The extremes are something that ought to be avoided, according to Larry Hurtado, (HT: Mike Heiser) and I couldn’t agree more. What Hurtado is essentially saying, I believe, is that one needs to wrestle with the fact that the Bible reflects the culture and times in which it was written vis-a-vis one’s own faith that the Bible is Scripture. The two are not mutually exclusive. In fact, I would argue that a robust doctrine of Scripture must expect that those Scriptures are the product of certain cultures and times.

As a brief aside, the fact that Scripture is written in a language means that it is culturally conditioned since all languages are–by nature–culturally conditioned.

Hurtado’s brief post is well worth the few moments it will take to read.