Signs as Reminders of Covenants/Contracts
Of course, no Biblical text claims that God “specially invented” rainbows at some later date long after the creation of the universe. (The refractive properties of light were not delayed until after the Great Flood!) Instead, the Genesis text states that a particular significance was assigned thereafter to the rainbow as a reminder of the Noahic Covenant. [I’m not trying to imply that gbrooks8 thinks that the Bible states that rainbows appeared for the first time after the Flood. I’m simply acknowledging that some people actually *do* make that claim! So it is worth broaching that topic.]
In that culture it was quite common to take something rather routine—even something quite mundane—and give it new significance. This was especially common when covenant relationships were established between parties to a contract.
Of course, this custom persisted in Western Culture as well, right through the Middle Ages until literacy became common. I can still vaguely remember James Burke’s 1980s (??) BBC classic Connections (which came to PBS television in America soon after) illustrating this concept with a typical story from some English village in the 1100’s. A judge (a cleric?) came to town and was presiding over the disposition of an estate of some deceased man. A witness came forward and said, “This knife was given to me by John of Essex, son of William, on the day that he asked me to serve as a witness at his son’s baptism. Everyone in the village knows this. This is the very knife, I say. Everyone knows I speak the truth.” The judge looks at the villagers gathered round, and they all shake their heads in agreement. Everybody in the village knew the story behind the special knife. There was nothing obviously special about the construction or appearance of the knife. But for years people had seen the man using the knife and the story of how he came to own it was often mentioned, even across generations.
Such mnemonics were important in societies before literacy and public records became common. That’s why even piles of random rocks were assembled in ancient Israel to commemorate important events. Piles of rocks are in and of themselves not rare or unusual. But by assigning significance to them—and then retelling that story often—such signs became “monuments” equivalent to what we might call a “historical marker” or commemorative plaque. We might even call them “legal documents on public display” so that future generations would not be prone to forget them!
Likewise, the Bible doesn’t claim that no atmospheric water droplets had ever before refracted to display in the sky the colors ROYGBIV. Instead, Noah was told that, from that day forward, the beautiful rainbow in the sky would serve as a reminder of the covenant God established with humans and all other creatures after the Great Flood. Thus, every rainbow in the sky serves as a public display of an ancient contract.
Has the significance of “the sign of the rainbow” ever been misunderstood by those of other cultures since the Genesis text was first written down? Yes. Probably many times. But that doesn’t change the fact that this kind of custom was a familiar one in a great many ancient cultures.
POSTSCRIPT: Signs & Contracts
In pre-literate societies, contractual agreements (aka “covenants”) were often accompanied by signs to make them more memorable and meaningful.
WORTH EMPHASIZING: A covenant is a word that has largely been replaced in our culture by the term “contract.” In fact, because so many undergrads tend to think of words like “testament” and “covenant” as Bible talk without context, I always encouraged them to substitute more common synonyms, such as “contract”. Thus, the “Old Testament” and the “New Testament” can be regarded as traditional, even pious-sounding titles with rather unpretentious meanings: “The Old Contract” and “The New Contract”.
And when people complain that Christians today obey provisions of *the New Testament" and not necessarily those of *the Old Testament", I ask them if they have ever refinanced their mortgage or if they know somebody who has. Most will say yes. So then I ask them, “After someone refinances their mortgage contract—an agreement between two parties—do they base their relationship on the rules of the old contract or the new contract?” (Everybody answers: “The new one, obviously.”) "Do any of the same rules appear in both the old and new contracts? (“Yes.”) “Do any of the rules in the two contracts differ?” (“Yes”.) “Does anybody complain that any provisions of the old contract are now ignored by most people?” (“No, of course not. The old contract was replaced by the new contract.”)
Of course, we can also point out that the Old Testament (aka The Old Covenant) was a contract between YHWH ELOHIM and the Children of Israel, while the the New Testament (aka The New Covenant) refers to that same deity (who in Greek was called by the noun THEOS, God) who established a special relationship agreement with individual humans, both Jews and Gentiles who placed their faith in Jesus Christ the Son of God. Also, many of the New Testament texts deal with clarifications between the Old and New Covenants, that is, the Old Contract and the New Contract.
Anyone who has attended a Christian seminary and taken courses in Systematic Theology has probably spent many classroom hours learning about the various covenants of the Bible. Even many young and uninformed Christians get confused sometimes about the covenantal relationships described in the Bible. Thus, we should extend gracious patience to those who may be confused by the differences between the Old and New Testaments, the old and new contracts.
