The crux of the Bible is solely about salvation as opposed to non-salvation. Primarily, everything in it was written by God to explain that with Christ as its foundation. Cultural issues and issues of the day are not germane to the understanding of salvation - given that salvation is essentially spiritual and not temporal - the spiritual, not the temporal issues are what are of concern. The temporal are illustrations of the spiritual. That is why in the Bible we are admonished that no prophecy of scripture is of any private interpretation and that (amongst others) the spiritual must be compared to the spiritual to gain correct understanding. Were it as you say, then those admonitions wouldn't be necessary nor correct because to follow them would move away from immediate context, but the admonitions instead demand that the entire Bible is evaluated to find the spiritual. Without doing that, would someone be able to understand the spiritual message of Old Testament without also knowing the spiritual message of the New Testament, and vice versa? No, biblical doctrines are revealed progressively, across books, chapters and verses, from start to end - they are not localized, and so, the gospel's doctrines must be understood as being revealed globally, and analyzed in that way; that is, just by reading certain verses, no matter how obvious the message may seem to be, nor what the cultural issues at play are, will not yield correct results. As an example, we are informed by God that He used allegory to illustrate one of the most fundamental spiritual doctrines of the Bible. Since God used allegory to illuminate it, then a temporal standalone reading of other related verses, would just yield a particular piece of it, but not the whole thing. However, a part of it, should it be taken at face value, would make the interpretation of it wrong. Notice below that cultural and temporal factors are not pertinent in these verses. Here is the example:
[Gal 4:24-26 KJV]
24 Which things are an allegory: for these are the two covenants; the one from the mount Sinai, which gendereth to bondage, which is Agar.
25 For this Agar is mount Sinai in Arabia, and answereth to Jerusalem which now is, and is in bondage with her children.
26 But Jerusalem which is above is free, which is the mother of us all.
Do you see we are informed that beginning in the Old Testament, there were two covenants and two Jerusalem(s) symbolically portrayed? If having followed the biblical admonitions, we would therefore know to look more closely and more deeply wherever Jerusalem (in this example) is mentioned by/in other verses, and not assume which one it is though the answer might even seem obvious to us at the time - in fact, both Jerusalem(s) could be present and appropriate, yet each representing different things. Otherwise, without following the biblical admonitions and factoring in all pertinent references to form a complete, not a localized picture, we could easily come to the wrong spiritual conclusions and yet not realize it.
I'm kind of tired right now, so this is about as good as I can do right now - I hope this makes sense and doesn't sound like gobbledygook - I know I didn't do a very good job so I'll apologize in advance, plus, it is difficult to explain it in one post, but hopefully you can get a little of its gist. After I post this, I'm sure I'll think of other things I should have included and better ways of saying it - so, I reserve the right to amend and revise as necessary (lol).[/QUOTE
Lots of words but not to the point which is??? as relates to the comments I've made. I'm very well aware of the message of the bible . I'm also aware of passages such as Romans 15:4 which applied to them looking back at the old testament but also to us as we look back at both the old and new, but that doesn't mean the events are stories solely for our learning, but rather historical events captured in writing as God directed, as si done for our learning. So, once again, what exactly are you trying to say?