What is the Bible anyway?

There are so many possible answers to this. It's a very long book about God - that's certainly true. It's the Word of God - that's true as well, but a statement that needs interpretation, which we'll look at in a later post. It's a religious history book - to a large extent, yes. It's a long, boring book - a very common perception, but if that's how you feel, hopefully this series will help you to see it in a better light. It's a library of shorter books, written by quite a lot of different people - definitely true, and that's our starting point for today.

The Bible is indeed a very good book, whether you believe it to be God's word or not. If you know it well you will realize that, in addition to all the wisdom and guidance that it contains, it's actually a ripping yarn. There are kings and battles, giants, prophets and witches, angels and demons, and of course God and the devil. Miracles abound amongst other supernatural happenings, there are tender love stories, glorious poetry, exquisite prose and a great deal of factual historical detail. What isn’t there to like?

Well, it's true that it's very long (over 1,000 pages in most English translations) and it's made up of isolated stories that have to be brought together into some sort of whole. If you're going to get to know the Bible you need to recognize that it's actually a collection of 66 books written by different people over a period of thousands of years - and they're not in chronological order. It's normally best not read cover to cover from beginning to end; rather, each book has something different to say, but they all dovetail together remarkably and present a single overarching story. So what are these books and why are they there? Today we shall look at the first section, called the Old Testament, which can be divided into four parts.

The Bible in most English language versions starts with a group of five books called the Pentateuch (meaning a five-volume book!), sometimes also referred to as the books of Moses. In the Hebrew Bible this is called the Law. It is essentially ancient history, in particular tracing the ancestry of those who would eventually found the nation of Israel. Genesis takes us up to the time when the first Israelite family moved to Egypt. The other four books (Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy) describe the Israelites' escape from Egypt about 400 years later, led by Moses and Aaron, followed by some details of their life as nomads in the desert for 40 years. During this period, God told Moses the Laws by which they were to abide, the blessings that would follow, and the consequences of disobedience. In the midst of it all there is also friendship and intrigue, loyalty and deception, love and warfare, faithfulness and immorality.

The next section is a series of what are essentially books containing details of how various kings, prophets and ordinary people led dynamic lives in step with God, or failed completely to follow him, making similar mistakes to what we still do today, turning their own lives upside down and affecting those of people around them; others fluctuated between the two. They're referred to as history, but are much more than that. They take us from the time when the Israelites first entered Canaan to conquer it as their new home (Joshua), through the period when there was no fixed ruler but God raised up prophetic military leaders to act as divinely appointed presidents (Judges and Ruth), up until the end of the subsequent monarchy (1&2 Samuel and 1&2 Kings, in parallel with 1&2 Chronicles), finishing with the exile of the Jews in Babylonia and their return to Jerusalem for those who chose to do so, or not as the case may be, as described in Ezra, Nehemiah and Esther. There's a lot more intrigue, deception, fighting and immorality - as well as friendship, loyalty, love and faithfulness of course.

The Old Testament is about real people loving and failing their real God, loving and fighting, hoping and despairing, rejoicing and lamenting along the way.

There then follows a group of what is called wisdom literature. This comprises a story about a man's suffering and how he found God through it (Job), five sets of poems about worship, righteousness and anger (Psalms), two books of wise sayings with very different characters (Proverbs and Ecclesiastes) and a highly erotic love poem (Song of Songs). Much of this, but not all by any stretch of the imagination, was written by the second and third official kings of Israel: David and Solomon.

The final section of the Old Testament is the writings of 16 prophets, together with an associated set of sorrowful poems (lamentations) over the destruction of Jerusalem by the Babylonians. These books tell us what God was saying to his people at various times from the latter part of the time of the monarchy (Isaiah, Jeremiah, Hosea, Amos, Obadiah, Jonah, Micah, Nahum, Habakkuk and Zephaniah), through the Jew's period of exile in Babylon (Lamentations, Ezekiel and Daniel) and into the period of the restoration of Jerusalem (Joel, Haggai, Zechariah and Malachi, although Joel could possibly have been written in an earlier period). The various prophecies contained within them interweave with the historical books. Malachi, and perhaps Joel, take us to the end of the Old Testament period, around 400 BC. In these prophetic books there is a lot of heartache and judgment, but equally vast amounts of love, comfort and blessing.

So if you thought that the Bible was just a tame book, suitable for inspirational Children's stories in primary school, I hope that I've opened your eyes to the more X-rated side. If on the other hand you thought that the Old Testament, in particular, was a horrendous book mainly about wars and judgment, then maybe you've missed the love, joy, grace, hope and promise contained within its pages as well. It's a warts-and-all depiction of a typical nation of good and bad people, constantly swaying between pleasing and frustrating their ultimately loving but equally just God and how he dealt with that. It's also the story of how people just like us still do please and frustrate the same, one and only God, who wants to be our friend if we'll let him.

When life just won't stand still

Like many of you reading this, as I write we are in Covid-19 lock down here. In principle, that makes life a bit slower, which would be nice. It becomes rather claustrophobic not being able to get out much, and only for specific reasons, and many of us are experiencing that. However, a lot isn't happening that would be normally, which means that there should be some space in our lives to compensate for the restrictions. So why am I so busy? Somehow, life always manages to fill all the available time, and more. How can I slow down and not always be driven by the next priority?

Jesus knew all about this. Mark tells us fairly near the beginning of his Gospel that after a busy day of ministry, Jesus slipped away on his own in the early morning to pray in a lonely place (Mark chapter1:, verse 5). Luke tells us that he would quite often go into the wilderness on his own to be with his Father (Luke chapter 5, verse16). After feeding a crowd of 5,000 men plus many women and children with five loaves of bread and two fish, he stayed behind once the crowds and his disciples had left, so that he could pray (Matthew chapter 14, verse 23). Quite importantly, when he was about to choose his 12 core disciples for his apostolic team, Jesus spent the whole night in prayer (Luke 6:12). And of course, before he was about to be betrayed, leading to his crucifixion, he spent the night in prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane (Matthew 26:36-46).

Jesus knew that his ministry was not all about doing things. It was important for him to stop and be alone with his Father after hard days and before important decisions and events. Remember that Luke said this was a common occurrence, not limited to the cases specifically recorded by the Gospel writers. Jesus' power for ministry, and probably his sanity in the midst of all the activity at times (certainly his mother was worried at one point that he might crack up under the intense pressure), came from his relationship with his Father and the Holy Spirit.

When I teach physics classes, I know that I need to spend around an hour in preparation before each lesson, or often even more. That's fairly standard in teaching. So why do we think that we can rush from one event to another in an endless cycle - and that includes any ministry that we might do for God - without stopping both to prepare and rest? To answer my earlier question in part, being locked down means that many of us don't travel to meetings anymore, but we can stay at home and log in to one Zoom meeting, or WhatsApp group call, or Skype interview after another without taking any time in between at all. Some people are finding themselves much busier under these circumstances. As Christians, we need to look after ourselves and recognize where the source of our own strength and sanity lies. We need to create time for ourselves and for spending time with our Creator and Saviour. Yes, we need to create the time, which often means cutting out something else or not taking on something extra. The benefits are immense.

Questioning God

When Luke wrote his Gospel, as his account of Jesus' life, he had to choose what were the key events which he wanted to record. For example, he didn't bother to write about the famous visit of the magi from Persia and that Jesus' parents had to keep him safe by taking him to Egypt for a while. Matthew had possibly already written at least a first draft of his account of that (Matthew chapter 2, verses 1 - 23), and there were things to consider which other people hadn't mentioned. So what he did include must have been important to him, especially since he often wrote in so much detail.

The first event of importance for Luke was the announcement to Zechariah that his wife, Elizabeth, was going to have a special baby (Luke chapter 1, verses 5 - 25). You might think that having an angel turn up while you're working in the Temple would have been enough to convince you that what he was saying was true, but maybe you're less susceptible to human doubts than Zechariah. He struggled to understand how at their age he and his wife could possibly have a baby - it was a biological impossibility. Perhaps a priest should have remembered how old Abraham and Sarah had been when Isaac was born. But in the heat of the moment we don't think of these things, do we?

Next, Luke tells us that this same angel, Gabriel, went to a lady called Mary going on for six months later (Luke 1:26-36). She also was to have a special baby. Mary quite rightly asked how this would be (not if it would be, like Zechariah), because in her case she wasn't married; Gabriel told her that the boy's father would be God. Mary accepted this unquestioningly. She had had a discussion about the details, but never crossed a line into disrespect. Instead, she was extremely well behaved, even though she must have had all sorts of emotions going on: she was going to be the mother of the Son of God; she was going to be unmarried and pregnant, which was very dangerous in those days because of the potential religious penalties which could even involve death; what indeed would her fiancé have to say about it?

God is always willing to talk to us and even puts up with our emotional responses, although he might tell us off a bit if they go too far. Doubting him, though, is not without its consequences, as Zechariah discovered - he was not able to talk for nine months after questioning the accuracy of what Gabriel told him. It's so easy to interpret what God says to fit into our own understanding of what can be, rather than accepting the miraculous implications. Zechariah tried to interpret; Mary accepted the miraculous straightaway. Is God trying to tell you something that it's difficult to fit into your understanding of the world, your church, your family, your own life situation? Are you willing to accept the miraculous option?