I was asked to give a presentation this past Friday on the Old
Testament to the guys in their first year of Franciscan formation. I had
one hour, and with so little time I figured that, if nothing else, one ought to
have a fairly general idea about the flow of major historical events which influenced
the Hebrew Scriptures. Keeping this task to an hour was no easy feat, for if you
knew me (or anyone in my family), you'd know that I can take a long time to get
to the point of a story and often detour into excessive tangents. That being
said, I'm not entirely sure if I accomplished my goal for those guys in
formation. However, since today's post is about the so-called historical books,
I figured it would be good to distill that hour-plus rant into a post that
takes under ten minutes to read... for your sake and for theirs.
First of all,
the books categorized as the "historical books" are not meant to be
read like high school history books. Rather, I'd be inclined to think of them
as more akin to Shakespeare's historically-based plays. We can talk about
Richard III's rise to the throne and his eventual defeat as historical events,
but it was Shakespeare's poetry and poignancy that put into his mouth "A horse, a horse! My kingdom for a horse!"
Likewise, we know that Julius Caesar was assassinated, but did he really ever
say "Et tu, Brute?"
("You too, Brutus?")? Probably not. Nevertheless, the reality of
being betrayed by a close friend is a truth that resonates so deeply within us
that we invoke these words whenever we feel as if we've been stabbed in the
back by someone we love. What I'm getting at is that the "historical
books," and much of the Bible for that matter, are not historical in the
way we think about history today. But that isn't to say they don't speak the
truth.
I'll let this
notion sink in for now and return to it in a later post. It's an important
topic and one that I think lot of people find difficult to grapple with. This
is also my not-so-covert attempt to keep readers tuned in to subsequent blog
postings.
For now,
let's look at the quick-notes version of Old Testament history.
Last week I
wrote about the Torah. It's difficult to pinpoint the events of most of the
narratives in the Torah on a timeline, and some passages I wouldn't bother even
putting on a timeline at all. The flow of events in the Torah is, however,
important to keep in mind. The main things to remember are that Abraham was
called by God out of Haran (near the Syrian-Turkey border of today) to immigrate to the land of
Canaan (in modern-day Israel/Palestine). He begot Isaac who begot Jacob (aka
Israel), and Jacob had twelve sons who more or less became the fathers of the
twelve tribes of Israel. These Israelite tribes went down to Egypt from Canaan
because of a famine, and many generations later the Israelites were led out of
the Egypt by Moses (you know the story... "Let my people go!" and all
that). They then spent forty years wandering in the desert. According to Fran
Fine from The Nanny it was because
they were walking off the Passover meal. According to Scripture it was because
the people had sinned. Anthropologists might say it was because they were
nomads. Either way, they eventually reached the eastern bank of the Jordan
river.
This brings
us now to the setting of the historical books. The book of Joshua concerns the conquest of the land of Canaan. Moses has died,
and Joshua is charged to lead the people into the Promised Land and take it
from the Canaanite tribes. This book is rather triumphalistic, because it gives
the impression that the conquest was reasonably successful. This was likely not
the case, but rather wishful thinking on the part of the authors of Joshua.
Next we have Judges. This book goes to show just how
unsuccessful the conquest of Canaan really was. As Michael Coogan says, the
book of Joshua "presented the ideal... however, the book of Judges gives a
sobering and even appalling presentation of the reality."[1]
The Judges were military leaders and/or administrators of pre-monarchic Israel
– "the highest authority at the tribal level."[2] At
this time there was a lot war with the Canaanites and a lot of in-fighting
among the tribes of Israel. Judges
is a great book to read, by the way. Some of it reads like a Greek tragedy. Other
parts are rather funny, like the story of Ehud (see Judges 3:12-25).
The book of Ruth takes place at the time of the judges.
It doesn't deal with historical material per se, but it is a lovely book to
read. And it's only four chapters, so I'm not even going to bother giving a
summary of it. But I will note that it has much to say to us to today in terms
of welcoming the immigrant or foreigner. Ruth, by the way, is one of the
ancestors of king David.
By 1 & 2 Samuel we
get into some chartable history. These books are named after the prophet
Samuel, who is kind of a crusty figure in the Old Testament. He anoints the
first king of Israel, Saul, even though he'd rather not have a king. He's
pretty bent out of shape about it, but God tells him "You are not the one
they are rejecting. They are rejecting me as their king" (1 Sam 8:7). Saul
then becomes king, but falls out of favor with God and then goes a little nuts.
Saul is succeeded, not by his son, but by the ruddy and handsome David. Under
David are the tribes of Israel united for the first time, and the rest of the
books of Samuel are about David's
reign. The united kingdom of Israel is short-live, however. 1 & 2 Kings begins with the death
of David, and then follows the line of his successors. Only his first
successor, king Solomon, is able to keep the kingdom together (though, for all
of Solomon's wisdom, he wasn't that admirable of a king). After Solomon's death
(c. 928 BCE) the kingdom is divided by his sons Jeroboam and Rehoboam: the
northern kingdom (Israel) which included most of the Israelite tribes, and the
southern kingdom (Judah).
Jumping ahead
about 200 years later, the kingdom of Israel in the north falls to the Assyrian
empire in 722 BCE. The elite from this kingdom are exiled to Assyria (modern
day northern Iraq). King Sennacherib of Assyria tries to take Judah and lays a
nasty siege on Jerusalem during reign of Hezekiah, but surprisingly Jerusalem
and the southern kingdom does not fall... yet. In 586 BCE the Babylonians (from
modern day southern Iraq, and sometimes referred to as the Chaldeans in
Scripture) destroy Jerusalem and the Temple and send the upper classes of Judah
into exile in Babylon. I cannot express how devastating this was to the
Judahite's psyche and religious morale. A lot of prophetic literature concerns
either the impending experience of exile, the exile itself, or the return from
exile.
This brings
us to the end of 1 & 2 Kings. The
exile lasted almost fifty years. But
then the Persian empire (from modern day Iran) captures Babylon in 539 BCE, and
the Persian king, Cyrus II, allows the Jews to return to Judah in 538. They
begin working on reconstructing the Temple. The next four historical books, 1 & 2 Chronicles, Ezra, and Nehemiah, were written during the time of this reconstruction of
Judah. 1 & 2 Chronicles are pretty
much a retelling of the books of Samuel
and Kings, but from a post-exilic
viewpoint and theology. Ezra was a priest and a scribe, and Nehemiah was
governor of Judah appointed by the Persian King. These two men, though active
at different times, were most responsible for reorganizing Jewish life after
the exile.
I'm going to
skip Tobit and Judith for now. They are interesting books, but they don't have
much to do with the history of Israel for our purposes today. Perhaps I'll
treat them later in a post about Deuterocanonical books. Protestant traditions
refer to these books as apocrypha, which simply translated means "hidden."
The book of Esther doesn't have much
to do with the history of Israel either, but it takes place during the Persian
period. Here's a one sentence synopsis: Jewish queen of a Persian king
convinces the king not to enact the genocide against her people which his official,
Haman, devised. Like many of the books of the Bible, its message is about God
saving his people.
The Persian
period lasted from about 539-332 BCE, but, as we may be familiar with from the
movies, Alexander the Great conquers a fat chunk of the eastern world including
the Persians. Thus the land of Judah came under the control of the Greeks –
more specifically, the Seleucid empire. This brings us to the last period of
the Old Testament, the Hellenistic period. Do you remember that scene in My Big Fat Greek Wedding when Toula's
father says, "There are two kinds of people in this world: Greeks and
everyone else who wishes they were Greek"? This must have been the
attitude of the Greeks back then too, because they loved their culture and
thought everyone should love it too. They wanted to spread their Hellenistic
ways all over the world. This did not make some folks too happy.
Now you've
got this small nation of Jewish people who have not been self-ruling for over 250 years. They have not only kept
their faith and traditions but have become staunchly committed in their beliefs
and culture despite the trials of the exile, and now they've got Greeks wanting
to Hellenize them – that is, make them Greek. Well, some of them went along
with it and assimilated. Others, however, thought the very infringement on
their Jewish culture was a heinous persecution. And then Antiochus IV came
along and really acid rained all over
Jewish religion, essentially making it punishable by death to practice the
Jewish faith at all. The books of 1
& 2 Maccabees are concerned with this Hellensitic period in what is
known by this time as Judea. Like Tobit and
Judith, I'll say a little more about
1 & 2 Maccabees in a later post. But for now I shall say that these books
relate the surprisingly successful Maccabean revolt (a Jewish revolt against
the Seleucids) which eventually led to the Hasmonean dynasty (Jewish rulers of
Judea) and fairly independent rule for the Jews until the Romans came and
did... well, what Romans do. Conquer people.
So obviously this
could not cover every detail in Old Testament history, and yet it was still a
rather long post. But hey, we just covered over a thousand years of history! I
hope, however, that this helps to put some of the Old Testament into context.
Since this
post had a lot to do with rulers, kings, and empires, and since this Sunday was
the Church's celebration of the Solemnity of Christ the King, my recommended
Scripture reading for this week is 1
Samuel 8. As you reflect on this passage, compare and contrast this warning
about earthly kings with Christ who is king of heaven and earth. What does it
mean for you to have God as king? What do you think the kingdom of God is like?
Given the rather unfortunate history with earthly rulers that unfolds in the Old
Testament, do you think a kingdom of justice, peace, charity, mercy, and
self-sacrifice with God's own son as king can make a difference in our own
time? What do you hope for if/when you pray "thy kingdom come"?
As always, I
am grateful to hear from readers any comments or questions. Don't forget to
subscribe in the "Follow the Codega" box. And tune in next week to
learn more about the wisdom/poetical books!
Peace and all good things, and have a joyful Thanksgiving!
No comments:
Post a Comment