Why So Apocalyptic? Part I: A Matter of God's Justice

A few weeks ago I posted a blog about what an apocalypse is and what it means to be apocalyptic. For review, you can read the whole thing by clicking here, but in summary here are a few things to keep in mind. Apocalypse means an "unveiling" or a "revelation." In biblical studies it refers to a particular kind of literature, one in which a supernatural message is revealed to a human being through or with the help of a heavenly being. To be apocalyptic is to espouse a worldview in which the spiritual realities of God, angels, demons and the like are real and active in the world. God is in control of his creation and has a plan; the forces of good and evil are in conflict with one another as evidenced on earth, and there will be some ultimate and imminent finale to all this in which God and those aligned with him will triumph.

I guess I could have just said that instead of posting a lengthy blog earlier, but brevity has never been my forte, especially with this much time to write. In any case, I ended that post on a cliff-hanger: Why was there an apocalyptic movement? Why did people write apocalypses? These are complicated questions, and anyone who knows me well knows that I'm high-context. So I apologize; I'm going to have to give you a little bit of biblical background. First, I recommend that you check out my blog post from four years ago entitled "Greek Week: The Bible in the Hellenistic Period." It should provide a fairly decent historical backdrop for Jewish apocalyptic literature.

Like you have somewhere to go. It's spring of 2020.

It's important to keep in mind that the books of the Bible come from a variety of different time periods in Judeo-Christian history. While there is continuity in the Scriptures, over time the Bible also reveals an evolution of theology. One issue that the authors of Scripture grappled with is that of God's justice (a.k.a. theodicy). When it comes right down to it, theodicy today and for much of history asks, If God is all good and all powerful, why does evil exist? For the ancient people of Israel, however, this wasn't quite the question that was on their minds. They didn't try to reconcile God's benevolence and omnipotence with the existence of evil in the same sort of post-enlightenment way that we do. They were more comfortable with accepting the reality that evil exists and that bad things happen.¹ Furthermore, the Scriptures frequently remind us that God has a special love for the poor and seeks to rescue the innocent. All that being said, it didn't stop them from asking why good people suffered so much or why corrupt people seemed to have it so easy.

You see, one prevailing notion from an earlier scriptural tradition was that goodness and faithfulness were rewarded in this lifetime and evil was cursed. Proverbs draws upon this theme quite a bit: e.g. Truly the evil man shall not go unpunished, but those who are just shall escape (Prv 11:21). Another earlier belief was that everyone - the just and the unjust, rich and poor alike - had the same fate after death. They would go to Sheol, a sort of shadowy underworld. Belief in a eternal reward or punishment developed later, as did a theology of resurrection. Until then, there wasn't much of any kind of existence to look forward to in the afterlife. So the suffering of the innocent flew smack into the face of their ideology that the righteous would be blessed and the wicked would be cursed. With the belief that everyone shared the same fate after death, where was God's justice to be found?

Various books and literary styles of the Bible deal with this issue differently. Wisdom literature, like Psalm 49 and Ecclesiastes, point to the futility of wealth. They remind their audience that, since both the rich and the poor will die alike, those who amass riches will not be able to take any of it with them. For Ecclesiastes especially, everything was vanity and that suffering was just a part of life, but the author still believed that God had a plan. We just aren't privy to what that plan is. Down the road, apocalyptic literature will be like, "Guys, I have seen the plan, and let me tell you what it is!" But I'm getting ahead of myself.

Job is perhaps wisdom literature's theodicist par excellence. In the midst of his devastating anguish, his so-called friends keep telling him that he should admit that he did something to offend God and therefore deserved his lot. They tow the line that the good are blessed and the wicked are cursed. But Job maintains his innocence and demands that God explain himself. God's answer is, in short, that God is God and Job is not. However, God justifies Job for speaking rightly of him, while his friends are chastised for upholding a flawed concept of God's justice. One message of Job is that it's fair to question God and God's ways and even to cry out to God for suffering that is unmerited. In the end, though, we'll never quite know why. On the other hand, to think that affliction is a curse for evildoing, or even that wealth and comfort are a reward for righteousness, is definitely not the wisdom of God.

Prophetic literature is different in that it's generally more concerned with the whole of the community or nation than with the individual. Communal suffering, therefore, is attributed to social sin. The prophets were not theodicists, asking why bad things happened to good people. Instead, they were the moral conscience of society, beckoning their communities to fidelity to the covenant. They knew why bad things were happening or would eventually happen. They could see the writing on the wall, the consequences of idolatry, injustice, ill-advised foreign policy, etc., and they called their people out on it. Some prophetic literature though, especially after the Babylonian exile, began to look toward an eschatological climax and end to the suffering of the Jewish people.

PAUSE! Yes, eschatology refers to the end times. Eschaton in Greek is related to the last days, or the end. But don't be afraid! It didn't mean the ultimate annihilation of the earth, though it would probably involve some form of destruction. Rather it refers more to the cosmic fulfillment of time, end of oppression, and renewal of heaven and earth. It's not the end of the world per se; it's the end of the world as we know it. 

You should feel fine. This is really good news!

So now we can start talking about an apocalyptic movement, because you can't have apocalypticism without eschatology.  You can't have an apocalyptic ideology without conflict between good and evil and the pronouncement of God's judgement upon the earth. And you can't have apocalyptic literature without a sense that history is moving forward to some ultimate event, resurrection, renewal, and coming of God's kingdom.

After the Babylonian exile and return to Judea there were certain promises that were not fulfilled. The land didn't belong to the Jewish people anymore; it was a province in the Persian empire. Moreover, they did not have a descendant of David on the throne. There was a prophetic movement to rebuild the Temple so as to hasten these expectations, but even when the Temple was rebuilt, it did not seem that God's reign had come. The Gentiles were ultimately in power, internal corruption was rampant, and infidelity to God's law persisted. Some prophets had pointed to a time of doom and God's intervening salvation in the future: "On that day... on that day." But for centuries that day never seemed to come. For those of the apocalyptic worldview, however, that day was near. So what does it take to go from prophetic to apocalyptic eschatology? The same thing it takes for coal to turn into a diamond: pressure. Pressure, in this case, manifested as oppression and persecution, because apocalyptic literature is not written at Starbucks sipping on a latte, folks.²

Again, I recommend that you check out the Greek Week blog post for a little bit more detail on this period in Old Testament history, but let me do a quick run through on some of what went down.

Under Persian rule things were, relatively speaking, not too bad for the return community, especially after rebuilding a temple by 515 B.C.E. Nevertheless, the collective memory of the Babylonian exile and the destruction of Solomon's Temple would forever be with them. It should be noted that Jews were not just living in Judea, but at this point were all over the Mediterranean and Ancient Near East due to the the deportations of Israel and Judah by the Assyrians and Babylonians respectively This is known as the Diaspora. Much of this Persian period saw a consolidation of their traditions and sacred texts. And then came Alexander the Great, who conquers the Persian Empire (and specifically Palestine in 333 B.C.E.).

While the Persians had been pretty chill about their subjects as long as they paid their tribute, the Greeks were all about Hellenism (i.e. Greek culture). They wanted everyone to be Greek, and there were a lot of Jews who, either from pressure and discrimination or by their own will, assimilated to the Greek culture - learning the language, hiding their circumcision in the gymnasium (or foregoing it altogether), intermarrying with Greeks, etc. It was not outright oppression and persecution, but it was certainly perceived that way by some Jews. A dominant, invasive culture was snuffing out their Jewish identity! They had already experienced the destruction of their monarchy, capital city, and temple for not keeping the covenant once before; they weren't going to lose what little they had left because Jews were compromising their faith and identity.

The earth was ripe for cultivating the seeds of an apocalyptic worldview. Prophetic literature had already begun to set the stage for some kind of restorative culmination to the Jewish narrative since the devastation of Babylon. It was clear that there were forces of good (those who kept the covenant) and forces of evil (those who made concessions to their faith and Gentiles who led Jews astray). It was in this time of cultural crisis that early apocalypses were composed, though almost none of them made it into the Jewish canon of Scripture. A radical theodicy was developing in which the suffering faithful would be vindicated and the backsliders and oppressors would get their comeuppance. No more of the equalizing perception of death from the wisdom literature of the past. The theme of judgment becomes very prevalent, and in fact is one characteristic that is in nearly all apocalyptic writings.

One example of an early apocalypse is the Book of the Watchers, which is part of a much larger corpus known as Enochic literature after its protagonist, Enoch. Enoch is an obscure figure from Genesis, and it says of him, "Enoch walked with God, and he was no longer here, for God took him" (Gen 5:24). The mystery surrounding Enoch made him a perfect candidate for someone to have supposedly received a secret revelation from God about the future. So in this book, as with other apocalypses, the visionary is taken on an otherworldly journey and learns of the places of paradise prepared for the righteous and those of torment for the wrongdoers.

The Watchers also draws on another obscure passage from Genesis in which angels from heaven have intercourse with the women on earth and beget giants known has the Nephilim (Gen 6:1-4). Now I urge you not to read too much into that weird passage. I can't say the same thing to the apocalyptists at the turn of the second century B.C.E., though. This narrative from Genesis made some interesting source material for them. We'd probably call it fan fiction today. In Enoch's account, the evil "Watcher" angels teach humans things like weaponry, cosmetics, fornication, and astrology (1 Enoch 8:1-4). Some scholars speculate that this may be an allegorical reference to leaders of the Greek forces teaching the Jewish people their pagan ways.³ Later on in the story we discover that there's a special place in hell (so to speak) prepared for the Watchers. We can assume that the authors felt the same for the Greeks as well as those Jews who had succumbed to Greek ways.

 Whereas the issue at hand in the early stages of this apocalyptic movement had to do with cultural and religious compromise, the pressures from persecution were about to become more dire, and the apocalyptic heat was about to get turned up! It was one thing to feel as though justice was lacking when fidelity to the covenant made life challenging. Even more so when your fellow Jew was living well yet betraying the Torah. But what happens when all perceptions of God's justice go up in smoke and you're put to death because you keep the covenant? Extreme times such as that call for extreme literature!

On that note, I'll leave you with another cliff-hanger until I write again. Next time I shall write about that son-of-a-beast, Antiochus IV, and the effect of bloodshed on apocalyptic writings. I hope, though, that this provides some insight into how apocalypticism developed, especially in regards to the notion of God's justice in the midst of fidelity and compromise to God's Law. In the meantime, my Scripture recommendation for the week is 1 Maccabees 1:1-64. I know it's not in every Bible, so if it's not in yours at home, you can click the link and read it online. This chapter and all the atrocities described within really get at the heart of why there was an apocalyptic movement at this time in Jewish history. As you read it, put yourself in the shoes of the Jewish people living under the reign of Antiochus. What would be your response to God? How would you interpret your experience? What kind of salvation would you look forward to, and how would you want God's justice to unfold?

Until next time,

Peace and all good,
Bro. Ian

P.S. Don't forget that you can subscribe to this blog by entering your email address in the "Follow the Codega" box. You can also also like and follow @biblecodega on Facebook for even more scriptural reflections.

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1 Gregory Stevenson, A Slaughtered Lamb: Revelation and the Apocalyptic Response to Evil and Suffering, (Abilene, ACU Press, 2013), 40-45.^↩
2 Timothy Milinovich, Class Lecture, January 12, 2010.^↩
3 Mitchell Reddish Ed., Apocalyptic Literature: A Reader, (Peabody, Abingdon Press, 1990), 145.^↩

Obscure Men: People and Places Part I

           It occurred to me after posting my last entry that there can be a lot of confusion surrounding the names of people and places in the Bible. It doesn’t help that the history of Israel is hard to follow as it is. To add to that, it gets even more complicated when you take into account that the Bible was not written with historical accuracy in mind. And if you’re reading the Hebrew Scriptures you might wonder who or what they’re talking about. What is Israel? What is Judah? Who are the Hebrews, and who are the Israelites? Is there even a difference?

           To unravel these questions, I thought I’d write a series of posts about stories of origin. So first, let’s begin with a fancy schmancy word to impress your friends: etiology. An etiology is “a narrative that explains the origin of a custom, ritual, geographical feature, name, or other phenomenon.”[1] The Hebrew Scriptures are full of these little stories explaining why things are the way they are. Consider how the Adam & Even narrative explains why serpents crawl on their bellies, or how the Noah story gives an explanation for rainbows. These passages, of course, have much more theological significance than mere snakes or rainbows. Yet woven into the deeper narratives are these mythical interpretations of the natural world.

           Some biblical etiologies are about the origins of peoples. Just as we try to categorize and classify the human race in our day – and I’m not saying that’s an admirable thing – so did our ancient ancestors. Some things never change apparently. For the biblical authors, this was usually done through genealogies and etiologies. The men who are mentioned in these infancy narratives and lists of fathers and sons frequently represent people of a geographical region, language group, nation, or city. So let’s take a look at a handful of these obscure men from the Bible to see how they were identified with various groups of people.

Shem, Ham, and Japheth (Gn 9:18 - 10:32)
           Do you know where the term “Semitic” comes from? It is actually not a synonym for “Jewish.” The term encompasses a much broader range of peoples, and it derives from the name Shem. Each of Noah’s three sons – Shem, Ham, and Japheth – is identified as a patriarch for one of the three major linguistic and ethnic regions that concerned the biblical authors. The descendants of Shem are identified with Syria, Mesopotamia and the Arabian Peninsula. Ham and his descendants are associated with northeast Africa and regions under Egyptian influence (as the land of Canaan had once been). And Japheth and his descendants are linked with modern-day Turkey and the eastern Mediterranean.

This map is courtesy of Corey Baugher's website www.knowingthebible.net. I do not have rights to claim this map as my own.

           For the record, the term “Semitic” nowadays is used more to refer to a particular language family that includes Hebrew, Arabic, Aramaic, and Akkadian – just as, say, the word “Romance” is applied to Latin-based languages, such as Spanish, French, Italian, and Romanian.[2]

           There is one interesting thing to note about Ham. The biblical authors and compilers tended to tell the ancestral stories of their national adversaries in rather unflattering ways. Oftentimes the patriarch is involved in some kind of sexual taboo and/or gets cursed. The story of Ham, the ancestor of the Canaanites, tells of how he “saw his father’s nakedness” - a possible sexual euphemism - when Noah was drunk off wine. Noah then curses Ham’s son:

“Cursed be Canaan!
The lowest of slaves
shall he be to his brothers.”
He also said:

“Blessed be the Lord, the God of Shem!
Let Canaan be his slave.

May God expand Japheth,
and may he dwell among the tents of Shem;
and let Canaan be his slave.” (Gn 9:25-27)

           In Scripture, the ancient Israelites took possession of the land of Canaan after the Exodus. If nothing else, this story should give you some indication of how they felt about the Canaanites.

Eber (Gn 11:10-26)
           Eber is a little-known name in Scripture, but an important one. Eber is the great-grandson of Shem and one of the ancestors of Abraham. It is from him that the name Hebrew derives. You can see the similarities in the Hebrew language: עבר (Eber); עברי (Hebrew). But the term Hebrew can be a confusing one. Today it is used as the name of a language, but not of an ethnicity. And it wasn’t used too frequently to speak of the Israelite people in the Old Testament either. Michael Coogan points out two contexts in which the term Hebrew was used in the OT. “First, it refers to Israelites or their ancestors living as resident aliens in another jurisdiction… The other context is for slaves, probably fellow Israelites.”[3] So when the Israelites were living in Egypt, they were known as Hebrews, but the term was not properly applicable once they left. In any case, it seems like Hebrew would have been too generic of a term for the Israelites, since Eber was about eight generations removed from their namesake, Jacob/Israel.

           Coogan also adds some clarification to the way the term Hebrew was used in the New Testament. Occasionally it was applied to the common language of Palestine, which was actually Aramaic. As such, it was sometimes used to distinguish the Aramaic-speaking Jews of Palestine from the Greek-speaking Jews dispersed throughout other parts of the Greco-Roman world.[4]

Moab and Ammon (Gn 19:30-38)
           The last patriarchs I want to go over in this post are the eponymous ancestors of two of Israel’s national enemies. As with Ham, the father of Canaan, the biblical authors weave in a sexual deviance into the origin story of Moab and Ammon.

           After the destruction of Sodom & Gomorrah, Lot, the nephew of Abraham, settled in a cave in the hill country… far away from other people apparently. Well, after witnessing the calamity that fell upon two populous cities, he probably didn’t want to be around too many folks. It was just Lot and his two daughters. His wife was turned into a pillar of salt for looking back – you know, ‘cause that’s the sort of thing that happens in the OT – and the men who were going to marry his daughters did not escape. So what are two single girls desperate for offspring to do? Having children was very important in those days, especially for women.

           They decided to get Lot very drunk and sleep with him. Somehow he never noticed a thing, which means they must have gotten him really drunk. In any case, they both succeeded in bearing children. The first gave birth to Moab, which, according to the passage, is a play on the Hebrew word meaning “from my father.” The second gave birth to Ammon, for the words “son of my kin” and “Ammonites” sound very similar in Hebrew.

           Even though these and other etiological narratives were at times used as backhanded slaps to ridicule their enemies, by linking their rivals’ lineages with that of their own the Israelites acknowledged a profound interconnectedness that transcended the conflicts that arose among them. Moab and Ammon were kin to the Israelite patriarch, Abraham. Even in the book of Deuteronomy the Lord stipulates to the Israelites that, unlike the land of Canaan, they are not to try to take away the land he gave to the Moabites and Ammonites. The Israelites may have had contempt for these people, but they were still part of the family.

           My reading recommendations this week are the genealogies and stories of origin regarding the patriarchs above in bold. You can click the passage references beside their names for links on Biblegateway.com. These might be spiritually dry readings, but as you go through them consider that we are all part of the one human family. We are all children of God, and thus all interconnected. Read these passages, and pray for people across the world, in the most obscure places and in the most difficult situations. Pray for the nations we are at war with, and give kind consideration to the cultures we struggle to understand. We are all sisters and brothers to one another, so let us pray that a spirit of unity and solidarity may reign in all of our hearts.

Until next time,
Peace and all good!

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[1] Michal D. Coogan, The Old Testament: A historical and Literary Introduction to the Hebrew Scriptures, (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006), 562.

[2] Stephen L. Harris and Robert L. Platzner, The Old Testament: An Introduction to the Hebrew Bible, (Boston: McGraw-Hill, 2003), G-39.

[3] Coogan, 86.

[4] Ibid.

Where Did the Bible Come From? Part II

           After the attacks of September 11, 2001, something changed in the United States. I distinctly remember watching a commercial on television that showed a row of houses with a voice-over that said something to the effect of "On September 11, terrorists tried to change America forever." Then it faded to a image of those same houses sometime after 9/11 with U.S. flags waving in the wind on each one of them. The voice-over then said, "Well, they succeeded." (You can click here to see the ad on Youtube.)

            However you may feel about said commercial, I bring it up for purely anthropological reasons... not political ones. To me, the ad illustrates something about the effects of trauma on a nation, a group of people, or even an individual. For better or for worse, each of these in some way will change as a result. After a devastating event, their attitudes, outlooks, and values change – or at least become stronger. Last week, I mentioned how the Israelites didn't have a pressing need to preserve their religious tradition until they were faced with the threat of losing it altogether. Although parts of it had been written, the Torah was not compiled and consolidated until after the traumatic experiences of the Temple's destruction (586 BCE) and the Babylonian exile. But fear of their tradition's disappearance was not the only motivation behind its preservation. National trauma has a way of strengthening people's convictions about identity, religion, and culture. The increase in patriotism that took hold after the events of 9/11/2001 is one example I can think of in our own time of this sort of phenomenon. This apparent effect due to devastating circumstances seems to play out as the Bible begins to take shape in the centuries after the exile.

"The Flight of the Prisoners" James Tissot (1836-1902)
Google Images

Image from www.newtestamentchristians.com/bible-land-maps/

            Last week we looked at some of the sources that contributed to the formation of the Torah. The developers and authors of the Priestly source were the ones mostly responsible for its final form (post exile), and by about the 5^th or 4^th century BCE those first five books of the Bible were more or less considered authoritative. Thanks to the Deuteronomists' fine work, we also have a sense that a fair few of the "historical books" were composed and collected by that time as well. But what of the other books of the Old Testament? How did those get lumped among the Scriptures?

            The Jewish canon of Scripture (the Tanak) is divided into the Torah, followed by the Prophets, which begins with the Deuteronomic History (Joshua, Judges, Samuel, and Kings), and finally everything else (the Writings). I rather prefer the Jewish arrangement of the Hebrew Scriptures because the categories of books are organized somewhat more closely according to chronology and importance than the Christian canon. But then, as anyone who knows me would tell you, I love all things Jewish anyway. So given the placement of the prophets in the Tanak, it's fitting to talk about them next.

            Like the Torah, the prophetic works were edited (redacted) over time, especially the pre-exilic prophets, such as Amos. Some prophetic texts, like Isaiah or Zechariah, are even compilations of separate works written at different periods in history. However, much of the prophetic material derives from the oral sayings of a prophet during his ministry. What we have in written form was probably composed either by the prophet's disciples or those within the prophet's school of thought (like the so-called "school of Isaiah"), by the prophet himself, or by a combination of both. We know from Scripture that Jeremiah used a scribe named Baruch, for example. Most, if not all of the books, faced some degree of redaction. Some of the biographical material in the prophets, for example, was surely written by redactors some time later than when the prophet lived. For more about prophets, see my post, "The Bible Library: The Prophets," and check out the table of dates for an idea of when the prophets were active. I know how people feel about dating prophetic activity, so if you want to print the table out and put it on your fridge or bedroom wall, I totally understand. I found this one below on Google Images and loved it so much I posted it on Facebook.

Google Images. Thank you Dr. Bandstra and this webpage: http://barrybandstra.com/rtot4/rtot4-09-pt2.html

            Although they were not apparently always well heeded, The pre-exilic prophets were influential enough for their works to be copied and preserved through the traumatic events of the 6^th century. As Marc Zvi Brettler writes, "The complex activity of preserving and developing the prophetic oracle collections reflects a conviction that a prophet's words were not only significant for the circumstances in which they were originally pronounced but potentially relevant for later ones as well."[1] In other words, those preserving the prophetic material saw something of universal value in it. At this point, however, there wasn't a fixed canon of Scripture; works were still being redacted, especially in ways that reflected the social and religious needs of the time. It's unclear as to when the prophetic works actually became fixed and scribal editing began to cease – perhaps sometime before the end of the 3^rd century BCE. Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel were long enough to each have their own scroll. The twelve minor prophets, however, were small enough to fit on just one – thus, the "Book of the Twelve." Coincidence that there were twelve like the twelve tribes of Israel? Probably not. I'm sure the scribes intended it that way, even if it meant putting separate material under one name.

            This now leaves us with the Writings – basically everything else. More than any other collection of books that reflects post-exilic, national/religious attitudes are the books of Ezra-Nehemiah and Chronicles. Having lost both Temple and homeland, the Judahites in captivity reflected on their experience. What went wrong? The answer, they felt, was that they had been unfaithful to the covenant. So after the exile, in the period known as the Restoration, the religious beliefs of the Jewish people began to become more concretized, and cultural/national identity likewise intensified. (I can't help but think back to that aforementioned commercial.) Ezra, a priest and scribe, was a religious reformer. Nehemiah was an administrative reformer and governor of the province of Judah now under Persian domain. These books, once considered a unit, reflect an urge to rebuild the Temple and the city of Jerusalem. They are also not a little xenophobic. Both have very harsh  stances with regard to marriages with foreigners.

            1 & 2 Chronicles fall under a similar school of thought as Ezra and Nehemiah. Chronicles retells Israel's history and is rather nostalgic for what it believes were the nation's glory days: the reigns of David and Solomon. It's attitude: We were once a great nation, so let's write our history to highlight the greatness of David and Solomon (as we gloss over their faults), as well as those kings who were faithful to the covenant. And let's just not talk about the northern Kingdom. They were unfaithful and didn't worship in Jerusalem, and it muddles our ideal of a unified Israel. And we can blame our past problems on the infidelity of the kings who did not follow the covenant. That's our version of history.

            As far as the rest of the Writings go, each has its own tradition and are hardly, if even at all, connected to one another. Proverbs and Psalms have long oral traditions, and since they are collections of assorted sayings and songs, the dating of each one varies. Some were surely written before the exile, but some prove to be post-exilic. A fixed composition of Psalms and Proverbs did not exist until after the exile, maybe during the 4^th century.

            Much of the wisdom/poetical writings (Job, Lamentations, Song of Songs, Ecclesiastes) can be dated between the 6^th century (the traumatic one) and the 4^th century (the one that transitioned from the Persian period to the Greek period). Lamentations was written shortly after Jerusalem's destruction. Song of Songs, Ecclesiastes, and perhaps Ruth seemed to have been written after the exile. The latest books in the Jewish canon were Daniel, which takes place during the Babylonian exile but is secretly concerned with life under Greek domination (sneaky, sneaky), and Esther, which is set in Persia but was likewise written later during the Greek period.

            As I mentioned earlier, there is something about the experience of trauma that incites a desire to preserve and strengthen former ideals. This is perhaps why Ezra-Nehemiah are so religiously rigorous, and Chronicles so idealistic about history. And this is my guess as to why much of the Torah, the Prophets, and some of the Writings, were edited and compiled after the exile. Imagine what would happen if your house caught on fire. Say, your dog died, and a lot of your antiques and mementos perished in the tragedy. You have to find some other place to live. You're utterly crushed and devastated. Somehow or other though, a great deal of photographs and letters from deceased loved ones survived. What would you do with those things? Would you value them differently than before. Make copies of them? Keep them in a safe place?

            It seems that in the centuries after the exile, certain writings took on a significant meaning, and the Jewish people wanted to maintain them. Obviously some were considered authoritative more readily, namely the books of the Torah. The Prophets also would become especially meaningful and their words considered timeless. In time, so would the Writings. Interestingly enough, a lot of this biblical material has a wide range of perspectives and ideals. We've already seen how disparate sources are put side by side in the Torah. The anti-foreigner attitude of Ezra-Nehemiah contrasts significantly with the favorable attitude toward a foreign woman in the book of Ruth (A Moabite becomes the great-grandmother of King David. Shocking!) And the wisdom of Proverbs, which suggests that the good are blessed and the wicked are punished, is turned on its head with Job's bad-things-happen-to-everyone ideology. It doesn't seem like this bothered them that much, though. The compilers of the Hebrew Scriptures were literary hoarders. They didn't throw anything out.

            However, not everything made it into the Jewish canon of Scripture either, but that canon did not become fixed until sometime after the Christ event. There were many Jewish writings circulating in the centuries before the time of Jesus. Some of them never made it into any canon of Scripture. Some made it into the Christian canon but not the Jewish one. Later, several of those books would be omitted from some Christian canons after the Reformation. I hope to go over these sorts of things in the following posts of this "Where Did the Bible Come From" series. For now, I'll just wrap up today's post. (I hear a sigh of relief.) Today's topic was a little heavier, having a lot to do with trauma, bringing up painful memories from history, and even asking you to imagine your dog dying in a house fire. Who knew writing about the compilation of Scripture would get so dark?

            For that reason, I recommend for this week reading Nehemiah 8:1-12. It takes place during the Restoration after the exile. The book of the Law is read to the assembly of the people, and they are told to rejoice and not weep. This is a community that has been through hell and back. They're survivors, and now they are being consoled and strengthened by God's law and a possibly hopeful future. As you read this passage, consider a time in your life after you had experienced a tragedy. Who or what was your consolation? Did you experience God at all in the midst of your suffering and/or recovery? Does God's word give you comfort or joy? Which passages are particularly meaningful to you?

            By the way, the season of Lent is rapidly approaching (Yay!). If you're thinking about something you might like to do to deepen your spiritual life during this special time of year, here is a suggestion. Start a small, Scripture based faith-sharing group with your friends. You can use the Gospel reading from Sunday's liturgy, a suggested reading from this blog, or go through a particular portion of the Bible that interests you. Make an evening of it. Have some wine, cheese, crackers, Lit'l Smokies Sausages (unless it's Friday). Enjoy an evening with your friends, some food, and Scripture. You don't have to be a Bible scholar to share with your friends how the Scriptures are touching your life. You can use Pope Francis' advice on scriptural meditation as a guideline: "In the presence of God, during a recollected reading of the text, it is good to ask, for example: 'Lord, what does this text say to me? What is it about my life that you want to change by this text? What troubles me about this text? Why am I not interested in this? Or perhaps: What do I find pleasant in this text? What is it about this word that moves me? What attracts me? Why does it attract me?'" – Evangelii gaudium (Joy of the Gospel).

            As always, questions and comments are most welcome via e-mail, Facebook, this blog site, or now Twitter. I'm still getting used to that last one. Any tips on how to use it more effectively would be most appreciated. Until next time...

Peace and all good![2]

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[1] Marc Zvi Brettler, "Nevi'im: Introduction," in The Jewish Study Bible," ed. Adele Berlin and Marc Zvi Brettler (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 457.

[2] This post could not have been possible without these other sources:

Coogan, Michael D. The Old Testament: A Historical and Literary Introduction to the Hebrew Scriptures. New York: Oxford University Press, 2006.

Gabel John B. and Charles B. Wheeler. The Bible as Literature: An Introduction New York: Oxford University Press, 1986.

Gottwald, Norman K. The Hebrew Bible: A Socio-Literary Introduction. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1985. (Particularly the chart on pages 104-105.)

Where Did the Bible Come From? Part I

           In the fall I asked some friends and family what kinds of questions they had about the Bible, and one of the topics that came up the most frequently had to do with the composition, compilation, and canonization of the Bible (Yay, alliteration! I think I'll refer to these as the Three Cs). In short, people want to know how the Bible came to be. Most folks are well aware that it didn't just drop into the lap of some ancient religious leaders by the Holy Spirit. But a lot of people still aren't really sure about the Bible's actual origins.

            As I have insisted in my earliest posts, the Bible is not really a book, but more like a library of books. It is a whole corpus of literature composed over a period of a thousand plus years or so, and its content concerns events that range over two thousand years of history (delving into some undatable, legendary periods as well). The books of Bible are compiled somewhat according to the order of the over-arching narrative – where there is a narrative to follow – but certainly not according to when they were written. Some of the older books of the Hebrew Scriptures predate some of the books of the Torah (those first 5 books). Matthew's Gospel precedes Mark's in the New Testament, but Mark was almost certainly written first – not to mention the letters of Paul before any of the Gospels. And Romans is the first letter to appear among Paul's epistles, but it was likely one of his later letters. Basically, the ordering of the books in the Bible has little to do with the date of their composition.

            The who and when of biblical authorship is a rather complex issue. Regarding the Old Testament alone, most of the books were not composed by single authors but were more so the product of collaboration "– collaboration of a special kind because the various authors were widely separated in space and time, had no knowledge of one another, and certainly had no conception of the form that their work would finally take."[1] The Hebrew Scriptures had a slow development that included various authors, sources (both oral and written), editors, and compilers. This is especially true for the Torah, which brings me to source analysis and the "Documentary Hypothesis." (Exciting, right?) As technical as these sound, they're really just fancy terms for talking about how the Torah is a compilation of several sources with varying origins and points of view.

            Personally, I am a fan of the concept of the Documentary Hypothesis, and I have no problem believing that the Scriptures were developed from various sources. As with many things in academic disciplines however, it's a theory, and scholars continue to debate and dispute the dating and nature of the proposed sources. However, as Michael Coogan concedes, "the data must be explained, and almost all scholars agree with the general principle that underlying the present text of the first five books of the Bible are distinct sources."[2]

             One way we can think about the use of various sources in the formation of the Torah is to imagine writing a book on your family's ancestry. You might have heard family stories from your grandma Dorothy, but then you also have a diary written by your great-aunt Bertha. Maybe you find a few legal documents that have to do with your great-grandfather Robert on ancestry.com, so you decide to add those to the mix as well. And then there are always those family legends – the ones that have been passed down from generation to generation with a few variations here and there. You're not sure if they actually happened in the same way that they've been related, but they reflect an important part of your family's character and identity, so you put them in too. Some of the materials may seem to contradict each other. Perhaps Dorothy tells a story that disagrees with Bertha's diary, but you choose to put it all together anyway and try to make a somewhat homogenized story of your family.

            All analogies fail at some point, of course, but I hope this kind helps to put in perspective what I mean by the use of sources in the Torah's composition. Just as the family stories were passed down orally before writing this book from the example, the oral traditions which influenced the biblical texts also had a long-standing history before they were committed to writing. But just like Bertha's diary or Robert's legal documents in the analogy, it wasn't only oral traditions that were used as sources in the development of the Torah. Some written material was produced as early as the monarchy, which began around the 10^th century BCE (the 900s).These sources, both oral and written, would eventually would lead to the formulation of parts of the Torah.

            With some confidence, scholars can point to the reign of Josiah of Judah (640-609 BCE) as a datable period for an early edition of what would become the book of Deuteronomy. At that time, a so-called "Book of the Law" was "found" in the Temple (see 2 Kings 22:1- 23:30). Later, with the experience of the Babylonian exile and the threat of their religious faith disappearing altogether, there was an unprecedented need "to fix [their] traditions permanently as canonical documents."[3] So by about the 4^th century, a good while after the exile, the material that made up the Torah was collected, compiled, and redacted to form more or less what we know as the Torah today.

            So, okay, by that time we pretty much have the Torah, and it evidently was an authoritative text for its readers (i.e. canonical), since the post-exilic Judahites needed to preserve and pass on their religious faith. But what were those sources that made up the Torah? Here is just a bird's-eye view of the four classical sources and some of their characteristics.

J (Jahwist): This source, pronounced YAH-wist (because them Germans have the market on biblical scholarship, and they pronounce Js like Ys, as in Jägermeister) is so named because when referring to God this source uses the Divine Name, YHWH. English Bibles typically never use the Divine Name, and rightly so out of respect. Instead, whenever the Divine Name appears it reads the LORD, and in fact, whenever Jewish people read from the Scriptures and encounter the Divine Name in Hebrew they instead say Adonai, which more or less means "Lord." J is probably the earliest of the traditions, and it likely developed in the southern Kingdom (Judah). God is depicted as more humanlike and speaks more directly to human beings rather than through messengers.

E (Elohist): This source is so named because it uses the Hebrew word elohim to refer to God – at least up to the revelation of the Divine Name in Exodus 3. Elohim is usually simply translated as "God" in English Bibles. In E, God is more distant and communicates through dreams and messengers (angels). Geographically it has a more northern perspective. The term "prophet" is favored in this source, for even Abraham is called a prophet. Also, the mountain known as "Sinai" in J is here called "Horeb" (as well as in the D source, but I'm not there yet). Since E is very fragmented and intertwined closely into the J source, the two are sometimes indistinguishable.

P (Priestly): The Priestly source gets its name because it deals so much with religious matters and instructions: rituals, sacrifices, Sabbaths, etc. It was likely the last of the four sources to develop – probably during 6^th century, given the need to preserve the traditions in the midst of the turmoil that occurred in that period (destruction of the Temple, exile, return and reconstruction; let's face it, the 500s were a trying and pivotal century). Almost all of Leviticus is from the P source, but P is interlaced in all of the books of the Torah. God is more remote in P than any other source. The light-filled cloud described in Exodus is an example of P's distant and transcendent depiction of God's glory.

            If you're wondering how all of these sources got pulled together, you can thank the P source for at least being the final editors of the source materials, which is why their contributions  are found in all five books. In fact, chapter 1 of Genesis and the last chapter of Deuteronomy are from P, so it basically bookends the  whole Torah. It may have been a later source, but the Johnny-come-latelies got the final say.

   

D (Deuteronomic): You can thank the Deuteronomists for a good chunk of the Hebrew Scriptures. A type of religious/intellectual movement which scholars refer to as the Deuteronomic School developed as early as the 8^th century in the northern Kingdom (Israel). That school later moved to Judah after the fall of Israel to the Assyrians. Surprise, surprise, the Deuteronomic source was responsible for most of the book of Deuteronomy (from which the D source gets its name). But the Deuteronomists were also the authors of Joshua, Judges, Samuel, and Kings. These books make up what is known as the Deuteronomic History. They also edited and possibly collected material from a number of the earlier prophetic books, most particularly Jeremiah, who himself may have been part of the Deuteronomic School. Obviously this school of thought didn't have much to do with what we mean by "schools" today, but if it did and had I lived back then, I would have had a closet full of their T-shirts and gone to all their games with a big foam finger. I am that much of a fan of their accomplishments. Go Deuteronomists!

            This is merely a rough sketch of the four main hypothetical sources originally proposed by Julius Wellhausen (1844-1918).There were indeed other source traditions in existence. For example, chapters 17-26 of Leviticus probably derive from a separate source known as the "Holiness Code." And the book of Numbers is a patchwork of not just J, E, and P, but of other folklore, laws, lists and accounts that were passed down.[4] Some of the books of the Old Testament even refer to non-biblical textual sources (e.g. the Book of Jasher) which have since been lost to us.

            Lastly, we cannot pretend that the literature and oral traditions from the surrounding cultures and nations had no effect on biblical writings. The Israelites settled among Canaanites and were under Egyptian, Assyrian, Babylonian, Persian, and Greek domination at different periods of their history. Naturally, some of the literature and lore of their neighbors and captors would have rubbed off on them. It's no surprise, for example, that multiple flood stories occur in ancient Near Eastern literature. But comparing biblical and other ancient Near Eastern texts is a topic for another day. The point is that the formation of biblical literature was a rather organic process and consisted of much more than just a handful of individual authors. Even the Documentary Hypothesis can be critiqued for oversimplifying what was certainly a complicated development.

     

            But why does any of this matter? What sort of effect will it have on our biblical reading? Why am I going into a whole rant about source analysis? One reason is simply because I find that people are hungry to know where the Bible comes from. How did this anthology of books come about that has had so much influence over history and our lives today. The best way I could think of to approach that question was to write a bit about the ever-enthralling Documentary Hypothesis. The other reason, however, is because I am edified and mystified by the wondrous way in which God communicates God's self. As I said in my previous post, the Truth has a way of making itself know to us. The fact that multiple sources and traditions – some of which differ greatly in perspective from one another – can all be brought together to proclaim the word of God says something about God's infinite greatness and inclusivity. We find that God is more "both/and" than "either/or." Some lament the apparent contradictions in Scripture. I prefer to see them as an example of the fine tension in which all things are held, tempering extremism and giving us the freedom to stretch our arms out wider to embrace even more of the mystery of our faith.

            For this week, I recommend reading chapters 1 & 2 of Genesis. They're a perfect example of two separate sources at work. If you compare these creation myths, you'll find distinctive and differing characteristics between them. Gen 1-2:3 is from the P source, and in it there is more of a sense of bringing order out of chaos. It orders creation with the perfect number, seven, and concludes with Sabbath rest. God is more distant in chapter one; God speaks, and creation is made. On the other hand, Gen 2:4-24 is from the J source. God is more humanlike, forming a man out of the earth like a potter, planting the garden like a gardener, building up a woman from the man's rib. The narrative is much more story-like with explanatory asides and a developing plot which will unfold in the following chapters. You don't have to try to pick out all the differences in the two accounts, but I would encourage you to see how each one is unique but at the same time speaks a truth about God, humanity, stewardship, the goodness of creation and the preeminence of relationship.

            Since this post is only Part One of a series of entries on the Bible's origins, I hope to go over other areas of the Three Cs in subsequent posts. Today's has only covered a tiny speck of what is certainly a topic best explored in a lecture series with an actual professor. Nevertheless, I welcome questions and comments via e-mail, Facebook, or this blog page. And now you can even follow the Codega on Twitter (@biblecodega). Come back next week for more about the origins of the Bible, and until then...

Peace and all good!

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[1] John B. Gabel and Charles B. Wheeler, The Bible as Literature: An Introduction, (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986), 9.

[2] Michael D. Coogan, The Old Testament: A Historical and Literary Introduction to the Hebrew Scriptures, (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006), 28.

[3] Ibid., 76.

[4] Ibid., 145 & 153.

The Bible Library: The (not-entirely) Historical Books

            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!

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[1] Michael D. Coogan, The Old Testament: A Historical and Literary Introduction to the Hebrew Scriptures, (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009), 175.

[2] Coogan, 178.

The Bible Library: Torah

            When I was in junior high I began to read a chapter of the Bible almost every night, and by the time I was in my third or fourth year of high school I had read up to Isaiah. I didn't really understand prophetic literature, so I gave up on that whole endeavor for awhile. Interestingly enough, what initiated this nightly reading from Scripture wasn't so much youthful piety as it was a really odd sort of punishment. My parents saw that I was using a pencil on which I had written the words "Cupid sucks." Typical thirteen-year-old angst, though I think anyone would admit that I could have written a lot worse. Nevertheless, my parents thought that a good penance for my apparently shocking vulgarity was to read chapter 3 of Genesis (when Adam and Eve eat from the tree in the middle of the garden). Pubescent immaturity... a narrative of the fall of humankind and distortion of relationships. Hmm, it seems a little incongruent if you ask me, but that's what I was told to do.

            For the record, I do not advocate using religion to punish children – of course, I'm not well suited for giving parental advice either, having no children of my own. For me, however, it kind of worked out, and I had decided to keep reading the Bible even after my reprimand for juvenile nonsense. I doubt many other teens would follow suit, but if the worse your child can do is write the words "Cupid sucks," he or she might be the type that would run with it and end up pursuing a religious studies degree. As it turns out, I never returned my mother's Bible after that, and it is currently on my desk beside me as I type. Some lesson learned.

            Some people may be under the impression that in order to read the Bible they should start from Genesis chapter one and read straight through. That is a worthy and laudable endeavor, I suppose, and if you want to do that, that's great, but I personally wouldn't recommend it. Even though I had taken that route as a teenager, I still had not connected very deeply with the Scriptures until I began to learn more about them. In any case, the Bible isn't really a book. If you try to read even just the Old Testament from beginning to end you might start off reading a single narrative, but soon you'll begin reading repeated versions of some of the same stories. You'll also find that not everything in the Bible reads like a story. In fact, most of it doesn't at all. There is a lot more poetry than prose in the Old Testament, for example, and half of the New Testament is letters which are a whole other literary form in and of themselves.

            The Bible is a complex compilation of various literary genres and styles by numerous authors. And if there is anything you should know about the Bible, it is that it didn't just fall into human hands from on high. Not even all of the books in the Bible reflect the exact same theology. What!? I know, you'd think that the Word of God would have its act together, right? This is one of the reasons why we need to use caution and humility when using Scripture. We have to appreciate the fact that the Bible is not so simple. Nevertheless, you can read the Scriptures, and God does speak to us from them today. That's kind of why we listen to the Word proclaimed at our religious services, isn't it?

            For the next couple of weeks I just want to introduce some of the books of Scripture and how they are organized in the Bible. I like to think of the Bible not as a book but as a library. On the left side of the library there are shelves of books of the Old Testament (aka Hebrew Scriptures) and on the right there are bookshelves of the New Testament. Those shelves on the left of our library can be categorized by Torah, the historical books, wisdom or poetical books, and the prophets. That, in fact, is how the Catholic editions of the Bible order the Old Testament and why they are not organized in chronological order. The Jewish canon[1] of Scripture is known as the Tanak, and it is organized by the Torah, the prophets (Nevi'im), and the writings (Kethuvim). I point this out simply because the acronym, TNK, is just brilliant, and it makes me smile!

            For today, let's look at the Torah, also known as the Pentateuch – penta as in pentagon because there are five books: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy. The Torah is the most important of the Hebrew Scriptures for the Jewish peoples. It can be said that everything else in the Hebrew Scriptures, and arguably in the New Testament as well, is commentary on the Torah. The word Torah simply means teaching or instruction. Sometime before the Babylonian exile, the word Torah was associated with "the teaching or law of Moses," and by sometime after the exile it essentially referred to these first five books of the Bible.[2] As with all things, there is a lot more that can be said about the meaning of Torah, and it surely has a much deeper connotation in the Jewish faith, but for our purposes if you hear Torah, think Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy.

            Oh, and if you are every perusing a shelf of movies and you come across Tora! Tora! Tora!, do not be fooled. It is not something akin to Fiddler on the Roof as I had thought. I was quite disappointed when I took it off the shelf only to find Japanese World War II aircraft on the cover and not cheerful Jewish elders dancing.

            By way of a brief and almost certainly over-simplified introduction into these five books, here is a little description about each one just to whet your appetite.

Genesis: I think this is a great book to start with if you are new to reading the Old Testament. It's one of my favorite books in the Bible, because it is such a human story. It's got everything: myth, legend, blood, sex, and betrayals, family drama, beautiful struggles and witnesses of faith, and dastardly deeds of human folly. It's like Game of Thrones without the dragons. I'm kidding;  I have never even seen Game of Thrones. The bulk of the narrative, beginning just before chapter 12 through the rest of the book, tells the story of the great Hebrew patriarchs and matriarchs: Abraham & Sarah, Isaac & Rebekah, Jacob (aka Israel) & his two wives, Rachel & Leah, and finally all of Jacob's sons.

Exodus: Another must read! Some of this story we are familiar with from popular culture, but just as with Harry Potter, the book is always better than the movie. Exodus is the story of a saving God, who hears the cry of his people – a people who aren't even all that grateful sometimes. Not only is God a saving God, but he also makes a covenant with his people at Sinai and gives them the law. This was a hallmark of ancient Israelite theology – the salvation from slavery in Egypt, the covenant, the law. The ancient Israelites defined themselves as a people and their relationship with God based on the narratives found in Exodus. Always remember, the God of the Torah is a saving God.

Leviticus: This is one reason why I don't recommend reading the Bible from cover to cover. That isn't to say Leviticus is a bad book; it's mostly a book of laws though. Many of the laws contained within it might seem tedious or unusual for our senses, but essentially many of the laws have to do with holiness. As it says repeatedly "You shall be holy, for I the LORD am holy." Holiness was a technical term, however. It didn't mean piety like we often think of holiness; it meant separation from what was ordinary, and the people of Israel were called not to be ordinary, but extraordinary – a people set apart. That vocation to holiness still remains in the Judeo-Christian tradition, by the way. One last thing I love to point out about the book of Leviticus is that it is in this oft-dismissed book of the Bible that we find that beautiful teaching which so many mistakenly think originated in the New Testament: You shall love your neighbor as yourself (Lev 19:18).

Numbers: To quote biblical scholar Michael Coogan, "Numbers is the most complicated of the entire Pentateuch, in terms of both its content and its sources."[3] Essentially, Numbers is about the Israelites wandering in the desert for forty years. It gets its name from the various censuses of the tribes of Israel that are included in the book. There are some more laws and some interesting narratives in Numbers – even one with a talking donkey (Num 22). Among the things we can take with us from this book is the analogy of wrestling with God. The Israelites do a lot of whining in this book, and while God often chastises, God also always saves.

And finally, Deuteronomy: I love this book. A biblical professor I once had said that Deuteronomy and Isaiah are like the bread and butter of the Hebrew Scriptures. Deuteronomy, whose name means "second law," is more or less Moses' fair-well speech before his death and the Israelites' entry into the promised land. Indeed, a lot of it reiterates many of the laws and narratives found in other parts of the Torah, but with a slightly different theological perspective. My favorite part of Deuteronomy is 7:6-11. The thing to keep in mind with Deuteronomy is covenant and that "the LORD, your God, is God indeed, the faithful God who keeps his merciful covenant... (7:9)." It is God who is faithful, even when we are not.

            So as you can see, the Torah has a lot of laws, but it also has a lot of stories – stories about a people and their intimate relationship with God. Consider for this week some of the stories in your own life about your relationship with God or with the Scriptures. As you can see, my teenage encounter with the Word had some offbeat origins, but sometimes our experiences with the Divine can be a bit humorous. For this week, I recommend reading Exodus 15:1-18. This is one of the oldest passages in Scripture, and it really gives you a sense of how the ancient Israelites thought of and related to their God. One of their earliest recognitions of the character of God was that God saves his people. In reading this passage, think about your image of God. What is your earliest experience with the Divine? Who has God been for you in your life? When you hear how God saves his people, how does that affect you? Do you think God cares about you, or do you think God is aloof and distant?

            As always, I encourage questions and comments, and don't forget to subscribe. Just type your e-mail in the "Follow the codega" box. Tune in next week for a brief introduction to the historical books.

May the Lord bless you and keep you!

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[1] Canon is the word used to designate the list of authoritative books of the Bible by a religious institution.

[2] Michael D. Coogan, The Old Testament: A Historical and Literary Introduction to the Hebrew Scriptures, (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006), 184.

[3] Coogan, 153.