A Reader's Guide to the Bible

John Goldingay

• Publisher: IVP Academic
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9780830892860
• Topic: Teologia e religione
• Subtopic: Studi biblici

Approaching the Bible for the first time can be intimidating. At sixty-six books, nearly 800, 000 words, and numerouskings, prophets, and deliverers, as well as priests and apostles, where should you begin? In what order should you read it? Why are there narratives here and over there, but other things mixed between? And is there an alternative to reading the Bible from Genesis to Revelation? In A Reader's Guide to the Bible John Goldingay places the biblical books in their times and settings, and then lays out a memorable pattern for understanding the Bible. Three categories of biblical books—story, word, and response—form three doors into the cathedral that is the Bible: the story of God and his people, the word of God to his people, and the people's response to God. Whether you are a person of Christian faith or other faith, or no faith at all, here is a reliable guide to exploring the Bible. Written by a highly accomplished biblical scholar, A Reader's Guide to the Bible joins a clear and direct style with a maestro's touch.

THE BIBLE IS MORE A SHELF OF BOOKS than merely one volume: it’s a collection of sixty-six compositions, of varied size, covering a thousand years and more. They were written in the Middle East and around the Mediterranean, and they use three languages, Hebrew (for most of them); Aramaic (for some chapters of Ezra and Daniel), a sister language of Hebrew, which probably Jesus spoke; and Greek (for the latest of the books).

The Hebrew and Aramaic books are called by Jews “The Torah, the Prophets, and the Writings”; to a Jew these are “the Scriptures.” Christians refer to them as the “Old Testament” because they add to them the “New Testament,” the books written in Greek (though also written by Jews). Christianity places most emphasis on these later writings and often uses them to provide the key to understanding the earlier writings.

In this book, after three introductory chapters, we are going to look at the Bible mainly as “God’s story” and as “God’s word.” We begin with the story that starts with creation and takes the people of God down to the end of their independent political existence in 587 BC (chaps. 4–5). Then we look at a retold version of the story that centers its interest in Israel’s worship (chap. 6) and at some shorter stories (chap. 7) before coming to what Christians see as the climax of the story in Jesus of Nazareth (chap. 8).

Other parts of the Bible do not have the narrative form of the story: rather, they explicitly teach or preach. Thus we look in successive chapters at law, prophecy, advice, letter writing, and visions (chaps. 9–13). Then, after two chapters considering Israel’s response in the form of its worship and its intellectual wrestling (chaps. 14–15) we ask the question, How can the Bible speak today (chap. 16)?

The books collected into the Old and New Testaments are not the only old Jewish and Christian writings we have; the ones included here are those included in Protestant Bibles. The Bible as read by Catholic and Orthodox Christians includes some other Jewish writings, the “Apocrypha” or “Deuterocanonical Books.” These belong to the period from the time of the latest Old Testament books up to that of the New Testament. They provide more examples of the kind of writings we look at here: further accounts of the story of the nation and further short stories (Tobit, Judith, Maccabees, 1 Esdras), as well as additions to the earlier stories and further visions (2 Esdras), two more wisdom books (Wisdom and Ecclesiasticus), and a further psalm (the Prayer of Manasseh). Baruch is more difficult to classify: it has affinities with story, prophecy, psalmody, and wisdom.

The Bible is God’s book. God was involved in its coming into being, and it tells us the truth about God and about us. It’s also a human book. When God first created the world, he did it without human help. He said “let there be light”—and there was light. He could have created the Bible the same way, no doubt. It could have dropped straight from heaven. In fact it was written by human beings—people such as Isaiah and Matthew. God worked through them and spoke to them, but the books are their work too. This doesn’t mean it’s spoiled by being a human book. It does mean that if we want to understand it, we’ll need sympathy both for the God behind it and for the human beings behind it. You don’t have to believe in God to understand the Bible. You do have to be sympathetic to the way it talks about God and about the world as his world. You have to have an open mind. You have to try to look at life the way the Bible does, if you are to understand it. You also have to have sympathy for the people behind it. You are not a farmer in Hebron in 800 BC, or a scribe in Babylon in 400 BC, or a slave in Rome in AD 50. But you have to imagine how life was for them, if you are to understand the books they wrote or the books they read.

THE EVENTS
OF THE BIBLE

ORIGINS (?2000–1200 BEFORE CHRIST)

The first date we can be reasonably sure of in the Bible is when some Israelites escaped from labor camps in Egypt under the leadership of Moses; the time is about 1260. But the Israelites regarded the beginning of their story as the journey of Abraham and Sarah from Mesopotamia to Canaan. Mesopotamia means “between the rivers,” and it denotes the country between the Rivers Tigris and Euphrates, seven hundred miles east of Palestine. It overlaps with the modern states of Iraq and Iran stretching down to the Persian Gulf.

One of the oldest and most splendid cities of Mesopotamia was Ur of the Chaldees. Chaldea is another word for Babylonia. Genesis tells us that, for reasons it doesn’t say, a man named Terah, with his wives and family, left Ur and traveled northwest to the town of Haran. After Terah’s death, part of the family, headed by his son Abraham, left Haran and migrated in a southwesterly direction toward the land of the Canaanites.

Racially, Abraham’s clan and the inhabitants of Canaan were related; their languages, too, were similar. They would be quite able to communicate with one another. However, their cultures and ways of life were different. The Canaanites were a settled, agricultural people. They worshiped a variety of gods under the presidency of one named El, who had sanctuaries throughout the country. Abraham’s clan were shepherds, not farmers, and they were thus less used to staying in one place: they might wander as they wished, and indeed they were obliged to wander to some extent, ever in search of pasturage for their flocks. Their God guided the leader of the clan and was thus often called by the name of the leader, by names such as “the God of Abraham.” This God accompanied them on their travels.

So Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebecca, Jacob and his twelve sons moved to Canaan. They might have carried on living as shepherds there had it not been for a desperate famine that took Abraham’s great-grandchildren to Egypt. There, in fact, they settled and lived happily, until there was a change of government and a king (or pharaoh) came to the throne who was not so sympathetic to these aliens in his country.

So by about 1300 the descendants of Jacob—who had been given the new name “Israel”—were no better than state serfs of the Egyptians. At this time there were various Semite groups in Egypt, many of whom were put to work on building projects in the Delta area. However, one group fled from there, led by Moses. They raced east toward the Sinai Peninsula, and after a miraculous escape near the site of the present Suez Canal, found refuge in the desert. It was an area Moses knew well, and he led them to the mountain where the God of Abraham had once appeared to him. There a pact was made between God and this people, Israel.

The pact is referred to in the Bible as a “covenant.” The word denotes a solemn commitment. In this case, it is a two-sided agreement by which two parties promise to be faithful to each other. God had reached out to the Israelites, and now they committed themselves to God. The Ten Commandments and God’s other instructions are the standard that Israel agreed to accept as their part in keeping the covenant (though we do not know how many of these instructions go back to Sinai).

On leaving Sinai to move on to their destination in Canaan, these Israelites lived as nomads for a generation, mostly in the northern part of the Sinai Peninsula. Eventually they traveled up the east side of the Jordan rift, through the countries of Edom and Moab, and crossed the River Jordan near Jericho. They won spectacular victories under Joshua in the heart of the country, and these victories impressed themselves on later generations as the key to the Israelites’ occupation of the country as a whole. But before Joshua’s victories, the Israelites had conquered the country east of the Jordan separately, and the territory that became Judah was apparently attacked from the south by Caleb. Even in the center and north, some of the peoples of Canaan accepted the invaders, without resistance, perhaps recognizing them as their own kin and acknowledging the invaders’ God as their own too. One way and another, Israel could claim possession of the hill country west of the Jordan and of a fair slice of territory on the other side.

The following parts of the Bible refer to these events:

◆ Israel’s ancestors	Genesis (Job is also set in this period)
◆ The exodus	Exodus 1–18
◆ The covenant at Sinai	Exodus 19–40; Leviticus; Numbers 1–10
◆ The time of wandering	Numbers 11–36; Deuteronomy
◆ The conquest under Joshua	Joshua

CHAOS AND KINGSHIP (1200–931 BEFORE CHRIST)

The story of Israel’s getting into Canaan ought to lead into “and lived happily ever after.” In fact, it’s only the beginning of Israel’s troubles. Many Canaanite clans had not been defeated by the Israelites. Even the later capital, Jerusalem, was still controlled by an indigenous people called the Jebusites. Furthermore, at about the same time as the Israelites were making inroads on Canaanite territory from the east, the Philistines (who came originally from across the Mediterranean) were doing the same from the west. While the Canaanites might be doomed by this pincer movement, it was not clear that Israel would be the eventual victor.

In another way, the Canaanites themselves formed an even more serious threat to Israel. Their religion had a beguiling attraction for the Israelites. The name of the Israelites’ God was Yhwh, probably pronounced “Yahweh” (it used to be misspelled as “Jehovah”) and represented in most English Bibles by the phrase “the LORD.” This God had proved powerful in meeting the people’s needs in rescuing them from oppression and aiding them in battle. But could this God make crops grow? There might be doubt about that. On the other hand, making crops grow was the specialty of the Canaanite god Baal (El’s son)—so his worshipers claimed. And often Israelites fell to the temptation to join in his worship. Moral chaos also characterized these early years in Palestine: “all the people did what was right in their own eyes” (Judg 21:25).

Renowned leaders such as Deborah, Gideon, Samson, and Samuel belong to this period. They are often referred to as the “judges,” though the title is misleading because they were primarily figures through whom God rescued the people from apostasy and oppression. But the Israelites never won final security. With the Philistine threat increasing and Samuel now old, the Israelites eventually insisted on having the organized leadership required by the challenge of the situation. They insisted on having kings, like everyone else.

The first king was Saul, who won notable victories, though without being able to deal with the Philistine threat. Nor did he deal with the problem of religious anarchy: indee...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Contents
• Part I: God’s Story and God’s Word in God’s World
• Part II: The Story of God and His People
• Part III: The Word of God to His People
• Part IV: Israel’s Response to God
• Epilogue: The Bible Today
• Scripture Index
• Praise for A Reader’s Guide to the Bible
• About the Author
• More Titles from InterVarsity Press
• Copyright