The Bible: Ancient Context and Ongoing Community

Introduction
Chapter 1: The Bible—Which Bible?
Approaching the Bible is a difficult task, no matter who you are or how you do it. Where should we start?Perhaps the word “Bible” itself can get us into the game. Most directly, the title “Bible” comes from the Greek ta biblia, which means “the books.” Indeed, the Bible as we now have it is a collection of books, a type of anthology of writings by dozens of different authors over a span of around 1000 years. For Jews, “the Bible” would refer to a collection of 39 books—at least in the way that Christians number the books—while for Christians, “the Bible” actually indicates a collection of at least 66 books, or, at most, around 80–85 books. We are already encountering a significant difficulty with our topic: Bible readers do not agree on the exact contents of “the Bible”!
Chapter 2: Some Opening Thoughts on Interpreting the Bible
Before we dive right into the Bible itself, we have to confront a few important questions. We won’t be able to resolve these questions immediately, or perhaps ever, but all educated, adult readers of the Bible must begin to think about very complex questions as they read and interpret. Here is one: When you open to page one of the Bible to begin reading, how do you know what you’re reading? Put more specifically: how do you know what kind of book you are reading? The answers to these questions make an enormous difference when reading any written material—whether it is the Bible or a math textbook. The Bible is an anthology of many different books, with different types of writing; you may be struck with the realization that the Bible does not consist of a single genre, which can be interpreted in a single way. Poetry and law are two genres of ancient literature, and they need to be read in very different ways. But what if the boundaries are not always so clear? Indeed, in the Bible, they are not. Readers of all kinds of backgrounds—including various groups of Christians—have typically acknowledged that the Bible contains many genres. However, readers of the Bible may really want to question the status of the entire book, as a macro category. How would we go about making some definitive statement that would be accurate and useful as a guide for reading the Bible as a whole? This is where things get complicated—which is frustrating, since, as I think we would all agree, interpreting the Bible depends to a large degree on one’s bedrock assumptions about what the Bible is, how it should function for a reader or a community, and so on.
Chapter 3: Creation: Genesis 1–2
Chapter 4: Primal Humans: Genesis 3–11
Chapter 5: Land and Kids: Genesis 12–50
Chapter 6: Exodus from Egypt: Exodus 1–15
Chapter 7: The Law: Exodus 16–40; Leviticus; Numbers 1–10
Chapter 8: The Wilderness: Numbers 10–36; Deuteronomy
Chapter 9: A Historical Riddle: Who Wrote the Torah?
Chapter 10: Possession of the Land: Joshua and Judges
For many outside of Christianity (see any of the books or articles by folks loosely called The New Atheists), and for a good many within the Christian faith, the violence and death in the book of Joshua is one of the most difficult things in all of scripture to reconcile with an idea that the God of the Bible is good, loving, and morally virtuous. How can a good, loving and virtuous God command his people to engage in what amounts to something very much like genocide? This question is often asked with derision by those hoping to denigrate the ideas of Judaism/Christianity or with dismay by those who believe in God, but are deeply troubled by these accounts. By way of personal disclosure, this episode in the biblical story of Israel is perhaps the piece of scripture that, as a person of faith, I struggle the most. I don’t have an easy answer for how to make sense of the genocide question. What follows are a variety of approaches one might use to think about it, each of which helps in some ways—but fails to help in others.
Chapter 11: Attempting Kingship: 1 Samuel
Chapter 12: David the Eternal King: 2 Samuel
Chapter 13: Solomon the Wise/Failure: 1 Kings 1–11
Chapter 14: The Divided Kingdom: 1 Kings 12–22
Chapter 15: Israelite Prophecy
Chapter 16: The 8th-Century Prophetic Movement
It doesn’t take an expert theologian, or even an overly attentive reader to notice that the Hebrew people do a horrible job at following God. From Abraham to Ahab, from the wandering in the wilderness through the dark violence of the time of the Judges and on to one wicked, greedy king after another, God’s people are a disaster. This goes on for over a 1000 years. And, God notices. He rails, disciplines, chastises. So much so that, it is tempting to reduce the Old Testament to these two ideas: The Israelites suck, and God hates them for it. But that’s not how Hosea tells it. Hosea is a prophet in two ways. He has specific things to say, messages in words that God wants communicated, but he is also a person who’s very life seems to be used by God as a teaching. His life is a metaphor. God comes to him and says, “Marry an adulteress (a woman who either is already sexually promiscuous, or will be in your marriage), because the Israelites have been unfaithful to me.” With that simple statement, God is setting up a living parable (or teaching story), and Hosea is going to be playing the part of God in this little drama.
Chapter 17: Two Prophets on Assyria: Jonah and Nahum
Chapter 18: Fall of the Kingdoms: 2 Kings
Chapter 19: Prophets at the Fall of Judah: Jeremiah and Ezekiel
Chapter 20: More Prophetic Voices
Chapter 21: Hebrew Poetry: Psalms, Songs, Lamentations
Chapter 22: Wisdom: Proverbs and Ecclesiastes
Chapter 23: The Book of Job
Chapter 24: Two Heroines: Ruth and Esther
Chapter 25: Return from Exile: Ezra and Nehemiah
Chapter 26: Isaiah of the Exile
Chapter 27: The Apocrypha
Chapter 28: Reading the Gospels
Chapter 29: Mark
Chapter 30: Matthew
Chapter 31: Luke
Chapter 32: John
Chapter 33: The Crucifixion and the Resurrection: What Did It All Mean?
Chapter 34: The New Testament Canon and “Other Gospels”
Chapter 35: Acts
Chapter 36: The Longer Letters of Paul: Romans, 1–2 Corinthians
Chapter 37: The Shorter Letters of Paul: Galatians, Philippians, Philemon
Chapter 38: Hebrews
Chapter 39: Other Voices: James, Peter, John, Jude, etc.
Chapter 40: Revelation
The Bible comes to a stunning and, at points, baffling conclusion in a book called “Revelation.” The title in the Greek language tradition of the book’s original composition is Apokalypsis Iesou Christou, “the apocalypse of Jesus Christ.” In Greek, the word apokalypsis means “unveiling, uncovering, revealing,” and so, though the genre of “apocalyptic” literature is shrouded in mystery for modern readers, the authors of works in this tradition in fact wanted to tear back the curtain and show us some aspect of their experience in a clear manner. The author of Revelation, a certain John (probably not the John of the Gospel of John or 1–3 John), introduces himself to us in the book’s opening chapter.
 

Chapter 1