EXERCISE
Write a half‐page to one‐page statement or mini‐autobiography of your past encounters with the Bible. Which parts of it have been most central in such encounters? Have you studied the Bible in an academic context before? Have you had unusually positive or negative experiences with the Bible or people citing it?
Academic Study of the Bible
At first glance, the Bible is one of the most familiar of books. Most families own a copy. Every weekend, Jews and Christians read from it at worship. There are echoes of the Bible in all kinds of music, from Handel’s Messiah to reggae and hip hop. Popular expressions, such as “Thou shalt not” or “Love thy neighbor as thyself,” come from the Bible. Movies are often filled with biblical allusions. And you still can find a copy of the Bible, or at least the New Testament and Psalms, in many hotels.
At second glance, the Bible is one of the most foreign of books. Its language, even in English translation, is often difficult to understand, especially if you are reading the King James Translation (1611), with its beautiful, but often obscure, seventeenth‐century cadences and words. Moreover, the Hebrew texts that are the basis of all translations are thousands of years old, dating to a span of centuries from 1000 BCE to around 164 BCE. These texts reflect ancient origins, in many ways, and this can make them difficult to understand. If someone sees a reference to “Cyrus” in Isa 44:28 and 45:1, that person likely will have few associations with who “Cyrus” was and what he meant to the writer of this text. Most readers have even fewer associations with places and empires mentioned in the Bible, such as “Ephraim” or “Assyria.” Usually, their only acquaintance with “Egypt” or “Babylonia” is a brief discussion in a world history class. Furthermore, certain types of writing mean little or nothing to contemporary readers, for example the long genealogies of Genesis or the detailed instructions for sacrificing animals in Leviticus. As a result of all this unfamiliarity, few people who try to read the Bible from beginning to end actually get very far, and those who do often fail to make much sense out of what they have read.
The goal of this book is to give you keys to understand the Bible, including its more obscure parts. Names (e.g. Cyrus), events (e.g. the liberation from Babylonian captivity), and general perspectives in the Bible that previously you might have skipped past or not noticed should come into focus and make sense. For many, the experience of reading the Bible in historical context is much like finally getting to see a movie in color that beforehand had only been available in black and white. It is not at all that the meaning of the Bible can or should be limited to the settings in which it was originally composed. On the contrary: along the way we will see how the Bible is an important document now thanks to the fact that it has been radically reinterpreted over centuries, first by successive communities of ancient Israelites and later by Jewish and Christian communities who cherished the Bible. Still, learning to see scriptures in relation to ancient history and culture can make previously bland or puzzling biblical texts come alive.
To pursue this historical approach, we will not read the Bible from beginning to end. Instead, we will look at biblical texts in relationship to when they were written. This means that, rather than starting with the creation stories of Genesis 1–3, this book starts with remnants of Israel’s earliest oral traditions. These are songs and sagas from the time when Israel had no cities and was still a purely tribal people. Our next stop will be texts from the rise of Israel’s first monarchies, particularly certain “royal” psalms that celebrate God’s choice of Jerusalem and anointing of kings there. Overall, as we move through Israelite history, we will see how biblical texts reflect the influences of successive world empires: the Mesopotamian empires of Assyria and Babylonia, and then the Persian and Hellenistic (Greek) empires. The common thread will be historical, and this will mean starting most chapters with some discussion of the historical and cultural context of the biblical texts to be discussed there.
Overview: Order of Main Discussions of Biblical Books
| Steps in the Bible’s own story | This textbook’s discussion of biblical texts and traditions in the order they were created |
| Creation, flood, and other materials about the origins of the world (Genesis 1–11) Stories of Israel’s patriarchs and matriarchs (e.g. Abraham and Sarah, Jacob, Joseph; Genesis 12–50) The growth of the people of Israel and their exodus from Egypt (Exodus 1–15) 40 years in the wilderness, gift of law at Sinai (Exodus 16–40; Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy) Israel’s conquest of Canaan (Joshua) Tribal life under various leaders (Judges) The establishment of Saul and then David’s monarchy (1–2 Samuel) The kings of Jerusalem and Israel (1–2 Kings 17 also 1 Chronicles 10–2 Chronicles 28) | [See below, discussed later in the textbook] [See below, discussed later in the textbook, since few or no identifiable traditions in the Bible are clearly datable to these periods] [See below, discussed later in the textbook] Period of the Judges: Chapter 2. Oral traditions in Genesis 12–35, Exodus, and Judges 5. Early monarchy/David and Solomon: Chapters 3 and 4. 1–2 Samuel, Proverbs, and ancient stories of primeval families in Genesis 2–4 and 9. Later northern and southern monarchies: Chapters 5 and 6. Amos, Hosea, Micah, and early parts of Isaiah (along with possible northern traditions in Exodus, Genesis 25–35, etc.). |
| The later kingship in Jerusalem (after destruction of the kingdom of Israel (2 Kings 18–25//2 Chronicles 29–36)) [The Bible lacks narratives directly of this time (the book of Daniel is a much later legend)] Rebuilding of a temple‐focused community under Persian rulership (Ezra‐Nehemiah) Deuterocanonical/Apocryphal books of 1–4 Maccabees | Twilight of the monarchy in Jerusalem: Chapters 7 and 8. Deuteronomy through 2 Kings, Jeremiah, Nahum, and Zephaniah. Exile of Judeans to Babylonia: Chapters 9 and 10. Lamentations, Ezekiel, Isaiah 40–55, and exilic parts of Genesis through Numbers (such as the creation account in Genesis 1 and laws in Leviticus). Return of exiles and rebuilding: Chapters 11 and 12. Haggai, Zechariah, Isaiah 56–66, Jonah, Ruth, Job, and the book of Psalms (along with parts of Ezra‐Nehemiah and Genesis through Numbers). The Hellenistic empires and crisis: Chapter 13. Sirach, Enoch, Daniel, Ezra‐Nehemiah, 1–2 Chronicles, Esther, and questions about the final formation of the Hebrew Bible (along with some on Ecclesiastes and Song of Songs). |
At first this approach may be disorienting, since it involves placing familiar biblical texts in a different order and in new contexts. Take the example of the story of creation in Gen 1:1–2:3. It seems straightforward enough as it is. Why wait to talk much about this opening story of the Bible until Chapter 10 of this Introduction? As we will see, one reason is that reading Gen 1:1–2:3 in relation to the Judeans’ experience of forced exile in Babylonia (the focus of Chapter 10) explains the major emphasis in this text on the Sabbath. This is an aspect of the text that many people, especially non‐Jews, completely miss, since it has little meaning for them. But the whole seven‐day structure of the story is meant to lead up to one thing: God’s rest on the seventh day and blessing of it (Gen 2:1–3). Reading this text in relation to the Babylonian exile highlights this important feature and makes sense of other aspects of the creation story as well.
This is just one way in which academic study of the Bible is quite a different thing from study of the Bible in Sunday school or even high school religion classes in parochial schools. Many people come to a university or seminary class on the Bible expecting a summary of the contents of the Bible or indoctrination into biblical theologies or values. Others expect a devotional approach that they have learned in church Bible studies where the Bible often is read as a lesson book for life. All these approaches have their value and place, but they differ