Welcome to the One Great Story!. George B. Thompson
To do so, we want to be clear about some very well-established conclusions about the Bible itself:2
1.The Bible is actually a library. The version that mainline Protestant churches use includes sixty-six “books,” which contain several kinds of literature—legal codes, short stories, songs, poetry, history, letters, oracles, and so forth. Genesis and Exodus, for instance, read quite differently than the Song of Songs or Paul’s letter to the Galatians. Most of these writings also show evidence of having been handled by more than one storyteller, writer, or editor. In its great variety of detail, the Bible can appear daunting!
2.Even though we have inherited this library with its long, complex history, behind most of these texts and documents stands a spoken tradition that is much older and more dynamic. Writing is a fairly recent way for humans to transmit and preserve their community identity. Instead, what has dominated human history is the spoken word—storytelling through word of mouth, recitation, and response—passed on from one generation to the next. We are referring here to the universal phenomenon typically described as “oral tradition.”
Oral traditions still exist today, not only in non-Western or “less-developed” regions of the world but also in rural areas and working-class populations of Western countries.3 Their continued resilience and power can help us appreciate how our biblical ancestors would have preserved their stories, laws, and customs for many generations—initially and for a long time—only by oral practices.4 What we read, therefore, in much of the Bible is derived from oral sources, which eventually were preserved by incorporating them into (and as) written documents. This is the case for both the Old Testament and the New Testament.
3.In spite of all of their diversity, the biblical books have a lot in common with each other in terms of themes and emphases. God is a major player virtually everywhere in the Bible. God’s overall purposes come through consistently, as well as human responses to those purposes—whether faithful or otherwise. God’s actions on behalf of a failed community appear from the very first book (Genesis) to the very last one (Revelation). These common themes will become quite clear throughout this book.
4.The Bible deals with circumstances and issues that were part of life in ancient times. The historically related events of the Bible cover a period of about two thousand years, ending in the late first century of the Common Era (“CE” or “AD”). The world was very different back then, compared to the twenty-first century with its satellites, democratic nations, mobile electronic devices, video conferencing, prevalence of the English language, etc. To read back into the Bible, an awareness—for instance—of specific historical or technological developments from our own time, is to insult the Bible’s own integrity.
5.The cultural world of the Bible is specific to a time and place. It is often referred to, in scholarly studies, as “the Ancient Near East.” This cultural world was affected by the conditions of male-dominated communities, as well as language, land, climate, assumptions about personal identity, and so forth. We do not readily understand, for instance, why blessings are so pivotal from father to son or what legal obligations a master had to his servants. Recognizing its own particular context, as puzzling as it often seems, is a necessary part of understanding the Bible.
6.Biblical writings serve very different purposes than those served by our typically modern assumptions about “objective and value-free” reporting and research. The Bible witnesses to a God who seeks to restore creation from the destructive rebellion of the very humans who were made to care for it. This goal of reclaiming, or “redeeming,” humanity from its errant ways and their consequences becomes evident in The One Great Story at every turn. Details about characters, places, events, and practices are never included as ends in themselves or free of an interpretive framework or aim. Consequently, we today are challenged not to impose our own assumptions about reality and truth on how the Bible expresses itself.
Our typical, modern assumptions about “objective” study do not line up with ancient assumptions that frame biblical material.
7.In addition to all the other ways that the Bible is strange to our world, it was composed in languages that few of us can read. The oldest versions of biblical books were composed in ancient Hebrew or Aramaic (Old Testament) or Koiné—common Greek—(New Testament). Not only this, but it is likely that Jesus himself spoke Aramaic in daily conversation. This suggests that his sayings were translated from Aramaic into Greek by the time they appeared in the four Gospels. Most people on the planet cannot read, write, or speak any of those languages and thus rely on a translation in their own native tongues. Moreover, the process of translation itself still requires some interpretation, since word-for-word renderings sometimes do not convey the meaning of the original.
One example of the challenge inherent in language and understanding is Jesus’ parable of the laborers in the vineyard (Matt 20:1–16). The landowner in the parable hires workers during different times of the day but pays them all the same wage at evening time. When those who worked longer complain, the landowner replies that he has done nothing wrong. His final comment to them comes in the form of a question: “Or are you envious because I am generous” (Matt 20:15b)? Actually, the Greek literally says, “Or is your eye evil because I am good?” At least five other English versions provide very similar translations to the one quoted here.5 Instead of the literal Greek, each translation team chose to provide an interpretation of those Greek words. Verses like this one remind us that there are places in a translation where we must make educated guesses about a text’s meaning—whether the results fit into our preconceived notions or not!
8.Finally, the Bible that we know represents a selection process, or processes, that took place in the mists of history. The sixty-six books that are familiar to Protestants today were not the only ancient literature about the Israelites and Jews, as well as about Jesus and very early Christians. Evidence, from early history and from archeological discoveries, makes it clear that dozens of other documents about biblical characters and events were composed. Some of them survive today in a collection known as the Apocrypha (including such books as 1 and 2 Esdras and 1–4 Maccabees). Others are not extant, such as the Book of the Annals of the Kings of Judah (see, for instance, 2 Kgs 23:28). Some were known in the early Christian centuries, such as the Shepherd of Hermas and the Apocalypse of Peter, and others have been discovered much more recently, such as The Gospel of Thomas. The fact that an extensive list of these books exists suggests that, indeed, our Christian forebears made determinations along the way about the value of particular writings to the instruction and life of the church.
Measured Discernment
This last point, in other words, has to do with the question of “canon,” or standards by which any particular book would have been deemed suitable for circulation in the church. Evidence from history and archaeology is overwhelming: the Bible did not drop out of the sky, as though written by the finger of God, cut and dried, with no grey areas. Protestants, Catholics, and Orthodox Christian traditions still vary in their inclusion of what constitutes “the Scriptures.” Not every ancient book written about Jesus “made it” into the Bible, for example, and neither did every letter attributed to the apostles Peter and Paul.6
Not only this, but our English translations are made from Hebrew and Greek collections that include variations, and sometimes even omissions, between ancient copies of the same texts. Some early Greek versions of the Gospel of Mark conclude with 16:8, while others include twelve more verses. Similarly, the oldest known documents of the Gospel of John do not have the story of the woman caught in adultery (7:53—8:11). In the Old Testament, sometimes a Hebrew word or phrase is not clear, and translators have to rely upon early Greek or Latin translations to render an English reading (see, for example, Ps 16:2, Ps 18:43, Prov 24:21, and many others).
One of my Bible professors in seminary, James A. Sanders, told the story, in class one day, about a rare privilege that he was given. While a young scholar, Sanders became the first person allowed to view the Psalms scroll that was found among the famous collection known as the Dead Sea Scrolls. He had to travel to Israel to do so, and on the ship he memorized all the Psalms in Hebrew, since he would not be allowed to take any books or writing utensils into the room with him. During his examination of it, Sanders discovered that this scroll, dated from the first-century