Welcome to the One Great Story!. George B. Thompson
of 150!
Sanders’s discovery is not the only one of its kind, and it reminds us that many decisions have been made across the centuries about what would be considered “in” and “out” of the canon. This matter of standards for what is acceptable as Holy Writ leads us also into the question of “interpretation,” which we have mentioned a little already. In every era (even within the times of the Bible itself), people in the tradition of biblical faith have had to make sense out of what the Bible says. This kind of discernment is not as straightforward as we might wish—in part because every act of reading anything at all involves an attempt to see meaning in something. In our case here, scholarly study of the Bible has helped to open up a greater awareness of the way in which texts and passages were likely to have been understood by their earliest audiences.
Many decisions have been made across the centuries about what is considered “in” and “out” of the biblical canon.
Getting from “There” to “Here”
These scholarly resources are invaluable but, by themselves, they are incomplete. We—and anyone who reads the Bible—interpret what we read out of our own context, too. It should not surprise us that our context (and any context, for that matter) lays a filter or two over the biblical text. What we see in the text through these filters might mislead us. Drastic differences between the ancient Mediterranean world and the modern, scientific world that affects us today illustrate the challenges of interpretation.
Still, one of the primary reasons that we have a Bible is because our spiritual ancestors assumed that the Bible’s witness provides meaning that also is significant in every time and place.7 In this book, we proceed with the conviction that evidence in the Bible itself witnesses to the dominating presence of The One Great Story that we will explore here. The meaning of that Story then offers us here and now a rich, challenging, and invigorating way to discover points of significance from it for our lives and for the life of this world that God still seeks to make whole. We can benefit from scholarship’s capacity for un-covering those earliest meanings from a text, as we seek faithfully to dis-cover how that meaning might speak to our own situation and to the world today.
Thus, this book about the Bible is different from others. It aims to provide evidence for the claim that the Bible became what we know it to be because, across many generations and centuries, inheritors of a particular Story (The One Great Story) recognized its meaning as of major significance for themselves, in their changing circumstances. That recognition led, time and again, to explaining how that Story made sense out of their identity, purpose, and call. We are going to explore that Story here.
The Second Naïveté
I write this book as a seminary-trained pastor and teacher, whose graduate work includes a degree in biblical interpretation. As a young adult, I struggled with matters of biblical inspiration and authority, and I have come out on the other side. My approach assumes that Christians take the Bible very seriously, even as those of us affected by modern, Western ways of viewing the world realize that the Bible speaks out of a quite different world and in a very different way. We impose assumptions on the Bible that did not exist in its time. Our opportunity now is to learn to discern how to throw out the bath water and keep the baby. For instance, Old Testament symbolic exaggeration, or its presentation of violence of many kinds, made sense in that biblical world. Today, these features often leave us scratching our heads or clucking our tongues. It is possible—perhaps necessary—for us to move from innocence through skepticism to what philosopher and theologian Paul Ricoeur called “the second naïveté.”8 This kind of naïveté emerges when we move beyond a simple innocence, beyond even a scary or discouraging skepticism, to engage all the intricacies of biblical study with fresh enthusiasm. Once we get there, the Bible can become for us today an even deeper and more compelling witness to life and faith.
Launching Out
This book does not provide an overview of every book in the Bible. Neither does it assume that every quotation of, or reference to, an earlier section of the Bible in a later section expresses the Story that I seek to illuminate here. Rather, here we favor those parts of any biblical book that reveal or allude to The One Great Story, that contribute to its trajectory throughout the Bible. We seek to discover how that Story itself influences and propels successive storytellers, scribes, and editors as they discuss later characters, places, events, and practices. In this way, The Story itself becomes expanded and developed, while maintaining its theme consistently. This theme, I believe, provides the heart and deepest energy driving the Bible as canon. It is within the energy of this Story that we, in our respective times and places, can discover how it still speaks.
It is within the energy of The One Great Story that we can discover how it still speaks.
We are about to follow a Story that is long and involved! It includes many generations, many characters, a long list of locations, episodes, and developments—not to mention those storytellers and editors who preserved and interpreted various parts of it all along the way. What might not be apparent at first glance is that the most present and dependable of all the characters is not one of the many persons whom you might expect—not Abraham, Jacob, Moses, Ruth, David, Elijah, Isaiah, or Mary. Rather, it is God—a God who initiates things, who responds to what people are doing, who will shift action in order to maintain an overall purpose, and who never gives up.
Because of how The Story begins, we could argue that its most central theme is whether the called, chosen ones will demonstrate their trust in the One who—because of the call given to them—promises, acts, expects, holds accountable, and persists against the odds. Will they “do what is right in their own eyes,” or will they follow the One who made them and keeps giving them one new chance after another? Will they live into the promise given to their ancestors, thus becoming a blessing for themselves and all peoples?
In the chapters that follow, we will see this Story begin, build, shift, peak, falter, start to echo, get revived, make a fresh appeal, and continue to speak. Along the way, we will reflect, now and again, on how the character of this Story is handled from one generation and set of circumstances to another, and how integrally rooted to the whole Story is the chapter that has to do with Jesus as Messiah. Finally, we will identify some of the issues about this Story for its hearers today—issues about interpretation, about the nature of biblical faith, and of life as a community of believers. These issues have a timeless-type quality to them, a feature that will both challenge and encourage us. Hopefully, this journey will allow you to grasp what took that earnest fourth-grader so many years to understand—and then you, too, can find the Bible opening up in fresh and exciting ways.
I invite you now to join me on the journey of a lifetime, a journey of Most High intent and human response. Welcome to The One Great Story!
For the Reader
1.What do you remember about your earliest exposure to the Bible? Was it through children’s songs, a Bible story, or hearing someone read from the Bible? What were your impressions at the time?
2.With what parts of the Bible are you most comfortable—if any? Which parts bother you the most? Why?
3.Have you ever participated in an organized study of the Bible itself or of particular biblical books (as distinguished from devotional studies that draw from biblical stories and verses here and there)? What was that experience like? What did you get out of it? What wonderings did it bring up in your mind and heart?
4.What is easier for you to trust: a passage from the Bible or the evening news? Why?
Suggested Activities
•Without referring to a Bible, write down as many names of characters, events, locations, and customs or practices that you can recall. Allow yourself about 20 minutes to do this. When you finish, review your list and be aware of your thoughts and feelings. What interests you about the Bible? What turns you off? What might you like to understand better?
•Invite a friend to complete this exercise, too, and then share your results with each other. How does the conversation between the two of you help you think about the Bible?