THE BIBLE AS SACRED HISTORY Tracing God’s Activity in History by Dr. James T. Reuteler, Ph.D. Covenant Bible Studies Aurora, Colorado TABLE OF CONTENTS The Foreword 1 PART ONE THE OLD COVENANT 2 Chapter 1 The Bible as Sacred History 3 Chapter 2 The Jewish Scriptures 5 Chapter 3 In The Beginning 12 Chapter 4 The Promised Land 17 Chapter 5 The Struggle For Leadership 20 Chapter 6 The United Monarchy 27 Chapter 7 The Collapse of Two Kingdoms 35 Chapter 8 Waiting for a New King 42 PART TWO THE NEW COVENANT 47 Chapter 9 The Christian Scriptures 48 Chapter 10 The New King Arrives 53 Chapter 11 The Message and Person of the New King 59 Chapter 12 The Crowning of the New King 69 Chapter 13 Seeking Citizens for the New King 78 Chapter 14 Seeking More Citizens for the King 83 Chapter 15 The Final Establishment of the Kingdom 96 PART THREE APPENDICES 108 Appendix A The Names of God 109 Appendix B The Image of God 110 Appendix C The Commandments 111 Appendix D The Dates of the Kings 112 Appendix E The Kings of Israel 113 Appendix F The Kings of Judah 114 Appendix G The Festivals of Judaism 115 Appendix H The Jewish Calendar 118 Appendix I The Seven Covenants 119 Appendix J A Brief Chronology of Jesus 121 Appendix K The Life of Our Lord 122 Appendix L The Beatitudes 124 Appendix M The New Commandments 125 Appendix N Jesus and the Commandments 126 Appendix O The Parables of Jesus 127 Appendix P The Miracles of Jesus 128 Appendix Q The Christian Calendar 129 Appendix R The Book of Revelation 130 The Afterword 131 FOREWORD I can’t count the number of people who have said to me, “I’d like to join your Bible Study, but I don’t know enough about the Bible.” What they are actually saying is, “I don’t know the story well enough to keep myself from appearing stupid.” Many of us have tried to overcome our Biblical illiteracy by beginning to read the whole Bible. We start in Genesis and get bogged down somewhere in Leviticus or Numbers and give up. This book is about the story of the Bible from Genesis through Revelation. It does not cover every book of the Bible. It follows the story through the Bible, preparing the reader to delve more deeply into a more comprehensive Bible Study. It is not a Bible Handbook. Plenty of those have been written. It is not a Commentary of the Bible. Plenty of those have been written, and I myself have written commentaries on every book of the Bible, including the books of the Apocrypha. Since most Protestants don’t accept the Apocrypha as Scripture, I have not included very much on the Apocrypha in this book. The Bible is not a scientific book so don’t expect to find scientific answers to all the questions that emerge out of your reading of the Bible. Neither is the Bible strictly a book of history, but it is a book of Sacred History. The Bible is a theological interpretation of history. Whether all the stories are accurate in all their details is not as important as the theological interpretation of the stories themselves. For the most part, I will paraphrase the stories as we move from Genesis through Revelation, but at times, I will make theological interpretations of the stories. My intention is not to write a book about Biblical Theology, but to demonstrate how the Bible is a book about Sacred History. Out of that Sacred History we may develop our own Theology and Ethics, but that’s not my purpose here. The Bible is a difficult and dangerous book to read. It is my hope that this book will make reading the Bible a little easier and a little less dangerous. By putting the Bible in the context of its Sacred History, we prepare ourselves not only for a more comprehensive study of the Bible, but we also prepare ourselves for applying its wisdom to our own lives. Once you have finished this book, you may want to use it as a reference as you dive more deeply into a comprehensive Bible Study, but do that in a small group with others. You will learn so much more. In the Appendices I have included several charts to help you in your deeper study of the Bible. I have not included Bible Maps. The best two sources I know of are online. They are: http://www.biblemaps.com/ and http://www.bible.ca/maps/. The first set of maps must be purchased, but the second set, are free for your use. They are copyrighted, so I can’t include them in this book. Good luck as you begin the greatest study of your life. Dr. James T. Reuteler, Ph.D. 1 THE OLD COVENANT The LORD spoke to Moses, saying: Speak to all the congregation of the people of Israel and say to them: You shall be holy, for I the LORD your God am holy. Leviticus 19:1-2 2 1. THE BIBLE AS SACRED HISTORY The Nature of the Bible The Bible is a library of books that teach us about God. One might call the Bible a sacred history of God’s revelation of himself. God revealed himself before the Bible came into being, but with the Bible we have a written record from a people who experienced that revelation. Since many people contributed to this sacred history of God’s revelation, we should not expect all of those experiences to be the same. In addition to being a library, the Bible is also inspired. This does not mean that God put his words in people’s mouths. The sixty-six books of the Bible, were written by people, who, had personally experienced God; and, had witnessed his movements in history. Edward P. Blair shares with us the nature of that inspiration: Since people wrote about their experiences with God, we ought not to expect inerrant fact and perfect understanding from their writings. When light shines through a glass, there is inevitably some distortion of the light. God took the risk of human distortion in order to communicate with us in our language and forms of thought. The clearest revelation, of course, came through those persons in whom there was the least opaqueness and imperfection. Only through the one perfect human personality, Jesus Christ, did the light shine without distortion. The ability to see God in history was unique. A more common way of seeing God was in nature. The Biblical writers acknowledge the God of nature as well, but they refused to worship nature. Nature was God’s handiwork. From nature one could know that there was a God, but one could only come to know that God in history. To say that God reveals himself in history is to say that God reveals himself in human relationships. Some of those relationships are social and exist in relationships between nations, but they are also very personal and exist in relationships between friends. Leslie Weatherhead explains: ...if God can get near to us in inanimate things, He must be able to get much nearer to us through our fellows? If He can speak to me in the tones of the wind, cannot He say much more to me in the vibrant tones of my friend’s voice? If the sight of a flower can speak to me of tenderness—and I think that is His voice— then, as I look into the eyes of my friend, how much nearer can God come, how much more clearly can He speak. The Purpose of the Bible By reading about how God spoke and acted in the past, we can get a better picture of how he is speaking and acting in our lives and in our society today. The primary purpose of the Bible is to lead us into a personal relationship with God and to enable us to do his will in our personal lives and in our life together as his people. In The Bible Speaks to You, Robert McAfee Brown describes the purpose of the Bible: The Bible makes it plain that God reveals himself. He does not simply reveal information about himself. Put another way, what we find in the Bible is not an 3 accumulation of data about God, but rather a living God in living relationship with living people. So the Bible is not a textbook of doctrinal statements (though doctrinal statements can be derived from it)—the Bible is an account of an encounter between God and his people. Just as the Bible is not primarily a book of doctrinal statements about God, neither is it a law book. It does contain laws and commandments, but we cannot simply use the Bible as a law book. When we try to do that we will quickly discover that people can make it say whatever they want it to say. It contains doctrines about God and it contains laws and commandments, but the purpose of the Bible is to bring us in touch with God so that we can know what his will for us is. Martin Luther made this point well when he said: “He who merely studies the commandments of God is not greatly moved. But he who listens to God commanding, how can he fail to be terrified by majesty so great.” The purpose of the Bible is to help us come to know the commander and once we know him, our greatest desire will be to do his will.