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Chapter One

THE BIBLE AS IT IS

THE BIBLE IN CHRISTIAN BELIEF

To Christians, the Bible is the word of God. All accept the authority of the Bible in one way or another.  Baptists, Presbyterians, Pentecostals and Methodists accept the Bible as the sole religious authority.  All the solutions to problems of theology, morals and even day to day living are to be found in the Bible.  Anglicans, too, accept the sole authority of the Bible.  However, its interpretation is subject to the traditional Anglican statements of faith.  The position of the Lutheran Churches is similar to the Anglican one: the Bible is the sole authority but subject to the interpretation based on traditional Lutheran statements of faith.  The Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Churches recognize the traditional church councils as authoritative alongside the Bible. Catholics, in addition, treat certain pronouncements of the pope as equally binding.
Fundamentalist and liberals view this “authority” very differently. The strict fundamentalist says that the Bible is literally true and is without any error whatsoever.  Where allegory is intended, the context is made clear.  Where there is no allegory, the statements are accepted a literally true. For example, if the Bible makes certain pronouncements on astronomy, these are accepted without equivocation as true.  For reason cannot contradict revelation. As the television evangelist Jerry Falwell (1933-2007) confidently asserted:

The entire Bible, from Genesis to Revelation, is the inerrant word of God and totally accurate in all respects.

A different stance is that taken by the liberals.  They, too, assert that the Bible is true, but that the truth of the Bible is not scientific or historical and should not be analyzed as such.  The Bible, say the liberals, speaks of spiritual truth.  Hence when it speaks of the 6 day creation of the universe, one must not take it literally but allegorically.   
In subsequent chapters we will critically examine these views on the Bible. In this chapter we will provide an introduction to the Bible and its contents. Despite the importance placed on the Bible by all Christians, many – if not most – are only vaguely familiar with its contents.

THE BOOKS OF THE BIBLE

One of the way documents were made in ancient times was to write them down on rolls of papyrus.  The material to make these rolls comes from the inner bark of a reed plant that grows only in swampy places.  The plant was called byblos.  This name is derived from the Canaanite seaport in Phoenicia (modern Lebanon) called Byblos.  Hence, the Greek word for the roll of papyrus is biblion which is translated into English as “book.”  The plural of biblion is biblia.  It is from this word, biblia, that the word Bible is derived.
The Greek name for the Bible, Ta Biblia (the books), is apt.  For it is really a collection of many books.  The modern Bible, not including the group of books known as the Apocrypha, comprises 66 books.  The lengths of these books vary from Isaiah, which comes close in length to a modern short novel, to the Third Epistle of John, which has only 294 words.
The books in the Bible are divided into two main sections; known respectively as The Old Testament and The New Testament.  Christians view the Old Testament as an account of the old covenant between God and the Hebrews.  The Old Testament is also supposed to contain references and prophecies to the coming of Jesus Christ.  The New Testament presents, through Jesus, a new covenant, this time between God and all mankind. 
In some Bible there exists a third section, known as the Apocrypha.  These books are those which have their canonicity disputed in various churches.  The Roman Catholic Church accepts some of these books as canonical and places them together with the books of the Old Testament.

THE OLD TESTAMENT

The early Christians adopted the Hebrew Scriptures as their own. What the Jews called the Tanakh, the Christians labeled the Old Testament. While the contents of these are the same, the arrangements of the books are different.  The Hebrew Tanakh comprises 24 books divided into 3 sections while the Christian Old Testament consists of 39 books grouped into 4 separate sections. Below we give a tabular comparison of the two.
The arrangement and division of books of the Old Testament came from the Greek translation of the Hebrew Scriptures known as the Septuagint. Most of the early Christians were Greek-speaking Gentiles. Not being able to read Hebrew, they turned to the Greek translation. It was this version that was the Bible for the early Christians.

PENTATEUCH

The first five books of the Old Testament - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy – also known collectively as the Pentateuch, were traditionally believed to be the work of Moses.
Genesis narrates the mythical creation of the world in six days and the creation of the first humans: Adam and Eve. The story of Adam and Eve is central to the Christian doctrine of the atonement.  The first human couple was originally created to live forever in the paradise called the Garden of Eden.  They were given only one command: not to eat the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, the original forbidden fruit.  However, tempted by the serpent, Eve partook of the fruit and induced her partner to do likewise.  In punishing their disobedience, God expelled the couple from the garden, imposed hard labor on Adam, promised pain in childbirth for Eve and took away their immortality. Christian theologians call this event The Fall, the loss of man’s primal innocence.  From thence on every generation would inherit this Original Sin of Adam and Eve. 
The next notable event in Genesis is the story of the Deluge. God, dismayed at mankind’s wickedness, decided to destroy the whole world with a cataclysmic flood.  He called on the one human worth saving, Noah, and commanded him to build an ark big enough to house his family and specimens of every kind of animals in the world.  When the flood finally came, Noah, his family and the menagerie of animals were preserved by the ark which floated on the waters. When the waters subsided, God made a covenant with Noah, symbolized by a rainbow, promising never again to “curse the ground any more for man’s sake.”
Ten generations after Noah, another major figure arose, Abraham, the father of all the Semitic races.  Born in Ur in Chaldea (see figure 1.1 below), he traveled many lands, through Haran and Canaan, searching for a land he could call his own.  He fathered two sons, Ishmael and Isaac.  One day God called on Abraham to sacrifice his son Isaac.  With a heavy heart, he took Isaac to the mountain to do as God had commanded him.  Seeing the obedience of his subject, God commanded that a ram be substituted for Isaac, sparing the boy’s life.  God then made a covenant with Abraham, promising him that his descendents will be as numerous as the stars and that they would inherit the land of Canaan.  Christian theology considers Abraham’s willingness to sacrifice his son as a precursor to God’s sacrifice of his own Son to save the world.

Isaac begat two twin sons, Esau and Jacob. Esau was the first born and the “hairier one.” Just before Isaac’s death, he sent for Esau. Esau, being the first born, was the rightful recipient of his father’s final blessings. Rebekah, the mother of Esau and Jacob, overheard this and loving Jacob more, sent for Jacob instead. Isaac was nearly blind and to make the trick work, Rebekah had her favorite son wear sheep’s skin on his hands and neck to simulate the hairiness of his brother. When Isaac asked “Esau” to come near, the sheep’s skin fooled him and he gave the younger son his final blessing, making him the head of the family. Fearing that Esau would kill Jacob, Rebekah sent the latter to Haran.
In Haran, Jacob married his cousins, Leah and Rachel, the daughters of Laban. After working with Laban for twenty years, Jacob left Haran. In his return to his home country, Jacob stopped at Gilead and there met with a mysterious stranger who wrestled him throughout the night until daybreak. Jacob held on to the person and would not release him until he received his blessing. The stranger agreed and said that from then on he shall be called “Israel” which means “he who prevails with God.” In other words, Jacob had wrestled with God and won!
Jacob’s twelve sons eventually had the twelve tribes of Israel named after them: Reuben, Simeon, Levi, Judah, Zebulun, Issachar, Dan, Gad, Asher, Naphtali, Joseph and Benjamin. Joseph, as the exception, was the ancestor of two tribes, Ephraim and Mennasseh.
The narratives now center on Joseph. He was the favorite of Jacob. Jealous of their father’s love for Joseph, his brothers conspired to kill him. One of them could not go through with the plan and Joseph was sold to the Ishmaelites instead. The Ishmaelites in turn sold him to an Egyptian official.  Joseph turned out to have a knack for the interpretation of dreams. Eventually this talent became known to the Pharaoh. Joseph’s prognostication helped Egypt through seven years of famine and made him a favorite of Pharaoh. Joseph met his brothers again when they came to Egypt to buy grain. He sent them back for his father and his other brother Benjamin. His whole family eventually moved to Egypt on his invitation. This was the biblical account of how the nation of Israel came to settle in Egypt.
The term patriarch is normally applied to Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and Jacob’s twelve sons. The term patriarchal narratives refers to the story from Abraham to the settlement in Egypt mentioned above.
Exodus deals with the deliverance of the Israelites under the leadership of Moses from bondage in Egypt.  Moses was hidden by his mother for three months from the Pharaoh who instructed all Israelite male babies to be killed.  No longer able to hide him after that, his mother made a basket out of bulrushes, placed the baby Moses in it and let it float away on the river.  The baby was found and raised by the Pharaoh’s daughter.  In adulthood Moses was commanded by God to lead his people out from bondage in Egypt via the Sinai Peninsula to the Promised Land.  It was while leading the Israelites to Canaan that Moses received the Ten Commandments on Mount Sinai.  Due to an earlier transgression, Moses was forbidden to enter the land of Canaan but before he died he was given a glimpse of the Promised Land from the top of Mount Nebo.  This deliverance from bondage is regarded throughout Jewish history as the outstanding instance of God’s favor for his chosen people, the Israelites.
Leviticus consists almost wholly of religious legislation.  Written in the form of a sermon of Moses, the book contains a variety of laws on such things as the eating of meat, religious duties, marriage, the priesthood, festivals, real estates and slaves.  Numbers presents a narration of the experiences of the Israelites under Moses during their exodus from Egypt.  Deuteronomy lays downs Moses’ instructions on Israel’s religious law. It also contains an account of his death.

THE HISTORICAL BOOKS

Joshua tells of the story of the Israelites after the death of Moses. Led by Joshua, they crossed the river Jordan into the promised land of Canaan and conquered it. The land acquired was divided among the twelve tribes of Israel.  
Judges traces the history of Israel from Joshua’s death through the period just before a monarchy was established over Israel.  During this time Israel was more or less informally ruled by leaders known as “Judges” without any central administration.  
Ruth is set in the latter days of Judges and revolves around a Moabite woman of that name who married a Jew.  Upon the death of her husband, Ruth was taken under the protection of Boaz, a kinsman of her husband, who eventually married her.  Ruth, being a foreigner, was shown as a gentle person and as an ancestor of David.  By showing that a foreigner could be the ancestor of the greatest king of Israel, the book can be seen as an early argument for inter-racial tolerance.
I & II Samuel relate the story of the first two monarchs of Israel, Saul and David, and their relationship with the prophet Samuel.  Saul led the Israelites through many victorious wars against foreigners.  But Saul disobeyed Samuel and the prophet promptly anointed David, then only a child, as the new King of all Israel.  David did not immediately ascend the throne but became king only when he was 30 years old, after Saul was killed in a battle with the Philistines.  In between the time of his anointment and his actual ascension to the throne, David roamed the countryside with an armed band.  It was during this period that David slew the Philistine giant, Goliath, with his slingshot.  Under the leadership of David, Israel grew due to his conquest of neighboring lands and became the dominant power in the Middle East.  It was David who made Jerusalem the capital of all Israel.
I and II Kings cover the history of Israel from the death of David until the fall of Jerusalem in 586 BCE.  After the death of David, his son Solomon, from an illicit relationship with Bathsheba, became King of Israel.  Solomon substantially enriched Israel both culturally and economically by developing profitable trade routes.  It was Solomon who, with the help of craftsmen and engineers from Phoenicia, built the Temple of Jerusalem.  This temple was to remain the center of Jewish worship until the fall of Jerusalem.  After Solomon’s death Israel was divided into two separate kingdoms: Israel in North and Judah in the South.  Divided, Israel and Judah lost all the power of Solomon’s kingdom.  Israel fell to the Assyrians in 722 BCE, while Judah in turn was conquered by the Babylonians in 586 BCE.  With the fall of Judah, Jerusalem was obliterated and the Temple was destroyed.  Like the people of the northern kingdom, the people of Judah were either deported to the land of their conquerors as slaves or fled to the neighboring countries in the Mediterranean. This dispersion of the Jews became known as the Diaspora.
A considerable amount of overlap exists between I and II Chronicles on one hand and II Samuel and the two books of Kings on the other.  In fact most scholars are of the opinion that the chronicler used II Samuel and the books of Kings as his main sources. The books of Chronicles end with the return of the Jews from exile in 536BCE.
Ezra records the return of the exiles from Babylon and their attempts to rebuild the temple at Jerusalem.  The book also chronicles the mission and work of the Jewish priest and scribe, Ezra.  Nehemiah records the plans of the Jewish leader of that name for the restoration of Jerusalem. In his zeal to keep Israel racially pure he excluded from the city people not of Jewish blood and strongly forbade inter-racial marriage. Nehemiah is probably one of the earliest records of a racist.

The last book in this section, the book of Esther, relates how a Jewish girl of that name became Queen of Persia and risked her life to save her people (the Israelites).  Its inclusion into the Old Testament is probably due to the book’s introduction of a patriotic holiday, the Feast of Purim.

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