I think the view of scripture as a record of our attempts to know God better - that view has a lot to commend itself. As opposed to seeing scripture as a flat God-dictated book that must be taken as perfection from its first word to its last, which opens up so many cans of worms and internal, self-inflicted problems within the scriptures themselves that protestants spend all the rest of their theological energies becoming olympic eisegetical gymnasts putting it all back together again - trying (and failing to all eyes but their own) to achieve even just internal coherence. But if one lets go of all that and just lets the scriptures become a story - a narrative - of the people of God haltingly and slowly becoming aware of who God is - building up to Christ; then it casts new light on nearly everything, and is impossible to then “unsee”.
So in that view, God is first viewed as having much in common with so many other gods of the day - needing to be appeased with sacrifices, having a bit of a temper, looking more like how we would see Zeus than what we later see instead in Christ. He hurls lightning bolts, wipes out entire populations with floods … and for all that … sin remains in the world. It didn’t ‘work’. At least not like the ancients thought it should work. Literalists and inerrantists are stuck trying to defend all these old views because … there it is in the Bible after all, so it must be the final word, right? (Nevermind Christ, apparently). But that isn’t to say these movements weren’t in true and needed directions. First - the recognition that sin exists and is a thing, a devastating thing! And then beyond that, we should be addressing it - trying to atone as it were (enter the whole system of sacrifices). Also an improvement on the notion that everything is just a free-for-all and whoever is strongest just gets to have their way. And that vengeance shouldn’t be unlimited - let’s instead limit it to an eye for an eye and so forth. These are all improvements on what came before. All getting closer to what God is about even if it isn’t yet the final word (Christ) on the fullness of God’s will.
Once read that way, and not trying to justify floods and rivers of blood as having some sort of equivalent authority about what God is like over and against Christ - then a great burden is released and one can go back and actually learn from the old accounts on their own terms about where the people of God have been rather than trying to craft new theologies around old temple and sacrificial systems that Christ definitively informed us were things of the past. John 4:21-24. This new wine just won’t keep well in the old wineskins we keep trying to re-use.
It is the viwew I have learned. The understanding of God develops as people walk with Him. Genesis 1-9 os basically folklore based on the human view of God. God comes across as very human, even down to throwing Hissy fits at Adam & Eve and then the world as a whole. The Flood defies our view of God because it would seem that God either bult us wrong or, at least, could not forsee how we would turn out. The underlying view that god wants perfection is echoed in most religions but is overturned by the Gospel of Christ, which is why i consider Christianity not only unique, but an “easier” faith to follow. God approaches us instead of us trying to please Him.
Then you get the hardline biblical fanatics who try and turn Christianity into the most stringent and exclusive “club” in creation. I literally Hate it!
Jacob L. Wright’s book, Why the Bible Began: An Alternative History of Scripture and Its Origins, explores the origins and purpose of the Hebrew Bible, proposing that it was crafted as a response to national catastrophe and as a means to forge a new form of political community. Wright argues that, following the Babylonian destruction of Jerusalem, the biblical authors used shared texts to unite deeply divided communities, creating a sense of peoplehood not based on victory but on shared narratives and reflections on failure.
Rise and Fall: This section intertwines the historical context of the ancient Near East with the biblical narrative, illustrating how the experiences of defeat and exile influenced the formation of Israel’s national identity.
Family Story to People’s History: Wright examines how familial narratives evolved into a collective history, emphasizing the role of shared stories in uniting disparate groups.
National Narrative and Palace History: This part delves into the development of national narratives and their relationship with royal histories, highlighting the tensions and collaborations between prophets and kings.
Writing to Survive: The final section discusses how the act of writing became a survival strategy, preserving the community’s identity and values amid societal collapse.
Wright’s analysis suggests that the Hebrew Bible served as a blueprint for a new kind of community, one that could maintain unity and identity without political sovereignty. This perspective offers insights into how ancient societies used literature to navigate crises and construct enduring forms of collective identity.
I see here an attempt to force the Ark episode into a modern binary and somewhat scientific worldview – guaranteed to get things wrong. It strikes me as an effort to demand that scripture conform to preconceived ideas rather than to just ask “What is this trying to communicate?”
That said, there are inconsistencies in the above with the text. First, the text doesn’t say there was intent to wipe out sin or “[kill] all the evil sinners”; it says that “every intention of the thoughts of [man’s] heart was only evil continually” (and that there were offspring from ‘angels’ mating with human women). In that context, “Noah found favor” doesn’t require that he be sinless, only that the intentions of his heart deviated significantly from being “only evil continually”.
Why? If all for whom “every intention of the thoughts of [man’s] heart was only evil continually” were eliminated and those who were saved had intentions of their hearts that were not evil continually but had other motives as well, then a purpose was served: the dominant virulence of wickedness was eliminated, leaving a small number who could be evil but could also be ‘good’. Think of it as triage; those who had any redeeming attributes got rescued, those with none were eliminated.
But you’re defining “proper reboot” in a way not justified by the text. Think of it in terms of a disease sweeping through a herd, and a new strain emerges that is 100% fatal: if at that point the herdmaster pulls out a small group that has the original disease but not the new strain and then kills (and burns the bodies of) the rest, that is definitely a “proper reboot” because a remnant of the herd has been saved.
In fact that fits in with a regular theme in the Old Testament scriptures, often called “remnant theology” where it is noted that God starts with a small number, that number grows, then the majority are culled and a remnant saved, and the process begins anew.
Spending less time judging scripture and more asking “What does this tell me?” makes artificial problems like this vanish.
I see that as the whole point behind the phrase “in the fullness of time God sent His Son”: when the people of God were in the right “space” and the conditions around them were also right, the Christ arrived. From that viewpoint the entire history of the Israelite people was aimed at establishing the proper setting for the arrival of the Messiah – a thought found among the Essenes and others – who would take back all the nations for Yahweh.
At last some Jewish writings looked at this issue and concluded, “Of course it didn’t work – that won’t happen until Messiah comes!” Dr. Michael Heiser grabs hold of this strain when he talks of the “three rebellions” (Garden, Genesis 6, Babel) and the expectation that Messiah would deal with all three, not just the first. I like one writer in that company who argued that when Messiah came sin wouldn’t vanish but just as sin began small and grew to extend to everyone, with Messiah sin would begin to diminish until it was removed (from everyone who served/followed Messiah) – that fits with what we see; as Christians grow in Christ we sin less (or at least less drastically), yet we remain sinners until our resurrection.
I think everyone intending to be a preacher or pastor should be required to study the Tanakh with at least three rabbis to get a more biblical perspective on how to treat the Bible: as being the final authority, but also being something the understanding of which must be subject to adjustment as more is learned. The rabbis I knew in grad school were delighted with all the new textual and archaeological finds relating to the Tanakh because every new bit was an opportunity to re-examine whether doctrines held since the Masoretes were sound (not that everything was up in the air!).
And that it may not just be a word denoting an act of disloyalty to God but may be – as Paul often seems to treat it – an actual force, or as an Orthodox priest called it in a sermon a few months ago, “a miasma in which we live”.
Since I was just mentioning rabbis, I’ll take a moment to point out something those I knew had no trouble with: holding in their minds competing understandings of various passages and interpretations without choosing one or the other. Many Christian theologians could learn from that.
From the examples of the Prophets and Apostles that is certainly how the scriptures apply to us, not as rules we are still expected to follow but as illustrations from which we are to draw principles.
IMO Wright goes overboard. It’s an important perspective but misses out on major themes by confining the message to “What does it mean to be a people?”
Yeah, that misses the point, too. He’s quite right that Israel’s core concept of peoplehood wasn’t based on victory – which was otherwise universal in the ANE – but ignores the fact that the “shared narratives and reflections on failure” revolve around something else that was quite radical in the ANE, namely that rather than expecting their gods to be loyal to them their identity rested on them being loyal to YHWH-Elohim.
Youu can argue what you wish. Original Sin is still a false doctrine.
f you wish to claim that Noah was sinful, as proven by getting drunk, so be it. if you wish to think Angels had sex with humans, so be it. You are ust justifying your own version of an evil doctrine tha makes God both incompetant and unable to control His wayward creation due to the power of man. So be it.
Hopefully that link will let you listen if you want, as it is quite interesting and makes me want to get the book. If you just want to listen to a few minutes, starting at about 10 minutes is a good sample.
Thanks for the link. I was allowed to listen to a very brief portion of the beginning of the podcast, but that led me to search Youtube for more about Carmen Ives, which I am now doing. I haven’t found one that specifically addresses the stuff that she discussed on the link you gave me, but I’m sure I will.
Dr. Imes (an Old Testament Scholar) is a good voice to listen to on just about anything. Searching for “Carmen” on the HolyPost.com web site yields lots of hits, most of which (the flagship podcast) would be available for viewing even without subscription. Here is a screen shot of that search result in case any of it is of interest.
It puzzles me why people object to the idea of Moses borrowing things from Egypt, especially the Tabernacle and the Ark/Cask of the Covenant. Both match the pattern of items belonging to Pharoah, “lord” of Egypt, so by using them Moses was declaring that YHWH-Elohim is Lord, not Pharaoh. That was point enough, but it was also a challenge to all the gods of Egypt given the divine connection to Pharaoh. And given that both were related to Pharaoh’s military activity, marching along with the two items was a declaration that YHWH-Elohim was claiming the land they walked on.
Just one more example of why one should not demand the text fit some preconceived notion but ought to ask “Why did God do it what way?” – the Tabernacle and Ark were marching warfare on an ANE spiritual level.
When she talks about “democratization” of the presence of God, that’s not all that’s going on with the fact that we don’t have to be ritually clean to go to church: being clean or unclean runs the other direction in the New Covenant, so rather than uncleanness polluting scared space, sacred space now cleanses uncleanness: coming into the presence of the Messiah, we are cleeansed.
The value and the acts of humans are not the same; we should recognize and respect the value of an individual even when we do not agree with his/her acts. I admit that I do not know why the biblical scriptures do not accept homosexual acts but I do note that both in the OT (Leviticus, if I remember correctly) and in a letter of Paul (Romans) there is a very clear rejection and condemnation of such acts (but note that the scriptures do not condemn people who have homosexual orientation, only homosexual acts!).
I used to think in this way; separating the thought from the act! But it has some major problems. First, the teaching of Jesus in the sermon on the mount.
“But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart.” (Matthew 5:28 NIV) So it appears that having the thought but not acting on it is already condemned.
Second, St Paul’s condemnation of homosexuality is based upon Nature, and such a basis reverses his conclusion. We know a lot more about Nature than Paul could possibly have known in the first century A.D. If I lived in the first century I would probably have agreed with Paul, but in the 21st century his conclusions are turned on their head.
As for Leviticus, if you want to base anything on what is written in Leviticus, you have to embrace the lot, not just the sentences that suit your argument. I am sure others in this group will be able to tell you what that means.
