Michael S. Heiser's Blog, page 20

I Guess I Have to See The Shape of Water

The recent movie The Shape of Water won the Academy Award for best picture this past weekend. Like most of the country, I wasn’t watching. However, it appears I’m going to have to see it. Its plotline sounds a little too familiar.

In case you’re not familiar with the film, it’s about a captured amphibious fish-man (think creature from the black lagoon and you’ve got it). You can read the plot at the Wikipedia link, but basically the fish guy and a mute woman who loves him have sex and escape the government bad guys and live happily ever after (she grows gills in the end after fish-man heals her with his powers). We aren’t told if they have hybrid children together (maybe that’s the sequel — I can already see “Man from Atlantis” re-runs in mind’s eye).

I couldn’t help being reminded of the Mesopotamian apkallu tradition, where wise and powerful divine “sages” (apkallu) — sometimes described as being fish-like in appearance since they were born in the Apsu (“great deep” / Abyss) — mate with human women before the flood and thereby preserve the fantastic knowledge that would lead to the greatness of Babylon and other Mesopotamian cities after the flood. After the flood the apkallu are described as “of human descent” and (of course) giants (e.g., Gilgamesh). Figurines of apkallu buried in building foundations were called maṣṣarē in Akkadian (“Watchers”). Sound familiar?

From Black’s Gods, Demons, and Symbols of Ancient Mesopotamia (p. 18):

Neo-Assyrian figurines of the so-called fish-garbed figures, representing the Seven Sages (apkallu) in the guise of fish. Sun-dried clay. (left) One of a group of seven figurines found together in a brick box buried in the foundations of the house of a priestly family at Aššur, probably dating to the reign of King Sargon it (721-705 BC).

Black’s entry on the “Seven Sages” (pp. 163-164) adds this:

According to Babylonian tradition, seven apkallu (`wise men’ or `sages’) lived before the Flood. Neo-Babylonian and Neo-Assyrian ritual texts give their names and the seven cities from which they were believed to have come, although there are variant traditions which cannot be fully reconciled one with another. . . . The tradition of the Seven Sages seems to be preserved in Berossos’ account of eight creatures who appeared from the sea in the ‘first days’, beginning with Oannes and ending with Odakon.”

The apkallu story is the Mesopotamian backstory for Gen 6:1-4. This is virtually unknown to biblical students (even scholars) since prior to 2010 only two articles ever mention the apkallu in connection with that biblical passage. That all changed in 2010 with the excellent work of Amar Annus (as I have blogged before). Consequently, there’s a whole lot more to the apkallu than these brief comments. I wrote about them and Gen 6:1-4 in Reversing Hermon. Do I think director Guillermo del Toro is intentionally trying to “communicate” the apkallu / Gen 6:1-4? No. I doubt he’s been reading Mesopotamian material. But perhaps he had a muse.

The post I Guess I Have to See The Shape of Water appeared first on Dr. Michael Heiser.

The Big Story of the Bible: Part 2

This is Part 2 of a guest series by Dr. Ronn Johnson.

 

What is the Bible’s Big Story? Part 2

Dr. Ronn Johnson

In my opening post I recommended that locating the Big Story of the Bible can be difficult, and that simply being more fluent in the Bible does not solve the challenge. I should also add that I do not think this is anyone’s direct fault. No one is conspiring to keep the Story hidden. Maybe the modern Sunday sermon shares some of the blame, however: we are dropped into a text and then guided, often expertly, through left- and right-hand turns while never backing up (or backing out) to hear what is generally going on. During the sermon I suspect that everyone assumes—even the preacher—that everyone else knows how the text works in the larger scheme of things. When the sermon ends, we leave knowing the Bible better … yet the main story of the Bible is either assumed, or left out, and very likely left unchallenged. I think you know the drill.

But while no one is hiding the main story of the Bible from us, neither is our current evangelical climate excited at the prospect of rethinking it. I speak here from personal experience, having taught and pastored in the movement for all of my adult life (for the record, I’m fifty-five, which may be old or young depending on how you interpret fifty-five. I used to think it was old, and now find it to be rather middle-aged, lost somewhere between teenage impulsiveness and senior moments of forgetting why I just stood up). I have worked for academic deans, Bible departments, denominational leaders, and even college presidents who are simply not interested in reviewing the Big Story question. When the question is asked, I sense that a siege mentality appears. Why challenge the system? But why is precisely my burden here—why would a movement so interested in explaining the Bible clam up (or worse, clamp down) on the greatest question we could ever ask of the Bible? I begin to wonder if we are hiding something after all.

My last post included two sample paragraphs of evangelical renditions of the Bible’s Big Story. For fear of creating, and then destroying, a straw man, let me to offer two more quotations which come from well-respected evangelicals. I am trying to find short, representative readings that reflect current traditional thinking. As you read these paragraphs, my hope is that you find yourself saying yes, this is the Big Story I have been hearing. I want to be an honest critic, which means I first have to define my opponent’s view to his liking. This first sample is from the opening pages of the recently published ESV Gospel Transformation Bible (Crossway, 2013):

“We will understand what Jesus meant about all of Scripture bearing witness to him as we remember the big picture of the Bible. An old cliché says, ‘Biblical history is “his-story.”’ But how is this story of Jesus unfolding across the past and future millennia the Bible describes? A standard way of thinking about the whole picture of God’s dealing with humanity begins with a good creation, spoiled by Adam’s fall, redeemed by Christ’s provision, and perfected in the consummation of Christ’s rule over all things. This creation-fall-redemption-consummation perspective helps us map all the events of Scripture. All have a place in this great unfolding plan of ‘his-story.’”

This “creation-fall-redemption-consummation” story is another way of describing the Sin Paid For model which I mentioned earlier, where the problem of sin on the front end (here called the fall, coming on the heels of the creation) is solved by atonement on the back end (Jesus’ redemption, followed by the consummation). The story goes from Genesis 1 to Genesis 3, then jumps to Matthew 26 and finally to Revelation 22. It is the distance and time between Genesis 3 and Matthew 26 about which I am most concerned. That is quite a jump. N. T. Wright has cynically described this not as making a jump but as “helicoptering our way” over the Bible, arriving at our destination with suspiciously clean feet. We certainly wouldn’t want a big story that makes us trudge through the details! It seems like there should be more to it all than this.

Here is another sample paragraph. It is a bit long, but there may be no better spokesman for evangelicalism than Timothy Keller:

“Through two-thirds of the Bible, the part we call the OT, an increasingly urgent, apparently unsolvable problem drives the narrative forward. God is a God of holiness and is therefore implacably opposed to evil, injustice, and wrong, and yet he is a God of infinite love. He enters into a relationship with a people who are fatally self-centered. Will he bring down the curse he says must fall on sin and cut off his people, or will he forgive and love his people regardless of their sin? If he does either one or the other, sin and evil win! It seems impossible to do both. The resolution to this problem is largely hidden from the reader through the OT, though Isaiah comes closest to unveiling it. The glorious King who brings God’s judgment in the first part of Isaiah is also the suffering servant who bears God’s judgment in the second part. It is Jesus. Victory is achieved through [Jesus’] infinite sacrifice on the cross, where God both punishes sin fully yet provides free salvation. Jesus stands as the ultimate protagonist, the hero of heroes. Therefore, because the Bible’s basic plotline is the tension between God’s justice and his grace and because it is all resolved in the person and work of Jesus Christ, Jesus could tell his followers after the resurrection that the OT is really all about him (Luke 24:27, 45). So everything in the Bible—all the themes and patterns, main images and major figures—points to Jesus” (The Story of the Bible: How the Good News about Jesus is Central [in the NIV Zondervan Study Bible, 2015]).

Let’s be fair, but pointed, in summarizing what Keller just said: God is holy, and he hates sin, but he cannot freely forgive the sin of those he also loves. So God is at an impasse between his love and his justice. God solves this tension by punishing Jesus on our behalf, thus providing us with a free and gracious salvation. What do you think? I hope that you can see that we are once again staring directly into the Sin Paid For model of the Bible’s Big Story. Nothing has changed. He has added some nice flourishes reflecting his pastoral concern, and for that he is to be thanked. He wants people to treasure God’s love for them as presented in the death of Jesus. I responded to this message when I was five years old, and my father was a pastor who ended almost every sermon by inviting people to respond to this story. So in one sense I am thankful for what Keller writes. But my concern remains. Is this really what the Bible is about?

Last time I mentioned five concerns that I had with the Big Story of the Bible as told by evangelicals. My first concern was this: Evangelicals are content to describe the Big Story of the Bible without appealing to what is actually happening in the Bible. I use the word “content” here because evangelicals often own up, very quickly, to this concern. I have heard them say rather often, in fact, that the main story of the Bible is likely not visible to those who simply pick up the Bible and read it. That sounds harsh. But Keller said it himself: “The resolution to this problem is largely hidden from the reader through the OT.” He then describes this problem/resolution as the “basic plotline” of the Bible, identified as “the tension between God’s justice and his grace.”

We should feel led to ask, Why is this tension largely hidden? And if it is, what is the point in reading the Bible if we won’t experience, along the way, the very tension that Keller claims is its main point? Either I am really missing the point of the Bible while I read it … or maybe the tension Keller is describing is simply not there. I recommend the latter option. I challenge any reader to find Abraham, Moses, or David describing a tension between God’s righteousness (the Hebrew word for justice and righteousness is the same, tsedaqah) and his grace. Moses received the stipulations of the law at the same time that he heard God describe himself as “gracious, long-suffering, and abounding in goodness and truth” (Exod 34:6). Yet we sense no tension. The Psalms commonly celebrate God’s righteousness and grace in the same breath (e.g., 103:17). And Jesus agreed. His parable of a creditor who “freely forgives” two debtors (Luke 7:42) is presented as though it is an honorable thing to be gracious without requiring payment. It is possible, even good, to “just forgive” a sinner without implying that their sin was not grievous. This graciousness is odd, yes, almost to the point of being ridiculous, but that is the point. God is just this ridiculous in his grace, and always has been. That is the kind of God that Jesus is trying to explain. Yet Keller rejects this view of a God, saying that we should have been sensing, all along, a grace/justice tension instead.

By the way—and I will return to this in a later post—evangelicals like Keller use Romans 3:25-26 as their proof for this tension between God’s justice and grace. I believe they are misreading the passage. But let’s say, for argument, that they are right about the meaning of Romans 3, and that the main tension of the Bible is finally exposed and resolved by two verses written by Paul to a church in Rome in A.D. 52 (what took so long?). I find this hard to believe. It is one of several reasons why Romans 3:25-26 will not support this interpretation. The point of 3:25-26 is summed up in 3:29-30, dealing with the Jew/Gentile problem, thus dismissing the idea that Paul was trying  to clear up something that people had not known since the fall of Adam. I will deal with this passage when I explain my Concern #3, which is that Evangelicalism, especially the modern American version of the movement, has concentrated on providing answers to the wrong questions.

Let me close by taking an even closer look the Sin Paid For model, beginning with an illustration. Pretend we are trying to decide whether we should repair an old brick wall or demolish it and start over. From a distance the wall looks usable and sturdy. But when we get close we realize that some of the bricks are loose, others are misshapen, and some simply don’t belong. It appears the wall has been put together in hopes that no one will really inspect it. We conclude the whole thing needs to come down since its appearance does not match its reality.

So let’s inspect the bricks which make up the Sin Paid For wall. Actually, I would like you to do the inspection first, and I will save my opinions for my next post. Below I have listed the individual ideas or elements that go into the Sin Paid For story, or which comprise the finished wall. I’ve grown up staring at this wall, and I have heard or read each brick t some point on my journey. Your job is to determine whether a brick should be kept or thrown away. Or maybe it just needs reshaping. Maybe it was never part of the wall in the first place, and can just be ignored.

So how should you evaluate each brick? I recommend a simple test: in keeping with my concern that the Big Story of the Bible be found by appealing to what is actually happening in the Bible, I would like you to look at each brick and ask yourself: Is this idea taught, or is this happening, in the Bible? If it is, keep the brick. If not, throw it over your shoulder and move on. We will see what is left before rebuilding.

Adam disobeyed God in the Garden of Eden

Adam’s sin resulted in the punishment of hell for all humanity

Adam’s sin resulted in the corruption of a perfect creation

Adam’s guilt is the primary cause of God’s wrath on humanity

Human beings since Adam are naturally and totally sinful

God’s holiness demands moral perfection from human beings

God’s holiness demands that he cannot be in the presence of moral sinfulness

God’s holiness demands that sin must always be punished

God instituted OT sacrifices to teach of his hatred toward sin

God instituted OT sacrifices to teach the general concept of substitution

God’s wrath against sin was temporarily assuaged because of OT sacrifices

God taught that a substitute could take the punishment of a morally guilty person

Priestly actions in the OT (sacrifice, atonement, etc.) played a role in OT salvation

Priestly actions in the OT (sacrifice, atonement, etc.) prefigured Jesus’ future priestly actions

The OT teaches a constant tension between God’s justice and God’s love

Loyalty to God (“faith”) is necessary for salvation

Idolatry is putting anything in front of God

Salvation is primarily an issue of one’s judicial relationship to God

The idea of “taking away sin” relates to a person’s judicial relationship to God

The offer of God’s “free” salvation depends on prior payment

God’s grace cannot be shown without prior payment

God’s forgiveness of sin is dependent upon prior payment

God’s forgiveness of sin without requiring payment lessens the offensiveness of the sin

God’s forgiveness of sin was not possible until Jesus’ death

Forgiveness of sins is the means of becoming a Christian

Unforgiven sin results in going to hell

It was not possible to actually be righteous until Christ died

When Jesus said he came to “save the lost,” he meant everyone

Jesus needed to live a sinless life in order for humans to be saved

Jesus’ sinless life can be credited to, or attributed to, the Christian’s judicial standing

Our sinful life was credited to, or attributed to, Jesus on the cross

God could not look upon Jesus on the cross because he was credited with our sins

God’s wrath was poured out on Jesus on the cross

God’s wrath against humanity was assuaged by Jesus’ death

Jesus’ momentary death equaled the punishment of eternal hell for all humans

Jesus’ “dying for sin” means that he paid the price/punishment of sin

Jesus’ death was necessary for salvation

Jesus’ resurrection was necessary for salvation

Jesus’ priestly actions (sacrifice, atonement, etc.) play a role in human salvation

The idea of being “saved from sin” means being released from the punishment of sin

The Apostle Paul explained the plan of salvation better than Jesus

Explaining the meaning of atonement is a necessary step in describing the plan of salvation

Salvation is dependent upon believing in what Jesus did on the cross

Salvation is dependent upon individually accepting the atonement of Jesus

Salvation is a passive reception of something that is being offered by Christ to us

The principal question being considered in the NT was how to become righteous

Everything in the Bible points to Jesus

The Big Story of the Bible is substituted moral perfection

 

We both have our work to do. Happy inspecting!

If you would like to respond to this post, please email me directly at ronnjohnson7@gmail.com. Thanks.

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The “Book of Og”

I recently got an email requesting that I comment on something called “The Book of Og.” I’m not sure what is being claimed about this book. You can be sure, though, that this book is NOT a book that goes back to the biblical period (i.e., the OT time period when Og was taking a beating). If someone is selling a book claiming such a “discovery” (and its consequent “translation”) buyers are getting ripped off. Here are a few pages from a couple of scholarly works on this book in case anyone is interested.1

Reeves on sources for a lost book of the giants-Og

Wilkens 2pp from Remarks on the Manichaean Book of Giants

But, in a nutshell, here’s what I am guessing my emailer wanted to know.

The “book of Og” is mentioned in an early medieval text called the Gelasian Decree, which condemns the book of Og as heretical. The book of Og has been identified via several scholarly studies as the Manichaean version of the Book of Giants (aka, “Mani’s Book of Giants”) known from the Dead Sea Scrolls. (See the footnotes in the PDF pages for those studies, most of which are in German). What this means is that Mani, an Armenian prophet (religious figure; 216-274 AD), had access to the book we now know as the Book of Giants from Qumran and produced his own version of it according to his own theology. Mani was the founder of Manicheanism, a gnostic religion. Fragments of Mani’s book of the Giants are known in Middle Persian (an Iranian language used during the Sassanian Empire, 224–654 AD), Sogdian (a language used in eastern Iran from 100-1000 AD), and one old Uyghur fragment (9th-14th centuries AD). The Sogdian and Uyghur material is later than Mani’s Middle Persian since they are translations of Mani’s work (Middle Persian was Mani’s native language).

In other words: (1) The “Book of Og” = Mani’s version of the Book of the Giants known from Qumran. and dates at the earliest to Mani (third century AD); (2) Since Mani’s book is a reworking / adaptation of the Book of the Giants, a good portion of the Mani’s work dates to the time of that Qumran book, sometime in between the late 3rd-2nd century BC, long after the Mosaic period. As readers of my book Reversing Hermon: Enoch, the Watchers, and the Forgotten Mission of Jesus Christ[image error] may recall, the Book of the Giants is “Enochian material” (i.e., its content has a close relationship to 1 Enoch). Note that the Dead Sea scrolls material from Qumran is the earliest witness to 1 Enoch and the Book of the Giants. There is no textual evidence for either book older than Qumran (3rd-2nd century BC). For those interested in the dating, the most thorough scholarly study on the Book of Giants is Stuckenbruck’s critical edition with commentary. If you want to read the Book of Giants this is the trustworthy resource, not something self-published or produced by a non-academic press. Here is Stuckenbruck’s summary of the date of the Book of Giants (=BG) from Qumran:

The date of the original composition of BG cannot be established with certainty. For Milik, this question was made contingent on his claims based on codicology and palaeography, on the one hand, and on his dating of other writings, on the other. With respect to the physical evidence, Milik suggests a terminus ante quem for the earliest manuscript, 4QEnGiantsb (4Q530), which he assigns to “the first half of the first century B. C.”. In addition, he argues that the early Herodian script of 4QEnGiantsa (4Q203), which he believes formed part of the scroll 4Q204 (4QEnochc), suggests a date for that manuscript sometime during the last third of the 1st century B. C. E. Mainly due to archaizing orthographic features in 4QEnochc, Milik finds justification for asserting that it was copied from “an old manuscript, doubtless belonging to the last quarter of the second century B.C. (date of lQIsa and 1QS)”. For a terminus ab quo Milik looks to the account of Enoch’s works in Jubilees 4:17–24 in which BG is not included. Thus, in dating Jubilees to 128–125 B. C. E., Milik proposes that BG was composed later. Milik then attempts to narrow the gap and appeals to a phrase in the Damascus Document col. ii, l.18 (“and whose bodies were as mountains”—אשר … וכהרים גויותיהם) which he thinks may well betray a dependence on “a work devoted more particulary to the descendants of the Watchers”, that is, on BG. By further assigning to the Damascus Document a composition date of 110–100 B. C. E., Milik arrives at the conclusion that BG must have been written sometime between 128 at the earliest (Jub.) and 100 B. C. E. at the latest (Dam. Doc.).

Milik’s argument for dating BG is beset with difficulties. There is, of course, the question of the degree to which the manuscripts can be dated accurately by means of palaeographical analysis. However, apart from the way he dates the Damascus Document, palaeography is not the most decisive part of his reasoning. More important is his emphasis on the silence concerning the existence of BG in Jubilees. Three problems with Milik’s use of Jubilees for dating BG can be identified: (1) Milik’s assumption that BG, in a strict sense, is an Enoch pseudepigraphon (see section III. B above); (2) the related assumption that Jubilees would have alluded to BG were it already composed110; and (3) the dating of Jubilees itself. Regarding the last point, Milik appeals to Jubilees 34:2–9 and 38:1–14, wherein he finds historical allusions to the military activities after the death of Antiochus VII Sidetes in 129 B. C. E. led by John Hycanus I in the Transjordan, Idumaea, and Samaria. This interpretation has, for good reasons, been contested. For one thing, this later date would require one to suppose that the author of Jubilees is casting the Hasmonaean Hyrcanus in a positive light. Even more problematic are the supposed allusions to Hyrcanus. On the contrary, James Vanderkam, after a detailed study of the place-names in Jubilees 34:4 and of the historical allusions throughout the work, cannot identify any event after 161 B. C. E.; the accounts in 34:2–9 and 38:1–17 were influenced by the Maccabean victories during that year over Nicanor at Bethhoron and over the Edomites (so 1 Macc. 7:39–50 and 5:3, 65).

As for the Damascus Document (CD col. ii, ll. 18–19)—the difficulty of dating this work aside—, there is little therein which suggests that the passage actually alludes to or cites BG. While the passage clearly refers to the Watchers (עירי השמים) and their sons (בניהם) the description of the latter recalls the description of the Amorites in Amos 2:9 (“his height like the height of cedars”; cf. l.19—“whose height was as the height of cedars”). García Martínez has argued that the second parallel phrase (“whose bodies were as mountains”), which Milik derives from BG, is sufficiently explicable as a “poetic extension” of the first. Even if, however, one grants that the Damascus Document is citing a recent tradition concerning the giants, we may ask why this tradition should necessarily be BG (cf. 1 En. 7:2) or why such a tradition should necessarily be a literary one. Milik’s proposal that BG was composed between the respective productions of Jubilees and the Damascus Document rests on a series of questionable hypotheses which are extrinsic to any of the data within the Qumran BG fragments themselves.

Beyer’s dating of BG to the latter part of the 3rd century B. C. E. offers an alternative to Milik’s view. His date involves the debatable hypothesis that (1) BG was originally composed in Hebrew and the related assumption that (2) BG would already have been copied alongside other Enoch literature as “das jüngste Stück des hebräischen Henochs” in the 3rd century B. C. E.. Nevertheless, the advantage of Beyer’s proposal is the literary dependence of BG on the Book of Watchers which it implies (see section III.B). If composition of the latter occurred sometime during the 3rd century B. C. E., then here we might have a reasonable terminus ab quo.

Regarding the earliest possible date of composition, García Martínez suggested a way forward by calling attention to the significance of the relationship between 4Q530 col. ii, ll.17–19 and the text of Daniel 7:9–10. At that time, the pertinent BG material was, of course, still unavailable. García Martínez reasoned that if Milik’s claim of literary dependence on the Danielic text were to be substantiated, then the composition of BG may be assigned to an “upper limit by the middle of the 2nd century B.C.”. On the basis of my comparison of 4Q530 col. ii, 16–20 (’Ohyah’s dream) with Daniel 7 (see Chapter Two), it is difficult to maintain a literary dependence of the former on the latter without accounting for some important differences. On the contrary, it appears that BG actually preserves a theophanic tradition in a form which lacks traditio-historical developments that one finds in Daniel 7: While this conclusion does not necessarily mean that BG must have been composed before the passage in Daniel, the comparison of the texts strengthens the possibility that BG may have been written sometime between the Book of Watchers and Daniel, that is, sometime between the late 3rd century and 164 B. C. E.

Loren T. Stuckenbruck, The Book of Giants from Qumran: Texts, Translation, and Commentary (ed. Martin Hengel and Peter Schäfer; vol. 63; Texte und Studien zum Antiken Judentum; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1997), 28–31.

The sources of these two items are, respectively: John C. Reeves, Jewish Lore in Manichaean Cosmogony: Studies in the Book of Giants Traditions (Monographs of Hebrew Union College; Hebrew Union College Press, 1992; Matthew Goff, Loren  T. Stuckenbruck, and Enrico Morano (eds.), Ancient Tales of Giants from Qumran and Turfan (WUNT 360; Mohr Siebeck, 2016). ↩

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Mike at Grace Church Bellingham: Thinking Like an Israelite: Week 4: Chaos and Calendar

Here are the slides to the last night (which was tonight). You can catch the video on my Facebook / Youtube channel.

Wk4-Chaos-and-Calendar

The post Mike at Grace Church Bellingham: Thinking Like an Israelite: Week 4: Chaos and Calendar appeared first on Dr. Michael Heiser.

What is the Bible’s Big Story?

A guest post by Dr. Ronn Johnson

I recently heard that we see more images or pictures in one day (whether on our phone, on the TV, on a billboard, etc.) than a pre-Renaissance person would have seen over the course of their entire lifetime. Apparently our brains have been able to adjust to this visual onslaught, and we are not necessarily suffering because of it. But this is just another reminder of how much data we are being hit with (and hit seems to be the right word) every day, all day. We are victims of too much information.

Now in one sense I like this problem. Better having too much than too little. But it still counts as a problem, one that is relatively new to my way of life, and I find myself having to change the way I live because of it. For example, Susan and I now watch the evening news on fast-forward, pausing only if one of us interrupts with a “Hey, let me see that.” It is our new normal, turning something that used to be a half an hour into five minutes. I am not yet sure whether this is a good thing. It just means I have more time for more information.

For those of us who like to read and study the Bible, we could guess that this too-much-information condition would poke its nose into our tent as well. Biblical study is not immune from informational overload. The Bible is more accessible than ever, especially electronically. I have three Bible search applications just on my phone, allowing me navigate through almost any kind biblical study I can imagine, even while waiting in line at the store. So there is no excuse for not knowing Scripture. Or is there? Is modern accessibility to our Bible, at least the kind of accessibility we are accustomed to, actually putting us in a position to understand the Bible less than we did before? I think this question is worth considering over the course of several posts.

I recently spent a week in Phoenix, on business, joined by my wife. This was our first time in Arizona, so Susan took the rental car sight-seeing each day while I sat in an office building (yes, it was one of those kinds of business trips). At night, however, the town was ours to enjoy. We just typed in the address of where we wanted to go, or where we wanted to eat, and our phone map took over. I never felt lost in a huge and totally unfamiliar city.

So I “learned” Phoenix that week. Or did I? After returning home, I realized that my experience of that city was limited to, quite literally, left- and right-hand turns. I never wondered where I was because that question never came to mind. My map took away the wonder, and may I say the “story,” of Phoenix. If you were to drop me in the middle of the city today, I would be lost, guaranteed. I have since decided that someday it would be fun to go back to Phoenix and get to know it the old fashioned way—with a map spread across the dashboard, wondering where in the world we are while simultaneously wondering whether we were ever going to get where we wanted to go. That dreaded feeling of being lost would be a good thing.

I think it is the same way with the Bible. To know what the Bible is about, to know its larger story, we need to experience the stories and plotlines and themes snaking through Scripture much like we need to drive (and even get lost in) the highways which lead into and around a city. We can’t just jump in and experience a few right-and left-hand turns and say we know what the Bible is about. We need to draw back, look at our map, and even get lost.

Evangelicals and the Big Story

So let’s admit the information we receive from the Bible (and its electronic retrieval systems) doesn’t necessarily help us experience its main plotline, what I will call its Big Story or leading narrative. This problem has not been lost on religious schools and publishers, of course. They know we are suffering from biblical information overload. Even as I wrote that last sentence I received an email advertisement for a free class at Dallas Seminary entitled “The Story of Scripture” (I will try to finish the class before completing this blog; if I do, I’ll let you know how it went!). In bookstores, I am noticing that the word “story” now appears in many titles of books about the Bible. Probably the best example is Zondervan’s recently published The Story, an abridged version of the NIV translation. Its subtitle certainly baits the hook for us: “The Bible as One Continuing Story of God and His People.” Out of curiosity, I opened to the beginning of The Story the other day to see if its editors would reveal where they were headed with their project. Here is the first paragraph from the Forward:

“This book tells the grandest, most compelling story of all time: the story of a true God who loves his children, who established for them a way of salvation and provided a route to eternity. Each story in these 31 chapters reveals the God of grace—the God who speaks; the God who acts; the God who listens; the God whose love for his people culminated in his sacrifice of Jesus, his only Son, to atone for the sin of humanity.”

This Big Story sounds familiar to most of us, I would suspect: God wants us to spend eternity with him, but he can’t because of our sin. Jesus’ death paid for our sin so that we can go to heaven. In simplest terms, let’s call this the Sin Paid For story. To bring the Bible into it, Genesis 3 (the sin) is resolved by Matthew 26 (the paying). Everything between these bookends counts as extra information, at times related to the main story but not necessary to it.

“Putting it that way, I would disagree,” said a friend to me in response to that last line. “The Bible has many stories which culminate in Jesus’ atonement, with these stories coming both before and after Jesus’ incarnation. So I would say the Bible’s main story, that of sin and atonement, has many smaller stories leading up to it. I don’t see why that’s a problem to you.”

I do have a problem with it, and I will lay out why we should all have a problem with it a bit later. But first I am curious if The Story’s version of the Bible’s grand narrative could be considered par for the evangelical course. So let’s try another book. The Bible in Sixteen Verses by Chris Bruno (Crossway, 2015) caught my attention because of its title (now there’s an idea—just read sixteen verses to get the point of the whole Bible!), and from the blurbs included on the book’s dustjacket. Many evangelical leaders apparently loved the book, one even saying it was the most valuable book about the Bible he had ever read. So now I’m interested. Bruno offers a summary statement of the sixteen verses he chose to tell the story of the Bible on page 142:

“God created a kingdom, and he is the King, but he made human beings to represent him in that kingdom. Adam and Eve rejected this call, which led to sin and death. But God promised to defeat the Serpent through the seed of the woman, who is also the seed of Abraham. Through Abraham’s family, and specifically Judah’s royal seed, David, the covenant blessings would come to the world. Because all people were guilty and deserved death, the sacrifices of the Mosaic law revealed more clearly their need for a substitute—the suffering servant. Through the servant and the work of the Spirit, God would establish a new covenant and give lasting life to his people in the new heavens and new earth. Jesus is the One through whom all of these promises find fulfillment, first in his sacrificial death as a necessary and just payment for sin and then in his victorious resurrection and reign as King. This great story will find its culmination when the redeemed from every tribe, tongue, and nation gather in the new creation to live with God forever.”

I applaud Bruno’s attentiveness to detail. But I maintain that what he is describing as the main story of the Bible is the same basic story we encountered earlier, now with other plots and sub-plots simply included as filler material. Here is the giveaway: notice how the word “necessary” connects the second-to-last sentence (“as a necessary and just payment for sin”) to his second sentence (“Adam and Eve rejected this call, which led to sin and death”). Bruno’s crisis is sin, solved by atonement. Of course other stories happen and other characters are introduced between these bookends. But we are right back where we started. The Big Story is the problem of sin and the solution of payment. It could even be argued that skipping completely over Jesus’ life, all 30 years of it, would not offend Bruno’s story, provided we include Jesus’ cross. Read Bruno’s paragraph again and ask yourself if he thinks that Jesus’ ministry—his teachings, his healings, his exorcisms—have any place in the main story of the Bible. Something is missing. And I maintain it is the Big Story of the Bible itself.

I close with five concerns, with each being the subject of another post to follow:

Concern #1: Evangelicals are content to describe the Big Story of the Bible without appealing to what is actually happening in the Bible. We (and I include myself as an evangelical, so I have been part of the problem) have been so busy making left- and right-hand turns through the Bible—think of your favorite massive commentary as Exhibit #1—that we have lost sight of the big picture. The solution is not making more careful turns, either. That would just be another commentary. The only way out of this problem is to step back and notice what is linking one story to another in the Bible, even linking one book to another. I will recommend not thinking of the bookends of the traditional story (sin and atonement) as the shiny objects that demand our attention, but instead spend time looking at what is lining up on the shelf between those bookends. When we do that we will notice that the Bible does not render sin management as its main narrative. I am convinced a brief tour of the Bible will convince you of this, and so this will be the subject of my next post.

Concern #2: We have been taught to ask what the Bible means to us instead of asking what it meant to them. We are doing a good thing when we read the Bible for ourselves. But no ancient document, not even the Bible, can be understood without first drawing it through the lens of its original authorship and readership. This is the primary burden of this Naked Bible website. I believe the main narrative of the Bible is not hiding from us, but happily standing out in plain view for those who simply listen to the Bible in its original context. This will be the burden of this coming post. We will identify several key contextual elements which must be understood in the discernment of the Bible’s Big Story.

Concern #3: Evangelicalism, especially the modern American version of the movement, has concentrated on providing answers to the wrong questions. This is where I have come to appreciate the books of the British scholar N. T. Wright. If you have not read any of his books, I would recommend starting with Simply Christian and then trying The Day the Revolution Began. The first book will give you a scent of Wright’s Big Story, and the second wades into the details. Wright’s genius in my opinion is challenging the questions that Luther and Calvin tried to answer when reforming the Roman Catholic Church in the 16th century. He is an evangelical writing to evangelicals. But he thinks that evangelicals should basically start over when interpreting the Bible’s bigger story. I will dedicate an entire post to looking at N. T. Wright’s writings. While I do not end up subscribing to everything he maintains, listening to him challenge long-held views within the Western Christian tradition is refreshing and will lead us to think for ourselves, especially when trying to rethink our original questions.

Concern #4: We are still awaiting evangelicals to take other gods seriously. This of course strikes the nerve of this website. I would recommend reading Mike’s The Unseen Realm, at least up to chapter 14, to getting a running start for my coming post on this subject. There would have been nothing more commonsensical to the ancient Bible writer than the reality of an unseen host of gods ruling over the affairs of men from the heavens, and for this reason there is no more commonsensical place to start for understanding the larger story of the Bible.

Concern #5: We should never have described God as a payment-based being. My last post will challenge the Sin Paid For model of the Big Story, claiming that it not only fails the Bible, but fails in explaining God’s character. It is a serious thing to damage God’s character, and I believe a leading culprit in this regard is the idea that God can be satisfied with payment for sin. I look forward to explaining this further.

If you would like to respond to this post in any way, please email me directly at ronnjohnson7@gmail.com. Thanks.

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Has Isaiah’s Signature Been Uncovered in Jerusalem?

Well, if you can read paleo-Hebrew that sure looks like:

[לישׁעיה[ו]

נבי[א

as in:

ל = “belonging to”

[ישׁעיה[ו] נבי[א= Isaiah the prophet (with some letters missing)

We’ll see. I can hardly wait for the minimalist crowd to come up with another “what you see really isn’t what you see” argument. They’re good at that.

You can read a bit about the discovery here.

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The Roswell Crash: Nothing to do with Extraterrestrials

If you have not yet read Nick Redfern’s two books on the Roswell UFO incident, you should.

Body Snatchers in the Desert: The Horrible Truth at the Heart of the Roswell Story [image error]

The Roswell UFO Conspiracy: Exposing A Shocking And Sinister Secret [image error]

Nick believes the Roswell incident had nothing to do with aliens. He writes: “All of the data I have uncovered points in the direction of top secret, controversial experiments involving high-altitude balloons and human guinea-pigs.” I agree. This was actually the position I took in my novel, released way back in 2001, The Façade. [image error]It was one of the sub-plots of the storyline.

Granted, the case Nick marshals is not perfect. But no explanation of Roswell is without problems. However, one can build a strong circumstantial case where human experimentation and human technology make far better sense of the verifiable data points than aliens do.

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That NY Times / Department of Defense UFO Video Story … Unraveling?

You have to wonder after reading this essay at Wired.com: “What is Up with those Pentagon UFO Videos?”

The article basically traces the history of the videos that accompanied the now famous NT Times article about a secret government program investigating UFOs (the AATIP: Advanced Aviation Threat Identification Program). Part of that history involves Tom DeLonge’s “To the Stars Academy of Arts and Science” enterprise (pun intended). The article also notes in passing something students of UFO history already know well: that the military-industrial complex had more than a passing interest in using the UFO phenomenon to manipulate public thought. Perhaps they still do.

If you’re interested at ll in the UFO Disclosure dream (or fantasy), the article is really worth your time. Here’s part of the summary conclusion:

After all the unclassifications and release-denials, this information shouldn’t surprise you. We’ve pretty clearly established that whatever these videos show, they don’t seem important enough for the Pentagon to get in a tizzy over. And while the fact that one of them has shown up online before doesn’t prove that they didn’t originate with the military, it does call that chain of custody into question. Without official confirmation or available documentation (and more documentation than WIRED saw), you can’t be sure what you’re viewing is unadulterated footage, and you can’t be sure who recorded it first. . . .

It’s true, a Navy pilot named David Fravor did give an account to the Times of his 2004 experience with a UFO, and an unnamed source provided a report in September 2017 of the same events to To The Stars Academy. But squint just a little to see that there’s no definitive link between these accounts and that video. The witnesses give a description of an alleged strange event, and the video shows an encounter with a strange object. But without a time and location stamp of some sort, viewers can’t know whether the witnesses are actually describing what’s in the video. And, beyond that, there’s no definitive link between this video and AATIP.

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Mike at Grace Church Bellingham: Thinking Like an Israelite Week 3: OT Sacrifices

Here are the slides for tonight’s session. This one will be livestreamed from the Grace Church Bellingham Facebook page, not my Facebook page.

Wk3-Sacrificial System

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Mike at Grace Church Bellingham: Thinking Like an Israelite: Week 2: Sacred Space

Here are the slides for this second talk. I will post a link to the livestream / video once we have that.

Wk2-Sacred Space and Sacrifice-Heiser-GCB

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