BibleProject - Inspiration, Quiet Time, and Slaying Your Giants – Paradigm Q+R #1

Episode Date: November 1, 2021

How were the books of the Bible selected? What should we do if we have a hard time reading the Bible? How does the Bible apply to daily life? In this episode, Tim, Jon, and Carissa respond to your questions from the Paradigm series so far. Thanks to our audience for all your incredible questions!View full show notes from this episode →Timestamps Do Christians Need To Have a Daily Quiet Time? (0:38)What’s the Difference Between Inspired and Inerrant? (9:57)What Bible Did Jesus Use? (31:09)Should We Call the Bible the Word of God? (37:14)Should the Apocryphal Books Be in the Protestant Bible? (45:40)What About the JEDP Theory? (55:52)How Should We Apply Scripture to Our Lives? (1:03:30)What Do You Do if the Bible Was Used Against You? (1:09:20)Referenced ResourcesThe Chicago Statement on Biblical InerrancyFive Views on Biblical Inerrancy (Counterpoints: Bible and Theology), J. MerrickThe Pentateuch: International Perspectives on Current Research, Thomas DozemanParadigm Change in Pentateuchal Research, Matthias Armgart“Was the Documentary Hypothesis Tainted by Wellhausen’s Antisemitism?,” Alan T. LevensonInterested in more? Check out Tim’s library here.Show Music “Defender (Instrumental)” by TENTSShow produced by Cooper Peltz. Edited by Dan Gummel and Zach McKinley. Show notes by Lindsey Ponder.  Audience questions collected by Christopher Maier.Powered and distributed by Simplecast.

Hey, this is Cooper at Bible Project. I produce the podcast in Classroom. We've been exploring a theme called the City, and it's a pretty big theme. So we decided to do two separate Q and R episodes about it. We're currently taking questions for the second Q and R and we'd love to hear from you. Just record your question by July 21st

and send it to us at infoatbiboproject.com. Let us know your name and where you're from, try to keep your question to about 20 seconds and please transcribe your question when you email it in, try to keep your question to about 20 seconds, and please transcribe your question when you email it. That's a huge help to our team. We're excited to hear from you. Here's the episode.

So today on the podcast, we get to do a Q&R. Question and response episode. We're going to do questions that are a part of the paradigm series. So we're gonna look at questions for the first half of this series, the first half of the of the pillars, and with me is Tim McEan-Kris-Klyn. Good morning. Hello. So we're gonna jump into these questions. Thanks for joining us. Here we go. Good morning. Hello. So we're going to jump into these questions. Thanks for joining us. Here we go.

All right. Question number one is from Grant in Texas. Hello, I'm Grant from Denton, Texas. John, in episode one of this series, you shared your story of struggling with a quiet time Bible study paradigm. Every part of this story rung so true to my experience. So I was disappointed that it ended with you

as a post Biblebible Christian. Can you continue telling this story? What advice would you give to someone who is struggling with this paradigm? Do you maintain something like a quiet time Bible study now? If so, how has it evolved and matured? And if not, what have you replaced it with? Thanks so much. All right. Yeah. Getting personal right off the bat. What a great question. Yeah. Yeah. Thanks for your interest, Grant. Well, this project actually was probably an outflow of that journey.

I don't like to give up on things and stubborn that way. And so I continued to like to talk about the Bible and try to understand it, even though I was really frustrated with reading it. And one of the people that I got to do that with was you, Tim. And that was always a really rewarding experience. And still always really believed that the ideas in the Bible were really important. I don't know how I held that in tension with like, uh, Bibles not important in my life anymore, but the ideas in the Bible are important. Yeah, that's

interesting. Is that what you meant by post Bible Christian that, uh, the Bible is not important in my life anymore, but the ideas in the Bible are important. That's interesting. Is that what you meant by post Bible Christian that the Bible is not that important in my daily life? Yeah, for me, I don't need the Bible. I could follow Jesus. But there was still this sense of like, you got to know the right answers though. You got to know the right things. Yeah, there's some foundational things that you think are good and beautiful or true. Yeah, but the way the Bible tries to tell me that is frustrating and so. Yeah, and other people seem to get it. So maybe I could just talk to those people. And they can explain it to me.

Yeah, sure. And so, the first idea of this project was just a theology YouTube channel, just to talk with scholars and try to understand how they understand the Bible, and then explain that to others. Actually, have we told that story? I don't know what cast. The first conversation we had about the idea doing this was you come into me with an idea of YouTube channel

with a sarcastic title. Yeah, called Theology is Boring. Yeah, because I was bored. But I knew that it shouldn't be. Yeah, because I was bored. But I knew that it shouldn't be. Yeah, right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And so, but then you Tim, we're like, well, look, I have a lot of content we can make videos about. And this one you presented, like the list of theme videos. Yeah. And so we don't need to go and interview people. Let's just make this content. And that, then we're off to the races. And you focused me on, I'd been very shaped by systematic theology.

And that was the lens by which I was trying to understand the Bible. Where you take a question and then you approach the Bible with that question to try to answer it. Right. And then try to systematize, create a very clean theological grid by which I can understand everything. And I was given that grid, and then I was told to go and read the Bible and understand the Bible through that grid.

And it just didn't work. I just couldn't, I couldn't make the two work together. And only people that could seem to have a knack for the Bible that I didn't have. But then you really resented me on biblical theology, which is a different perspective of let's come to the Bible and try to engage the Bible through its own texture, its own grain. What are the questions it's asking? Or addressing. Or addressing. Yeah, maybe your questions we never thought to ask. Yeah.

And so that's been really rewarding. In terms of like a quiet time, I have given up on that. I'm really bad at any sort of routine, actually. It's my personality. Like I've actually, I've wondered before, I don't think I have any routines in my life. That's okay, John. That's impossible. Don't you think it's impossible?

Do you brush your teeth every day? Don't answer that. Don't answer. Oh, dang. You eat every day. Uh, yeah. Eventually. Eventually I'll eat during the day.

Some days you'll get to work and we'll be eating lunch. I will brush my teeth every day, but sometimes I won't brush my teeth before I go to bed and it annoys my wife's Oh, he hates it. Oh, man. Okay. Okay. So yeah on the scale of routines. Yeah, you are more on the less planned Yeah, so this is a good question because probably a lot of people are like that or for whatever reason or another don't resonate with this Disciplined quiet time of reading scriptures. So yeah, and so I've just given myself a pass like that's okay. That doesn't have to be my ideal really with anything that requires like a routine. The way I get things done is I just I go with my energy.

Yeah. So it's like five energy for it that day. I do it. There's a flaw in that when you're feeling down for long stretches. Another little hack is when you're procrastinating on something, make yourself do something else that you would otherwise be procrastinating on. That's just a little less intense. So like what's the minimum amount of thing that I do have energy for that I could do? Anyways, when I read the Bible, it's not every day.

I try to read in larger chunks, like read a whole letter of Paul. All at once and try not to understand every line. That's where I was got hung up, is I would try to understand like every single line. What did he mean by that? What did he mean by that? And then I'm down a rabbit hole

and I'm confused and I'm frustrated. And so being okay that I'm gonna have a lot of questions and then having a community of people that I can read the Bible with. You too, starting to do that with my family as well. We just read the Bible together. So those are the new habits. And one of the goals we have about a project

is to create Bible nerds, right? Yeah, life long. Defined as, yeah, go ahead. Yeah, life long meditators of scripture. Yep. Yeah. People who will are dedicated to like kind of a intense, maybe slightly obsessive, like just I'm this book is a huge part of my life. Or from another angle, people who are just become so enamored with curious and

curious about what's in the Bible because they find it beautiful. Yeah. Yeah. And exciting. Yeah. And that curiosity and excitement generates its own momentum for how new habits and so on. Yeah. So I think once you get there, if that becomes you, and this might be controversial, but I don't

think every follower of Jesus is necessarily going to be like a bad-wearing Bible nerd. Totally. Yeah. There's other work to be done in the kingdom of God. That's an important point though. And there is I think a baseline to understand who Jesus is and follow him. You at least need to be really familiar with His life and teachings and like what He did. And then to make sense of Him, and why you follow Him and think what you do about Him means some wider story, but it doesn't mean that everybody is going to have the same degree of depth and time commitment into understanding the Bible. And that's called the body of Christ.

Some are different limbs and different parts and that's how the whole thing works together. Yeah, I think one of the goals for my life is to know God, to love God, and to help others know and love Him more. Two, I think that's a pretty general goal that most Christians could adopt. And that doesn't mean you have to be a Bible nerd. It doesn't mean you have to do it quite a time. It means you value knowing who God is and that does mean familiarity with the biblical story to some extent. But it also means finding ways to connect with him that don't have to just be reading scripture. It could be like for me, I love prayer walks. It's really hard for me to sit down and just focus. But I love like going on a walk and praying or thinking or reflecting with a friend about scripture or

Yeah, I just I don't think it has to look the same for everyone, but knowing God and loving God receiving his love I think is a really important part of the Christian life Yeah, what's that? Yeah, so when you become a Bible nerd if you want to like own that and hopefully there's a lot of people Listening to this or people part of the project or just followers of Jesus who are like, yeah, I want the Bible to be I want I want to dive in deep. I think it manifests in different ways for me I'm not gonna I'm probably not gonna be the guy is gonna learn Greek in Hebrew and go to school But I think that the Bible as literary art does come to life and begin to shape me while in this community of people who there's some people who have done that. And so that's

that's really exciting. So I would call, like I actually now feel like I've gone from being a post-Bible Christian to someone would say, yeah, I want the Bible to be one of the one of the biggest passions of my life and have a vision for that. And so that doesn't mean though that I'm really learning Greek and Hebrew or have a quiet time every day, but reading long stretches and reading community. Our next question is from Emily in Kansas. This question comes from one of the first episodes because I don't remember being in this conversation. Hi Tim and John, my name is Emily and I'm from Kansas City.

Two questions. How would you describe the difference between the scriptures being inspired versus an era to someone who comes from a tradition that emphasizes an erudency? Also, how do inspired scriptures differ from other writings where people are reflecting on God and life? For example, how do poets today who are contemplating God as they write differ from the biblical authors' inspiration, and what role does this play when considering which writings to view as most important for gaining insight into God's intentions? Thank you. Such a good question. So there's so many good questions packed in there. Just always as a note, there's been so many questions sent in over the last few weeks. And so Emily's question is a great summary of what a

lot of a lot of people were asking. So good job, Emily. You put the what do you say? You put the your finger on it. You put your finger on it. Yeah, exactly. So, maybe some shorthand definition. So inspired is a term, it's an English word that's a translation. One way to translate this term that Paul uses in his second letter to Timothy, where he says, all scripture is, say, on Newstaw, C. Greek,, God spirited, or God breathed. So we had a whole conversation about that earlier on. So it's important when Paul's writing that, he's thinking primarily of the Hebrew Bible,

or most likely the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible because he's talking about the Bible that Timothy grew up reading with his mom and his grandma, and or at least hearing at synagogue in church. And that's significant because it means it wasn't just those original words in the original language, but also translations of it that are inspired. Correct. Yeah, that's right. Yep, that's right.

In other words, yeah, Paul the Apostle can imagine the voice and the message from God coming through human writings in Hebrew or in Greek. And he also believed we had a conversation about this and so did Peter and John that through their guidance and instructions to the early Jesus followers that the Spirit of God will also speaking through them and what they were writing to the Jesus followers. So inspired is just referring to this conviction or confession Inspired is just referring to this conviction or confession that these writings in the unique way are the result of a human and divine partnership of human and God's spirit. So that what these people wrote is what God wants his people to hear to lead them to Messiah and to know what it means to be human in life. So in herancy is it actually a different term that addresses a whole different thing altogether. So it's interesting. Maybe it's because they both have the word in,

the letters in, the beginning, that they get merged in people's minds. It's more than that. Or and also because I think they're both trying to get at the question of the authority and truthfulness. Yeah, exactly. So inarancy, it's a term that means it's a Latin terms, means without error, or making no mistakes. So in error, I think it's a Latin root. So it's an old idea in the Christian tradition, but it became that rose into prominence just in the last 75 years or so in Europe and mostly in America in public public debates that we're being had about the authority

and the truthfulness. When you're talking about, does it make an error or does it not make an error? We're talking about issues of truthfulness. Reliability. Reliability. Yeah. Yeah. To be truthful is to be reliable.

It's a different way of saying the same thing. So what's funky about the term inherent is it's a reverse way, it's a negative, it doesn't have errors. It's not arant. So you could just flip it over and when you flip it over and think about this idea, then we come to where scripture itself develops vocabulary for it. That scripture is truthful. And so here you did a word study video on this.

Yeah. Faithful, and that truthful. Yeah. The Hebrew word, video on this. Yeah, faithful, and that. Yeah, truthful. Yeah, the Hebrew word, a met, or a man, is a Hebrew word that means reliable or trustworthy, but it's a relational word. So when you say that someone is truthful, what you're saying is what you're saying corresponds to fact. That's maybe how we might think of it. Right. Yeah, in a modern sense.

Yeah. So we mean, yeah, that, in a modern sense. Yeah. So we mean, yeah, that's in a modern sense. Like scientifically accurate or precise. Yeah, that's right. That's kind of the associations of the word truth. But as you were pointing out in the video, and in our discussions about that video,

on main, it has to do with relationships and that someone is trustworthy to be who they say they are, to do what they say they're going to do what they're going to do. And so that's the term used. So the most famous lines are in Psalm 119, the longest chapter in the Bible. There's all these lines that some of them are famous, King James line, by word is truth. The sum of the by words is truth, that kind of thing. But it's the word Emmett, or I mean. of thy words is truth, that kind of thing. But it's the word Emmett or I'm in. Could also be translated, your word is reliable. It's trustworthy. But that raises the whole question of trust worthy to do what? And in what way? And in what way? Like how do you define an error if you're using

that idea? The inarrency debates of the last half of the 20th century were mostly focused in on the historical truthfulness or the historical reliability of biblical narratives in particular. So inspiration and inerrancy got joined in kind of a logical argument. Well if God is truth, in his essence, God cannot lie or make an error, then God's word, whatever he says, will not lie and will be entirely truthful and will not make any errors. And so logically, you're like, yeah, that makes sense. But there was an important moment in the late 70s where a large number, I should know

more about this if I'm going to bring it up in the podcast, but a large number of theologians, I think mostly from America came together in Chicago in 1978, I think mostly from America, came together in Chicago in 1978, I think it was. And drafted a kind of a, what was an attempt to be a unifying statement about these inarrency debates. Yeah, you can look it up. It's the Chicago statement on aneruncy. Yeah, that's right.

It's talking about these ideas, but there's one section of it that gets to this issue of historical truthfulness. And it's, there's a lot buried in to it. And for me, it was always interested in that one paragraph where it that gets to the situ of historical truthfulness. And there's a lot buried in to it. And for me, it was always interested in that one paragraph where it's talking about how to claim that the scripture is telling the truth, especially when it tells a story, doesn't mean that we should demand that the biblical authors write historiography the way modern Westerners think

of historiography, the way modern Westerners think of historiography. And so that they use round numbers or symbolic numbers, or that they might summarize or use artistic and stylistic conventions and how they tell a story. Yeah, they can describe things from the eye of the author rather than from scientific fact. Yeah. and so an erudency shouldn't mean that we demand that the biblical authors correspond to our ways of writing, writing literature. And to me, that was always a super important paragraph that I thought this should be,

and there have been now, whole books on that. So. Yeah, it's article 13 of the Chicago statement. Thank you, Ray Lubeck, and it's stuck in my mind forever. Wow, wait a minute, bring that out. of the Chicago statement. Thank you Ray Lubek. It's stuck in my mind forever. Wow, wait a minute. So in many ways, I'm not an expert on this.

Oh, if you want, Zondrevin, Publishers, has a great, they have a whole series of books called Counterpoint series. We'll give four of you's on this, five of you's on that. They have a book called Five Views on Biblical Inheritance. And it's the whole spectrum. And there are all people who love and follow Jesus and who believe the scriptures are a divine human product. But they have different

ways of framing up how you define ineridcy. And that diversity is important because you could, on one spectrum, say, every detail, as stated verbally, must correspond to a historical reality like you're watching video camera footage. And on the other end of the spectrum, you could say, well, biblical authors had a different mode of writing historiography, and they use a lot of symbolism, stylistic, literary, and creative elements. And yet it can still claim to be a faithful,

a truthful representation of the events. And there's a whole diverse set of positions along those two spectrums. And um, Yeah, I think a book like that is really helpful too for understanding that the Christian tradition has room for a lot of different viewpoints. Yeah, but the baseline is that, um,

that it's a truthful, re-presentation of the story that it's telling. When you say truthful, yeah, you don't mean precisely accurate in how it would have happened in the time space continuum. That is one way to imagine what truthful could mean. Another way to imagine that truthful could mean is that it is truthful in that it's relaying something that happened and it's relaying a faithful interpretation about the meaning and significance of what happened.

So the meaning and significance is truthful, reliable, just worthy. And for example, I think it really matters that there was a man named Jesus of Nazareth who did and said these things who was publicly executed and that he was his body, it was recreated. The rose from the dead and that the tomb was empty. The meaning of those events was not self-evident to any of the people who watched them happen. It took them a long time, at least 40 days, and for some longer, to sort out the significance and the meaning of what happened. But we had this debate about the phrase three days,

and he was in the tune for three days. Was it, right? Three days and three nights? Was it on the third day? Because it was from Friday, right? From Friday afternoon to Sunday morning, and debating about rotations of the Sun. And that's a good example. And you're like, it's a shorthand phrase full of symbolic meaning from the Hebrew Bible.

And that's the kind of thing that we're after here that we need to allow for a category of truthfulness, but that doesn't put a modern set of expectations of historiography on the collazers. And I've taken me a long time to settle myself into that. And so it was very disorienting for me when I first started trying to learn about all this. But so that's inspired and inherent. Emily, you had another part of your question that we can talk about. But I was just curious how that lands with either of you or if you have further thoughts on that. Well, I've got questions, but I don't know how many questions we want to get through. Yeah. But let me ask this. It's really important, like you said, it's really important that a man named Jesus

who lived in the Middle East lived and died. And like I like how he said that his body was recreated. But the way that the narrative of Jesus's life were crafted, you could argue they were stylized. Heavenly. Yeah. Like, yeah, there's four accounts and they're acted differently. And there and there is a lot of people who try to bring a harmony to the Gospels, which seems like it's not letting the gospels do what the gospels are trying to do. It's just another project. So I guess, okay, so my question is, how do you wrestle to the ground as you're reading a narrative? What are those things where to you? It's really important

that this thing happened, or this person lived, or that this event took place versus I'm okay with the stylized version. And is it just that Jesus was recreated? Is that it? And then the rest, you kind of hold loosely, or is there other characters and other specific events that it's like that needed to have happened? And then how do you decide what, yeah, where to draw the line? Yeah, well, I mean, what we have received is in Israelite family history.

And if I'm not in Israelite, then I'm grafted into that family through Israelite Messiah. So there's a spectrum of views on this. Personally, it matters to me that this isn't just a work of fiction, of creative fiction. What's just a few connections to historical realities. And even, you know, part we had Joshua Swamidas, a genetic scientist on the podcast, part of why it was because he was addressing the genealogies and the notion of ancient genealogies and in a way that created a new

category for me, especially about the historical reference of the genealogies going all the way back to these figures named Adam and Chava, Adam and Eve, who would have existed in history before the Hebrew language even had the form to say the words Adamama Dchava. In other words, their names in the narrative are classical Hebrew names. But couldn't have been referred to themselves. Couldn't have been their names, because Hebrew didn't exist in that form yet. And so for me, it matters that there's

a historical reference point for this family history going all the way back to its beginning. But the way that that family history as represented is a highly creative literary form, the way that it refers to what we would call historical events and people and so on. I've become more comfortable with the connection between the literary representation

and whatever the historical reality is that the biblical authors aren't giving his video camera footage. That's the best metaphor I know how to use. They have a family history that I think is anchored in history, but the way that they're portraying it, literally, is to help later generations understand the meaning, and they use literary creativity to do that.

We do the same thing when we retell our family histories too. And it's different because this is a different culture and way of writing, but I think we can relate that there's truth. It's a true story, but it's stylized. Yeah, heavily stylized. And I think it's going to an extreme to say, well, if it's so literally creative, then that means it's being just made up and it didn't happen. Or it happened exactly as we presented in every detail, including the literary creativity.

And I just happen to think there's more views, possible than those two extremes. So we were just having this discussion about the age of certain characters in Genesis 1 through 11. And there's this pattern where, at the ending of a literary unit in Genesis 1 through 11. Oh, right. And there's this pattern where, at the ending of a literary unit, in Genesis 1 through 11, you often find the number of 7, 7, or 7, and a page. And so, you know, was so-and-so actually 777? Or was that a literary airbrushing to create the literary pattern for the reader to notice this development of the seventh day rest theme.

And so I've become comfortable with airbrushing of details to make literary patterns work. But what it doesn't mean is that person never existed. It means that a story is being told in a certain way to make a point. And that's the exciting part of literature that's artistic and stylized is that there's meaning communicated by that artistry. Yeah. So I hear you saying you're comfortable with some airbrushing, but they're not using a Photoshop filter. Would that create an entire character? That's not a story. Yeah, sure. And even think about how the processes work, this actually gets into some of the questions that we're coming

into about how oral traditions turned into written traditions and oral history and so on. But once again, this isn't about foisting an agenda onto the Bible. It's actually trying to do the reverse. And we're just saying, what were the processes that God used by the work of the Spirit to produce this family history that leads to the Messiah? And I think we need to humble ourselves that the way that this family produce, retain, told its history and shaped it

could be really different than how we would do it if it were happening today. And it's honoring that historical cultural difference. But I recognize that there's a lot of different views on this within the bigger stream of Christian orthodoxy throughout history. And that has always been the case. This isn't like novel. It's a very old conversation. Yeah, I think for me an important question to ask is what is the authors or what are the authors' intentions

in portraying this actor event in this way? And what kind of literature is this that I'm reading? And what does that mean? So when we read Genesis, is this history, is it narrative? And what are the literary markers that tell us that? When we read the Gospels about Jesus, and it's, what would you say the genre is? It's an ancient biography.

Yeah, biography is kind of the... So that's going to communicate in a certain way and communicate truth in a certain way that's different than maybe the proverbs that are communicating truth in these short sayings or then a parable that Jesus tells that's going to communicate truth in a different way. So I think genre, how literature communicates and how the what the authors' intentions are are really important for me to try to figure out why what things we should take in what ways. Yeah, that's well said. Yeah, and the trick is how do we know an author's intentions and what we have to go off is cues in these actual scrolls. Or how later authors reflect so and when Paul says to the Corinthians that if Christ was not raised, then our faith

is in vain. He's saying, this is really important that we take this as historical fact. Yeah. I used to try and rank some events in the Bible. It's like, well, that one's got to be truthful or else it all falls apart. But this one, not so much. There's a part of me that still wants to do that. But I've become suspicious of that too in myself because all of a sudden, it's like my very limited life experience and brain is trying to.

It's like then you're equating truth and history again. And so truth can be broader than just historical fact. Yeah. And none of us, like, this isn't stuff we can verify. Yeah. It's a family history that's been passed down to us. It's not like we can go time travel and check what we can do is when there's different accounts of the same events in the Bible, which there are.

We can compare them. And what you see is differences and details that point to a lot of this literary creativity. Well, don't people try to verify through archaeology? Oh, it totally. And you can in a very rough and general way. Like, there was a Davidic kingdom. Yeah. We verified that. That is pretty cool, though. It's totally cool. The Tell Dan inscription is awesome. And it references the House of David, and it's cool. But like, that doesn't tell us anything about the literary portrayal of the House of David in the books of Samuel and

And how accurate those words. Yeah, there's no rock you can dig up that's gonna tell you about that. It can just tell you that there was a Davidic Kingdom. I've heard people argue though that like like with the Exodus, if that many people did travel through the Sinai Peninsula, we would find something that would, we would find something in the land, in archaeology. And so that's a good example. That narrative is a good place to see that there's a variety of positions where you can affirm that historical event happened to the ancestors of Israel, but to see that there's a variety of positions where you can affirm that historical event happened to the ancestors of Israel, but the way that it's portrayed in the narrative, you could take a variety of positions on it, that the apocalyptic creation,

de-creation symbolism has been ratcheted up to 11. In that narrative narrative to communicate theological points. And that's a part of the presentation of the narrative and how that relates to historical events. Well, there's, I think there's some complexity there, but it doesn't mean that nothing happened. It's like asking in what way is this true rather than imposing our viewpoint of truth? So Emily, like I said, you put your finger on the issue right there, and this is not one that's easily resolved. But I do think one can come to peace with a spectrum of positions that affirm the historical truthfulness of the Bible, but that don't force us to bulldoze or ignore the literary creativity of the biblical authors. I think one can have their

cake and eat it too. But it does just lead to, there's just so much we don't know. Historical knowledge isn't like science. We can't repeat the events of the past and verify them. Archaeology and historiography are disciplines that can give us tools to think reasonably and critically, but it's not like a experiment that you can reproduce in a lab. Ultimately, there is a level of trusting the testimony of the biblical authors

about these events and the meaning of these events. This was long. It was long. Yeah, it's important now. Yeah, it's totally. We've got another question from Trey. Hello, I'm Trey from West Lafayette, Indiana. You mentioned that we know Jesus used the same canon we do because he refers to the law of the prophets and the Psalms in Luke 24. Could you explain how we know that the Psalms refer to the entire third section of the Hebrew scriptures? I would have expected him to say something like the law of the prophets and maybe the writings of the letters, if that's what he was referring to. Thank you so much for your podcast and all your videos.

Yeah, great, great question. So a shortish answer, as you write, in Luke 24, Jesus just mentions, there's two passages where he refers to the Hebrew Bible. He calls it the Torah and the prophets in two terms, and then the Torah, the prophets and the Psalms. And what's interesting is that Torah-profit Psalms also corresponds to how the Bible nerds who produced the Dead Sea Scrolls, so other second temple Jewish communities at the same around the same time, a little bit

century before Jesus, also referred to the Hebrew Bible as the Torah, the prophets, and David. That's interesting. But then you also have other historians or Jewish writers like Filo and Josephus, and with a describe the three part collection, they do use the Torah, the prophets, and the other writings. They do use the other books. It seems like it was hard for people to categorize or name the writings right away. Yeah. So calling it the Ketuvim, which means writing, as a shorthand, the writings for that third

section of the Tanakh does seem like it was a crystallization or a term that developed, it could have even developed post Jesus, even though we know it was being used by some people in the time of Jesus. Another little clue is in Luke 11, Jesus is announcing a prophetic oracle of doom over the towns of Israel that aren't accepting his vision of the kingdom of God because he's convinced they're going to be destroyed by the Romans, if they keep going the way they're going. And he talks about how the blood of all the prophets is going to be held accountable by this generation.

And he talks about the blood from Abel, in Genesis 4, to the blood of Zechariah. And then he adds a little detail, you know, the Zechariah who was killed in between the temple and altar. Yeah, not Zechariah necessarily from the book of Zechariah, but yeah, a different one. Yeah, there were many Zechariahs in the Hebrew Bible. Common name. And so what's interesting is that Zechariah, that narrative that he's referring to is near the end of the Chronicles scroll, and in to is near the end of the Chronicles scroll and in a very common Jewish ordering of the writings, Chronicles is the conclusion of that third part of the collection. So it's interesting is Jesus' names, the beginning of the writings, Psalms, and the concluding book of the writings. The beginning of the Torah, the synesus for Abel. That's right. Yeah, for Abel to Zekariah,

it's he's saying the whole Hebrew Bible from the Torah to Chronicles. And it's showing us the shape that he had. Yep, that's right. Because Chronicles comes last only in the Hebrew ordering. That's right. Of the Kentubing. That's right. And actually, there were a variety in Medieval manuscripts. There's a variety of orderings for the writings, that third section. But we know that one of them was beginning with Psalms and ending with Chronicles. And that seems to be by these two mentions

that seems to be what Jesus has in his mind. Why would you use Psalms as a shorthand for the entire collection? Yeah, it is the first book of the writings. And it's a really big book in the writings, maybe just as a synectic key. So what is that? A kind of a metaphor? Using part to describe the whole. Exactly. Yeah. So like, I got new wheels, but you're talking about a car. Yeah. You use

a part to describe the whole. So I think it's that kind of thing. And actually, that's what happens when the New Testament and Jesus use the phrase, the law and the prophets, to describe the whole of the Hebrew Bible, or to say David for ancient Jewish writers to use David to describe even the whole book of Psalms or the writings. It's using a part, one author to describe the whole, David didn't write all the Psalms. Do biblical authors use Torah to describe the whole Tanakh as a synchtochi? Yeah, I mean, when Jesus says, if you listen to Moses, then you would also accept me. I wonder if he's referring to the whole of the Hebrew Bible, or if he's just referring to the Torah. Yeah, it can definitely be a part for the whole.

There's a passage in John chapter 10, where Jesus quotes from the Psalms, but he says, isn't it written in the Torah? Oh, yeah, that's right. Yeah, and he put it quotes from a Psalm. So, yeah, it doesn't seem like the terms to refer to sections is as what he say, is as clear and categorized. There was a looseness and a variety of terms. Because remember, the word Torah means instruction.

And so that can become a shorthand for the entire of the Hebrew scriptures. And you mentioned what Psalm 119 earlier, and it's always referring to the Torah, the Torah, the Torah, right? Oh, it'll refer that's one of the terms. It can, but also judgments and precepts and statutes and your word and so on. Yeah. And whenever I studied that passage as a young Christian growing up in the church, for us, we were talking about the whole Bible. When you read Psalm 119, like how I love your teachings, we were thinking about from Genesis to Revelation,

right? Was the psalmist there thinking always specifically about the Torah? Were they thinking about the whole writing? It's interesting. It's interesting. Yeah, I think the whole collection. The whole collection. Yeah, because the psalms scroll by the introduction, psalm 1 and 2 together, and then the design of the book of psalms, psalms, scroll to have five macro parts,

corresponding as a symmetry around the prophets matching the five scrolls on the other side, namely the Torah. So the Tanakh opens with the five part Torah, and then the third part begins with a five-part Psalm scroll. To me, as a signal that the final shape of the Psalms is itself aware of the whole collection. This question merges right into the next one from Cody in California. Hi, Tim John and Karissa. This is Cody from California. I am a long-standing, avid listener of the Bible Project podcast, and I'm truly loving this paradigm series.

My question is this, should we call the Bible the Word of God? Yes, there are hundreds of moments within the Bible where it says the Word of the Lord came to so and so, or it says the word of the Lord came to so-and-so, or thus says the Lord and so forth. But the Bible never actually calls itself the word of God. It even refers to Jesus as the word in the Gospel of John. And with so much human influence upon the writing and composition and arrangement of the literature that comprises our modern Bible, I'm curious about calling the whole thing from cover to cover the word of God. Is that right? All right, thank you so much

for all that you do. Cody, what a precisely worded question. Yeah, this is a fun question. It's making me look up the word of God and search it throughout the New Testament to see what it refers to. Yeah, I did that yesterday to remind myself of it. I remember this, but I wanted to upload the facts. You write, Cody, the phrase, word of God in the old and New Testament primarily refers to either a narrative, when somebody's telling somebody either the message about covenant faithfulness of the prophets, so the word of God comes to so and so.

To Isaiah or something. The word of God to Isaiah. So in the New Testament, the phrase word of God, or they spoke God's word, is a shorthand for telling the story of Jesus as Israel's Messiah, who's crucified, raised from the dead, and the gift of the Spirit, and so on. So in the book of Acts, Paul and Barnabas will arrive, and they shared the word of God. So they're sharing a summary. But what they're sharing is the summary of the biblical story

that leads to Jesus or the goodness. Or the goodness, yeah, the good news about Jesus specifically. Yeah, and in Paul's letters, the same thing tells the Cessalonians, you know, when we came and told you about Jesus, you received our word, not as a word from humans, but as a word from God and then Jesus is you know Called the word in the Gospel of John as you know Cody in the other writings of John too. Yeah John in Revelation Yep, so the word of God a shorthand for the good news announcement that tells the whole biblical story as a story leading to Israel's Messiah, namely Jesus. There are a couple uses, however, where I think the idea of calling all

of the scriptures by this phrase the word of God developed from. So for example, in the letter to the Hebrews, the pastor has this whole discussion, long discussion about Psalm 95 95 as giving God's word to the community that he's writing to, wherever they were living. And there's the point in Hebrews chapter 4 where the pastor just calls Psalm 95, he just says, he calls it the word of God, those to whom the word of God comes, which is the people I'm writing to. So there, a Psalm, that's the word of God. And what's interesting is earlier in Hebrews chapter one and two, he's quoting from the psalms, and there he calls the psalms just David.

He says, as it says, in David, and then he quotes. Oh, that's a good example from our last question. Yes, so David can stand for the whole psalm scroll, even though he's only named in the Maseratic Hebrew text in 73 of the poems. But then two chapters later, he can call a Psalm, not David, but the Word of God. So the biblical authors don't have a conception where if it's connected to one of the human

authors, it's less divine or we shouldn't call it the Word of God. They just operate with this paradigm that God's word uniquely was communicated through these texts written by these humans. So you're right in noting that calling it the word of God is a, it's a step that doesn't quite happen in the scriptures themselves, but you can see where the logic's going and where it comes from. Yeah, in the same way that Psalm 95 is the word of God, then every Psalm is the word of God.

Yeah, that's right. And then if the Psalms are a word of God, then why not the other writings in the Bible also be the word of God? Yeah. To the point where the Bible is the word of God. Yeah, the phrase the word of God though feels like it's become a little bit abstract. Is that the right? Or it's just, it's become Christian needs to wear. I'm not even quite sure what it means, but it gives the impression of dictation straight from God. Yeah. Yeah. So I think,

and for that reason, I would prefer to call it scripture. And the Word of God, it seems like the way the authors are using it is, is more to talk about the message or the story of Scripture. Yeah, yeah, I'm kind of in a similar place. I've come to prefer using the biblical terminology more of just the Scriptures or the writings and even though Oh, because the word the Bible doesn't occur in the Bible. Yeah, right. Scripture. Yeah, writing But the word Bible the Greek word Bibl means scroll, and it was never all on one scroll. It was in a collection of scrolls and then much later in a codex, post Jesus. So even though we've called this the Bible project, it would be weird to call it the Bible's project or the scroll's project, but I resonate with what you're saying, Chris, I think the word of God in our cultural context can actually miscommunicate

this important biblical paradigm of it being a product of the human and divine partnership. Yeah, which I think is exactly what Cody was bringing out that it is there is human involvement human partnership at the same time the benefit of calling it the word of God is that it truly is a divine the benefit of calling it the word of God is that it truly is a divine divine anthology of scrolls also. Yeah that's right, the human and divine aspects don't, it's not a zero-sum game. Yeah. It's not one, at least the classic confession, what's a docks confession is that it's both at the same time and the one doesn't minimize or compromise the other, which is a hard balance to strike in our imaginations, I think, because we tend to think that if it's one, then it somehow minimizes the other.

So in the examples where the prophet hears from God and then delivers a word, that seems like potentially transcribed in a way. It's kind of like, this is the thing I heard. Yeah. I'm just going to tell you the thing I heard. Totally. Yep. In a way, it's kind of like, this is the thing I heard. I'm just going to tell you the thing I heard. Totally. When Paul goes and tells the good news to a new community, he is using his creativity to summarize what happened

and why it mattered, but then his use of creativity and his summarization is called the Word of God. So it's like, he kind of got both usages there in the Bible itself. But I agree with you, Chris, that I think what we typically think of when we say word of God in a modern setting is more of this transcribed. Like God said it in a very specific way. And then we just wrote it down without using our creativity. Yeah. The phrase can under emphasize the human element of the Bible to, yeah, to agree that I think is not just that it's not necessary

to minimize the human involvement, but I think it can have negative effects over the long term, namely setting people up to think that the Bible is more divine than human, and then when they're exposed to the human history of the Bible, it becomes scandalous when I don't think it needs to be. So there's an argument for calling it the word of God, but allowing the idea of what a word from God is to be more of a collaborative. A partnership, and about the message, about the Messiah, the story about the Messiah.

Yeah, and it's important to remember. The apostles never had a council where they drew up a theological dictionary of their terms. They used a variety of terms to describe lots of ideas depending on the context that they were in. And for me, the most interesting example was always that the primary title Jesus used to call himself was the son of Adam, the son of humanity, but the apostles in their writings never call him that. They call him Messiah or Son of God, which were the very titles that Jesus explicitly tried to avoid using in public.

But both are true, but just based on their different contexts in their moments in history, different vocabulary, sort of different purposes. And so in the same way, how we refer to the scriptures, I think, can vary depending on cultural context. We've got a question from Heather in Maryland. Hi, Tim. John and Karissa. My name is Heather Morton, and I live in Chevrolet, Maryland. My question has to do with the second temple literature that influenced Jesus and his early followers. Were Protestants mistaken to remove these books from the scriptures? Do you think our relationship with God or our biblical

understanding is diminished by not having them in our Bibles? Thanks so much for this series. I'm finding it really helpful. Yeah, great question. Yeah, a really good question. Yeah. So maybe one place to start is a clarification. So this broader set of texts from the second temple period were widely disseminated in Greek translation along with the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible. So this is after the writings of the Tanakh, the Jewish Bible, 39 books. It's the same books that are in a Protestant Old Testament, just a little bit different number. That's right.

Or it's 39 by the Protestant division and then 24. Okay. Yep. In the Hebrew Bible. So after that, and before the New Testament, right? Well, what's interesting is the after and before, these were all, there was a collection of scrolls. So like, since you didn't bind all the scrolls together in one collection, this idea of what the collection is,

where the boundaries of the collection are, that felt more blurry. More blurry, yeah. Well, certainly there was opportunity for it to be blurry because it wasn't ever bound by two covers in a codex, in that early second-time period. However, I do think you can pay attention to the structural clues of the Tanakh,

and which we were paying attention to earlier about the Psalms. As the third section begins with the five parts scroll, the Psalms matching the five part Torah at the beginning of the collection. Chronicles is a retelling from Adam to the exile and the return from exile. So it's very much a concluding type of story. So I do think there's intelligent life in the design and collection of the Tanakh.

However, did all Jewish communities perceive that? One, and then two, were there some Jewish communities that also revered other texts of more recent origin? They didn't conceive of as part of the Tanakh, or they thought the Bound Jews were blurry, and so they held other texts as having a divine human origin. And we know the answer to that question is, yes. And whether it's the Messianic community Jude belonged to for Enoch was very clearly revered, he wouldn't quote it otherwise.

In the Dead Sea Scroll community, there was a scroll called the Temple Scroll that's an amalgamation of all of the apocalyptic temple visions in the Hebrew Bible to talk about a temple that is yet to come. And they accepted it as a word of prophecy about the restoration of a new temple when the Messiah comes. And they held it in very high regard.

So the trick is, as right from the beginning of the Jesus movement, there were a variety of communities, because it was never centralized after it scattered out of Jerusalem. And there were communities, and you can trace their history into the second, third, fourth century, that held a more blurry, wider collection of Greek scriptural writings. But there were always voices too that said, no, but the Jewish communities always held this particular section, the Tanakh, to be a unique divine human word that's different from all the others. And Jesus, and most of the apostles, seem on that train because they use unique vocabulary when they quote from the Tanakh that's

different from when they will borrow the Tanakh that's different from when they will borrow language from some of these other writings. So I'm compelled that there was an entity called the Tanakh, that's the 24 scrolls, but that doesn't mean that every Jewish community recognized that as a firm boundary line, and that even some of the early Messiann communities, this has been an issue of debate. And so in the medieval or early medieval codexes, codices of the Greek translation of the Bible that were produced by Christians, these all have both the Greek translation of the Tanakh and other Second Temple writings in them and the New Testament writings. And so when the English Bible started to be produced, the earliest Geneva Bible, the earliest King James Bibles,

had this wider Second Temple literature in it. And it was the Catholic Protestant debates that led to the production of Bibles that put these books separate as appendix, what was happening in the first decades after the printing press, and then as the centuries went on, they were just removed altogether from Protestant Bibles. So it's important to say when Protestants removed them in one sense, that's true. But in another sense, they were just recognizing something that some Christians had always thought, namely that the TNOC is a very unique revelation of God's word to his people that's different from these other books. I'm sorry, I just talked for a long time, but maybe the biggest takeaway from this is

it's complicated. Yeah. And it's not simple. And this used to bother me for a long time. I mean, it really bothered me for a long time. Well, so it's complicated to try to put your finger on exactly what should be considered as a scripture and not. Is that what you're saying?

Well, it's complicated because going back to the origins of the Jesus movement, there have been differences of opinion, but the differences don't mean that there's no such thing called the Tanakh. It's about these other texts that were revered alongside the Tanakh in some early Jesus communities. And that has been the case from the beginning. These are the books like Judith, Wisdom, Maca Bees. They were revered by the Jewish community and later communities. And to go back to Heather's question, they are useful and super helpful for, even if, even for

Protestants, they're helpful for context, for theology, for early interpretation of scripture, for all of those things. So even if Protestants say, this isn't part of what we'd consider scripture or authentic scripture, they're still very useful. I think that's important. But it is a genuine difference in the Christian tradition. And the trick is there's no one form of these extra writings.

There's a traditional Catholic Bible, it's called the Deuteron canon. But in most forms of the Orthodox tradition, there's a couple more, including Jubilies. And in one strand, in the Ethiopian Orthodox church, there's a couple more, Enoch and Jubilee. And in each of those expanding traditions, it's saying in these books, we hear a word from God by which we evaluate and measure claims about the will and purpose of God in the world. So that's what the word canon means.

It's a Greek word that means a measuring line or an evaluating line. And so the confession has been that the canon scripture guides God's people to measure what we can say reflects the will and purpose of God. And so the trick is is what collection is the measure. And there's not a lot in these books that like is really out of the ballpark completely, you know, in the Deuteron canon or extra books. It's like, whoa, that's coming out of left field. Like most of it is just developing what's in the tonk in the first place in terms of ideas But there are some parts that became matters of debate between Catholics and Protestants and that's what led to this divide. I think when we're asking the question, are they scripture? that became matters of debate between Catholics and Protestants, and that's what led to this divide.

I think when we're asking the question, are they scripture some things that are helpful to consider are the shape of the Tanakh. So the seams of the Tanakh that are seem really intentional, like the beginning of the prophets, Joshua, one, the beginning of the writings, the end of the Torah, the prophets, and writings, all pointing to this leader to come. And then when you hear the New Testament authors reflect on the Hebrew Bible, they do refer to a three-part collection, not a four-part collection. So we have to consider that.

I'd be curious to know how people who include the Deuteron canon as part of the Bible, how they see that fitting within the literary story, as far as its macro design, you know, it does have those same kinds of features and seams or is it different qualitatively? Yeah, a good example of that is like Judas or Tobit, they're so awesome. It reads like, it's written by people who know the Tanakh so well, and they're just working the design patterns. Judas is all about the main character, Judas, which it's the Hebrew word for Jewish woman.

And she's the snake crusher. She's the see, it's a woman who's the seed of the woman depicted as a portrait of the coming snake crusher. And the snake crusher, the snake is an amalgamation of a Syria babel on a Persia. They're like the three big bad empires in the Bible. So you're like, oh man, that's just working the same things. But you read Maccabees. And Maccabees reads like a propaganda document for the Maccabeean regime that came in revolt in the 160s. And it's, you're like, whoa, this is a different pool.

I'm swimming in right now. So there are differences, even within the duodro canon of what the text agendas are and what they're about. And it's all illuminating to help us understand the wider cultural context into which Jesus was born and into which the apostles you know are writing and doing their thing. But it's a genuine difference and as much as I've worked on these questions I kind of reached this point where I don't know what else to do except to say yeah this is a genuine difference between the Catholic Protestant Orthodox traditions But there's so much to be unified

about in terms of the main content of all this literature and the main themes and leading to the Messiah that, yeah, there you go. For me, the unity of all across the traditions is what's much more striking than the differences, but I know other people feel differently. Okay, let's take another question. This is from Willie. Hi, Taman John. My name is Willie Bistinsa. I am originally from Peru, but currently reside in Florida. As you are talking about the formation of the Old Testament, I wanted to get your thoughts on the JEDP critical theory of Torah composition.

To me, the arbitrary picking of the names of God to ascertain the origins of a document is too far-fetched. But do you think there is any validity to that theory, given that we understand the Bible, what's made for many sources? If so, how do we uphold the inspiration of the Bible and Moses' role in the composition of the Torah, as this theory has been used by many to manage the divine authority of the Bible. Thanks for everything you do. This guy's taken a texikatin class. Yeah.

Yeah, so this is a question about the sources behind the penitue or the Torah and what that means for the authority of it as a text. And whether it's necessary to affirm that Moses was the author of the Torah for it to have authority. Or the author of all the material in the form that we have it today. Right. Yep. And then he refers to one particular theory. One particular theory called, say, he's been really influential. Yeah. JDP. So maybe let's take it back to Willie, just anchoring it in some early parts of the pillars of the paradigm in our conversation. So to say that a biblical author used many sources to make a biblical book, there shouldn't be anything controversial about that. That's how scrolls were produced in the ancient world.

Yeah, as long as we see the writing process as this act of revelation from God in that time as opposed to just the event or one inspired author. It's the actual writing of the text. So an author, a later author who adds to it, an editor who shapes it, all of those processes are part of shaping God's word through his spirit. Yeah. Even if one does hold to a Moses authorship of all of the Pentateuch in its final form, you have to take on board that Moses received source material for all of the stuff that came before him, because he only appears in the second book of the Torah. He wasn't alive for everything that came before him. So he has to have sources for that. And you have to know that someone came in after and added at least a few things. To toy like the story of his death.

Yeah, like he died. But also other things like in the story of Abraham and Isaac binding of Isaac. There's a little detail in there that's an illusion from an author, a narrator who's standing centuries after Moses because he's referring to Jerusalem. Yeah. As the place where Yahweh will provide or be seen by his people. There's lots of little things like that throughout the Torah that show a perspective from a later Israelite history. So we don't have to limit inspiration to the named authors.

Even within the Bible itself, there is references to a tradition of scribes and prophets alongside what coming after. Isaiah refers to his disciples in the book of Proverbs. There's a whole section that says, these are the words of Solomon that the men of Hezekiah assembled. And that's like centuries after Solomon. So the biblical authors aren't trying to hide the their composed of many sources.

So there's this one particular theory you're referring to Willie called JEDP. This is a fascinating rabbit hole in the history of biblical studies. I'll try not to go on for too long because I've been really interested in this. So a discussion about the source material of the Torah in particular, it goes, it's very ancient. It's a very ancient conversation. It's very ancient. It's a very ancient conversation. But in Germany, in the 1800s, it took on a particular focus. The scholars who are really the engine behind what became known as the documentary hypothesis

or JADP are a number of scholars, Carl Boudre, somebody graph, graph, and then vellhausen, and Julius vellhausen. And for them, it was both about using divine names as a way to peel apart the sources and try and reverse engineer the Torah, but it wasn't just that. It was a whole model of reconstructing the history of Israelite religion. That's what they were really after. And they had this concept that Israelite religion developed from key male individuals who were inspired by the prophetic genius of God's spirit that encountered God and led the people. And then what happened throughout Israelite history was a degrading of that

into a form of legalistic religion. And so they align the sources, JEDP, in this order from like poetic, prophetic, inspirational down to legalism and Pharisees. And so the last source, P, is most of the ritual stuff in Leviticus and so on. And so in that whole model is a deeply anti-Semitic agenda and a deeply unhistorical understanding of the history of Israelite religion.

And an agenda. Oh, and very much an agenda. Yeah. That fits into what was happening in Germany in the 1800s. It's not just about trying to identify sources. No, it was driven by a whole bunch of things. And so the history of Pentatucle or Torah composition history, the scholarly debates about that have continued to rage. And even though JEDP has a particular hold in certain

universities in America, most of European biblical scholarship has moved on to other models for the composition of the Torah. So there is a real interest in what is the source material? Oh yeah. How might you be able to find that there might have been different, maybe, communities of material that were brought together or whatever? Yeah, and you can see it when you read in Hebrew and really begin to go in detail into these texts, you can often see the literary scenes of where a section ended and where a new source was spliced together. You can see the handiwork of it. It's cool. Right, it's cool to see. the literary themes of where a section ended and where a new source was spliced together, you can see the handiwork of it.

It's cool. It's cool to see. That's part of the shaping of the overall story. But the fact that it was shaped from sources doesn't mean that it's less inspired if we mean by inspired a divine and human partnership. It's actually one of the most compelling arguments to me for this divine hand at work in the text

that it's written and shaped by a variety of different authors. I mean, more than 50. Yeah. Different authors and editors. And yet it is a unified work. I mean, can you imagine trying to do that over so much time today with so many different authors trying to write a religious, political, historical document? Yeah.

And still have it be unified. Yeah, it is. It's remarkable. So if you're interested, Willie, there are very expensive scholarly volumes that will get you up to date on the debates about the composition of Zotora in particular. So Thomas Dozman or Matthias Armgart edited really recent volumes about scholarly conferences on these things. We'll put links in the show notes.

But it's a conversation that keeps evolving because what we're doing is trying to reverse engineer the content of an ancient scroll. And it's an informed guessing game at many points. And so the theories keep developing. But no matter what theory you adopt, it shouldn't, I think, cause us to question the category of it being divine and human if that's a confession that you hold. Yeah. All right, let's do a question from Finley. Hi Bible Project, I'm Finley from London, England. The churches I've been part of use the Bible to give life lessons.

So the story of David is used to tell us how we can rely on God to overcome our challenges, whilst Moses has taken this lesson in using the gifts God has given you, despite your limitations, to make a difference in your world. This approach seems to be the norm in church preaching, but it's not about the Messiah. Is this the wrong way to go about reading and applying Scripture, or is the legitimate space for it? Thank you.

Yeah, this seems like a really common experience probably. That's interesting, because I think what we have said up till now is that it wasn't the purpose of the stories, was to give you... It's a less helpful approach. It's a less helpful approach. It's a less helpful approach. That the story of David, we talked about this. David's playing Goliath.

I've heard many sermons of taking that to be like, what are the giants in your life? And what are the five smooth stones that you need to find? And that will miss what the story is designed to do. However, the Bible then is wisdom literature. Yes, totally. And that's when then you reflect and meditate on the story and what it's doing, then it will actually give you wisdom for how to live your life and develop your own character and slay your giants. You know Like, that is true. So I think there is something there, but maybe we're just missing the first beat of that progression. Yeah, so this goes back to the Bible as Messianic literature,

or as part of our paradigm, that's how we address this issue. So, Jesus, if we take seriously, the Jesus Nepostles, say, what is the Hebrew Bible about? It's a story about the Messiah that leads to the Messiah who enters into death, goes out the other side so that new creation can be released to the nations. So that's what they say it's about. So whatever lessons it has to offer me, it's seeing how the story of David and Goliath fits in to the larger themes of the Hebrew Bible as being leading to the Messiah. And then once it's about the Messiah, then it becomes about us because we are, if you're a follower of Jesus, you're part of the body of the Messiah. And so it's as Messianic literature that it offers wisdom to me. And I think that's important because who does one identify as the giant?

What's the giant? So in the story of David and Goliath, the giant, the Goliath is, if you've been tracking with the narrative patterns from Genesis, Goliath is a narrative image that is bringing together a whole collection of bad guys and forces throughout the story, beginning with the snake. Because his armor is snake life, bronzey, which is the same word. Yeah, that's right. But that would only be convincing to you if you been tracing the narrative patterning of the snake throughout the tour and prophets leading up to that point, which is also then the nephhilim and the giants and the great warriors of old are also in the narrative argument of Genesis 1 to 11 are connected to the to the to the archetype of the snake.

And so once you have reptiles and giants and that's a pattern that keeps repeating in all kinds of stories, right through the Torah and prophets. When you get to the David and Glyph story, he's facing off against the seed of the snake. It's a story about the conflict between the seed of the woman and the seed of the snake. So what is the Messianic reading of that then? A non-Messianic reading is, well, so you reader or listener like David and who's your Goliath? But in the Hebrew Bible it's creating this portrait of spiritual evil that hijacks human communities and nations and institutions represented by their violent warrior leaders. And so to me it's crucial that we read this in light of its Messianic fulfillment, because Jesus was facing His Goliath in the form of the Roman and Jerusalem power regimes,

but crucially, He did not chop off their heads. In fact, for Him, He wouldn't be faithful to His calling as Messiah if He did chop off their heads. The whole point was that He let them chop off His head, so to speak. And if you don't read the David and Glow story through that messianic lens, then you get the opposite wisdom from it that you're supposed to get. Interesting. And so when you get to Paul, who says, you know, our enemy, Ephesians says our enemy of a follower of Jesus is never another human.

Yeah. It's the parts, palatism, powers that are behind everything we see around us, and that's our enemy. If you have a sword, it's the good news. And you stand against it, you don't go on the offensive. So that's a messianic reading of the David story. But when you don't read the Bible as a story leading the Messiah, I think you end up with the wrong life lessons. Yeah. Or maybe some good ones. Oh, that's true. You can still use that methodology and come with

wisdom that then if you go, well, let's make sure we first read this through the lens of this Messianic literature. Yeah. You might be like, okay, cool. We could actually affirm. That's right. Some of that wisdom. But the fact that the giants in our lives are spiritual powers, you know, you could get there. And if you're not reading it through Messianical Ends, you still might be like, what are the things in my life and you realize that there's powers and principalities in your life that you need to fight against. But I like how you brought that up to him that how you do it becomes very important and is easy to miss if you just focus on the story if David and don't read it through the lens of Jesus.

So let's do one last question, and it is from Carrie. Hi, Tim and John, this is Carrie from Phoenix, Arizona. My question is, how would you help somebody who has no interest in reading the Bible after being in a church or a tradition where the Bible was weaponized against them and used to harm them. How would you invite them to see the Bible as a source of good and flourishing? Thank you so much, such a huge fan of the podcast. That's such a good honest question.

And an important question. Yeah, really important. Yep. I think this is a lot of people's experience, whether it's from a spiritual tradition that they come from that was abusive in this way or some other form of abuse or trauma that is gonna affect the way we view life. And when we come to the Bible, it's not an easy text to read. It can be really triggering. Yeah, it's already a challenging text to read, it can be really triggering.

Yeah, it's already a challenging text to read and engage with. Yeah, it's full of a lot of dark things. Yeah, and then add this type of experience that can write itself into our body. In terms of our body begins to be triggered by responses to the Bible because of trauma. right? This is what trauma does, right? I understand it. And so it's much more difficult than just saying, well, here's some new ideas

to approach the Bible with because it's not about ideas. It's also about your body has been shaped in such a way that it goes into fight and flight when certain issues and circumstances come up. So that goes into fight and flight when certain issues and circumstances come up. So it's a very important question. It's not something that we can answer for someone else because it's gonna be so different for every person, you know. One idea is that because that type of harm happens in faith communities

by other people in faith communities, that most likely the way forward is not going to be by just a new idea of reading the Bible, but it's going to probably happen through relationships. In a community of relationships where some followers of Jesus are living and organizing their common life in a way that is healing and that feels safe and compelling and beautiful and to see that community life around Jesus happening and then to see like, oh wow, the Bible plays an important role in why these people are living the way that they're living.

I think that can, in other words, it's not just going to be about the Bible. It's most likely going to be about finding a community that's living out the biblical story in a way that can bring healing. It's hard for me to imagine another way forward for someone who's in that situation, and that's just a tough place to be. Well, I think an assumption in the question is that this person maybe wants to follow Jesus still. Otherwise, it doesn't matter.

It's right. But there seems to be some sense of like, I'm still in this, with Jesus. And if that's the case, then perhaps, I don't know, and you're right, Tim, that like there's every situation is gonna be different. But perhaps there is something in just, let's just go and read the teachings of Jesus, or let's just read stories of Jesus.

And then let the Bible begin to unfold from there slowly, or just talk about the stories of Jesus. And not have to let go and read the actual text because maybe the weaponization was a very specific phrasing of something Jesus said and then was twisted and turned into something that was abusive, perhaps. But how can you still generate on Jesus and then let God through time and community and safe relationships

begin to pull back those things so that your body can begin to interact with these words again in a way that isn't triggering. Yeah. In my experience, I mean, I have an experienced spiritual abuse or spiritual trauma, but I have experienced other kinds of traumas. And that has affected the way that it feels to read the Bible. And I remember the first time after I experienced a trauma four years ago of having this painful sudden divorce and being finding myself with a tiny new infant and feeling like I really needed

God's care and that I needed to know that he was stable and steady for me. And I remember reading the book of Genesis for the first time after that and I got to this story of Hegar and I was like I can't read this. I just don't want to read this and I can't because it felt don't want to read this and I can't because it felt triggering and unstable and uncaring and I think yeah I think from my experience just having the self compassion to be like I think God understands that and he cares and he doesn't need me to like push through to be a good Bible skull and read my Bible like this. Like if I'm, if I need to just connect with him, however, I can receive his love, whether it's through community,

whether it's through like prayer, whether it's through feeling the grief and just crying and feeling the refuge that God provides, I think he understands that. And it totally makes sense that when we go through hard things, we're going to feel it. Yeah. So, yeah, I think self-compassion and also, you know, we're not supposed to read these stories as robots or as...

Brains on a stick. Yeah, just, I think actually before maybe I was able to read the story of Hagar and ask mostly cognitive questions about it. Be emotionally detached. Kind of, yeah. And I can't do that anymore, but I think that's a benefit when we are feeling grief is that we can be more holistic readers. So at whatever point somebody can engage with this text, it's like the Bible should actually

bring us grief a lot of the time. If we really are in touch with human, evil and pain, but I don't think we should push into that if it's causing us to be triggered, you know. That's wise. That's really, it's well said, it makes me think about how the biblical collection is full of so many different parts and it's okay if some parts are more difficult and you don't hang out there as much. Yeah. Because there might be another season of life where you see it differently and to me that's one of the great gifts of such a diverse collection. The Dispviable is if Genesis is triggering hang out in the Psalms. Yeah. And if the Book of Kings is like really bothering you, I think you'll go.

But also sometimes it's worth moving towards the things that bother us. And the biblical collection can help us in that journey of growth too. So yeah, thank you for sharing. Chris, and thank you, Carrie, for that really, really good question. There's always, always more to discover. On that note. Okay. Yeah.

So, we're going to do one more question response at the end of this series. Yeah, we've got more. We've got more. Yeah. And the next one actually is wisdom literature, which was alluded to. And then we'll get through the seven and we'll do one more question response. So feel free to continue to send in your questions. And we love to hear them. And thank you, Tim and Christopher, interacting with those. And John, and thank you, John. You interacted too.

Yeah. Next week, we jump back into the series and look at the Bible as Wisdom Literature. Wisdom Literature. Okay, what do we mean? So first let's just recognize Wisdom Literature is often in Biblical studies, a title that refers to a handful of books within the Bible, not the full thing. What we mean by this is a little bit different. So Wisdom Literature, so here's our shorthand sentence that we've written to summarize this. All of the diverse literary styles in the Bible reveal God's wisdom and invite us into a journey

of character transformation. This episode was produced by Cooper Peltz. Our editors are Dan Gummel and Zach McKinley and the show notes are done by Lindsay Ponder. Bible project is a nonprofit and we exist to experience the Bible as a unified story that leads us to Jesus. Everything we make is free because of the generous support

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