Ten Minute Bible Talks Devotional Bible Study - How Did We Get the Bible? | Judges | Judges 11

Starting point is 00:00:00 Welcome to 10-minute Bible Talks, where we connect the Bible to your life and the time it takes to get to work. I'm Keith Simon. I'm Tanya Wilmuth. And I'm Patrick Miller. Right now, we're going through the Book of Judges. If you haven't subscribed to our new podcast, Truth Over Tribe, I'd encourage you to take some time and go do that right now. We've got interviews about culture, politics, and the things you really care about with people like John Mark Comer, John Tyson, Oz Guinness, and many, many others. It's going to be a great podcast.

Starting point is 00:00:33 I've been excited about the interviews and the topics that we've taken on. So stop right now. Go subscribe to Truth Over Tribe on your podcast player. Have you ever wondered how we got the Bible? How this library of divinely inspired histories, law books, poems, prophecies, and letters came into existence. How did God work with humans to write his words? Well, I've wondered that question a lot. And the answer to it is incredibly complex because the answer is honestly slightly different

Starting point is 00:01:03 depending on each one of those books. But let me start with what I used to think. When I became a Christian at age 19, I always imagined a man with a pen and a scroll, kind of pseudo-possessed by God's spirit, writing God's words out madly. They spilled onto the page in an ecstasy and a trance, the genius of God and the thinker combining to create a perfect and holy first draft. Now, I now know that almost every aspect of that picture I once had, is entirely false. Ironically, the idea of a man caught in a trance transcribing the very words of

Starting point is 00:01:40 God, well, that's what happened with the prophet Muhammad, or at least what he claimed, happened to him. He was transcribing Allah's words exactly. And this is one reason why the Quran can only be truly properly read in the original Arabic. If you translate it, you are losing the exact words of Allah. But of course, we understand that the Bible, it can be translated and understood. and many different languages. Where did Christians get this idea, a man out there just scribbling down the words of God, where did we get that idea from? Well, I think English speakers, we got those ideas from the romantic English poets of the early 1800s.

Starting point is 00:02:19 Now, I know what you're thinking, boring, I need to change this right away. But stop, track with me here because it's very interesting. Poets like Shelley, Blake, Wordsworth, Cool Ridge, Keats, and Lord Byron, they spilled a great deal of ink writing about their creative process. And they wrote about it in a similar fashion. They spoke of a creative spirit or a creative genius which would come over the author like a muse and would inspire that individual author to write poetry without a forethought ahead of time or revision after the fact. It was an intensely individualistic act and it was coming from the soul of one person, not many people. And so for them, creativity was best performed in an ecstasy, not as a process.

Starting point is 00:03:05 Well, we now know that what they wrote about creativity obscured more than it revealed. From their own papers and letters, we know that they thought about projects before embarking on them. They revised their words. They improved them, and they collaborated on them. In fact, it's obvious that they incorporated the ideas of other people into their own work. And this is how most thinking and most writing actually works. Two cognitive researchers, Stephen Sloeman and Philip Fernbach, they revealed this in their spectacular book, the knowledge illusion. And they showed that even if a book cover only credits one author, and even if that one author does the bulk of the work, he or she is always collaborating with other people.

Starting point is 00:03:47 They're always incorporating ideas or words or stories from other people. Sometimes it's consciously, sometimes it's unconsciously. That author will draw on the work and past thinking of past authors. In fact, good authors, they set out a plan ahead of time, and they revise and improve their work over time. And they often do this, by the way, within a community of editors. The romantic myth of the individual, inspired creator, it has long outlasted the men who first created the mythology.

Starting point is 00:04:19 And somehow, it's now how Christians think that the Bible was created. But of course, that's not the case. It's explicitly not the case, by the way. In many of Paul's letters, he names collaborators and co-authors. Luke describes gathering and incorporating eyewitness testimony, not his own, other people's testimony into his gospel and into the book of Acts. The prophet Isaiah, he took an entire prophecy from the prophet Micah, and without even crediting him, he put it into his own book.

Starting point is 00:04:48 In fact, there's two whole chapters in the book of Isaiah, which are taken straight out of the book of kings. Isaiah's book, alongside so many other books, it shows a process of revision, collaboration, reorganization, and editing. God could have inspired a book that was by an individual human with individual genius. But that's not what he chose to do. God chose to superintend divinely over a much more ordinary, normal human process of creating. So what about the book of judges? Well, in Judges 11, can see clear indicators of how, at least some of this book, came together. Let me set up the context. Judges 11 tells us the story of Jephtha, who was an illegitimate son rejected by his entire clan,

Starting point is 00:05:37 the clan of Gilead, and as is often the case for those whom society discards, he finds himself in a life of crime. Now, the text says that he surrounded himself with a band of criminals, or in some translations, a band of scoundrels. But when the Ammonites, a foreign power, they start threatening Jephtha's former clan, that clan, they decide, hey, we actually want you to come back because apparently Jephtha was a formidable fighter. Jefftha agrees, but he has some conditions. First, that he will be accepted from this point forward, but second, that he would become their leader. Now, the people agree, and he ends up taking down the Ammonites, but before he fights the Ammonites, he makes a rash vow. He promises that he will sacrifice whatever comes out of his house next.

Starting point is 00:06:22 He'll sacrifice that thing to Yahweh if he wins. Now, I'm sure that he expected a sheep or an animal. I mean, those were the things that normally came in and out of houses for the most part. That's what he expected, but it turns out to be his daughter. Now, it's worth saying. There were ways to break vows to Yahweh, and so he didn't have to follow through on this vow. And by the way, the Torah strictly prohibits child sacrifice. And yet, catch what happens next.

Starting point is 00:06:47 Verse 35, when Jefftha saw her, his daughter, he tore his. his clothes and he cried, Oh no, my daughter, you have brought me down and I am devastated. I have made a vow to Yahweh that I cannot break. My father, she replied, you have given your word to Yahweh. Do to me just as you promised, now that Yahweh has avenged your enemies, the Ammonites. But grant me this one request. Give me two months to roam the hills and weep with my friends because I will never marry. You may go, he said, and he let her go for two months. and her friends went to the hills and wept because she would never marry, and after the two months she returned to her father, and he did to her as he had vowed, and she was a virgin. From this

Starting point is 00:07:33 comes the Israelite tradition that each year the young women of Israel go out for four days to commemorate the daughter of Jephthah the Gileadite. It's a tragic story, though I have to admit it's very easy to miss what's actually happening here. It's doubtful that Jephthah actually physically sacrificed his daughter. Instead, it appears that he gave her as a perpetual virgin to the people who serviced the tabernacle. Back in those days, it was common for many women to work inside of the tabernacle as virgins, and they were symbolically pledging their fidelity to Israel's one true husband, Yahweh. But I want to pick up the main thread of this podcast. How did we get the book of judges? Well, verse 40 tells us how we got at least a part of it. Let me read it again. From this

Starting point is 00:08:20 the Israelite tradition that each year the young women of Israel go out for four days to commemorate the daughter of Jephthah the Gileadite. The story of Jephthah and his daughter, it was not written down in his day. And it wasn't written down in the future by an individual male genius who just had a spirit come upon him and tell him what to think and what to write. It's clear that this story was passed down by traditioners of the faith. Women passed down the story of Yahweh's work and faithfulness from one generation to the next. And women also remembered the evil and the horrors of human rebellion and foolishness. Women were traditioners passing down this story of Jeff The and his daughter. At some later date, we don't quite know when, their story was incorporated into the book of judges,

Starting point is 00:09:06 alongside a lot of other stories. So whoever wrote judges or edited all of these stories together, they brought this story, which was passed down from person to person into the book. But I want to say this, God superintended over the whole process, including these women faithfully passing down their story from one generation to the next. And that's what actually brings us all home to you. Do you know that you are called to be a traditioner of the faith? I know the Bible is complete, so your words won't be included into it. And yet, God is still overseeing the same old process of knowledge being passed down through communities from generation to generation. He wants you to faithfully pass down what you've received from his word. He wants you to pass that down to the next generation,

Starting point is 00:09:57 perhaps to a child, or perhaps to a friend who's new in their faith, or perhaps to someone whom God has called you to disciple, or who God has called you to share the gospel with. You see, the Bible was a book created by a community, passed down by a community, and now entrusted to you, a member of the community. How are you passing down the tradition? That's God's calling on your life. His grace, his spirit will empower it. So pass along the story. Thanks for listening. If you've enjoyed this content, please subscribe and give us a rating. That helps other people find this podcast more easily. Also, ask yourself, who could you share this podcast with? Texting an episode to a friend or a family member.

Starting point is 00:10:44 is a great way to help them grow spiritually. If you want to go deeper, check out our show notes for book recommendations.

Ten Minute Bible Talks Devotional Bible Study - How Did We Get the Bible? | Judges | Judges 11

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