Bible 1 - Special role ...

Tuesday, Nov 25, 2009. Good morning, how are you today? The week has started already - it might be quite busy for you currently, or you have some more time now, before the Christmas activities start to take over completely. Here in the Jesus Network we have a look at the bible over the next days - we want to have a fresh look, a look which tries to understand the role of this basic book. What is the bible?

The bible has influenced more people than any other book in history. It has been translated more times into different languages than any other book which exists. It has fascinated people, but it has also triggered antagonism. It is not an easy book to read and understand. It is a book with great visions, with fantastic passages, with world shaking thoughts and challenges. It is a also a book which is difficult for any culture, it does not meet the expectations of its readers, it seems to drag us out of the comfort zone.

Let's have a look at the bible for a moment as if we never had access to the bible. It might in fact be that you never read it in a sincere way, or you never had one yourself. The bible consists out of the Old Testament and the New Testament. Each of these parts has many different books. The Old Testament for example starts with the “five books of Moses”, called “Genesis”, “Exodus”, “Levitikus”, “Numbers” and “Deuteronomy”. These books talk about the early history of the world and about the origin of the people of Israel. Then, there are many historical books in the Old Testament about the history of Israel between the years 1500 before Christ and 400 before Christ (BC). There is a song book, called “Psalms”. And there are many prophetic books, in particular the three large prophets Isaiah, Jeremia and Ezekiel, and twelve so-called “smaller” prophets. The prophets write about life, faith, society and politics in Israel and beyond, they cover the time between approximately 900 and 300 BC. The Old Testament has been in its present form around 200 BC, i.e. it is more than 2200 years old!

The New Testament starts with four “gospels”, by Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. They talk about the life of Jesus, the central figure of the bible. Then, there are further books and letters, which have been written in the early time of Christian faith, to churches around the Mediterranean sea in the first century. The New Testaments closes with the book of the “revelation of John”. It contains the story of Christianity in presence and future in strong and deep images and visions, written by the apostle John in jail in the late first century. The New Testament has been used in its present form from at least around 200 AD (Origen, Muratorian fragment). This means that today it is more than 1800 years old, with texts which have been written 1950 years ago!

How can we read the bible? How can we make sense of the bible? When you start to read this book, you will probably be easily able to pick up some basic meaning from the stories and discussions which are reported. But you will see that these stories are not easy to put into a general framework. It is nontrivial to understand their meaning and to put them into a “realistic framework” - to make sense of the things which are reported.

The bible is a special book. It is not a novel, a fiction. It is not a plain report either - not the Old Testament and not the New Testament with the story of Jesus. The bible wants to be much more: it claims to be a text which come from the eternal God through people of faith. It is a collection of books from many different authors - and yet it claims to reflect one author through all the diversity, it claims to be the word of God. So if we want to understand the bible, we need to look into this special role. That is what we want to explore further over the next days …

[R.W.E.P., jesusnetwork.eu]

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