Making of the Bible

Why

Historical human origins of the Bible can create ‘crisis of faith’ as they are learning about the history. He had the opposite experience as he was learning about the human history and origins.

He didn’t understand why to some, learning the Bible creates scandals of faith because they are learning about the very public, open accessible, noble history of the Bible. He realized something is broken in the system of Western ‘Churchianity’, where somehow people are being raised with a view of the Bible that makes its history a ‘scandal’.

Many people who love and follow Jesus, have high view of scriptures and its authority, origins as a divine Word from God- People hold this and the Bible becomes ‘dangerous’ to them. It’s a problem for many people who cant’ buy the ‘christian religious package’ anymore, bc they heard of the origins of the Bible and the ‘dirty secrets of the Bible”, there are none (but people think that.)

What does it mean for a community of Jesus followers to believe that a text that was produced by humans through a public accessible history that we can know and learn tons about, what does it mean to be a community of people that have that kind of text, and claim at the same time that it is a human and divine word to God’s people- and through this text, God speaks to His people.

What does it mean to say a HUMAN TEXT SPEAKS GOD’S WORDS to His people? Every single one of us need to be thinking about this, because he guarantees that someone nearby, neigbhor, coworker etc is thinking the same thing. They want to know why you believe what you believe.

M.C ESCHER

“Drawing Hands” 1948 - It embodies many different things. It is a visual depiction of something we come across- there are somethings in our world that are so complex, they have multiple interweaving causes and its hard to say which is the cause of the other. Ex: Love, Chicken and the egg. Life is very complex.

This image gives a framework- somethings in life are inexplixable accept to account for all the different things that go into make it.

Which hand is causing the other hand? Wrong question to ask. This has been helpful image to think of Jesus, the historic claim that he was both a human (ate fish, pooped, spoke aramaic, and grew up in a place that you can go to today), but the overwhelming impression that he left on people that he talked to and changed lives, that he was more than human- he was the embodiment of the God of Israel, the Creator of the World.

NT had a way of saying “Jesus was human and was God”.

For 2K years, people want to seperate that claim- “Surely he was more one than the other” “More God than man”. The historic Christian claim, he was BOTH. He was human and Divine- Historic Christian Orthodoxy is - called the Incarnation.

The Bible

Is a book, produced by humans, which is said many times. You discover, the Bible has a lot to say about the human, social, political, economical, circumstances in which it was written, it tells you that. For some reason, in modern western culture, we have this thing that if somehow if it is a divine word, than that human history is incidental at best.

What comes to mind when you think about how the Bible was written. Inspiration- God by His Spirit, inspired the Biblical writers to write what they wrote, so He could say what He wanted to say.

What that means that the human authors were these empty vessels. One morning Ezekial woke up in a holy spirit trance, and he just started writing. :) Many of us believe, if the Bible is God’s word, that had to have been what happened. To believe that, there’s problems with that on every level. The Bible itself tells you how it came about. The Bible presents itself with the same paradox that Jesus presented to people. Jesus and the Bible are very closely connected. The Bible speaks divine word to people in no way diminishes its human history of production and origins and vice versa. To learn about its human history in no way has to compromise a conviction that its a divine word at the same time. IT’S BOTH (HE USES HIS DRAWING HANDS- we constantly want to seperate the hands) . Becoming a Christian is accepting is “Jesus is this ____ holds arms together one on top of another) and the scriptures that He said that bore witness to Him also (holds arms together- TOGETHER) .

Most people who grew up in Churchianity have been ingrained that the Bible is a divine word, (he calls it the “Golden Tablets falling from Heaven point of view of Bible) That because the Bible is a divine word, the human authorship of the Bible gets diminished.

POP QUIZ

If reading through the Bible, what is the first time that the writing of the Bible was mentioned in the Bible if you start on page 1?

Moses. Where? Doing what? It’s not where you might expect. In Exodus Ch. 17, (You’ve probably seen the movie, Let My People Go” - God chose family of Abe, made covenant with family that he would restore somehow through this family, family grows ends up in slavery in Egypt, God raises up Mo as a deliver, through mighty acts of justice God delivers people out of Egypt, huge band of escaped slaves wandering through the desert, they right from plunder, this people group the Amalekites see this opportunity to attack. Exodus 17:8-9 , (Mo raises hands but gets tired, so Joshua and Hur holds up Mo’s hands” Then the LORD said to Moses, WRITE THIS ON SCROLL as something to be remembered.” Very normal. Anticlimatic! This isn’t the orgin of the Bible, but the origin of the story that is in the Bible. Does God a remarkable deliverance of these people who are almost destroyed in slavery, just got rescued and God in a remarkable way, delivers His people. God tells Mo to write down, on a scroll, the story of what just happened, so you never ever forget it. So Mo gets out a tablet and just writes down a short account of what just happened. Very normal. Maybe something we would do- journal something remarkable that happened that day. First mention of the writing of the Bible in the Bible- a story about how God is rescuing and delivering a people. Not the first time God has rescued His people. A much more dramatic rescue happened just a few chapters earlier - Red Sea, Plagues. But that wasn’t the first way to remember that story- They were suppose to remember THAT story thorugh a MEAL that had all these symbolic foods and every part of the MEAL retells the STORY. So every year, its the oldest STILL PRACTICED ritualist meal, people have been practicing for MILLENIA. So, sometimes God tells people to remember the story by EATING the story, other times that God tell His people to remember the story by WRITING the story. Its very normal, no scandal.

What is the SECOND MENTION of the writing of the Bible?

Exodus 24 What happens when people go the wilderness and arrive at the foot of this mountain (Mt Sinai or Mt Horeb -same thing).

They get to the foot of this mountain, God wants to deepen His covenant with His people and he wants them to have deeper covenant with Him so He “I saved you out of Egypt, I will give you these ‘terms of the covenant’ , commands or laws, they called them ‘words’ or ‘statutes’ ) First 10 very famous- 10 Commandments, then the following in Lev, Num, Deut- is 613 total terms of the covenant. God eases them in with first 10- He says if you follow these terms you will become a ‘kingdom of priest and holy nation’ . These aren’t the Divine Rule-book dropped from heaven” NO> God has rescued His people and now he wants to form them into a unique people who will be priest, people who will mediate God’s character and justice and generosity to all the other nations. If they obey, they will become this contrast community to the nations (counter culture community that lives in different value system) .