Now we come to the most famous short story of the entire Bible: Jonah!  Again, since it is “short” it does not take long to read – just four brief chapters – and it’s surprising so few people have actually read it.  And a pity.  It’s a terrific little book that is adventurous and thought-provoking.  Here is what I say about it in my textbook  The Bible: A Historical and Literary Introduction (Oxford University Press). ***************************** Of the various short stories found in the Hebrew Bible, Jonah is no doubt the best known of all. As it happens, the book is not located among the Writings, as are the other short stories we are considering. Jonah is one of the Minor Prophets, included among “the Twelve” in the Hebrew Bible. To some extent that makes sense, since the book is about Jonah making predictions of a coming destruction brought by God against a sinful people—a motif that we saw repeatedly in the other prophets. Moreover, the main character, “Jonah son of Amittai” (1:1) is named [...]

In my last couple of posts I talked about one of the great short stories of the Hebrew Bible, Ruth; now I move to another – Esther.  This one will take only one post.  Again I am taking this material from my book The Old Testament: A Historical and Literary Introduction. *******************************            The book of Esther is another short story with a woman as the main character, and it too is about an intermarriage of a Jew and a non-Jew. But in this case it is Esther who is the Jew; her husband is a pagan figure of rather grand importance. He is, in fact, the King of Persia. As with the other short stories, the book of Esther is difficult to date, but as its action takes place during the period of the Persian empire it is certainly postexilic, probably from the fourth century b.c.e. It tells the story of a Jewish queen who saves the entire Jewish people from destruction. As such, it provides us with the first recorded attempt of a [...]

In my previous post I talked about the book of Ruth, a gem of a short-story in the Hebrew Bible.   Now that I’ve explained how the plot works, I’d like to make just a couple of points about what it is trying to teach, starting with a comment about an episode that many readers over the years have found rather intriguing. It is definitely one of the confusing and suggestive passages in the book.  It comes in chapter 3, where Ruth and her rich (and drunk) relative Boaz end up asleep together on the threshing floor, and in the dark Ruth “stealthily uncovered his feet.”  The next day he arranges to marry her.  What??? Different cultures, using their different languages, use different euphemisms for sexual organs. In older English literature, for example, a man’s penis is sometimes referred to as his “member.” Hebrew had its own euphemism for genitals. They were called You don't want to miss this one.  Join to see more.  Who knew this kind of thing was in the Bible??  Click here [...]

It’s been a long while since I’ve posted much of anything on the Old Testament, and it’s high time I did so!  As I have announced recently, in February I’ll be publishing a six-lecture course on the Pentateuch (the first five books) – one of the most influential collection of books in the history of civilization.  There are lots of other amazing books in the Old Testament as well, and it’s a real pity people don’t read them more. With this post I am starting a thread on the “short stories”  of Scripture.  I begin with one of the truly greats, Ruth.  This one will take a couple of posts. I have taken the discussion from my book, The Bible: A Historical and Literary Introduction (Oxford University Press, 2nd edition, 2018) ****************************** RUTH One of the real gems among the books of the Hebrew Bible is the four-chapter book of Ruth, the tale of a Moabite woman married to and then widowed by an Israelite man, who then uses her wits, determination, and sexuality to [...]

In this discussion of God’s wrath, I want to emphasize that it is not an isolated view of this or that biblical author in the Hebrew Bible.  It is a highly pervasive view.  God punishes those who disobey him, and he destroys anyone who might lead his people astray into disobedience. Here is how I talk about God’s active role in suffering in my book’s God’s Problem (Harper One, 2008)   ******************************   The thematic idea that God punishes disobedience drives the narrative of all five books of the Pentateuch.  In some ways it comes to a climax in the final book, Deuteronomy.  The title of this book literally means “Second Law”; in fact it is not a second law that is given in the book – instead, the book describes the second time the Law was given to the children of Israel by the prophet Moses.  The way the narrative sequence works is this.  In the book of Exodus God saved Israel from its slavery in Egypt and miraculously allowed it to escape the [...]

I have been discussing the book of Joshua and its descriptions of violence inflicted on others on orders of the God of Israel -- massive military campaigns and massacres (is there any reason NOT to call it a genocide of the inhabitants of Canaan?).  I have wanted to cover this material as background to the New Testament book of Revelation, where the slaughter is even more full scale.  One of my points is that the contrast between the “God of wrath” in the OT and the “God of love” in the NT does not really hold up, especially in view of the New Testament’s final book; another will be that the devastation of Revelation is indeed consistent with a common motif of Scripture.  I will be getting to that later, and emphasizing it, since at the same time it is inconsistent  with another motif of Scripture. But first I want to address a question lots of people typically have about these stories of the Conquest of Canaan in the book of Joshua.   Did any of [...]

In my previous post on the narratives of the Old Testament, I talked about God’s complete intolerance with the “other” – the non-Israelite who might influence his people to worship other gods and not obey his laws.  The other had to be destroyed in order to preserve the purity of his people.  It did not matter if some, many, or most of these others were decent, loving human beings who cared for their children and did acts of kindness, doing the best to help others and be good people.  They were to be destroyed.  Every one of them in the city of Jericho: man, woman, child, and, well, the animals for good measure. The taking of Jericho is the first major battle of the book, and others follow suit.  To illustrate, here is the one that comes next, less known to Bible readers today but equally instructive (and gruesome) (and with an interesting military tactic). Again, this come from my book The Bible: A Historical and Literary Introduction (Oxford University Press).   ******************************   The [...]

  In this thread I have been discussing the wrath of God as manifest in the writings of the Old Testament, in preparation for a later discussion of the divine judgments meted out in the New Testament book of Revelation. In a number of Old Testament narratives God asserts his raw divine power not because he is angry at the disobedience of his people but because he does not want them to be corrupted by outsiders, the “Others” who will lead them astray.  In one sense I suppose God could be said to be angry with these outsiders, but it is a little difficult to see why, since he has not revealed himself to them and they are simply worshiping the gods they and their ancestors have worshiped from time immemorial. But in any event, the outsiders need to be destroyed to prevent them from badly affecting the Israelites.  Nowhere is this theme played out more consistently and graphically than in the book of Joshua, the sixth book of the Hebrew Bible (right after the [...]

As I pointed out in my previous post, the “purity” of Israel was seen as massively important to most of the writers of the Hebrew Scriptures, including the various sources that eventually came to make up the Pentateuch and the other books (Joshua – 2 Kings) that describe the history of ancient Israel.  Nowhere can that be seen more clearly than in narratives about the children of Israel as they journey from Egypt to the Promised Land, after God delivered them from their slavery at the Exodus under their leader Moses. Once Israel escapes (Exodus 1-15), Moses leads them to Mount Sinai, where he is given the Law -- starting with the Ten Commandments (Exodus 20 all the way through Leviticus).  Much of this law is about how Israel is to worship and live, now that they have been chosen by God to be his people.  Once they receive the law, the Israelites journey to the promised land, but they sin en route, and God judges them by forcing them to remain in the wilderness [...]

  In my previous post I began to explain the book of the prophet Amos, the earliest named author of the Bible, in particular his portrayal of the coming “wrath of God.”  My ultimate reason for dealing with Amos is to set up a later discussion of the book of Revelation, where the portrayal of God’s wrath is even more stunning.  But Amos’s message was certainly stunning enough for his original readers, the Israelites living in the northern kingdom of Israel.  Amos was telling them in rather direct and uncomfortable terms that God was soon going to wipe them out in an act of judgment. Prophets were rarely the bearers of good news.  But their condemnations were always brought against people precisely because they had sinned and God was soon to do something about it.  Here is more of how I describe Amos in my book The Bible: A Historical and Literary Introduction, 2nd ed. (Oxford University Press, 2017). ****************************** Amos stresses that the coming suffering for the nation will derive not from the accidents [...]

A few posts ago I more or less backed into a new thread on literary discrepancies found in the Pentateuch, the first five books of the Old Testament; these discrepancies are key to understanding why the books were almost certainly not written by a single person -- Moses, for example -- but are a combination of sources put together centuries after the stories were first placed in circulation. I talk about this in my textbook: The Bible: A Historical and Literary Introduction.  Here is how I discuss the matter there: ****************************** The literary inconsistencies of Genesis are not unique to these two chapters.  On the contrary, there are such problems scattered throughout the book.  You can see this for yourself simply by reading the text very carefully.  Read, for example, the story of the flood in Genesis 6-9, and you will find comparable differences.  One of the most glaring is this: according to Gen. 6:19 God told Noah to take two animals “of every kind” with him into the ark; but according to Gen. 7:2 God [...]