The question that people have raised loudest and longest as I've blogged my way through the Bible is whether the Old Testament God is the same as the New Testament one.
I firmly believe that he is the same God, but I also believe that people's understanding of his nature changed radically during the course of Bible history. At first, it's clear that the Israelites thought of him as their tribal god, on a par with Baal, or Dagon, or any of the other gods worshipped by other nations. Take a look at this passage, where the Philistines are fighting the Israelites, and you'll see what I mean.
1 Samuel 4:1-8
Now as it happens, having the ark of the covenant in Israel's camp didn't help them win, and it was the start of a painful lesson that just having the signs of God's presence with them didn't guarantee them blessing. They had to behave rightly as well.
By the time of Jonah, there is the first hint that the Israelites thought of their God differently. He wasn't just their God, he was THE God, the creator of heaven and earth. Here's the post I made when we reached this moment.
Day 174: Jonah
Ok, so if that's the first signs of a new understanding, by what time does it come to full flower? Fairly quickly, in my opinion, after the almighty shock of the exile. And it comes through the mighty prophecy of Isaiah.
Isaiah was a prophet of the exile. Or at least the second half of the book that bears his name was. That doesn't fit with the chronology of the reading plan I used, which placed him earlier, in the last days of Judah before the exile. The Isaiah of those times was a palace insider, living in the court of King Uzziah and ending up as an old man advising Uzziah's great-grandson Hezekiah.
Hezekiah beat off the attacks of the Babylonians - just - but 150 years later, Jerusalem did fall, and with it fell all of Israel's confidence.
Into that despair a new voice takes up the prophecy in Isaiah, saying "Comfort, comfort my people." (Isaiah 40:1). There are prophecies of new hope about a God who has not been defeated, whose love and mercy are unquenched, who will come to rescue his people.
So much of what we Christians understand about God comes from the poetry of this nameless person, who just tacks his (or maybe her?) writings on to the end of the book of Isaiah. Here's an example of how great and wonderful these words are:
Day 194: God's people comforted
Not a god of vengeance, not a god of wrath and destruction: a God of power, yes, but of mercy and love as well.
Deutero-Isaiah, Son of Isaiah, Isaiah the Sequel, call him/her what you will, tells us what to believe.
Hi Nick
ReplyDeleteGuess who? Yes James, It had to be really! Ok i understand what you are saying the progression of understanding about God. Early on the knowledge is small then grows into a fuller picture as time goes on. But here's the problem that I observe. If from a modern viewpoint of bible critisicm, knowing that the torah was written earlier, than the prophets later, why do Christians obey laws from an obviously more primitive time when it is obvious that those who wrote it were from a tribal bronze age people? How can the truth of every part of the bible be true if we know that the earliest parts were written by a people with no more than a basic knowledge of the universe, and who clearly saw natural disasters and plagues as acts of a vengeful God? Worst of all we see prejudice towards certain people justified by scripture from a time that God was viewed in a distorted way? From what I see, shouldnt the new, more fuller view of God, ie the New Testament, superseed the old? If as you argue, God hasnt changed, but merely our understanding of him, why do we need the earliest and most frankly, barbaric parts when we know that view of God is wrong? Im starting to get my head around this Old/New testament God issue, but find I cant take the Old testament seriously when I know its source. Phew! Lucky this isnt the 16th century or I probably would have been trialled as a heretic! Would do you think?
Good stuff, James.
ReplyDeleteI suppose I think that yes, to an extent the early views of God in the Old Testament have been superseded. We no longer feel it necessary to keep all the purity laws in Leviticus, for example, and we don't justify the invasion and displacement of peoples from their ancestral lands just because God told people long ago to do it in one particular time and place.
But we still read and learn from stories as old as Job and the Creation myth, which to my mind is far more deeply true than being just plain, boringly factual.
I'm happy to say "God created human beings in his image" even though I'm quoting the first chapter of the first book of the Bible.
And don't forget, we haven't arrived. We don't understand God fully yet. Generations to come might view us as barbaric and uncivilized as bronze age tribesmen!
I still marvel at the wonderful insights those bronze age people give us into the eternal God. Given how much wiser we should be than them, isn't it a shame that we haven't made more progress?
Hi Nick
ReplyDeleteThe thing is that Job and the creation myth are not factual, but more poetic, i understand that, but there millions of Christians who believe that these things are scientific truth and fact because they believe that the whole bible is the indisputable word of God. Yet we have three hundred years of scientific method to show this is not so and so it raises that question if some parts of the bible are inaccurate, what else isnt? This is an arguement I have encountered. I do concede your point that some parts of the old testament point toward God but I feel that large parts do more for the cause of unbelief than for God, such as the Book of Joshua. However I equally agree that recent history shows that perhaps when we abandon God greater atriocities than appear in the book of Joshua occur such as the Holocaust. Either way perhaps knowing the source of the scriptures is the best way to counter attacks against God from athiests. After all at least I can honestly say I struggle with the Old teastament too!
So it does down to what we believe the Bible is. Do we believe it's something like the Qu'ran to Muslims - dictated by God to Mohammed, therefore perfect in every detail, not to be altered or even translated out of the sublime Arabic poetry in which is was written?
ReplyDeleteNo we don't.
Many Christians say the Bible is the inspired word of God, and therefore inerrant (which means accurate, true and reliable in every detail). I personally accept the first half of the previous sentence, but not what comes after "therefore."
When we read the Bible we hear God speaking to us (at least potentially). In that sense it's the Word of God.
God breathed through the lives of the patchwork of writers who first wrote the words that make up this book, and in that sense it's inspired.
But it doesn't have to be literally true. Does the parable of the Good Samaritan lose any of its force if there never was an actual, literal Good Samaritan?
Those who want to cling on to the inerrancy of scripture will regard such thinking as the thin end of the wedge. If you admit that one part is flawed, they'll say,you lose your faith in all of it.
My response is: Grow up. Deal with the fact that the Bible is more complicated than that.