Bible (Re)Beginnings: History and Story Amos 7:7-17; Psalm 119: 1-11; 103-105
Is the Bible History? A lot of people want to know the answer to that question.
Let’s start with what we mean by history. Some of us, when we think of history, think of a series of facts: dates, reported and verified occurrences, archaeological finds, eyewitness accounts, etc. that when put together make up history. This is history as a science. However, there’s a reason that history is now seen as part of the arts or humanities. History involves interpretation, which requires empathy and imagination. So, for example, let me give you some bald facts:
1914: Archduke Franz Ferdinand was killed in Sarajevo on June 28 by a Serbian nationalist; Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia on July 28, marking the start of what we now call the First World War. In 1918, on November 11, the armistice was signed, and the War was considered officially ended.
Those are undisputed facts. But why the assassin did what he did, why the Austro-Hungarians and then Germany responded as they did, why the rest of the world got involved – that is interpretation. The question could be asked: “Did the World War end then, or were World War II, the Cold War, the splitting up of Eastern Europe, the wars in Asia, Europe, and the East all part of that first war?” You see? History requires interpretation. So even the question, “Is the Bible history?” may not mean what we first think.
Is the Bible a book of verifiable facts? Nope. There is very little scientific, archaeological, or literary evidence for most of what happens in the Bible. For example, there’s no evidence that a person named Moses ever existed, or King David, or most of the people of the Hebrew Bible, at least up until the time of the Assyrian and Babylonian invasions. Some even say there’s no evidence Jesus even existed, though that is very much a fringe position, and most scholars accept the evidence that he did.
So is the Bible history? Well, yes and no.
Let’s look at the Hebrew Bible reading given us this morning. Amos is a missionary prophet of the 8th century before Jesus, leaving Judah to go north to Israel. He has a dream of God holding a plumb line – which is the ancient equivalent of a level to make sure things are straight. Carpenters and masons still use them today. It’s a picture of God’s message that the people really need to straighten up and follow God’s ways, because the way they’re going leads to disaster.
Was someone around when Amos told of his dream, writing the story down? Perhaps it was written as part of the chronicles of the kings – though that seems a bit unlikely, as Chroniclers tend to tell stories that flatter their rulers, rather than the other way around. Perhaps Amos, like Isaiah, had a scribe who wrote down his prophecies. Or maybe these stories were transmitted through oral history. We don’t know.
But if we recall that these stories and sayings were collected during the Exile in Babylon – a verified event that shook the ancient Jews to their foundations – then we might understand where this vision came from, or why it was considered significant. War came, and destroyed the royal household, and devastated the land. In 732 the house of Jeroboam II, the royal descendants of King David in the northern kingdom of Israel, l was defeated, thousands were exiled and in effect Israel no longer existed after 722 BCE when Jerusalem was captured by Sargon II of Assyria. Less than 150 years later, Judah was overrun by the Babylonians and Jerusalem was burnt to rubble in 587 BCE.
So, are Amos’ words a true prediction of an actual historical event, or is it a reading back into history of an event that the exiled people knew had come to pass? Perhaps it’s a bit of both! That’s why the question of whether the Bible is history or not is so complex. We’ll talk more in the coming weeks about the different kinds of literature in the Bible and the different voices and versions we hear in the multiple books that make up this sacred collection.
One thing we know for sure, is that this story mattered to the people who had seen or heard stories of their devastated land. They mattered to a people trying to figure out who they were without their temple and the land they believed was promised to them by God?. Why were they in this situation? According to some of the prophets of this period, the first crime against God was idolatry – the worship of golden idols, trees, statues, or anything else that was not God. But the prophets also agree that one of the greatest crimes was economic inequality. “One of God’s chief complaints in the book of Amos is about wealth inequality, whether wealth was built dishonestly or not. The wealthy are condemned for “selling the needy for a pair of sandals” (2:6) and for cynically using garments held in pledge as mattresses for forbidden sexual acts (2:7-8). Trampling the needy and preventing periods of rest by having perpetually open markets with predatory exchange rates (8:4-6) are specifically condemned. But even when there is no predatory or unjust economic activity mentioned, merely being rich in a time in which poverty exists is an unthinkable affront to the God of justice, and to poor neighbors (6:1, 4-6). Those who are carefree and live in comfortable homes would have done better to mourn the ruination of their society because of economic inequality”. [Kathryn M Schifferdecker, Professor of Old Testament at Luther Seminary on enterthebible.org]
So whether or not the actual factual events unfolded quite this way, the story carries a message. It carried a message to the ancient Israelites, as they asked themselves how God could have let such a disaster fall upon them. It carries a message to us now. Do nations fall apart when there is too much disparity, when the poor are desperate and the rich profit without thought for others? I think the answer is obvious, given our daily headlines.
But what is hopeful is that the exile in Babylon was a time of collecting Jewish stories, texts, chronicles, first into what became called the Pentateuch – sometimes called the five books of Moses – with later books being added. It was a time of spiritual reformation, of discovering what it meant to be a people away from the land and the temple that had defined them up to that point. We 21st Century Christians are in the process of finding out who we are, without the cultural and religious supremacy we have taken for granted for so long. In times of chaos, reformation often begins.
Why I wanted to spend some concentrated time on the Bible and why and how we read it, is because in churches like ours, the Bible is too often considered something only “experts” can understand. All of the education that went to putting current Biblical scholarship into the hands of the people, especially from the 1960s on, seems to have led to fewer people reading the Bible, rather than more! It’s as if, if we can’t read every word as fact, people feel like this book is beyond them.
I can understand the Bible can be intimidating and puzzling to the new reader, and that’s why Bible study is so important. But there is new scholarship and new interpretation coming out all the time – and it can actually be really exciting to find out what people are saying. There’s so much good Biblical scholarship on-line, free for the finding; we just need a little help to “separate the wheat from the chaff” – to use a Biblical metaphor.
Weekly we have evidence that despite thousands of years of time passing between the Bible’s formation and our lives, the Bible remains relevant – perhaps because people are people, our motivations tend to remain the same, and we’re not always all that good about learning the lessons of history OR story, so we need to hear them again. Don’t let this weird and wonderful Bible be taken out of your hands. Don’t let it become the sole property of people who use it to hurt or harm others. This is your Bible, as much as it is anyone else’s.
After church on Sunday’s I’ll be sitting at a table at coffee time, and anyone who wants to continue the conversation is welcome to do so…or, you can just come keep me company! I hope that over the course of the summer, your ability to read the Bible on your own, to appreciate all that it has to offer, will increase. May God’s word be a lamp to our feet, and a light to our path. Amen.
