We were looking at the reason why it is so important to have these biblical narratives, what these stories have to teach us. We saw that these stories capture our imagination in a way that drives home the truth of what the scriptures are teaching. We also saw that these stories are more than simple illustrations of truth, but because they establish or recount redemptive history, they actually establish the truth of God's work on behalf of His people. And the last thing we were looking at is that God is a historical agent, and that the Bible from first to last lays great stress on the fact that God is active in history. At the very beginning, let me just elaborate on that a little bit more, at the very beginning of the Bible, or near the beginning, at least. In Exodus 15, we have the Song of Moses, which lays great stress on God's active deliverance of His people as He brought them out of Egypt and threw the waters safely to escape from those who were pursuing them. Let me just read you a few of the words of Moses as found in Exodus 15, beginning in verse 1. I will sing to the Lord for He is highly exalted. The horse and its rider He has hurled into the sea. The Lord is my strength and my song. He has become my salvation. He is my God, and I will praise Him, my Father's God, and I will exalt Him. The Lord is a warrior. The Lord is His name, Pharaoh's chariots and His army He has hurled into the sea. The best of Pharaoh's officers are drowned in the red sea. The deep waters have covered them. They sank to the depths like a stone. Your right hand, O Lord, was majestic in power. Your right hand, O Lord, shattered the enemy. In the greatness of your majesty, you threw down those who opposed you. You unleashed your burning anger. It consumed them like stubble by the blast of your nostrils, the waters piled up. The surging waters stood firm like a wall. The deep waters congealed in the heart of the sea. The enemy boasted, I will pursue. I will overtake them. I will divide the spoils. I will gorge myself on them. I will draw my sword and my hand will destroy them. But you blew with your breath, and the sea covered them. They sank like lead in the mighty waters. Who among the gods is like you, O Lord? Who is like you, majestic in holiness? Awesome in glory, working wonders. The Lord is a warrior, and a warrior is active. You are not much of a warrior if you never go to battle. God is presented in the Bible as a historical agent, one who is active. The uniform biblical testimony is that God is not only the creator of time in space, which is the stage of history, but he is also an actor, perhaps, the chief actor within that realm. Isaiah 64-4 says this, since ancient times no one has heard, no ear has perceived, no eye has seen any God beside you, who acts on behalf of those who wait for him. God acts. Psalm 66 tells us how we should respond to that. Shout with joy to God, all the earth. Sing the glory of His name. Make His praise glorious. Say to God how awesome are your deeds. So great is your power that your enemies cringe before you. All the earth bows down to you. They sing praise to you. They sing praise to your name. Come and see what God has done, how awesome His works in man's behalf. Over and over this stress is laid upon the fact that God does things. And just as the Bible more or less began with this stress on God's doing things, and we quoted Exodus 15, the Song of Moses. Interestingly, Revelation 15, at the end of the New Testament, refers back to the Song of Moses. They are still singing the Song of Moses at the end of time, beginning in Revelation 15 too. And I saw what looked like a sea of glass mixed with fire, and standing beside the sea, those who had been victorious over the beast and His image, and over the number of His name. They held harps given them by God and sang the Song of Moses, the servant of God, and the Song of the Lamb. Great and marvelous are your deeds, Lord God Almighty. Just and true are your ways, King of the ages. Who will not fear you, O Lord, and bring glory to your name? For you alone are holy. All nations will come and worship before you, for your righteous acts have been revealed. God acts, and He reveals those acts. I might say He interprets His actions for us, not only in the historical books that we're focusing on here, but throughout the Bible. He interprets what He does, but first He does, and then He explains, history as the old adage habit has it is His story. I hate to use that because it's overused, but maybe some of you haven't heard that. History is His story, and of course this story finds its climactic chapter in Christ, and that leads us to our next point. Another reason that we concern ourselves with the Old Testament histories is that the Old Testament reveals to us who Christ is. Jesus is the climactic chapter of a much larger story. If history is the stage of God's self-revelation and of His mighty deeds, and if the mighty deeds include acts of deliverance for His people, it should not surprise us that the Old Testament historical narratives provide essential background for understanding Jesus. After all, in Jesus we have the quintessential self-revelation of God and the supreme act of salvation. Jesus is that to which all of that other has been driving. But you may ask if Jesus is the climax of redemptive history, doesn't knowledge of Jesus then obviate the necessity of the other? Why do we have to bother reading the preceding chapters if really Jesus is where it's at? Well, the climax, the end of the story is, of course, extremely important. If you're watching a movie, you hate to have to leave before the end of the movie. You may come in a little late to the movie and still kind of get into it and figure out most things and if it's not a very complicated movie, you may be able to understand the climax pretty well. But if you only catch the last quarter of the movie, even though you may be excited by it and so forth and so on, there's going to be a lot that's puzzling to you and a lot that you miss. Jesus is the climax of the story, but it is a much larger story and so we concern ourselves with that which has gone before in order to understand who Jesus is. Chris Wright, whom I mentioned before, who wrote the book Knowing Jesus Through the Old Testament, is principal of All Nations Christian College in England. And in his book, he insists that, and I quote him here, if we were to jettison the Old Testament, we would lose most of the meaning of Jesus himself. For his uniqueness was and is built upon the foundation of the uniqueness of the story that prepared for him. Now, there may be a slight bit of forgivable overstatement in that particular quotation from an Old Testament scholar. But I think he's on to something. Why does Chris Wright say this? For one thing, it is important to recognize the place that the Old Testament, what we call the Old Testament, played in the life of Jesus. The Old Testament was his Bible. It wasn't his Old Testament. It was his Bible. It was the Bible that he read. And this leads us to the next point that Jesus himself learned from the larger story. Chris Wright puts it this way in the introduction to his book. I find myself aware that in reading the Hebrew Scriptures, the Old Testament, I am handling something that gives me a closer common link with Jesus than any archaeological artifact could do. For these are the words he read. These were the stories he knew. These were the songs he sang. These were the depths of wisdom and revelation and prophecy that shaped his whole view of life, the universe, and everything. This is where he found his insight into the mind of his father, God. Above all, this is where he found the shape of his own identity and the goal of his own mission. In short, the deeper you go into understanding the Old Testament, the closer you come to the heart of Jesus. How do you respond to a quotation like that? When I first read it, I found it a little bit troubling. I think maybe my understanding of Jesus was beginning to grow a little doccetic. That is, I was perhaps stressing the divinity of Christ or the deity of Christ at the expense of his humanity. I was sort of not ready to hear about Jesus learning a whole lot. You think of God as knowing everything all the time in every way, but there's something mysterious about the incarnation that I will not try to solve for us or fully explain because I don't think I would be able to hear. Now, but there is something in the life of Jesus and in the incarnation that involved him in a learning process, just as we assert that he was God in his entirety. He was a hundred percent God. He was a hundred percent human as well, yet without sin. But the Bible itself in Luke 252, it says, and Jesus grew in wisdom and in stature and in favor with God and men. We're talking about God incarnate and we're saying that he grew, not just physically and stature, but in wisdom. Now, we tend not to think in those terms unless we're processed theologians or something in God is in process or whatever, but I'm not in the hope not too many of you are processed theologians. I hope not any of you are processed theologians, but I do think we need to understand what Chris Wright is saying here that in reading the Old Testament, we are reading a book that Jesus studied and from which he learned and with which he astounded the religious teachers when he was 12 years old. I don't think it was simply, you know, miraculous infusion of wisdom and knowledge in Jesus. I think he learned by the power of the Holy Spirit and by diligent study of what was his Bible. Now, I'm not for a moment suggesting that Jesus began reading this book and decided, hey, that Messiah thing sounds cool. I'd like to be the Messiah, you know. Because he obviously read the Messianic portions a good deal better than many of his contemporaries and he realized that it wasn't simply cool. He read the royal aspects, but he was well aware of the suffering servant aspect of what it would mean to be Messiah. I think he would have had a sense of who he was not only from what his mother would have communicated about the unusual circumstances of his birth. I don't think she would have kept that secret. It says she pondered these things in her heart and I think she would have imparted them to him as he grew and also by virtue of his innate sense of being the son of the father. We can't claim to know the ins and outs of all of that, but whatever he knew about his identity, I think he began to understand what all that implied as he read about who the Messiah was to be in the Old Testament. Yes, raining king, but also and first and foremost, suffering servant. And so it's no wonder that after his baptism, when God quoting both the royal passage, Psalm 2 and suffering servant passage, Isaiah 42 pronounced upon him as the spirit came upon him like a dove at the time of his baptism, God said, this is my beloved son in whom I am well pleased. Jesus would have heard Old Testament echoes. Now we don't tend to hear them, but he would have heard royalty and suffering. And it was right after his baptism that it says he was driven into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil, tempted to do what, to give up his calling, to give up his destiny if we can use that term to worship Satan and be gained the kingdoms of this world that way. Jesus learned more fully what it meant to be Messiah by reading the Bible, his Bible, which is the Old Testament. And it's exciting to think we can in some way retrace his steps. And as we do that, we're reading the words he read, singing the songs he sang, thinking at least in part some of the thoughts he thought, and thus we come to understand him better. Right summarizes his book in this way. The Old Testament tells the story which Jesus completed. It declares the promise which he fulfilled. It provides the pictures and models which shaped his identity. It programs a mission which he accepted and passed on. It teaches a moral orientation to God in the world which he endorsed, sharpened, and laid as the foundation for obedient discipleship. Now that's saying a lot in little. In fact, he says all of that throughout his book. And that's just the summary. But I would suggest that this is reason enough for us as Christians to study the Old Testament and to give the study of the Old Testament a very high priority in our own lives and our life of discipleship to draw us near to the heart of our Savior. There is one more reason and this is a far more mundane reason for involving ourselves with the Old Testament narratives. But I think in doing justice to the question I need to mention it. And that is that these stories, these historical narratives are often in the center of debates over biblical authority. And this is for a couple of reasons. Historical narratives can at times, not invariably, but can in principle be checked. I think you probably know what I mean by that. But it's not surprising that because of this aspect, if they can be checked out, that they often lie at the heart of debates about biblical authority. Historyography, that is the writing of history, claims to make reference to the real world. It is a kind of writing that for all its artistry and for all of its crafting is constrained by a point of reference outside the text, unlike fiction which is unconstrained. A fictional writer could write realistically, but here she is unconstrained by any real events in the real world. The author can make up whatever world he or she desires in fiction. But in historiography, there are points of reference and the history. Whatever its artistry and crafting and the eloquence with which the story is told has to bear the real events in mind and be constrained by them. This claim means that the truth and accuracy of these narratives can in some instances at least be checked. Now we can't go back and rewatch history except in the day and age of video cameras. And there we can go back and rewatch certain historical events. And still, there's debate over the interpretation of those events. I remember when we were in England back in the Olympics days, this has got to be a lot of years ago now. When was it that Zola Bud and Mary Decker slainy collided? 84, thank you. In a big class like this, I can always count on someone to fill in the gaps of my minimal knowledge. But I remember the night that that happened. I was watching television in England and the two collided and the commentators immediately said, Bud cut in on her. Zola Bud cut in on her. They soon and for those of you who didn't see it, this is a barefoot runner. I think from South Africa who had gotten a British passport in order to run. And there was a collision. Mary Decker, who was America's golden girl, as they began to call her, fell and was lying there weeping in her husband to be came out and pick her up. And as all very sad, Zola Bud went on to finish the race and she herself was in tears. But there was a collision. And initially the interpretation of that collision was Zola Bud cut in on her. But then I think the British commentators began coming to their senses and thinking, that is not a convenient control of this. Because we have kind of, there's been some dispute about her getting a passport so quickly when other people are in line and so forth. So I watched over the next 24 hours as the same event, which was on videotape from various angles and could be watched by anyone, was interpreted in various different ways. And soon it went from Zola Bud cutting in on Mary Decker to Mary Decker being given fair warning and failing to give way. Same event, you can rewatch it over and over again. And yet the interpretation is disputed and who has the authority to interpret it? Well, I don't know. I don't know who's right. I don't know what exactly happened there, even though I can keep watching it. So in a sense what we have in the Bible is interpreted history. Historography is always interpreted. But it is constrained by real events. So there are points of contact which can be checked. If you could prove that there was no collision, then whatever interpretation is being given to that would be fallacious because the event never happened. So these historical narratives often are front and center in debates over biblical authority because some of them at least can be checked out. They can be cross-examined as it were, like a witness on the stand can be cross-examined. I don't know if you're watching the OJ Simpson trial. I'm certainly not. It goes on and on. I figure it would be like a soap opera. You can pick up six months later and probably the same things are still happening. So I'm not coming on that, but we're well aware of what happens in trials that a person on the stand will be cross-examined and the person doing the cross-examination may take several different tasks. He may try to find or she may try to find internal inconsistencies in what the witness is saying. If the witness's story is contradictory, internally contradictory with itself, then that witness is discredited. So one way that biblical narratives are inspected is in terms of internal consistency. And if they can be shown not to make sense as a story, then certainly we wouldn't want to believe them as history. Another way that they are checked out is through external checks. How do they square with archeological discovery? How do they square with what other material evidence can be found? How do they square with inscriptional evidence, with other literary evidence? And so in many different ways, one can make an attempt at least to check the veracity, the truth of historical narratives. Now, if they can be checked, then they also can be challenged. And that's the next point. Take the matter of coherence, this internal consistency or coherence of a story. A majority of scholars today and for the last almost a century will insist that the story of Saul's rise to power does not make sense. It can't be read as a sensible, sequential account of what might have happened. It doesn't even make sense as a story. And thus, if it doesn't make sense as a story, we don't even have to entertain the question of whether it is historical. Now, my own study of Saul has led me to believe that it does make a great deal of sense as a story. Later in this course, we'll go through some of that and we'll spend some time with the Saul narrative for various different reasons, but part of which is to show that what on the face of it may seem not to make sense. If we look at it more deeply and study it for a while and pick up on certain key elements, suddenly we begin to see, hey, the problem was ours all along. It seemed like a story that didn't make sense and now I realize it was my problem all along. Now, I realize that not everyone will agree with my interpretation of Saul and there may even be some of my fellow scholars that someday see these tapes that are being made and they may not agree. But I'll simply be presenting what I regard as a coherent reading of the Saul narratives and seeing if you agree. See, and of course you're getting a grade in this course, so you'll have to agree, but later you can disagree. So one way to check the witness, the biblical testimony is to say, is it internally consistent? Does it make sense with itself? If it doesn't, then we've got a problem historically, that is taking it on its own terms as it should be understood as ancient historiography, applying to it appropriate standards given what it is. Another way of challenging these texts is, as I said before, with material evidence or external evidence, external to the biblical text, archaeology, for instance. Parade example that is often cited is the issue of the city of Jericho and the capture defeat of the city of Jericho, supposedly in the time of Joshua. Now, you will hear people citing various different views on the archaeology of Jericho. Some will say that Jericho was not even inhabited at any time when Joshua could have invaded the land of Israel and us. Of course, Joshua could not possibly have captured the city of Jericho in the way that the Bible describes or in any other way if the city was not inhabited. This is often cited as a parade example of how the Bible and archaeology disagree. So scholars, one of whom I will quote, without naming him, one scholar says that we have to, on the basis of Jericho alone, redirect our thinking about the Bible. Now, my tendency in those cases is to take a couple of steps back and ask myself, have I rightly understood the archaeology? Because you see archaeology, the artifacts themselves and the strata that we look at and so forth, do not present themselves with museum labels. I know when you go in a museum, you always see a label that explains what this artifact is and when it came from and this and that and the other thing. However, archaeology, those do not come up out of the ground with the artifacts. And so as Frederick Branford and others have been pointing out recently, and it's an obvious point that I think many have understood, archaeology itself requires interpretation. So the minute you begin to talk about what you've dug up and what your results are, you are providing an interpretation of that evidence. And so recent work on the archaeology of Jericho is finding some very widely differing interpretations. And in fact, a fellow named Bryant Wood is reassessing the evidence from Jericho in the published results of Kathleen Kenyon, who is one of the major archaeologists to work at that site. And he is saying some things that really turn this parade example on its head. And so we'll have a chance to look at that kind of thing as well. But I just wanted to stress that these stories, these histories are important not only for what they can do in terms of drawing us into them, capturing our imagination, driving home the truth in a way that would not happen if we're just presented with a proposition. Not only do they do that, but they also recount redemptive history. They tell us what God has been doing right along and thus what we can expect that he is doing in our lives. And they reveal who Christ is, they show how he was foreshadowed and how preparation was made for his coming in the Old Testament, how he is the fulfillment of a promise that was given. And then also they are important just on this basis of apologetics, of being able to defend or even assess the authority of the Bible. Because if the Bible proves to be inaccurate where it is making historical truth claims, now we need to be careful that we are rightly reading the text and see is the text actually claiming that this or that other thing happened in history. And we need to bear in mind the way in which historiography represents or depicts the past. It's not a video recording, it's not a tape recording. There are creative choices made by historians in terms of how they present the past. But given all that, once we determine that the Bible has made a historical truth claim, if we discover that that historical truth claim falls and if enough of those fall, then we have to begin to worry about our faith in this Bible as God's Word. I got a letter just recently. In fact, yesterday from a friend of mine, a fellow scholar that I ran into in Cambridge this past summer, I had the privilege of being over there for the 15th Congress of the International Organization for the Study of the Old Testament, which sounds terribly impressive and indeed I was impressed by the people that were there. But it was fun to get to be there. I gave a short paper as opposed to the big papers that imported people gave it. I gave a short paper which was also fun. But I ran into this fellow and he wrote me a note just yesterday. It arrived and he said just a quick note to apologize for missing you in Cambridge. He had said that he'd like to get together in chat about the art of biblical history, which he had read. And I'll skip the reasons why we didn't meet. He had to leave a day early and wanted to get back to his family and such. And then he says, anyway, it was a pleasure to see you again. I would still enjoy chatting with you about your art of biblical history, which you were kind enough to send me. I struggle. Now this is a scholar speaking who teaches at a college, teaches religion, and he says, and I admire his tender here, and my heart goes out to him and people like him. I struggle with matters of faith and history. Like you, I think history is fundamental for biblical faith. It's just that the evidence against the historicity of certain events seems compelling to me. So where does that leave me with a lot of questions? Perhaps we'll have a chance to talk in Philadelphia, best wishes on your new term, which I guess would include this class, which is starting tonight. But I've received a couple of letters from other scholars teaching out and about who say history is important for faith, but my faith is in crisis because I can't leave the history. Now, I would not for a moment say to my friend whom I esteem very highly, all sit down with me, and I can explain all the questions and answer all the difficulties and so forth. But I would sit down and perhaps encourage him by saying, you know, I work for several years on the rise of Saul, which is regarded as a story that doesn't make sense. And the more I studied it, the more I discovered it does make sense. Now it took me several years to figure out how it makes sense. But that encourages me when I encounter other things that are perplexing in Scripture to think the problem is not the Bible or that story that I'm reading. The problem is probably in my lack of understanding. So it's sort of a matter of which side you want to tip the scales on. And I would my desire would be to encourage him to begin to give the Scripture more the benefit of the doubt and keep looking for answers rather than saying, I find the evidence compelling. I'm not sure it is. So we'll be looking at those kinds of things and I give that just as it became yesterday, I thought I'd just throw that in as an example, a real life example of how this continues to be an issue. And what's an issue for people who teach religion in colleges and seminaries becomes an issue for people who are pastors and teachers and people like you who teach others and thus it becomes an issue for all Christians. So it's not just a mind game we're playing. It's something very important that we'll be dealing with this term. Now any questions in our last couple of minutes being generous with the clock? Anyone have a question they want to address? I would encourage you to look at the syllabus in terms of what you should prepare for next week. Remember that since some of the books are not in, I will not be, I will not live up to my reputation as I might as well tell you I'm sometimes called the Smiling Assassin. That was only a joke when it was first initiated and I always promise that I can smile less if you don't like it. But I won't be too tough on you next week if you don't have everything read, but do by all means be reading something. If you don't have the book that is assigned for reading, dive into the Bible, begin working on one of your outlines so that you are working this week and not piling up this week's work for another time. Thanks for your patience. See you next week or in between time.