What if I told you that you can take the Bible seriously but not literally? I’m Rev Darcy, a Universalist pastor from rural Alabama, and I’m inviting you on a journey with me through the Bible where we’ll dive deep into all of the drama without the spiritual trauma. Come with me to learn about just how much you are loved, just as you are in this moment, as we spend the next eleven minutes in heaven.
Listen to what the Spirit is saying to you through this sacred word from 1 Thessalonians 5:19-22: “Don’t suppress the Spirit. Don’t brush off Spirit-inspired messages, but examine everything carefully and hang on to what is good. Avoid every kind of evil” (CEB).
Hello Beloved, I’m Rev. Darcy (she/hers), and I am so pleased you’ve decided to spend another eleven minutes in heaven with me today. Today, we will begin the second part of our brief introduction to the Bible that is laying the foundation for our time together each week. The Biblical stories as we know them today in the twenty-first century have their origin in an oral tradition. What do I mean by this? I mean that people told the stories, they didn’t read them. The stories we have were literally passed down through telling not by writing them on scrolls and binding them into books. In fact, while we do have written versions of the Bible— both physical and digital— most of us know the stories because we’ve heard someone tell them not because we’ve actually read the Bible. According to Lifeway Research, a evangelical organization, only half of Americans have read significant amounts of the Bible, with the other half reading select passages and stories, a few sentences, or none of it. According to Pew Research Center, a nonpartisan organization that conducts survey research in the United States, only 45% of American Christians read the Bible at least once per week, with 33% reading it seldom or never. Yet, so many of us know or have a good outline of what the Bible is about and of many of the important stories. Why? Because someone told them to us. As we continue our journey through the Bible, we will look at the transition from oral to written tradition in what Christians called the “Old Testament” but what is more appropriately called the Hebrew Scriptures.
Sermon Note: Want to dive even deeper or check my claims? I recommend The Bible: An Introduction (3rd Edition) by Jerry L. Sumney (ISBN-13: 978-1506466781). Available at your local bookseller and online.
The World Behind the Text: Oral Tradition to Written Text
Okay, let’s look at the world behind the text. The writing down of the Hebrew Scriptures started just before the exile to Babylon of the Judean Israelites, the Jews, from Judah, or the region around Jerusalem, between 597-587 BCE and continued during their return to Jerusalem and Judah around 538 BCE as well as during the development of second temple Judaism as late as 164 BCE (so roughly two hundred years before Jesus was born). Remember, the Biblical stories had existed for thousands of years, but they were finally being written down. The first books to be written were the prophetic books, or what would be the last seventeen books of the Old Testament in the protestant Bible, which were warnings to the Kingdoms of Israel and Judah that they would fall if they didn’t stop their social injustices. They were written between 750 BCE and 450 BCE. Then the Torah, or the first five books of the Hebrew Scriptures were written down during the Judean captivity in Persia between 539-333 BCE or even later between 333–164 BCE according to some scholars. So no, Moses didn’t write the Torah. Any guesses of when the “historical books,” or the books falling between the Torah and the prophets which tell the national story of the people of Israel, were written? Most scholars agree they were also written during the captivity. And the Psalms, or the hymnal used in Temple worship? Well they evolved from the 10th century BCE to the 5th century BCE, meaning King David could have written some of them, since he reigned between the 10th and 9th centuries BCE, but some of them were actually written during the captivity!
The World of The Text: Liberation and Faithfulness
To recap, the Biblical narrative of the Hebrew scriptures spans a period of what most scholars agree represents about 4,000 years but was written down during a very specific 586 years of intense sociopolitical conflict. These stories developed over thousands of years from different semitic dialects and cultures as the people of Israel developed from a loose confederacy of tribes into a single nation and then two separate nations and then as a series of puppet states of various Asian and European Empires. But remember, with the exception of the prophetic books that were written contemporaneously with their authors, these Biblical editors, the priests in captivity who took the oral traditions and wrote them down in Biblical Hebrew, infused them with their own editorial agenda. So the language infused in the Hebrew Scriptures is one of a people enslaved by a foreign power longing for and praying for liberation. It is no accident that there is a common theme in the narrative of the Hebrew Scriptures. God is our benevolent creator who loves us, has made covenant with us, and is with us even as we fall short (sometimes spectacularly) of our part of the covenant, and God will liberate us eventually when we return to right covenantal relations.
The World in Front of the Text: Theological to Historical Narrative and Back
Jews in captivity up to the time of Jesus would have understood clearly the liberation narrative of their Bible. In fact, when the story of the New Testament opens in the Gospels, the Jewish people have not been free or truly sovereign for over 600 years. They received the text as a theological narrative that reinforced God’s faithfulness to God’s covenant with them through Abraham, and they tracked that faithfulness through their national story. Interestingly, many of those in the early days of the Common Era or Anno Domini (years AD) would have most likely read the Bible, that is the Hebrew Scriptures, through a Greek translation called the Septuagint which actually contained more books than are typically included in today’s protestant Bibles (more on that next week). This means that the national story of the people of Israel, the Jews, was available to the entire Empire. And as we will see in the New Testament, there are many instances where the Jewishness of the Gospel story has to be translated for an increasingly non-Jewish audience. As the Biblical story moved further and further away from the time in which it was formally written, we came to see it less and less of a theological narrative about God’s faithfulness to and liberation of God’s people and saw it instead as an historical narrative— something it never actually claims to be. In the twenty-first century, we tend to approach the Biblical stories with an allegedly objective skepticism. As we will discuss next week, we don’t actually have to be on our guard against illogical or factually fallacious claims in the Bible if we approach it as a theological story rather than a scientific or historically accurate narrative.
Conclusion
What do we make, then, of the Hebrew Scriptures in light of the fact that they are a compilation of an oral tradition into a written text with a theological and low-key political agenda? Are these scriptures a reliable source of truth? Are they a reliable revelation about God? I say that if you take it seriously but not literally, then it is absolutely a reliable source of truth and a reliable revelation about God. Taking it seriously involves doing what we are doing now— looking below the surface level to understand the worlds behind, of, and in front of the text. Remember our sacred word from the start of our eleven minutes: “Don’t suppress the Spirit. Don’t brush off Spirit-inspired messages, but examine everything carefully and hang on to what is good. Avoid every kind of evil” (1 Thessalonians 5:19-22, CEB). In order to do this we must approach the Bible freely, letting go of the need to control what it says or to interpret it in an orthodox manner. And we need to approach it responsibly, that is, with a clear understanding of its historical, linguistic, and cultural contexts. I hope that our time together is equipping you to do just that.
Next week on Eleven Minutes in Heaven we will uncover just how the New Testament, or the second half of the Christian Bible, came into being. If you are enjoying Eleven Minutes in Heaven I invite you to subscribe to my Substack. There, you will find my sermon notes for Eleven Minutes in Heaven, other sermons I’ve preached, and my spicy takes on current events in my blog, Tea and Scandal. If you choose to become a paid subscriber, you gain access to additional features and content and ensure that I can continue my public, parish, and community ministries.
Beloved, go about your day knowing you are loved more than you could ever ask or imagine. Be kind to yourself and to one another. Have a snack, and take a nap. Dwell in peace. May it be.
Eleven Minutes in Heaven is © Copyright 2024 Darcy Corbitt, LLC, PO Box 23, Camp Hill, AL 36850. Support Rev. Darcy and gain access to even more content by becoming a paid subscriber at revdarcy.substack.com/subscribe.
All scripture quotations come from the COMMON ENGLISH BIBLE which is © Copyright 2011 COMMON ENGLISH BIBLE. All rights reserved. Used by permission. (www.CommonEnglishBible.com).
Music included in this podcast is by Julius H used under the Pixabay Content License.
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