From Malachi to Jesus: The 400 Silent Years in Seven Minutes

Ever wondered what happened between the end of Malachi and the beginning of Matthew (if you primarily know the Protestant Bible)?

Well, here it is, the so-called 400 Silent Years – presented in a heavily slanted view. Conservative Jews at the time of Christ would have been happy with this presentation; hellenistic Jews, Greeks and Romans not so much.

I recorded this years ago in pre-YouTube days while doing a leadership course in Sweden, but I just posted it now online:

New Testament Overview

I recently recommended Yale’s online course on the Old Testament, but it’s all the more heartily that I recommend Yale’s course on the New Testament. Prof. Dale B. Martin has a good sense of humor and is very easy to follow.

Here’s the first class:

Old Testament Overview

This is the first lecture of a course on the Old Testament. Prof. Christine Hayes isn’t always the most exciting of teachers, but she’s very clear, to the point and manages to deliver a lot of good information within a short period of time.

Click here for the video.

And click here for an overview of all twenty-four sessions.

A Painting of 1. and 2. Kings

Here’s another one of my Bible book paintings, this time about 1. and 2. Kings. The picture shows King Salomon and all the kings that came after him.

Salomon was the last king of the united monarchy and – according to Kings – was a major reason the kingdom split after his death. The left side pictures the northern kingdom of Israel, which ended up in Assyrian exile, and the right side pictures the southern kingdom of Judah, which ended up in Babylon.

Flying Snakes in the Bible

In the fifth century BC—a time when several Old Testament books were composed—there lived a Greek historian called Herodotus. His books The Histories are, among other things, an extremely interesting read about the various countries, cultures and exploits of the ancient world. They are a great source of information on a bygone time.

However, I would advise every reader to take certain accounts with a grain of salt. Not everything in Herodotus is accurate by a modern historian’s standard. His books often blend fact with legend—sometimes clearly stating that it is a legend, but at other times not. Some of his accounts are twisted by Greek prejudice; others contain scientific inaccuracies. The modern reader should be aware of these and read the books accordingly.

For instance, in Book II of The Histories, Herodotus reports on the existence of flying snakes in Egypt, getting there from the East. Now as far as we know, there was never any such thing as a flying snake. It must have been a legend which Herodotus believed because he did not know any better. And when, in addition to our scientific knowledge on the non-existence of flying snakes, archeologists tell us that they have found pictures of flying snakes on Egyptian monuments,[1] we have found a probable source for Herodotus’ account.

He simply followed common belief. This is quite excusable, since we often do the same. But it is, nonetheless, (as far as we know) scientifically inaccurate.

If we approach the books of the Bible in the same way that we approach Herodotus and we found a report of flying snakes there, we would have to draw the same conclusion that we did in Herodotus’ case. We cannot have a double standard. We cannot brand Herodotus’ account of the flying snakes as scientifically inaccurate, but explain the Bible’s account away. If one is scientifically inaccurate, so is the other.

Are there, then, biblical references to flying snakes in Egypt? Yes, there are. The prophet Isaiah writes: “Through a land of trouble and distress, of lioness and roaring lion, of viper and flying serpent, they carry their riches on the backs of donkeys, and their treasures on the humps of camels, to a people that cannot profit them. For Egypt’s help is worthless and empty, therefore I have called her, ‘Rahab who sits still’” (italics mine).[2]

From these verses we have to conclude that Isaiah, like Herodotus, held to the inaccurate belief that there are flying snakes. Otherwise he would not have included it in his oracle. This means that if the oracle was inspired by God, then God did not attempt to correct Isaiah’s false assumption about flying snakes.

One could, of course, also endeavor to explain the flying snakes by saying that they were another term for locusts or a similar flying animal. But the main point is that we have to interpret Isaiah the same way that we do Herodotus. And since I, at least, find the explanation most convincing that Egyptian paintings and a common belief suggested the flying snakes to Herodotus, I am forced to adopt the same explanation about Isaiah’s flying snakes.

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[1] See John Marincola’s notes on The Histories by Herodotus.

[2] Isaiah 30:6-7. The Hebrew word which is here rendered “flying” is עוּף (“oof”), which, as far as I understand with my limited grasp of the matter, quite clearly implies that the said serpents had wings. Some translations render it to mean “darting,” but such a translation seems to stem from the presupposition that the text cannot contain any scientific inaccuracies and therefore has to mean something reasonable.

Don’t Buy into the Bible too Easily

In my last post, I said that C. S. Lewis did not begin his journey to faith by trying to substantiate the claim of the Bible; he started with no claim at all and came to believe in the Bible by gradual steps.

It is always better to underestimate the value of a claim and be proven wrong than to be proven wrong at overestimating the value of a claim. This is a principle that most of us know all too well. Since our world is cluttered with advertisements, many of us are well aware that we should be cautious at overestimating the value of a catchy slogan or an incredible promise. If we read an advertisement and think “That’s too good to be true,” most of the time it really is. We still have to read the small print to find out the catch to it.

It is the same with the Bible. Better to start by supposing it is not divinely inspired and to later find out that Got is behind it after all, than to start by believing an outrageous claim only to be disappointed.

If you’re interested, you can read more about C. S. Lewis’ faith in relation to the Bible in The C. S. Lewis Book on the Bible: What the Greatest Christian Writer Thought About the Greatest Book.

When C. S. Lewis Came to Believe in the Inspiration of the Bible

In his  journey to faith, C. S. Lewis did not take the claim of the Bible’s divine origin as the starting point and then tried to substantiate it. His road was the other way around.

The Bible stood on his shelf without any distinction among authors like Homer, Herodotus, Plato, Cicero, Virgil, Plutarch, and the like. The Bible was merely the Hebrew section of Antiquity, without any special claim of divine inspiration on it.

He did not become a Christian by trying to substantiate an outrageous claim, but by beginning with no claim at all and slowly becoming convinced of the existence of God and, several years later, the resurrection of Christ. Only then did he begin to see the Bible as “Scripture.”

The divine inspiration of the Bible came last; it was not C. S. Lewis’ starting point.

Read more about C. S. Lewis’ approach to the Bible in The C. S. Lewis Book on the Bible: What the Greatest Christian Writer Thought About the Greatest Book.

Amos: A Cry Against Social Injustice

A few years ago, a German magazine asked me to write a series of articles on the Minor Prophets in the Old Testament and to draw a picture for each article. Here’s the one about Amos, who lived in the eight century BC and preached passionately against social injustice. I think the picture needs no further explanation:

Painting the Book of Genesis

Several years ago, I started painting pictures of various Bible books. One day, when I’m an old man with a long white beard, I might publish all 66 pictures with written explanations. But I’m still a long way off from completing the entire Bible, so I’ll post a picture every now and then on this blog – without written explanations for now.

Here’s the Book of Genesis:

A Brief History of Interpreting the Bible, Or: The Failure of the Historical Critical Method

Several Christians I know are still overly optimistic about the historical critical method of studying the Bible, without being willing to take the method to its logical conclusion. For those people, Prof. Dale Martin gives something to think about. Here’s a slightly edited transcript taken from one of his lectures:

Before the Reformation, basically the Bible was supposed to mean what the Catholic Church said it meant, what the Pope and bishops said it meant. The authority structure of the church was taken to be the way that you controlled wild interpretations.

People in the ancient world knew that you can interpret a text any way you want to. So what keeps heretics from interpreting this text in false ways? The institution of the church. So Ignatius said that you can’t just interpret scripture any you want to; you must be in agreement with your bishop. The rule of the bishop and the rule of the church was the way to keep control over the interpretation of the text.

Of course in the pre-Reformation time, you did have the rise of humanism and the Renaissance, which started questioning that a bit, and they started going back and looking at the original Hebrew, the original Greek, insisting that you should read these texts in their original languages and not just in Latin. That was before the Reformation. You already had this move toward history and reading the text in historical context in the humanist movement and the Renaissance.

With the Reformation, though, of course you really get it in the sixteenth century with Martin Luther, John Calvin, Melanchthon, different writers saying, “Well, we’re going to throw out this Catholic authority on the text. We’re going to get back to the text itself.” The only authority for the radical reformers was scripture. You know this as sola scriptura, scripture only; scripture only will be the guide for authority for Protestants.

Then they start realizing that different people can interpret scripture differently. They’re very familiar with medieval Christian ways of interpreting scripture to have several different meanings and layers of meanings. And so they say, “The predominant guide of scripture isn’t going to be just scripture; it’s going to be one particular meaning of scripture.” And that’s sensus literalis. The literal sense of scripture is what will be now the guide for the Reformation, not the Pope, not the bishops. Even the bishop must submit to the literal sense of scripture.

Now it’s rather debatable what they meant by “the literal sense” because some of these reformers said that the literal sense of scripture could even be a prophetic sense, so they still said that the literal sense of scripture could be in a Psalm when the Psalm says, “The Lord said to my Lord, ‘Sit at my right hand.’” They knew that the  text would be referring to the Davidic King, but they also said that Psalm also could refer to Jesus, even in its literal sense. The literal sense that they were talking about in the Reformation was not necessarily what we would call the historical critical sense. It was what they took it to be the most fundamental plain sense meaning of the text.

So that was the literal sense. Then again they realized the more they did this that Protestant churches started splitting all over the place. Presbyterians and Calvinists split off from the Lutherans, the Anabaptists split off from the Reformation. And then you have a rise of so many Protestant movements that the idea that scripture alone could settle debates and give you a foundation started becoming questionable.

Beginning somewhat in the eighteenth century but mainly in the nineteenth century, and mainly in German speaking lands, scholars started pushing the historical reading of the text. They said, “We’ve got to get down to what the author meant. What did the historical Paul mean? How did we discover that?” That’s when you have the rise of the dominance of the historical critical method. It was elaborated and invented in the nineteenth century, and in some places it was precisely invented in order to try to make the text of the New Testament and the Bible a firm foundation for doctrine and ethics within Protestantism and within the wide of varieties of different kinds of Protestantism.

Then the last part of this — just in the last, say, thirty years — is that people like me come along and say, “You know, it hasn’t worked. This attempt to use historical criticism, to settle disputes about the meaning of the text, doesn’t work.” Because even the historical critical method can render wildly varying interpretations of these texts.

So you’ve got some people reading Romans 1 as a condemnation of modern homosexuality and thinking they’re doing a good historical reading of this text. You’ve got other people who read the same text, using the same methods of historical criticism, and say, “Are you crazy? He’s not talking about homosexuality, that’s not his concern. It’s talking about idolatry or something else.”

Even scholars using the same method of historical criticism, trained in the same schools, getting degrees from the same places, come up with different interpretations of these texts. And that’s why you have right now a lot of questioning of this method as not supplying the firm foundations that Protestants originally thought it might.