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A Sacred Story Line

What is the first Bible story that you remember hearing? Was it about the Israelites fleeing from Egypt? Samson pulling down the pillars to destroy a multitude of the Philistines? King Solomon deciding which of the two women would get the baby whom they both claimed was theirs? Elijah complaining to the LORD in the wilderness? The angel Gabriel visiting Mary? Jesus healing ten lepers and only one coming back to thank him? One of Jesus’ followers using a sword to cut off the ear of the high priest’s slave? Saul being struck blind on the road to Damascus? Peter being rescued from prison by an angel?

“Yes, that’s the book for me!”

Those of us who grew up in a church were very likely told Bible stories from an early age. If you were, and you were like me, you were not always sure what the story was supposed to be telling us. Part of that uncertainty would have been related to the story’s setting—in a world so far removed in time, distance, and familiar customs from our own. I think the stories that I remembered the most were the hardest to understand—like a plague of locusts or Jesus making mud paste and healing a blind man with it.

What was it like for you to sit down and read something in the Bible on your own for the very first time? Where did you begin, and why? What do you remember about it? What questions did you have about what you read? What motivated you to keep reading—or did you give up out of frustration?

What was it like to sit down and read something from the Bible for the very first time?

My home church had a practice of presenting Bibles to children when they entered the fourth grade. I remember the Sunday morning when I received mine, bound in black faux leather, with a presentation page in the front, a bunch of color maps in the back, and my name embossed in gold leaf on the front cover. It was my very own copy of the Bible, and I was excited! I received it with pride and carefully carried it home after worship. That night, I sat cross-legged in my pajamas on my bed, placing my Bible in front of me on the bedcovers. I was determined to read it—but where should I begin? It seemed to me like cheating to start anywhere other than at the beginning, so I turned to Genesis, chapter 1, and began to read.

Not many days later, I discontinued this nightly effort. I had made it to about chapter 17 or 18 of Genesis, but I could not understand what was going on. The translation was the Revised Standard Version, so it was not a matter of trying to make sense out of old-fashioned words and phrases. No one at church had suggested a place to start or a particular approach; no one oriented me on what I would be reading or how to find answers to my questions; no one checked in with me to see how it was going; and, for whatever reason, it never occurred to me to ask anyone for help. Granted, I was only nine years old at the time, so it was a challenge for a child to understand much about the characters and story lines. Even so, when I put that Bible aside, I quietly felt defeated and guilty.

Something similar happened to me at school in eighth grade. My literature teacher decided to challenge me so, one day in class, she handed me a copy of Tolstoy’s War and Peace to read. I took the book home and plodded away at it for a couple of weeks, getting through about 200 pages of that 2,000-page novel—trying to keep track of characters, story line, events, and plot development. But I was lost, getting more and more frustrated and discouraged. Finally, I gave up and returned the book to her, apologetically—but that was that. I have never tried to read War and Peace again.

The Parts—and the Whole

My motivation to keep reading the Bible ebbed and flowed over the years, until my freshman year of college. There, I ran across a loosely knit fellowship of Christians, who didn’t think much of organized church but were zealous in their faith. Perhaps not surprisingly, I read more of the Bible during college than in all the years before then. Introductory courses to the Old and New Testaments helped to broaden my perspective, but I was not able, at the time, to integrate that college-level learning into my devotional reading. Then I went to seminary, where (after testing out of the required Bible courses) I took classes in 1 and 2 Samuel, 2 Isaiah, John, and 1 Corinthians. By that time, I knew that I was preparing to become a pastor, so I was committed to using scholarly study tools in the service of preaching and Christian education.

You would think that, after all this formal and informal preparation, I would have had a clear and comfortable sense of the flow and overarching coherence of the Bible. At the time, I am not sure that I would have admitted anything to the contrary; however, it was not until some years of preaching were under my belt that it finally felt like I began to “get it.” Perhaps there were professors and course readings along the way that had presented “it,” but that comprehensive picture never, for me, had come into clear focus.

Reading the Bible—and feeling confident that you are following what is happening—can feel like dumping out the contents of a 1,000-piece puzzle and trying to figure out where to begin. But it doesn’t have to be that way. Yes, the Bible is very long and consists of a dizzying number of distinct books and documents. And, yes, the Bible was composed, edited, and re-edited a long time ago, by many different people over hundreds of years, largely from oral traditions, in a geographical location that most people today see only on maps or electronic media. Yet, I am convinced that interested, devoted people can read the Bible and get a lot out of it, once they get oriented. You don’t have to pursue a formal degree in order to understand and appreciate the Bible’s rich, compelling message.

Reading the Bible can feel like dumping out the contents of a 1,000-piece puzzle and wondering where to begin.

My wife Beverly and I have been serving together as pastors for about a decade, during which time I have been regularly leading adult Bible studies. Over the years, I have preached about how Christians are called to find their story within the Bible’s story. More recently, these Bible studies have allowed me to trace the story that holds the Bible together and to demonstrate how it echoes, time and again, from the Old Testament to the New, with fascinating consistency. I call this “The One Great Story,” and it is the reason for this book. It is written for readers inside the church as well as those outside of it, for people of faith as well as people who might simply be curious—or even skeptical. For this reason, I have attempted to avoid “churchy” jargon—so that the story can speak vividly, both to church and non-church folks.

Starting Points

Everyone who writes about the Bible does so guided by some set of assumptions, whether articulated or not. Here are the particular ideas that guide my understanding. The first one I already have begun to unpack: that what gives the Bible its basic integrity is a narrative—a story line. This narrative emerges in the first book, Genesis, and can be traced in its long development through most of the biblical books, all the way to Revelation.1

Second, although this story takes on more and more characters, places, events, and practices, its basic theme and goal do not waver. They concern God’s call to establish a people who will bear witness to who God is and what God is doing in and for the world. The unavoidable flip side of this claim has to do with that selected people, what happened over many centuries as they sometimes trusted God in this call—but often did not. Third, this story, by definition, does not conclude with the last book of the Bible; it is our story too. Christians in all times and places are spiritual descendants of the people of God whom we discover, celebrate, cringe over, and certainly with whom we identify in the pages of the Scriptures.

Consequently, our fourth claim here is that the Bible retains a unique place in the life of believers in all times and places. It is intended to be our companion and our friend. Like any faithful and worthwhile companion, the Bible encourages us as it also sometimes tells us what we do not want to hear! This dual role is what makes the Bible so valuable and reliable.

Fifth and finally, I am aware that many adults in the church are embarrassed to admit that they don’t know much of the Bible, or that they don’t always understand what they read. Some even have concluded that it doesn’t matter much to their faith anyway. This is a sad but all-too-common situation, and I think one of the main culprits is the church’s failure to teach well. I remember once sitting in the board meeting of a large church and hearing one of the officers state quite firmly that he “did not need to go to Sunday school!” No one else in the room offered a response. When congregations get used to biblical ignorance, their life and witness are weakened and in danger of losing direction. The growing number of people in Western societies who show no interest in religion just might change their minds and hearts if they saw churches who engaged the Bible authentically, faithfully, and creatively.

The Nature of the Beast

Approaching the Bible in terms of The One Great Story is a way to overcome our embarrassment of ignorance and confusion, and even our apathy. Before we enter this Story, though, let us make sure that we understand the basic nature of our subject matter. To do so, we want to be clear about some very well-established conclusions about the Bible itself:2

1.The Bible is actually a library. The version that mainline Protestant churches use includes sixty-six “books,” which contain several kinds of literature—legal codes, short stories, songs, poetry, history, letters, oracles, and so forth. Genesis and Exodus, for instance, read quite differently than the Song of Songs or Paul’s letter to the Galatians. Most of these writings also show evidence of having been handled by more than one storyteller, writer, or editor. In its great variety of detail, the Bible can appear daunting!

2.Even though we have inherited this library with its long, complex history, behind most of these texts and documents stands a spoken tradition that is much older and more dynamic. Writing is a fairly recent way for humans to transmit and preserve their community identity. Instead, what has dominated human history is the spoken word—storytelling through word of mouth, recitation, and response—passed on from one generation to the next. We are referring here to the universal phenomenon typically described as “oral tradition.”

Oral traditions still exist today, not only in non-Western or “less-developed” regions of the world but also in rural areas and working-class populations of Western countries.3 Their continued resilience and power can help us appreciate how our biblical ancestors would have preserved their stories, laws, and customs for many generations—initially and for a long time—only by oral practices.4 What we read, therefore, in much of the Bible is derived from oral sources, which eventually were preserved by incorporating them into (and as) written documents. This is the case for both the Old Testament and the New Testament.

3.In spite of all of their diversity, the biblical books have a lot in common with each other in terms of themes and emphases. God is a major player virtually everywhere in the Bible. God’s overall purposes come through consistently, as well as human responses to those purposes—whether faithful or otherwise. God’s actions on behalf of a failed community appear from the very first book (Genesis) to the very last one (Revelation). These common themes will become quite clear throughout this book.

4.The Bible deals with circumstances and issues that were part of life in ancient times. The historically related events of the Bible cover a period of about two thousand years, ending in the late first century of the Common Era (“CE” or “AD”). The world was very different back then, compared to the twenty-first century with its satellites, democratic nations, mobile electronic devices, video conferencing, prevalence of the English language, etc. To read back into the Bible, an awareness—for instance—of specific historical or technological developments from our own time, is to insult the Bible’s own integrity.

5.The cultural world of the Bible is specific to a time and place. It is often referred to, in scholarly studies, as “the Ancient Near East.” This cultural world was affected by the conditions of male-dominated communities, as well as language, land, climate, assumptions about personal identity, and so forth. We do not readily understand, for instance, why blessings are so pivotal from father to son or what legal obligations a master had to his servants. Recognizing its own particular context, as puzzling as it often seems, is a necessary part of understanding the Bible.

6.Biblical writings serve very different purposes than those served by our typically modern assumptions about “objective and value-free” reporting and research. The Bible witnesses to a God who seeks to restore creation from the destructive rebellion of the very humans who were made to care for it. This goal of reclaiming, or “redeeming,” humanity from its errant ways and their consequences becomes evident in The One Great Story at every turn. Details about characters, places, events, and practices are never included as ends in themselves or free of an interpretive framework or aim. Consequently, we today are challenged not to impose our own assumptions about reality and truth on how the Bible expresses itself.

Our typical, modern assumptions about “objective” study do not line up with ancient assumptions that frame biblical material.

7.In addition to all the other ways that the Bible is strange to our world, it was composed in languages that few of us can read. The oldest versions of biblical books were composed in ancient Hebrew or Aramaic (Old Testament) or Koiné—common Greek—(New Testament). Not only this, but it is likely that Jesus himself spoke Aramaic in daily conversation. This suggests that his sayings were translated from Aramaic into Greek by the time they appeared in the four Gospels. Most people on the planet cannot read, write, or speak any of those languages and thus rely on a translation in their own native tongues. Moreover, the process of translation itself still requires some interpretation, since word-for-word renderings sometimes do not convey the meaning of the original.

One example of the challenge inherent in language and understanding is Jesus’ parable of the laborers in the vineyard (Matt 20:1–16). The landowner in the parable hires workers during different times of the day but pays them all the same wage at evening time. When those who worked longer complain, the landowner replies that he has done nothing wrong. His final comment to them comes in the form of a question: “Or are you envious because I am generous” (Matt 20:15b)? Actually, the Greek literally says, “Or is your eye evil because I am good?” At least five other English versions provide very similar translations to the one quoted here.5 Instead of the literal Greek, each translation team chose to provide an interpretation of those Greek words. Verses like this one remind us that there are places in a translation where we must make educated guesses about a text’s meaning—whether the results fit into our preconceived notions or not!

8.Finally, the Bible that we know represents a selection process, or processes, that took place in the mists of history. The sixty-six books that are familiar to Protestants today were not the only ancient literature about the Israelites and Jews, as well as about Jesus and very early Christians. Evidence, from early history and from archeological discoveries, makes it clear that dozens of other documents about biblical characters and events were composed. Some of them survive today in a collection known as the Apocrypha (including such books as 1 and 2 Esdras and 1–4 Maccabees). Others are not extant, such as the Book of the Annals of the Kings of Judah (see, for instance, 2 Kgs 23:28). Some were known in the early Christian centuries, such as the Shepherd of Hermas and the Apocalypse of Peter, and others have been discovered much more recently, such as The Gospel of Thomas. The fact that an extensive list of these books exists suggests that, indeed, our Christian forebears made determinations along the way about the value of particular writings to the instruction and life of the church.

Measured Discernment

This last point, in other words, has to do with the question of “canon,” or standards by which any particular book would have been deemed suitable for circulation in the church. Evidence from history and archaeology is overwhelming: the Bible did not drop out of the sky, as though written by the finger of God, cut and dried, with no grey areas. Protestants, Catholics, and Orthodox Christian traditions still vary in their inclusion of what constitutes “the Scriptures.” Not every ancient book written about Jesus “made it” into the Bible, for example, and neither did every letter attributed to the apostles Peter and Paul.6

Not only this, but our English translations are made from Hebrew and Greek collections that include variations, and sometimes even omissions, between ancient copies of the same texts. Some early Greek versions of the Gospel of Mark conclude with 16:8, while others include twelve more verses. Similarly, the oldest known documents of the Gospel of John do not have the story of the woman caught in adultery (7:53—8:11). In the Old Testament, sometimes a Hebrew word or phrase is not clear, and translators have to rely upon early Greek or Latin translations to render an English reading (see, for example, Ps 16:2, Ps 18:43, Prov 24:21, and many others).

One of my Bible professors in seminary, James A. Sanders, told the story, in class one day, about a rare privilege that he was given. While a young scholar, Sanders became the first person allowed to view the Psalms scroll that was found among the famous collection known as the Dead Sea Scrolls. He had to travel to Israel to do so, and on the ship he memorized all the Psalms in Hebrew, since he would not be allowed to take any books or writing utensils into the room with him. During his examination of it, Sanders discovered that this scroll, dated from the first-century Common Era (that is, “AD”), included one extra Psalm—a total of 151, instead of 150!

Sanders’s discovery is not the only one of its kind, and it reminds us that many decisions have been made across the centuries about what would be considered “in” and “out” of the canon. This matter of standards for what is acceptable as Holy Writ leads us also into the question of “interpretation,” which we have mentioned a little already. In every era (even within the times of the Bible itself), people in the tradition of biblical faith have had to make sense out of what the Bible says. This kind of discernment is not as straightforward as we might wish—in part because every act of reading anything at all involves an attempt to see meaning in something. In our case here, scholarly study of the Bible has helped to open up a greater awareness of the way in which texts and passages were likely to have been understood by their earliest audiences.

Many decisions have been made across the centuries about what is considered “in” and “out” of the biblical canon.

Getting from “There” to “Here”

These scholarly resources are invaluable but, by themselves, they are incomplete. We—and anyone who reads the Bible—interpret what we read out of our own context, too. It should not surprise us that our context (and any context, for that matter) lays a filter or two over the biblical text. What we see in the text through these filters might mislead us. Drastic differences between the ancient Mediterranean world and the modern, scientific world that affects us today illustrate the challenges of interpretation.

Still, one of the primary reasons that we have a Bible is because our spiritual ancestors assumed that the Bible’s witness provides meaning that also is significant in every time and place.7 In this book, we proceed with the conviction that evidence in the Bible itself witnesses to the dominating presence of The One Great Story that we will explore here. The meaning of that Story then offers us here and now a rich, challenging, and invigorating way to discover points of significance from it for our lives and for the life of this world that God still seeks to make whole. We can benefit from scholarship’s capacity for un-covering those earliest meanings from a text, as we seek faithfully to dis-cover how that meaning might speak to our own situation and to the world today.

Thus, this book about the Bible is different from others. It aims to provide evidence for the claim that the Bible became what we know it to be because, across many generations and centuries, inheritors of a particular Story (The One Great Story) recognized its meaning as of major significance for themselves, in their changing circumstances. That recognition led, time and again, to explaining how that Story made sense out of their identity, purpose, and call. We are going to explore that Story here.

The Second Naïveté

I write this book as a seminary-trained pastor and teacher, whose graduate work includes a degree in biblical interpretation. As a young adult, I struggled with matters of biblical inspiration and authority, and I have come out on the other side. My approach assumes that Christians take the Bible very seriously, even as those of us affected by modern, Western ways of viewing the world realize that the Bible speaks out of a quite different world and in a very different way. We impose assumptions on the Bible that did not exist in its time. Our opportunity now is to learn to discern how to throw out the bath water and keep the baby. For instance, Old Testament symbolic exaggeration, or its presentation of violence of many kinds, made sense in that biblical world. Today, these features often leave us scratching our heads or clucking our tongues. It is possible—perhaps necessary—for us to move from innocence through skepticism to what philosopher and theologian Paul Ricoeur called “the second naïveté.”8 This kind of naïveté emerges when we move beyond a simple innocence, beyond even a scary or discouraging skepticism, to engage all the intricacies of biblical study with fresh enthusiasm. Once we get there, the Bible can become for us today an even deeper and more compelling witness to life and faith.

Launching Out

This book does not provide an overview of every book in the Bible. Neither does it assume that every quotation of, or reference to, an earlier section of the Bible in a later section expresses the Story that I seek to illuminate here. Rather, here we favor those parts of any biblical book that reveal or allude to The One Great Story, that contribute to its trajectory throughout the Bible. We seek to discover how that Story itself influences and propels successive storytellers, scribes, and editors as they discuss later characters, places, events, and practices. In this way, The Story itself becomes expanded and developed, while maintaining its theme consistently. This theme, I believe, provides the heart and deepest energy driving the Bible as canon. It is within the energy of this Story that we, in our respective times and places, can discover how it still speaks.

It is within the energy of The One Great Story that we can discover how it still speaks.

We are about to follow a Story that is long and involved! It includes many generations, many characters, a long list of locations, episodes, and developments—not to mention those storytellers and editors who preserved and interpreted various parts of it all along the way. What might not be apparent at first glance is that the most present and dependable of all the characters is not one of the many persons whom you might expect—not Abraham, Jacob, Moses, Ruth, David, Elijah, Isaiah, or Mary. Rather, it is God—a God who initiates things, who responds to what people are doing, who will shift action in order to maintain an overall purpose, and who never gives up.

Because of how The Story begins, we could argue that its most central theme is whether the called, chosen ones will demonstrate their trust in the One who—because of the call given to them—promises, acts, expects, holds accountable, and persists against the odds. Will they “do what is right in their own eyes,” or will they follow the One who made them and keeps giving them one new chance after another? Will they live into the promise given to their ancestors, thus becoming a blessing for themselves and all peoples?

In the chapters that follow, we will see this Story begin, build, shift, peak, falter, start to echo, get revived, make a fresh appeal, and continue to speak. Along the way, we will reflect, now and again, on how the character of this Story is handled from one generation and set of circumstances to another, and how integrally rooted to the whole Story is the chapter that has to do with Jesus as Messiah. Finally, we will identify some of the issues about this Story for its hearers today—issues about interpretation, about the nature of biblical faith, and of life as a community of believers. These issues have a timeless-type quality to them, a feature that will both challenge and encourage us. Hopefully, this journey will allow you to grasp what took that earnest fourth-grader so many years to understand—and then you, too, can find the Bible opening up in fresh and exciting ways.

I invite you now to join me on the journey of a lifetime, a journey of Most High intent and human response. Welcome to The One Great Story!

For the Reader

1.What do you remember about your earliest exposure to the Bible? Was it through children’s songs, a Bible story, or hearing someone read from the Bible? What were your impressions at the time?

2.With what parts of the Bible are you most comfortable—if any? Which parts bother you the most? Why?

3.Have you ever participated in an organized study of the Bible itself or of particular biblical books (as distinguished from devotional studies that draw from biblical stories and verses here and there)? What was that experience like? What did you get out of it? What wonderings did it bring up in your mind and heart?

4.What is easier for you to trust: a passage from the Bible or the evening news? Why?

Suggested Activities

•Without referring to a Bible, write down as many names of characters, events, locations, and customs or practices that you can recall. Allow yourself about 20 minutes to do this. When you finish, review your list and be aware of your thoughts and feelings. What interests you about the Bible? What turns you off? What might you like to understand better?

•Invite a friend to complete this exercise, too, and then share your results with each other. How does the conversation between the two of you help you think about the Bible?

1. More precisely, scholars would argue for the presence of more than one story line or tradition. Walter Brueggemann, for instance, distinguishes between the “primal narrative” that is revealed in Deuteronomy and Joshua, (and then is picked up in the New Testament Gospels), an “expanded narrative” revealed in Gen 12–50 (Abram/Sarai through the death of Joseph), and a “derivative narrative” that includes Judges through Nehemiah and the New Testament Acts of the Apostles. See Brueggemann, The Bible Makes Sense, chapter 3.

This book highlights elements that are common to these three narratives.

2. For a longer discussion of these conclusions, see McDonald, Formation of the Bible, 21–25.

3. For a brief, easy-to-read introduction to oral traditions in today’s world, see Sample, Ministry in an Oral Culture, chapters 1 and 2.

4. See the summary of oral tradition in McKenzie, “The Hebrew Community and the Old Testament,” 1073–74.

5. These other translations include:

—The Message: “Are you going to get stingy because I am generous?”

—New American Bible: “Are you envious because I am generous?”

—New International Version: “Or are you envious because I am generous?”

—New Jerusalem Bible: “Why should you be envious because I am generous?”

—Revised English Bible: “Why be jealous because I am generous?”

6. McDonald, Formation of the Bible, 21–25.

7. The distinction between a text’s “meaning” (which does not change) and its “significance” (the relationship of that meaning to something else) is a critical distinction, one that I have found very helpful for preaching. A scholarly discussion of this argument is found in Hirsch, Validity in Interpretation, (see, for example 8–9, 62–63, and 140–43), which I adapted for my STD dissertation, “The Beckoning of Scripture: Meaning and Significance in Biblical Interpretation.”

8. An academic summary of Paul Ricoeur’s use of the term “second naïveté” is found in Mudge’s essay, “Paul Ricoeur on Biblical Interpretation,” esp. 6, 21–29.