Luke: Launch-Pad Gospel

39th Day of Easter,
Wednesday, April 30

Luke:
Launching Pad Gospel

Luke starts out with the rest of the Christmas stories missed in Matthew. We get Elizabeth and Mary, John the Baptist cousin of Jesus, the shepherd and angels, Simeon and Anna, and the 12 year old prodigy Jesus. These opening chunks are poetic, as if from a different source. Notice the geneology, going all the way back to Adam to include all humanity, not just to Abraham and the people of God.

Luke’s resurrection stories are different too, the beloved Emmaus road story, with fish eating and bible teaching, then the ascension (which will be reprised in volume 2 of this gospel, Acts). The whole tale is garnished freely with angels.


In between the open and close here, I see ‘side A’ and ‘side B’ in Matthew. Jesus starts ‘out there’ as infant, child, then as Nazarene itinerant in 4:14 to 9:50, when Transfiguration occurs, earlier than a halfway point. From then on, Luke’s Jesus is heading for ascension, not just death, being led up to Jerusalem, lifted up on a cross, and then up into the sky in Side B. Along the way in Side A, he sends out the 72 as franchisees, teaches Mary and Martha, and debates Pharisees. Along the way, he mixes promise and threat (12, 13), draws then crosses class lines in mixed company (14-16), and showed and told tales of faith and power, prayer and spirit (17-19). The passion and trials are faster than in Matthew.

Some readers recognize Luke as an ‘outsiders gospel’, addressing rich and poor, women and those in need of healing, with angels, Spirit, and prayer. The disciples’ mission shares Jesus’ own work more clearly. Some call this a ‘preacher’s gospel’, with favorite nuggets of story and parable for every occasion. The fight with the devil was militant, magical, and mystical.

Luke’s Jesus is a universal Son of Man, a Son of Adam, a teacher and healer with a mind of his own, knowing his mission, relying on spiritual power and prayer, and keeping fewer secrets than in Mark. This Jesus is fiery and combative, but forgiving and gentle towards the weak.

We call this a ‘launching pad’ for the movement of the Spirit, laid out in the Acts of the Apostles. Where Mark’s Jesus seemed to crash into the wall of the cross n stop, Luke’s Jesus seems to take off from the cross, ascending with the Spirit in the world. For us Gentiles, this seemed to be an open and accessible gospel, compared to Matthew.


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Matthew: The Church's Gospel

38th Day of Easter,
Tuesday, April 29

Matthew:
The Church’s Gospel

I call Matthew the ‘church’s gospel’, or the ‘big tent gospel’. This version starts with the Christmas story, and ends with full resurrection resolution and a ‘Great Commissioning’ sending us off to save the world in the name of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Like Mark, at least that last bit looks like something tacked on later to round out the story more nicely.


Matthew organizes Jesus’ geneology to sort the story as ’14 generations from Abraham till David, 14 generations from David to Exile, and 14 generations from Exile to Jesus. This is a story that makes sense of and completes the story of the people of Israel. Notice the inclusion of women and scandals in the genealogical list.

Most of you could browse through the Sermon on the Mount, in chapters 5 to 7, and find a sense of familiarity. How do those comforting messages of Jesus strike you now? For me, the counsels of perfection are pretty steep, and I’m tempted to generalize in with Monty Python into ‘blessed are the cheese makers’. It’s only 3 chapters, out of 28!

The story builds in conflicts, heading for the Transfiguration past the halfway mark at 16. If the first half is an ascent or escalation, the second half is a mirror image descent. Only a community that knew internal dissension could write the ‘Alternative Dispute Resolution’ process of 18! Mark’s apocalyptic 13 is trumped by Matthew’s 23-25, cosmic conflict.

The death and resurrection accounts are much longer than in Mark. This Jesus is closer to the Sunday School one we remember. He is self aware, noble and tragic. Still, there is a two sided revenge and mercy, perfection and softness, loving but firm tension in this version of Jesus. Some readers find this version to be loftier, more lyrical and poetic, more ‘lawyered’ or ‘spin-doctored’ than Mark, to offend fewer neighbours. Jesus has an epic mission, blessed with disciples worthier than in Mark, rehabilitated as church founders.

What strikes you in this reshaping of the story? Imagine a play or movie of this script. Cast the roles of Jesus, disciples, Jewish people, and Romans. Godspell was an attempt to stage and film this version of the gospel. Who are the villains? Who gets to play Peter, the juicy role?
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Mark: Strong Start, Disaster Ending

37th Day of Easter,
Monday, April 28

Mark:
Strong Start,
Disaster Ending

Why start with Mark? For one thing, it’s the shortest gospel, so it’s easier to start with. It skips Christmas and abruptly begins. Just as abruptly, it ends. Check out the opening and closing in your bible. Does it clearly show the shorter and longer versions of Mark? Chapter 16 appears to have been a later addition to relieve the fearful ending of the original.

Between its blunt front and back ends, the tone of Mark is journalistic. It was written in the ‘koine’ Greek of the markets and docks, with use of the present tense that reads like some teenagers’ speech: ‘so right away, Jesus says…’ Does your translation maintain that tone? What do you notice about the choppy prose of Mark?

What picture of Jesus do you get in this book? It has a ‘lower Christology’: Jesus is clearly human, figuring things out as he goes along, insulting the disciples. Some readers find this Jesus to be authoritarian, domineering, and hardly ‘gentle Jesus meek and mild’. He is impatient with his disciples, who just don’t get it. He keeps telling them to keep it secret.

There is a first half of Mark, 8 chapters of progressive success. Jesus has a running start, announcing and showing ‘God’s imperial reign’ breaking into this life. He shows authority in deeds, but the Pharisees don’t get it. (1:14 to 3:6) He ministers in parables and signs, but the crowds don’t get it. (3:7 to6:5) He ministers to Gentiles up north, but the disciples don’t get it. (6:6 to 8:25)

There is a hinge, or turning point, between the first half and the back half. Peter’s recognition of Jesus as the Messiah is the joint that connects the halves. (8:26-31)

The back half shows what ‘Messiah’ means according to Mark. At least, it shows it until an unrelieved disaster of an ending. There are 3 predictions of the passion, pacing us from 8:31 to 10:52. The passion takes form in 11:1 to 16:8, and the midst of that passion, you find a wild apocalyptic vision in 13.

Who needs this big, tough, rude Jesus, and these stupid disciples? Maybe people with big opponents and challenges, who are feeling a bit stupid themselves – or seeing their church friends’ capacity for stupidity. ‘When worlds collide’, God’s and ours, it’s not all pretty, clean and clear.

We started with Mark as a Keep It Simple Stupid, KISS gospel, or Gospel for Dummies, journalistic, nasty, brutish, and short. Its’ also because scholars argue that Mark was written first, and that Matthew and Luke borrow a lot from Mark, plus another common source, in building their versions of the gospel.
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Gospels: introduction

36th Day of Easter,
Sunday, April 27

Gospels:
Jesus lived,
then died,
then what?

If there is any part of the bible we expect to find familiar, it is the gospels. Stories of Jesus’ birth, his life, teachings and ministry, and his passion, the cross and empty tomb, shape Christmas and Easter holidays, and lots of TV and movies. Sunday Schools of earlier generations taught the ‘stories of Jesus’. But have you actually read one through lately?

Find our 4 gospels in your bible, about ¾ of the way through. Often, bibles start at page 1 again at this point, making it even easier to locate Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Which is longer, or shorter? Which includes Christmas – and which omit that detail? Is there one that seems most distinctive to you from the other three?


Imagine Jesus’ followers after his death: few, scattered, scared, and mostly illiterate. Imagine the stories they’d tell, to each other and to newcomers who had missed him live. Imagine the stories they’d tell, and how they’d sort out which to tell, in what order, to make what points. What did he do? What did he say? What was he like? Why does it matter?

We know that lots of versions were told, and we even have copies of some collections that circulated after a while. Some are called ‘infancy’ gospels, going on at great lengths about Jesus’ origins and childhood. Others are ‘sayings’, or ‘signs’, or ‘secret’ gospels. Bits and variations of each type show up in our 4 gospels.

Some bibles have introductions, or headings for sections. Often they have references to where the same bits are told in the other gospels, or offer footnotes and references to other scripture. What do you see in your bible that connects the gospels to each other, and to the rest of the books of the Hebrew scripture?

We don’t have any original copies of these 4 books, or of the ‘lost gospels’. We have copies of copies, fragments and translations, none older than the 2nd century (100-200CE). Complete copies are never older than the 3rd or 4th centuries. The manuscripts that we have give us conflicting versions of very single verse of every single gospel.
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Gospels: outline

Heretics Browsing Bibles -
Easter Week 6:
April 27 to May 3

Gospels:
Jesus lived,
then died,
then what?

Lost and found, the ones we rejected and the four that made it into our bibles, the gospels are not simply biographies of Jesus. Each is making sense in its own way of the word and the world.

Apostles and apocalyptics - both are present in the gospels, and each has a whole book in our Christian scriptures. I’ve added Acts and Revelation to this week’s browsing, among the gospels.

36th Day of Easter, Sunday, April 27
Gospels:
Jesus lived, then died, then what?

37th Day of Easter, Monday, April 28
Mark:
Strong Start, Disaster Ending

38th Day of Easter, Tuesday, April 29
Matthew:
The Church’s Gospel

39th Day of Easter, Wednesday, April 30
Luke:
Launching Pad Gospel

40th Day of Easter, Thursday, May 1
Acts of the Apostles:
Volume 2 or Sequel

41st Day of Easter, Friday, May 2
John:
Word & Flesh

42nd Day of Easter, Saturday, May 3
Revelation:
Peeling the Onion

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Daniel: Boy-Hero Launched in Sci-Fe Space

35th Day of Easter,
Saturday, April 26

Daniel:
Boy Hero Launched
in Sci-Fi Space

You are about to browse the last book in your Hebrew bible (except for the rest of the Apocrypha. It’s an apocalyptic tale. Is it more like Job, or Esther than the other prophets? Do you recognize anything from Revelation, or Ezekiel? Try reading it in two halves: stories of 1-6, and visions of 7-12

This books comes from the late context. The Macedonian or Greek empire, divided into Pteloemaic and Seleucid parts, “Hellenized’ commerce and culture, and oppressed local cultures. The Maccabeans and Zealot nationalists, the Hasmonean reigned under the Romans. and the tales of Masada and Cleopatra of the Ptolemies. Who’s Daniel? Who’s telling his story?

Start with the Sunday school takes. Daniel and his three friends are given jobs in the Babylonians’ courts in early exile. They get new names and no kosher diet, yet eat vegetables and thrive until Cyrus of Persia comes Nebuchadnezzar had dreams, interpreted by Daniel in weird echoes of the Joseph pattern in Genesis. There is the statue of the ‘feet of clay’ (c2:41) The boys refuse to the worship the golden idol, and thrown into the fiery furnace, but are not burned (c.3) Nebby’s boy Belshazzar takes over, and has a feast using the vessels stolen from the temple in Jerusalem, but a moving hand writes on the wall, and Daniel reads the writing on the wall – the kinds’ days are numbered, he is weighed in the balance and found wanting, and his kingdom is divided between Medes and Persians (c.5) Finally, Daniel gets thrown in to the lions’ den and service (c.6) this is more than a child’s story of heroics, and no history of Babylon in the 500’s, it’s a way for later to talk about he powers that be of their day, and how to cope.

The second half of this book is more of apocalyptic, harder and less familiar, a series of visions of judgment, beasts, Gabriel the anger, conflicts of nations, and ultimate victory with Michael and all Angels and final end. If eschatology is abut the vision of what God intends in the end. Apocalyptic like this is eschatology amplified and done on a cosmic scale. It seems far less likely to me that Daniel is a tale of prediction while in exile before 539, than that it retells stories of imperial decline and fail from the perspective well after Alexander’s victories, in the time of Antiochus IV Epiphanes, and that the intimation is that the Seleucids and the Ptolemies in turn will decline and fall, and indeed any empire will. This it the moral shape of history. Where to you fit?

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More Minor Prophets: Make It A Dozen

34th Day of Easter,
Friday, April 25

More Minor Prophets:
Make It A Dozen

Browse the remaining 6 pack of minor prophets as if they came from later contexts – subject to the admission of uncertainty about Johan and Nahum yesterday. Picture the map again, with the Persian Gulf giving trade access between Asia and Africa and South Asia, and the Gulf of Aquaba doing the same for the Mediterranean and Egypt.


After in the 600’s, Josiah’s reform fails as the ascendant Babylonian empire and Nebuchadnezzar tried to dominate these trade routes as others had before them Habakkuk says Judah deserves punishment, and God will use Babylon to do it. The prophet stands in the watchtower to warn, and ends with a hymn of vengeance. Obadiah says Judah is down, and Edom is kicking her when she is down. He predicts a Day of the Lord when they will get their comeuppance. He might have been writing as late as the mid-400s

From 539 when Cyrus of Persia conquered Babylon, the exiles had permission to return to Judah. Macedonians won a battled at Marathon in 490CE, containing the regimes of Xerxes and Artexerxes through the 400’s as Ezra and Nehemiah in turn led rebuilding in Jerusalem. Haggai speaks sin about 520BCE, exhorting the locals to rebuild, and challenging them for taking care of their own private homes and not their temple and city.

Darius of Persia was overrun by Alexander the Great in 333BCE, who swept through Judah to establish Alexandria on the Nile delta, before dying in 323BCE in Syria. His empire was divided in to the Ptolemies based in south and Egypt and the Seleucids to the north from Judah. Zechariah says she speaks in Darius’ time, with 18 visions, outlining visions of return, restoring ’10 lost tribes of Judah’, and ending with rousing apocalyptic vision.

Joel laments the occupation of Israel and Judah by foreign powers – but which ones, in this long list of imperial conquests? His hope is more apocalyptic than practical politics, suggesting a later date. You will recognize the Pentecostal promise of 3:38 in browsing.

Malachi closes our canon of Hebrew Scripture challenging the priests with assumes a second temple in place, calling for reform, and promising a Day of the Lord again, in the form of Elijah returned.

So ends the tour of voices of 12 minor prophets – what do you hear to help our recognition, our religion, and people under our successive empire?
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Six Minor Prophets: First, a Six-Pack

33rd Day of Easter,
Thursday, April 24

6 Minor Prophets:
First, A Six-Pack


The first six-pack comes of ‘minor prophets’ are out of their bible order, attempting to follow a bit of historical narrative as framed on Sunday:

Amos and Hosea come from the 700’s BCE, in the northern kingdom Israel. During the first half of the century, Assyria and Egypt backed off, and a greedy elite took advantage of the vacuum of power, and drew Amos’ ire. From the middle of the century, the Assyrians resumed their pressure, and Hosea’s prophecy responded. Amos ranges widely in condemning neighbours then local leaders (c1,2) points out that actions have consequences, outlines visions, and stakes hope on that the end. Hosea opens with a tale of marrying an unfaithul wife, Gomer, with a rhythm of accusation, consequence, repentance, and blame. Real life, or a way to name a people of God?

Micah and Zephaniah respond to later situations. Assyrian conquest in 721BCE in the north was followed by Hezekiah’s reforms from 716BCE. Assyria leaned on Judah again, through a puppet Manasseh, ending the reform. Scythians swept through heading south into Egypt, then the Egyptians chased them north and occupied Jerusalem. Babylonians rose up and conquered Nineveh the homeland of Assyria then adventured into Judah. Micah warned Judah’s rulers in the time of 1st Isaiah, but half out the now familiar hope of a remnant (c5). Zephaniah is closer to Jeremiah’s time, very aware of Egypt and Africans, with bleak message of a Day of the Lord, threats and promises of discontinuous urban corruption and hop.

Johan and Nahum feely speak of Nineveh, a city on the Tigris we now know from the news of Iraq, as Mosul. The city faced Scythians (NE, 8th C, Greece/Macedonia 5th/4th Earlier, Tiglath Pileser I ruled there in 1100 BCE, and Tiglath Pileser III in 663BCE. So, which era of Nineveh’ was meant in Jonah or Nahum? Nineveh was a loaded word, like Paris, London, Washington or Moscow are for us. Jonah a great fable of an ambivalent prophet called to speak the truth to power, swallowed by a whale while evading service, then angry at God for relenting and giving them another chance. It might speak from the time of the other minor prophets you’re browsing today – or form the 200’s! Nahum similarly gives warning, prediction, or memory of Nineveh’s fall – likely between 663 and 615BCE, but possibly a later reflection with ‘Nineveh’ standing for Babylon, Ptolemies, Seleucids, or even Rome, as with Jonah. Here, the moral shape of reality rather than the historical origin dominates.
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Ezekiel: Post-Traumatic Stress Syndromw

32nd Day of Easter,
Wednesday, April 23

Ezekiel:
Post-Traumatic
Stress Syndrome

If we thought Jeremiah was a bit in need of medication an therapy Ezekiel will make us think of involuntary committal for psychiatric treatment. He was among the first crop of elite deported to Babylon, and had his vision in what we call south Iraq. For the call and vision (c1-3), he goes on with warnings and oracles (c4-24), with a rerun of the vision (c8-11), and condemnation of 7 nations (c25-32) then a fall, war, and a new world.

Ezekiel sees the heavens open, and animals with faces and wings, chariots and fires, and either Escher-like or beyond portrayal (c1,2) He eats a scroll so he can be the word (c3) even if people don’t listen, and lays on his side for 390 days with his head lying on dung (c4) He shaved his hair and beard with a sword, and burned, scattered, and saved it (c5) He predicts the subsequent pair of deportations to come, including devastation of Jerusalem, and abomination for him as a priest.

Ezekiel has at least three commissioning by God. He gets a message through a hold in a wall (c12) and gives it by standing at the fork of a road (c21) He enjoys a allegorical imagery: dry vine (c15) faithless wife (c16) sour grapes (c18), sisters Holah and Ohlibah (c23) a boiling pots(c24) a valley of dry bones (c27). He imagines a war with God and Magog (c38-40) and a new temple (c40-47) and a new allotment for 12 tribes Ic48).

Parts of Ezekiel will feel familiar from your browsing of Revelation. This is apocalyptic imagery, good versus evil on a cosmic scale. Part of it is rooted in actual social and political situations, as a the new temple relies on Zadokite rather than Levitical priests based on the condemnations of the corruption before the Babylonian conquest. It is intensely felt and personal, as the grief of the communal disaster is ranked higher than individual concerns – including the death of Ezekiel’s wife (c24).

Did you recognize the reworking of imagery, to be developed later in Christian apocalyptic writing later?

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Jeremiah: Acting Out Depression & Despair

31st Day of Easter,
Tuesday, April 22

Jeremiah:
Acting Out
Depression & Despair

Jeremiah is another long collection from a prophet who experienced the fall of Judah and Jerusalem and the exile to Babylon. He says he is form Anathoth, a couple of miles north of Jerusalem, in the land of Judah and Benjamin, but his heritage is tied to Abiathar and the northern kingdom of Israel, which had fallen in 722BCE to the Assyrians.

Imagine ‘one of us’, whose ancestors fled south a century before He tells us of the reforms of Josiah, which were possible later in his reign poised in the tug-of-war between Babylon and Egypt just as an earlier ruler had played with fire between Assyria and Egypt.



Josiah failed, and Jehoahaz and Jehoiakim were Egyptian puppets or lapdogs. Jeremiah warned against false claims of independence and pointed out that Babylon would wink even when Hananiah was offering false optimist as a competing prophet. (c28)


You might try browsing Jeremiah in two halves: chapter 1-25 leading up to the Babylonians, and 26-52 flowing form their arrival. There is hope offered in exile (c29) and the familiar classic promise of the new covenant (c31) which nobody teaches anybody else, but authority lies with in each person. On the other hand, the book ends with a bleak census of the exiles’ deportees (c52)’


Another way to browse Jeremiah is to listen for his ‘jeremiads’ personal confessions of a depressive: 1023-24, 11:18-23, 12:1-16, 15:10-21, 17:14-18, 18:18-23, 20:7-10. What might have happened in our day and age, Jeremiah had been properly medicated?

Jeremiah had a way with graphic illustration imagery for this warning: the linen loincloths and the wine jars (c13), the potter and the clay (18:1-11), the broken jug (c19), the good and bad figs (c24) and the cup of wrath (c25). As the puppets took over, he kept doing performance art, street theatre the sin of the yoke (c27), buying a field during the siege (c32), Baruch’s scroll (c36) This stuff worked in making rulers made – Jeremiah was imprisoned (c37, 38), hauled off the Egypt (c42, 43) against his own will. He condemns everyone, indiscriminately.
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Isaiah: 3 Span Bridge Between Eras

30th Day of Easter,
Monday, April 21

Isaiah: 3 Span Bridge Between Eras

Isaiah is 66 chapters long in your bible, and comes from an original prophet, with 2 rounds of further developments of his tradition, much as Wesley and Calvin are followed by later generations developing their spirit and word among us.

The original ‘1st Isaiah’ prophet claims a call in 742BCE when King Uzziah died in Judah, and appears to have been public to 735BCE, withdrawn a long time, then re-engaged public life form 705 to 701BCE, amid Assyrian siege. Chapters 1 to 39 record the words and story of this prophet. He challenges the people and leaders to a wider perspective on their dilemma between the power of Assyria to the north and Egypt to the south. Leaders were tempted to play the superpowers off against each other, or to trust blindly in God. Isaiah takes a longer, wider, cosmic view, from his initial vision until his final warning that a siege will life and the besiegers will fall so fast that a child born to a woman pregnant during the siege will not grow up before they fall.





The voice of ‘2nd Isaiah’ comes from over 150 years later, since it responds to Babylonian exile form Jerusalem in 586BCE, and tells of Cyrus of Persia (45) conquering Babylon in 539BCE. Chaters 40 to 54 record great poetic expressions we know best from Handel’s Messiah and Advent readings. The ‘Suffering Servant Songs.” (42, 49, 52, and 53) have set Christian types for describing Jesus’ role. The prophet sets out to ‘comfort my people’ (40) and to make sense of the collapse of both Israel and Judah in poetic form, just as the Deuteronomist did in recounting the histories. This is not the voice of a man in the mid-700’s BCE, predicting entire future through the mid-500’s, but a collection of prophecy in the spirit and tradition of an original.

The voice of ‘3rd Isaiah’ is recognized by many readers by now, based on further development of tone and content in chapters 55-66 of our book. This voice carries on the tradition in to post-exilic frameworks, of persistent hope in a new covenantal relationship between God and this people. Since there are no easy historical references, and since we can’t read colloquial original Hebrew in autograph copies, this distinction may be a bit more speculative. See if you can identify just by browsing the change of tenor.

The whole of Isaiah is a great, wide, and long bridge from the old identification with the land and kings of Israel and Judah, to and past the reforms and destruction of the temple and city of Jerusalem, through the Babylonian exile into a new identity and promise. It’s a bit long for one day…
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Introduction: Prophets - Voices to be Reckoned with

29th Day of Easter,
Sunday, April 20

Prophets:
Voices to be Reckoned With…

This week, we finish the Hebrew scriptures in your bible. There are 4 ‘major’ and 12 ‘minor’ prophets. These are the reformers, the challengers, the pundits, the political polemicists. What is a prophet? In Hebrew, ‘Nabi’ can mean call or invoke or name. in Greek, ‘prophete’ can mean spokesperson or messenger of the divine. There were other words in each language for clairvoyant, seer, discerner, or predictor. This week, we reach the writing prophets, browsing their words, and not their witness through supernatural vision or miraculous action.

Abraham Heschel suggests the writing prophets were those who said ‘no’, and bucked conventional wisdom, as pundits and spin doctors of their day, crucial voices addressing power. He suggests that this type of prophet responds to a change ins Assyrian policy in the 700s. Before that time, kings made treaties with kings, and prophets advised and challenged kings. Since the Assyrian empire, nations or peoples make treaties with nations and peoples’ and prophets assume a new voice and agency identity in response.


As you begin to browse, find a map. Treat today’s Syria as Assyria, the ‘stans’ as Scythians, Iran as Persia, Iran as Babylon, Turkey as Macedonia, and Greece, Egypt and Egypt, and check a timeline as follows:

• 700s BCE: Assyrian empire pushes from the north, Egypt form the south. Israel declines and falls 742 to 722, with leaders deported to Assyria.

• 600s BCE: Assyria declines permit Hezekiah 716BCE, then Josiah 37-608BCE, to reform. Scythians over-extend to mid-Egypt, Nineveh falls to Babylon

• 500’sBCE: Babylonians deport the elite of Judah and Jerusalem from 597 to 586BCE – Cyrus of Persia succeeds Babylon in 539BCE, and permits returning and rebuilding

• 400’s BCE: Greeks win at Marathon in 490BCE, and Xerxes and Artaxerxes rule over a shrinking empire

• 300’sBCE: Alexander beats the Persian Darius in 333BCE, heads to Egypt, and dies in Syria in 323BCE

• 200’s BCE: Ptolemies and Seleucids split up Alexander’s empire, with Ptolemies centred in Egypt, and Seleucids up to the northeast, with Judah in the middle

That’s a crude geography and history framework, not meant to insult what you already know. As we begin this last week of browsing, what do you make of this idea of prophesy in somebody else’s history, that names the normal shape of your own history?
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Outline: Prophets, Voices to be Reckoned with

Heretics Browsing Bibles -
Easter Week 5:
April 20 to 26

Prophets:
Voices to be Reckoned With…

These are the ‘writing prophets’, beyond Nathan or Elijah or Elijah the prophets. We’ll browse 4 majors, 3 at the start and one at the end of the week. We’ll browse a dozen ‘minor prophets. Did you know these voices, in phrases? Does context help?

Please re-view your maps and timelines - it matters where and when these prophets wrote, to confirm if they predicted future events, reflected in the midst of crises, or told the story after the fact as if they were anticipating, not remembering.

29th Day of Easter, Sunday, April 20
Prophets:
Voices to be Reckoned With…

30th Day of Easter, Monday, April 21
Isaiah:
3 Span Bridge Between Eras

31st Day of Easter, Tuesday, April 22
Jeremiah:
Acting Out Depression & Despair

32nd Day of Easter, Wednesday, April 23
Ezekiel:
Post-Traumatic Stress Syndrome

33rd Day of Easter, Thursday, April 24
6 Minor Prophets:
First, A Six-Pack

34th Day of Easter, Friday, April 25
More Minor Prophets:
Make It A Dozen

35th Day of Easter, Saturday, April 26
Daniel:
Boy Hero Launched in Sci-Fi Space

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Song of Songs: Sex Sells Something

28th Day of Easter,
Saturday, April 19

Song of Songs:
Sex Sells Something

Today we come back to the section of your bible you were browsing on Monday and Tuesday. Song of Songs follows Ecclesiastes. It is the last of the festival scrolls, the ‘megillot’, in the Hebrew bible, this time associated with Passover. However, Jewish practice has varied about whether or how to read this text, in private or in public. As you browse it, imagine how the erotic poetry might work – or not work - in public worship with a whole community.

The Talmud ties this text to Hezekiah’s time, but modern scholars place it around 250BCE as a late editing of much older poetry, about 25 bits gathered into an anthology. Just as old bar songs were claimed as hymns by Methodists, and we speak freely of the days of the week without worshiping Woden midweek or Thor the day after, or Saturn today, so this appropriation of older poetry does not indicated adoption of either old Canaanite cults of Baal, or the sex cults of Greek cultures of 250BCE.

Browse the bits first, and see if you recognize anything. ‘Rose of Sharon’ (2:1) or ‘banner over me is love’ (2:4) or love stronger than death(8:6) have been appropriated by our protestant subcultures.

You may have heard bits of this poetry in weddings, and the references to brides and bridegrooms and acknowledgement of their passions invites that use. However, it’s hardly worthy of poetic language to limit the metaphors to their literal referents.

The tradition has read this book in a variety of ways:
• Allegory – the bride is the church, and the groom is God
• Drama – this is a story to be acted out in unrequited love
• Literal – this is really an individual man in love with one woman
• Wedding songs – this is a collection of wedding singer’s repertoire
• Liturgical – eternal male and female godheads are worshiped

Before you browse one, let me ask, readers of all age, under the onslaught of our barbaric culture – is this really romantic or sexy for you? Am I the only one who finds it less than inspiring to imagine hair like a flock of goats, or teeth like a flock of ewes, and other fragments of the beloved’s body being addressed? What do you make of the reflection on the little sister of 8:8? It’s a short book, today, on a weekend day – so pause now. How do you experience your ‘re-creation’ or your ‘holy-days’? How do you relish, live fully, sensually, fully alive?





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Ruth & Esther: Desperate Housewives

27th Day of Easter,
Friday, April 18

Ruth & Esther:
Desperate Housewives

You’ll find Ruth after Judges. Hebrew bibles collect Ruth with the ‘megillot’, the festival scrolls, since synagogue tradition linked the story with the harvest festival.

The story is presented as a folk tale of peace, loyalty, and a proper proposed treatment of women and aliens in patriarchal and parochial cultures like ours. Some dated it as a response to the return form exile and the condemnation of foreign wives in Ezra and Nehemiah. Others see this as a more universal theme. The gospel we call Luke include Ruth intentionally in its genealogy of Jesus.

You can read the 4 chapters of Ruth as a narrative shaped of 6 scenes of a fable, or a personal drama. You could also imagine it as the script for a harvest festival, or as a bit of political theatre confronting xenophobia:
1. Moab, (1:1-18)
2. Bethlehem (1:19-22)
3. Harvest (2:1-23)
4. Threshing (3:1-18)
5. Public Gate (4:1-12)
6. Conclusions (4:13-22)

Ruth, and Esther which we browse next, are a bit like soap operas, but that does not deny them cultural weight or political resonance, This is popular culture that survived a couple of millennia, even longer than Desperate Housewives.

Who owes what to whom, in good times and bad? We quote a line of Ruth in weddings, ‘your people will be my people’, It was spoken by a woman to her mother-in-law, and not between romantic lovers.

You’ll find Esther after Nehemiah and before Job. It is associated with the festival of Purim, as another of the festival scrolls or ‘megillot’ in Hebrew bibles. It claims to come from the time of Xerxes in Persia, who ruled to 465BCE. Likely it was written in the 300’s BCE, resolving a divided practice of celebrating Purim on one day in Susa or Babylon (Iraq), another in Palestine (Israel).

This is a racy tale, like a Harlequin romance or made for TV movie. Queen Vashti the uppity wife loses her man the king. Esther wins the beauty contest to head the harem. The subplot has Haman dueling with Mordecai over the fate of Jewish people under the rule of others. How does a religious minority stay faithful and relate to power? When is it time for ‘coming out’ and claiming group identity?

Read this one as a comedy, for a carnival festival. Talmud (Meg 7b) tells people to get so drunk at Purim that you can’t distinguish between ‘cursed be Haman’ and ‘blessed be Mordecai’. Like any good comedy, it slips in a message (4:12-14): we owe a use of our privilege like Esther used hers, even when we are tempted to keep what we’ve earned by our efforts, merits, or looks!

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Lamentations: Woe Is Us

26th Day
of Easter,

Thursday,
April 17

Lamentations:
Woe is Us


You’ll find Lamentations tucked away after Jeremiah and before Ezekiel in your bible, two of the major prophets we’ll browse next week. This is because the Vulgate bible in Latin attributed the book to Jeremiah, the prophet whose ‘jeremiads’ of grief and woe over the collapse of Judah and Jerusalem seemed close in spirit to this book. Hebrew bibles present this book as one of the festival scrolls, the ‘megillot’ , since it was used in the same era as the Vulgate in synagogue liturgies mourning the temple. Browse Jeremiah 9:17-22 and you’ll find reason for both of these choices.

You can browse this book pretty much by chapter, as 5 poems. You won’t see that 4 of these poems were acrostics in the original Hebrew.

Remember from Psalms, how each chunk might start with the next letter of the alphabet? There are 22 consonants in the Hebrew alphabet – see if you see a 22 part poem in each chapter.






If you could ‘hear’ the Hebrew in your head, you’d recognize a meter or 3 line verses in the first 3 chapters, then 2 liners in the 4th chapter, and closing songs.

This is all about having a ‘mnemonic’ or remembering pattern, or a soundtrack and visual pattern that sticks with you, assuming written literacy, not just orality.

Jerusalem fell to Babylon in 3 waves of exile from 597BCE to 586BCE, with the temple razed in the last deportation. Jeremiah was a prophet mourning that disaster, but he did not share Lamentations’ elaborate artifice and structure, or respect for kings, princes, and priest. This is likely a collection of 5 poems for use in annual mourning of the lost temple, like a set of Good Friday hymns, or the tales that immigrant groups tell of the crisis that made them emigrate: Scottish Culloden and Highland Clearances or the Irish Potato Famine, or wars and camps and killing fields from Auschwitz to Ukraine to Vietnam to Bosnia to Rwanda...

Generally, this is an expression of communal grief, compared to Job’s more individual suffering and cries, but is not less persona or passionate. Strictly speaking chapters 1,2, and 4 are dirges, 3 a personal lament, and 5 a prayer. Again, frame it in Jeremiah’s appeal for the women to mourn our WASP culture is inarticulate in grief. Does this resonate with you at all, this decade of decline of our old institutions of church and society? These are also the songs of refugees, of which the 20th century produced plenty, and from whom our pews were replenished, mixing with the old WASP crowd.

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Job: Patient? Long-winded whining...

25th Day of Easter,
Wednesday, April 16

Job:
Patient?
Long-Winded Whining

Flip back before Psalms now in your bible. The Hebrew scriptures gather the books in different order: Torah, then Wisdom, then Prophets. Christian bibles split the writings up, before and after psalms, with Ruth tucked in after Judges. Its easy to find Job, a long book before Psalms.

You may think that Job is a familiar tale. Likely that’s because you know the opening tale, up to 2:13, and closing, from 42:7-17, perhaps from Sunday School. Do reread them today – it won’t take you long! But do browse the other 40 chapters – or it’s like remembering the sermon ‘hook’ or illustration, with no idea what the preacher was talking about for so long, or just how she made the longer arguments.

Some would say that this is a treatise on ‘theodicy’: ‘justifying God’s ways to humans, in the face of injustice’, or as the bestseller puts it, ‘why bad things happen to good people’. Please reread Psalms. Certainly, Job confronts us with the suffering of an innocent man, in a horrible story of God playing dice with the devil. Job is NOT patient, if you actually browse the book. This is not spectacular literature or logical theology, but more like a precursor of midrashic discourse, or in our age, lines of blogging or a wiki site.

Imagine somebody late in the ‘exile’ period, with Israel and Judah apparently over, elites scattered across one empire or another. The poet is sophisticated enough to know international cultures, from Edomite and other Oriental folk tales to Egyptian pessimism.
The book arranges the pieces and voices together to evoke and invoke reflection on God, humanity, Israel, and individual ‘just deserts’. Frame it in the old folk tale, with 3 cycles of 3 friends, talking to Job, and the penultimate voice of God, coming down to end the discourse before the happy ending.

The 1st cycle of ‘Job’s friends’: Job (3), Eliphaz (4-5), Job responds (6-7), Bildad (8) then Job to Bildad (9-10), then Zophar (11) and Job to Zophar (12-14). Now you’ve met the 3 voices in the chat room with Job.

The 2nd cycle of ‘Job’s friends’: Eliphaz (15), then Job responds to Eliphaz (16-17), Bildad (18), then Job responds to Bildad (19), Zophar (20) and Job to Zophar(21). You’ve heard the next round.

The 3rd cycle of ‘Job’s friends’: Eliphaz (22) gets Job’s response (23-24), then Bildad gets Job’s response (25-27), and finally Zophar gets his (27). This cycle may be a cleanup by an editor of various heresies.

Summaries are attempted on wisdom and through Job’s own closing arguments (28-31), like the site administrator or host. A 4th ‘friend’, presented as a young voice, speaks form inspiration if not experience or tradition (32-37). God speaks form the whirlwind (38-42) saying ‘who do you think you are’ and ‘where were you’? Are these resounding closers, or do they just add layers to the thread, and a dramatic development of the rhythm of the book?

Do you recognize any voices, as you begin to disentangle them in this reading? Have you not heard people like each of the half dozen voices here? Unsure what to say to them, hear the chorus around them, each being judged by the situation. Is this really pompous pedantry, or ironic dry humour or even satire? I have real empathy with the writer of Job!
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Ecclesiastes: East, Drink, and Be Jaded

24th Day of Easter, Tuesday, April 15

Ecclesiastes: Eat, Drink, and Be Jaded

Ecclesiastes is best known for its opening line and several later: ‘vanity, vanity, all is vanity’ paraphrased advice to ‘eat, drink, and be merry, ‘there is a time for everything’ and ‘cast your bread upon the waters’. It’s a great rant for an urban sophisticate, an existentialist jaded at the end of a full life in the world. We might even enjoy it too. It is attributed to ‘Qoholeth’, the Precher or Teacher, but perhaps better named ‘assembler’ or ‘gatherer’.

The language and references to larger estates and commercialism suggest that this was written, or gathered, or edited, in times of Hellenistic oppression, before 180BCE. It reflects a time of cultural malaise in the decline of Persian power, Greek empires rising and dividing into Seleucid and Ptolemaic. Locally, we might experience it in multicultural urban mixes. We might have been aware of Rome, rising empire in the west. But our narratives would include material as old as Gilgamesh.

Start with the first 2 chapters, framed in literary conceit as an autobiographical reflection of materially successful person now disillusioned. Enjoy the familiar opening of chapter 3, there is a tie’, but keep browsing, when your soundtrack ends. Chapter 4 recognizes oppression, and friendship, and power. Chapter 5 reflects on worship and moral realism about public and commercial life. Chapters 6 and 7 develop the theme of futile worldly success, and disillusionment, and paradox.

See how you enjoy the advice of the second half of the book: shrewd deference to the powers that be, taking what comes, making what you can of it. Chapter 11 opens with the familiar ‘cast your bread upon waters’ – unless you’ve chosen the good news translation, ‘invest in foreign trade’. Chapter 12 expresses a winsome recognition of aging, along the lines of how youth is wasted on the young.
This far into our Lent and Easter season daily blogging, you might pause to smile with me at 12:12: ‘of making many books there is not end, and much study is a weariness of the flesh. Take a break. Eat, drink, and be happy. Qoheleth said to.
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Proverbs: What a Wise Woman was that Solomon

23rd Day of Easter,
Monday, April 14

Proverbs:
What a Wise Woman was that Solomon

The book of Proverbs is attributed to Solomon much as psalms are attributed to David. As you browse through them, it may help to see an overall pattern, but it still may feel like sorting the phone book into personal, business, government and white pages. Nobody has to read it all this day. Just get a flavour of the type of writing, and how it reflects the source and form suggested yesterday to introduce the week: from household to school to an international class of civil servants, diplomats, and fixers getting ready to make things work.

The first seven chapters are discourses about wisdom. They challenge, encourage, and threaten you into seeking wisdom. They are attributed to Solomon, but they assume the voice of a sage, speaking to ‘my child’. Who could read this to you, and to whom could you read it?

The figure of Wisdom calling out is introduced in chapter 1 – but developed more later. Personal morality, gender, and marital and household roles: they are all here – just not construed by 21st century glib liberals into their preferred shape, yet.

Chapters 8 and 9 culminate these discourses with imagery of Wisdom personified as a woman. She was there form the creation and calls out in the city. She uses the same words as another figure, Folly, and her voice sounds similar, eh? These texts are favorites of those seeking a feminine face of God, if not a suggestion of an additional, feminine, God.

Next come 6 collections of proverbs. Chapters 10-21, and 25-29, are said to be from Solomon. Chapters 22-24, ‘Sayings of the Wise’, are taken from an Egyptian parallel in the time of Amen-Em-Ope. The collections close with ‘Sayings of Agur’ in chapter 30, and Lemuel and an ‘Ode to a Capable Wife’ in chapter 31. These texts follow the patterns of ‘masal’, little bits of wisdom often in a 2-part structure. The parts may be synonymous, or antithetical, or narrative, linked by ‘and’ or ‘but’ or ‘so’. They invite reflection one at a time, and not always just blithe acquiescence.

What’s the point of all this? Social conformity? They get at much more: fullness of life and integrity, life’s disciplines, discernment and construction of justice, God and moral imperatives, aesthetics of orderly beauty, imagery of God as creating, sustaining, and as Wisdom, revealed through creation, reason, and experience as well as the wisdom tradition, yet permitted continuing mystery and ambiguity.

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Introducing Writings: Wisdom from Mom to MBA

22nd Day of Easter,
Sunday, April 13

Writings:
Wisdom from Mom to MBA

It may be a relief to you in this week to deal with these more universal themes and perspectives of the wisdom writings. Much of this prose reads like what people think the bible should be. We turn to these books for those public ceremonies of increasingly common memorial for those who die in an inactive relationship with the church or without any coherent faith.

Imagine a civil service, an international class of scribes. Call them the MBA crowd, the diplomats and fixers of their age. There are some in the courts of any oriental ruler. From the dispersal of /Israel when the north fell to Assyria 750 years before Jesus, through the Babylonian exile of the elite of Judah 600 years before Jesus, the diaspora community participated actively in this international culture.

There are voices in these books of optimistic pragmatism, and of speculative pessimistic questioning and sophistication. The literary forms of ‘masal’ or proverb or parable tend to open a discussion as often as them conclude one, as often like riddles as imperative indicative instructions. Sometimes this is the voice of law and order. Assuring us that god is in this heavens, and all’s right with the world.


Sometimes this is the subversive voice so justice-seeking that it murmurs quietly: ‘just deserts… oh, yeah?’

‘Hokmah’, or wisdom, can mean knowledge, imagination, discipline, piety, order, or moral instruction. It’s a feminine noun for a way of understanding that has gendered associations even in English, and some texts this week invited you to imagine a personification of Wisdom as a feminine figure, which some folks root deeply in earlier and alternative polytheist religion, along the lines of ‘Mother Earth’ or ‘Sister Spirit’ in relation to theistic male ‘Sun God’. What is feminine for you about the wisdom way of being, or spirituality?

The social situations from which this literature arises includes home, clan, family or household teaching. There is a common sense quality, or bedtime story narrative, that invokes domestic contexts. You might imagine schools for children, youth, or those in training for scribe or court civil service, and not be far off. The is also a sense of professional diplomacy, akin to an ancient MBA or LLB curriculum about how to function in public life. The figure of a sage could be a parent, a teacher, a scribe or mentor – roles we recognize and often fill ourselves. Read more...

Outline for Week 4: Wisdom Writings, Mom to MBA

Heretics Browsing Bibles -
Easter Week 3: April 13 to 19

Writings:
Wisdom from Mom to MBA

These are the rest of the ‘Kethuvim’ or ‘writings’ in the Hebrew scriptures, or Tanakh (Torah, Nevi’im/Prophets, and Kethuvim). We’ve already visited Psalms, and the latter histories, here in the Tanakh.

This is a bit of a miscellaneous group – though we’ll try as we begin on Sunday to generalize and find some handles and hooks to get a hold of the variety. Remember, we’re just browsing.

22nd Day of Easter, Sunday, April 13
Writings:
Wisdom from Mom to MBA

23rd Day of Easter, Monday, April 14
Proverbs:
What a Wise Woman, Solomon!

24th Day of Easter, Tuesday, April 15
Ecclesiastes:
Eat, Drink, and Be Jaded

25th Day of Easter, Wednesday, April 16
Job:
Patient? Long-Winded Whining

26th Day of Easter, Thursday, April 17
Lamentations:
Woe is Us

27th Day of Easter, Friday, April 18
Ruth & Esther:
Desperate Housewives

28th Day of Easter, Saturday, April 19
Song of Songs:
Sex Sells Something

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Psalm 120-150: Pilgrimage Road Songs

21st Day of Easter: Saturday April 12
Psalm 120 to Psalm 150

Pilgrimage Road Songs

The ‘songs of ascent’ are for pilgrimage going to festivals at the temple, 120 to 134. Imagine a crowd on pilgrimage sharing road songs. On the way to feasts of tabernacles or Passover. How many of your favorite hymns are associated with our high holidays, and spill out into the public sphere rather than being contained inside church?

By the rivers of Babylon, psalm 137, whether Bob Marley sings it or others, carries the grief and rage of exile. Blessed is he who takes your babies and smashes their heads on a rock! The themes are echoed in 140 to 143 – even paranoid people have enemies, remember. The bridge psalm is 139, another favorite at funerals – do you recognize it?

Finally, asking and thanking themes complete the book. You will recognize psalms in other bible books, if you get to know them. Jesus’ cries on the cross echo psalms.

Return to these psalms, and remember them in times of passion and compassion, private and public, high times and low points. For now, you’ve browsed another section, about half of your bible so far!
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Psalm 107 to 119: Thank God, It's Friday

20th Day of Easter:
Friday April 11

Psalm 107 to 119
Hallelujah,

Thank God,
It's Friday...

Don’t be deceived by 'just a dozen' psalms – the last, 119, is the longest chapter in the bible, an acrostic praising Torah as the source and centre of law and life.

Start with 107 - different types of people are enumerated in the context of God’s creating acts – see verses 4, 10, 17, 23, 39 and wonder of you know folks like this, or are a person like this. The next couple of psalms take attitudes – assertive and humble in turn.

Browse messianic expectations of 110, the affirmations of royalty and of faithful obedience. The teens review the attitudes toward community life, personal and political. Now you have reach the longest.

Teachers and students can love 119 – built in a series of 16 line sonnets, with acrostic beginnings, elegantly praising God in terms of ‘teach me’. 20 days into the Great 50 Days of Easter – teach me indeed!
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19th Day of Easter:
Thursday April 10

Psalm 90 to Psalm 106
God’s Reign Songs

Whose reign is celebrated in the psalms: god or the kings of nations? These psalms have suffered some misuse in wars of religion- but browsed by those of us with less Christian memory, do they necessarily come off as authoritarian?

Today’s book opens with funeral psalms again – do your recognize 90&91 or 103 from that context?


Then praise God, and Sabbath and kings to give thanks – for the powers that be? Surely if matters which side of the fence we are on while we sing, and who’s there with us. I think that reframing in wider perspective is why the next psalms sketch a bigger picture, and make royal psalms more messianic than submissive.


Browse the last few psalms of this book as a prayer of the story of God’s story –from creation in 104, through the patriarchs into Egypt and out in Exodus in 105, and wandering in the desert in 106.
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18th Day of Easter:
Wednesday April 9

Psalm 73 to Psalm 89
Asaph & Korah’s Box Set


Credit Asaph with the musician’s guild – (I Chronicles 25) and he is also credited with some of these psalms. These were sung, and accompanied with instruments – that’s what ‘psalm’ means. Asaph’s name is linked to the rest of the ‘Elohim’ psalms – then we’re back with the Korahites, and one from David, and one from Ethan.

Here on the ‘hump day’ of the week, browse these public psalms, without restricting them to private piety. In the last centuries, soldiers carried psalms in their pockets to battle – imagine these psalms sung by Germans, or Israelis, or South Africans over that century. Does it matter who sings these songs, in what context?


Open again with a wisdom psalm, 73 – then find a national and tribal voice in a series of psalms recalling military and martial events – can you replace proper names of our time and space, and get a sense of the politics of these psalms?

Then head back to sanctuary worship attributed to other names – but don’t forget the context of the earlier psalms of a people. What would the sound track be in your mind – what instrumentation? Would this be brass bands and drums for marching, or bagpipes for lament – or folk guitars in resignation and resistance?

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Psalm 42 to 72: Kprah & David Duet Album

17th Day of Easter:
Tuesday April 8

Psalm 42 to Psalm 72
Korah & David Duet Album

Korah in Numbers is a rebellious guy – and in Deuteronomy – but the story is unflattering. Korahites are a branch of the Levitical priesthood – likely being put in their place in the pecking order of authority by the Torah references, in relation to the law, and to the Aaronic priesthood.

Elohim is God’s name here to psalm 83, while the earlier and later psalms call God ‘Yahweh’. You can recall from the first week that this is usually a signal of different sources or voices when it happens in Torah.

Open with laments, then sing the kings, before ending with a psalm of hope. Could you imagine reading these aloud in grief, privately or publicly? Have you heard 46, for instance, at a funeral? Try 49, 53, 56, 62, 69, 71 as mourning laments. Do you share any of the feelings, hopes, and fears?

The mid-50’s psalms attributed to David through the rest of this book return to the first person individual voice – and are tied to the voice of David. I imagine this like a soloist joining a band for an album, or the Korahites ‘covering’ a set of David’s songs in a tribute album.

This book ends with psalm 72’s hope – Canada’s phrase about ‘dominion from sea to sea’ comes from this psalm. Is this how you would frame your hope? Would these psalms frame your petitions, your asking from God for yourself and others?
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Psalms 1 to 41: David's Greatest Hits

16th Day of Easter:
Monday
April 7

Psalm 1 to Psalm 41
David’s Greatest Hits

Sure, they say David wrote all the psalms, but this first collection is most closely tied to his name. Open with a ‘wisdom psalm’, and a second one flows smoothly from it. Then notice the heading tying the next to David’s flight from Absolom, and the next psalms shift to first person singular laments and petitions with some thanksgiving.

Some say psalms 14 and 15 interrupt individual petitions with general instruction, and 19 anticipates later praise to Torah, 20 and 21 introduce royal psalms as a form. Psalm 22 anticipates exile – and 23 is perhaps the most familiar in the book for us, followed by 24, a familiar worship psalm, with great rhythmic structure in Hebrew. Psalm 25 is an acrostic, with each line opening with a different letter of the Hebrew alphabet.

Vindication is claimed in psalms 26 & 27: 28 demands deliverance, 29 praises, and 30 gives thanks. Then we return to petitions and confession, 34 again in acrostic, and 35 rallying a warrior to battle – or at least taking a militant stance. 36 & 37 back off to general wisdom and instruction, before 38&39 express humility, and 40&41 give thanks for God’s response.

If you’ve just browsed this set of psalms, you may have imagined praying with David, in private and public settings, in good times and bad, in different moods, with varying attitudes. If you’re looking for a way to express your own prayers, you could do worse than to browse this first set of psalms.

How many of the 41 psalms have tunes for you, form our hymn book, or from sacred music? Grab a hymnbook – our Voices United gathers the psalms in order.

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Introducing Psalms: Soundtracks & Greatest Hits

15th Day of Easter:
Sunday
April 6

Psalms :
Soundtracks
&
Greatest Hits


The psalms can be grouped for browsing into 5 collections which end with doxologies: 41:13, 72:18-20, 89:51, and 106:48. The rabbis said that “Moses gave the five books of Torah to Israel and David gave the five books of Psalms to Israel”
There are 150 psalms in our collections, though some historic scriptures split or combines some psalms, and some added a couple. Like any songs or poetry, they are not equal in size or content or type. Flip through to see how long or short they can be – Psalm 119 goes on the longest as a song for Torah or law.

Titles or ascriptions, or ‘selah’ notes, suggest the context of use, and hint at performance instructions. They might also be read like liner notes on an album or CD, giving background to the art. Different editions of the bible add or omit more or less of that pointing toward the associated tunes or visuals of the original context.

Individual or communal, ‘I’ or ‘we’ psalm language invites us to wonder about who is speaking, to whom, about whom. You might hypothesize David as the writer – or Korah or Asaph. You might imagine God’s voice, or angels’ choruses, or ancient Hebrew individuals or congregations.

Whether to praise, complain, or lament, psalms carry a lot of emotional weight, in allusive poetic expression. This is not dogmatic, doctrinal propositional language, nor is it descriptive historical storytelling. Forms of metaphor, mechanics of parallels and contrasts, of sound and rhythm, are not all available to us in translation.






Walter Brueggeman refers to psalms as prayers, expressing transitions from ‘hurt to joy’, ‘death to life’, the ‘formfulness of grief’, the ‘costliness of lament’, and politics of glad abandonment’. They articulate human transitions and transformations, disorientation and reorientation, as we accept or embrace, resist or deny, the dislocating changes of our lives.

‘Describe what is’, ‘evoke what is not’ is another Brueggeman expression of what psalms do. We can use them in public worship, devotionally in private, pastorally in the face of crisis or loss, illness or death or joy. We can use them politically, to sing of justice in contrast with experience.

If you have used Good News translations to get through the first 2 weeks of this browsing, this may be the week to flip open another translation, to capture the sense of poetry in Psalms. Literary merits are often lost in the newer efforts – on the other hand, some paraphrased developments from the original, in text and in the explosion of new worship music in our time, can touch you as the originals likely touched their hearers.

Browse Psalms as you would poetry, savouring a phrase or an image, rather than trying to exhaustively read every line of every psalm this week. If you get a sense of the book, you’ll be able to browse back later, having cracked some of the code of this central book of your bible.

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Browsing Week 3: Psalms - Soundtracks& Greatest Hits

Heretics Browsing Bibles -
Easter Week 3:
April 6 to 12


Psalms:
Soundtracks,
Greatest Hits



Open your bible in the middle, to Psalms.

This is the hymn book of the 2nd temple, the songs of a people in poetry, though we lost the music. This is not the only place that hymns appear in the bible, and ‘hymn’ may not convey the full sense of the poetry and liturgical (worship) words in Psalms.

These are pearls of centuries of a culture like the ‘greatest hits of all time’ according to the compilers. This collection probably took its shape about 4 centuries before Jesus, but collections within it are much older, and subsequent adjustments likely continued for a long time.

15th Day of Easter: Sunday April 6 Psalms Soundtracks & Greatest Hits 16th Day of Easter: Monday April 7 Psalm 1 to Psalm 41 David’s Greatest Hits 17th Day of Easter: Tuesday April 8 Psalm 42 to Psalm 72 Korah & David Duet Album 18th Day of Easter: Wednesday April 9 Psalm 73 to Psalm 89 Asaph & Korah’s Box Set 19th Day of Easter: Thursday April 10 Psalm 90 to Psalm 106 God’s Reign Songs 20th Day of Easter: Friday April 11 Psalm 107 to Psalm 119 Hallelujah, Thank God 21st Day of Easter: Saturday April 12 Psalm 120 to Psalm 150 Pilgrimage Road Songs

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Esdras & Maccabbees: Pay per view franchise?

14th Day of Easter:
Saturday April 5

Esdras & Maccabees
Pay-per-View Franchise Extensions?


Your bibles may exclude some, or all, of these final ‘histories’. They carry the story beyond the dedication of the second temple, and into the centuries of Greek rule after Alexander the Great beat back the Persians, and his successors split his empire into Seleucid and Ptolemaic parts. While Torah had taken final form and weight by about 400BC, this collection of ‘latter prophets’ histories stayed fluid through the ‘intertestamental’ period before Jesus.

Rabbis in Alexandria, Jamnia & Babylon collected all these histories, while collecting Talmud and Midrash used in Sephardic and Ashkenazi traditions in slightly different sets. These are tales told not from national power but from diaspora, by disenfranchised folk without delusions about imperialism.


‘Apocrypha’ includes 1&2 Maccabees:
1 Maccabees recounts how Alexander’s defeat of the Persians in the late 300’s led to oppression of Judah under Antiochus Epiphane, and insurrection under Judas Maccabeus. In turn the Ptolemies, the Empire running into Egypt, oppressed Judah until the Romans came.
2 Maccabees is framed as a message from Jews in Jerusalem and Judah to those in Egypt. Another account of opporession of religion and pillaging of the temple is offered, with Judas Maccabeus, Jonathan and Nicanor rising up in response, all tragically heroic and futie in the end.

‘Deutero-canonical’ scriptures include:
1 Esdras reaches away back to Josiah’s reign after the fall of Israel and before the exile of Judah to Babylon, then restates the story of Cyrus of Persia allowing return, and Ezra and Nehemiah’s ethnic purities
3 Maccabees tells a story of insurrection against Ptolemy, exile to Alexandria, and another return permitted by Ptolemy
2 Esdras (included in the Slavonic bible, not in the Greek, appended to the Vulgate) collects traditions about Exra and apocalypses like Revelation
4 Maccabees is an appendix to the Greek bible, a philosophical speculative reinterpretation of these traditions and law.

Catholic, Orthodox, or Protestant bibles vary in which of these books they include, and how much weight they are given. The Vulgate Latin bible, various reformers, the Slavonic and Greek Orthodox bibles all come to different conclusions about whether these are included in the ‘canon’ or simply appendices or footnotes.

Whose account of history is ‘scripture’? Perhaps our Eurocentric interpretations of ‘conquest and settlement’, ‘nation-building’, ‘decline and fall’, was not the only reading possible – and perhaps our bibles are waiting for a ‘post-colonial’ or ‘post-modern’ reading, rather than peremptory dismissal by heretics like us, browsing bibles – who could be like new producers in a franchise!
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Ezra & Nehemiah: Now a Mini-Series?

13th Day of Easter:
Friday April 4

Ezra & Nehemiah
Now a Mini-Series?


Ezra and Nehemiah continue Chronicles the way Kings continue Samuels’ stories. The middle books (Kings and Chronicles) overlap in content, and as Samuel was prequel, so Ezra and Nehemiah serialize a story of ‘return from Exile’.

Persia replaced Babylon as the empire of the Tigris-Euphrates, after Babylon over-extended their reach into Egypt. Cyrus of Persia prefers to keep local proxies running their own ethnic enclaves, rather than the Babylonian policy of exile of elites. After over a century, some of the elite go ‘home’ to Judah, to mix with the ‘remnant’ who had remained in the land. Some stayed east in diaspora, but supported a 2nd temple too.

The exiled elite, returned or in diaspora, are the literate leadership who gave us the Torah and the Deuteronomist writings of history, centred in Jerusalem. Those who remained in the land tended to a ‘go along, get along’ approach centered in Samaria, with their own cultic centre. One crowd tried to build the ‘2nd temple’, while the others appealed to Artaxerxes to slow the project.

Lists and enumerations of officials, characteristic of the Chronicler, continue in these books, now looking like the list of endowments and sponsors on the wall of a charitable edifice in our time.


Ezra shows up in chapter 7 of ‘his’ book as a scribe or bueaucrat assigned by Persia to govern the newly rebuilt client state of Judah. Ezra brings with him another wave of exiles returning from their Iraqi homes. Compare this to the return of North American émigrés to former soviet states, in the 1990’s, and then in these days.

The accounts of ‘ethnic cleansing’ offends our sensibility. Intermarriage or ethnic purity distinguished Ezra’s community from the Samaritans. The writer takes the anti-assimilationist position, and tells the story of people divorcing their ‘foreign’ families and rededicating themselves along with the new temple.

Nehemiah completes the rebuilding tale from the walls of the city, actual and metaphorical, setting boundaries between ‘us and them’. There’s an affirmation of administrative heroism, good management to organize the work, distribute the burden, and maintaining the objective against eternal and internal opposition. Renewing commitments still involve denying mixed marriages and assimilationism.

If a weak minority resists assimilation, it’s less offensive than when a majority with power excludes others from belonging. Which is the situation for the Chronicler, and for generations of readers, over millennia?
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Chronicles: Just a Remake?

12th Day of Easter:
Thursday April 3

1&2 Chronicles
Just a Remake?

Casual browsers might skip the reruns, or try to reconcile the stories, missing the way hearing a separate account highlights the subjective spin of the re-presenter. Why do we watch 2 newscasts, or read 2 news papers – or why do we reject one and favour another? Editorial bias!

‘Begatitudes’ from Adam’s beginning open Chronicles, through Noah to census summaries of the 12 tribes up to Saul[s day. We might skip – but imagine the stories for each – and wonder why the story didn’t start with Abraham, or with Jacob’s sons’ tribes. This is a reframing of the story within a universal horizon of humanity, not simply one royal dynasty or another.


David’s succession of Saul is tamer, beginning in Hebron, then in Jerusalem, with less dramatic tales of war, and less of the cult of David’s personality, flaws and all. David gets credit for planning the temple which Solomon would build. But God gets the credit for all of his success, over the next dozen chapters.

‘Begatitudes’ reciting lists of leaders, including Levitical and Aaronic priests, other Levites, temple musicians, gatekeepers, civil servants, military divisions, tribal leaders, and civic officials in enumeration. This is harder reading than the narratives of Kings, but honours a collective organization.

Solomon’s temple work in 2 Chronicles takes 9 chapters. The story of Judah and not Israel dominates, with formulaic summaries of king’s rules for 19 chapters. Highlights include Hezekaih in 29-31, reforming and beating back Sennecharib of Assyria, a chapter demeaning Manasseh and Amon’s weakness, then celebration of Josiah’s reforms in c 34-35. Babylon’s conquest occurs abruptly in the end.

We are invited to ‘get with the program’ of the 2nd temple, with organized ritual centered in Jerusalem. David is iconic, rather than human, and our whole bureaucracy can trace their roots to the original story, according to Chronicles, including both sets of competing priests.
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Kings: Decline & Fall - Oh, Yeah?

11th Day of Easter:
Wednesday April 2

1&2 Kings
‘Decline & Fall –
Oh, yeah?’

Succession is Kings’ opening theme as David faces competing claimants to his throne. The narrative is familiar from ‘the Samuels’, also from the Godfather movies. Solomon’s accession to the throne is pretty smooth, his administrative talent clear.

Expansion & affluence under Solomon includes building the temple, and building alliances, including marriage to a daughter of an Egyptian Pharaoh, and dalliance with the Queen of Sheba from Africa. Chapter 11 lists the women Solomon loved – hinting that he lived and served not only them, but also their Gods – to the writer’s chagrin.

Is this a sex scandal or political scandal? Overreaching pride pushes alliances beyond ‘inclusiveness’ and ‘partnership’ to a loss of identity, a root of subsequent trouble, and a cautionary tale for later generations scattered in diaspora and tempted more to assimilation with others than to Solomon’s megalomania.

Jeroboam revolts first in the north. Failing, he is exiled to Egypt, but once Solomon dies, succession is divided between Rehoboam in Judah (south) and secessionist Jeroboam in Israel (north). From this point, the account of Kings runs parallel histories of the two states, their kings and their independent wars.

Elijah story cycles begin in 1 King 17. Elijah challenges King Ahab of Israel, who wed Jezebel, a Baal worshiper. Yahweh beats Baal as Elijah ‘calls in an air strike’, but note the Elijah is on the lam, hiding out while Ahab and Jezebel steal Naboth’s vineyard. This is southern perspective on the north being less faithful than the south.

Elijah story cycles give way to Elisha’s parallels and echos in 2 Kings. These great folk tales are attached to the agenda of showing why the north fell to Assyria in the mid 700’s, long before the south fell to Babylon in the early 500’s, a century and a half later.

Hezekiah and Josiah both try reforms down in Judah, as Assyria’s power wanes. The latter reform is closely associated with the ‘D’ or Deuteronomist voice in Torah, and the dominant voice in the histories. However, it is still too late for Judah, as kings get younger, their reigns briefer, leading up to Babylon’s exile policy.

This is not just nostalgia, but a warning to those who dream of returning to united kingdom days of power and wealth – reminding us all of the seeds of trouble in the sins of power, subverting rather than glorifying the kings of affluence, with the Elijah, Elisha, and corruption stories.
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Samuel: Founding a Nation - Oh, Yeah?

10th Day of Easter:
Tuesday April 1

1 & 2 Samuel
‘Founding a Nation –
Oh, yeah?’

‘Why can’t we be like other nations’? Samuel warns ‘be careful what you ask for’ but we get kings: Saul, David, Solomon. How’d that go? England’s Magna Carta, America’s Declaration of Independence, or Canada’s Fathers of Confederation all echo the hope and the disappointment of nations.

Samuel accounts for transitions from tribal federation to monarchy, through the character of David the king, after Saul, his predecessor. Samuel, judge, names kings, saying ‘don’t say I didn’t warn you’! Saul lacks nerve, Jonathon his son loves David and Michal his daughter marries David the charismatic warrior musician.

According to Samuel, David cleans up loyally after Saul’s mess, then through a transition period, becomes king, making mistakes and living to a ripe age, succeeded by Solomon. What makes a king legitimate? Why not stick with anarchy? This account legitimizes David’s succession: he did not kill Saul, and he did love Jonathon – no, really…



David’s succession was more complex, like political party leadership campaigns and key alliances. Finally, the northern tribes come to Hebron and ask David to be king, based in the north, and later in Jerusalem, which was the capital of a united monarchy.

Successful in war, David’s seduction of Bathsheba costs him moral stature and a first child, but gives his Solomon his son. David’s other children Absolom, Amnon and Tamar destroy themselves in an incestuous rape and murder drama that culminates in insurrection by Absolom in David’s dotage.

What secures rulers, public or private morality? You can read this stuff as operatic drama and gossip. Compare our popular press and media reporting, and you’ll recognize the underlying conflicts of political and social models.

Samuel’s history will not silence dissent but will affirm David’s ascendancy, and sell a story of establishing a United Kingdom which Solomon gets to seal in the sequels. We need to read this account with as much sophistication as the original hearers did.
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