Exile Bible Quotes

4. Religion. Your reason is now mature enough to examine this object. In the first place, divest yourself of all bias in favor of novelty & singularity of opinion... shake off all the fears & servile prejudices, under which weak minds are servilely crouched. Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call to her tribunal every fact, every opinion. Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason, than that of blindfolded fear. You will naturally examine first, the religion of your own country. Read the Bible, then as you would read Livy or Tacitus. The facts which are within the ordinary course of nature, you will believe on the authority of the writer, as you do those of the same kind in Livy and Tacitus. The testimony of the writer weighs in their favor, in one scale, and their not being against the laws of nature, does not weigh against them. But those facts in the Bible which contradict the laws of nature, must be examined with more care, and under a variety of faces. Here you must recur to the pretensions of the writer to inspiration from God. Examine upon what evidence his pretensions are founded, and whether that evidence is so strong, as that its falsehood would be more improbable than a change in the laws of nature, in the case he relates. For example in the book of Joshua we are told the sun stood still several hours. Were we to read that fact in Livy or Tacitus we should class it with their showers of blood, speaking of statues, beasts, &c. But it is said that the writer of that book was inspired. Examine therefore candidly what evidence there is of his having been inspired. The pretension is entitled to your inquiry, because millions believe it. On the other hand you are astronomer enough to know how contrary it is to the law of nature that a body revolving on its axis as the earth does, should have stopped, should not by that sudden stoppage have prostrated animals, trees, buildings, and should after a certain time have resumed its revolution, & that without a second general prostration. Is this arrest of the earth's motion, or the evidence which affirms it, most within the law of probabilities? You will next read the New Testament. It is the history of a personage called Jesus. Keep in your eye the opposite pretensions: 1, of those who say he was begotten by God, born of a virgin, suspended & reversed the laws of nature at will, & ascended bodily into heaven; and 2, of those who say he was a man of illegitimate birth, of a benevolent heart, enthusiastic mind, who set out without pretensions to divinity, ended in believing them, and was punished capitally for sedition, by being gibbeted, according to the Roman law, which punished the first commission of that offence by whipping, & the second by exile, or death in fureâ. ...Do not be frightened from this inquiry by any fear of its consequences. If it ends in a belief that there is no God, you will find incitements to virtue in the comfort and pleasantness you feel in its exercise, and the love of others which it will procure you... In fine, I repeat, you must lay aside all prejudice on both sides, and neither believe nor reject anything, because any other persons, or description of persons, have rejected or believed it... I forgot to observe, when speaking of the New Testament, that you should read all the histories of Christ, as well of those whom a council of ecclesiastics have decided for us, to be Pseudo-evangelists, as those they named Evangelists. Because these Pseudo-evangelists pretended to inspiration, as much as the others, and you are to judge their pretensions by your own reason, and not by the reason of those ecclesiastics. Most of these are lost... [Letter to his nephew, Peter Carr, advising him in matters of religion, 1787]

Most of the Bible is a history told by people living in lands occupied by conquering superpowers. It is a book written from the underside of power. It’s an oppression narrative. The majority of the Bible was written by a minority people living under the rule and reign of massive, mighty empires, from the Egyptian Empire to the Babylonian Empire to the Persian Empire to the Assyrian Empire to the Roman Empire. This can make the Bible a very difficult book to understand if you are reading it as a citizen of the the most powerful empire the world has ever seen. Without careful study and reflection, and humility, it may even be possible to miss central themes of the Scriptures.

I sometimes think my vision of the sea is the clearest thing I own. I pick it up, exile that I am, like the purple ‘lucky stones’ I used to collect with a white ring all the way round, or the shell of a blue mussel with its rainbowy angel’s fingernail interior; and in one wash of memory the colors deepen and gleam, the early world draws breath.

Bear patiently your exile and the dryness of your mind. The time will come when I will make you forget these painful moments and you will enjoy inward quietness. I will open the Bible for you and you will be thrilled by your new understanding of my truth.

We're in the presence of a good story when the flaw that shatters shalom is also the doorway to redemption... Whether it be our own flaw or the sin of others, God uses the raw material of sin to create the edifice of his redeemed glory. The point cannot be overemphasized: your plight is also your redemption. The Bible assumes that its stories are also our story... We are Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Their stories are a paradigm of our own. Each of us is called, redeemed, and exiled - again and again.

To open the Bible is to open a window toward Jerusalem, as Daniel did (6:10), no matter where our exile may have taken us.

So the Bible is not so sad in the end?’ ‘Yes, it is the saddest book in the world. We are asked to believe that God has played an infantile trick on us: he has made himself unobservable, as an eternal test of “faith”. What I read, though, is the story of a species cursed by gifts and delusions that it cannot understand. I read of exile, abandonment and the terrible grief of beings who have lost something real – not of a people being put to a childish test, but of those who have lost their guide and parent, friend and only governing instructor and are left to wander in the silent darkness for all eternity. Imagine. And that is why all religion is about absence. Because once, the gods were there. And that is why all poetry and music strike us with this awful longing for what once was ours – because it begins in regions of the brain where once the gods made themselves heard.

My course is a survey of how readings of the same constant text have varied over the centuries, from the formation of the canon to our present time, dependent on context and subtext. A community in exile will read differently than a community in apparent full possession of all it surveys, with those who have nothing welcoming the promised overturning of the standing order, and those who have much of this world's goods not longing for the end of the age. Depending, then, upon how one reads and interprets, either the Bible is a textbook for the status quo, of quiescent pieties and promises, or it is a recipe for social change and transformation. There are churches dedicated to each point of view, each claiming its share of the good news; but what is good news for some is often bad news for somebody else.

I was taught craving another man was a sin, but I see now how wrong they were. It’s not the fact it’s a man I desire so desperately, it’s the intensity with which I claw and grab and reach for him that has them clutching their bibles. I’d kick down the door to Hell itself to be with this man… And that terrifies them. It terrifies them that love could be so raw, so primal, so powerful—stronger than any prayer.

One of the questions asked by al-Balkhi, and often repeated to this day, is this: Why do the children of Israel continue to suffer? My grandmother Dodo thought it was because the goyim were jealous. The seder for Passover (which is a shame-faced simulacrum of a Hellenic question-and-answer session, even including the wine) tells the children that it's one of those things that happens to every Jewish generation. After the Shoah or Endlösung or Holocaust, many rabbis tried to tell the survivors that the immolation had been a punishment for 'exile,' or for insufficient attention to the Covenant. This explanation was something of a flop with those whose parents or children had been the raw material for the 'proof,' so for a time the professional interpreters of god's will went decently quiet. This interval of ambivalence lasted until the war of 1967, when it was announced that the divine purpose could be discerned after all. How wrong, how foolish, to have announced its discovery prematurely! The exile and the Shoah could now both be understood, as part of a heavenly if somewhat roundabout scheme to recover the Western Wall in Jerusalem and other pieces of biblically mandated real estate. I regard it as a matter of self-respect to spit in public on rationalizations of this kind. (They are almost as repellent, in their combination of arrogance, masochism, and affected false modesty, as Edith Stein's 'offer' of her life to expiate the regrettable unbelief in Jesus of her former fellow Jews.) The sage Jews are those who have put religion behind them and become in so many societies the leaven of the secular and the atheist.

Joseph Voilà c'que c'est, mon vieux Joseph Que d'avoir pris la plus jolie Parmi les filles de Galilée Celle qu'on appelait Marie Tu aurais pu, mon vieux Joseph Prendre Sarah ou Déborah Et rien ne serait arrivé Mais tu as préféré Marie Tu aurais pu, mon vieux Joseph Rester chez toi, tailler ton bois Plutôt que d'aller t'exiler Et te cacher avec Marie Tu aurais pu, mon vieux Joseph Faire des petits avec Marie Et leur apprendre ton métier Comme ton père te l'avait appris Pourquoi a-t-il fallu, Joseph Que ton enfant, cet innocent Ait eu ces étranges idées Qui ont tant fait pleurer Marie Parfois je pense à toi, Joseph Mon pauvre ami, lorsque l'on rit De toi qui n'avais demandé Qu'à vivre heureux avec Marie

conduct yourselves with fear throughout the time of your exile,

But seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and o pray to the LORD on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare.

My views of what is missionary duty are not so contracted as those whose ideal is a dumpy sort of man with a Bible under his arm,” Livingstone explained. “I have labored in bricks and mortar, at the forge and at the carpenter’s bench, as well as in preaching and medical practice. I feel that I am ‘not my own.’ I am serving Christ when shooting a buffalo for my men, or taking an astronomical observation.

So could a woman be faithfully keeping her house, in exactly the way Paul tells her to, but also have “a job”? Well, the Proverbs 31 woman was doing it—so it would be ludicrous of us to say that women may not engage in any business ventures. Of course the Bible doesn’t prohibit a woman making money. On the other hand, as I’ve written before, that’s not really the problem of our generation. We’ve got bigger questions to answer. We are a generation that needs to recover a sense of the importance of the home, and the importance of wives and mothers who are invested in their people.

I have always loved the pilgrim narratives of the Bible and of other literature. Exile and wandering, return and setting out again—the heart moving toward its final goal—the heart finding God within, who then sends one forth again. This is the dynamic, not only of the individual pilgrim heart, but of the people of God, all the people who live on this earth as sojourners longing for an eternal home. Pilgrimages are not about one place being more holy than another, for God is everywhere. Making pilgrimages involves a response to something inside us that longs to move toward, that seeks the holy beyond.

The Spirit lifted me up and took me away, and I went in bitterness in the heat of my spirit, the  nhand of the LORD being strong upon me. 15 oAnd I came to the exiles at Tel-abib, who were dwelling  oby the Chebar canal, and I sat where they were dwelling. [3] And  pI sat there  qoverwhelmed among them  rseven days.

We can well imagine Jews feeling a bit out of their element—maybe intimidated and shamed by their own story, which began in slavery, ended in exile, and with absolutely zero contributions to philosophy or science. “Some ‘chosen people’! What kind of God did you say you follow? Apparently one who lets bad things happen to you.

cut off the inhabitants from the Valley of  q Aven, [4]     and him who holds the scepter from  r Beth-eden;         and the people of  s Syria shall go into exile to  t Kir,” says the LORD. 6Thus says the LORD:      k “For three transgressions of  u Gaza,         and for four, I will not revoke the punishment,     because  v they carried into exile a whole people

Ode to the Beloved’s Hips" Bells are they—shaped on the eighth day—silvered percussion in the morning—are the morning. Swing switch sway. Hold the day away a little longer, a little slower, a little easy. Call to me— I wanna rock, I-I wanna rock, I-I wanna rock right now—so to them I come—struck-dumb chime-blind, tolling with a throat full of Hosanna. How many hours bowed against this Infinity of Blessed Trinity? Communion of Pelvis, Sacrum, Femur. My mouth—terrible angel, ever-lasting novena, ecstatic devourer. O, the places I have laid them, knelt and scooped the amber—fast honey—from their openness— Ah Muzen Cab’s hidden Temple of Tulúm—licked smooth the sticky of her hip—heat-thrummed ossa coxae. Lambent slave to ilium and ischium—I never tire to shake this wild hive, split with thumb the sweet- dripped comb—hot hexagonal hole—dark diamond— to its nectar-dervished queen. Meanad tongue— come-drunk hum-tranced honey-puller—for her hips, I am—strummed-song and succubus. They are the sign: hip. And the cosign: a great book— the body’s Bible opened up to its Good News Gospel. Alleluias, Ave Marías, madre mías, ay yay yays, Ay Dios míos, and hip-hip-hooray. Cult of Coccyx. Culto de cadera. Oracle of Orgasm. Rorschach’s riddle: What do I see? Hips: Innominate bone. Wish bone. Orpheus bone. Transubstantiation bone—hips of bread, wine-whet thighs. Say the word and healed I shall be: Bone butterfly. Bone wings. Bone Ferris wheel. Bone basin bone throne bone lamp. Apparition in the bone grotto—6th mystery— slick rosary bead—Déme la gracia of a decade in this garden of carmine flower. Exile me to the enormous orchard of Alcinous—spiced fruit, laden-tree—Imparadise me. Because, God, I am guilty. I am sin-frenzied and full of teeth for pear upon apple upon fig. More than all that are your hips. They are a city. They are Kingdom— Troy, the hollowed horse, an army of desire— thirty soldiers in the belly, two in the mouth. Beloved, your hips are the war. At night your legs, love, are boulevards leading me beggared and hungry to your candy house, your baroque mansion. Even when I am late and the tables have been cleared, in the kitchen of your hips, let me eat cake. O, constellation of pelvic glide—every curve, a luster, a star. More infinite still, your hips are kosmic, are universe—galactic carousel of burning comets and Big Big Bangs. Millennium Falcon, let me be your Solo. O, hot planet, let me circumambulate. O, spiral galaxy, I am coming for your dark matter. Along las calles de tus muslos I wander— follow the parade of pulse like a drum line— descend into your Plaza del Toros— hands throbbing Miura bulls, dark Isleros. Your arched hips—ay, mi torera. Down the long corridor, your wet walls lead me like a traje de luces—all glitter, glowed. I am the animal born to rush your rich red muletas—each breath, each sigh, each groan, a hooked horn of want. My mouth at your inner thigh—here I must enter you—mi pobre Manolete—press and part you like a wound— make the crowd pounding in the grandstand of your iliac crest rise up in you and cheer.

I remembered the scene in the Bible when Jacob asks Rachel for water and on hearing her speak the words that were prophesied for him, throws up his hands to heaven and kisses the ground by the well. Me Jewish, Celan Jewish, Oliver Jewish—we were in a half ghetto, half oasis, in an otherwise cruel and unflinching world where fuddling around strangers suddenly stops, where we misread no one and no one misjudges us, where one person simply knows the other and knows him so thoroughly that to be taken away from such intimacy is galut,Hebrew word for exile and dispersal. Was he my home, then, my homecoming? You are my homecoming. When I’m with you and we’re well together, there is nothing more I want. You make me like who I am, who I become when you’re with me, Oliver. If there is any truth in the world, it lies when I’m with you, and if I find the courage to speak my truth to you one day, remind me to light a candle in thanksgiving at every altar in Rome. It never occurred to me that if one word word from him could make me so happy, another could just as easily crush me, that if I didn’t want to be unhappy, I should learn to beware of such small joys as well.

Of course some will ask, what about the white horse rider in the book of Revelation? In the end doesn’t Jesus resort to the ways of war? No! If God’s final solution for violence is simply a more gruesome version of the Nazi Final Solution, then we might as well throw away our Bibles away and roll out the TNT. And those caissons go rolling along. For that matter, if the world is to be shaped by violent power and not by co-suffering love, we should stop quoting Jesus and start quoting Nietzsche. If God’s solution for evil is to kill people who are evil, God didn’t need to send his Son—he  could have just sent in the tanks. Reading the end of the Bible as though Jesus ultimately renounces the Sermon on the Mount and resorts to catastrophic violence is a reckless and irresponsible reading of the apocalyptic text.

If exile language is used to bemoan a “darkening” or “growingly hostile” culture, rather than to see our situation as fundamentally the same as every other era before us, then we don’t understand what the Bible means by exile. Exile language does away with both a sense of entitlement and with a siege mentality. We don’t look to merge into whatever seems “normal” around us—and we don’t rage when we’re not accommodated there. We see our normal situation as not occupation but pilgrimage.

Just as Prometheus delivered stolen fire to man, so Eve, and the serpent, delivered man into self-consciousness, setting him up, were it not for his short lifespan, as rival to God. At the same time, man’s self-consciousness removed him from nature into a life of toil, doubt, fear, guilt, shame, blame, enmity, loneliness, and frailty—and the product of this separation, the fruit and flower of this exile, is, of course, culture. ‘God,’ said the writer Victor Hugo, ‘made only water, but man made wine.

I am a (relatively) wealthy white American male, which is fine, but it means I have to work hard at reading the Bible right. I have to see myself basically as aligned with Pharaoh, Nebuchadnezzar, and Caesar. In that case, what does the Bible ask of me? Voluntary poverty? Not necessarily. But certainly the Bible calls me to deep humility — a humility demonstrated in hospitality and generosity. There’s nothing necessarily wrong with being a relatively well-off white American male, but I better be humble, hospitable, and generous!

Most of the Israelites chose to stay in Babylon, where they would make an important contribution to the Hebrew scriptures. The returning exiles brought home nine scrolls that traced the history of their people from the creation until their deportation: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, Joshua, Judges, Samuel and Kings; they also brought anthologies of the oracles of the prophets (neviim) and a hymn book, which included new psalms composed in Babylon. It was still not complete, but the exiles had in their possession the bare bones of the Hebrew Bible.

I had no problems manipulating the biblical text to suit my own preconceived notions of “blessing” while at the same time giving God my timetable for these things to be realized. But in doing this, I was violating the context and completely missing the fact that God was talking to a nation (not an individual), a nation that had to go through seventy years of heartache and exile before there was any hope of freedom from captivity. And if it could not be used as a promise for the immediate future of those who first heard it, then it should not be used for my immediate future either.

17And if you  ncall on him as Father who  ojudges  pimpartially according to each one’s deeds, conduct yourselves  qwith fear throughout the time of your exile, 18knowing that you  rwere ransomed from  sthe futile ways inherited from your forefathers, not with perishable things such as silver or gold, 19but  twith the precious blood of Christ, like that of  ua lamb  vwithout blemish or spot. 20He was foreknown before the foundation of the world but  wwas made manifest  xin the last times for the sake of you 21 ywho through him are believers in God,  zwho raised him from the dead and  agave him glory, so that your faith and hope are in God.

Thus the ancient Jews believed that if they suffered from drought, or if King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylonia invaded Judaea and exiled its people, surely these were divine punishments for their own sins. And if King Cyrus of Persia defeated the Babylonians and allowed the Jewish exiles to return home and rebuild Jerusalem, God in his mercy must have heard their remorseful prayers. The Bible doesn’t recognise the possibility that perhaps the drought resulted from a volcanic eruption in the Philippines, that Nebuchadnezzar invaded in pursuit of Babylonian commercial interests and that King Cyrus had his own political reasons to favour the Jews. The Bible accordingly shows no interest whatsoever in understanding the global ecology, the Babylonian economy or the Persian political system.

As we have seen, the phrase “in accordance with the Bible” has little to do with isolated proof-texts and everything to do with the meaning of the long, dark, puzzling narrative of Israel ending with the question mark at the end of the books of Malachi and Chronicles. “Exile” was still in operation. The first Christians saw the message and accomplishment of Jesus as the long-awaited arrival of God’s kingdom, the final dealing-with-sin that would undo the powers of darkness and break through to the “age to come.” The whole point, as in Galatians 3, was that Israel’s long and sad story was not just a rambling muddle, an accumulation of irrelevant but damaging mistakes of generations that had more or less lost the plot. Paul never saw Israel’s past history like that, though many readers of Paul have assumed that he did.

The problem is not the general problem of human sin or indeed of the death that it incurs. The problem is that God made promises not only to Abraham but through Abraham to the world, and if the promise-bearing people fall under the Deuteronomic curse, as Deuteronomy itself insists that they will, the promises cannot get out to the wider world. The means is then that Jesus, as Israel’s Messiah, bears Israel’s curse in order to undo the consequences of sin and “exile” and so to break the power of the “present evil age” once and for all. When sins are forgiven, the “powers” are robbed of their power. Once we understand how the biblical narrative actually works, so as to see the full force of saying that “the Messiah died for our sins in accordance with the Bible,” the admittedly complex passage can be seen to be fully coherent.

We live liturgically, telling our sacred Story in worship and song. We fast and we feast. We marry and give our children in marriage, and though in exile, we work for the peace of the city. We welcome our newborns and bury our dead. We read the Bible and we tell our children about the saints. And we also tell them in the orchard and by the fireside about Odysseus, Achilles, and Aeneas, of Dante and Don Quixote, and Frodo and Gandalf and all the tales that bear what it means to be men and women of the West. We work, we pray, we confess our sins, we show mercy, we welcome the stranger, and we keep the commandments. When we suffer, especially for Christ's sake, we give thanks, because that is what Christians do. Who knows what God, in turn, will do with our faithfulness? It is not for us to say. Our command is, in the words of the Christian poet W.H. Auden, to "stagger onward rejoicing

I remembered the scene in the Bible when Jacob asks Rachel for water and on hearing her speak the words that were prophesied for him, throws up his hands to heaven and kisses the ground by the well. Me Jewish, Celan Jewish, Oliver Jewish—we were in a half ghetto, half oasis, in an otherwise cruel and unflinching world where fuddling around strangers suddenly stops, where we misread no one and no one misjudges us, where one person simply knows the other and knows him so thoroughly that to be taken away from such intimacy is galut, the Hebrew word for exile and dispersal. Was he my home, then, my homecoming? You are my homecoming. When I’m with you and we’re well together, there is nothing more I want. You make me like who I am, who I become when you’re with me, Oliver. If there is any truth in the world, it lies when I’m with you, and if I find the courage to speak my truth to you one day, remind me to light a candle in thanksgiving at every altar in Rome.

A Prayer for Grace and Illumination Stay with me, Lord, for it is necessary to have You present so that I do not forget You. You know how easily I abandon You. Stay with me, Lord, because I am weak and I need Your strength, that I may not fall so often. Stay with me, Lord, for You are my life, and without You, I am without fervor. Stay with me, Lord, for You are my light, and without You, I am in darkness. Stay with me, Lord, to show me Your will. Stay with me, Lord, so that I hear Your voice and follow You. Stay with me, Lord, for I desire to love You very much, and always be in Your company. Stay with me, Lord, if You wish me to be faithful to You. Stay with me, Lord, for as poor as my soul is, I wish it to be a place of consolation for You, a nest of Love. Stay with me, Jesus, for it is getting late and the day is coming to a close, and life passes, death, judgment, eternity approaches. It is necessary to renew my strength, so that I will not stop along the way and for that, I need You. It is getting late and death approaches. I fear the darkness, the temptations, the dryness, the cross, the sorrows. O how I need You, my Jesus, in this night of exile! Stay with me tonight, Jesus, in life with all its dangers, I need You. Let me recognize You as Your disciples did at the breaking of bread, so that the Eucharistic Communion be the light which disperses the darkness, the force which sustains me, the unique joy of my heart. Stay with me, Lord, because at the hour of my death, I want to remain united to You, if not by Communion, at least by grace and love. Stay with me, Jesus, I do not ask for divine consolation, because I do not merit it, but, the gift of Your Presence, oh yes, I ask this of You! Stay with me, Lord, for it is You alone I look for. Your Love, Your Grace, Your Will, Your Heart, Your Spirit, because I love You and ask no other reward but to love You more and more. With a firm love, I will love You with all my heart while on earth and continue to love You perfectly during all eternity. Amen. —Saint Padre Pio of Pietrelcina

As we trace the myth of the Goddess through her salvific guides, we are aware of a cohesive set of metaphors that suggest a family likeness, as though a great mirror has shattered, prismatically retaining the original image. Indeed, the way which wisdom appears in the Bible is by means of "reflective mythology"-not the representation of an actual myth, but by a theological appropriation of mythic language and patterns that have been repackaged from the pagan models. With the Goddesses Demeter and Isis, the myth of the Goddess takes on a greater urgency that resonates to our contemporary spiritual response to the Divine Feminine: we find a common theme of loss and finding, of seeking for pieces of the shattered mirror of the beloved. Only when the divine daughter or husband is found and reconstituted can earth function again. Kore and Osiris are lost and found again, but they cannot be reconstituted entirely as they were. It is with our own search for the Goddess. In the period of loss, exile, or death, something transformative has happened. In each of these saving stories, it is the urgency of love the enduring patience of the seeker that restores the beloved. These are the prime qualities of Sophia that remind us always that, though we do not see her face clearly because she is veiled or disguised, the Goddess accompanies us wherever we go.

The Big Picture: From Abraham to Armageddon Down through the ages, the sons of Jacob have survived trials, persecution, and thousands of years in exile from their homeland. The Scriptures foretold the dispersion of the Jews and also of their regathering toward the end of the age. After a long absence from a country left in desolation, the Jews have come home to the land that God promised to Abraham: “…a land that has recovered from war, whose people were gathered from many nations to the mountains of Israel, which had long been desolate. They had been brought out from the nations, and now all of them live in safety.” (Ezekiel 38:8). The other branch of Abraham’s family—the sons of Ishmael— are the Islamic Arabs that inhabit the lands surrounding Israel. Ishmael’s descendants epitomize the spirit and temperament that the Bible predicted more than three millennia ago: “…his hand will be against everyone and everyone’s hand against him, and he will live in hostility toward all his brothers” (Genesis 16:12). The Prophet Ezekiel tells us that these same sons of Ishmael will be among the enemies who seek to destroy Israel in the end times: “And thou shalt come up against my people of Israel, as a cloud to cover the land; it shall be in the latter days, and I will bring thee against my land…” (Ezekiel 38:16). The day is soon coming when Ishmael’s descendants will unite as one: “…they receive authority for one hour as kings with the beast.” Their ultimate purpose being the fulfillment of a long-held dream: the annihilation of Israel. Muslims have been taught for centuries that the Last Day will not come until they wage a final war against the Jews and rid the world of them once and for all. They believe that only after this is accomplished will Muslims enjoy a golden age of peace, justice, and worldwide Islamic rule. However, the Bible tells us that God has other plans: Before Israel can be destroyed He is going to intervene, and bring to ruin those who seek her destruction. On that day, multitudes of Jews will realize that Jesus is Messiah, and many Muslims will realize that they have made a fateful mistake. Though most are unaware, we, today, are witnessing the fruition of seeds that were planted nearly four thousand years ago with the birth of Abraham’s sons. God promised Abraham that He would make great nations of both Isaac and Ishmael. To be sure, one would be hard pressed to argue that He did not. The Jewish and Arabic peoples have had an immeasurable impact on the world and can now be found at center stage in the arena of world politics and conflict. Thus, the history of mankind will reach its pinnacle, essentially where it began, in a region literally located at the center of the globe; more specifically, Israel and the nations that surround her.

I COULD HAVE reminded the Arab Knesset member of other historical facts once known to many schoolchildren but which have since been forgotten—or distorted by anti-Israel propaganda. The history of the Jewish people spans almost four millennia. The first thousand years or so are covered in the Bible, and are attested to by archaeology and the historical records of other, contemporaneous peoples. As the centuries progress, the mists of time and the myths gradually evaporate and the unfolding events come into sharp historical focus. Reading the Bible from second grade on, I could easily imagine Abraham and Sarah on their long trek from Ur of the Chaldeans to the land of Canaan almost four thousand years ago. Abraham envisions one God, unseen but present everywhere. He buys a burial cave in Hebron and bequeaths the new land to his progeny. The descendants of Abraham’s grandson Jacob are enslaved in Egypt for centuries, until Moses takes them out of bondage. He leads them for forty years in the wilderness to the Promised Land, giving the Children of Israel the Ten Commandments and a moral code that would change the world. The indomitable Joshua conquers the land, wily David establishes his kingdom in Jerusalem, and wise Solomon builds his Temple there, only to have his sons split the realm into two. The northern kingdom, Israel, is destroyed, its ten tribes lost to history. The southern kingdom, Judea, is conquered and Solomon’s Temple is destroyed by the Babylonians, by whose rivers the exiled Judeans weep as they remember Zion. They rejoice when in 537 BCE they are reinstated in their homeland by Cyrus of Persia, who lets them rebuild their destroyed Temple. The Persian rulers are replaced by Alexander the Great, one of whose heirs seeks to eradicate the Jewish religion. This sparks a rebellion led by the brave Maccabees, and the independent Jewish state they establish lasts for eighty years. It is overtaken by the rising power Rome which initially rules through proxies, the most notable of whom is Herod the Great. Herod refurbishes the Jerusalem Temple as one of the great wonders of the ancient world. In its bustling courtyard a Jewish rabbi from the Galilee, Jesus of Nazareth, overturns the tables of the money changers, setting off a chain of events culminating in his eventual crucifixion and the beginning of the Judeo-Christian tradition. When the Jews rebel against Roman rule, Rome destroys Jerusalem and Herod’s Temple in 70 CE. Masada, the last rebel stronghold, falls three years later. Despite the devastation, sixty-two years later the Jews rebel again under the fearless Bar Kokhba, only to be crushed even more brutally. The Roman emperor Hadrian bars the Jews from Jerusalem and renames the country Palestina, after the Grecian Philistines, who have long disappeared.

Skiddy Cottontail—that was his name—and he defended LGBT equality. He was a flamboyant, colorful striped rabbit, with a headdress of a rainbow crown on his forehead. The radiance of his energy was violet, scarlet, and turquoise; as it represented his love for everyone. In the infancy years of his existence, he was abandoned—alone—unwanted—unloved; rejected by a world that disdains him. His father wished him deceased, his family exiled him from the warren, he was physically mistreated and preyed on by homophobic mobs in the surrounding community by Elephants—Hyenas—rats. They splashed spit at his face, advising him that God condemns homosexuality—as Christ did not. They would slam him on the pavement with their Bibles, strike him in the stomach with their feet, throw boulders of stone at his body: imploring—abusing—condemning him to a tyrannical sentence. Skiddy Cottontail thought that his existence would end with this case of cruelty—violence—assault that was perpetrated against him. He wanted to cease to exist— he wanted to commit the ultimate murder on himself—he no more desired to go on living— he realized hope is already deceased. He yearned to have the courage to emerge, to discover his bravery that would sever this spiral of sensations of oppression. Being a victim made him a slave to his opponent—as his adversaries have full leverage against him. Life has become a thread of light, which he longed to be liberated from its shackles. His demon—a voice that keeps blaming him for his crimes in the back of his mind—a glass that continually cracks in his heart—will keep breaking him if he does not devise a way out of this crisis. He was conscious by his innermost conviction that there was candlelight with a key that had the potential to illuminate a new chapter that will erase this trail of obscurity behind him. He sees a new horizon with greater comprehension, a journey that can give him the roses of affection than a handful of dead birds that his adversaries handed him along the way. The stunning blossoming trees did have a forest—beautiful greenery that was colorful like the rainbow in the Heavens. This home will embrace him with a warm embrace of open arms, where cruelty is forbidden; where adoration can forever abound. Dawn will know him when he arrives. No more hurricanes or strife will be here—no crying of a sad humanity are here—only a gift of harmony and devotion, beyond all explanation, will abide in the heart of Skiddy Cottontail—when he finds his way out from this opponent world for a beautiful existence that is called liberation. Skiddy Cottontail has found a happiness that can only bring him contentment like nothing in this hurtful world can. Find your own sense of balance like him, Skiddy Cottontail, and you will experience serenity as much as him.

First, von Rad’s description of a traditio-historical trajectory of actualization failed to deal adequately with the post-exilic process of the textualization of the tradition which preceded and issued in the canonization of authoritative scripture. Secondly, his understanding of the New Testament as a charismatic, typological appropriation of Israel’s tradition did not adequately deal with the centre of the New Testament’s proclamation of the gospel, which arose from the impact of the resurrection. The effect is that the New Testament was not a linear continuation of the Old Testament, nor does the Old Testament lean toward the New. Rather the direction of the tradition’s growth was often reversed. The evangelists read from the New backward to the Old. The resulting transformed Old Testament served greatly to intensify the problem of Biblical Theology in understanding the nature of the Bible’s unity and indeed led to many of the major concerns of this volume.

Death is no longer banishment; it is a return from exile, a going home to the many mansions where the loved ones are already living. The distance between glorified spirits in heaven and militant saints on earth seems great; but it is not. We are not far from home—a moment will bring us there

He even taught them that to be his disciples, they had to be willing to take up their crosses—being willing to die for their faith (Lk 14:27). However, when everything Christ taught them happened, they fled. None were willing to die with him. With that said, this leads to one of the strongest evidences for the resurrection. After Christ rose from the dead and appeared to his apostles, each of the remaining eleven were willing to be hated, beaten, jailed, exiled, and even die for their belief. Each of the remaining eleven died for Christ—declaring that he had been resurrected—with the exception of John, who spent the last part of his life exiled on an island for prisoners because of his faith (Rev 1).

Publication of the Humble Address provoked a tumult of controversy in which the pros were loudly outpamphleteered by the cons. All the old charges were revived and some new ones, including the charge that Cromwell was a Jew and that the Jews were going to buy St. Paul’s and the Bodleian Library. They were an ignoble race whom even God had constantly to chastise for their wickedness; their exile was divine punishment for the killing of Christ (and the Puritans would reap the same punishment for killing King Charles); if recalled to England they would vilify the Christian religion and cause a movement away from Christian principles and customs, falsify coinage, create unemployment, ruin English merchants, and destroy foreign trade.

An early form of the books of Samuel and Kings triggered an interpretative rewriting, namely the books of Chronicles, which offers an alternative account of the Judean monarchy. It omits almost everything of the story of the Northern Kingdom, and ends with the decree of the Persian king Cyrus in 538, allowing the Judeans to return from exile and to rebuild the Jerusalem Temple.

The origins of the Jewish Diaspora were, of course, centuries earlier. Exiles were taken from Judah to Babylon by Nebuchadrezzar at the beginning of the 6th century BCE. Some Jews had fled to Egypt after the fall of Jerusalem to Babylon (Jer. 43: 4–7, and see Jer. 44: 1 where mention is made of Jews living at Migdol, Tahpanhes, Memphis, and in the land of Pathros). Aramaic papyri from Elephantine at Syene (Aswan) in Upper Egypt provide insights into the life and religion of a Jewish community of the Egyptian Diaspora of the 5th and early 4th centuries BCE.

Available sources make it possible to glean a limited amount of information about the Jews in exile in Babylon. As already noted, references have been found in Babylonian sources to Jehoiachin and his family, and these suggest that provision was made for the exiled king (cf. 2 Kgs. 25: 27–30).

Extra-biblical texts and the Bible The rich variety of types of written material from the ancient Near East enables the world from which the Bible emerged and in which the Bible is set to be seen in clearer focus. Much attention has been paid to the myths and legends of the Mesopotamians and the Canaanites, not least because of the Bible’s own suggestion that the people of Israel and Judah emerged from Mesopotamian ancestry, settled among Canaanites, and were exiled in Babylon. But the mythology of other ancient peoples such as the Egyptians and the Hittites, now known as a result of archaeological activity,

Very different in nature is the verbal map presented at the end of the Book of Ezekiel. Chapter 48 envisages a future land of Israel, restored after the successive destructions of the northern kingdom of Israel by the Assyrians and the southern kingdom of Judah by the Babylonians, and the subsequent exile. The land is arranged in a highly stylized fashion.

. To come to You is to come home from exile, to reach the shore out of the raging storm, to finally rest after hard labor, to reach the goal of my desires and the summit of my wishes. But, Lord, how can a stone rise; how can a lump of clay come away from the horrible pit? Please raise me; draw me by Your grace. Send Your Holy Spirit to kindle sacred flames of love in my heart, and I will continue to rise until one day I will leave life and time behind me and come away indeed

Ecclesiastes declares that life has no meaning, that evil will be rewarded, and goodness punished. He says that even the most honorable man can be left in town to die in the street, while the greediest fool gets a eulogy and a proper burial. But either people skip that part of the Old Testament, or they never read the Bible at all, and instead they follow their instinct to mythify a sequence of random events and the stream of strangers they encounter in life: Good things happen to them or people they like and they think, “justice.” Bad things happen to people they don’t like and once again they think, “justice.” This is part of why a cold bump can be so effective: Lucien believed that he summoned me into his life by heart alone, by fate. He believed he deserved to fall in love (everyone believes they deserve this) and, in his specific case, with someone like me. His satisfied desire was a reward, as if it were part of a grand design based on birthright, on being from a good family, and making good choices, moral choices, and aesthetic ones too. We took turns kissing and talking, lying on the grass of the Place des Vosges. Lucien was telling me about Victor Hugo, how Victor Hugo, exiled to the island of Guernsey in the English Channel, had heard voices in the waves, addressing him on the subject of the future of France.

A month later God asks Haggai to address the concern of the older exiles, who had wept when the temple foundation was laid. Remembering the beauty of the great temple of Solomon, they know that its replacement will be smaller and less ornate. God’s words of comfort are perhaps messianic in nature. He promises that, even though the architectural appointments will not compare with those of Solomon’s temple, God will one day fill this new temple with an even greater glory. Perhaps the message alludes symbolically to another temple, or possibly to the fact that the Messiah will personally walk through the very building they are now erecting. TEMPLE’S FUTURE GLORY. [Haggai 2:1–9 (520 B.C.)]

Jeremiah’s letter to the exiles does not separate the commands to build houses and plant gardens (that internal work of cultivation) from the command to “seek the peace and prosperity of the city.” The commands are intimately connected. The flourishing of a countercultural community is crucial for faithful witness in the world, in part because it provides a space for practicing that witness among brothers and sisters in the faith. Faced with a decision between culture warring and withdrawing, Jeremiah’s letter to the exiles gives us another way.

Dear friends, I urge you, as foreigners and exiles, to abstain from sinful desires, which wage war against your soul. Live such good lives among the pagans that, though they accuse you of doing wrong, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day he visits us” (1 Pet. 2:11–12).

If I read the Bible with the appropriate perspective and humility I don’t use the story of the Rich Man and Lazarus as a proof-text to condemn others to hell. I use it as a reminder that I’m a rich man and Lazarus lies at my door. I don’t use the conquest narratives of Joshua to justify Manifest Destiny. Instead I see myself as a Rahab who needs to welcome newcomers. I don’t fancy myself as Elijah calling down fire from heaven. I’m more like Nebuchadnezzar who needs to humble himself lest I go insane. I have a problem with the Bible, but all is not lost. I just need to read it standing on my head. I need to change my perspective. If I can accept that the Bible is trying to lift up those who are unlike me, then perhaps I can read the Bible right.

12:13 These final words from heaven are for Daniel personally: you will rest, and then you will stand to receive your allotted inheritance at the end of the days. Daniel had demonstrated extraordinary faithfulness throughout his life. He served God as an exile in a pagan world (1:3-6). He obeyed God’s law regardless of the outcome (1:8-16) and delivered God’s message loyally (2:31-45). He stood up to kings (5:13-29) and withstood persecution from those who wanted to take his life (6:1-28). He was a student of God’s Word (9:2) and a man of prayer and fasting (9:3-19; 10:2-3, 12). Daniel served many kings and saw many kingdoms rise and fall, but his ultimate allegiance was to the agenda of only one King. A kingdom man like that will certainly not lose his reward.

9but if you return to me and obey my commands, then even if your exiled people are at the farthest horizon, I will gather them from there and bring them to the place I have chosen as a dwelling for my Name.

God of Wonder Praise the Lord! How good it is to sing praises to our God! How delightful and how right! The Lord is rebuilding Jerusalem and bringing the exiles back to Israel. He heals the brokenhearted, binding up their wounds. He counts the stars and calls them all by name. How great is our Lord! His power is absolute! His understanding is beyond comprehension! Psalm 147:1-5 I loved seeing my little grandson Noah as he watched snowflakes twirling from the sky, patted our dog’s black, furry coat, and later folded his hands and bowed his red head to say thank you to God for his peanut butter sandwich. He is aware and alive, and his wonder was contagious. Kids are full of wonder, amazement, and awe. Many of us adults, however, have lost our sense of wonder and awe. So God gives us psalms such as this one. They draw us from our ho-hum existence that takes such things as rainbows, snowflakes, and sunrises for granted back to a childlike wonder of our great God who fills the sky with clouds, sends the snow like white wool, and hurls hail like stones. He created everything and possesses all power yet cares for the weak and brokenhearted. He calls the stars by name yet supports the humble. He reigns over all creation yet delights in the simple, heartfelt devotion of those who trust him. His understanding is beyond human comprehension. Surely a God like this can inspire our wonder and awe! Meditate today on the amazing greatness of God, and find your own words to sing his praise.   GOD OF WONDER, I am in awe of your creation, your power, and your compassion. I sing out my praise to you. Your understanding is beyond comprehension! Your power is absolute! How good it is to sing praises to my God! How delightful and how right! Praise the Lord!   RECEIVE EVERY DAY AS A RESURRECTION FROM DEATH, AS A NEW ENJOYMENT OF LIFE. . . . LET YOUR JOYFUL HEART PRAISE AND MAGNIFY SO GOOD AND GLORIOUS A CREATOR. William Law (1686-1761)

{7:26} And any one who will not diligently keep the law of your God, and the law of the king, judgment shall be upon him, either to death, or to exile, or to the confiscation of his goods, or certainly to prison.

The exiled Jews who settled in Babylonia were able to maintain their identity, in part because they were allowed to practice their religion. They not only kept their beliefs but also deepened and enriched their understanding of those beliefs by beginning to compile and write down the Torah (the Pentateuch, or Five Books of Moses, which are also the first five books of the Christian Bible’s Old Testament).

The Bible reads like a collection of books about people caught up in exodus and exile. It is a book that shows the destruction of imperialism and war. It shows how innocents suffer. The climax of the book is the suffering innocent saviour crucified on a tree. But, God is not done there, it is also a story of resurrection, redemption, and hope. It is the story of people with good news to share by words and action. It is counter-culture and more relevant now than some may realise. In an age of wars and rumours of war, an age of refugees in exile and mass exodus, it speaks of the need for love and compassion. The early followers of Jesus were famous for love and not hate. So while the extremists, the religiously ignorant, the politically cold, the divisive nationalists and the greedy arms dealers fuel the world's problems, and beat the war drums, let us the people of new birth be lights in the darkness and voices in the wilderness. Let us live and sing the song of love, for truly His banner over us is love. It is to that beat we march and in His name, not the gods of hate and war, but the God of love, the Prince of Shalom (peace). Soli Deo Gloria. Amen

What Happened to Our Hearts Beloved, I urge you as sojourners and exiles to abstain from the passions of the flesh, which wage war against your soul. (1 Peter 2 v 11) Inside every heart, there’s a war; and the heart is both the victim and the culprit. Why? Because every person’s heart is inhabited by sinful desires, and produces sinful desires. There is an ongoing battle within the heart in which unhelpful desires wage war with our conscience. Bitterness. Anger. Envy. Greed. We cannot trust our feelings or all the passions that reside within us simply because we feel them. Our hearts are not pure—far from it: The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it? (Jeremiah 17 v 9) The nature of deception is to convince us that our hearts will not be satisfied unless we indulge what our hearts desire. But our hearts lead us astray in countless ways. Envy robs people of joy and contentment, sours friendships, and can lead to compromising morality in order to “get ahead.” Envy does not produce flourishing or joy in people. Indulging envy only results in misery for yourself and others. But none of us think this way as envy rages on. In the moment, the wrath and bitterness of envy assuages the sense of loss and jealousy residing within each of us. Not every impulse we experience should be indulged. We should be suspicious about “listening to our hearts.” Actually, everyone knows this is true. Prisons are full of people who acted in accord with their feelings—and who have been told by society that they shouldn’t. Every time a therapist tells a patient to view themselves more positively, they are accepting that there are feelings that are unhelpful to someone’s fulfillment. Our hearts’ desires can be at war with what is actually good for our hearts. The real question is: which desires should be fed, and which should be starved?

In trying to understand the death of churches, several possible explanations come to mind, some much less convincing to modern ears than others. Throughout Christian history, observers seeking to understand catastrophe have turned to the Bible. They have looked in particular at the many cases in the Old Testament in which Israelite kingdoms fell to massacre and exile, leaving only a tiny righteous remnant as the basis for later building. These disasters are generally explained in terms of the failings of those societies, their refusal to obey divine laws, especially to enforce strict monotheism.

In 586 BC the Jewish people’s land of Judah was attacked by the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar—whom some versions of the Bible describe as a great dragon. Jerusalem and the temple were set ablaze, and all their gold and treasures taken. The Jews themselves were marched away as impoverished exiles to the land of Babylon. Jeremiah described these events metaphorically, saying, “King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon has eaten and crushed us and drained us of strength. He has swallowed us like a great monster and filled his belly with our riches. He has thrown us out of our own country” (Jeremiah 51:34 NLT). The King James Version uses more vivid imagery, saying that Nebuchadnezzar “swallowed me up like a dragon.

Matthew quotes from Jer 31:15; Matthew undoubtedly knew that the context calls Israel God’s “son” (Jer 31:20) and goes on to promise a new covenant (Jer 31:31–34). Jer 31:15 depicts Rachel weeping as her descendants are carried into captivity in the exile. Matthew would have known that Rachel’s tomb was near Bethlehem (Ge 35:19); like Israel’s exile, the slaughter of Bethlehem’s infants is a tragedy, but one that could not prevent the ultimate promise of God’s restoration in the new covenant.

When we connect the death of Christ to the Old Testament, as Paul tells us we should,45 we can see the destruction of Jerusalem in 587 BC as a portent of the cross (both of them acts of human wickedness that were simultaneously the outpouring of God’s judgment), and the return from exile as a portent of the resurrection (and ultimately, in longer prophetic vision, of the new creation). And as we read Lamentations again in the light of that connection, the experiences of Lady Zion (especially in Lam. 1), and the Man (in 3:1–18) find multiple echoes in the passion of Christ.

9I, John, your brother and companion in the mtribulation and kingdom and patient endurance which are in Jesus, was on the island called Patmos, [exiled there] because of [my preaching of] the word of God [regarding eternal salvation] and the testimony of Jesus Christ.

must have been a book—way down there in the slush pile of manuscripts—that somehow slipped out of the final draft of the Bible. That would have been the chapter that dealt with how we’re supposed to recover from the criticism session in the Garden, and discover a sense that we’re still welcome on the planet. There are moments in Scripture when we hear that God delights in people, and I am incredulous. But they are few and far between. Perhaps cooler heads determined that too much welcome would make sissies out of us all, and chose instead accounts of the ever popular slaughter, exile, and shame. The welcome book would have taught us that power and signs of status can’t save us, that welcome—both offering and receiving—is our source of safety. Various chapters and verses of this book would remind us that we are wanted and even occasionally delighted in, despite the unfortunate truth that we are greedy-grabby, self-referential, indulgent, overly judgmental, and often hysterical. Somehow that book “went missing.” Or when the editorial board of bishops pored over the canonical lists from Jerusalem and Alexandria, they arbitrarily nixed the book that states unequivocally that you are wanted, even rejoiced in. We have to write that book ourselves.

Second, this is a promise for God’s people who will exist seventy years from now. The majority of people who hear this promise from Jeremiah’s lips will never see it fulfilled in their lifetime. They will likely perish in exile before it comes to fruition.

The Pharisees deliberately avoided the Late form of Biblical Hebrew (LBH), which is the language of the Bible written after the exile, presenting their teaching in the language of the spoken vernacular.

Warning against Pride 15 Listen and pay attention!       Do not be arrogant, for the LORD has spoken. 16 Give glory to the LORD your God       before it is too late. Acknowledge him before he brings darkness upon you,       causing you to stumble and fall on the darkening mountains. For then, when you look for light,       you will find only terrible darkness and gloom. 17 And if you still refuse to listen,       I will weep alone because of your pride. My eyes will overflow with tears,       because the LORD’s flock will be led away into exile.

So the Israelites who had returned from the exile ate it, together with all who had separated themselves from the unclean practices of their Gentile neighbors in order to seek the LORD, the God of Israel. For seven days they celebrated with joy the Festival of Unleavened Bread, because the LORD had filled them with joy by changing the attitude of the king of Assyria so that he assisted them in the work on the house of God, the God of Israel” (6:21-22).

Exactly why the sources were intertwined in this way is unclear. Exploring this issue really involves asking two questions: (1) Why were all of these sources retained, rather than just retaining the latest or most authoritative one? (2) Why were they combined in this odd way, rather than being left as complete documents that would be read side by side, much like the model of the four different and separate gospels, which introduce the Christian Bible or New Testament? Since there is no direct evidence going back to the redaction of the Torah, these issues may be explored only in a most tentative fashion, with plausible rather than definitive answers. Probably the earlier documents had a certain prestige and authority in ancient Israel, and could not simply be discarded.9 Additionally, the redaction of the Torah from a variety of sources most likely represents an attempt to enfranchise those groups who held those particular sources as authoritative. Certainly the Torah does not contain all of the early traditions of Israel. Yet, it does contain the traditions that the redactor felt were important for bringing together a core group of Israel (most likely during the Babylonian exile of 586-538 B.C.E.). The mixing of these sources by intertwining them preserved a variety of sources and perspectives. (Various methods of intertwining were used-the preferred method was to interleave large blocks of material, as in the initial chapters of Genesis. However, when this would have caused narrative difficulties, as in the flood story or the plagues of Exodus, the sources were interwoven-several verses from one source, followed by several verses from the other.) More than one hundred years ago, the great American scholar G. F Moore called attention to the second-century Christian scholar Tatian, who composed the Diatessaron.10 This work is a harmony of the Gospels, where most of the four canonical gospels are combined into a single work, exactly the same way that scholars propose the four Torah strands of J, E, D, and P have been combined. This, along with other ancient examples, shows that even though the classical model posited by source criticism may seem strange to us, it reflects a way that people wrote literature in antiquity

The book of Jeremiah is a constant reminder of God’s faithfulness to his word in Deuteronomy that his elect will be cursed by exile for their unfaithfulness to Yahweh but will be restored at a later time with the hope of a new covenant—which was fulfilled through Jesus Christ, David’s “righteous Branch” (Jer 23:5).

The bottom line is that for Wellhausen and many other biblical scholars before and since, the Pentateuch as we know it (an important qualification) was not completed until the postexilic period (after the Israelites were allowed to return to their homeland from Babylon beginning in 539 BC). There were certainly long-standing written documents and oral traditions that the postexilic Israelites drew upon, which biblical scholars continue to discuss vigorously, but the Pentateuch as we know it was formed as a response to the Babylonian exile. The specifics of Wellhausen’s work no longer dominate the academic landscape, but the postexilic setting for the Pentateuch is the dominant view among biblical scholars today.

This is extremely significant. Knowing something of when the Pentateuch came to be, even generally, affects our understanding of why it was produced in the first place—which is the entire reason why we are dipping our toes into this otherwise esoteric pool of Old Testament studies. The final form of the creation story in Genesis (along with the rest of the Pentateuch) reflects the concerns of the community that produced it: postexilic Israelites who had experienced God’s rejection in Babylon. The Genesis creation narrative we have in our Bibles today, although surely rooted in much older material, was shaped as a theological response to Israel’s national crisis of exile. These stories were not written to speak of “origins” as we might think of them today (in a natural-science sense). They were written to say something of God and Israel’s place in the world as God’s chosen people.

It is only to admit that what we have cannot be explained as an early (second-millennium-BC) document written essentially by one person (Moses). Rather, the Pentateuch has a diverse compositional history spanning many centuries and was brought to completion after the return from exile.

Seek the welfare of the city to which I have exiled you and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its prosperity you shall prosper” (Jer. 29:7) – the first statement in history of what it is to be a creative minority.

The Exile In July 587 BCE, Babylonian soldiers broke through Jerusalem’s walls, ending a starvation siege that had lasted well over a year. They burned the city and Solomon’s temple and took its king and many other leaders to Babylon as captives, leaving others to fend for themselves in the destroyed land. Many surrounding countries disappeared altogether when similar disasters befell them. But Judah did not. Instead, the period scholars most often call the “Babylonian exile” inspired religious leaders to revise parts of Scripture that had been passed down to them. It also sparked the writing of entirely new Scriptures and the revision of ideas about God, creation, and history. Much of what is called the Hebrew Scriptures or Old Testament was written, edited, and compiled during and after this national tragedy.

The Divine Law was revealed to Moses, not only through the Commands that were found written in the Bible, but also through all the later rules and regulations of post-exilic days. These additional laws it was presumed were handed down orally from Moses to Joshua, thence to the Prophets, and later still transmitted to the Scribes, and eventually to the Rabbis.

must have been a book—way down there in the slush pile of manuscripts—that somehow slipped out of the final draft of the Bible. That would have been the chapter that dealt with how we’re supposed to recover from the criticism session in the Garden, and discover a sense that we’re still welcome on the planet. There are moments in Scripture when we hear that God delights in people, and I am incredulous. But they are few and far between. Perhaps cooler heads determined that too much welcome would make sissies out of us all, and chose instead accounts of the ever popular slaughter, exile, and shame.

Did you hear it? Can you picture the symmetry? Our God is a God of hospitality, creating a place for a people, a place where all life can flourish. God provides for all creation, as our Story shows. Our God is a God of order; we can trust God to provide for us now as in the beginning. “I know that it may not seem that way today, for here we are, exiles in a foreign land. Life is hard. We know that. And that is why we must tell each other the Story, and keep telling it, to do exactly what God has continually told us to do: remember . . . remember . . . remember.”[5]

This is what the Lord of •Hosts, the God of Israel, says to all the exiles I deported from Jerusalem to Babylon: 5 “Build houses and live in them. f Plant gardens and eat their produce. 6 Take wives and have sons and daughters. Take wives for your sons and give your daughters to men in marriage so that they may bear sons and daughters. Multiply there; do not decrease. 7 Seek the welfare of the city I have deported you to. Pray to the Lord on its behalf, g for when it has prosperity, you will prosper.

Had possession of the land remained central to the covenant during the exile, Israelite religion would have collapsed. By concluding the Torah with Deuteronomy and not Joshua, the fulfillment of the Torah is defined as obedience to the requirements of covenantal law rather than the acquisition of a finite possession.

I’ve read and reread William Tyndale, David Daniells’s substantial biography. Thomas More was a great defender of Roman Catholicism in England, and he felt himself the servant of God in taking on William Tyndale and doing everything he could to destroy his work. Tyndale did what More thought was an absolutely horrible thing: he translated the Bible into a language people could read, in defiance of the Catholic hierarchy of the time. They were afraid the church would lose its influence if any common person off the street, and not just the official interpreters of the church who knew Latin, could read and understand the Bible. More’s contemporaries relentlessly persecuted him, forcing him to live in exile with the knowledge that if he went back to England, his enemies would kill him, as they were killing the people who read his New Testament. Eventually they hunted him down, then imprisoned and executed him in France. His crime? Translating the Bible into English.

Pontius Pilate in Jesus’s death, instead placing blame on the Jews. The fairness of Pilate and his Roman administration that is displayed in the Christian Bible is not supported by the nonbiblical historical accounts. As Elaine Pagels has noted in The Origin of Satan: “Even Josephus, despite his Roman sympathies, says that the governor displayed contempt for his Jewish subjects, illegally appropriated funds from the Temple treasury, and brutally suppressed unruly crowds. The Jewish Greek historian Philo describes Pilate as a man of ‘ruthless, stubborn and cruel disposition,’ famous for, among other things, ordering ‘frequent executions without trial.

The heroine is Susanna, a beautiful and happily married Jewish woman living in Babylonian exile. Two Jewish elders are infatuated with her, and they concoct a scheme to force her to submit to their perverted wills. While she is bathing, they threaten to bring false charges of adultery against her unless she lies with them both. Preferring civil shame and even the death penalty over sinning before God, Susanna refuses their request even though the two men’s false testimonies convict her to death at her trial. Susanna is not allowed to speak at the trial and simply puts her fate in God’s hands. Right before she is executed, God sends Daniel to save the day. In a cross examination that would put Perry Mason to shame, Daniel separates the two self-appointed witnesses and asks them under which tree Susanna embraced her fellow adulterer. They give conflicting testimonies, and the two elders are executed while Susanna is cleared of all charges. Talk

sin. Israel’s most pressing need (v. 9; 32:32). wickedness, rebellion and sin. The use of the three major OT words for sin emphasizes that God is willing to forgive all kinds of sin/sinners. Yet . . . unpunished. God’s forgiveness is never at the expense of his justice; the guilty cannot simply be acquitted. punishes . . . generation. See note on 20:5. There is no such thing as sin without consequences, which here, as in 20:5, impacts successive generations. The implicit tensions of vv. 6–7 are only partially resolved by the various judgments of Israel’s sin that culminated with the exile; but they are fully resolved in the death of Jesus, which was both the ultimate expression of God’s love and a full expression of God’s wrath (Rom 3:25–26).

It is no coincidence that story after story contains the pattern of exile. The message of the Bible is that the human race is a band of exiles trying to come home. The parable of the prodigal son is about every one of us.

rebuilt in the Pergamon Museum. The sinister project was completed in 1930, and now you too can behold the famous gates that Daniel must’ve passed through during his exile of Jerusalem if you fly to Germany.

The books of what is now the Old Testament thus probably came into existence between the ninth and the second centuries BCE. This does not necessarily mean that the records of earlier ages are pure fiction, but it makes it hard to press their details as solid historical evidence. Many readers of the Bible would recognize that the stories of the early history of the world – Noah’s Ark, the Tower of Babel – are mythical or legendary, but it may be more challenging to think that the stories of Abraham or Jacob or Moses are also essentially legends, even though people bearing those names may well have existed. No one is in a position to say they are definitely untrue, but there is no reasonable evidence that would substantiate them. This is also the case with the early kings, Saul, David and Solomon, even though the stories about them do make sense within a period (the eleventh and tenth centuries BCE) about which we know something, from the archaeological record. With the later, eighth- and seventh-century kings (for example, Hezekiah and Jehoiachin) there is definite corroboration from Assyrian and Babylonian records, and we are less in the dark. But even some of the stories of life after the exile, in the Persian period, may be fictional: most biblical scholars think that the book of Esther, for example, is a kind of novella rather than a piece of historical writing. A later date does not of itself mean that a given book is more likely to be accurate: much depends on its genre, as we shall see in the next chapter. The biblical books of the Old Testament thus probably span a period of about eight centuries, though they may incorporate older written material – ancient poems, for example – and may in some cases rest on older, orally transmitted folk-memories. But the bulk of written records in ancient Israel seem to come from a core period of the sixth and fifth centuries BCE, with heavy concentrations in some particular ages: most think, for example, that the period of the exile was particularly rich in generating written texts, as was perhaps the early Persian age, even though we know so little about the political events of the time. The flowering of Israelite literature thus came a couple of centuries earlier than the classical age in Greece. The Old Testament, taken by and large, is thus older than much Greek literature, but not enormously so. Compared with the literature of ancient Mesopotamia or Egypt, however, Israelite texts are a late arrival.

The problem for the early church is that Jesus did not fit any of the messianic paradigms offered in the Hebrew Bible, nor did he fulfill a single requirement expected of the messiah. Jesus spoke about the end of days, but it did not come to pass, not even after the Romans destroyed Jerusalem and defiled God’s Temple. He promised that God would liberate the Jews from bondage, but God did no such thing. He vowed that the twelve tribes of Israel would be reconstituted and the nation restored; instead, the Romans expropriated the Promised Land, slaughtered its inhabitants, and exiled the survivors. The Kingdom of God that Jesus predicted never arrived; the new world order he described never took shape. According to the standards of the Jewish religion and the Hebrew Scriptures, Jesus was as successful in his messianic aspirations as any of the other would-be messiahs. The early church obviously recognized this dilemma and, as will become apparent, made a conscious decision to change those messianic standards. They mixed and matched the different depictions of the messiah found in the Hebrew Bible to create a candidate that transcended any particular messianic model or expectation. Jesus may not have been prophet, liberator, or king. But that is because he rose above such simple messianic paradigms. As the transfiguration proved, Jesus was greater than Elijah (the prophet), greater than Moses (the liberator), even greater than David (the king).

In the Bible, Jewish exiles returned from the Babylonian exodus, and so, too, would modern Jews. After all, that was the very purpose of the establishment of the State of Israel.

When Karen shared that with me, the first thing that came to mind was the way God cared for Timothy in the Bible. The text says that this young man had to deal with frequent illness, and there is no record that he found healing. Instead, the apostle advised him to use a little medicinal wine to settle his stomach.5 God also cared for James, but James was run through with Herod’s sword because of his testimony.6 God cared for John, but allowed him to be exiled and left isolated on a lonely island.7 He cared for Stephen, from the first stones that struck the young man’s earnest, unmarred face to the last one that sent him out of his broken body.8 He cared for Paul’s companion Trophimus, whom the apostle had to leave behind sick in Ephesus—though he was desperately needed for ministry.

Jesus chose Passover to do what had to be done. He did not choose the Day of Atonement. It is striking, indeed, that though the gospels, particularly John, mention many of the Jewish holy days, Yom Kippur is conspicuously absent. This relates to something my colleague David Moffitt has stressed in various places: when in the grip of exile – as many Jews believed they still were – what is required is not another regular sacrifice, but a fresh rescuing divine action. And the obvious model for that is not the Day of Atonement but the rescue from Egypt: Passover, in other words.

Jacob the trickster gets his due. After pulling off the ruse, he has to run for his life and spends 20 years in exile with his uncle. Uncle Laban then gives Jacob a dose of his own medicine by planting an unwanted sister in his wedding bed and by repeatedly changing his wages as head shepherd.

So the God of Israel put it into the mind of Pul b (that is, Tiglath-pileser c) king of Assyria to take the Reubenites, Gadites, and half the tribe of Manasseh into exile.

The Bible warns of the danger of a lack of knowledge. Proverbs 19:2 says that “it is not good for a person to be without knowledge.” It was for lack of knowledge that Israel went into exile (Isa. 5:13), and God says in Hosea 4:6, “My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge.” First Corinthians 14:20 warns us,

Both Judaism and Christianity are about a “way.” Indeed, the word “repent,” so central to the Christian tradition, has its roots in the Jewish story of the exile. To repent does not mean to feel really bad about sins; rather, it means to embark upon a path of return. The journey begins in exile, and the destination is a return to life in the presence of God.

For trickster saves the world. The paradoxical trickster-creating order through chaos, the underdog that overcomes, the liminal role, and all the dangers associated with it, personified Israel. So in Exile when the canon is beginning to form, the Israelites tell of their ancestors as tricksters. For the trickster represents not only the threat of a marginalized existence, or the danger of the liminal status, but also the salvific role in which Israel still paradoxically believed it functioned.

That’s plain enough, isn’t it? You’re no longer wandering exiles. This kingdom of faith is now your home country. You’re no longer strangers or outsiders. You belong here, with as much right to the name Christian as anyone. God is building a home. He’s using us all—irrespective of how we got here—in what he is building. He used the apostles and prophets for the foundation. Now he’s using you, fitting you in brick by brick, stone by stone, with Christ Jesus as the cornerstone that holds all the parts together. We see it taking shape day after day—a holy temple built by God, all of us built into it, a temple in which God is quite at home.

Therefore, prophesy to them and say, ‘This is what the Sovereign LORD says: O my people, I will open your graves of exile and cause you to rise again. Then I will bring you back to the land of Israel. 13 When this happens, O my people, you will know that I am the LORD. 14 I will put my Spirit in you, and you will live again and return home to your own land. Then you will know that I, the LORD, have spoken, and I have done what I said. Yes, the LORD has spoken!