I’d like to start a series of blogs that gives a quick overview of the books of the Bible. Gee, where should I start? Hmm . . . OK, how about Genesis?

Genesis is the first of five books that are called the Pentateuch (the others are Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy); they are also referred to as the “Torah,” a reference to the laws and instructions that they contain. Authorship has often been credited to Moses, the Jewish leader responsible for leading his people out of slavery in Egypt. At one time some critics thought the Hebrew alphabet had not been invented before 900 B.C., which meant Moses could not have written the books for the Hebrew people. But recent study now leaves this issue up in the air since some believe there is an early Hebrew alphabet in place around 1500 B.C.

Genesis means “beginnings,” an appropriate name, considering how many “firsts” there are in the book. Chapters 1-11 deal with primeval history of creation, sin, and judgments; chapters 12-50 focus more tightly on patriarchal history of four prominent Jewish ancestors. In the primeval section the author uses narratives and genealogies as building blocks. The patriarchal history tells hero stories—stories built around a person who best represents the conflicts and values of the culture that produced the stories. Genesis is also seen as an epic, much like the Iliad and Odyssey, for  telling of a nation’s destiny.

So many authors, painters, and sculptors have used the elemental stories in Genesis for their inspiration. We are not well-read if we have failed to read these powerful stories.

Read carefully enough to understand the gist of the story before you react to it. You can do this by constantly asking key questions for precise observation—who? what? when? where? why? how? Don’t be concerned if you can’t find the answer to each question every time because not all of them will apply with the various types of literature found in the Bible.

In addition, apply what you read to all human experience; there will be examples of love, hate, jealousies, friendships, pride, despair, and other human qualities that we still see today. The Bible shows us human nature at its best and its worst. Keep in mind the stories are often descriptive rather than prescriptive–they show us the good and the bad as they really are rather than telling us how we should live in a perfect world.

Be sure to read with a pen in hand—mark up the text like you would any other serious book. This will force you to read critically rather than simply putting in the time, flipping pages. That means it would be a good idea to use a new, inexpensive Bible with wide margins rather than a family heirloom. Note key terms and people, jot brief comments in the margins, connect one event with another you remember reading before, argue with the author.

Finally, realize much of the Bible uses figures of speech in which a word, phrase, or an expression is used in an imaginative rather than a literal sense. For example, in the New Testament, the devil is called a roaring lion; let your imagination go as you picture the strength of a lion and the fear one could induce. I will cover figures of speech some other time in these blogs.

See the last blog for my first entry in this category.

Since the Bible is so literary,  you should read it in a different way than you would if you were concerned with theological issues or interested in the history it contained. The following are some suggestion for getting the most out of reading the Bible as literature.

First, get rid of the fear of reading this book. With a good translation you can relax and enjoy the pageantry of people struggling with their lives. There is much less stern moralizing here than most people expect

Because the Bible is often understated (much is left out in a story), be sure to fill in the details as you imagine they must have been. For example, in the story of Abraham and Isaac, when the father has been told to sacrifice his son, we read that Abraham got up early the next morning to carry out his awful deed. Why was he up early—anxiety? eagerness to see what was to happen? to leave before Isaac’s mother could see her beloved son led away to death?

Also, when you read, try to put aside all your prejudices regarding the Bible. What kind of person does Jesus strike you as? Don’t depend on what others have said about him.

There are at least three ways people read the Bible—for the theology, for its history, and as literature. If we were in a church, it would be appropriate to look at the Bible for its theological content: we would discuss salvation, angels, sin, and other religious concepts in order to formulate a system of belief that we could all agree on. If we studied the Bible in a history class, we would downplay the religious content and focus instead on the peoples of the Bible, key events of their times, and changes that took place.

However, since I taught the Bible as literature at a secular school, I’d like to use this blog (and maybe one more) to concentrate instead on the Bible as literature. Most people are puzzled initially at this idea because they don’t think of the Bible as literature. They believe it is a huge religious tract that abstractly tells the reader how to live a godly life. But this is simply not true.

The Bible is literature—it’s made up of dramatic stories, highly charged poetry, carefully crafted letters, clever proverbs, and homey parables. Like other great literature, the Bible follows literary conventions that should be understood to fully appreciate what the author is attempting to do. For example, there are certain rules that Biblical poets followed as they created their work. In addition, the Bible is like other great literature for its exploration of the human condition; we see all types of people in all sorts of situations, which allows us to see ourselves better.

Let’s continue this in the next blog.

The land of Palestine, where all the wonderful Bible stories took place from Abraham to Jesus, is surprisingly small. It is roughly the size of Vermont with north-south dimensions of 150 miles and east-west distances ranging from 100-125 miles. It’s hard to believe so much history took lace in such a small area.

In the south is the Negev, a flat desert area that we sometimes wrongly think is typical of all the Holy Land.  So many pictures of barren land have been taken of this area and used in movies based on the Bible.

To the west, bordering the Mediterranean Sea is a flat coastal plain that gradually changes to limestone hills in the east. This area of scrub forest acted as a buffer between the peoples of the plains(the Philistines, primarily) and the Jews further up in the hills. Lots of battles took place here as the two cultures (coastal, civilized outsiders and Jews of the mountains) clashed.

Around Jerusalem it is hilly (about 3,000 feet altitude) with fertile, forested areas that were easy to defend. Many Bible passages talk of going up to Jerusalem, meaning no matter whether you are north or south of the city, you are going “up” literally to get there.

Continuing east, the land drops down to the Dead Sea in a wilderness area called the Rift Valley, part of a giant break in the earth’s crust. It is here that the ancient city of Jericho lies.

The land of Samaria, north of Judah, has rolling hills with good farmland. Unfortunately, it was not as easy to defend as Judah, and it fell to the Assyrians in the 700s B.C.

To the far north is Galilee, a rugged, wooded area. Overall, Palestine is a rugged, arid land that was made for tough people.

The Jews languished in foreign lands until the Medes and the Persians toppled the Babylonians and became the next world power. The Persians had a policy of  better treatment for their captives, so they allowed a remnant of the Jews to return to Jerusalem around 530 B.C.

You can see something called the Cyrus cylinder that talks about this return. Cyrus had a stone cylinder inscribed with his boast that he let many peoples return to their lands. There is actually a lot of archeological evidence for the Old Testament stories.

Much later the Greeks spread their civilization into the Middle East, thanks to the conquests of Alexander the Great(331-323 B.C.). In 165 B.C. the Jews revolted against Syrian leaders and briefly ruled their own land until the Romans conquered Jerusalem in 63 B.C.

Dealing withe the Romans was tough for the Jews. Relations with the Romans festered until the Jews attempted to rebel against their rulers in 70 A.D. Roman forces besieged Jerusalem, destroying nearly one million Jews in five months.

As the Christian faith gained in popularity over the next fifty years, it came into conflict with the Roman authorities also. However, persecution and martyrdom failed to wipe out either the Jews or the Christians, who can look back with pride at the courage of  faithful believers.

Well, it’s the start of the S’19 semester at Palomar, and I want to continue with my blog. Let’s see more of the history of the Bible regions–see the last blog for the history leading up to this point.

For the next 300 years the Jews invaded and attempted to conquer the land of Canaan, located between the two major powers along the Nile and the Tigris/Euphrates rivers. The most famous king in Israel’s history, David, ruled an expanded kingdom from 1011 to 971 B.C.

Unfortunately, the glory faded quickly when the Jews started a vicious civil war that split the country into two kingdoms; Israel to the north and Judah to the south. By this time another power had arisen in the Fertile Crescent, one that ruled by terror and cruelty—Assyria with its capital at Nineveh.

In 722 B.C. the northern Jewish kingdom was overrun by the Assyrians who hauled the inhabitants off to captivity. The southern kingdom lasted a bit longer until in 586 B.C. the people there  were conquered by the new power of the Middle East—Babylon.

OK, we spent a lot of time on confusing and controversial Bible people, places, and events. Let’s move to another area people often struggle with–history especially when it comes to the Bible.

Two river valleys saw the start of the first important civilizations connected with the world of the Bible. In the Middle East the land between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers formed a curve called the Fertile Crescent that reached  from the Mediterranean to the Persian Gulf. You can see this curve on any map–no way could people start a civilization in the desert areas between these two rivers and the other hugely important river to the west, the Nile.

Along this Nile River in Egypt, a second great civilization started that was to have a big impact on people of the Bible. Nearly 3000 years before Jesus, the Egyptians began building the huge pyramids that showed their engineering skill. It’s amazing to see ways they may have used to construct such well-built memorials for their kings.

The city of Babylon, so important in Biblical literature, became important in the Fertile Crescent about 1,800 B.C. when Hammurabi made it his capital. Probably around 2000 B.C. the well-known Biblical figure Abraham migrated to the land of Canaan, a place that served as a bridge between the two river valley civilizations. This location guaranteed that the Jews would be involved as the two major areas struggled for domination of the region.

Much later, perhaps 1800 B.C., the Jews settled in Egypt due  to famine in their own land. Initially, they were welcome, but over time they were enslaved by the Egyptians. Around 1400 B.C. Moses led the Jews to their freedom in an event known as the Exodus.

Any good series of stories based on the Bible covers events related to Sodom and Gomorrah, as described in Genesis. The inflamed passions,the dark of night, the narrow escape, the destruction, . . .  It makes for good drama. But what about the cities themselves?  Were they real?

At one time, historians were excited because they thought the cities were mentioned in the Ebla tablets, uncovered in Syria and dated to 2500 B.C. But more recent understanding of the language used has dispelled that idea. So what do we know?

These two famous cities were located at the south end of the Dead Sea. This area is part of the Jordan Rift Valley, a huge crack in the earth going down into Africa. Earthquakes are common here. This is an area rich in bitumen (asphalt) and petroleum deposits as well as sulfur and natural gas. Some people who have investigated this area say natural gas could be exposed by an earthquake and lit by fires in the city, creating a conflagration such as Genesis explained.

If you have a chance, go online and look up the Shroud of Turin. It is a single piece of linen, 14 feet long by 3 ½ feet wide that bears the faint image of a man, both his front and his back. It was first mentioned in 544 A.D., and a French knight displayed it in 1356 A.D. The claim was that it was the burial shroud of Jesus. People had to look long and hard to figure out that it was an image of a person.

But something remarkable happened in 1898. For the first time the Shroud was photographed, and an amazing thing was discovered when the photographer looked at the negative of the picture. He found that the Shroud itself acts as a photographic negative. In other words, if you take a picture of the Shroud and look at the photographic negative, that image becomes a positive record of the image on the Shroud.

The person on the Shroud appears to have been beaten in the face, jabbed in the scalp with small, sharp objects, crucified with nails through the wrists rather than the palms, stabbed in the side, and beaten on the back. If it was a fake, why would someone in the Middle Ages create it so that hundreds of years would have to go by before photographic negatives could be produced to truly see the image?

Of course, there are two big questions – Is it a fake? Is it the image of Jesus?  Archaeologists and historians have noted that very early paintings of Jesus show him with a face similar to the one in the Shroud. Tests show real bloodstains, rather than paint. Another test done in 1989, using carbon 14 dating methods, placed it as a medieval cloth. So that seemed to suggest it was a fake. However, newer carbon dating shows it to be roughly 2000 years old. Why the differences in dating? The first dating was made from an area of the cloth mended with newer cloth, plus there was a thin coat of bacteria that threw the dating off. Some believe it may be a natural evaporative process while others think it could’ve been a hoax in which the cloth was placed over a hot statue. There’s obviously much more that could be said on this topic, but go online if you want more details.