The book of books

Here is the text of a lesson I gave to some 11 to 12 year old on the Bible.

The word Bible comes from a Greek word biblion meaning book or scroll, and, as you can see, the Bible is a book. However, it is more accurate to say that the Bible is a collection of books.

I have a little collection of books here, my old Ladybird books:

First,

Little Red Riding Hood;

Cinderella;

A book of Prayers;

The story of Baby Jesus;

The story of Nelson;

A Robin Hood adventure.

We might add to that little collection of books:

The Summa Theologiae,

A hymn book;

A book of philosophy

Bede’s History.

So what kind, what type of books are these?

Little Red Riding Hood; a story with a moral

Cinderella; a story

A book of Prayers;

The story of Baby Jesus; a biography,

telling us about someone’s life

The story of Nelson a biography

The Robin Hood adventure. a myth/legend perhaps history

Summa Theologiae, ; a theology book

A hymn book; a collection of hymns

Discourse on Method a book of philosophy

Bede’s History. a history book

Different kinds of books, exactly the you will find same kinds of books in the Bible – because the bible is a collection of books.

For instance,

The Gospels biography –life of Jesus

The letters of St. Paul A letter - and theology

Ecclesiastes philosophy

The book of Ruth story

The book of Kings history

The Psalms hymns and prayers

Genesis a collection of legends and

creation stories

So that’s the bible.

Returning to Little Red Riding Hood: We all know the story, but we also know that wolves don’t talk, people cannot be eaten whole by wolves, and you’d never mistake a wolf for your grandmother – would you? So we can say that the facts of the story are nothing of the kind – there are no facts in this story – nothing happened as the story said – it’s just a story. However, does that mean there is no truth in the story – no truth to be found within its words?

So, for instance, one of the truths might be Don’t talk to strangers – that seems a good idea – especially if you’re young – listen to what your mother tells you, and so on.

There you are, we know that the story of Little Red Riding Hood is not true but there is truth to be found in it.

In the bible, many of the stories and even the histories that tell us about real events are written in such a way so that we can find a moral, a truth in them that’s not just about the facts of the story.

Let’s look at the first two stories in the bible:

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.

Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.

And God said, "Let there be light," and there was light. God saw that the light was good, and He separated the light from the darkness. God called the light "day," and the darkness he called "night." And there was evening, and there was morning—the first day.

And God said, "Let there be an expanse between the waters to separate water from water." So God made the expanse and separated the water under the expanse from the water above it. And it was so. God called the expanse "sky." And there was evening, and there was morning—the second day.

And God said, "Let the water under the sky be gathered to one place, and let dry ground appear." And it was so. God called the dry ground "land," and the gathered waters he called "seas." And God saw that it was good.

Then God said, "Let the land produce vegetation: seed-bearing plants and trees on the land that bear fruit with seed in it, according to their various kinds." And it was so. The land produced vegetation: plants bearing seed according to their kinds and trees bearing fruit with seed in it according to their kinds. And God saw that it was good. And there was evening, and there was morning—the third day.

And God said, "Let there be lights in the expanse of the sky to separate the day from the night, and let them serve as signs to mark seasons and days and years, and let them be lights in the expanse of the sky to give light on the earth." And it was so. God made two great lights—the greater light to govern the day and the lesser light to govern the night. He also made the stars. God set them in the expanse of the sky to give light on the earth, to govern the day and the night, and to separate light from darkness. And God saw that it was good. And there was evening, and there was morning—the fourth day.

And God said, "Let the water teem with living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth across the expanse of the sky." So God created the great creatures of the sea and every living and moving thing with which the water teems, according to their kinds, and every winged bird according to its kind. And God saw that it was good. God blessed them and said, "Be fruitful and increase in number and fill the water in the seas, and let the birds increase on the earth." And there was evening, and there was morning—the fifth day.

And God said, "Let the land produce living creatures according to their kinds: livestock, creatures that move along the ground, and wild animals, each according to its kind." And it was so. God made the wild animals according to their kinds, the livestock according to their kinds, and all the creatures that move along the ground according to their kinds. And God saw that it was good.

Then God said, "Let us make man in our image, in our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth, and over all the creatures that move along the ground."

So God created man in his own image,
in the image of God he created him;
male and female he created them.

God blessed them and said to them, "Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and over every living creature that moves on the ground."

Then God said, "I give you every seed-bearing plant on the face of the whole earth and every tree that has fruit with seed in it. They will be yours for food. And to all the beasts of the earth and all the birds of the air and all the creatures that move on the ground—everything that has the breath of life in it—I give every green plant for food." And it was so.

God saw all that he had made, and it was very good. And there was evening, and there was morning—the sixth day.

Notice that it is God who is creating here. The word God is Elohim in the Hebrew text. This is the first account of creation that we find in the bible.

Now look at the beginning of this Babylonian Creation story:

When on high heaven was not named,

And the earth beneath did not yet bear a name,

And the primeval Apsû, who begat them,

And chaos, Tiamat, the mother of them both,

Their waters were mingled together,

And no field was formed, no marsh was to be seen;

When of the gods none had been called into being.

You might think they’re quite similar – and that’s because they are. Around about 605 years before the birth of Jesus there was a war between Babylon and Israel. Babylon is in what is now Iraq. The Babylonians won and took many people from Israel to live in Babylon. Whilst they were there they would have heard the Babylonian story of creation. They took that story and made it their own, changing it to give it their own meaning.

Now let’s look at the second account of Creation that we find in the bible:

This is the account of the heavens and the earth when they were created.
When the LORD God made the earth and the heavens-and no shrub of the field had yet appeared on the earth and no plant of the field had yet sprung up, for the LORD God had not sent rain on the earth and there was no human to work the ground, but streams came up from the earth and watered the whole surface of the ground- the LORD God formed the human (Hebrew adam) from the dust of the ground (Hebrew for ground is adamah). and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the human became a living being.

Now the LORD God had planted a garden in the east, in Eden; and there he put the human he had formed. And the LORD God made all kinds of trees grow out of the ground—trees that were pleasing to the eye and good for food. In the middle of the garden were the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

A river watering the garden flowed from Eden; from there it was separated into four headwaters. The name of the first is the Pishon; it winds through the entire land of Havilah, where there is gold. (The gold of that land is good; aromatic resin and onyx are also there.) The name of the second river is the Gihon; it winds through the entire land of Cush. The name of the third river is the Tigris; it runs along the east side of Asshur. And the fourth river is the Euphrates.

The LORD God took the human and put it in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it. And the LORD God commanded the human, "You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat of it you will surely die."

The LORD God said, "It is not good for the human to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for it."

Now the LORD God had formed out of the ground all the beasts of the field and all the birds of the air. He brought them to the human to see what it would name them; and whatever the human called each living being, that was its name. So the human gave names to all the livestock, the birds of the air and all the beasts of the field.
But for the human no suitable helper was found. So the LORD God caused the human to fall into a deep sleep; and while it was sleeping, he took one of the human's ribs and closed up the place with flesh. Then the LORD God made a woman from the rib he had taken out of the human, and he brought her to the human.

The human said,
"This is now bone of my bones
and flesh of my flesh;
she shall be called 'woman’ (Hebrew ishah)
for she was taken out of man (Hebrew ish)."

Notice some of the differences between the two stories of Creation.

In the second, Humanity is created first, before all the other animals. Secondly, again in the second account, we are given the name of the god who creates – You might notice the word ‘ Lord’ is written in capitals; LORD. This is a tradition. It actually translates a word that looks like this: YHWH which is God’s name. and thought to be too holy to even speak, which is why we use the word LORD written like this whenever the Hebrew bible uses YHWH. Notice that the first creation story doesn’t use this at all. This is one of the reasons why we know that the two stories were not written by the same people. In fact they come from completely different times.

The second creation story probably originates from an earlier period of Israel’s history, between 1000 years and 900 years before the birth of Jesus. It comes from the time of Israel’s great king Solomon. It is a story that has a moral. It reminds human beings, however powerful, however glorious they think they are, they are in fact made of the dust. It’s a good thing to tell a powerful king that he’s just dust.

The first story has an order to it: the first day this happened, then this happened, then this happened….and God saw that it was good…It is about the triumph of Order over Chaos. Remember the Israelites had been defeated, their lives were in turmoil and chaos. They needed a story that told them that Order and harmony would prevail, and that God would be victorious over the turmoil and chaos.

The purpose of the two creation stories is to say something to particular human beings in two particular situations. The writers of the bible are using two different creation stories to two different sets of people. ‘You are getting too big for their boots, you are only dust.’ (the second story) or ‘Even though things seem bad now, everything is chaos and turmoil; harmony and order is how the universe has been put together, and harmony and order will win out in the end.’ The first story.

So, let’s return to your question of last week: Were we made by God or descended from monkeys? Behind that question I think, perhaps there is another one: Does the Bible conflict with Science?

Think back to the types of book we listed at the beginning. One type of book you won’t notice in the Bible is a Science book. That’s partly because Science as we know it now didn’t really begin until around 1300 years after the birth of Jesus.

Returning to the Creation stories in Genesis, notice again that there are two stories not one. As we saw, they don’t agree with one another. But that doesn’t matter, because they’re not telling us facts, rather they are trying to tell two different ‘truths’ to two different sets of people. People who wanted or perhaps needed to hear different things. What both accounts agree on of course, is that God is the Creator. They differ only on how God created. But creation is perhaps not the point at all, the stories have different purposes, purposes that have only been rediscovered over the past two hundred years.