Bible Study Cover to Cover

I'm enjoying the thread and noticed there has been a lot of talk about mythology. I thought that it might be helpful to quote CS Lewis on Christian mythology.

I'm impressed Mod. What an incredible review and what an immense amount of work.I would just like to compare your summary of Deuteronomy with a couple of passage from Leviticus.From Leviticus Chap.19

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1 Then the LORD spoke to Moses, saying : 2"Speak to all the congregation of the sons of Israel and say to them, 'You shall be holy, for I the LORD your God am holy.

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We can see from this that we are to emulate the holiness of God. This is completely consistent with the message from Jesus in the Gospels and is consistent with the message of the creation story with Genesis.

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9 'Now when you reap the harvest of your land, you shall not reap to the very corners of your field, nor shall you gather the gleanings of your harvest. 10'Nor shall you glean your vineyard, nor shall you gather the fallen fruit of your vineyard ; you shall leave them for the needy and for the stranger. I am the LORD your God. 11 'You shall not steal, nor deal falsely, nor lie to one another. 12 'You shall not swear falsely by My name, so as to profane the name of your God ; I am the LORD. 13 'You shall not oppress your neighbor, nor rob him. The wages of a hired man are not to remain with you all night until morning. 14 'You shall not curse a deaf man, nor place a stumbling block before the blind, but you shall revere your God ; I am the LORD. 15 'You shall do no injustice in judgment ; you shall not be partial to the poor nor defer to the great, but you are to judge your neighbor fairly. 16 'You shall not go about as a slanderer among your people, and you are not to act against the life of your neighbor ; I am the LORD. 17 'You shall not hate your fellow countryman in your heart ; you may surely reprove your neighbor, but shall not incur sin because of him. 18 'You shall not take vengeance, nor bear any grudge against the sons of your people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself; I am the LORD.

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When Jesus says that all of the law and the prophets are dependent on loving God and loving neighbour it makes sense when we refer to that passage.

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33 'When a stranger resides with you in your land, you shall not do him wrong. 34 'The stranger who resides with you shall be to you as the native among you, and you shall love him as yourself, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt ; I am the LORD your God. 35 'You shall do no wrong in judgment, in measurement of weight, or capacity. 36 'You shall have just balances, just weights, a just ephah, and a just hin ; I am the LORD your God, who brought you out from the land of Egypt. 37 'You shall thus observe all My statutes and all My ordinances and do them; I am the LORD.' "

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When Jesus says that we are to love our enemies we can see that it was always there in the Hebrew Scriptures.Now then if we look at your commentary on Deuteronomy it is painfully obvious that the image of God that we see expressed there is completely inconsistent with the passages from Leviticus that I quoted and of course the Gospel message of Jesus.This of course means that if we understand the Bible as being essentially dictated by God we have to choose between a loving god who desires that mankind reflect that love into the world, or we can choose a loving god who is prepared to see his followers break the law of love in order to achieve what it is he desires, or we can choose a god who is prepared to go to any length to achieve recognition and power. In other words we can worship a god in our own image by making him whatever it is we want him to be.If however, we understand the Bible as a meta-narrative, and incorporating into that meta-narrative all sorts of shorter stories and teachings it all starts to fall into place.The ancient Jews were a group of nomads that were most of the time under duress from their more powerful neighbours. It would be natural for them to want to get out from under that situation and be top dog themselves for a change.Their pagan neighbours all worshipped gods that they believed gave them power and wealth. It would make sense, that even though God was speaking through their hearts and imaginations with the idea that they should love their neighbour, they would also because of retain the idea that their god would support them in battle if they were to find a way to please him. IMHO if we read the Bible as an account of God gradually revealing Himself to the world through the Jews, who like everyone else were subject to the desires for wealth, sex and power, the Bible is revealed as a collection of stories that makes sense.Again, IMHO, it isn't difficult to discern the truths that God wants us to have from the Scriptures. There are two essential messages. The first is that there is an overarching narrative from creation, to Moses, to Abraham, to the Prophets, to Jesus, to the era of the church or the "Kingdom of God' to the end of time will all creation will be made new.Secondly that mankind is called to be loving stewards of that creation. This is reflected in love or all of mankind, other creatures and for the planet itself. The acts of unselfish love are in some way the building stones that God will use to bring about this new creation in ways that we have no way of knowing. It is about following that message of love as an act of faith.If we take the fundamentalist, inerrant or literalists view of the scripture it is my view that the message that God wants us to receive becomes at the very least muddied or even lost entirely.Again, well done with your commentary. Have a great 2012.

But it is about enemies. I'll requote the pertinent part.

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33 'When a stranger resides with you in your land, you shall not do him wrong. 34 'The stranger who resides with you shall be to you as the native among you, and you shall love him as yourself, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt ;

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Absolutely but that is my point. It is a narrative that contains the revelations of God along with historical accounts written with the normal cultural and personal biases showing. The OT is a collection of many books that together tell the story of God interacting with the people chosen to deliver His message of "love they neighbour" to the world. It tells the story with all the warts, failures of successes of the early Jews. Actually, I think that Christians would universally agree that the "love thy neighbour" message is central to the Christian faith. The problem is we still have the same problem the early Jews had. We keep trying to make God in our image to justify our human desires for wealth, sex and power, and that's one of my major problems with Biblical literalism. It allows us to paint an ambiguous picture of God that in many cases is contrary to the God we see embodied in Jesus.

You're right of course, but in that era anyone that didn't belong to my tribe was my enemy, (except when they could be of use to me), and for that there would be a fair number in my own tribe that I'd be very suspicious of. The only other thing that I would add is that in the call to Abraham it says that all the people on earth will be blessed through him. The point being is that we are not really to think of people as our enemies but maybe just as people who are our friends even though it doesn't appear that way right now. I know it's from the NT, but I love what Paul says about it.

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BUT IF YOUR ENEMY IS HUNGRY, FEED HIM, AND IF HE IS THIRSTY, GIVE HIM A DRINK ; FOR IN SO DOING YOU WILL HEAP BURNING COALS ON HIS HEAD

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It's like the modern twist. Love your enemy - it'll drive him crazy.