History...

Hey all! I wish I were posting more blogs, but it is hard to find the time. I think a part of me was expecting this whole Israel thing to be a vacation with some solid background info thrown in, but this trip really is a class. A class with tests and assignments. What I am saying is that this study in the land has been fairly mentally rigorous and has not left me much free time for reflection or musings. Still, one idea has been repeatedly popping up in my scattered mind, and that is that the Bible is history. Yes it is theological history, but history nonetheless. The people and places it describes were/are real people and places. The Bible is not full of Disney fantasies wherein you may hear about a genie and a magical carpet but you could never actually take that carpet ride. No, when the Bible speaks of Jericho it is saying that there was actually a city called Jericho which was an oasis in the desert that Joshua actually sacked. And you can go visit that oasis because it actually exists. Just as you can actually go visit the site where the temple described in the Bible once stood; you can see some of its old wall and walk on some of its steps. This is because the Bible is history. I'm no archaeologist so I'll state this in simple terms, but what has happened a lot is that people have read about sites in the Bible and thought 'Well this text describes this site as being here, so we should dig here to find the site'; and then people have found stuff. That's because the Bible is history. What this means is that it records the history of God actually visiting earth at various times- in a tent or in a vision or in a temple; even in a man. When the Bible talks about Jesus walking around and teaching and doing miracles and telling people about their sin and telling people that He is God and getting killed for it and rising from the dead, it is not telling a fairy tale. It is recording history. Jesus actually did those things. God actually in history in a real place that we can all go to became a man and died and rose again. He did things in a very particular way and this calls for a very particular response. We do not have the freedom to make up what we want about Jesus and twist and contort him to fit our own sense of religion or spirituality in the same way that I don't get to go around and tell you that Joe DiMaggio played for the Milwaukee Bucks. The Bible is a not a fairy tale but a theological history, and it records the story of God dwelling with people, and it records the story of God dying for His people. Surely this demands some kind of response beyond treating the Bible as some sort of nice story.