Thursday, January 29, 2009
Theological Ramblings on Biblical Detail
Ok, so its time to talk about the inspiration of scripture. Which is a bit ironic because its the running joke in my family that I believe the thing was pretty much made up. Anywho, onto my thoughts. A short synopsis of my belief on inspiration is that not everything happened the way its recorded but the way its recorded is inspired. Ok so what does that mean? To give you an example, today in class ( Joshua through Nehemiah) our teacher put forth the notion that it is possible that Jericho very well could have not been occupied by anyone at the time of the conquest. Ok, don't really care, but what I do care about is this, why then was Jericho picked to be the first place conquered in the narrative? What is the theological significance of putting Jericho as the first place? Obviously it has one, thats why it was picked to be first ( wether God picked it to be conquered, or God told the writer to pick it out of a random hat of names) place conquered? I asked the question and He didn't know quite what to do with it, and all my class mates gave a vague ( and very bad, as an slight enthusiast on the subject can attest, moi) defense of why Jericho was actually occupied. Frankly I don't care wether it was or wasn't , what I want to know is why it was chosen. Why did God say ok, Jericho's going to be the first town ( in my book or in an actual conquest) in a book that is rife with "theological geography". We've got those two mountains, ones blessings, ones cursing, and somehow the towns they take and the lists of the land is just fluff? Of no significance? Excuse me, however you believe it happened, it was put in there for a purpose, selected if you will because it was important, much the way John selected certain miracles of Jesus to record. You can't tell about every city you conquer, so your going to list the significant ones, and if it is a theological history, then your only going to list the ones that are theologically significant. For example, Ai is not a great battle. But its listed because of Aikan. God gives no extraneus details, everything has some significance to theology. anywho, I've had my rant and I shall now go do other things on the internets.
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4 comments:
If Jericho wasn't inhabited at the time of the conquest - that seems a pretty significant problem with scripture. Essentially you throw out Joshua 2, the genealogy of Jesus and Hebrews 11 as all being wrong.
Then we must throw out Genesis if you don't believe God created in 7 literal 24 hour periods as well. I'm not saying Jericho wasn't around, I'm just more interested in why it was chosen as the first city to conquest.
Your comparison doesn't hold up. There is a difference between literal and figurative (i.e. the Genesis accounts) and something being completely fabricated. i.e. Jericho wasn't a real city.
As to your point about why it was chosen for conquest I understand that, but it still doesn't hold bearing on the truth or untruth of the account in question.
I think then we should have a discussion about purpose and when you date the actual writing of the text. If its, say, written during the Babylonian captivity for the purpose of trying to figure out why Israel is in captivity , or what's Israel's status before God, then the authors concerns might not be historical. AGAIN, I'm not saying that it isn't historical, it is completely feasible ( to my mind) for this to an exact historical narrative. But much like the gospels, I'm not sure that is the intention. In the gospels the authors purpose is to tell the world about Jesus, not write down a play by play account of his life. The big ideas and themes of Jesus' life are what they go for, not so much a timeline. I don't see why Joshua can't be that way as well.
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