The Eerdmans Companion to the Bible

William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company

Contents

List of Maps.....................................................xiPreface..........................................................xiiContributors.....................................................xivAbbreviations....................................................xviiWhat Is the Bible?...............................................3Lands of the Bible...............................................9Divine and Human.................................................15Why Are These Books in the Bible?................................18How Was the Bible Passed Down to Us?.............................25Languages, Writing, and Alphabets................................31How to Interpret the Bible.......................................35The Bible in English.............................................39The Bible as Literature..........................................43Archaeology and the Bible........................................46Plants and Animals...............................................56Weights, Measures, Money.........................................61Measuring Time...................................................67THE FIVE BOOKS...................................................73THE HISTORICAL BOOKS.............................................165POETRY AND WISDOM LITERATURE.....................................301THE PROPHETS.....................................................375THE GOSPELS AND ACTS.............................................517THE LETTERS......................................................633The Guide for Christian Faith....................................741The Guide for Christian Living...................................746Glossary of Terms................................................751Who's Who in the Bible...........................................753Nations and Peoples..............................................761Gazetteer of Places..............................................764Index of Subjects................................................772Index of Scripture and Other Ancient Sources.....................779

Chapter One

Welcome to the wonderful world of the Bible! Some first enter it as children hearing Bible stories told by teachers or parents, while others first experience it as verses to memorize from flash cards. Some first hear of it as young adults taught by youth pastors or campus ministers, but some first discover it as adults adopting the common practice of daily Bible readings. And some have spent only a little time inside its world, while others who have heard about it have not yet ventured there. Whatever your relation to the Bible — whatever your favorite story, Bible character, or biblical book — this Companion aims to help you understand and enjoy the Bible's wonderful world.

Why Study the Bible?

Why should we study the Bible at all? What is it about the Bible that demands our attention, just as it did hundreds of generations before us? The answer is surprisingly simple: we should study the Bible because it introduces us to God. Indeed, God is its leading character. Most of the Bible consists of narratives starring God. Thus the Bible is not simply another version of humankind's age-old search for God but the account of God's own story — the report of God's persistent search for us. Put differently, the Bible's narrative "history" is essentially "his story" — the "Great Story" that underlies all of human history, the story that ultimately gives history a purpose. The Bible tells this great story in four chapters: Creation, Fall, Redemption, and Consummation. In this grand, cosmic drama, God plays the divine protagonist, Satan the antagonist, God's people the deuteragonists or foils — and sometimes also the antagonists! It is an amazing drama whose narrative tension redemption and reconciliation resolve, and whose denouement the consummation achieves. This large "forest" comprises the context for all the Bible's "trees" — its verses, paragraphs, chapters, books, and testaments. Thus, to help Bible readers find how their stories intersect with God's own story, the Great Story bears telling again.

The Biblical Story

Creation The creation marks both the first chapter in God's story and God's debut as protagonist. Surprisingly, he debuts not as a hidden God whom people must seek — in the end led to God by Jesus — but as a compelling, majestic figure standing alone at center stage. The narrator's introduction, "in the beginning God," signals that God alone existed before all things, that God alone is the cause of all things, that therefore God alone rules above all things, and that God alone is the goal of all things. His opening scene, with its seven-day structure, presents God as the sole Creator of both the whole, vast, intricate universe and of history itself (Genesis 1). All creation and all history have the eternal God, through Christ, as their final purpose and consummation.

God's own words, "Let us make humankind in our image" (Gen. 1:26), stamp humanity as the crowning glory of the Creator's work. We are beings made in God's likeness, with whom he could commune, and in whom he could delight; beings who would know the sheer pleasure of God's presence, love, and favor. Created in God's image, humankind thus uniquely enjoyed a clear vision of God and lived in intimate fellowship with God. But our being created in that image implies that God intended humans to be dependent on the Creator for life in his world. Genesis 1-2 first voices the Story's dependence theme, but in scores of ways other voices throughout the whole narrative echo and reprise it.

The Fall The fall comprises the second chapter in the biblical story, a long and tragic one. It begins in Genesis 3 and weaves a dark, ugly thread through the whole Story almost to the very end (Rev. 22:11, 15). It narrates how man and woman, suspicious of God's goodness, coveted God's divine status, and how in one awful moment in our planet's history they acted to become gods themselves, thus rebelling against their creatureliness, with its dependent status. They chose independence from the Creator, but that choice violated God's intention, so a fall resulted — a colossal, catastrophic, and tragic fall. (Granted, this is not a popular part of the Story today; but its rejection is symptomatic of the fall itself and the root of all false theologies.)

The truly tragic result was that we humans — created to enjoy fellowship with God, to thrive in dependence on him, and to find our ultimate meaning in being his creatures — fell under God's wrath and came to experience the terrible consequences of our rebellion. Three specific calamities afflicted our fallenness:

First, we lost our vision of God. Our perception of his nature and character blurred. Guilty and hostile ourselves, we projected responsibility for that guilt and hostility on God. God is to blame for this mess: "Why have you made me thus?" "Why are you so cruel?" Such plaintive but foolish cries echo throughout the history of our race. We thus became idolaters, reconstructing every grotesque expression of our fallenness into a god. As Paul writes, "They exchanged the truth about God for a lie" (Rom. 1:22-25).

In swapping the truth about God for a lie, we viewed God as full of caprice,...