The Bible TI251 Fall 2020

We talked about monotheism in class today and what it has historically been defined as. From my perspective, I have always known monotheism to be the belief that there is only one God, one divine being. I have never thought what the meaning is past that, but today in class I learned that there could be multiple interpretations of what monotheism could be and whether it is displayed or not in the Bible. A different interpretation would be putting all one’s faith in one God, but believing that there are multiple gods and the one God that someone puts their faith into is supreme compared to the rest of the gods, but this seems to look more like polytheism considering people who think this also think that there are multiple gods. A lot of people derive their belief from the first commandment in the Bible: one must love the Lord our God more than any other Gods, which has also derived many interpretations. Many people take this commandment literally, which gives them a polytheistic belief that there are multiple gods that are not as important as the supreme God. Others dive deeper into the meaning and interpret the ‘other gods’ as idols of the world, like money, fame, success, etc. and still believe that the supreme God in the first commandment is the only god. It is very interesting to see all these different viewpoints and interpretations of the monotheistic belief and how it can be determined in the first commandment.

In class today we talked about if there are modern prophets and the definition of monotheism and its application to the Bible. In my breakout group we named scientist and political activists as modern prophets. Scientists, in a way, bring and interpret the laws of nature and the universe to the people, which is similar to how prophets of the time of the Bible functioned. Political activists like MLK bring social change, and some people listen to the activist, while some reject their ideas for what is already the norm. Prophets either foretell future events for bring about change, so that was the logic of my group during class. The modern definition of monotheism is belief in a singular deity and rejection of the existence of other deities. The first commandment states, “thou shalt have no other gods before me,” implying that the author of the Exodus knows that other gods are worshiped within their culture. I don’t think that Christianity is strictly a monotheistic religion, given that there are angels (even though angel simply means messenger) and the reference to the father, the son, and the holy spirit.

The concept of monotheism relating to the first commandment was very interesting to think about. The Bible shows monotheism, but also monolatry, which is the belief that there may be more than one God, but only one should be worshipped. Is this what the first commandment is saying? You could interpret that the first commandment says that there may be more than one deity, but you should only worship the Lord. Or, it could be saying that there is only one God and no others. Now that I have questioned this, personally I think the commandment is saying that there may be other “Gods” out there, but there is only one true one. These “Gods” may be referring to other deities, or simply things like idols or superficial things. I know that Catholics are criticized for worshiping other people like Mary and the saints. Overall, the term of monolatry was something I’ve never heard before, and I’m going to start looking out for it when reading the Bible.

The Prophets almost give me the vibe of the Justice League or The Avengers. They’re this league of legendary figures with their own cool unique back story. I remember my church drama teacher telling us in approximately fourth grade that the Bible, specifically the book of acts, was like an action movie, and the prophets kind of fit into that narrative.

Another part of the lecture that I found interesting was talking about people not focusing on the afterlife for a long period of the Abrahamic religious timeline. As a person I tend to think about death a lot, I’m not sure if it’s just me or if it’s more people and society in general, but there’s no way that I wouldn’t think about the afterlife because quite frankly it’s scary to me. The afterlife is really the only part of Christianity that I ever struggle with. The morals and teachings of the Bible seem fairly straight forward and integral to life, but conceptualizing the afterlife is where sometimes my faith starts to waiver.

I believe that chapter 8 of Wil Gafney’s article is a little extremist in interpretation, I also think that the use of critical theory in this article doesn’t add to the dialogue but strays from any actual scholarship. Gafney admits to this, stating that “The passage does not say that David uses force against Bathsheba, as it does in other accounts of rape.” and the overuse of power structures makes me think Gafney extrapolated too much. Once again, I will defend that modern interpretations of scripture are inherently ethnocentric by nature as our cultures/ideologies are wildly different. There was also a segment (paragraph 2, page 212) that elaborates on the potential ethnic makeup of Bathsheba, I believe that this was an attempt to bring tie the final pages of how people of color in Judaic society were more likely to be raped. This sentence

has no source allocated for it, so it is unclear as to whether POC were actually systematically disenfranchised in ancient Judea. Once again, this is over extrapolation to say that our modern understanding of what the systematic oppression of “black and brown women and girls” are is in line with what the Ancient Judaic understanding of POC oppression is. Gafney then uses misogynoir,

in the United States as the final evolution of early Judaic systematic racism which seems a little far fetched to me. I think that perhaps this could even be a little anti-semitic, placing the cause of American racism on the patriarchal structure of Jewish culture.

In class today, we talked about the prophets and we tried to come up with our own definition of a prophet. The class defined a prophet as someone sent by God to preach his word or someone who predicts the future. This seems to be a pretty good definition based on the readings for today’s class. “How Capitalism Echoes the Bible,” said that the prophet Samuel warned people about the consequences of demanding for a king to rule over them, he predicted the future and tried to convince them to not ask God for a king, and yet they did anyway. The kings that Samuel tried to convince them not to get ended up expropriating the men, imposing heavy taxes on harvests, and breaking up the tribal structure of Israel. “Walking with Justice” brought up an idea I had never thought about prophets despite learning about them for so long. I never thought about the dangers of the job of a prophet. Many prophets told of controversial topics that could have made powerful people very angry. For example, Isaiah and Micah stood up to rich people who stole inheritance from the poor and Elijah prophesized that Jezebel and Ahab would die because of their treatment of Naboth. I think in defining a prophet our class should have recognized the danger of their job, as it takes a lot of courage to stand up to the powerful people and follow God’s word despite the worldly repercussions.

In class, we talked about how very often the Bible has many tellings of the same story. Usually, these stories are told in different ways to accentuate a different part of the story than previously told. However, in other books of the Bible, some stories are completely left out. For example, the book of Chronicles completely ignores Saul’s kingship and the story of David and Bathsheba. This is intentional as Chronicles is meant to tell of the rebuilding and the return to the promised land. It purposefully leaves out some of the negative things. Chronicles does a very good job of making characters previously mentioned in other books into role models and giving clear messages. I never thought about different books of the Bible in this way. Whenever I considered missing information within stories of the Bible I always assumed that the author of that book did not think that story was important enough to include. However, it makes much more sense that authors of the Bible would repeat stories told in different ways to give off different messages and portray characters in a different light. It is also important to remember that the Bible was not written to be one long narrative, but it was compiled a collection of separate books, so it makes sense that some stories do not contain the same details that others do.

In class today we talked about the importance of archaeology to providing evidence to the historicity of the Bible. Archaeology provides concrete evidence, isn’t quite as impacted as bias as analysis of the text, and archaeological evidence is from the time period that the text was written whereas the texts are copies. We also analyzed the historicity of Exodus. In order for large numbers of people to cross the Red Sea, it would take at least a week. There are indications that the crossing of the Sea of Reeds may have been a less unusual if no less important event. Archaeological evidence confirms the settling of large numbers of people in previously uninhabited Canaan. This supports the idea of Exodus.

One very interesting thing I learned in class today was the idea that the Bible is not pro-slavery but it was taking something that existed in the time and providing legislation for it. Many people argue that because the Bible talks about slavery so much it must be pro-slavery, however, this is very untrue. The Bible was written during a time when indentured servitude was much more common than slavery as we in America know it from history books. Indentured servitude allowed servants to get out of their work once they repaid their debt by working. These people also weren’t mistreated like they were in American history. Therefore, I think it is very important for Christians and people who believe in the Bible to clearly understand that the Bible does not condone slavery, especially not on the basis of racism. I think very often people are under the impression that the Bible supports slavery and being able to explain that it does not is very important.

The book of Exodus begins the law of the Bible. The story within Exodus isn’t actually that long, but it is full of law. Within the story, God wrote the ten commandments and gave them to Moses, the plagues occurred in Egypt, and God parted the Red Sea through Moses. It was mentioned in the lecture that Pharaoh in the Exodus story is unnamed. This tends to be helpful to oppressed people as it allows them to put the things that are oppressing them into the spot of Pharaoh making the story of the Exodus more relatable. I was also surprised to learn that during early American history people took out the parts that mentioned liberation during. times when people had slaves to discourage slaves from trying to gain liberation. We also worked on making a list of commandments for a hypothetical society. This was a very interesting activity as it allowed me to think about what was important to me for my specific society and to compare them to the Ten Commandments.