Why is this significant?

It means, for example, that the Old Testament gave a sufficient revelation of the gospel before Jesus was even born.  ”Sufficient” does not mean “complete” – indeed it could be argued that even with the New Testament added we still don’t have a complete revelation of the gospel, because there are many things that can be learnt about God that are not explicitly revealed in the Scriptures.  But “sufficient” does mean exactly that.  It means that I can take any book of the Jewish Scriptures and find that it points me toward Jesus, sometimes as a simple signpost, but often even in explicit teachings, without which our understanding of “who Jesus was, what he did, and why it matters” is very limited (to quote Tom Wright, whose latest book Simply Jesus is the next on my book pile – watch this space).

Take Job for example – most likely the oldest book in the Bible, and the book I am ploughing through in my daily readings at the moment.

As water disappears from the sea or a riverbed becomes parched and dry, so man lies down and does not rise; till the heavens are no more, men will not awake or be roused from their sleep.  Job 14:12

As Job sinks deeper and deeper into his suffering he gloomily focuses on death as being a finality which is the only hope of escape from his pain.  But even here there is a glimmer of an indication that death actually isn’t the end.  Yes man may lie down, but it seems Job is entertaining the thought that when “the heavens are no more” man will again be roused from his sleep.

This thought continues to develop as he responds in anguish to the judgements of his fair-weathered friends.

I will wait for my renewal to come.  You will call and I will answer you; you will long for the creature your hands have made.  Surely then you will count my steps but not keep track of my sin.  My offenses will be sealed up in a bag; you will cover over my sin.  Job 14:14

Through his blinding pain, and the railings of his “friends”, somehow Job manages to keep hold of some deep truths that he can only have received by revelation.  This is all the more fascinating when we remember that the poetry of the book of Job is among the most ancient writings in the Bible, and indeed in antiquity period.  Job understood that a renewal was coming; that part of this renewal involved a reconciliation with the eternal Creator God, in which his sins would be be covered over.  But how was this to take place?

Even now my witness is in heaven, my advocate is on high.  My intercessor is my friend as my eyes pour out tears to God; on behalf of a man he pleads with God as a man pleads for his friend.  Job 16:19

Sometimes the revelation about Jesus in the Old Testament comes in vague whispers, but at other times with flashing neon lights and blaring sirens – this is one of those occasions.  The covering over of sin would involve a witness and an advocate who has direct access to God in heaven.  Job also understood that one of the qualifications of this advocate was that he would have to be human:

[God] is not a man like me that I might answer him, that we might confront each other in court.  If only there were someone to arbitrate between us, to lay his hand upon us both, someone to remove God’s rod from me, so that his terror would frighten me no more.  Job 9:32-34

Not only would he have to be human, but he would have to be  a friend, a friend whose great love would be poured out in tears before the throne of God.

We know such a man.  We learn about him in hindsight, whereas Job was looking into the distant future.  His revelation of this intercessor was partial, ours is somewhat more detailed (although still not complete), but although separated in time by many thousands of years, we are looking to the same man.

Reading Job we have the impression that the more he poured out his lament to God, the clearer the revelation became.

I know that my Redeemer lives, and that in the end he will stand upon the earth.  And after my skin has been destroyed, yet in my flesh I will see God; I myself will see him with my own eyes – I, and not another.  How my heart yearns within me.  Job 19:28

Job’s friends seemed to believe that death truly was the end.  But like the light at the end of a tunnel Job’s understanding brightens to the point where deep down he knows that death is not the end.  Indeed, the renewal he speaks of is indeed a resurrection. Though his intercessor and advocate is now in heaven, the day is coming (and has already been) when he will stand on the earth.  Though his body was temporarily destroyed through death, it will be renewed in order that with his own eyes he will meet his intercessor in the flesh.

Here we have a full-fledged doctrine of resurrection right in the most ancient book of the Bible.  Job had a revelation of Jesus.

Joseph is a fruitful vine, a fruitful vine near a spring, whose branches climb over a wall.  Genesis 49:22

This curious verse is found in Jacob’s blessing of his son Joseph.  The fruitfulness of Joseph is a constant theme in the last thirteen chapters of the book of Genesis, and “fruitful vine near a spring” seems consistent with devices used throughout Hebrew poetry, where an initial thought is repeated and expanded upon in in the following phrase.  But what’s the idea with “branches climbing over a wall?”

I have an aunt whose neighbours have a very prolific grapefruit tree.  This tree has a few branches reaching out over the fence into my aunt’s property, and they are usually laden with delicious grapefruit.  Rather than cut the branches off, the neighbours freely invite my aunt to pick and enjoy the grapefruit on her side of the fence.  My aunt does not own the tree, she does not prune or care for it in any way, and she does not pay for the grapefruit she takes.  All she has to do is pick them, and enjoy them.  Sometimes there are so many grapefruit that she gives some away.  But she has no right to the grapefuit tree as such – it is the property of someone else.  The grapefruit are simply a free gift from the person who owns and nurtures the tree.

Some have accused the God of Israel of being an exclusive God, who shows favouritism toward one particular people.  There were strict laws governing intermarriage and even association between Israel and people of other ethnic groups, and the Bible is clear that God identifies himself as the God of Israel, and gives special blessings and responsibilities to this people.  It is as if there is a wall around this people, preventing other nations from entering in and sharing the blessing, and indeed down through the centuries many Jews have perceived their particular “blessing” in this way.

But the fruitfulness of Israel is like a tree that has branches that climb over a wall.  There are hundreds of ways of showing from the Scriptures that the covenant blessings God bestowed upon Israel were in fact for all nations, and that Israel was to be the bearer of this blessing to the nations.  Like with my aunt’s grapefruit, the nations outside the wall do not own the tree, but they can nevertheless enjoy its fruit, as its branches extend well beyond the confines of Israel.

Joseph’s own life is a clear example of this, as it was a result of his intimate relationship with the God of Israel that Egypt was finally saved from a devastating famine.  And the saving work of Joseph simply foreshadows the life of the most famous and most influential Jew of all history, who also made a trip to Egypt in his early years, and whose house would be called a house of prayer for all nations, and who, many centuries before his birth, was identified by the prophets as being a light to lighten the Gentiles, and the glory of his people Israel.

My aunt could choose to react to the branches of the grapefruit tree in different ways.  She could complain about the intrusion of wayward branches into her property and insist that the neighbour cut them down.  She could become jealous, wishing that she herself had such an excellent tree on her own property.  She could refuse to pick the fruit because she doesn’t want to feel indebted to the neighbour in any way.  The nations have reacted to the fruitfulness of Israel in all of these ways and more.

But the most intelligent thing for my aunt to do (and the approach she has in fact chosen) is to gratefully take as many grapefruit as those branches can produce, to enjoy them herself and share them with her guests, and to express her appreciation to her neighbours – something which she has been able to do in a variety of practical ways.

Quite a good deal, really, when you think about it…

Have you ever noticed how often the figure 70 appears in the Bible?  There are a few occurrences in Genesis that are particularly interesting.

Terah was 70 years old when Abraham was born.  Genesis 11:26

There are 70 names in Genesis 10, leading to the Talmudic tradition of the 70 nations.  The Septuagint (Greek translation of the Tanakh, the version that is quoted in the New Testament) counts 72 names.  Interestingly there is a similar discrepancy in the gospel of Luke, where in relation to the number of disciples that Jesus sent out to preach and demonstrate the kingdom of God, the numbers 70 and 72 are more or less evenly distributed in the manuscripts (Luke 10:1).  Rather than getting upset about the fact that the manuscripts don’t all the same thing, let’s be intrigued by the fact that this same discrepancy exists both in the Old and New Testament texts, probably a strong clue that they are referring to the same issue.  Other examples:

The members of Jacob’s household as they travelled down to Egypt during the time of the famine were 70.  Genesis 46:27

When Jacob died the Egyptians mourned for him 70 days.  Genesis 50:3

So what?  What does it matter how many days the Egyptians mourned for Jacob?  Traditionally the Jews have strongly associated the number seventy (or seventy-two) with the Gentile nations.  Terah’s age at Abraham’s birth could have been coincidental, but it is certain that his illustrious son was the first to receive the call to be a blessing to all nations, a call which to a greater or lesser degree has always featured in Jewish thought as being a significant part of their national identity.

Long before his descendants were conscious of being Jews, or Israelites, Jacob led the 70 members of his family southward to escape a terrible famine.  It is not clear to what extent Jacob, was actually conscious of his particular mission, as Abraham’s grandson, to take the blessing of God to the nations.  But he ended up doing it in spite of himself.  His own son Joseph became the saviour of Egypt, which opened the way for his whole family to set up shop in a corner of that land where they became a shop window for the kingdom of God.  Why 70 family members?  Perhaps a reminder of the call to go out into the world and demonstrate what being a righteous nation was all about.

The presence of Jacob’s descendants in Egypt, or “Israel” as they came to be known, left a lasting impression on people – so much so that when Jacob died, 70 of the greatest dignitaries of the nation were in the cortege to carry Jacob’s remains back to the land God had promised him.

Whether or not Jacob understood all this, it is strongly suggestive of the mission of God to reach every nation with the message of the restoration of his kingdom.

Other “seventies” elsewhere in the Scriptures may serve to confirm this, such as the 70 bullocks sacrificed at the tabernacle (II Chronicles 29:32), the 70 weeks of years in Daniel 9:24-27 during which Jerusalem would be trampled by Gentile powers or the 70/72 missionary disciples Jesus’ sent out as forerunners.

A question before we go there: is the story historical?  In other words, did it actually happen?  Nowhere in the New Testament is the historicity of the Flood either questioned or defended.  It is simply assumed.  The early Christians certainly appear to have believed the account to be accurate, and up until about the eighteenth century it was generally assumed to be historical.  In our day it is generally assumed to be complete fantasy.  Modern scholarship tends to envisage an impassable chasm between history and myth, whereas the line between the two is actually very blurry, particularly when we are dealing with ancient history.  One way of viewing “myth” is to consider it an interpretation of events, focusing on meaning rather than simply a blow-by-blow account of what actually happened.  Part of the reason history as it is taught in schools is often a source of great boredom for children is that events are listed without any presentation of the great uniting themes that give sense to them.

Let me say that I have no compelling reason not to consider that the basic elements of the story actually happened.  That said, I cannot prove the story in an empirical sense any more than it can be disproved, separated as we are from the events by several thousand years.  I don’t believe we are intended to try to prove or disprove the veracity of the account within the limitations of modern historical method. There is undoubtedly meaning in the story that goes beyond a dry and technical analysis of whether or not the events actually occurred as written (even though I see no reason to accept that they didn’t).

The first thing to note is that Jesus himself spoke of the ark, the days of Noah and the flood, with the clear assumption that his hearers knew what he was talking about  (Matthew 24:37-39).

Similarly, the writer of the epistle to the Hebrews uses Noah as an illustration of practical faith, when he built the ark to save his family in response to God’s instructions (Hebrews 11:7)

The apostle Peter seems to have been the first to explore the theological significance of the story of Noah.  He interprets the ark as an image of salvation, pointing to the fact that 8 people (the family of Noah) were saved from the waters of the Flood thanks to the ark.  He then draws a direct parallel between the waters of the Flood and the waters of baptism “that now saves you also” (I Peter 3:19-21)  Here we enter right into a christocentric interpretation of the story.  There are many ways in which the Flood story points toward Christ.  The extreme nature of the Flood as a judgement reflects the gravity of mankind’s disobedience, in a similar way that the extreme seriousness of the cross of Christ does.  In many ways the ark is a reflection of Christ, carrying his people through the waters of judgement for sin.  Peter specifies that baptism is not so much about the removal of dirt, as the pledge of a clean conscience toward God.  A just God cannot turn a blind eye to disobedience and sin.  The dirt is real, but in spite of the dirt, if we respond obediently to the solution that God has provided in Jesus Christ, we may approach the throne of God with confidence, a major theme of Hebrews chapter 10.

In so many ways walking through door of the ark and stepping out onto dry ground was like a resurrection for Noah.  Just as baptism is an identification with Jesus’ rising from the dead, so Noah and his family embarked (no etymological relationship implied) on a completely new life in a new world which bore some resemblance to the world they had known but in many respects was completely different.  Not only a new world, but a fresh start, like the fresh start that Jesus offers us daily when we lay our dirt at the foot of the cross, pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, and keep heading up the road, taking on more and more of his likeness as we move ahead.

There are other fascinating ways in which the Flood account foreshadows Christ.  The ark rested on the mountains of Ararat on the 17th of Nisan – the 7th month in the Hebrew calendar, which also happens to be the date of the Jewish feast of Firstfruits, the first day of the harvest, and also it would seem the date of Jesus’ resurrection, the day after the feast of Unleavened Bread.  The apostle Paul seems to confirm this.  Just an interesting coincidence?

I’m also fascinated by the following enigmatic comment, following Noah’s entry into the ark:

 Then the LORD shut him in.  Genesis 7:16

We cannot save ourselves.  Even after doing everything God had commanded him, there was still a final step that Noah was incapable of fulfilling: closing the door of the ark.  Jesus is the author of salvation in the sense that left to our own devices we can no more escape sin and live righteously than fly to the moon.  If we can live rightly, it is only through his achievements and his presence in us.

The strapline of his thesis is “why biblicism is not a truly evangelical reading of Scripture”, and one of the strengths of his book is that he spends the first four chapters defining what he means by “biblicism”.  He preempts accusations of having liberal tendencies by making clear in his introduction that his book is not an attack on the inspiration or authority of the Bible, but rather a “critical interrogation of certain aspects of one specific account of biblical authority that I think reason and evidence show is impossible to defend and employ with integrity.”  He calls this account “biblicism”, and demonstrates that it is the most common approach to the Scriptures in American evangelicalism.

I am not an American evangelical, and Smith has been criticised for being too centred on the American scene, although I find this criticism somewhat unfair – Smith is addressing the situation he knows best, and in such a short book the scope is necessarily limited.  In France evangelicalism is a relatively young movement and in many respects has more in common with its American counterpart than with the Christian traditions and approaches to the Scriptures native to its own land, therefore many of Smith’s findings are also applicable here, as in other parts of the world.  The fact that Smith has apparently joined the Catholic church and considers himself an “evangelical catholic” makes his study particularly interesting for the French situation, where many evangelicals would consider the term “evangelical Catholic” an oxymoron.

The book is very technical – Smith is an academic sociologist by trade – and you have to plough through to the end as he defines his subject for the book to make sense.  Even the title of the first chapter – “Biblicism and the Problem of Pervasive Interpretive Pluralism” would be enough to discourage some readers.  This is possibly one of the weaknesses of the book in the sense that his arguments probably apply more to popular evangelicalism, that is evangelicalism as it is actually practised in the churches and homes of large numbers of American evangelicals, who may find the book inaccessible.  But the effort is definitely worth it.

“Pervasive Interpretive Pluralism” is the primary problem addressed in the book, and in short it refers to the fact that Bible interpretation leads to a wide variety of different and contradictory understandings of what the Bible actually means on a very wide variety of subjects, all of which claim to be authoritative.  Smith points out that evangelicals disagree on many issues, including some that have very significant repercussions on the way we understand and practice the Christian life, and his argument is that the reason for this is the “biblicist” understanding of what the Bible actually is and how it should be read.  He defines biblicism in the introduction as being:

“a theory about the Bible that emphasizes together its exclusive authority, infallibility, perspicuity, self-sufficiency, internal consistency, self-evident meaning and universal applicability…a constellation of assumptions and beliefs that define a particular theory and practice”.

So what’s the problem?  That sounds like a fairly “biblical” approach to the Bible.  The problem is that in actual practice, Christians expect the Bible to speak unequivocally on all the subjects it addresses in such a way that all Christians should be able to arrive at the same conclusion about it’s meaning by just taking the text at face value.  In actual practice the exact opposite is true, which has led to the multiplicity of church denominations that we know today, and the sometimes vociferous arguments between Christians about what the Bible actually means.  Smith demonstrates through logic and through practical examples that biblicism as a theory of biblical interpretation is, quite simply, “impossible”.

In so doing he pulls the rug of security and certainty out from under large number of Christians who may find themselves destabilised by the thought that on numbers of subjects raised in the Scriptures there can be a diversity of valid interpretations, and not necessarily one “right” one.  He also goes into some detail about how modernistic approaches to knowledge and epistemology have also profoundly influenced the biblicist belief that it be desirable or even possible to arrive at the “right” answer to whatever question we might ask of the Bible, and that this approach to knowledge is not what the Bible intends.

In terms of what should replace biblicism, Smith gives several leads in the second half of the book, but without developing them or illustrating exactly what they might look like in practice.  This is a little frustrating, but again, consistent with the scope of the book.  He points to other authors who have already done good work in these areas, and perhaps he will address these issues in more depth in future publications.

For me this has been a very important and liberating book.  It is important because of the approach to biblical interpretation espoused in chapter 5, entitled “The Christocentric Hermeneutical Key“.  Put simply, the entire Bible is above all a revelation of Christ.  To quote Smith:

Seeing Christ as central compels us to always try to make sense of everything we read in any part of scripture in light of our larger knowledge of who God is in Jesus Christ…We only, always, and everywhere read scripture in view of its real subject matter: Jesus Christ…Christ is the center, the inner reason, and the end of all of scripture.  From the Bible’s account of the creation of the world in Genesis to its final consummation in Revelation, it is all and only about the work of God in time and space in the person of Jesus Christ for the redemption of the world.

Most evangelicals would agree with that statement, but often there is a significant gap between agreement and actual practice, because of our tendency to go to the Bible just to find answers to our questions.  We take our questions as the starting point, rather than the Bible itself.  We can usually find answers to these questions, but often we ask questions that the Bible itself does not ask.  We can too easily force the Scriptures to tell us things that they were never intended to.

It was also liberating, because it opens up for me a world where when I am questioned on what is the correct understanding of topics like women in ministry, tithing, church government, or any number of topics which I am frequently asked about where there seems to be some ambiguity in the Bible, I am perfectly free to give my own opinion on the topic without feeling under pressure to be sure to give The authoritative correct answer.  It also gives a strong foundation for genuinely close fellowship with other Christians who may have a completely different view to me on these subjects, because it’s normal that there be different views, as the Bible is not completely clear on every subject.  It is also liberating to think that the fact there are ambiguities in the Scriptures is intentional, and this in no way detracts from the inspiration or supreme importance of the Bible.  Above all, it will potentially lead me to an even greater love for the Author and Perfecter of faith, the central focus of human history, and the all-encompassing theme of the Scriptures: Yeshua.

So practically speaking, next time I read the genealogies at the beginning of I Chronicles (a passage most Christians avoid out of sheer boredom – let’s be honest) I am going to start with the assumption that Christ is the central focus of this passage, and I am looking forward to seeing how this assumption might change my understanding and appreciation of the usefulness of this and other passages that are often left aside because they seem too boring, too strange, or to controversial.

Noah is an excellent example of what obedience looks like.  We can barely imagine life inside the ark those 40 long days and nights, shut up in that huge windowless box, buffeted in all directions by the waves.  But forty days is only just over a month.  What we don’t always notice is that once the rain had stopped, Noah waited over 7 months before leaving the ark. After the ark stopped moving, 7 more months living on stale food with all the smell and mess of those animals, presumably in the dark, breathing old air.  Why did he do that?

Why did God require that of Noah and his family?  We can only guess – he had his own reasons.  But we see by Noah’s obedience that he had unshakeable faith in the fact that God knew best, that he loved him, and had his best interests at heart.  This is what gave Noah the confidence to obey, even in such difficult circumstances.

“Faith” has become a very esoteric word, meaning something like a vague positive feeling that everything is going to work out ok.  At least that’s how the term is often used in popular music and Disney movies.  This is not at all the same kind of thing as the faith that we find in the Scriptures, which is a very concrete, day by day discipline of believing God: believing that God is who He says he is, that His vision of my identity is the correct one, and that He really does have my best interests at heart.  On this basis, trusting and obeying him is the most intelligent response I can make.  This is not a once-and-for all decision, but a choice that has to be made several times each day, when we are faced with situations that on the surface would seem to call God’s love into question.

How did Noah’s family feel about being cooped up in the ark for so many months following the end of the rains?  We don’t know, but I imagine that Noah’s decision not to leave the ark until God explicitly told them to possibly didn’t go down very well.  There were a hundred and one reasons why it would have seemed a good idea to get out of that place.  ”Did God really say that we had to wait….?” – echoes of Eve about eating the fruit.  ”Did God really say…?” is the question at the root of all doubt concerning the integrity and goodness of God.

But not only did Noah stand firm, but what was his first act in the new world?  No sooner had his feet touched terra firma than he was looking for materials to construct an altar:

Then Noah built an altar to the LORD and, taking some of all the clean animals and clean birds, he sacrificed burnt offerings on it.  The LORD smelled the pleasing aroma and said in is heart:”Never again will I curse the ground because of man, even though every inclination of his heart is evil from childhood.  And never again will I destroy all living creatures, as I have done.  As long as the earth endures, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night will never cease. Genesis 8:20-22

Much more could be said about the significance of altars and sacrifices, but for now let’s just notice that Noah shows by his obedience that he is acting consistently with the line of Abel, and his obedience is what saved humanity, and continues to be a protection for us right up to our day, regardless of the evil inclinations of human hearts.

That’s because God doesn’t forgive because of man.  God forgives because of God.  Obeying Him because it’s in our best interests is as good a motivation as any when we start on our journey, but we are on a path heading for a deeper understanding of obedience, and a higher motivation, which is that we obey him for no other reason that He is who He is.

It must have been awful.  It has always been a mystery to me why one of the ghastliest events in literature is treated as a cute children’s story.  The Flood was all of the scariest disaster movies rolled into one.  And in many respects it could be considered a man-made disaster, in the sense that the root cause of this catastrophe can be summed up in one word: disobedience.  Christians sometimes talk about the unconditional love of God.  While the unconditionality of love is a moot point (there are cases to be made for God both loving and hating in the Scriptures), there is clearly a condition involved with living “righteously” – that is being like God, living the way we were designed to live.  Adam chose not to respect it, and had to abide by the consequences.  The Flood seems like an awfully harsh solution for disobedience, but that is probably because we don’t grasp the depth of human depravity, nor how widely spread evil was in Noah’s day:

Every inclination of the thoughts of [man's] heart was only evil all the time.  Genesis 6:5

Disobedience is a simple matter.  Parents deal with it all the time.  Disobedience is rarely spiteful.  It is usually the result of children misguidedly thinking they know better than their parents.  In small children this is more impulsive than thought through.  In older children, they can rationalise that perhaps “tidy your room” was actually intended as a piece of advice rather than something that was actually expected to be accomplished, or perhaps it was only binding up until the point where the child found something more interesting to do.  In teenagers it can even become a conviction that the parents actually don’t know what they are talking about (especially if disobedience hasn’t been addressed in earlier years).  Children get tired of parents saying “it’s for your own good”, because very often the “good” that the act of obedience is supposed to produce is something intangible in the future, and children don’t really get delayed gratification.

But delayed gratification or the child’s agreement or disagreement with the parent’s instructions have very little if any bearing on what is good for the child, or whether or not the child should obey.  Unfortunately the child-parent relationship has been terribly marred by the same kind of evil that originally produced the Flood.  Nevertheless, deep down we instinctively know that in a “normal” world, children should obey their parents, because the parents are the immediate reason that the children are alive, they have their best interests at heart, and they know what is best for them.  (Part of “normal” here denotes a world where parents don’t require that their children do things just for their own convenience, or to bolster their own ego, amongst other unhealthy motivations for seeking a child’s obedience).

Obedience does not require understanding.  Understanding and wisdom grow as a child gets older, and in retrospect a child will understand better why a parent makes certain requirements.  It’s amazing how once you have your own children your parents can start to seem quite intelligent after all…

It’s pointless negotiating with a small child, or trying to explain the rationale behind why we give them the instructions that we do.  They don’t have the necessary maturity to cope with that.  But they are perfectly capable of being trained to obey.  Of course they don’t always do it perfectly, and when they slip up good parents don’t love them any less.  But the fact that it can be a long and sometimes exasperating process doesn’t negate the fact that training a child to obey is a realistic and desirable outcome, and is in the best interests of the child.

We go through very similar processes in learning to obey God.  But the ancients didn’t learn.  To be continued…

Pairs of clean and unclean animals, of birds and of all creatures that move along the ground, male and female, came to Noah and entered the ark, as God had commanded Noah.  And after the seven days the floodwaters came on the earth.  Genesis 7: 8-10

In addition to serving as an example as to how God never demands anything of us without giving the wherewithal for us to achieve it, it illustrates something of the nature of the originally intended relationship between humans and animals.  Adam was commanded to govern the animal kingdom (Genesis 1:28), and to name the animals as a mark of his authority over them (Genesis 2:20).  It was under the new post-flood conditions that God put the fear of man into the animals, but this was seemingly not his original intent.  There are some people today who have a certain affinity with animals, and even a limited ability to communicate with them, but this is the exception rather than the rule.  Perhaps these animals knew by instinct that their safety lay within the ark.  In any case Noah did not have to go out looking for them.  This is simply one of the examples of the favour that Noah enjoyed as the one righteous man alive at that time, along with the family he headed.

But Noah found favour in the eyes of the LORD.  This is the account of Noah.  Noah was a righteous man, blameless among the people of his time, and he walked with God. Genesis 6:8-9

Being a prophet has always been a dangerous occupation, but Noah was one of those prophets who managed to survive.  It seems likely though that by his time people would have though he was simply crazy, not exactly a threat to public order.  In fact, there probably wasn’t any public order.

At the time of Noah’s 8 x great grandfather Enosh, people first began to “call on” the name of the Lord (Genesis 4:26), which by all reports seems to be a somewhat misleading translation.  The real sense of this verb seems to be to “call on” in the sense of misuse or profane.  It was at this time that people began to curse God for the hardship of life.  Adam blamed his wife for the loss of paradise.  By Enosh’s time people began to blame God.  We do the same every time we say “if God really exists, why is there so much suffering in the world?”  We blame God for suffering.

After 8 generations of profaning the name of God, people were probably out of touch with the concept of “righteousness”.  Noah was a righteous man, he taught about righteousness, but evidently nobody understood what he was going on about.  The word “righteous” is similarly misunderstood today.  I like to think of it as a very simple concept: living the way we were designed to.  We were created in the image of God – we are meant to be like him.

A curious point:  Enosh might have been Noah’s 8 x great grandfather, yet he only died 14 years before Noah was born – check out the math in Genesis chapter 5.  If Genesis is to be taken seriously, then Enosh was Adam’s grandson, so in this sense in Noah’s day people were not so very far removed from the time when man dwelt in God’s presence, and yet Noah and his family were the only ones who “walked with God”.  Amazing to think there were people alive who would have known people of the generation of Adam’s grandchildren, who would have presumably heard tales of the paradise that was lost, and yet nobody but Noah had figured out how to walk with God.  But Noah proves that it was possible.  And remains is possible today.  So how did Noah do it?  How did he find favour with God?

So Cain went out from the Lord’s presence and lived in the land of Nod, east of Eden. Genesis 4:16

Not the land of “nod” that I should be heading for right now after a long day of work, but Nod, the place whose name meant “wandering”.

This is right up there with the most tragic passages in the Bible: a man went out from the presence of God, out from that place where he is designed to dwell and flourish.  And people have been wandering ever since, away from the presence of God, and have not been able to find their way back.

All of man’s religious systems were born in Nod, artificial forms of “worship” through unauthorised offerings that give God no pleasure, because they take place out of his presence, in the land where men wander, trying to find their own way.

God has sent his prophets to warn men of the dangers of this errancy, and of his own provision of a way to get back.  Abel was the first of these prophets.  Cain killed him.  Ever since, religious people have killed the prophets.

So Cain built a city.  He called it Enoch, later known as Erech,  (for the linguistically geeky, the ‘R’ and the ‘CH’ in this placename turned up many ages later, albeit in mangled form, in the Germanic ‘buRG’ or anglo-saxon ‘boRouGH’).  This first city was Cain’s attempt to escape his wandering, by his own skill and design.  It seems cities as we know them were man’s idea, not God’s.  In God’s kingdom there is only one city, a city on a hill, that comes down out of heaven, but that’s another story.

Enoch/Erech is the symbol of man’s endeavour to create a comfortable life for himself, and to distract himself from the reality of paradise lost.  Yet no amount of self-kidding has ever healed that deep sense of having lost something that we know we should have.  Cities were an insufficient remedy to man’s errant heart.

Not a cheery thought to start the year with, but it’s not the end of the story.

I admit to being fascinated by the possibility that the remains of the Ark could still be buried somewhere in eastern Turkey.  I would not consider, however, that I have any vested interest in the finding of the said artefact because of my faith.  The Christian faith is not based on whether or not the Ark can be found, but rather whether or not a certain first century Jew died and rose again three days later as he claimed he would.  For me the historical evidence for this second fact is quite sufficient to give me confidence to follow the way of Jesus.

However, quite apart from the question of whether or not this latest finding is authentic, we are again witnessing the news media behaving in a very peculiar way, as it does every time some archaeological discovery is made that sheds light upon an event that is recorded in the Judaeo-Christian Scriptures.

Have you ever noticed that for an archeological find that is corroborated by the Scriptures to be accepted as authentic, an impossibly exacting standard of proof is required?  The set of criteria for evaluating biblical archaeology is quite different to those used in any other field of archaeology, or indeed historical science in general.

A collection of statements from media reports concerning the latest Noah’s Ark find illustrates this:

The evangelical group says it found wood structures on Ararat, and carbon dating placed it at 4,800 years old. But even this doesn’t necessarily mean it’s Noah’s Ark – or that the “structure” they found is that old.
New York Daily News 20/04/10.

Carbon14-dating is generally presented by the popular media as being infallible, even if it yields an age of over 60,000 years, which is widely understood to be the maximum extent of the method’s reliability.  If we read in the news that a fossil or an artifact has been dated to x number of years, we accept that report as being reliable.  If, however, it concerns a biblical artifact, carbon-dating doesn’t prove anything.

It could be ancient, it could be medieval, it could even have been constructed last week,” he said. “Even carbon-14 dating will only tell us how old the wood is; it will not tell us when the structure was constructed.

A quote by Professor Eric Cline of George Washington University, from the same article.

All historical evidence needs to be evaluated and interpreted, as there are no eye-witnesses available to confirm whether or not a find is authentic.  We see both plausible and implausible interpretations put forward, and in most cases, when an expert rejects an implausible interpretation, this rejection is confirmed and accepted.  When it comes to biblical archeology, however, experts get away with publishing the most absurdly implausible interpretations, and are taken seriously.  The above is a prime example – Mr Cline would have us believe that it is possible that somebody found a store of 4,800 year old timber that he carted 4,000 metres up a mountain and built a wooden structure, embedded it in the ice, and managed this feat in a week.

Noah’s Ark Hoax Claim Doesn’t Deter Believers, trumpets Fox News, followed by a stereotypical medieval engraving of the Ark (supposedly highlighting the unsophistication of our credulous forbears who actually believed the biblical account).  Further down in the article we read:

Maybe the find on Mount Ararat in Turkey really is Noah’s Ark. More likely, it isn’t. But if it isn’t, that won’t stop Ark enthusiasts from believing it is out there somewhere.

The headline tells us it’s a hoax.  The article specifies that the authenticity of the find has not yet been determined.  This article does not tell us anything useful regarding the identification of the artifact, other than portraying the author of the article, Lauren Green, as someone who considers herself qualified to brush off of the find with a summary “more likely it isn’t [the ark]“, which begs the question, “what would she know?”  Can a journalist who entitles her article with such a blatantly contradictory headline really be trusted?

Difficult to find serious journalism on the subject, although the Christian Science Monitor seems to do a better job than most.  It has published in-depth articles about the expedition and its findings, and brings up a number of factors that need to be seriously examined before the find could be considered conclusive.

Nevertheless we also see in these articles exacting standards that would not necessarily be required of less controversial discoveries:

While news of the find is making headlines around the world, there’s one part of the story that Yeung is conspicuously silent about: He is only the latest in a long line of people who claim to have found Noah’s Ark. In fact, there have been at least half a dozen others.  Christian Science Monitor, 28/04/10

Would it be generally expected of someone going public with an archeological find to give an account of the work of their predecessors?  Is there really anything so “conspicuous” about this silence?

There are several reasons why the new claims should be treated with skepticism. For example, Yeung refuses to disclose the location of the find and is instead keeping it a secret. This of course is inherently unscientific.  From the same article.

If the discoverer is convinced of the authenticity of the find,  is it so surprising that he would not want the exact location published?  Later in the article the research team is criticised for not making their find available for independent testing, but for this to occur, surely the site would need to be protected from pillagers and the alterior motives of any number of adventurers that could cause serious damage.  It’s early days – let us first wait and see if peer review is undertaken.  It could be a very lengthy procedure.

Much more could be said, by people eminently more qualified.  I suspect a lot more work needs to be done before the value of this find on Mt. Ararat can be finally determined.  In the meantime, we will no doubt be treated to more examples of double-standards in the news media when it comes to archeological finds as they relate to the Bible.  There is a world of difference between healthy skepticism and cynicism.

Update: For a comparison of the media treatment of biblical archaeological finds  and “missing link” discoveries supporting Darwinism, OneNewsNow has an interesting article.

Photograph courtesy of sacredsites.com.

When he finds them, he persists in his questioning: Who told you that you are naked? As if to say, “I made you that way! You have no reason to be ashamed”. Have you eaten from the tree that I commanded you not to eat from? Why would God ask what he already knows, if not to allow man the opportunity to confess. Before speaking judgement, he allows man to take full responsibility for his actions, thereby affirming his humanness. He allows room for reflection, confession and repentance, so that man might be restored. Yet rather than recognise his own fault, Adam blames God, and then his wife, for his own folly. What is this you have done? A fourth question, which Eve in turn answers in blaming the serpent. Neither acknowledges wrongdoing. What would have happened had they confessed? Was it the eating of the fruit or the failure to ask for forgiveness that saw them ultimately excluded from the garden, and thus human life the way God intended it.

God continues his search, probing into the heart of man, drawing him out. To Cain he asks Why are you angry? Why is your face downcast? Is this not the concern of a loving Father? Yet rather than receive that love, Cain allows his anger to give birth to murder. There again, God stays his judgement, preferring to allow the possibility of a contrite heart. Although Abel’s blood was screaming Cain’s guilt, God asks: Where is your brother? Cain adds falsehood to his crimes. And still God questions: What have you done?

This same God questions us today, not imposing his truth, nor bringing judgement before its time. He allows us to draw our own conclusions, willing us to choose rightly, longing for our restoration, yet permitting us to reject him if we so choose. If we reject him, our refusal will not go unjudged indefinitely. Today is amnesty day – our opportunity to confess our faults, to overcome our pride, and to agree with God’s appraisal. Who knows but that it might be our last.

There are some interesting reflections there on John 15 and living a fruitful life, which I find very applicable to us at the moment.

I just approved a comment on some thoughts I posted a while ago under the heading Reinterpreting Traditions. It’s an article by our friend Cor the artist touching on the story of the Samaritan woman, and I thought it was too useful to hide away in the comments section of an old post. Hope you get as much out of it as I did…

Like many of you, I’ve heard and read it countless times! I know this story already for more than fifty years! Then one day as by a divine touch, the real meaning of this rich deep story hit home, at least it shook up my life.

This divine touch can leave you potentially confused, excited, reassured or, as in my case, with a glorious revelation experience! I am talking about the story of the Samaritan woman at the well in the Gospel of John 4.

By many preachers, she has always been painted as the lady with a questionable past, who went through five husbands, and the one she was living with was not her husband either, according to a very reliable source: Jesus! Surprisingly, Jesus does not turn away from her in horror and disgust, but He choses to do the opposite…to teach her! She becomes one of the first human beings to be taught the miracle and principle of the Kingdom.

Here she is, a woman belonging to the despised Samaritans, a human being without any credibility according to the Jewish laws and attitude of the time.
Even the disciples were at least “mildly” disturbed, when they found Jesus talking to her by their return to the well. Their behaviour gives us some insight in their preconceptions and ways of thinking regarding situations like these.

The disciples had no idea that they were about to go through a life-changing experience that would absolutely shatter their pre-conceptions about religion and human relationships, and would add inevitably a new level to their spiritual maturity.

First, Jesus paid attention to the person, whom He knew had more spiritual depth then many of His own people. He looked past the five husbands which could easily have been a dramatic run of illnesses in that family, and that she was therefore cared for by a certain man according to the laws at the time.
We find a similar situation in the case in the old testament of the prophet Elijah and the widow of Zarephath with her son.

This Samaritan woman turns out to be very knowledgeable about the religious environment of the times. Yes, she even knew about the Messiah who was about to come. She rises far above the mediocrity of her fellow villagers, reaches out, absorbs and processes the words of life, provided by Jesus.
This exhibition of faith puts her on a similar level with Simeon who was waiting for the Messiah as well.

There is plenty of reason and evidence to believe that, instead of the perceived impression of a lady with a past, she was in fact a lady with a future and leadership, as she was evidently a highly esteemed prophetess (Revelation 19:10… for the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy.) and well regarded by her own people. This explains her obvious gift of perception, the ease and authority by which she gets her fellow villagers to listen to that strange Jewish teacher: Jesus.

She was clearly steeped in religion as she new the conditions of worship in her own culture as well as the Jewish, and was most likely familiar with the “theology” surrounding it. She had all her religious facts lined up in a row and nothing would surprise her. Yes, apart from an underlying yearning for more, she was content with it, despite the obvious “enslavement” aspect. Little did she know about that glorious spiritual glowing fire that was brooding under her feet, a fire that would free, purify and cleanse her for the rest of her life.

In His short teaching-session, Jesus gets straight to the point by exposing the center-core truth about the Kingdom, which is the Spirit of God in man, thereby heralding the coming demise of the known formal type of worship, including the use of the buildings dedicated to that purpose.

The emphasis in His teaching is on the walk of a human being by the government of the Spirit of God. This Spirit is the bread of Life, and the Living water, which will quench every need and directs the receiving person into a lifestyle which is worship in itself. When the Spirit of God directs a life into a life of worship, Truth is the result, and as the truth is the person of Christ, it is easy to see that a Spirit governed life is a life lead by the living Christ.

Is it not wonderful that Jesus entrusted the principle of the Kingdom to these despised people. They invited Jesus AND the disciples to stay in their village and Jesus accepted. They stayed for two days and reading their responses and reactions, Jesus’s time in their midst changed these people involved dramaticly, including the disciples. They all went through a real-life seminar/workshop and all must have come out on the other side as changed people.

Understanding that this Kingdom-blueprint was also meant for the believers in the following ages, for us, raises in me the question; what on earth have we done with the Kingdom teaching! Jesus always taught the Kingdom power, never the church principle, only the English translation Bibles do. Perhaps we are called to choose again for the Kingdom, in order to experience unobstructed the Christ of Christianity?

Several generations later we see King David undertaking exactly the same project which God had blessed in Moses’ day when he sent his commanders throughout the land to count the fighting men of Israel and Judah. The text does not elaborate on David’s motives for doing this, but we see Joab, his trusted advisor, warning him not to do it. David stubbornly continues with his project, and finishes with a stricken conscience, repenting before God for this foolish sin which resulted in a severe outpouring of God’s judgement in the land.

Is God capricious? Does he have double standards? Does he have favourites? No to all of the above. The point is that without faith it is impossible to please God. Moses acted by faith, obeying God’s commandment. David acted out of presumption, as if he could force God’s blessing just by cutting and pasting the acts of the past into his situation.

It occurs to me that we are so like that. How often we do the things that God has blessed in the past, expecting the same blessings today. We are so easily trapped in old forms and traditions which have long passed their “use by” date. This is especially true of our ecclesiology – our way of being Church. Going to our ancestors and forbears in the faith is a great source of inspiration, but copying their methods and actions can be perilous. God blessed them because of their faith, which for them was acting in accordance with God’s leading for their situation. There was nothing magical about their methods. Making a tradition out of the methods of the past degenerates very easily into idolatry where we worship the forms and forget the meaning behind their original function.

We need a fresh prophetic revelation for today, to help us apply God’s eternal and unchanging word in our situation. We must go to Him for this revelation, and not just copy what has gone before.

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