Lection and Liturgy

Some historical events leave a deep footprint. Alexander the Great’s conquest of much of the world, as known to the people of the Mediterranean at the time, was one such event. While the political empire he established fragmented quickly among his squabbling heirs, the linguistic and cultural empire – an accidental by-product of his victories – lasted centuries longer. Greek became the common language of the ancient Mediterranean world, and Greece’s culture, education and philosophy became the ones to admire. For some time this was also the case in Jerusalem, many of whose leaders aspired to the Hellenistic city state model. The writer of First Maccabees attributes this primarily to the beginning of the second century BC. He sees it as yet another example of religious and cultural compromise. The leaders seeking cultural assimilation are backed up by the forces and laws of the king, Antiochus Epiphanes, who seems also to have had some delusions of grandeur. The Greek E...

As I mentioned early in this series, I am including the deuterocanonical books / apocrypha in their traditional Greek and Latin Bible order. ( The main post discussing this distinction is here. ) Today’s post considers a cluster of short stories grouped towards the end of the historical books. No readings occur in the Sunday Lectionary from the two deuterocanonical books of Tobit and Judith, and only one from the undisputedly canonical book of Esther. It is worth mentioning them together, as they illustrate the kind of short story, told with a historical framework, which show popular stories in their literary versions getting into the Bible. A basic familiarity with them can help us understand the culture in which Jesus and his first followers grew up. Tobit is a humorous family story, used only in weekday readings, telling of the young man Tobias and his adventures. Tobit, his blind father, sends him to get some money he had left while in exile, in the land of ...

If it wasn’t for the names of the biblical books, the title of this piece could look awfully like a contemporary headline. Yet in many other respects, neither Ezra nor Nehemiah feel particularly relevant for the contemporary world. Perhaps that’s why only one reading from these books crops up in the Sunday lectionary. Gustave Doré’s woodcut of the scene (1843: Public Domain) He imagines Ezra as a second Moses with stone tablets, rather than the scroll described in the story. The books of Ezra and Nehemiah are heavily edited stories relating various aspects of how things went when people began returning from exile to the land they still saw as the focus of God’s promises. Although the books have been written together on a single scroll, and are therefore often treated together, it remains a matter of much speculation among historians and biblical scholars how they (and their different parts) interrelate. 1 These books are concerned with the restructuring of society, in ...

The two books of Chronicles provide a kind of alternative history to the one we’ve been exploring. It goes back to the very beginning with an opening series of genealogies starting with Adam. These lists of names and generations take us through the various tribes of Israel and with an emphasis on where the writer wants to focus: the tribe of Levi, and the work of the Levites. For most modern, and quite a few ancient, readers, it probably has – at least in its opening chapters – at least a small claim to be the most boring book in the Bible. Part of a word cloud illustrating modern genealogies The Anglican newspaper, The Church Times , will often relate major news stories of the past week, but unlike the mainstream media, will include some mention of how local clergy responded to the events, opened their churches, offered prayers and commented on their significance. The books of Chronicles are something like that: the history you’ve already heard about, now with added clergy...

As with the books of Samuel, there are rather more excerpts from Kings in the continuous ecumenical lectionary, than there are in the related set of Old Testament readings. This additional set brings a semi-continuous reading of the stories of Elijah and Elisha, two prophets fabled for their interventions in politics and the miracles they worked as proofs that God favoured them. 1 The books of Kings take the story of Israel’s monarchy from the death of David to the deportations to Babylon that marked the end of the kingdom of Judah, and the beginning of the Exile. 2 A significant amount of time is devoted to David’s son, Solomon, and particularly his building of the temple. The writer enjoys offering lavish and detailed descriptions of its construction, and he will end his story with its dismantling and the despoiling of its sanctuary. (At the start of the books of Kings 3 the kingdom of Israel is portrayed as at its greatest extent (one still longed for by s...

There are a few carefully selected stories from the two books of Samuel which occur in the lectionary. There is a larger number in those churches which use the continuous Old Testament lectionary. This wider selection is not surprising, as these books tell the story, often quite critically, of the establishment of the Israelite monarchy. They also present a warts-and-all picture of the man who would come to be revered as the ideal king, David of Bethlehem. King David Playing the Harp (detail), Gerard van Honthorst, 1622, via Wikimedia Commons The book begins with the story of Samuel’s birth to Hannah and Elkanah, though Hannah, desperate to conceive, is the main character. Her story, and that of the eventual birth of her son as an answer to prayer, is echoed by Luke when he comes to tell the story of Mary and Elizabeth at the beginning of the gospel. Hannah gives her miracle baby, Samuel, back to God and he is brought up in the sanctuary at Shiloh. He grows up to become a ...

The short story, Ruth , sadly gets no use in the normal Sunday lectionary. It is tempting, following on from the absence of Deborah and Jael ( see yesterday’s post ), to wonder if the men who compiled the lectionary were giving in to a little bit of unconscious bias against women’s stories! Jean-François Millet, The Gleaners. Ruth meets her future husband while gleaning To be fair, however, it is hard to pull out a single excerpt from a very tightly written short story. The book tells the story of an Israelite family who go to live in the neighbouring country of Moab. The husband dies, leaving his widow Naomi and two sons. The sons marry Moabite women, and then the sons die. Naomi, accompanied by her loyal daughter-in-law Ruth, goes back to Israel. There Ruth attracts the attention of a wealthy and kind man, and ends up marrying him. Their child is named as the grandfather of King David. The story is placed between the books of Judges and Samuel, because of when it i...

As we move into the history books (or former prophets) I’m going to take both Joshua and Judges together. First, there are only a couple of readings from Joshua in the Sunday lectionary (and none from Judges), and secondly they make something of a contrast with each other. Judges – despite its omission from the lectionary – contains some cracking stories about some famous names like Gideon and Samson. These used to be a Sunday School staple despite the sex and violence. However, they tend to be too long for them easily to be used on a Sunday, and perhaps we are more shocked by some of these stories than our ancestors were. The main reading used on a Sunday (and also in some of the provision for initiation services) comes from the climax to the book of Joshua. 1 It is a covenant renewal ceremony that challenges the listeners to make the story of the exodus their own, and worship only the liberating God who has led them into the promised land. Joshua tells a stor...

We turn from law to history, or from instruction to prophecy, depending on whether you’re a Christian or a Jew. The second major division of the Old Testament in the Christian tradition is a group of historical writings. At this point the contents page of the church’s bible begins to look different from the Jewish one. The Jewish tradition puts what Christians call the historical books in two different categories, with the earlier books classed as Prophets, and some later ones put in the category of Writings. 1 The historical books classed as Prophets are Joshua, Judges, 1 & 2 Samuel (treated by Jews as a single scroll or book) and 1 & 2 Kings (also treated as a single book). These make up what are known in Jewish tradition as the four Former Prophets. 2 This Jewish classification is a good reminder that we are reading history with a message: the books are concerned not simply to relate what happened, but to tell the story of God’s activity with, for and sometim...