Lection and Liturgy

Daniel, as I have mentioned in a previous post , is not classified among the prophets in the Hebrew Bible, but as one of the rather more miscellaneous “Writings”. The main reason for that is almost certainly because it was written quite late – around the time of the Maccabean revolt 1 , as an encouragement for those who were being called to give their lives, if necessary, as a faithful witness to their God.  The writing on the wall at Belshazzar ‘s Feast. See the story in Daniel 5. The first half of the book deals with previous examples of faith shown by the legendary characters of Daniel and his companions, Hananiah, Azariah and Mishael. The story calls them both by these Jewish names, and their Babylonian names: Daniel is Belteshazzar, and his companions Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego. It seems likely that these stories are already old by the time the author of the book of Daniel selects these characters for as the basis for his purpose of encouraging faithfulness in...

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...

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...