Reading the Bible again for the First Time

by Marcus J. Borg

  This is the world of Egypt and the world of empire—the world that Moses knew. Israel’s “primal narrative” is the story of radical protest against and liberation from such a world, and it affirms that radical criticism of and liberation from such societies is the will of God. Moreover, the radical economic legislation of the Pentateuch was designed to prevent such a world from reemerging. Indeed, early Israel (for roughly the first two hundred years after gaining the promised land) was a remarkably egalitarian society, one with universal land ownership and no monarchy. The message of the Pentateuch was that God’s people were to leave the world of Egypt and empire behind.

  Thus Israel’s primal narrative is profoundly political in the broadest sense of the word. Politics is about the shape and shaping of society. The exodus story is about the creation of a world marked by freedom, social justice, and shalom, a rich Hebrew word meaning “well-being, peace, and wholeness.” It contrasts an “exodus worldview” with a “monarchical worldview.”

  Yet it is not simply political. At the center of Israel’s primal narrative is God. God is the central reality of the story, and God’s covenant with Israel begins, “I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. You shall have no other gods before me.”42 The exodus story is not about social justice without God; equally, it is not about God without social justice.

  Ancient Israel’s primal narrative thus brings together two areas of life that we tend to separate: religious passion and social justice, God and this-worldly liberation. Even the obituary of Moses at the end of Deuteronomy unites these two contrasts. It not only refers to Moses’ central role in the exodus but also describes him as one whom God “knew face to face”:

  Never since has there arisen a prophet in Israel like Moses, whom the LORD knew face to face. He was unequaled for all the signs and wonders that the LORD sent him to perform in the land of Egypt, against Pharaoh and all his servants and the entire land, and for all the mighty deeds and all the terrifying displays of power that Moses performed in the sight of all Israel.43

  Moses knew God; and Moses was the liberator of Israel. In Moses, as in the story of the exodus as a whole, the experience of God and the liberation from empire are brought together, in opposition to the monarchical worldview.

  Finally, the story of the exodus is framed by the theme of the Pentateuch as a whole: promise and fulfillment. Both the exodus story and the theme of promise and fulfillment were strikingly relevant to the situation of the Jewish people in the exilic and postexilic periods—the years when the Pentateuch was composed in its final and present form.

  They had been conquered, greatly reduced in numbers, and exiled by one imperial power; now they lived under another imperial power. The promise of God that they would be “a great nation” seemed profoundly threatened, as did their very existence. In this setting, they remembered and celebrated the promise given to their ancestors, the stories of Israel’s liberation from a previous imperial power, and the gift of a new land and a new life.

  Indeed, the theme of promise and fulfillment is strikingly relevant to people in all times. In spite of threats to the promise and seemingly insurmountable obstacles, when birth and rebirth seem impossible, when pharaohs and the powers of empires seem to rule the world, God’s faithfulness can be counted on.

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  6

  Reading the Prophets Again

  The classical prophets of ancient Israel are among the most remarkable people who have ever lived. Such is the indelible impression made by their words. Their language is memorable, poetic, and powerful. Their passion and courage are exceptional. Their message combines radical criticism of the way things are with urgent advocacy of another way of being. They disturb our sense of normalcy in several ways—socially, personally, and spiritually. And, in their own words, they speak for God.

  Introduction

  We move from the Pentateuch, or the Law, to the second major portion of the Hebrew Bible: the Prophets. The books contained in the Prophets are divided into two groups, “the former prophets” and “the latter prophets.” The former prophets are a collection of historical books beginning with Joshua and including Judges, I and II Samuel, and I and II Kings. They narrate the history of Israel from the time of the occupation of the promised land until the fall of Jerusalem to the Babylonians in 586 BCE.

  The latter prophets are those books named after the classical prophets. These persuasive messengers of God are themselves commonly divided into two groups, “the major prophets” and “the minor prophets.” The designations do not refer to the prophets’ relative importance; rather, they indicate the length of the books that bear the prophets’ names. The three major prophets are Isaiah (sixty-six chapters), Jeremiah (fifty-two chapters), and Ezekiel (forty-eight chapters). The books of the twelve minor prophets range in length from Hosea and Zechariah (fourteen chapters each) to Obadiah (one chapter, the shortest book in the Hebrew Bible). Several are only two or three chapters long.1

  We not only move now from the Pentateuch to the Prophets, but we also move forward in time about five hundred years, leaving behind the exodus of the thirteenth century BCE. For about two centuries after the Israelites settled the promised land, they lived as a “tribal confederacy” with no centralized government. Then, in about the year 1000 BCE, the tribal confederacy was replaced by a monarchy. The first king was the ill-fated Saul, followed by King David, who unified the new kingdom and made Jerusalem its capital. David’s son King Solomon built the temple on Mt. Zion in Jerusalem and extended the kingdom to the greatest size it was to attain.

  When Solomon died around 922 BCE, the united kingdom split into two parts: the northern kingdom of Israel and the southern kingdom of Judah. The northern kingdom lasted until 722 BCE, when it was conquered and destroyed by the Assyrian Empire and basically disappeared from history. The southern kingdom was conquered and destroyed by the Babylonian Empire in 586 BCE, and some of the survivors were exiled to Babylon. The exile lasted about fifty years, ending in 539 BCE, when the exiles were permitted to return to Judah and begin rebuilding their ruined country.

  The classical prophets belong to the time of the divided kingdoms, their destruction, the exile, and the return. The earliest of these prophets (Amos) began speaking about 750 BCE, some thirty years before the destruction of the northern kingdom. The latest spoke in the century or two following the return from exile. Though they had predecessors (Samuel in the eleventh century, Nathan in the tenth, Elijah and Elisha in the ninth), I will focus primarily on the classical prophets.

  Hearing the Prophets the First Time

  I have heard the voices of the prophets in three quite different ways in my own religious journey as a Christian. My first impression of the prophets was formed when I was a child growing up in the church. In common with many Christians of my generation (and before), I heard the prophets spoken of primarily as predicttors of the messiah, who was, of course, Jesus; they had been sent by God to foretell Jesus’ coming. Moreover, given that they predicted events hundreds of years in the future (from their point of time), it was obvious that they had to be inspired by God.

  I heard the New Testament itself, especially Matthew’s gospel, speak about the prophets this way.2 From the first chapter onward, Matthew uses a “prediction-fulfillment” formula. After he narrates the story of an angel telling Joseph in a dream that Mary is pregnant by the Holy Spirit, he quotes a passage from the eighth-century prophet Isaiah:

  All this took place to fulfill what had been spoken by the Lord through the prophet: Behold, a virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall call him Emmanuel, which means “God with us.”3

  So the virgin birth had been predicted.

  In his first two chapters, Matthew uses the prediction-fulfillment formula five times, all in connection with Jesus’ birth and infancy. I cite two more examples. After Jesus is born in Bethlehem, Matthew writes, “It has been written by the prophe
t” and then quotes words derived primarily from Micah:

  And you, O Bethlehem, in the land of Judah, are by no means least among the rulers of Judah; for from you shall come a ruler who is to shepherd my people Israel.4

  I took Matthew’s claim for granted as a child: the birthplace of Jesus had been predicted centuries earlier.

  Matthew also tells us that Mary, Joseph, and the baby Jesus flee to Egypt to escape the murderous plot of King Herod. (Like Pharaoh centuries before, Herod had ordered the death of all male babies.) After Herod dies, they return from Egypt, and Matthew writes:

  This was to fulfill what had been spoken by the Lord through the prophet: “Out of Egypt have I called my son.”

  The quoted passage is from the prophet Hosea.5 Used in conjunction with Matthew’s narrative, it gives the strong impression that even Jesus’ time in Egypt and his return from Egypt had been predicted.

  In Matthew as a whole, the prediction-fulfillment formula is used thirteen times. And though the other authors of the New Testament do not use the pattern so explicitly, many of them correlate events in the life of Jesus with passages from the Hebrew Bible, especially in the passion narratives, which tell the story of his death. Hearing the Bible in a state of precritical naivete, I reached a conclusion that was inevitable: the prophets were supernaturally inspired predictors of Jesus.

  This reading of the prophets was reinforced by a copy of Halley’s Bible Handbook that was in our home. First published in 1924, it soon became a best-seller. As I recall the edition I knew as a child, there was a two-page layout of over one hundred predictions of the messiah in the Old Testament and their fulfillment in Jesus in the New Testament.6

  The handbook’s claim: “By the time we reach the end of the Old Testament, the entire story of Christ has been pre-written and pre-figured.”

  Then the handbook asks a question to which its answer is obvious:

  How can this amazing composite of Jesus’ life and work, put together by different writers of different centuries, ages before Jesus came, be explained on any other basis than that ONE SUPERHUMAN MIND supervised the writing? The miracle of the ages.7

  Thus the prophets predicted Jesus. Moreover, their predictions not only proved that Jesus was the messiah; they also proved the truth and supernatural origin of the Bible.

  Seeing the prophets as predictors of the future was reinforced by the most common meaning of the words “prophet” and “prophecy” in our culture. For both Christians and non-Christians, the words most often refer to a supernatural (that is, more than natural) knowledge of the future. Some people within each group believe that prophecy is possible; others do not. But both groups agree that this is what prophecy is.

  In short, the way I heard the prophets the first time is that they certainly predicted the first coming of Jesus and may have predicted his second coming. This way of seeing and reading the prophets is still around. Halley’s is still in print, the best-selling Bible handbook in American history, and now in its twenty-fifth edition. In person or by letter, I continue to be asked by Christians who are puzzled about the historical study of Jesus, “What about the argument from prophecy?”

  I no longer see the prophets as predictors of Jesus. Instead, there is another (and quite obvious) explanation of the correspondences between the New Testament and passages from the Hebrew Bible. Namely, the correspondences are there because the authors of the New Testament were all Jewish (with one possible exception) and knew the Hebrew Bible (whether in Hebrew or Greek) very well. Thus, as they told the story of Jesus and reflected about his significance, they often echoed language from Jewish scripture. Doing so was completely natural and legitimate. The prophets were part of their sacred tradition, and they sought to show continuity between Jesus and the tradition out of which he and they came.

  In short, the correspondences are not the product of prediction and fulfillment, but of prophecy historicized. In other words, the New Testament authors used passages from the Hebrew Bible to generate historical narrative. They did this in at least two different ways:

  Sometimes they used prophetic passages as a way of commenting about something that had happened. For example, the gospel writers often used phrases or passages from the Hebrew Bible to comment about the significance of Jesus’ crucifixion (an actual historical event).8

  Other times they embellished their stories of Jesus with details drawn from texts of the Hebrew Bible.

  As the New Testament authors historicized prophecy in these ways, they often took a passage out of its ancient context and gave it a meaning very different from what the prophet had intended. I illustrate with three passages already cited from Matthew.

  Matthew uses Isaiah 7.14 as a prediction of the virginal conception of Jesus. But that earlier text did not originally refer to a virgin birth or to an event in the distant future. Rather, as the full context of Isaiah 7.10–17 makes clear, Isaiah was speaking to King Ahaz of the southern kingdom of Judah in the eighth century BCE. It was a time of crisis: Judah was threatened by a military invasion. Within that historical context, Isaiah tells King Ahaz that God will give him a sign—namely, a young woman already pregnant will give her child the symbolic name Immanuel. (Immanuel is not a proper name, but a phrase meaning “God with us.”) Isaiah then tells Ahaz that before this child is old enough to know the difference between right and wrong, the crisis will be over. In its eighth-century context, the passage promises deliverance to Ahaz and Judah: they will be safe.

  Matthew’s use of Hosea 11.1 in his story of Mary, Joseph, and Jesus returning from Egypt illustrates the same point. Matthew quotes only the second half of Hosea’s verse: “. . . out of Egypt I called my son.” But the full verse makes it clear that the prophet is referring backward in time to the exodus, not forward: “When Israel was a child, I loved him, and out of Egypt I called my son.” Not only does the passage refer to the exodus, but it is Israel (and not Jesus) who is called God’s son.

  Finally, the story of Jesus’ birth in Bethlehem may be an example of prophecy having generated historical narrative. The majority of mainline scholars think that Jesus was probably born in Nazareth, not in Bethlehem.9 Why, then, do both Matthew and Luke have him born in Bethlehem? Probably because of the tradition that the messiah was to be “the son of David”—namely, a descendant of King David, Israel’s greatest king. As the home of David, Bethlehem was “David’s city.” Indeed, the passage from Micah quoted by Matthew expresses this connection: the future and ideal king—a king like David—will be born in Bethlehem, the city of David. Thus the story of Jesus’ birth in Bethlehem may not reflect history but instead express the early Christian movement’s conviction that Jesus was the messiah, son of David, and ideal king.

  But I am getting ahead of my story. I did not learn what I have just reported until later. Nevertheless, setting aside the notion that the prophets’ primary purpose was to predict Jesus centuries ahead of time is an essential step in seeing and reading them again.

  Hearing the Prophets the Second Time

  I began to hear the prophets a second time in college, during a political philosophy course. Included in the course was the prophet Amos.10 I learned that Amos and the other prophets of Israel did not write books (as if they were recording their predictions for the future), but were masters of oral speech. For the most part, they spoke short, memorable oracles and addressed people in their own time. And I learned that the words they spoke were disturbing.

  The Prophetic Passion for Social Justice

  Amos was downright electrifying. I was stunned by the rhetorical elegance and content of his “inaugural address” in the first two chapters of the book bearing his name. Speaking to the northern kingdom in the eighth century BCE, he indicts by name the kingdoms on its borders who were Israel’s traditional enemies: Da-mascus, Gaza, Tyre, Edom, Ammon, and Moab.

  The oracles against each of the neighboring kingdoms begin with the solemn words, “Thus says the LORD: For three transgressions and for four, I wil
l not revoke the punishment.” He indicts them for barbaric cruelty in warfare: they have exiled entire communities, pursued with the sword with no pity, and ripped open pregnant women, all for the sake of enlarging their borders. It is as if Amos were pinning up verbal atrocity posters. He announces God’s judgment on each kingdom: they will be conquered and sent into exile. Then he indicts Judah, the southern kingdom, also an enemy of Israel.

  The rhetorical strategy is brilliant. By indicting and pronouncing God’s judgment against Israel’s enemies, he draws his audience to his side. Then he turns the screw and indicts Israel itself in the name of Israel’s God. Now the crimes are not cruelty in warfare but social injustice within the society:

  Thus says the LORD:

  For three transgressions of Israel and for four,

  I will not revoke the punishment.

  Because they sell those who have done no wrong for silver

  and the needy for a pair of sandals.

  They trample the heads of the poor into the dust of the earth,

  and push the afflicted out of the way.11

  In Amos, I heard for the first time the prophetic passion for social justice. Repeatedly and not only in his inaugural address, he indicts the wealthy for their exploitation of the poor: