Does the Historicity of the Old Testament Matter?

0:00All right, Dave asks about history and archaeology. He says, did the events of the Bible actually happen or were they just stories, some with minor to substantial embellishment? I've heard credible evidence calling it a question if the Exodus or the Promised Land conquest ever even occurred, at least in the way that the Bible recounts it. Seeing as the Exodus is one of the major motifs of our faith, is it essential that the Exodus actually happened? If it did, will our evidence eventually catch up and if it didn't, how am I supposed to hold that in light of kind of how our whole faith has built on it? Great question, Dave, and an important question. I'm really empathetic to this question because what I found is going through the 90s, especially

1:06I was teaching at Beffel University, and as I was doing a lot of reading on the Bible and its relationship with history and whatever, I felt I had to always come to the conclusion that the evidence supports the biblical narrative. And so I would look for all the evidence that could support the biblical narrative. And I want to say that it's pretty impressive how much archaeological evidence and literary evidence supports the basic narrative of Scripture. I think that's, it's generally reliable. But I also found pretty compelling evidence that didn't support the biblical narrative. And I would just kind of poo who they had or try to explain it around, and I read authors who argued against it, trying to come to the right conclusion, the right conclusion being it almost support the biblical narrative. And at some point I began to feel dishonest, like I'm not doing honest research.

2:07If I have my conclusion, now everyone does the research with hypothesis in mind. But if you come at it from a dogmatic perspective, and now you're trying to force all the evidence to support the dogma that you're trying to hold on to, there's something disingenuous about that. And it caused, you know, I had to start rethinking the Bible and its relationship to history and all the rest. And the conclusion I came to was that, and this isn't just me, there's a whole realm of scholars who are doing this. It's called the theological interpretation of Scripture, the TIS movement. And the basic thesis is this, that to read the Bible, and there's a lot of variation within this movement, so I'm depending on the very broad strokes here, but the thrust of the movement that I almost resonate with held that, to read the Bible as God's word, we need to read it the way the church has always read it. And the way the church has always read it is that this narrative is divinely inspired.

3:13They own new stoths. It's got something to say to us, and that's different than reading it as a critical historian trying to figure it out to what degree does it or does it not correlate to what we think we know about actual history. And when you start reading it from a critical historical perspective, which began to happen in the Enlightenment period, up to that point the church never dealt with this. But the critical historians, then we're reading it with these critical questions, did Moses actually write the Pentateuch, and the conquest narrative happened just the way, and they came to some conclusions that, no, it doesn't always correlate with history. There's some parts that seem that they're a historical. But these folks are arguing that, well, the historical, critical discipline has a role to play. And that's what it helps us discover what some of the original meanings were and things

4:15like that. But it has a role to play, but that's not reading the Bible as God's word, to read the Bible as God's word, and really Carl Bart helped me with this more than anyone else. To read the Bible as God's word means that you're not Lord over it, you let it Lord over you. And so you put your critical apparatus aside, and you just read the text. And the text is what is authoritative. Not its relationship to history, the text in and of itself. And that's how Jesus and the early disciples read the Bible. They weren't answering when Jesus refers to the five books of Moses. He wasn't answering a historical, critical question there. He was speaking on the basis of the biblical narrative and on the basis of tradition. And Moses was a traditional figure who was seen as the author of those five books. But he's not answering a historical, critical question. And so I encourage people, there's a role to play for historical, critical exegesis and investigation and all the rest. But when you read the Bible as God's word, to bracket out those considerations and just

5:19ask, what does this narrative have to say to us? The other thing I'd say is that it's important to realize that what we mean by history here in our modern age, it's very different from what ancient people meant by history. When they did history, it was not to solve curiosity. It was always to teach a lesson, to make a point, to draw out things. So they weren't into the meticulous facts the way we are. They were more interested in what is the purpose of this past event and what is the teachers. And they had no trouble mixing in some mythology along with their historical writings. Ezekiel, I think it's 19, where he tells us parable about a bear and his cubs and uses that as an illustration of the kings of Israel. And they were much looser on those kind of things. So if you're doing historical, critical exegesis and investigation, keep that in mind that they

6:20just weren't as meticulous about historical matters as we were. Not trying to solve curiosity or whatever. The basic point is that when I come to the text, I read the text. The text is what's authoritative. It is our constitution. It's a constitution of the community of God. And like our American constitution, judges can interpret it differently, but they always have to wrestle with the text. And so I feel obliged that every passage of scripture is something we can't just dismiss because we don't like it. We have to approach it as authoritative and it has something to teach us today.