Session 18 Introduction to the Episcopal Church

Introduction to the Episcopal Church

Session 18 

As I look at the wisdom traditions that are found in the Bible and in the writings of our Christian traditions and in the inherited practices, I assert that the great insights we have received, sometimes called revelation have functioned to help our ancestors survive and forge an identity and transmit what each of them have added to a living tradition that still lives today.  Our tradition is not a tradition dead in letters in a page in a book or in books; it is words with Spirit that are alive enough to inspire new words of insight for pragmatic and wise living.

 We call the first section of the Bible, the Old Testament but for the Jewish people, it is not old at all, because it is their Hebrew Scriptures that they know to be alive within their worshiping communities today.  The Hebrew Scriptures functions differently for Jews who have located themselves more completely within the Hebrew Scriptures tradition.

In looking at the Old Testament or Hebrew Scriptures we find many insights that have arisen to address the great questions of life.  About the Hebrew Scriptures we might say that it was not written for me in the way that a personal letter is written to me.  In fact, though I presume the relevance of the Bible to me, it was not written to me or for me per se.  Any writing past or present has a writing occasion and in that occasion the writer is the sender of the message and there is a specific intended receiver.  Biblical writing was not writing like an anonymous message in a bottle and cast into the sea for some possible but uncertain future reader.  When one is looking at an ancient writing such as the Old Testament, it is very hard to define single writing occasions since the Book is a collection of the text results of writing occasions.  Some writing occasions include the complete re-using and re-editing of previous writings into a new occasion.  The final edition is made up of many different editors and we have lost details of the ancient contexts of the writing occasions (who wrote it, where, and to whom).  We have to do scholarly work to match up what we know from general history and archaeology to provide some light upon the writing occasions.  We mostly rely upon internal evidence itself, such as the reference to certain tools or weapons that indicate a particular Age or era.

When I look at the Hebrew Scriptures I find writing that is the technology of memory of great insights that inspired people as they dealt with the great questions of life.  The book of Genesis presents an insight in answer to the question of where we came from.  The infinite regression (mentally trying to conceive the first chicken and the first egg) is brought to a break through when the word of God creates life as we know it.  So word as emanating from God creates the world as the writers of the book of Genesis knows the world.  All definitions of beginning of anything still leave us with questions and mystery.  The word of God created this world.  In science, the big bang started everything and from a single bang has differentiated into what we have today.  What came before the big bang?  Is God a Being with language like human beings such that God would speak?  Whether scientific big bang or creation by word of God, we still are left with mystery.  The truth of the big bang and of the creation story is the universal truth of origin quest within humanity.  The “Origin Quest” make-up of humanity is the greater revelation of Genesis than being able to verify the creation story as an historic event.    This big insight is so profound as to inspire endless attempts to prove the “origin quest” truth.  And so the bigger question of life is living with “origin quest” as defining our basic humanity.  No one can presume to give a final answer to “origin quest” since it is something we live with and we give many insights about “origin quest.”

The Hebrew Scriptures gives many different goals to the creation story that arose because of the basic human “origin quest.”  One of the main functions of the book of Genesis has to do with the forming of a functional identity of the people who resided in what came to be called Israel.  The irony is that much of the writing and editing of this functional identity did not occur until after what were called the exiles.  The people of Israel were carried off into exile by the Assyrians, Babylonians and the Medes and Persians.  It was in the times of losing their land that the writing was done with a fervor that literally made their writing their new interior “topography.”  Their writing became what constituted (constructed) their identity as a people who could retain that identity without being in their land. At the same time the writing constituted the Jews as a people who were uniquely married to a particular land. This marriage is so profound that the connection remains today even for those who have never set foot there.  One cannot miss the profundity of how the Hebrew Scriptures have created this bond for such a long ethnic/communal continuity and a long connection to a particular geographical location.

The Hebrew Scriptures have more particular relevance to the formation of the identity of the Jewish people than it does to me as a “Gentile” Christian.  We cannot ever usurp or forget the particular relevance of the Hebrew Scriptures to the Jewish people; the Scriptures are inextricably woven into Jewish self-identity.  It is important for us to appreciate this as we attempt to understand how our community identity has been born out of the Hebrew Scriptures and the Jews who were the architects of the Hebrew Scripture religious traditions.

Let’s be honest then; the Hebrew Scriptures are written from a point of view, namely, the point of view of the Jewish peoples.  The Hebrew Scriptures were written to help constitute them as a people and to serve as “Spirit of the words” to continue their communal identity in their future.  One of chief reasons that the Bible carries weight and authority is because it is unique in how it uses pre-historic wisdom epics as a way to give foundation to practices that are found in the practices of the Jewish community.

The writers of the Hebrew Scriptures use the pre-historic wisdom epics about humanity in general and the symbolic narratives from the patriarchs (Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, tribes of Israel, Moses)  to create the foundations for how the historic identity was forged during the Davidic and post-Davidic times.  We will look at this use of pre-historic wisdom epics and symbolic narratives of the patriarchs as creating what I would call sonar or echo effect between history and pre-history.  It is something like this: The community practices Sabbath.  Why do I have to give up a day?  The ancient epic of oral tradition has the seventh day of God’s rest from creating.   Thus, there is a day of religious obligation.  The practice is taught by looking into oral epic story tradition and oral tradition comes to textual form as an explanation of the religious practice of Sabbath.  I hope that you do not cease to be amazed by the living Spirit in how tradition occurs and how it relives in new ways.  This will be even more crucial when we show how the New Testament writers used the Hebrew Scriptures as the template for telling the story of Jesus Christ.

Exercise:

Is this your vision of how the Bible came to us? A Holy Spirit Dove whispering verbatim words into various authors ears as they write them down.  Is this your view of how the Bible is understood?  All of the words have but one meaning and if I understand the meanings of the words, I can understand the correct meaning?  How do you think the Jews feel about Christian uses the Hebrew Scriptures as a Christian book for Christian purposes?

Father Phil