Genesis to Revelation: One drama in progress

The Drama of Scripture:
Finding our Place in the Biblical Story
by Craig G. Bartholomew and Michael W. Goheen
272 pp. Baker Academic. $15

The satirical website The Babylon Bee recently published an article called “The TL;DR Edition Of All 66 Books Of The Bible.” TL;DR is texting shorthand for “too long; didn’t read.” Some of its summaries of biblical books are

• Leviticus – STOP DOING GROSS STUFF.
• Judges – A riveting documentary on the doctrine of total depravity.
• 1 Corinthians – Stop screwing stuff up, Corinth.¹

Silliness aside, Craig G. Bartholomew and Michael W. Goheen offer a faithful abstract of the Bible that not only digests books down to a sentence but also demonstrates how this ancient text tells an epic story. The story is not just about Abraham’s descendants the Israelites, but it is a drama about all of humanity, even the modern human.

The authors outline the Bible like a six-act play with an interlude between acts three and four:

1. God establishes his kingdom,
2. rebellion in the kingdom,
3. the King choose Israel,
4. the coming of the King,
5. spreading the news of the King,
6. and the return of the King.

In the names of each chapter, the authors convey the overarching themes of the Bible as kingdom and the kingship of God. The Kingdom of God that Jesus proclaims as recorded in the Gospels is not an innovation. “We cannot grasp the meaning of the story of Jesus until we begin to see that it is, in fact, the climactic episode of the great story of the Bible, the chronicle of God’s work in human history.”² Jesus is restoring the Kingdom of God that humankind has failed to maintain or grow despite God’s multiple opportunities to try again.

One of the strong, consistent characteristics of Drama is that the authors repeatedly show that the good news of the Kingdom, even at Abraham’s election, has always been for both Jew and Gentile. This should be plain from the creation story as Adam and Eve are parents to all humanity. This universality can be lost to those not paying attention when reading Genesis 12:1-3. Yes, there is an election, a calling out to be special, but not because Abraham or the people of Israel were superior. God purposefully zeroes in on one man so that “through Abraham, ‘all peoples on earth will be blessed.’ … [God’s] ultimate purpose is to bring redemptive blessing to the whole creation.”³ God chooses Israel because they are us.

The Bible is a difficult text for both the faithful and unbelievers. It can be hard for modern readers to make sense of the strange stories, the alien and uncomfortable commandments, and the bloody violence. Goheen and Bartholomew are right that “Abraham and his descendants are all too human” but “as they journey with God they are gradually shaped into people fit to bear the promise.”⁴ Also, God is judge and sometimes uses nations to chastise other nations. In Numbers 33 and Deuteronomy 7, the LORD orders the Israelites to drive out the native Canaanites. The Drama authors show biblically how this command is not arbitrary or without cause. “According to Genesis 15:16, God does not take the land away from its first inhabitants until their sin has reached such depths that they have in effect forfeited their right to it.”⁵ The action should have been a warning to the Israelites that they too could lose the land if they failed to worship the LORD alone.⁶ So God demonstrates in the Babylonian conquest of Judah.⁷

The grand narrative of the kingdom and the device of outlining the story like a play place the difficult passages in proper context. One example is the extreme moral and social breakdown detailed in Judges. The people of Israel do not obey God’s command to push out the idolatrous Canaanites, and so God judges them. “Judgment is pronounced: God will not drive out the remaining pagan nations, and their gods will be a snare to Israel.”⁸Paul would say “God gave them over to a depraved mind, to do those things which are not proper, being filled with all unrighteousness, wickedness.”⁹Judges ends with the line “In those days there was no king in Israel; everyone did what was right in his own eyes.”¹⁰ Goheen and Bartholomew point out that it is not that Israel needed a monarchy but that Israel was no longer submitting to King Yahweh.¹¹

The cycle of Judges outlined by the authors – sin –> anger –> oppression –> distress –> crying out –> deliverer –> rest¹² – repeats even after God establishes a monarchy through David. This cycle replays over and over even through the interlude.

The inclusion of the interlude chapter may seem obvious to some, but there is not enough Christian teaching on the intertestamental period. Some Christians grow up with a notion that God was silent between the last canonized word to the prophets and the birth of Jesus. This misconception has perhaps fed wrong ideas about Israel’s place in the story after most first-century Jews rejected Jesus’ messiahship.

The authors of The Drama of the Scriptures do well to give a crash course on how the rise and fall of the Persian, Greek, and Roman empires affected the faith and outlook of Jews of the Second Temple period. In writing about the Hasmoneans, whose successful revolt against the increasingly oppressive Seleucids is celebrated at Hanukkah, Goheen and Bartholomew highlight that “this event, like the exodus, became for the Jews a defining moment in their history: God had acted to deliver his people, restore his temple, and vindicate his law. And since God had visited his people once in this dramatic act of redemption, surely he would do so again.”¹³

This refreshed faith was undermined, however, by bitterness that grew with every subsequent regime change. The Roman peace enforced by taxation and violence¹⁴ spawned hate that would blind and deafen most Judeans to Jesus’ announcement that the long-awaited Kingdom of God had arrived.

A word about the anachronistic use of the label Palestine for Judea and Samaria in the first centuries BCE and CE. The label is introduced into the interlude to name the land in which the people of Israel lived during the Greek and Roman occupations. Palestine is the default label in academia, and the authors intended to write a university textbook.¹⁵ They also created resources for Bible study¹⁶ which encourages the use of the book outside academia. Using Palestine to label the area of the Levant inhabited by the people of Israel at the turn of the eras is prejudicial. As Louis H. Feldman notes, the term Palestina before the common era refers to the coast where the Philistines lived.¹⁷ The area where the Jews lived is called Judea in official Roman documents until the name change by Hadrian around 135.¹⁸ Using Palestine for the land that the New Testament and the early Roman governmental documents called Judea can breed misconceptions that color how Christians view the modern Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The conflict is complicated as it is. Teachers of the Bible should not add confusion to the topic.

The modern world has accustomed people to instant gratification. We see a goal, we desire an outcome, and we want it now. We want the Kingdom of God now. In The Drama of the Scripture’s structure, we can see that we are deep into Act 5. When do we get to Act 6? When does the King return? While the book is a condensation of the biblical narrative, it communicates how God works over long stretches of time and how those who faithfully await and serve him will take part in his final victory, no matter how dire the present circumstances are.¹⁹

Nonetheless, the authors saw fit to address the end of the story. Revelation is a very difficult text. The authors inclusively mention various interpretations, not belittling any. They acknowledge that “the ‘labor pains’ of end-time events can be fascinating” while pointing readers to the miracle of “the new world waiting to be born.”²⁰ God is continually endeavoring to dwell with his creation: in the garden, in the wilderness Tabernacle, in the Temple, in the indwelling of the Holy Spirit in post-cross believers. God will finally have his way when the new Jerusalem descends onto the earth. His will in heaven finally will be done perfectly on earth.

The Drama of the Scripture is an accessible textbook that should be taught in every church. The authors successfully explain that there is a coherent narrative in ancient biblical texts written in three languages. The more Christians understand the kingdom restoration theme, the better the church will effect change in the world even as we await the final restoration.

Footnotes

1. “The TL;DR Edition Of All 66 Books Of The Bible,” The Babylon Bee, http://babylonbee.com/news/tldr-edition-66-books-bible/.
2. Craig G. Bartholomew and Michael W. Goheen. The Drama of Scripture: Finding Our Place in the Biblical Story. (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Publishing Group, 2014), 135.
3. Ibid., 54.
4. Ibid., 54.
5. Ibid., 79.
6. Ibid., 86.
7. See Habukkuk.
8. Ibid., 87.
9. Romans 1:28-29 NASB
10. Judges 21:25 NASB
11. Bartholomew, The Drama of Scripture, 90.
12. Ibid., 88.
13. Ibid., 127.
14. Ibid., 128.
15. Ibid., 13.
16. “Class resources,” Scripture & Worldview, http://www.biblicaltheology.ca/about/resources/.
17. Louis H. Feldman, Some Observations on the Name of Palestine. (New York: Yeshiva University, ), 2 ff.
18. Ibid., 15.
19. Bartholomew, The Drama of Scripture, 229.
20. Ibid., 231.