The Bible: A Library of Books

When I was last in Jerusalem, it happened to be the Jewish New Year. I was invited to celebrate with a group of friends I had known in my university years, whom I hadn't seen in a long time. I had often spent Jewish holidays with them when I lived and studied in Israel, so it was a real homecoming!

After Brian, the host, led in the prayers for the New Year, I commented that there were a lot more prayers than I remembered. Yes, he said, he had added prayers from other Jewish traditions, prayers he had been unfamiliar with in the old days - when I had previously celebrated with them.

I made some comment about a passage in the Bible. Brian knew the passage I was referring to, and corrected me: That's not from the Bible, Marlene, it's in the Prophets.

I think that for him, the Bible consisted of the five Books of Moses alone. From his comments, I sensed that for him, the rest the Jewish religious writings, those Christians consider to be "Scripture" or sacred writings, did not rank equally with the Torah, the five books written by Moses, which in English are called the Law.

Our conversation reminded me that the Bible - Jewish or Christian - is not A BOOK but a COLLECTION OF BOOKS... a little "BIBLIOTEQUE" - to use the French word for "LIBRARY."

The Bible being a collection of books, not in chronological order, I have always been confused, about how the they fit together, from a historical point of view - in other words, what happened when? I also had other questions, like: What were the historical circumstances surrounding the various Psalms, the songs of the Bible, which I particularly love?



















A few years ago, I came across a different kind of Bible, a chronological Bible - where the various books, or even parts of books, are not presented in the traditional order, but in the order in which they occurred, historically speaking. I have been reading through this chronological BIBLE - or BIBLIOTEQUE, as I tend to view it, for several years now. Even though it is divided into 365 "parts" - if you want to read it in a year, I don't want to rush through it. I have a lot to learn.

Several things have surprised me so far. First, I didn't realize that the book of Job, which tells of the tragic things that happened to this man who tried to do his best, is really a very old book. In the chronological Bible it comes before the books of Moses. To me, the story of Job always seemed very modern. I could identify with it: it talked about questions, doubts and feelings. The five books of the Law, written by Moses, on the other hand, give us the Ten Commandments, but there are also large sections that deal with situations that I personally can't identify with, like surviving in the desert, touching dead animals, dealing with problems like lack of water and leprosy.

The second thing that has surprised me, so far, is how much of the Old Testament is about the Babylonian Exile, a time about 2600 years ago when powerful King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon (now part of Iraq) conquered the Jews, and deported them to Babylon. Prophets (including the lonely Jeremiah) predicted this would happen. Jeremiah wrote several books (found in the Bible) about it. Eventually it did happen, and several books in the Old Testament, notably Daniel and Ezekiel, were written in exile, after this mass deportation. Then other books were written about the Jews who returned to rebuild the temple in Jerusalem, which had been destroyed by King Nebuchadnezzar. The new temple, called the Second Temple - or Second House, in Hebrew - was rebuilt with the blessings of a new king, King Darius (also sometimes called Cyrus), king of the kingdom of the Medes and the Persians (two countries that make up present day Iran), who conquered Babylon.

That's as far as I have gotten in my Chronological Bible reading - I have yet to read about Queen Esther, who I would have guessed lived earlier than this, but apparently didn't. And of course Christianity is still several hundred years away.

But I am enjoying my historical journey, and would recommend the chronological Bible to anyone who wants to get a historic, chronological perspective of these readings that have been a major force , not only in the Middle East, but all around the world.