¶1[music] >> Hello and welcome to the Ask NT Right Anything Podcast, the program where we try to answer your questions about Jesus, the Bible, and the life of faith. I'm Mike Bird from Ridley College in Melbourne, Australia. I'm joined by >> Tom Wright from Wycliffe Hall in Oxford. >> Tom, how would you be this day? >> Uh well, it's been a long day already for various reasons.
¶2We've had family staying and they had to leave very early this morning to catch a boat. So, I've been up quite a while, but as long as there's exegesis on the table waiting to be done, that's okay. >> Yeah, that's good. That gets you out of bed in the morning. Exegesis gets you out of bed.
¶3>> Yes, often yes. >> Yeah, I'm not an early morning person. I Nothing is more terrifying than the words breakfast meeting. You know, I I don't mind a a brunch meeting, a lunch meeting, maybe an afternoon tea meeting, but I don't like I don't like morning meetings before around around breakfast time, you know. >> Breakfast meetings I think are an Americanism, aren't they?
¶4I Sometimes when I've been in America, my hosts have said, "Now, we've got a meeting at breakfast tomorrow morning." So, we turn up and sometimes I've been into a hotel restaurant and there's two or three tables where there are already three or four men, usually men, sitting there reading the Bible together. People don't do that in England or Scotland. Reading the Bible together in restaurants at at sort of 7:30 in the morning. I'm always thrilled when I see people reading the Bible at any time of the day, but that particular thing alas, we don't do in England or Scotland. >> I I I want to um prayerfully support them from the comfort of my own room after I've got up, woken up, had a shower, done my morning ablutions, and got ready.
¶5Then I'm ready to to the world. I'm having meetings at 7:30 a.m. They're They don't maybe a violation of human rights. I don't know, Tom. But anyway, we've got some good questions this week about the ending of Mark's gospel, the purpose of the book of Acts, and a very difficult one, which is about violence in the Old Testament.
¶6So, let's get stuck in. We've got a question from Roy Jacobson of Charleston, USA. And this is about the ending of Mark's gospel, which is a bit of a puzzle. He says, "Many scholars believe the ending to Mark's gospel was added by later editors in order to harmonize with the others got with the other gospels. While Mark does not deny Jesus' resurrection, what do you think about this sudden and dramatic ending?" Now, for those who don't know, our earliest and reliable manuscripts of Mark's gospel have it end at verse 8, where the women went away from the tomb afraid, and they said nothing to nobody.
¶7Which is a really weird way to end the gospel. And there's a number of other endings you can find in other manuscripts where there is a a variation of how of how it, you know, all pans out. And there's one particular longer ending that became part of the majority text that came into the King James Bible and became for a long time the most popular ending. But in terms of the manuscript evidence, it's not the best attested. So, we've got a few different choices from manuscripts as to where Mark ends.
¶8Does it ends in verse 8, or do we go for a longer ending of Mark, or is it the case, Tom, and I suspect this may be your view, that there was a longer ending of Mark's gospel, but unfortunately, it's been lost uh either because uh Nero's police came and arrested Mark just before maybe when he had his last manuscript and it got torn. Uh Mark's gospel was neglected in the tradition of New Testament manuscripts. The Gospels of Matthew and Luke by attestation, the number of copies were by far the most popular books of early Christianity. So, maybe Matthews uh Mark got sort of, you know, eclipsed eclipsed by Matthew and Luke and John. So, we don't have many copies of Mark's gospel, and maybe that explains why we don't have a full copy of the ending.
¶9Tom, what do you think's happening with the ending of Mark's gospel? >> Right. It This is one of the New Testament questions which I remember being fascinated by from my very early days in seminary. I think my first term in seminary, the then principal of Wycliffe Hall, where I was studying, did a series of Bible readings on Mark, and I can't remember what he said when he got to chapter 16, but I do remember that I thought, "Well, if Mark is following Peter's preaching at this point, which and that's one of the traditions >> [clears throat] >> Peter preached in Rome, told people about Jesus, and that Mark was his assistant and wrote stuff down, then maybe this was as far as Peter had got, and so that's as far as as as Mark had got." And then another theory formed itself into my mind, which was that maybe this is the point at which Mark is saying in one of those little footnotes which we would insert, but he didn't have the means to do that, "that when you're reading this at this point in the story, invite your friend so-and-so or such-and-such who happens to be here with you, who was there on the first Easter day, and let them tell their story." And so, that I would then imagine Mark's gospel ending with a kind of a rubric, at this point bring on your eyewitnesses. Now, that's plausible, well, I wouldn't say plausible, possible, but not hugely likely in my view.
¶10My view has sort of settled down into a different point of view, and I expand this in detail in the relevant chapter of my book, The Resurrection of the Son of God, that's chapter 14 on Mark's resurrection narratives. But, my view really came to me more firmly when I was in Jerusalem for the first time, and I went to the Israel Museum, where the Dead Sea Scrolls are displayed. Now, I love the Dead Sea Scrolls. I've studied them intensely for a long time, and I'm in fascinated by them, and I wish people would find more similar things, because it's just wonderful to see the actual artifacts from the ancient world before your very eyes. Almost all those scrolls are truncated either at the beginning or at the end, or both.
¶11There's very few of the scrolls where we seem to have the actual ending and the actual beginning. There's a good reason for that, that the scrolls are on parchment, but they were attached to sticks, to rods, to wooden things, in other words, and that in the course of time, the wooden stick that the scroll was wound around on either end has rotted, and has pulled away the bit that was attached to it with it. Now, here's the thing. I think not only was Mark's ending lost, I think Mark's beginning was lost as well, because at the beginning of Mark's gospel, there's a very odd little passage which says, "As it is written in Isaiah the prophet," and then we get a quote from Malachi. And it just doesn't seem quite to fit and it looks to me as though the beginning of what we have as Mark now, which reads arche tou euangeliou Iesou Christou huiou theou, the beginning of the Gospel of Jesus Christ the Son of God, then as it is written in Isaiah the prophet, I suspect that that was added later because though you can have a Gospel which ends with the sort of dot dot dot, it'll be very difficult to have one which began with a dot dot dot.
¶12So, that some very, very early scribe will have found a text which just plunges straight into a bit of Malachi and then Isaiah and some scribe has said, well, this is the beginning. So, the beginning of the Gospel of Jesus the Messiah Son of God and there's a textual question about that as well. But, then as it is written and he glances down and he sees it's Isaiah coming up. So, fine. In Isaiah the prophet, we'll have written Malachi in brackets and then we'll get to Isaiah.
¶13So, I think it's highly likely that the beginning and the ending were lost. And that's highly likely historically because that's what happened to a lot of very early manuscripts precisely at that time. Now, when we then go to the ending, they said nothing to anyone. This is the women at the tomb because fear and trembling had fallen upon them and they were afraid. Eforbounto gar.
¶14I remember people used to write whole articles, maybe they still do, on can a Gospel end with the word gar >> Gar. >> which means for. And for the And the answer is, yes, sentences, even books, paragraphs can end with gar. It's unusual. Normally, you would expect to go on beyond that.
¶15But, then people have built whole theories about this over the last century or so. Some people have said, well, but that's what Mark wanted to stop at because he didn't want to make anything explicit because the gospel is all about mysteries and penetrating the darkness and not knowing what's going on and having to live by faith instead and so on. And I think a lot of that is modern or even postmodern fantasy because there are lots of passages in the New Testament, in Mark as well, which speak of people in fear and trembling, like the woman who comes and touches Jesus in the crowd. When she's identified, she comes and it's the same phrase with fear and trembling. Um it this is a perfectly good way of saying the these people are aware that something is going on here which is much bigger than they had imagined.
¶16Um and so the the end the ending as it is makes perfect sense. But here's the thing. Passage after passage after passage in Mark has Jesus predicting two things: that he's going to the cross and he's going to be raised from the dead. Going to the cross, he's going to be raised from the dead. Ever since chapter 8, Jesus has been repeating that.
¶17And then when he stands in front of Caiaphas the high priest, and Caiaphas says, "Are you the Messiah, the son of the blessed?" Jesus' response basically means yes in a different sense from what you thought, but you will see me vindicated. You will see the son of man sitting at the right hand of power and coming on the clouds of heaven. That's not a way of saying Caiaphas will see Jesus returning coming downwards. It's a way of saying Caiaphas will see Jesus exalted like the son of man in Daniel 7 or like the the the king in Psalm 110. Um and so Mark has then had these predictions.
¶18He's going to be crucified, he's going to be raised. He's going to be crucified. Then he spent the long chapter 15 describing in a lavish detail how Jesus was crucified. So, it seems to me highly likely that he will have had a section talking about the resurrection as well. And if, as many think, Mark was following but Mark was followed by um Matthew at this point, well, what we see at the end of Matthew's gospel maybe maybe I wouldn't put it stronger than that maybe something like what there was originally at the end of Mark's gospel.
¶19One thing I'm quite clear about is that the two further endings, the short one and the long one, are definitely secondary. They're added by scribes in order to make up uh what seems to them a rather obvious deficiency. So, um people get worried about all of this because of the theory of inspiration that how could the Bible be sort of incomplete like that? And I think yeah, the the Bible this doesn't mean the Bible's getting wrong. The Bible is a human book like any other human book and the Bible or every book of the Bible has been written by somebody, edited by somebody, transcribed by somebody.
¶20It's not a big deal. God works through all these processes. Inspiration doesn't mean that God dictated a perfect text that somebody simply sat down there with a mind going blank and transcribed it. Um this is this is probably Petrine testimony filtered through Mark. And there probably was a resurrection narrative.
¶21This is what we would expect at the end of the story. And I just think it's been lost and that's a shame at one level, but it's a tease and a pointer at another level that maybe we today reading this account should say, "Well, as we get to this point, what is our experience of the risen Jesus? How did we come to faith? How do we know Jesus today?" And maybe Mark's gospel invites us to think that way even if its original author didn't expect that. >> Yeah.
¶22Yeah, Tom, I go back and forth with this. I think on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, I think that Mark's Gospel had finished at verse 8. As if Mark is saying, "Look, I can take you to the empty tomb. I can show you the women in fear and trembling, but you've got to decide for yourself whether you're going to believe and follow the risen Jesus." I mean, that's one way of thinking about it. >> Yeah.
¶23>> But, as you say, Mark does kind of set us up for belief in the resurrection. I mean, you've got the three passion predictions where he says the man will be handed over, he'll be mocked, crucified, him on the third day he will rise. So, you think Mark should have a resurrection narrative there. But, because of the relative neglect of Mark's Gospel compared to particularly the Gospels of Matthew and Luke, it's likely that maybe very early on Mark's ending was lost to us. And then some scribes have tried to fill in the gap.
¶24>> Yeah. >> And the only final thing I'll say, there there is one interesting thing about the longer ending of Mark. You know, that's the version you get like in the in the King James Bible. It's attested by the time of Justin Martyr. So, although it's late and secondary, it's still relatively early.
¶25You could probably date it to about 125-150 AD. And what's really fascinating though, Tom, is it incorporates elements from all four Gospels and the Book of Acts. So, the longer ending of Mark, I don't think it's you know, what was Mark the evangelist's actual ending, but it is proof that by the second quarter of the second century people were already reading and collecting together the four Gospels and the Book of Acts. So, the longer ending of Mark is a very good witness to the collection and synthesis of the fourfold gospel and the book of Acts. That's what I think is the real payoff from the longer ending of Mark.
¶26I don't think it's original to Mark, but it's a very interesting window on the gospel culture of early Christianity. >> That That's That's really helpful. And I was struck as well at some point, I forget where I first saw this, by the fact that verse 9, which is the beginning of the longer ending, actually repeats what would be the whole resurrection story. In other words, verses 9 onwards isn't really an addition following verse 8 because it begins when he rose on the first day of the week, he appeared first to Mary Magdalene. In other words, it's as though the longer ending is giving you a whole resurrection story and not resurrection story part two.
¶27So, I I I think I agree that it's a way of some scribe saying, "Okay, I'll pull together from the other gospels and from Acts and we'll tell the whole story just in case anyone is worried about how this whole thing gets wrapped up." >> Yeah, that's I think that's a good way to put it, but it's a great mystery. For those who want to do a deep dive on this, there is a thing called the Mark 16 project which scholars who have got a research grant are going around collecting all the manuscripts on Mark. They're looking at all the paratextual paraphernalia like when people have got comments, scribes writing things in the margins, people are drawing things maybe like big question marks like going, "What happened to the resurrection story?" It's a great project. You can check it all out. But, Tom, let's move to our second question.
¶28And this takes us from Mark's gospel to the book of Acts. This is a question from Martin Inchley of Christ Church, USA. And this This what Martin writes to us. When discussing the Book of Acts, sometimes you, Tom, say it's part of Paul's defense for his trial, showing that the authorities had constantly found Paul innocent. But then you also say it proclaims Jesus as the world's true Lord in a way that must have been plain even to a pagan reader.
¶29Are these two perspectives not at odds with each other? Uh well, my response to that, Martin, is that I don't think they are mutually exclusive, you know, Luke can emphasize Paul's innocence, you know, repeatedly when he gives his testimony, and Jesus is Lord of the whole world as we find in Acts 10:36. But Tom, can you break down for us, for Martin, what do you think is the purpose of the Book of Acts? Is Is it a manual on how to do church planting? You know, as if, you know, we've been in Acts 28, but now we need to go do our own Acts 29, which I think would make a very good name for a church planting network.
¶30I'll may have to trademark that one. But anyway, Tom, can you help us out, help Martin out? What is the purpose of the Book of Acts? >> Yeah. Yeah.
¶31I I think there is a primary purpose which gradually comes into focus. I think chapters 1 to 12 are an extraordinary summary of the first generation in Jerusalem, but then chapters 13 to 28 focus on Paul. Of course, they have quite a bit of Peter in as well, and you have the debate in Jerusalem in chapter 15, but increasingly Paul is the one who is the center of the story, which we know historically is only a small part of the story. The danger of of reading Acts as simply early church history is that it implies that this is the only real show in town, whereas we know that there were other missionaries, some going south to Egypt or Ethiopia, some going east um towards India according to very early tradition, uh Thomas went to India, et cetera. So, we're only given a piece of it.
¶32And I think uh I've come to the view that Paul is not actually really the hero, the real hero is the gospel, the gospel itself, the word which does things, which is powerful, which uh calls people to discipleship, which um does its own work in uh communities and hearts and minds. And Paul is the one who is articulating this word. So, just as the Book of Acts begins by uh having Jesus um say, "You will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and to the ends of the earth." So, I think part of the point of the ending is for Luke to say, "Here we are uh they have been witnesses to Jesus in Rome, which in principle means to the ends of the earth." Cuz once you're in Rome, people are going to travel in all directions as as we know they did. Um but then within that, I think Luke has woven quite cleverly into that this sequence of trials in each of which, sometimes um against their better judgment as it were, Roman officials declare that Paul is innocent. Again and again, he's on trial, but actually, uh there's nothing against him.
¶33Um he's on trial, but well, he could have been set free if he hadn't appealed to Caesar. Um the the people the the people in Malta think that he's um a murderer because a snake fastens on his arm, but then uh he shakes it off and and he's okay. Um and that's why they think he's a god, which is another confusing issue. The centurion was uh had to stop the the soldiers killing the prisoners on board. [clears throat] And so, at point after point after point, Paul is being rescued by the Roman authorities.
¶34And I think all this is pointing in Luke's intention towards saying, "So, when Paul comes before Caesar, somebody should make this case." I'm not saying that Paul himself would make it, but that Luke wants this to be known and that that this this was the attitude that Roman officials took. Yeah, when there was the riot in Ephesus, it wasn't the Christians who quelled it, it was the local town clerk, the representative of the Roman Empire, who said, "Hey guys, you're going to be in a mess here because Rome if Rome hears about this, they're not going to be pleased. And if Paul has done anything wrong, well, sue him, take him to court. But if he hasn't, then sit down, shut up, and go home." Um and which which they do. So, that at every point, it is as though the story is designed to say, "Actually, he's innocent.
¶35Actually, it might surprise you, but he he is not guilty. Actually, don't worry about it, but Paul is okay." But then, within that, how do you put that together with, as our questioner says, with the whole emphasis that Jesus is now the Lord of the world, the kurios kosmo? Well, my mind on hearing this question went straight across to the letter to the Romans. The letter to the Romans begins very emphatically with Jesus as the son of God, as the Lord of the world, as the one who is basically sending out messengers to claim believing allegiance from the world. And through the message about this, the gospel, which is also a Roman imperial world, then justice and peace and salvation have come to the world.
¶36All of this is a way of saying everything Caesar claims, Jesus has done it in spades and far beyond. At the same time, when Paul gets to Romans 13, he says, "We're not into violent revolution against the principalities and powers, against the powers that be. You are not to be known as troublemakers. You are to be known as good citizens because we're in living in a different dimension. We are witnesses to new creation, not to a cheap and cheerful revolution which simply keeps the wheels of the old the old world turning.
¶37As we know, military revolutions and so on usually just replace one bad system with another. And Paul has seen that and says, "No, we're not into that." But that doesn't at all pull away from his firm emphasis in Romans 1 to 8, and then in Romans 14 and 15 straight after 13, that Jesus is the Lord of the whole world. So, theologically, there actually isn't any incompatibility. In order to tease that out, one would need to write a book on Jesus and the powers. And Mike, I think you and I did write one of those.
¶38>> We did, Tom. You did. Cracking good read, may I add. A cracking good read. So, well, yes.
¶39I think that's a great way to put it. Tom, you've also got your own book about the Was it the vision of Acts? Do I have that right? The vision of Acts? >> Um No, I think No, it's the challenge of Acts.
¶40>> So, the challenge of Acts. [clears throat] Sorry. >> Yeah, I mean, I use these cliches like vision and challenge and so on. It's a way of saying, "This book is about Acts." And by the way, it's it's it's a big challenge. Yes, that was an exciting book to write because I decided I only had eight lectures to cover the whole of Acts.
¶41That's 28 chapters. So, I decided to take each chapter is four chapters of Acts as an introductory thing, and then Acts 1 to 4, 5 to 8, and so on. And that was an extraordinary way of doing it because obviously you can't treat every verse anything like. But it was it was like standing back or or or going up in the plane and getting the 30,000 ft view of the book and how it worked. I found that enormously refreshing.
¶42And out of that this double conviction comes that again and again Jesus is the true Lord of the world. And so ultimately he is calling Caesar to account. Um but he is also saying to the Roman authorities, um Paul has done nothing wrong. And there's a straight line from there to the apologists in the 2nd century who go on saying, Jesus is Lord, but also go on saying, We're not troublemakers. We keep the laws.
¶43We pay our taxes. The only thing you'll find wrong with us is that we won't worship your gods. >> Mhm. >> That's like Polycarp and people like that. >> Mhm.
¶44>> So um and that is an authentic early Christian position which some in the Roman world obviously didn't like because they burned Polycarp to death and they did the same similar things to others. But it's a position in which the early Christians and Luke among them are sketching out a way of see saying, seeing the community, the Christian community following Jesus as representatives of a new world order which isn't just a transition to more of the same in the old world, but it's a whole new way of being human, a whole new way of doing community. >> Yeah. Well, thanks, Tom. I think that's that's a good summary if you're going to get on the purpose of the Book of Acts.
¶45And it's not just one purpose. There's multiple things that are going on in the Book of Acts. We're going to take a break, but when we come back, we're going to have a look at one of the most difficult and challenging topics in all of biblical study, and that is how do we understand, how do we grapple with some of the strange and brutal violence we find described [music] in the Old Testament. More on that in a moment. >> [music] >> I I recently saw Richard Dawkins.
¶46Sort of embarrassingly I sort of said I I was actually at evensong last night and he said, [music] "Me, too." It's not as if I ever looked at a supermarket shelf of religions and said, "I think I'll have that one." I found this continued [music] to unfold and make the best sense I could imagine. >> The person of Jesus compels me. Is life all suffering? Is it all love? Both.
¶47It's both. It's both. And this in this story they are held in this I find it beautiful. >> The way I think of Christianity is that in the person of Jesus God and us and the universe came together in a unique and unparalleled way. >> You're supposed to be atheists.
¶48>> [laughter] >> Christians. >> This is This is all happened since you invited me. Sorry. >> [laughter] >> Sorry. >> Don't worry.
¶49I haven't become an atheist. >> That's one atheist >> [laughter] >> on the panel. I've got some bad news. >> Welcome back. Now, [music] we have a question and it's not from one person.
¶50I would say this question is from many people from the land of everywhere. So, I mean I'm I'm not joking. We've had about six different people write into us asking about the topic of how do we understand violence in the Old Testament. I'm not going to read out all of the six questions, but I'm going to summarize them all with this basic question, Tom. And Tom, I think this is one of the hardest questions we're ever going to wrestle with on the show.
¶51And it's this one. Why would God call Israel to kill, to eliminate the very nations they were to bless and bring light to. Now, this means we've got to get into the conquest narratives in the book of Joshua, the various bits of tribal violence we find that characterize the ancient Near East, the rise and fall of empires, the brutality that went with it, the kind of strange descriptions of ancient Near Eastern warfare that we find even in the holy and spired Bible. Uh Tom, I mean, what are we to make of these Dare I Dare I say these texts of terror that we sometimes find in the Old Testament? I mean, there's an easy temptation here which is to go the Marcionite route and say the God of the Old Testament was an angry God who commanded, you know, the elimination of whole peoples and tribes and the sacking of cities.
¶52And the God of the New Testament is better than that. But if we believe the God of creation and the God of salvation are the same God, that the God of Israel and the God of Jesus is the same God, well, that's not theologically possible. Tom, do you have an answer to many of our audience who are inundating us with questions about how to understand violence in the Old Testament. >> Yeah, I don't have the answer. I don't have a a secret line which will trump all the other lines that have that have been explored from time to time.
¶53There are two or three fixed points in my mind which I think we have to bear in mind as we stand back from all of this. One of them comes in the call of Abraham in Genesis 15 um where God says to Abraham that his descendants are going to be going off to be slaves in a foreign land and that they will come back in the fourth generation and then there's this odd explanation for that and it's because the iniquity of the Amorite is not yet full. Now, it's as though God waits until a whole society has become so wicked, so corrupt, so horrible in itself with child sacrifice and all kinds of human wickedness that the only word to be said is a word of judgment. Now, we've had judgment before in Genesis of course because when the wickedness of humans gets so bad, God sends the flood and in a sense that's an advanced warning that God will not forever tolerate ongoing evil. Now, this this is difficult for us because since if if you're if you're raised Christian and taught Christianity, then you want to say that that all always ought to be a second chance.
¶54That the people of Israel should have gone into the land and said, "Hey guys, there is a God who is a redeeming God, so please stop your wicked ways at once." I would love to believe that, but the older I get, the more I'm aware looking around the world, looking around society that there are some movements and some people of whom perhaps the only thing we can pray as in the Psalms "Lord, may they fall into the pits that they have dug for others." When we're recording this, I I am aware of certain great world leaders whose names are very familiar to everybody who just seem to tell lie after lie and use one wicked violence after another excusing them this way and that and just trampling on all sorts of of human issues and and and defenseless people. And I want to say of people like that that there has to be a moment when God says enough is enough. We're not just going to wait around for such people to repent one day. We have to do some sort of judgment. Now, it seems to me that the perspective of Genesis from Genesis 15, that line about the iniquity of the Amorites, is a way of saying that those people currently in what we think of as the Holy Land have gone so far down the road that the only thing to be said is a word of judgment.
¶55And that then the the kind of holy violence which is commended in Joshua is going to be the way to deal with it. Of course, in the book of Joshua itself, there are exceptions like Rahab who looks after the spies in in Jericho. So, it's not absolutely every single person. And there are some people who tried to say, you know, come up with different theories about, well, it's it's only the real military heartlands or whatever, and ordinary people get away with it. And there are there are others that there are the the the tribe who play a trick and who pretend that they're coming from miles and miles away, whereas in fact they're just next door.
¶56Um and they do a deal with Joshua's men and and somehow they get spared. So, there there are already wrinkles in the in the sort of absolute theory. But, in general, I think that was the theory behind it, that the wickedness had gone so far that the only possible word was a word of judgment. And then within the book of Judges, as many commentators have said, it looks as though what's happened is that Israel, so far from being a light to the nations, has been running itself in ways which are really rather like the rest of the nations. At And then there's a sort of sense of Well, they've got to do it this way and so on.
¶57And that that of course goes on to David. And one of the very interesting things is when David wants to build God a house, and God says, "Nah-uh, you can't do that. You've got blood on your hands. I'm going to call your son, and he will be a man of peace, and he will build me a house." And so already, even in the midst of David, who you know, slaughtered people to left and right, and Philistines, and Moabites, and goodness knows who, God says, "Yeah, but that's not actually how to create the world that I want, which is a world where I can come and live in the midst of my people." So there is already that sense of This may have been necessary, or it may have been the only way of doing something, or something, but the but God is already saying, "There has to be a limit to that." So that that's the first thing I want to say, starting from Genesis 15 and moving forward. But the second thing I want to say is that when God called Abraham, back to Abraham again, um in order to deal with the problem of humanity, because that's in the narrative of Genesis, that's the role that Abraham and his family have, to deal with the problem of humanity, um God knew perfectly well that Abraham himself and his family were part of the problem as well as part of the solution.
¶58So that Abraham is an ambiguous character. He's very ambiguous in the book of Genesis itself. But God works with that ambiguity. And we can see that going on all the way through the Old Testament. That God works in his people, through his people, even though they are rebellious, they get things wrong, and they too have to be judged, They too have to go to exile, etc.
¶59And what I see then is like an enormous picture gradually building up of God saying, "This is how I am rescuing my world by calling Abraham and his family to be the people through whom I will redeem the world." So that the picture finally grows and we realize it's the picture of God incarnate dying on the cross. And only when I see that whole story, can I even begin to think about Joshua and Judges. That actually all along God is saying that I am going to take the wickedness and violence of the whole world onto myself in the end. Now, that doesn't explain or justify it in the sense of Well, part of the problem is people have gone to the Bible expecting to see a nice moral book, a book of good moral rules, good moral examples. And then they see extraordinary things happening and they think, "Oh, oh dear, we don't like those bits.
¶60So maybe they weren't inspired or something." That's not the point. This is a cosmic story of how the creator of the world decided to come into his world to take its horror and violence upon himself and to deal with it. And all that stuff from Abraham through Joshua and Judges, through David and all the rest of it, that is all by way of saying the God of Israel is working his purpose out, but the ultimate moment of that purpose is this solitary figure on the cross shouting out, "My God, my God, why did you abandon me?" And so when the world today gets to the point of saying, "Where is God? Why have we been abandoned? Then it seems to me that God himself is saying, "I am here with you.
¶61I am working my purpose out. So, don't try and have little pet theories about how those earlier bits of scripture work. Look at the larger picture reaching its climax in Jesus." That's about as far as I can get. One could go on to the book of Revelation, which raises all sorts of other >> Oh, yeah. >> questions.
¶62Um but um those are those are the guidelines I would give within which we might cautiously begin to explore the question. >> Yeah, I mean, Tom, this is such a huge topic, and I find this is one of easily the top five topics I get asked by both Christians and non-Christians when they're wrestling with the Bible. So, I think what we're going to do, we'll pause this conversation here for now, but we'll do a bonus episode where we'll get maybe a little bit more granular on a couple of aspects of this topic about, you know, violence in the Old Testament. So, for subscribers to Ask NT Wright, anything, if you want to you or if you want to make sure you don't miss out on that, become a subscriber to our bonus episodes because for the price of a cheap coffee from Nero or Starbucks, you can get four extra episodes a week, including this one where Tom and I will try to dig a little bit deeper on this very difficult and perplexing question. But, in our next regular episode coming up, Tom, we've got some good questions coming, Tom.
¶63These are good ones. We've got a question that we'll topics we're going to deal with next week on are there prophets and apostles today? Um what about sacraments versus ordinances? And I love this one. Should we try to change people's minds on the rapture?
¶64Now, on this program, Tom and I, we've done a lot of critiquing of rapture theology. >> Okay. >> But, should you put in the effort to try and change people's minds on that topic? So, that's something we're going to deal with in our next episode. And, I also want to point out that in the Premier Network, there is a great number of shows you can watch.
¶65There is the C.S. Lewis podcast, where they recently did a cracking episode on whether C.S. Lewis was a bad theologian. Now, Tom, I know you like C.S. Lewis, but you you have a little bit of an asterisk next to your admiration of him.
¶66Um yeah, he was he was a great storyteller, a great apologist, but sometimes his theology, his eschatology, left a little bit to be desired. And so, Premier has done a great job putting out a podcast and some episodes on C.S. Lewis. Uh Tom, I don't know whether you know this, but I've also got another program with Premier called History's Last Stand, where we go into history. Uh we've been looking at the successors of Alexander the Great.
¶67We've been doing a series about the last days of Dietrich Bonhoeffer. And, we're also going to explore fake gospels and hoaxes about Jesus in the end in the world of antiquities. So, people might want to check that out. But, Tom, if people want to send us their question, is there some place they should go if they want to hear you answer their question? >> It's very easy.
¶68The website is askntwright.com. >> If you go to that site, you can submit your question, and maybe, just maybe, your question will get read and answered on this program. But, until then, it's goodbye from me, Mike Bird. >> Goodbye from me, Tom Wright. >> And we look forward to seeing you on the next episode of Ask NT Wright Anything.
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