Crisis of Faith Kelsey Schleusener Saturday, October 23, 2010 Throughout the last eight weeks, my life has

been put through something akin to the spin cycle of a washing machine. Very few of the things I held as true, permanent, and straightforward just two months ago feel the same way now: my diet, my sleep schedule, my family tree, my drivers license and my faith are all vastly different than they were at the end of the summer. Life is changing, and I am shaken up. In the interest of full disclosure, the material I am learning in this class has caused me to call into question virtually every part of the faith Ive taken for granted during my adulthood in the church. It scares me to think that stories of divine providence that I always considered watertight are perhaps only the ramblings of an ancient people in search of explanation for their trials. What does it mean if the cornerstones of my faith are in fact just historical rubble? If everything I once believed is inaccurate, then why am I in seminary? Suffice it to say that this essay topic has weighed heavily on my mind for some time now. Suffice it to say that I have no answers to the questions I have asked myself. Suffice it to say that I feel in no way qualified to speak for a population larger than just me; I will, however, gladly undertake a discussion of the importance of Biblical study as it pertains to my life. Finally, suffice it to say that even as many things remain unclear, I find it greatly important to seek reason from amongst things that appear unreasonable. This is possibly the only way anything significant has ever been discovered.

The creation stories of Genesis are a fair example of this very concept. In the first, found in Genesis 1:1-2:4a, a transcendent, distanced God speaks the world into being in a cadenced, structured manner. In The Old Testament: A Historical and Literary Introduction to the Hebrew Scriptures, Michael Coogan observes that this creation story has a liturgical rhythm: God creates; God notes that creation is good (32). This formula permeates the entirety of the creation account: God first creates the heavens, on days one and four; then the waters, on days two and five; and finally the earth, on days three and six. God speaks, creation responds, and it is deemed good. In the second creation story, taken from Genesis 2:4b-3:23, we find an experimental God playing in the dirt: God forms a man, then a host of animals, and finally a mate for the man. This God, Coogan tells us, is wildly anthropomorphic (38) God fashions creation like a potter and thinks like a human being. In her essay from the Womens Bible Commentary, Susan Niditch writes of the theology used in the second creation story, saying that it allows God a certain closeness to the human realm (14). We are better served to merge these stories than to juxtapose them. Why can this God not be both magnificent and playful? Niditch goes on to write that (c)reation is not merely the initial coming into being of the universe and its life forms; it includes also the ordering and continuous unfolding of the world (15). By this she unites the two stories: God is at once order and a calculated unfolding, and a winding, impulsive artist, calling the universe and its goods into creation. We can use this thinking in regards to man and woman as well. Niditch writes that when God created humankind in the first creation story, there is no commentary regarding their rank or value, except to say that together they reflect the divine image

(16). The same is true for the second story: Man and woman are parts of a whole, Niditch says (16). Here we see shades of Gods composite nature. Order or disorder? Our divine Lord is both. Here again, in Exodus 14:1-29 and 15:4-5, the historical narrative interweaves three separate stories of the Hebrew escape from Egyptian slavery. We understand the event to be historically accurate because of outside sources corroborating it: Victor Matthews and Don Benjamins Old Testament Parallels: Laws and Stories from the Ancient Near East details the Annals of Merneptah, which contain the only mention of Israel during the New Kingdom recovered in Egypt (97). The stela refers to Israel as a people rather than a state, and places them in the time of Egyptian Pharaoh Ramsesses II. This stela aside, the Womens Bible Commentary tells us there are no other sources to support the existence of the Israelites in that time or place (31). In the first story of exodus, the great leader Moses finds himself at the shore of the Red Sea with Pharaohs army bearing down upon he and the people under his command. Moses raises his staff, and the sea parts; the chosen people walk across on dry land; and Moses raises his staff again, drowning the army. In the second story, curiously written squarely within the first, the Lord causes panic to befall the pursuing army, whose chariot wheels become stuck in the mud of the sea; the army retreats in fear. The third and final story tells of Pharaohs army drowning in the sea after their ships overturn in a mighty storm caused by God. Coogan tells us that the true event was probably a hybrid of these stories. A small group of slaves may have escaped their captors somewhere in the Nile river delta. They headed for one of the swamps or wetlands in the vicinity, pursued by their guards, he

writes. Because they were on foot, the escapees were able to make their way through the swamp, but the Egyptians, in chariots, got bogged down and gave up the pursuit, so the Hebrews got away. This event would have been unworthy of report for the Egyptians, but for the Hebrew slaves who escaped, it was miraculous (102). Once more, in 1 Samuel 9:1-10:16, 10:17-27, and 11, we are given the layered story of the beginning of Sauls kingship. The Womens Bible Commentary cautions us not to assume that this simple arrangement of originally separate stories is a straightforward historical account of the relationships between Samuel, Saul, David and God (91, 92). The first of the three enthronement stories show how Saul was chosen as the first king of Israel in a private meeting with Samuel. In the second, Saul is chosen by lot in a public ceremony in which Samuel presides; and in the third, Saul is chosen by popular opinion after defeating the Ammonite armies. Coogan tells us that although the texts contain hyperbole, Saul was still a popular leader, and the account attests to Sauls frequent successes in battle (238). A discerning audience can read the overlaid scriptures of Genesis and Exodus without issue. It can be logical to interpret the creator God as both ordered and spontaneous, and to interpret the exodus story as a hybrid of several tales of escape for a people in desperate need of a little hope. In 1 Samuel, however, the three stories of coronation are presented without much explanation as to reality. Because in actuality it cant be all three stories at once, and because we have no reason to believe that a synthesis of these stories was accurate, what is a curious person someone seeking reason in the unreasonable to do?

These stories provide opportunities for us to examine the fusion of historical truth and the written word. Coogan tells us that as the narratives in the Deuteronomic History were told and retold, they began to reflect the Israelite inclination to praise Yahweh by magnifying the actual events, sometimes into the realm of hyperbole (100). Then later on, in overlaying these ancient accounts, the final editors of the texts were less concerned with a superficial consistency than with preservation of traditions (101). This leaves a modern-day reader in an amoebic gray area, somewhere between reading the texts literally and relying on historical evidence to provide context. We are left, simply, to have faith. In her introduction, Niditch tells us that the people of Genesis looked to God to take stock of the comprehensible and make sense of the incomprehensible (13). In fact, that is exactly what we do as well. So much has changed in the thousands of years between them and us, and yet nothing has. As I learn the historical context behind these texts and come to discover that it doesnt always affirm the events and perspectives of God presented in the Bible as true for the purposes of faith, and I begin to doubt that Biblical study is important in this light, I look to these cultural parallels and find in them a little confidence to keep on. This doubt and this great faith can interweave, much like the truth and the narrative interweave in the stories of Genesis, Exodus, 1 Samuel and other texts. We remain faithful in our historical study because God calls us to, even as we are unsure if it is important. This is possibly the only way anything significant will be discovered.

Bibliography

Coogan, Michael D., Marc Z. Brettler, Carol A. Newsom, and Pheme Perkins, eds. The New Oxford Annotated Bible with Apocrypha: New Revised Standard Version, College Edition. Fourth Edition ed. New York: Oxford University Press, USA, 2010.

Coogan, Michael D. The Old Testament: A Historical and Literary Introduction to the Hebrew Scriptures. 2 ed. New York: Oxford University Press, USA, 2010.

Newsom, Carol A., and Sharon H. Ringe, eds. The Women's Bible Commentary expanded. Expanded ed. Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 1998.

Matthews, Victor H., and Don C. Benjamin. Old Testament Parallels: Laws And Stories from the Ancient Near East. 3 Rev Exp ed. New York: Paulist Press, 2007.