When I awake I will see your face! All I want is to see you as you are.
Psalm 17:15

The Story of Israel
Both Judaism and Christianity are historical religions, meaning, among other things, that if you want to truly understand them, or their God, you must understand their history beginning with Genesis. However, this is not a matter of inquiring into the dates and hard facts of particular events, but of entering yourself into the Hebrew experience of life as an encounter with the One who exists as both numinous reality and intensely personal presence. The story of the Old Testament is the story of the long relationship between God and the ancient Hebrews. It is a story that has been unfolding and developing for nearly two thousand years by the time Jesus is born in the town of Bethlehem. As the history of the relationship between God and the ancient Hebrews it involves stories of desire, need, argument, accusation, lament, disappointment, pleading, anger, praise, betrayal, faithfulness, great depths of insight and total blindness. We could even think of it as the story or history of a conversation. It is simply impossible to get at the meaning of any one text in isolation from the story as a whole. So, the texts with which we began part one of this post cannot be understood apart from the strange call of Abraham and Sarah to trust God, to leave the easy life of their home in Ur and make the arduous journey to live as nomads in faraway Canaan. They cannot be comprehended apart from the four hundred years of Jewish slavery in Egypt, or their astounding escape and miraculous liberation, and they cannot be felt without remembering the drama of cloud and lightening and fire and smoke on Mount Sinai as they receive the Torah and vow to be the people of God. And their formation as an ethnic group, political entity, and spiritual religion through forty years of struggle and danger in the desert wilderness, with God alone as their help, is essential in interpreting the whole of the Hebrew Bible.

What the patriarchs and matriarchs, the priests, poets, prophets and people discovered in this long journey into intimacy with God were the names of God––not the fuzzy and abstract terms for God used by philosophers and theologians who love participating in a vigorous game of intellectual gymnastics, but strong, concrete, active names that spoke of a real God with whom it is possible to have a real relationship. In the Old Testament Hebrew God is Yahweh, El or Elohim, El Shaddai, and Adonia. God is, then, if these names are translated literally: “He who is,” or “He who exists,” or “He who is the one being.” God is the strong leader who teaches the people how to work, shows the secret of the doing, by working alongside them, and nourishes and sustains them like a mother whose breast milk is sufficient to nourish her infant in health, strength, and growth. And as Adonia, “My Lord,” God is the one who defends, protects, provides and cares for the people––especially the poor and vulnerable. Each name for God is not just a tag for some nebulous concept or idea. For the Hebrews a name wasn’t simply what someone was called, but identified something essential about their character. For the Hebrew poets and worshippers to say, “My hope is in the name of the Lord, creator of heaven and earth” (Psalm 124:8), was to affirm that their hope was in the very essence of who and what God is. Obviously Israel’s experience of God was of one who was for them, not against them. This raises the pertinent general question,  why if Dawkins’s assessment of matters is correct did the Hebrews God good and worthy of worship? It also raises a more personal question: Does something deep in your own soul resonate with and affirm the same discoveries made by Abraham and Sarah, by Moses, by Mother Mary and Jesus Christ; even while, at the same time, recognizing there are passages in the Old Testament that are neither worthy nor truly representative of God.

Lived Experience
I am going to suggest to you now that ultimately the only knowledge of God really worth having comes through this sort of lived experience. “Things of the Spirit,” Saint Paul said in his correspondence with the Corinthians, “must be discerned spiritually.” One of my favorite anecdotes is a little story William Barry the Catholic priest, Jesuit, clinical psychologist, Rector of Boston College, and distinguished author and spiritual director tells about his mother in his wonderful little book on prayer, God and You: Prayer as a Personal Relationship. He writes, “When my mother was dying of cancer, she said that she prayed every night that God would take her in her sleep. I asked her what God was like,” says Fr. Barry, “and she answered, “He’s a lot better than he’s made out to be.” Apparently when William Barry’s mother thought of God coming for her in the night, and gently taking her as she slept it was a comforting image. She had not been shaken by priests and teachers who pictured God as capricious, vindictive, or cruel. The heated rants and diatribes of atheists like Dawkins or Hitchens had not disturbed her faith in the One Lord of the Bible who is: “Father of all, over all, through all, and in all.” Nor did the imprecatory psalms or claims God commanded brutal holy wars seem to have lessened her confidence in the essential goodness of God. Barry says his mother had learned about God, and what God is really like, mainly from praying a lot. She read her Bible, recited the rosary, and prayed simple devotions. “One time I asked her,” he says, “what happened when she prayed. During her response she said something like this: ‘Sometimes while you’re saying your prayers, you go deep and you know he’s listening to you and you to him.'” However, I am not just talking about one’s solitary experience, but of entering into the whole experience of the people of God. Barry’s mother was not a solitary believer but part of a worshipping community; and, a participate in the sacred history that unfolds in the both the Old and New Testament..

The Threatening God
In both my work as a counselor and spiritual director I encountered many people who, particularly as a result of growing up in abusive or dysfunctional families, had formed such a distorted image of God that they could not walk into a church without it giving them the creeps. Here is another quote from William Barry that provides further insight. This one is actually from two different books, Paying Attention to God: Discernment in Prayer and his Finding God In All Things. In both he quotes largely from the British psychiatrist J. S. Mackenzie and the psychoanalyst Henry Guntrip:

The enjoyment of God should be the supreme end of spiritual technique; and it is in that enjoyment of God that we feel not only saved in the Evangelical sense, but safe: we are conscious of belonging to God, and hence are never alone; and, to the degree we have these two, hostile feelings disappear. . . . It is a common experience in psychotherapy to find patients who fear and hate God, a God who, is always snooping around after sinners, and who becomes an outsize of the threatening parent. . . . The child grows up fearing evil rather than loving good; afraid of vice rather than in love with virtue, Anyone who has done pastoral work can attest that this is a common experience among many Christians. And while sermons and homilies whose theme is the love of God may help, ultimately people need to experience that love. It will tax our ingenuity to develop the spiritual techniques or pastoral practices that will help people to have such a foundational experience.

If your aim is to logically figure out whether the God of the Bible exists, which is what this question of whether the Judeo-Christian God is good or malevolent is really all about, you should be able to find plenty of people willing to help you take that sort of head-trip. But if you want to know God intimately you will ultimately find such efforts to be an exercise in futility. Knowing God, knowing that God is and knowing the character of what God is, must ultimately be experienced rather than thought. You can think, and think, and think all you want, and while that may be somewhat helpful it will only take you so far. In the end you are either capable of sustaining a vital relationship with God and a believing congregation of sufficient spiritual vitality to undergo the transformation of metanoia or you are not.

A Boyhood Story
I grew up in the very conservative Churches of Christ. Actually, I grew up in a subset of the Churches of Christ that was more conservative than the conservative main body. I do not wish to disparage these churches in any way. It was in their fellowship that I came to faith, experienced my call to ministry, and learned much that has helped and sustained me throughout my life. Having said that, I also found many obstacles that had to be overcome; but, even that is not necessarily bad for it is in the struggle that growth most frequently occurs. One of the obstacles I struggled with was the idea that God is strict and demanding. God’s will must be followed with exactness in all things; and ignorance of what is required is no excuse. The smallest of infractions will send one to hell. At least, that was my childhood and young adult understanding of matters. One of the key texts often used in sermons to support this was Leviticus chapter ten–– actually it was just 10:1-2 that was read––the King James Version of course:

And Nadab and Abihu, the sons of Aaron, took either of them his censer, and put fire therein, and put incense thereon, and offered strange fire before the Lord, which he commanded them not. And there went out fire from the Lord, and devoured them, and they died before the Lord.

So the point to be made, as I understood it at the time, was extrapolated from the phrase, “and they offered fire which God commanded them not.” This, we were told, meant that God had not explicitly forbidden this particular incense so they thought, “Why not? This mixture smells pretty good so let’s use it. After all it’s not explicitly forbidden.” And the next thing you know they are knocked right out of their sandals by a bolt of lightning, as dead as dead can be (at least that’s what I imagined as a kid). The moral of the story is simple and certain: Even if you think God vague or ambiguous you had better get it right with precision or you could end up very much like a piece of toast––and the margins for error are more than exceedingly small. This is the sort of thing that might fall within Dawkins’s accusation. So note the following and try to look at them in the context of this post as a whole:

• Were Nadab and Abihu just two happy klutzes that didn’t read the small print in the Incense Guide? Or, were they somehow at odds with Moses and the Torah itself? At Sinai they had certainly shown a propensity for a religion of wild music, dancing, sex and booze. And the explicit prohibition in verse eight against drinking any fermented drink in the tent of the meeting implies that they were intoxicated––intoxicated, irreverent, and defiant. Some scholars think that they had not only arrogated for themselves the role of the High Priest but they were also initiating some sort of extra-cultic rite. I say they were irreverent because the text makes clear they were obviously unable to distinguish between what is sacred and what is profane. These are all clues that whatever was going on involved something significant for Israel as a spiritual nation and a light in a world where the religious celebrations of other states often included drunkenness, prostitution (both female and male), bestiality, the offering of infants in the fires of an idol; and, where the injustice suffered by the poor was codified in royal law and supported by the religious establishment. Notice how verses three through four seem to confirm this. Moses says to Aaron, who is both his brother and the High Priest:

“This is what the Lord spoke of when he said:
“‘Among those who approach me
I will be proved holy;
in the sight of all the people
I will be honored.’”

• Did God actually strike Nadab and Abihu with lightening? I don’t know. It is, as I say, what I imagined as a kid but I don’t know. The text says “fire went out from the Lord,” which would seem to correct my childhood notion of a lightning bolt and suggest that something happened right there at the incense altar. I remember a college professor suggesting they got drunk and caught everything, including themselves on fire. Regardless of how an objective team of observers recording the event might have described it (a lightning strike, an explosion emanating from the incense altar, or the intoxicated Nadab and Abihu accidentally setting themselves on fire) the Hebrew’s would have said “fire went out from the Lord.” This is because they could not conceive of anything happening that God is not involved in, which leads to ways of framing things that does not fit easily with our Western way of conceptualizing matters. For example, Exodus in describing what happened when Moses pleaded for Pharaoh to let the Israelites go, says at times that Pharaoh hardened his own heart and refused, and at other times that Pharaoh refused because God hardened Pharaoh’s heart. In our Western way of thinking we want to know which it was. Did God harden Pharaoh’s heart or did Pharaoh harden his own heart. The Hebrews simply did not think of cause and effect quite as we do, and we need to remember that in interpreting any given text. But we do understand consequence––well theoretically we do. Some, like those addicted to alcohol and drugs, have a difficult time with the concept, have a difficult time making the invariable connection between thoughts, consciousness, actions and results
• The rest of the story is informative. Moses tells his brother Aaron, the High Priest, that he is not to mourn Nadab and Abihu but to continue with the prescribed sacrificial ritual and ceremony. However, Aaron and his remaining priestly sons do not eat the sacrifice as stipulated but allow it to burn up. When confronted by Moses (verses 19-20) Aaron says that considering the tragedy that has befallen him and his family that day God will surely understand. And with that Moses is satisfied. When the rest of the story is told it does not prove the arbitrariness of God as I was told as a child, but that God’s understanding and mercy is broad, and the margins for error wider than many have thought. So here we have that balance the Hebrews saw in everything. In this instance there is the reverence required upon entering the presence of the Holy, and the gentleness needed in dealing with everyday human frailty if it is ever to be transformed into something more.

Punishment and Consequence
I will try to say something briefly here about punishment and consequences because I think it relevant to our overall discussion. First notice the balance just referred to above as the balance of compassion and justice in Exodus 34:7-8.

Yahweh! Yahweh! the God who is compassionate, merciful and gracious, always patient, extravagant in love, staying true to thousands in loving kindness, and forgiving wickedness, rebellion and sin. Yet, he does not ignore their twisted ways. But visits the consequences of the parents’ sins on their children and grandchildren to the third and even fourth generation (My translation).

We are contemporary people, and contemporary men and women have a great appreciation for God as love and kindness, especially if that means whatever everything is all about it’s all about them and their wishes. As Charles Tart has it in his not entirely factious Western Creed, “What pleases me is Good, what pains me is Bad.” People are therefore adamant in their insistence that God, if God exists at all, is absolute and pure love. Their enthusiasm for the idea that God is the one to whom they are ultimately accountable and responsible is far less obvious. Yet, love and accountability for what we do with or to that love is integral to the cosmic balance.

The root meaning of the Hebrew word for punishment means “to shed.” It is used to refer to the removal of shoes (Exodus 3:5), an axe head slipping from its’ handle (Deuteronomy 19:5), and the fall or collapse of a nation (Deuteronomy 7:1). The prefix attached to this root word conveys the upward movement of the eyes. The purpose of what our English translations may render as “punishment” is to get us to lift our eyes, to look up in order to see where we have slid (literally shed or fallen) from. In Scripture punishment by definition is restorative and redemptive in nature, and if a punishment does not restore or redeem, (if it does not re-establish balance) then it has failed. Family and child counseling of course makes this distinction by using the term “consequence” rather than “punishment.” Allowing natural consequences to occur or applying logical consequence, as opposed to arbitrary punishment, is meant for redemption and restoration. What I am obviously suggesting is that much of what we view as coercive punishment in the Bible is really consequence.

A number of years ago William Gaultiere wrote a little book many found helpful. The title of Gaultiere’s book was, Mistaken Identity/Clear Up Your Image of God and Enjoy His Love. His thesis was that especially adults who grew up in dysfunctional families may have distorted images of God. The parent whose expectations are inconsistent or cannot be met, or who is chronically angry, who is demanding but never around to help with life’s tasks, who is harsh and authoritarian, who cannot be pleased, or is in some way psychologically abusive and “crazy making” may cause us to seriously mistake the identity of the God of the Bible. But if the lens through which we are looking is cleaned just enough that we can begin to see the connection between our thoughts, actions and circumstances we may begin, little by little, to glimpse God more and more as God is.

And a Final Prayer
In Genesis Jacob, whose very name means something like manipulative cheat, through trickery and deception steals both the birth right (the future inheritance) and blessing that belong to his older brother Esau. This enrages Esau who determines to kill Jacob who, with the help of their mother, then flees to the safety of their uncle Laban in Mesopotamia. Years later shrewd Jacob, who is now a wealthy man, decides to return home to Canaan with his four wives, children, large herds of goats, cattle, camels, and flocks of sheep. He is afraid that the fierce Esau will now take his bloody revenge. Emissaries he has sent ahead with gifts for Esaul come back to tell him that Esau is already coming with his warriors to kill him and take everything he has. As part of his strategy Jacob creates three groups. After he has gotten them all across the river with the livestock that evening, he goes back across the river for some unknown reason. There he encounters a mysterious stranger, some accounts say an angel, with whom he wrestles all through the night there beside the Jabbok. When the morning comes the stranger blesses Jacob and tells him that his name is no longer Jacob but Israel, probably meaning “God fights.” Jacob need not be afraid, his God will fight or contend for him. But God also contended, or wrestled, with Jacob himself that night––a struggle so intense that it altered Jacob’s very identity so that he was now no longer Jacob but Israel. That’s what I would pray for you––that you have the stamina to wrestle with angels beside the river of your doubts, fears and unknowing until morning breaks and you know the joy and confidence of transformation.

The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic-cleanser; a misogynist, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.”
(Richard Dawkins)

I don’t know from what inner turmoil, hurt, or mistaken ambition the venom for which Richard Dawkins has become somewhat infamous comes. Nor do I know why, if he truly believes the God notion to be utter nonsense he is so haunted by it––I mean he has said it loud and long enough for the whole world to hear, so why not get on with whatever he finds positive, good, and generative? Why doesn’t he find his own horse to ride instead of beating what he thinks a dead horse belonging to his neighbor? When I consider it from this angle, I find it sad that he is so troubled. But I feel no great compulsion to argue with him in some Quixotic effort to change his mind (or your mind if you share his same faith) which would probably be both disrespectful and futile. But I do want to say something I hope might be helpful and encouraging to those Christians who struggle with those Old Testament texts that render us confused about the character of God and leave us in a dark place––causing us to wonder whether the God of the Old Testament is indeed the loving God of Jesus Christ and Christian Scripture.

The Problem
There are too many disturbing passages to cite them all in a brief essay such as this, but here are three of sufficient terror to provide some orientation to the problem, and that call into question the character of God for anyone who possesses any feelings of tenderness, of human sympathy, or common kindness.

But as for the towns of these peoples that the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance, you must not let anything that breaths remain alive. You shall annihilate them––the Hittites and the Amorites, the Canaanites and the Perizzite, the Hivites, and the Jebusites––just as the Lord your God has commanded, so that they may not teach you to do all the abhorrent things that they do for their gods, and thus sin against the Lord your God (Deuteronomy 20:16-18).

So Joshua defeated the whole land, the hill country and the Negeb and the lowland and the slopes, and all their kinds; he left no one remaining, but utterly destroyed all that breathed, as the Lord God of Israel commanded (Joshua 10:40).

Thus says the Lord of hosts, “I will punish the Amalekites for what they did in opposing Israel when they came of Egypt. Now go and attack Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have; do not spare the them, but kill both man and woman, child and infant, ox and sheep, camel and donkey (1Samuel 15:2-3).

I want to say especially for conservative Christians who may find raising questions about the integrity and goodness of God more frightening than these texts themselves, that there is really nothing to fear in being honest to God. As strange as it may seem, the biblical model is one in which everything in real life gets used in building, strengthening, deepening our relationship, our connection, our communion, our intimacy with God––and that includes doubting, wondering, arguing, pleading, and even accusing God of not acting like God. And if you find yourself on a dark night journey such as this, you should know that the dark night journey, though difficult, is nothing to fear. If undertaken with genuine courage and humility such struggles in the night will serve only to deepen your consecration to God and to prepare you for some greater work of love.

What will not help you is a strict literal reading of the Bible. Angry and militant atheists like Dawkins and Chris Hitchens are entirely enthusiastic about a fundamentalist reading of Scripture since it enables them to caricature, parody, and attack Judeo-Christian belief as illogical and ridiculous. They are more than happy to use a literal reading of the Bible as a weapon against people of faith. But there is also a larger problem to a literal, legalistic, and one dimensional reading of Sacred Scripture; and, it is this: Spending our time trying to explain away the difficulties created by a more literal reading, distracts us from the deeper, spiritual, meaning of the text.

Assumptions
When we read the Bible we always read it with many assumptions––some of which are true but many which are false. But we seldom question our imagination, and think that the thought picture in our mind has captured the gist of the text. When you read: “And God said. . .” what do you assume? Do you imagine Abraham, or Moses or Isaiah, or Deborah hearing a baritone voice from heaven; or, are you sufficiently informed by Scripture itself to know that it was or may have been what came to them in a dream, or vision, in a mystical experience, as an epiphany, or as a moment of insight or enlightenment in which there were no audible or inaudible words at all––a moment of sudden spiritual clarity. What we have in Scripture are not the actual and irrefutable words of God, but the assertion of a given text that here is what God communicated to an Abraham, a Sarah, Moses, Isaiah, or Mother Mary. And have you ever noticed that questioning and testing whether a message is from God is not only tolerated in the Bible but encouraged––does what is communicated resonate deep within, is it rooted in justice, does it prove over time to be true, is it consistent with reason and the long tradition of wisdom? “Beloved,” Saint John writes, “do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, for many false prophets have gone out into the world.” What I am suggesting is that the next time you read or hear the assertion that God is a monster commanding genocide that you ask not only what the Biblical text they are referring to says, but whether in testing the passage you believe God really commanded such a thing––even if a biblical writer sincerely thought God had commanded a war of extermination the question remains as to whether that writer got it right or not.

The Norm of Interpretation Is a Person
Jesus in his controversy with the Pharisees regarding Sabbath observance said something rarely noted or emphasized but highly significant. It occurs in Matthew 12:6. Although a fascinating line you could remove it from the text and never know it was gone. Jesus says there, “I tell you that one greater than the temple is here.” For the Christian Jesus is Lord of all. Christ is greater than the temple, greater than institutional Judaism or organized Christianity, greater than the Law of Moses, the prophets or the writings, and greater than the Apostles, martyrs, saints or the canonical documents of the New Testament. Classical Christianity believes that everything, absolutely everything, is to be interpreted in the light of Christ. Every text of the Bible, every word, thought, and action of every individual and of the church, every doctrine, prophecy, and teaching is ultimately validated or invalidated by the light of Christ’s love, wisdom, and grace. The final criterion of whether a passage of scripture is God-breathed or inspired is the person of Christ.

Inspiration
Our quandary has, of course, a great deal to do with our assumptions regarding the inspiration of Scripture. The question here is not just whether we believe Scripture is inspired, but what we think inspiration means, and how that informs our further assumptions about the Bible itself and the kind of book it is. For some reason it seems difficult for people in general to grasp the idea that the Bible is both a human and divine book. To say that it is divine does not mean that God took control of the hand of each writer to compose Scripture according to  exact specifications, but that God’s Spirit, or literally God’s Breath, went out and moved in such a way as to energize the hearts, minds, and writings of the writers so that through their writings we are able to discover God as the chief glory of our lives. Yet, the Bible is also a human book with human flaws. To say, that Scripture is inspired simply means that God was somehow involved in its creation so that it  speaks to us, speaks into the great mysterious depths of our being.  If someone believes that every word, comma, semicolon, and period is there in the Bible because God determined it should be there, then they are stuck with explaining what is horrifyingly inexplicable. If on the other hand there is no God, or no God who speaks intelligibly to our souls, we are indeed lost and alone. But, I believe there is another way. It is not a way that I alone have discovered and on which I have proprietary rights, rather it is the understanding of inspiration that runs back hundreds of years in Christian thought––back through the patristics (the early great leaders, saints, and teachers of the church) to the apostles. It is the perspective which sees the Bible as both a human and divine book. This view acknowledges God’s involvement in the creation of Scripture, as well as the strong and independent human element that is ever so obvious. This means that morally problematic statements or actions attributed to God need not necessarily be accepted or defended as such.

Or, I can put it this way: Not every statement in the Bible needs to be accepted as inspired Scripture. Look at the 2 Timothy 3:16-17 (KJV). It is the primary text for any discussion on the doctrine of biblical inspiration:

All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness: That the man of God may be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good works.

I have quoted 2 Timothy 3:16-17 from the King James Version, not only because it was the version I grew up with, and was the one which was most often used in Bible studies, but because for many conservative Christians, although no longer their preferred translation, it remains, even if somewhat in the background, the source of a basic misunderstanding of inspiration. I will explain further in just a moment, but first let’s try again with a different translation––this one by the famous scholar and Bible commentator William Barclay:

All God-inspired scripture is useful for teaching , for the conviction of error, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, fully equipped for every good work.

And here is my own:

Every God-breathed writing is profitable for instruction in this way of life, for producing a change of heart, for amending character defects, and for training in kindness.

Notice Paul does not say all scripture, (literally all writing) is inspired (literally God-breathed), but that every scripture or writing inspired by God is profitable or useful in learning how to practice the Christian faith. What Paul says has a number of implications. One is certainly that there is writing or scripture that is not God-breathed, or, if you prefer, inspired. In his own writing, which Christians recognize as Scripture, Saint Paul distinguishes between his own advice and the command of Christ ( 1 Corinthians 7:10, 12, 25). I therefore have no difficulty, when someone like Dawkins uses the Old Testament to indict God as a genocidal maniac in replying, “That I cannot believe!” I know full well of course that such words were in fact said, but I don’t think they come from God. I know they are there in the text, but I do not believe they are the words of God.

Animated and Warmed By The Breath of God
Anyone who wants to know the God of the Bible, the one God of both the Old and New Testaments, will need to embark on a long journey. You might imagine J. R. R. Tolkien’s four fantasy novels, The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings trilogy, as somewhat analogous. To really understand each character as a person who is growing and being changed by events, for insight into Tolkien’s understanding of good and evil and spiritual struggle, you have to, in some sense, enter the adventure with them and participate in the rushing and receding tide of their conversation––of their life together. It has to be read with an awareness of fictional Middle Earth’s history for that is key to understanding the present crisis, and with the consciousness that it is all going somewhere, moving toward a great unknown climatic event and resolution. In much the same way, the Biblical story is the story of the developing spiritual consciousness of ancient Israel that went through a number of stages over a period of nearly two thousand years between the arrival of Abraham and Sarah in the land of Canaan and the Advent of Christ. Later stages and developments do not nullify or make the earlier untrue, but rather reveal their deeper meaning and something about the trajectory of the whole story. Sometimes, as Thomas Cahill notes in his book The Gift of the Jews, these developments occurred slowly and at other times in great spurts. Given the quilt like nature in which Scripture is put together, its errors, and contradictions, it is difficult to believe that every single word is inspired. But given the beauty of its coherent pattern we can believe it reveals a meaning deeper than words. And, as Cahill goes on to say, “We believe that the experience on which this story is based is inspired––that the evolution of Jewish consciousness taking place as it did over so many centuries, was animated and kept warm by the breath of God.”