Quotes about Ancient

the ancient Israelites were an ancient tribal people.

Forty is a go-to number symbolizing a complete or "right" period of time, and "480" is twelve times forty—twelve likely symbolizing the twelve tribes of Israel. The number is symbolic. It draws on ancient conventions of the symbolic value of round numbers to mark off a sacred moment.

The point of all this is that the book of Exodus as we know it simply could not be as old as the thirteenth century BCE, and could not have been written by Moses.

It may be hard—sometimes impossible—to see the history in Israel's stories, but we do get a good picture of how these ancient Israelites experienced God.

A God who does not connect to the world around us is a God who cannot speak to us. Believing in a God who demands that we continue to adopt only biblically ancient ways of thinking of God, which are themselves rooted in their own cultural moment, is to diminish God's active presence here and now.

How do biblical writers talk about the past?

the Bible is ancient, ambiguous, and diverse.

Christians should not search through the creation stories for scientific information they believe it is important to see there. They should read it, as the New Testament writers did, as ancient stories transformed in Christ.

Rather than providing us with information to be downloaded, the Bible holds out for us an invitation to join an ancient, well-traveled, and sacred quest to know God, the world we live in, and our place in it. Not abstractly, but intimately and experientially.

Wisdom, in other words, was not an add-on, but was always central for obeying any law in the Bible. Laws, once we begin thinking about what they mean and how they are to be obeyed, actually push us to seek wisdom, which goes beyond mechanical obedience. It's not surprising, therefore, that ancient Jews came to think of wisdom and Law as inseparable—they need each other to work, like needing a pin number to access your cash.

We have every reason today to think differently about the universe and our place in it. This doesn't disprove God, but it does challenge our thinking. For people of faith, bringing the ancient Bible and our lives together can be stressful and unnerving—which is a problem if faith and correct thinking are deemed inseparable. "What does it mean to be human?" does not have as clear a biblical answer as it once had.

He was a mighty hunter before the LORD; so it is said, “Like Nimrod, a mighty hunter before the LORD.”