Digging Deeper: The True Gospel Story

In the beginning… there was chaos. And from the chaos… order was created.

According to the ancients… God separated the earth from the heavens. And so was laid out the whole of creation. And God said, “let us make man in our image.” And after so doing, God rested.

But humanity rebels… and they decide they want to become gods themselves and to choose for themselves what is good and what is evil, symbolized in the eating of the forbidden fruit. And humanity is cut off from having access to the tree of life, and for their own protection, they become separated from God’s presence when they declared war on him… because God’s presence to them now has become like a dangerous fire rather than a protecting one.

In the fall of mankind lies a curse - the curse of death. Death is shown to be the final state of mankind because of sin. But life will continue through childbirth through Eve who is known as “the mother of the living.” Throughout most of the Old Testament it would seem that the common view of death is that it was the end of life, and very little is said about the possibility of life beyond the grave. Death has a hold over humanity and the end of every person is the grave. The hope of life after death or the hope of living life in victory over death is seen mostly in the reproduction of offspring. Life will continue through progeny, even as the fathers are “gathered to their people.”

When God curses the deceiver, the serpent, he says that He will put “enmity” or hatred between the serpent’s children and the children of the woman. Their children will always be at war with each other. But God also says in that while the serpent strikes the heel of the woman’s child, the child will at the same time crush the head of the serpent.

In Jewish tradition, the serpent came to represent the evil forces at work against the people of God. Throughout the Old Testament, serpent-imagery is used to describe the enemies of God’s people. Very often in these stories, the hero of the story, the descendant of the woman, kills the enemy of God by crushing his head or by some other head wound. Many of these Old Testament stories include a woman as the representative of the descendant of the first woman.

In Christian tradition, this came to be seen as a “protoevangelium,” which means “proto-gospel…” or “the Gospel in advance.” Christians saw this promise of God to mean that God would one day send his son Jesus to be the descendant of the woman who would crush the head of the serpent, or the devil, once and for all.

As we read on, we hear about how God repents of the creation of man and comes down to wipe them off the face of the earth with a flood.

But one man, Noah, and his family are spared their lives after having been warned to build a great boat. They take with them two of every kind of animal, and when the flood waters finally recede, they send out a raven and a dove to find land.

And so mankind found favor in the eyes of God once again and order was restored from chaos.

When the flood story is looked at in the light of its development and association with such ancient texts as the Gilgamesh Epic, one may see how this story has its roots in a desire for immortality. While the Noah story is different from the Gilgamesh Epic, the desire to avoid death is still present. Even the picture of the ark is one of a type of box, or a coffin or sarcophagus. The language in the text is riddled with images of death and the promise of new life. The Ark story has often been interpreted in allegorical fashion, saying that the flood waters represent death and chaos and that Noah and all in the Ark are saved from death, even in a sort of picture of resurrection. Noah and his family emerge from the Ark after the flood as though emerging from a coffin. This type of language was carried on further by the early Christians who compared the flood waters to the waters of baptism, in which the followers of Christ become associated with Christ in his death and resurrection in both a spiritual and a physical sense. 

The people who would later become the nation of Israel would have known these ancient stories well…. However, something happened that caused these people to see themselves, the divine, and the world differently than they had before. Something led them to get up and leave their Mesopotamian home and become a new people in the land of Canaan.

They became devoted to a new God – a God in land of Canaan. Yet this new God revealed his character to be a bit different than many of the attributes ascribed to him by the other Canaanites.

The chief god of Canaan was known for demanding the blood of the first-born son… yet this new God instead offered to redeem the sons of the people who would become Israel. This new-found God demanded blood in payment for sin… but it would be his own blood.

In God’s covenant with Abraham, God commands Abraham to be perfect, also promising him land and descendants. They seal the covenant in blood as was the custom in ancient near eastern culture at the time, and even today in certain places. This is done by both covenantal partners walking through the blood of the dead animals. However, God is the only who passes between the halves of the animal carcasses in the form of smoke and in the form of fire, as he is often represented in scripture. Abraham, though, does not walk through the pool of blood. He would have been condemning himself had he done so, because both parties are required to live up to their ends of the agreement under penalty of death. Abraham and the descendants promised to him were to be perfect under penalty of death, and God was to provide land and descendants under penalty of death.

However, the text indicates that Abraham does not pass through the blood, but that God passes through as fire and as smoke. In doing this God is indicating that he will live up to his end of this covenant even if Abraham does not. God will be put to death if he does not fulfill his side of the covenant, and God will also be put to death if Abraham does not fulfill his side of the covenant. In this we begin to see the idea of the sacrificial system starting to play out. The animal sacrifices are a reminder to God of the promise he made to Abraham to not condemn his descendants to death because they have not lived up to perfection and that God has promised to carry the sentence of death as a result of sin in their place.

The idea of sacrifice and blood substitution as a way to avoid death caused by sin is carried further in Abraham’s sacrifice of Isaac. In this story God first asks Abraham to sacrifice his favored son, but then provides a ram as a substitution at the last second. In this way, the blood of the ram is used in the place of the blood of Isaac and he avoids death.

And so this new-found God was worshiped by these Mesopotamian nomads above all other gods of Canaan. Some of these Mesopotamians began to intermarry among the Canaanites… whereas others kept in contact with their relatives in the east. And new nations and peoples began to be created… Ishmaelites, Ammonites, Moabites, Edomites, Amalekites… Israelites.

But along came famine and drought… and these new people in their new land heard of the prosperity of the Egyptians… and they went back and forth between Canaan and Egypt in order to survive. And they became wealthy off of the Egyptians…until eventually the people of Canaan took control over Egypt.

However, the Egyptians took back their kingdom and caused the Canaanites to work for them as slaves and mercenaries. And so the people who would form the nation of Israel became familiar with the ways of Egypt, and with the Egyptian gods… because the Egyptian gods were more powerful than the God of Canaan.

But everything changed when Moses came along. He claimed to have met the God of Canaan and that the God of Canaan had revealed his name to him – Yahweh – and Yahweh would free his people from the hands of the Egyptians and destroy their gods with plague and disaster. He would take back the land of Canaan from the Egyptians and establish the Israelite tribes as his people who would show the entire world the power of their God… and he would fulfill his promise to redeem their children.

God makes a marriage covenant with his people at Mount Sinai, turning them into a kingdom of priests to bring good news to the world. And the blood-sacrifice is seen throughout the Exodus story, especially in the story of the Passover. Also, we see death swallowing up the Egyptians in the Sea, but we see the Israelites emerging alive as a new people.

God led his people out of Egypt and back to Canaan… though they took a 40 year detour through the desert and rebelled against him constantly… even when they finally made it to the land… they were always turning their backs on him and worshiping other gods… gods of death.

Eventually, the tribe of Judah arose above all of the other tribes of Israel and the house of David was established as the ruling dynasty over Canaan. And God made a covenant with the house of David, promising that a king would arise from David’s line and rule over Israel forever.

However, The Davidic dynasty experienced a leadership crisis after the death of Solomon and the northern tribes split away from Judah to form their own kingdom.

During this time of monarchy, the prophets spoke mainly about how the people of Yahweh had turned away from Yahweh and had gone back to the primitive ideas of child-sacrifice to which the Canaanites who lived in the land before them held.

The tales of Elijah and Elisha began to be committed to writing during this time, along with other source material for future biblical books now lost to history –such the annals of the kings of Israel and Judah.

At this point in Israel’s history, people believed that when they died, they went to the place of the dead, a place called Sheol. It is not necessarily a bad place, but it is not happy. The psalmist says that once people die and go to Sheol, they cannot praise God. They cannot do anything because they are dead. However, a group of song-writers called The Sons of Korah began to wonder if Sheol was truly the final state of mankind. Their ancestor, Korah, had fallen into Sheol alive when the earth opened its mouth to swallow him up in his rebellion against Moses. But if someone could fall into Sheol alive… was it possible for Sheol to vomit them back up alive again? Was resurrection a possibility?

While it seems impossible, these psalmists imply that they will be “taken” out of Sheol by God just as Elijah and Enoch were “taken.” Psalm 139 asks if there is any place where God is not, and any place where one may flee from the presence of God. The conclusion is no, God is everywhere, even in the “depths of the earth” and “the far side of the sea” (vv.8-10). While death may overtake the follower of God, God will remain with them wherever they go.

This type of language is used in the prophetic literature as well. In the book of Jonah, the prophet travels to the far side of the sea to escape God and descends to the depths, but he finds that God is present even in these places. God even brings the prophet up from the depths of the grave. The prayer of Jonah from inside the fish says, “From deep in the realm of the dead I called for help,/ and you listened to my cry” (2:1). Jonah continues, “The engulfing waters threatened me,/ the deep surrounded me;/ seaweed was wrapped around my head./ To the roots of the mountains I sank down;/ the earth beneath barred me in forever./ But you, LORD my God,/ brought my life up from the pit” (2:5-6). At the conclusion of Jonah’s prayer from inside the fish, the passage reads, “And the LORD commanded the fish, and it vomited Jonah onto dry land” (2:10).

Here we see a picture of one who has fled from God to every place imaginable, even into the grave, only to find that God is in the grave and has the power to cause the grave to vomit him back out. The connection of the fish with the grave is further shown in that Jonah spends three days and three nights in its belly, the length of time before one is proclaimed legally dead in Jewish tradition. The prophetic story of Jonah is only a small part of a larger picture, one that indicates God’s ultimate power and victory over the grave. 

Now, Jonah preached to the Assyrians, and the impending destruction of the Northern Kingdom of Israel by the Assyrians could have motivated scribes and priests to put their traditions in writing.

The prophet Isaiah lived in the south during the time that the north was being destroyed, and much of his Zionist theology is centered on these events.

He writes that the people of Israel were supposed to bring life to the earth, but that they failed. They instead produced stillborn children. He says, “We have not brought salvation to the earth,/ and the people of the world have not come to life.” He then says that God will not allow it to be this way forever. He will cause salvation to be brought to the earth. Isaiah uses a picture of resurrection to describe this act, saying, “But your dead will live, LORD;/ their bodies will rise—/ let those who dwell in the dust/ wake up and shout for joy—/ your dew is like the dew of the morning;/ the earth will give birth to her dead.” While Isaiah is speaking of salvation here, he describes it as resurrection, even saying that the bodies of the dead will rise.

In chapter 53 is seen the passage on the Suffering Servant. The man described in this passage appears to have been made a sacrifice for sins, harking back to the idea of sacrificial substitution as a way of avoiding death as a result of sin. This person is described as bearing the sin of all of Israel in his own body and being put to death for the sins of others, the people of Israel. This Servant dies in the place of Israel and is placed in the “grave” of “the wicked,” but his life appears to continue even after his death.

It is uncertain exactly what Isaiah had in mind, but he seems to be struggling with the sacrificial promise made by God to Abraham, which said that God would God be held accountable for the sins of Abraham’s children. God is seen as fulfilling his covenant through this suffering servant, and yet because of the apparent nature of this servant of God, and his association and identification with God portraying his innocence, it would seem that death cannot truly hold onto him forever. This leads one to conclude that the Suffering Servant must not remain dead forever, indicating a possible and even likely resurrection of the body from the dead. Isaiah concludes his book continuing his theme of salvation and saying that God will create a new heaven and a new earth and that in this new existence death will be a foreign thing and that in this place destruction will not be found.

Another major shift comes during the reign of Josiah. Josiah rediscovers the neglected book of the laws of Moses, the core of Deuteronomy, and brings about a religious revival to follow these laws in Judah.

Zephaniah preached a message of loyalty to Yahweh during the reign of Josiah, Nahum interprets the fall of Nineveh in 612 BC to demonstrate Yahweh’s control over history, and Habakkuk prophesied immediately before the first Babylonian deportation of 597 BC.

The destruction of Jerusalem, the desecration of the Temple of Yahweh, and the exile of the southern kingdom of Judah to Babylon radically shook up the theology of the Bible.

No longer was the main emphasis on the blessing of God to his chosen faithful people. Much of the literature of this time is quite dark. Leading up to Jerusalem’s destruction, Jeremiah prophesied doom and gloom. After the exile, Ezekiel preached about how God’s people had played the whore with Egypt and others, and so now God had destroyed her…but would also destroy all the nations.

In Ezekiel, there is a passage that describes a valley of dry bones that come to life and are given flesh and a spirit. This passage should be read in light of the Exodus story, as Ezekiel describes Egypt taking its rightful place in Sheol, and life being given to Israel. Egypt will descend into the Netherworld, but Israel will rise. God breathing his spirit into bodies of flesh is also reminiscent of the creation story in Genesis 2 and shows that God remains Creator of life.

The descendants of the Isaiah clan had similar things to say and added them to the oracles of Isaiah. But these prophets also added an element of hope at the end, claiming that a messiah would arise to fulfill the promise of God’s redemption to the children of Israel… and not just Israel, but the entire world.

Many of the more depressing psalms were written during this time, asking God why he had abandoned them. The writers admit they have sinned, but they question God’s judgment, pointing out that God had destroyed them through the Babylonians – a people far worse than themselves.

The book of Lamentations was also composed, ending with the question, “Will God once again restore our hope, or has he given up all hope on us?

However, one of the darkest pieces of literature to be added to the Bible because of the exile is the book of Job. It is a philosophical debate on the nature of God and mankind, and why good people have to suffer. The main debater, Job, demands that God show himself and provide an explanation for pain, death, suffering, and injustice. In the end God does show himself, but does not give Job the answer he was looking for… instead telling him that he is incapable of beginning to understanding the answers to his questions.

Another great shift occurred when the Persian Empire under Cyrus took over the Babylonian empire. Cyrus issued a decree that the Jews could return to their own land and so many of them returned.

Hope had been restored… but the Jews were still recovering from an identity crisis and were beginning to experience another one. They didn’t know who they were anymore. They didn’t know how to worship their God... or how to interpret his promises anymore after he had let them be destroyed.

So along came people like Ezra and Nehemiah. Nehemiah rebuilt the walls of Jerusalem, and Ezra rebuilt Jerusalem’s theology. Ezra reintroduced the laws of Moses to the people, and many people think he also wrote the books of 1-2 Chronicles in order to retell the history of Israel from a new theological perspective.

Ezra followed the letter of the law so strictly that he even ordered Jewish men to divorce their foreign wives… so it’s not a big surprise that the book of Ruth became quite popular around this time, with one of the main points of this short story being that even Israel’s greatest king, David, was a descendant of a Jewish man and a Moabite woman.

The books of the prophets Haggai and Zechariah were also written around this time. These prophets encouraged the people to stop dragging their feet and rebuild Yahweh’s temple so that things could get back to normal again.

With the rise of Alexander the Great and the Hellenization of the world came new interests. The books of Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and Song of Songs began to increase in popularity as many of their themes resonated with aspects of Greek philosophy. The books of the Psalms were also nearing their completion at this time.

The Book of Daniel chronicles the different kingdoms that took over the world from the Babylonians, to the Persians, to the Greeks, and was completed during the reign of the Greek ruler Antiochus IV Epiphanes over the Seleucid quarter of the empire. Antiochus defiled the temple in Jerusalem by setting up a statue to Zeus and sacrificing a very non-kosher pig there. Daniel’s book ends by predicting that a Messiah will arise to destroy the wicked kings of the earth and that after this all who have died in history will be raised to everlasting life.

The Maccabee brothers did rise up against their overlords and established an independent Jewish state that lasted for about a hundred years… until of course, the Romans showed up, and took control over most of the world. Many Jews were waiting in eager expectation for a messiah to come and save them from the Romans and to bring about the redemption God had promised to bring his people so long ago.

It is in this setting that Jesus is born… and Jesus would claim to be that messiah… but he claimed more than that… he said he was God in the flesh… the very God who led the ancestor of Israel – Abraham – out of Mesopotamia, the God who created order out of chaos, the God who revealed his name – Yahweh – to Moses, and the God who promised that he would pay for the sin of his people with his own blood and establish the kingdom of heaven on earth.

The history of Israel is then summed up with Jesus because Jesus is not only the one who will restore the Davidic dynasty in himself as the eternal king, but he will also fulfill the Abrahamic Covenant by becoming a blessing to all nations of the earth as Abraham’s seed.

And Jesus – God made human – comes in complete humility – he comes as a helpless infant – born out of wedlock to a teenage girl from a poor town – placed in a donkey’s feeding trough – in the shadow of the Roman Empire – worshiped only by shepherds, an old man and a woman, a few strange foreigners, and by his cousin John.

At the beginning of Jesus’ public ministry, he goes to his home town of Nazareth and preaches in the synagogue from the book of Isaiah, claiming that Isaiah was talking about him when he said: 

“The Spirit of the Lord is on me,

    because he has anointed me

    to proclaim good news to the poor.

He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners

    and recovery of sight for the blind,

to set the oppressed free,

    to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” 

Jesus also identifies himself with the Son of Man from the book of Daniel as well as the Suffering Servant from the book of Isaiah.  In Jesus’ time, the passages in Daniel and Isaiah had come to be seen as referring to the coming of the Messiah in Israel’s history. Jesus seemed to agree with this conclusion, seeing himself fulfilling these roles.

However, Jesus’ view of himself also differed considerably from others in that many believed that when the Messiah would come, he would overthrow the Romans and Jesus did not intend to do this. He identified much more with the Suffering Servant who would carry the sins of his people upon himself. With this understanding, Jesus would go to the cross and die, dashing the hopes of many of his followers who did not understand the nature of the Suffering Servant and how to reconcile this picture with that of the all-powerful Son of Man. While this may have dashed the hopes of many, Jesus truly does fulfill the expectations of both the Suffering Servant and the Son of Man in both his death and his resurrection.

After Jesus is raised from the dead, he spends 40 days walking around in his own physical body teaching his followers about the kingdom of God. He then ascends to heaven and is seated at the right hand of God. And all authority in heaven and on earth is given to him, and he in turn gives this power to his people. And he sends the Holy Spirit to come live inside of his people and fill them with life and grace and power to proclaim the Kingdom message and to drive out evil spirits and to heal people of diseases, just as Jesus had done himself. And Jesus tells his followers that they will do greater things than they had seen him do. And the message of the kingdom and of the resurrection and lordship of Jesus begins to spread throughout the world.

According to one of the early apostles, Paul, Christ is the first born from among the dead (Colossians 1:18), indicating that the rest of us will follow him in his resurrection. Paul writes in Romans, “If we have been united with him like this in his death, we will certainly also be united with him in his resurrection” (Romans 6:5).

And if we are to be truly resurrected as Jesus was then we must be resurrected in our bodies, for that is how Jesus was resurrected. He had a physical body after his resurrection and so will we. However, Jesus’ resurrected body was not exactly the same as it had been before his death, so we may assume that our resurrected bodies will not be exactly the same as they were before our deaths. One of the differences is that Christ will not die again. His body cannot die. In the same way, our physical bodies will no longer be subject to death.

In the last book of the Bible, we see that through our participation in the death and resurrection of Christ, humanity may once again eat from the “tree of life” and live forever with God. Like Ezekiel, John sees a vision of a new heaven and a new earth… reunited. A river flows from the temple and provides “healing for the nations.” And God will be with us fully.

This is the goal of all the history of God and humans – restored fellowship. And in the end, Jesus promises to return and restore all things. And he says, “I am coming soon.”