Extreme Walking - Tom de Bruin

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Many pages and much ink has been spent discussing the author of Hebrews. The book itself is anonymous, but many people assumed and still assume that it was written by Paul. A comparison of style and theology between Paul’s letters and Hebrews shows that it is very unlikely that Paul wrote Hebrews. Who did write it is anyone’s guess.

      B. Extrabiblical Books

      Christians are very focused on the Bible. There is nothing wrong with that. When Christians speak of the Bible, however, confusion can arise. Somewhere in history we agreed on a canon, meaning we agreed on the actual contents of the Bible. When most Protestants refer to “the Bible,” they mean a certain sixty-six books in the Old and New Testaments. These books together are often called Scripture or the Word of God. Christians consider these books to be inspired.

      Almost all Christians know that there are more books from the time of the Bible. In some Bibles you might see nine books printed between the Old and New Testament. These are called the deuterocanonical (second canon) or apocryphal (hidden) books. The sixty-six–book canon is not the only one: the Catholic canon has more books, seven or nine, depending how you count. We will discuss these books in more detail later.

      What most Christians don’t know is that the deuterocanonical books are just the tip of the iceberg. Some Ethiopian churches have fifteen additional books in their canon, but even that doesn’t include all the books out there. There are hundreds of Jewish and Christian books from the time of the Bible. Very few people actually know what is in all these books. In fact, most Christians are likely to ignore them, because they don’t consider them to be part of inspired Scripture.

      Uninspired

      Inspiration is a complicated topic. Let’s think about it for a moment: is the daily devotional we read inspired? What about latest book by a famous Christian author? Or that textbook on economics? Is the newspaper inspired? What about the news on TV? None of these are inspired like the Bible is, but we don’t just ignore them. They contain valuable information that we need to have. When we ignore ancient Jewish and Christian sources, we miss out on a treasure trove of useful information. I find that very strange. Most of us would agree that archaeology and history are vital to understanding the Bible. As good students of the Bible, we should not ignore these extrabiblical books either. They can help us to understand the Bible so much better.

      There are two ways that these books can strengthen our faith and inform our theology. The first has to do with the large amount of time between the Old and New Testaments. If all the Old Testament books were written by the people they are ascribed to, we are talking about a span of at least five hundred years. Even if we assume the books were written by their followers, there are still centuries between the two testaments.

      Consider the last three centuries of world history. Think of the great literature that has been written, the changes in culture and philosophy, the various religions that have gained and lost ground. Consider the countries that have been founded or have disappeared. Imagine trying to ignore all of that. What would you misunderstand because you lack the correct information? Let me put that the other way around: if you were to time travel from 1717 to 2017 would you understand anything correctly? If we ignore these writings, which are often the only witness to ancient culture that we still have, we miss out on huge amounts of information. Sometimes, we understand the New Testament poorly because of this.

      Consider the differences between the Old and the New Testament. Satan is hardly in the Old Testament (just three times), and is present almost everywhere in the New Testament. Where does that emphasis on Satan come from? The Old Testament is silent about an afterlife: the dead know nothing, feel nothing, experience nothing. The New Testament shows a different picture. There is an eternal fire (Mark 9:45–28) and Jesus makes a trip to the underworld (1 Peter 3:19). Where does this belief in a hell and underworld come from?

      Discontinuity

      In Biblical Studies, we call this logical leap discontinuity. That means that certain topics don’t match up. We see discontinuity between the Old and the New Testament in some areas. Naturally, this discontinuity did not just appear out of nowhere. It is the result of hundreds of years of thinking, believing, and writing. Sometimes this led people away from God’s ideals—Jesus regularly renounces various doctrines. Other times it did not.

      We are going to look at these extrabiblical books, but not to form a theology. We want to read them to understand the context—the background—of the inspired authors of the Bible, and to understand what they are reacting against. We will study them to better understand the worldviews present in the books.

      First Test, Then Decide

      That brings us to the second way these books can strengthen our faith and theology. Our interpretation of the Bible is very dependent on those who came before us. We know a lot about some earlier interpreters and very little about others. Who knows: by studying more theological ideas of early Christians, we might find something that helps us understand God’s revelation even better. If we decide not to even look at these books, we have automatically decided that there is nothing useful in them, without even having explored the possibility.

      Paul famously says “test everything; hold fast to what is good” (1 Thessalonians 5:21). This is a task for each of us. We can’t just make assumptions; we can’t just take other people’s opinions for granted. Theology is a process of searching and researching, questioning and testing. In this book, we will take Paul’s advice. We will discover what is outside of the Bible, and test it.

      Trust me, we will see wonderful things.

      2. Satan

      Grab your Bible, and open it to the New Testament. You don’t have to read very far before you run into Satan. The Devil is introduced right at the beginning of Jesus’ ministry, and he immediately gets the name Satan (Matthew 4:1, 10). Matthew has a good reason for this. There is a strong connection between Jesus’ redemptive work and Satan’s existence.

      Now, think about the fact the New Testament is called “new” because there is also an Old Testament. You would expect Satan to be a regular sight there too. Nothing is less true! If you read the Old Testament from cover to cover, all nine hundred pages in my Bible, you will run into this evil figure only three times (2 Chronicles 21:1; Job 1–2; Zechariah 3:1–2). That’s once per three hundred pages.

      This difference between the Old and New Testaments is intriguing. Satan is a frequent figure in the New Testament. If you read the New Testament cover to cover, only 250 pages, you will run into his name thirty-six times. If you include all the other names for Satan, such as devil, tempter, Beezeboul, Belial, and adversary, you end up with almost 140 times. In 250 pages, that is more than every other page!

      Yes, I know that, if we do our best, we can find Satan a few more times in the Old Testament. The snake in Genesis: that has to be Satan. Right? And the prideful Lucifer, that’s Satan too. We can recognize Satan in a few more places in the Old Testament, but we only recognize him because the New Testament has taught us so much about Satan. With Revelation in the back of our mind it suddenly becomes clear that the snake in Eden is Satan. But without the New Testament, we would have never associated the prideful angel Lucifer with Satan.

      There is also a big difference between how the Old Testament and the New Testament portray Satan. This difference is significant if you consider the theological role that Satan plays for many people. Satan is not small or unimportant at all for a good deal of Christians. He is the great opponent of God and humanity.

      We can attribute this difference to humanity’s growing understanding and to God’s growing revelation. Through the ages people learnt more and more about reality and God revealed more and more to them. This could be why Satan’s role is so small in the Old Testament and suddenly so much larger in the New Testament. Maybe people in the time of Abraham were not ready to learn all about the great enemy, or maybe they had just not realized it yet. Maybe by the time the New Testament rolled around, they were ready to understand the nature of evil.

      We could conclude that there has always been progress in how humanity understood God’s grace and mercy, and salvation. That same

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