Podcast Summaries

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Today is Bible Sunday. It's an invitation to look on what first hit me, what we call the basis of so much of our worship. What we read Sunday by Sunday, most of us, the ESV, the Father 12. I'm sure you know that the word Bible doesn't mean a talking back, it means a library. So what? It means a book from the Bible. Written by very many people, intended to be read to different audiences. They're saying audiences, rather than readers, which is very sparse. It's the word Bible. It is not being read privately, but being proclaimed loudly. It's not just studied by people who have it in their hands. And hopefully you can cover something of the enthusiasm that raised that message up to be proclaimed. It's very different from the Bible, it's not just the book. We need to be careful of occupying a lot more space for other books. And yet, we can't change it. Nowadays, if we want to get a message across, what do you do? You don't get on television, I suppose. Or write a blog, but you somehow ensure it goes viral. What I'm trying to say is it's very hard to predict what will go viral and what will stay unread. But in the slightly more than a thousand years the Bible was being put together, there we are, it's a shout. Loudly through the marketplace. Or at the gates. You'll see many references to the gates in the Bible. It's the place, the end of the town where the senior men of the town got together to discuss legal matters. To deal with what was happening in various cases. Or perhaps at the door of the king's palace. I hope you might hear you. It's a bit amusing, isn't it? Or of course, we need to get more organized. We have the opportunity of a congregation that was gathered together. Synagogue. The word synagogue and congregation means actually the same thing, gathering. It was gathering together to worship God. And what better place would it be for proclaiming the word of God to the faithful than where they were gathering already? It would be there and here. That means here. The difficult responsibility of proclaiming the word of all the prophets. Not much predicted of the future. But commentators have always been on the dime. They don't probably have a Bible still. Nor a written book. We have books of the prophets. Lots and lots of them. Either proclaiming to the tribes of Judah, the southern tribe. The two tribes of the left after the Jewish split. Or the ten tribes of Israel. And before, of course, the kingdom was established. All people spoke the word of God to the people. And that can't have been an easy, persuading, difficult day in the midst of a soft and a program. So there were many people proclaiming the word of God. Some of them were genuine. Some were not so genuine. But they did make a living out of it. Except for those who were proclaimed also maybe down. But before the skies. It's got to be a very bad message in the New Testament. But we didn't depend on the written record. The skies. The right. So they would have listened to the prophets that had spoken. And then they would have written down something. And of course, with all these voices, live audiences, they would have piqued themselves an awful lot. And sometimes the Bible would be very repetitive. Other times it seems like different versions of the same thing. Sometimes it's even books. And it's time for those writings to come together. Eventually, in a book, the book of Isaiah. The book of the prophet Isaiah. Well clearly, in Hebrew, that's the image audiences that Isaiah spoke. They wrote something down. And then what they did, they said something like this next time. But in these days, they went on speaking by reading out the son and the truth as well. A few books of the world. Eventually, it finished up with the book we have. It started off in the time of Isaiah. Of the Caesar round, the man of the game. He was around. He takes his mentions very early on in the book of Isaiah. The later books were addressed to people in exile. In Babylon. Long after that. But they were long, the same strand of prophecy. But it started like Isaiah. And so we have four. It tells us so much about history. And it can reach up to us. No one can do anything. But the prophet, one who writes that the Jewish people have preserved and protected the messenger. He didn't stop them in his early act. With tablets and what the nation are. They wrote those few commented on sections. They found those who were wise and followed the original message. The message of the prophets. The message actually of the whole school of prophecy. In his family. And so the main books of the Bible came together relatively. No arguments of course about what to go in and what to stay out. Now a lot of it isn't necessary to write down the law. Now of course it started with people remembering. And then people came across a situation they had to reply. And they thought, how does that work? So they answered that question and wrote it down. And so there develops a great corpus of law. Mixed in of course with the story. The law essentially based on stories. What happened in a similar situation? There were the books of the law. This is the story of Moses. The sending of the law. The time of the kings. It's not the wrong path. Or over the earth. The law and the prophets. That phrase sounds familiar doesn't it? And of course it's that that the Old Testament, the writings. So this is follows of the antiquity.

and dancing. And also, he was very people. Very, very much. Those three things together, they combined. Through that Bible, for Jesus knew, he scolded, and nobody had books like we had in those days. He scolded and painted to him. He read the Hebrew, and commented on it. In the way that the synagogue would comment on it. And he would have commented on it in the language of time. It wasn't the same as in the text. The teachers would have spoken about it. The development of Hebrew. And the Hebrew had been learned quite separately from the language of the normal age. A bit like, I suppose, the English and the Anglo-Saxon. If I don't understand it, it's not that easy. But that's what Jesus was doing. Translating it, explaining it. In the biblical record of the story, he reached his meeting. I'm not saying he must have been busy in those days. My dad would have told us about this all those years ago. We're all descendants from translations. So remember that this Bible Sunday, let us all of us think of all of those who are finding translations in news. For those taken out processed for languages. The benefit of people overseas perhaps. I think languages are much rarer. The Bible in their own language. It's worth saying other languages. Fairly thought about it in work on those translations. And it's the work itself of those translating. The benefit of those in other countries. Without a total grasp of English as their native language. They used to work with our authors. Speaking English all the way. And they're not much deeper understanding of the privilege we take for granted. And here they brought students in our own language. The third part is not about the Old Testament. It's Jewish in Hebrew. It's written out there. The second process may go on to New Testament. Because all the words of Jesus have been translated for us. There's no written record. But in Hebrew or Aramaic. We can't say back in our native tongue. It's all about Jesus. He's our media language. It's all about the words of the author. But the Bible, the New Testament and the Old Testament are again spoken. Probably not so much about the theory. But about the practice of the academic process of the scribes and Paul. If you like perhaps. It might be a bit more spoken. And people are uncomfortable with Jesus. Wanting to know more. Asking one another. Let's go and have something else. About the stories told. About the miracles of Jesus. We talked about it. Some of them wrote bits down. The grandfathers got put together. By people called Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. Look at their names. We're not really sure about their identity. We think it was just us as we call. Quite likely it was. He was one of the ones who put them together. Or was he one of the ones who was a scribe? Somebody else put him on the book. Or she put the book back. But he's got to do with the academic process. We don't know. They might have said that. But we got Matthew. We got him. Go back to Jesus. And he revealed himself. He didn't realise. But he went on believing himself. With God's spirit. To the congregations of that day. Whatever the mechanism of how the Bible came to be. Key is your Holy Service. We don't have a guidance for the Holy Service. The reading of the Bible. Hundreds of people involved. In talking about these things. Writing them down. Gathering them together. Separating the truth from the untruth. The made up. Putting together the work that we now know as the Bible. God speaking to us. The Bible. And the Bible. And the Bible. But let's realise that's how many people are involved. Perhaps something much bigger here. Those first stories. Those first prophecies. In the Matt first normal. And that's the joy. There's so many people involved in that process. And you are too. And you. Talking about the stories of Jesus. Or the stories of Moses coming back. And you telling the apostles. Something about the third. What we wrote. The very stories. Even making a difference in your life. And the lives of the human family. Don't miss that. Be relaxed. There are many people involved in that process. Gathering the Bible together. And expressing it in our language with other sometimes. But let's all be aware. The Father in each of us. And finally. Spreading that same word of God. In the world. Amen.