When the Jews lost their Bible

A PLACE FOR MOSES. A rabbi faces Jerusalem while reading Scripture in a synagogue. Behind the curtain in front of him is a handwritten copy of the laws of Moses, carefully preserved on a large Torah (Law) scroll kept in a cabinet called an ark. The “ark” is a modern variation on the Ark of the Covenant, a gold-covered chest that held the Ten Commandments written on stone tablets. The ancient ark was lost in history, possibly pillaged by Assyrian or Babylonian invaders from what is now Iraq. Photo by Cottonbro Studios/Pexels.

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I had a moment last week—a jolt from the Bible.

Not the full 120 volts from sticking a hairpin into an American wall socket. More like the 12.6 volts we’d get from an electric fence wired to a battery. A “Whoa!” kind of a jolt instead of an “Ouch!”

I’ve been paraphrasing 2 Kings for the last couple months. Finished last Friday. I’m about to start creating maps for each chapter of 2 Kings. I’ll post them one chapter at a time, so you can start finding them here.

Stories about Israel’s kings begin in roughly 1000 BC. So, with 1-2 Kings, I’ve paraphrased my way through the stories of David, Solomon, Rehoboam, and that rotten Jeroboam who split the country in two.  He took the northern tribes—and the name of Israel.

Down south, in Jerusalem, King David’s grandson Rehoboam, ended up sitting on the throne of one lonely tribe: Judah. So, they called their country Judah.

Here’s the jolt

Four hundred years into the story of Israel’s kings, I got a big shock.

I came to the story of a priest who finds a lost book of Jewish laws, possibly the book of Deuteronomy. He reads it to the king of Judah, named Josiah. The king freaks out, ripping his clothes, possibly out of fear for what the LORD might do—which, by the way, the LORD did.

I knew that part of the story. Here’s what I did not know.

“The people hadn’t bothered with Passover for centuries—since the time of the heroic judges of Israel. Even through all those centuries, with all the kings of Israel and Judah—still no Passover” (2 Kings 23:22, Casual English Bible).

Passover is one of the most important Jewish holidays. It’s reportedly the most observed Jewish holiday today, with three out of four Jewish folks eating the ritual Passover Seder meal each spring.

Here’s the jolting question

So why didn’t the people of Israel celebrate Passover during all those centuries, when kings ruled?

Think about who skipped Passover: David, Solomon. Good king Hezekiah. And what about the prophets at the time? No Passover for Samuel, Elijah, Elisha, Micah, Isaiah, and all the others before King Josiah?

One possible answer, which seems most likely:

Jews lost their Bible.

The laws of Moses was likely all the Bible the Jewish people had at the time. That seems to be what they lost.

Prophets were just getting warmed up, while poets and proverb pundits were still waiting on inspiration. They would publish later and get added to the Jewish Bible around the century of Jesus. Scholars debate exactly when and how.

No Bible? No wonder the Jewish people got it all wrong nearly all the time, as Bible writers report it.

They remembered the rituals:

• Kill a lamb to thank God for a baby.
• Eat the meat (of the lamb).
• Share some food with the priest; it’s part of his salary.
• Save the sweet fat for God and barbecue it on the altar, well done.

But they didn’t have the Bible, so they didn’t know the story.

That’s the speculation.

Before we criticize ancients for losing the Bible

We could mock the ancient Jewish people for losing something so important.

Let’s not. We might be who they were.

• We know the road to church, and we go there.
• We’ve got the rituals; we know how to hold the communion cup, so we don’t spill the juice on our pew neighbor again.
• We know the Lord’s Prayer from the King James Version—or as some have said, the King James Virgin.
• We have half a dozen copies of the Bible scattered around our home.

But who reads it? The Bible might as well be lost, for many people, Christians as well.

Here’s a worst-case scenario that we’re witnessing today:

Many don’t even know the difference between a Christian and an antichrist. That makes it hard for them to pick a pastor, a partner, or a president.

“You’ve heard an antichrist is coming. Look around. They’re already here, crawling all over the place” (1 John 2:18).

Take politics. Would you? Just take it.

How Christians pick a leader

If we want to say, “I’m a Christian, so I’m voting for this person,” shouldn’t we prefer a person who lives the life Paul describes, a person who shows at least one of these characteristics:

“Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, devotion, gentleness, and self-control” (—Paul, writing in Galatians 5:22-23, Casual English Bible).

But aren’t we betting on an antichrist—someone who behaves like Jesus’s evil twin from hell—if we select the damaged person who exhibits every one of these non-Christian, antichrist characteristics:

“Sex sins, dirty minds, acting depraved…arguing, bickering, jealousy, temper tantrums, selfish ambition, pointless debates…You get the idea. I’m warning you again, like I did before. If you live that kind of life, whatever you inherit, it won’t be God’s kingdom” (Galatians 5:19-20, Casual English Bible).

Has the Christian church lost its Bible?

Jews, it would seem, lost their Bible for 400 years about 3,000 years ago.

Today, I wonder if their Christian spiritual cousins have done the same.

The Christian church has aligned itself with evil before, just as the people of ancient Israel embraced one wicked king after another. The German church enabled, supported, and encouraged Hitler. That was the big example from my parent’s generation of the church failing its own nation.

The big example from my generation, I suspect, will be the story of many evangelical churches in America who enable, celebrate, and cheer evil. They’ve been doing it for several decades now, more so in the past decade. This year, it’s terrifying.

A warning from history, which we will ignore

I’ve just finished researching and paraphrasing 2 Kings. I know what the Bible says God did when his people lost their Bible, and for generation after generation chose evil over good. Bible writers said God had enough. He sent invaders who erased both Jewish nations from the world map and deported the Jewish survivors to Iraq and Iran.

I don’t know if those ancient historians got it right when they attributed that to God. Maybe they figured it was God’s doing simply because they believed God controlled everything that happened.

In Bible history and in history everywhere else, when nations become as divided as people are today in the United States and in other countries around the world, opportunist dictators attack.

Having just worked through the history of the fall of Israel and Judah, I can’t help but see similarities today in the lead-up to the end.

I fear the church’s attraction to one particular antichrist—to a person whose claim to Christian values seems fraudulent, like so much of the rest of his life.

How could we do this to ourselves?

I would ask how those of us who call ourselves by the name of Jesus Christ could do this. But perhaps the answer is beyond our understanding and our capacity to realize what’s going on.

“We’re not fighting flesh-and-blood humans. We’re fighting otherworldly beings. These are spiritual forces: leaders, authorities, and rulers of spiritual darkness and evil in the heavenly dimension.

Suit up into every piece of God’s armor….

Strap the belt of truth around your waist…

Protect your chest with the body armor of spiritual integrity.

Slip on boots of the good news of peace…

Take the sword that the Spirit forged for you: the word of God” (Ephesians 6:12-19).

If we can find it.

Related video from a past post

Antichrist video premiere

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