Isaiah 40:1-11

The Bible is not a history book. You might have heard that before. This is a good example. In Chapter 39 of Isaiah, the Babylonians are at the gate and Isaiah is warning the King, as he has been warning the King and the people for most of this book so far. They need to get back to taking care of the poor and the widow or God is not going to be happy. Then in this chapter, God is telling them to take comfort. What happened?

About 160 years of history happened between these two chapters. Jerusalem was torn down and the Jews were exiled. God didn't have much to say about it. If some new writer, sometimes referred to as "Second Isaiah", would not have picked up the story, it may have been the end of Judaism. What were his choices? Would he write of a weak God who was conquered and his Temple destroyed? Was there a reason they had been abandoned? His first word is "comfort" and it's for "my people". God still has his chosen ones, and it's going to be fine.

How does he explain God's absence? The loss to the Babylonians? It's like grass or flowers. Grass and flowers die off then they come back. If you rake the dead stuff away, it will help the new life come up. God is the one that "will stand forever". It sounds more like nature worship to me. You might see it differently. The Israelites certainly did, at least the ones who called themselves prophets. And later, when it was the Romans who shut them down, they prepared the way for another version of God.

2 Peter 3:8-15a

So, way up in 2 Peter we find out the 6 "days" of creation was really 6 thousand years. At least that's how some take it. So there's that. This book was most likely written after Peter died, like a century or more after, then claimed to be by Peter. What he's doing here is explaining why they haven't seen the fulfillment of the promises. Paul whipped up a lot of excitement, but it's getting hard to hold the movement together. The answer is to be "pure" and "aware" and "diligent" and mature in your relationship to Christ. And in the previous chapter he denounces some false teachers, giving them something to rally against. That usually strengthens the tribe.

Mark 1:1-8

Richard Carrier is currently taking a lot of heat for claiming to have written a proper historical analysis of the existence of Jesus. In his book, "On the Historicity of Jesus", he develops a theme that the story of Jesus can be found by looking back through the Bible and understanding Jewish mythology of the time. His claim is that came first. This is very different than the theme of someone like John Dominic Crossan who claims Jesus lived and was crucified, and to help understand what happened, they went back to their traditions and tried to make the facts match the prophecies. Crossan has also taken a certain amount of heat, but he gets interviewed by mainstream media and makes it on to PBS Easter specials.

Here we have the earliest written gospel, giving us a major clue. God has gone away and come back like he has before, just like during the exile, and he's doing that again. He's got this new thing this time, it's not about lambs, or evening out the hills and valleys, this time, you eat bugs in the wilderness and of course confess your sins, there's always that. It's still about the law, but the corruption of the government and religion is actually pretty bad this time. It's going to be about how you treat the people nearest to you. But for now, we just need to prepare the way.