The Hebrew Bible provides us with a range of entertaining, engaging and confronting stories. There are countless tales of angels, mystics, leaders, kings, princesses, priests, prophets and heroes. These fill the Hebrew Bible along with outlaws, battles, rebellion, conquest, villains and death. Other types of writing don’t give us stories as such, but tell us something of the ancient Jewish people—poetry, songs, legal texts, bookkeeping and speeches. These books were all pulled together into what would become called the Tanakh, an acronym of the three traditional divisions of Hebrew scripture: Torah (the first five books), Nevi’im (which means the Prophets) and Ketuvim (the Writings). The document was compiled in a process that saw the full works being formally accepted as ‘normative’ sometime in the second century A.D.

It is helpful to remember that the texts in the Hebrew Bible are very different, and that not all texts can be read in the same way. In modern times it would be unhelpful to read a DVD player instruction manual, for example, in the same way that we read a book or a newspaper. Further, we would not read a mystery novel in the same way that we would read a biography. Whether we think about it or not, there are unwritten and unspoken differences in the way we read our texts.

The Hebrew Bible is no exception. We must remember that its books were written over hundreds of years. Moreover, the Hebrew texts were written for different purposes, not all of which immediately have a clear meaning to a modern reader. The books of the Hebrew Bible were intended for people that thought differently and who lived in a different time, under different conditions and using different languages to most of us (it was originally written in Hebrew and another language called Aramaic). For Jewish people past and present the Hebrew Bible is not the ‘Old’ Testament at all. Rather, it was and is ‘The’ Testament that bears witness to the God of the covenant.

With these things in mind, we need a way to fit these very different texts together. For that purpose, it is helpful to think about the ‘narrative’ of the Hebrew Bible. ‘Narrative’ tells us that we are compiling an overarching story from whole range of literature, without getting into arguments over how ‘historical’ or ‘factual’ each individual text is. Another helpful way that some people describe the Old Testament is as ‘memory’. Memory describes the important things that a people or group want to remember about who they are. This kind of memory shapes the values and aspirations that define a society.

The Bible as Memory: Some Modern Examples

Our national memory in Australia is very much linked to events that took place in World War 1. Thousands of Australian lives were lost in a campaign on the Gallipoli Peninsula in Turkey, where Commonwealth forces were seeking to capture key defensive positions that would have opened up a supply route through the Dardanelles. Landing in a poorly planned offensive, ANZAC (Australian and New Zealand Army Corps) troops and their allies were pinned to a small strip of beach, where they were faced with poor supply, poor weather, horrendous hygiene, deadly snipers and wave upon wave of Turks who were understandably desperate to defend their homes from invading forces. For Australia, the reputation forged by their troops in that time came to represent much of how Australians like to be seen today… 'battlers' who stay true to each other when the going gets tough. This self-definition has flowed over into Australia’s national obsession with sport, where we like to define ourselves as tough competitors who ‘punch well above our weight’ against larger countries (even though we spend disproportionate amounts of money to be successful, a luxury that many countries in the world cannot afford). 

Other nations would have their own national memories, whether it is America’s sense of being protectors of freedom and liberty stemming from the War of Independence, or the British stoicism and calmness in the face of adversity that was epitomised by World War 2.

The Hebrew Bible is the national memory of the Jewish people, as a people ‘Chosen by God’. It may help to consider the Hebrew Bible as a journal or diary that shows how the Jewish people’s understanding of both themselves and of God grows and develops over time. In a journal, thoughts change. Sometimes you write a recount of the day, sometimes you express feelings or thoughts, and sometimes you might write a poem or reflection. Sometimes you revisit an old thought, changing your mind in light of new experiences and information. The Hebrew Bible demonstrates all of these shifting moods of the Jewish people, coming from multiple authors with a multitude of experiences.

It was possibly not until as late as the second century that the key teachers and leaders of the Jewish faith finally decided on which texts could be accepted as scripture. With this complex history and process in mind, we begin. Please remember, we are not discussing the finer details of how historical or factual the stories are here, but rather are trying to give summarised accounts that shows the stories of the Bible together.

Prophets of Israel and Judah

Most overview texts of the Bible have set ways of outlining the prophets, drawing on the traditional Hebrew divisions of major and minor prophets. However, on this site we've roughly divided the prophets narratively, between prophets that are located within the Kingdoms of Israel and Judah, and those that deal with the later events of the exile.

The prophets we may broadly associate with the time of the kingdoms are Isaiah, Jeremiah, Hosea, Joel, Amos, Obadiah, Jonah, Micah, Nahum, Habakkuk, Zephaniah. Through the prophets in these texts, God warns, reminds and implores the people to change their behaviours. The prophets were critical of not only incorrect religious practices, but of social practices as well as people became greedy, self-centred and dismissive of the needs of others. The prophetic books in the Hebrew Bible record many of the moral statements and actions of the messengers active throughout the time of the kings (although its suggested that many of these were actually written down much later, possibly in the exile, while we will explore next). While these books usually related to the specific events taking place in one of the two kingdoms, the books in broad terms address the same challenges, lack of faithfulness and warnings of doom for the poor behaviour that take place in both. Jonah is a little unique in this group, as he actually leaves Israel and goes to speak to the Assyrians in Nineveh!