George Goodman (1)

A part of me was going to question the title of this book, until I glanced at the preface and noted that it is part of a series, and in this particular book, Goodman is looking at bible stories that tend not to make up the mainstay of Christian teaching. The reason I questioned the title though is because most committed Christians tend to be quite familiar with their Bibles and are thus quite familiar with many of the stories therein. However, this is probably not always the case, because we tend to gravitate to those stories that we are really familiar with, and tend to like, such as David and Goliath, Moses crossing the Red Sea and getting the tablets, as well as the life and stories of the Lord Jesus Christ. However, there is a lot more to the Bible than just these stories, and many of them make us feel quite uncomfortable. Let us look at some that Goodman looks at in this book.
It seems that I am almost pulled towards the first two stories that are mentioned here, namely because they are antideluvian stories, and tend to only take up a couple of verses in the bible. The first one is about Enoch and his son Methuselah. All we know about Enoch is that he walked with God until he was no more because God took him. In considering this we should immediately be drawn to the story of Elijah because he was the only other human who did not die but was taken to be with God. Does that mean that he didn't die? The implication is that this is correct. At one stage I had an idea that Elijah was taken to the sky to go and evangelise to interstellar aliens. While it is a romantic idea, it is only speculation because we are not told anything beyond his ascension, though it is implied that he went to be with God. As for Enoch, he does appear elsewhere in the bible, but I guess the crux of the story is that he was a godly man, and God recognised his godliness, but that is all we know about him.
As for Methuselah, he is known as the man who lived the longest, though he did not quite reach a millenium (he died in his late 900s). The ages of the characters in the early part of Genesis are quite mindboggling, to the extent that we will simply write it off as myth. I do not necessarily agree with that namely because there is a lot about our world that we do not know. As Peter says in one of his letters, 'in the last days scoffers will come … believing that everything will go on as it has gone on before'. This is not a new attitude though, it has been around for time immemorial. People do not live hundreds of years today, so it must be impossible that people ever lived hundreds of years. I do not agree, mainly because I suspect that one of the main reasons that we age as fast as we do is due to our exposure to solar radiation. However, I am not a scientist, so this, to me, is really only speculation.
The next story is set after the flood, when Abraham has won a great victory, and travelled to the city of Salem (most likely Jerusalem) and met the kingpriest Melchizadek and gave him a tenth of his possessions. This sets the tone for the tithe that was then imposed on Israel (and the tithe served the double purpose of supporting the priests and the temple, and also for poverty relief). Melchizadek would have only been a footnote in the bible, forgotten by all, if it were not for a significant mention in the book of Hebrews. Here Melcizadek is referred to as a type of Christ (a type in theology is a model that sets the scene for the Messiah). Simply because he seems to appear and then disappear, the writer of Hebrews suddenly talks about him not being born and not dying, in a sense being eternal. He is also said to have been the only biblical character, other than Christ, that legitimately held the title of King-Priest. One should notice that when the tribes of Israel were established, the duties of the priesthood fell to the Levites, while the duties of Kingship initially fell to Benjamin (under King Saul) but quickly shifted to Judah (under King David). One could say that Ancient Israel was a caste system, but we must remember that that was abolished with the coming of the Christ.
There are a lot of stories in this book, 70 of them to be exact. Not all of them would be classified as lesser known, however a lot of them deal with quite complex subjects, and while Goodman helps us to understand them, we cannot simply take his word as gospel. We need to read them, take Goodman's comments on board, but also look elsewhere to see what others have to say. All the while we should be trying to work it out ourselves, but also as important, we must consider that we will never fully grasp the spiritual realities until such a time as we are presented to Christ in our glory, and in a way, I hope, there will still be much more room for us to learn and grow as individuals. I guess that is why I love Christianity: we are all individuals under God's eyes, and he meticulously created us, not just in the womb, but also through our experiences throughout out life.… (meer)