{N}THE HISTORY OF ISRAEL{/}

{K}THE BIBLE AND HISTORY{/}

God has spoken in the past to our ancestors through the prophets, in many 
different ways, although never completely; but in our times he has spoken 
definitively to us through his Son {N}{/}[Heb_1,1] - [Heb_1,2].
The Bible is inseparably "The Book of God" and "The Book of Man", or to 
be more exact "The Book of Communion between God and Man"; therefore it 
is impossible for us to enter into this Book neglecting either one of 
these two dimensions. By doing so we would run the risk of reducing the 
study of the Bible to only the historical and cultural level, or on the 
contrary, of forgetting that God in the heart of history, or of making 
the Word of God a collection of rules or a book of religious teachings. 
In fact the Bible is the Revelation of God's Love in the history of the 
world as well as in the life of each one of us.
{K}GOD RESPECTS MAN{/}

When I was a child I thought and reasoned like a child [1Cor_13,11].
God manifests himself throughout the whole history of humanity. When He 
chose a people, He walked with that people, walking along together and 
little by little shaping or molding them, in spite of their rebellions, 
doubts and repeated infidelities. God respected man, and for this reason 
the Bible appears deeply human to us, human not only in its contents but 
also in the way it speaks to us. From the first to the last page it seems 
linked to the cultures, the way of speaking, the collective psychology of 
the different ages and the diverse means used where it was written. There 
is a way of reading a text from Genesis which through the centuries 
echoes the old nomadic traditions which were repeated from generation to 
generation in their tents before being written down one day. Different is 
the case of an extract from the annals of the king of Judah, which was 
meticulously written down, but also with the partiality of a court 
secretary. A popular story that explains the name of a city or certain 
place cannot be read the same as a report on the foundation of the Church 
of Antioch or Corith. If we wish to read the Bible, we must in the image 
and likeness of God, respect the authors: respect their origins, their 
mentality, their way of thinking and writing.
{K}THE PROGRESSES OF HISTORY{/}

In spite of the surprising diversity of literary forms that the authors 
of the Bible used to express themselves (epics, poems, royal annals, 
prophetic oracles, prayers, proverbs, sentences, judgements on such and 
such kingdom or period...), nowadays it is relatively easier to move 
closer to the events that constituted the plot of the story of Ancient 
Israel, to capture its causes and repercussions, to place them within the 
general framework of the History of the Near East in the last thousand 
years before Jesus Christ. The comparative study of extra-biblical 
literature (tablets, papyrus, inscriptions in stone...), results of 
archaeological investigations carried out over the years from Egypt to 
Mesopotamia, evidence from other attached sciences on the history of the 
world, have all contributed in a great way to consolidate our knowledge.
