Nehemiah

So it's welcome back to our class of atheists and other beginners, as we resume the Eccles Bible project after the break. I hope you all had a Merry Christmas (er, just Mas in your case!), and wish you a Happy Nehemiah.

Anyway, to recap, here we are in the 5th century BC, and the Jews have been in exile in Babylon. As we saw last time, Ezra (Esdras) has brought some of them back to Jerusalem.

What ho, Nehemiah! Any chance of one of your pick-me-ups?

This is the tale of Nehemiah, the cup-bearer of King Artaxerxes of Persia, who retrains as a builder (or maybe architect) in order to get Jerusalem rebuilt. Ezra turns up again later in the Book of Nehemiah, and he is now billed as a priest and scribe,

Our hero rebuilds the walls of Jerusalem.

In the above picture Nehemiah is presumably the one reading the plans, rather than the ones doing the actual building, but one can never be sure. Perhaps the other chaps are the sons of Hassenaah, who built the Fish Gate (see Chapter 3); or possibly Malchiah the son of Rechab who was told to repair the Dung Gate. It was a true poet who named these gates.

This is what Nehemiah has on his scroll.

Actually, talking of Gates, we have Bill and Melinda here today in our Bible class for the first time. Welcome, guys! No mention of Windows in this book, I'm afraid, but I suppose you'll enjoy Jeremiah when we get to it, with its For death is come up through our Windows. I wonder whether Jerry was thinking of you there?

Half way through the book, Ezra attends to the spiritual needs of the people (now that their deliveries of fish and dung have been sorted out), and after a bit of prayer and penance they once again promise to keep the Law.

A delivery of fish.

Nehemiah actually becomes the effective governor of Jerusalem; he later pops off back to Persia to do some more cup-bearing, before returning to find that the Jews have gone off the rails yet again. So he fixes that.

In next month's instalment we have a choice: we can follow the Protestant Bible and jump straight onto Esther (so to speak), or take the Catholic and Orthodox line, and include Tobit and Judith.

Tobit or not Tobit? That is the question.

We'll discuss Tobit next. Class dismissed.

Ezra

We continue with the Eccles Bible Project, explaining the Bible to atheists and other unsaved persons, in the hope that they may finally see the point.

Good to see you're all here, class, so pay attention. Dawkins, put that honey away, or I shall have to confiscate it.

Ezra Meeker - probably the wrong Ezra, but a fine-looking chap anyway.

Our Ezra was operating in the 5th century BC, and like Ezra Meeker he was a bit of a pioneer - he made the trip back from Babylon to Jerusalem. The books of the Bible seem to have got a little out of chronological order here, but Babylon had fallen to Cyrus of Persia some years earlier, as we'll see later when we get to the very exciting book of Daniel.

So some of the Jews head back to Jerusalem. If you want to know more, read Chapter 2. Apparently, there were 42,360 of them, with 736 horses, 435 camels, etc. The exact figures aren't very important, so I won't include them in the test you're going to have.

One of the 435 camels.

Jeshua (Josue) and Zorobabel set to work building a new temple. Now this is where you come in, dear atheists, as in Chapter 4 the enemies of Judah and Benjamin (that's you lot) write to King Artaxerxes and get the rebuilding stopped. Actually, they probably weren't atheists - such a strange idea hadn't been invented in those days - just Muslims - er, no, that hadn't been invented either - well, some sort of other religion. Troublemakers, anyway - I'm sure you'll easily identify with them. But Haggai (Aggeus) and Zechariah get things restarted and eventually King Darius lets them get on with it.

I'm trying to get the chronology right here, but for some reason they insisted on counting years backwards in those days, as positive numbers hadn't yet been invented. So the temple is rebuilt in 515 BC, which is BEFORE Ezra gets into action (458 BC). Our hero arrives in Chapter 7 and we only have 4 more chapters to go.

Waiting for Ezra - He'll be along in another 50 years or so.

Ezra (Esdras) himself leads another great expedition from Babylon to Jerusalem, although he omits to mention any camels this time. This is about the first thing he does when he gets there:

And when I had heard this word, I rent my mantle and my coat, and plucked off the hairs of my head and my beard, and I sat down mourning.

Ezra (R), with torn mantle, reproaches Sechenias.

So what has upset Ezra? It is that the Jews in Jerusalem have taken strange wives. Well, of course many people have got strange wives - and strange husbands - and many of us are reduced to tears on seeing what our friends and relations have chosen to spend their lives with; but that is not what's meant here.

Darling, you're not at all a strange wife.

The point is that the Jews have promised not to intermarry with our people - it's all part of the "chosen people" deal, although they won't find out exactly what that means until they read all about it in the New Testament. So Ezra stops the "strange wife" business, and that's the end of his book. We come next to Nehemiah: the two books were originally combined, and our hero will reappear next time. Class dismissed: off to the playground with you!

1 Chronicles

The holidays are over, and term has restarted, so we welcome back our audience of theological novices to the Eccles Bible class.

Some of our more promising students, ready to learn!

I'd better start with the register, then.
Dawkins? Here. Hope you had a good holiday, my boy, and didn't get into too many Twitter fights. New pot-boiler selling OK? Splendid.
Grayling? Here. Get a haircut, boy.
Fry? Whoop! That will do, child.
Toynbee? Here.
De Botton? Stop sniggering, Fry, I didn't say "bottom". An adequate evolution of morality from superstition to reason should mean recognizing ourselves as the authors of our own moral commandments. All right, that will do, de Botton. You've not been paying attention, have you?
Sanderson, Hari, ... stop fighting, Kamm, ...
Conry, what are you doing here? You want the Orthodox Catholicism for Beginners class next door. All right, we're quorate. Let's get started.

Adam, Seth, Enos, Cainan, Malaleel, Jared, Henoc, Mathusale, Lamech. All right, who said "Here!"?

Possibly Cainan, Malaleel or Jared.

Well, class, you're going to have a very easy ride today. It's another of those books about Jewish history with a rather low "spiritual nourishment" rating. Also, a lot of it is plagiarised from other books. Ah, I thought you'd be interested, Hari.

The first 9 chapters are mostly lists of names, as I've just indicated. Something like the Tel Aviv telephone directory, but without the numbers of course. Then we get on to history, most of which is covered in earlier books. We get the stories of Saul and David once more. Since you all know about this, we won't go into it again. However, we come to deep questions such as this one:

Is there a contradiction between 2 Samuel 24:9 and 1 Chronicles 21:5, when the number of soldiers Joab counts comes up different?

Well, not really. You know how people never stand still when you're counting them. And anyway, the wording is slightly different. So, Dawkins, I'm afraid that you can't use this as a stick to condemn the Bible as nonsense. Although you probably will, anyway.

Who wrote Chronicles? Quite possibly, Ezra, who turns up later in a book with his own name on. Experts decided this by comparing styles. It's what you might call a sockpuppet for Ezra, anyway.

Ezra tells a fascinated audience about Jizreel, Jishma, Jidbash, and their sister Hazlelponi.

Well, one commentary I have read (don't think I make all this stuff up myself) explains that Kings gives us man's viewpoint, while Chronicles gives us God's viewpoint. You'll have to sort that one out yourselves.

There are some rather strange passages, even in the narrative parts; for example, And Satan rose up against Israel: and moved David to number Israel (Chapter 21). Who would have thought that censuses could be evil?

Hazlelponi? There's nobody of that name here.

Ezra is on safer ground when he's copying out lists of names, so let's finish with one of his more sparkling passages, which, nonetheless, no priest is likely to take as a text for his sermon: Now the first lot came forth to Joiarib, the second to Jedei, The third to Harim, the fourth to Seorim, [a few lots deleted here], The three and twentieth to Dalaiau, the four and twentieth to Maaziau (Chapter 24).

O.K., class dismissed. 2 Chronicles next time, then we'll get Ezra's own story.

Oh, and Hollande, don't wear that silly hat next time.