Religious Mysteries Of Antiquity

The Adventures Of Indiana Jones Harrison Ford whipcracks his way around the globe as daredevil archeologist Indiana Jones in this four-disc boxed set of director Steven Spielberg's rousing action hits. Follow Jones on a search for the fabled Ark of the Covenant in "Raiders of the Lost Ark" (1981), co-starring Karen Allen, Paul Freeman and John Rhys-Davies; Indy saves children from a bloodthirsty Indian cult in "Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom" (1984), with Kate Capshaw and Ke Huy Quan; and Jones teams up with his father (Sean Connery) to fight Nazis and seek the Holy Grail in "Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade" (1989).

Its message stronger than the passage of time, the Bible still speaks to us thousands of years after it was written. Yet more than the great book's pages still endure: it's possible today to actually walk through the same towns and streets where David and Solomon, Jesus and Peter once walked. The city of Jerusalem still stands in the Middle East - and appears all too often in our living rooms on the evening news. We can visit the city of Jericho, where Joshua's trumpets once made the walls come tumbling down. We can stand on the shores of the Sea of Galilee, where Christ walked upon the water. We can swim in the Mediterranean, but keep your eyes peeled! - for that's where Jonah was swallowed by a mighty fish.

But not all the significant places and artifacts mentioned in the Bible have survived. And while scholars and archaeologists scour libraries and probe the desert sands for shreds of information to confirm what people in biblical times saw and experienced, they don't always find what they're looking for.

As in the classic film Raiders of the Lost Ark, in which gutsy archaeologist Indiana Jones battles Nazi generals as they vie to locate the resting place of the Hebrews' sacred Ark of the Covenant, scholars still dream of locating the Garden of Eden or the remains of the Tower of Babel - or even, perhaps, the fossilized horn of a unicorn - missing links that can bring people and places apparently long lost to antiquity back to fresh life.

Are the tales of the Old Testament intended to be literal fact, roadmaps to discovery? Or are they intended as parables, guideposts of spiritual insight? However readers choose to interpret the words of the Bible, one point is beyond dispute: modern-day science and technology - frequently pitted as adversaries of religion - have proved instead to be sources of illumination, clarifying the reality of stories that earlier generations might have written off as fables. Biblical archaeology is a respected and growing scientific discipline.

The ancient text we call the Bible is filled with marvels and mysteries, with disasters, cataclysms, and calamities. Yet though the Bible is thousands of years old, the people we meet in its paces are surprisingly similar to us. They struggled. They succeeced. Sometimes they failed. They gloried in their shining moments and grieved in their dark ones. And, like us, they experienced the unexplained - and sought to understand this world and their place within it.

The Bible tells the story of God, who created a world of natural order, yet didn't always abide by that order. He parted the waters of the sea. He stopped the sun in the sky. He allowed his creations to face the consequences of their actions, and in some cases, he rescued them in the nick of time. At times, he even reversed life's most final process: death.

God interacted with the world he created. There is a supernatural world as surely as there is a natural one. The unusual events depicted in the Bible are viewed from many angles, including science, history, and faith. The Bible's mysteries were designed to invite conjecture. After thousands of years, the mysteries of the Bible still have the power to fascinate us, to puzzle us, to delight us. And most important, they remind us that there are surprises to be found in our own lives and our own world, if one has the eyes of faith to see them.

The Bible is a collection of many different ancient texts, written by many authors, employing a wide variety of forms. It is divided into two main sections, the Old Testament and the New Testament. The Old Testament deals with the history and faith of the Jewish people; the New Testament tells the story of Jesus Christ and the founding of Christianity.

Certain books of the Bible are historical texts that tell their stories in narrative form. The first few books of the Old Testament relate the history of the ancient Jewish people, who are called the Hebrews and the Israelites in different time periods.

These books include the stories of Adam and Eve, Abraham and Sarah, Joseph and his brothers, and many more familiar characters. Several other historical books tell the story of Israel when the nation was ruled by judges and prophets and kings (Judges, Samuel, Kings, and Chronicles).

The first few books in the New Testament are also historical. The four Gospels tell the story of the life of Christ, while the book of Acts recounts the growth of the 1st-century Christian church. Not all books of the Bible are historical; some of its books consist of prayers and songs, parables and visions. For instance, the book of Psalms in the Old Testament is a collection of songs and poems written out of the experiences of people like King David. The Psalms enlighten us and express deep truths, but they do not tell a narrative story. Some of the books of the New Testament actually consist of the correspondence between early church leaders and the congregations they influenced.

That's one source of the strength of the Bible: Its message is told from the perspectives of individuals and communities of faith, and it reflects their experiences and encounters with the living God. Whether written by a prophet, a king, a female judge, or even a queen, the truth of the Bible flows through specific lives and specific situations. These are stories of God-in-motion, influencing the lives of those who follow him. We often see him most clearly as he is reflected in the responses of those who believed in him.

What is the "sacrilegious object that causes desecration"? In the book of Daniel and in the Gospels, we find mention of the "sacrilegious object that causes desecration" (some Bible versions say "abomination of desolation") that will appear in Jerusalem's temple during the last days. Bible students ever since have debated the meaning of this terrible event. Some have suggested that it refers to vainglorious rulers like Antiochus Epiphanes who attempted to deify themselves, or to Emperor Titus, who destroyed the temple and much of Jerusalem in A.D. 70. Others see the statement as a metaphor for the unsuccessful attempts of heathenism to undo the spiritual victory of Jesus over Satan. (See Daniel 11:31; 12:11; Matthew 24:15; Mark 13:14.)

For many people, the Bible is like the pyramids. Those who live along the Nile take the massive stone triangles for granted. Their design, complexity, and origin are steeped in mystery, but because they are so obviously there, they go largely unnoticed.

In the same way, the Bible is everywhere. With so many versions, so many translations, so many options - often on our own bookshelves - we too begin to take it for granted. But having Bibles and reading the Bible are two very different experiences. Open the pages of the Bible with a curious mind, and mysteries leap off every page. The Bible is a boring book in the same way that a massive archaeological dig is boring to someone with undeveloped curiosity. The boredom is in the beholder. Even repeated readings of the Bible never seem to prevent the attentive person from occasionally uttering, "I didn't know that was in the Bible!"

The Bible has been with us for nearly two thousand years, and the early books of the Old Testament have existed almost twice that long. Its enduring life attests to not only its great spiritual treasures but also its amazing stories, astonishing miracles, and intriguing facts that continue to grip readers today.

numeric messages First advanced by three Israeli researchers, the theory that numeric messages are encoded in the Torah was popularized in the U.S. by Michael Drosnin's 1997 book The Bible Code. Scientists who have studied the claims are far from convinced. Numbers also play a major role in some forms of Kabbalah, the most mystical branch of Judaism.

The Bible is filled with mysteries, with marvels and wonders that modern science still cannot explain. This ancient, sacred text invites each of us not to "solve" the mysteries it depicts, but rather to ponder them. The Bible challenges us to explore whether life is more than merely what we can see and feel, measure and quantify.

We are faced with these questions every day. Few of us have not experienced our own moments of mystery, those circumstances that seem to whisper that there is more to life than meets the eye. The mysteries and stories, parables and events, prophecies and people that make up the Bible were gathered together to lead us on a search for God. And that search is intended to lead us into a relationship with God that will affect us authentically and profoundly.

If we leave the mysteries of the Bible on the page where we've found them, we miss the point. These pages invite us to reach beyond ourselves and our world as we know it, to find a much deeper vision of reality. They invite us to acknowledge the possibility of a God who reaches back. If the Bible teaches us anything, it is that he will.

Can you understand the mysteries surrounding God All-Powerful? They are higher than the heavens and deeper than the grave. So what can you do when you know so little, and these mysteries outreach the earth and the ocean?

Job 11:7-9

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