Nate and Tim discuss how ancient scroll technology led to literary binding techniques evident in the Bible. Collections of texts were stitched together through canonical seams and enclosed within literary introductions and conclusions. This seam work is how we got a Bible.

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Collectively, the Bible consists of complex literary layers stacked atop one another. Stories and motifs are recycled and re-used. When we read any individual story, we must read it as a single layer of a greater whole. The strange story of Ananias and Sapphira, for example, is written in conversation with a series of Old Testament stories as well as at least one other Ananias story in the Book of Acts. We aren’t reading it well unless we learn to read it as a literary layer.

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If the Bible is a mosaic, then the meaning is in the stitching. Nate and Tim look at how Psalm 108 is an example of clear editing and repurposing of texts within the Hebrew Bible, and how the Gospel of Luke is tracking with this literary mechanism at work.

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Nate and Tim open up a new series of conversations exploring how the Bible actually works. They introduce the idea of the Bible as a literary mosaic in which various texts are pieced together to form a kind of theological portrait. This episode is the first in what will be an ongoing series called How The Bible Works.

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Lisa Sharon Harper talks about what Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation to the Supreme Court really means, how we got here, and what the gospel has to say about it.

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