War Cry 15 June 2019: selected articles

BBC/Red Productions/MATT SQUIRE

15 June 2019 • WAR CRY • TELEVISION 3

FEARS AND FEARS Celeste (T’Nia Miller) and Stephen (Rory Kinnear) are living in troubled times

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As Years and Years reaches its dramatic conclusion, Emily Bright asks if there is any hope for the future

MERICA drops a nuclear bombshell, a populist reflects back on the shocking developments that have politician enters No 10 and humankind’s befallen the fictional family. ‘Transhumanism took me by overreliance on technology leads to devastating surprise. I was like: “What!” Seeing how they played it out developments in surgery. All these fictional scenarios with special effects, I think it was just brilliant.’ have featured in the dystopian drama Years and Years, She tells the War Cry that the script was one that comes which reaches its finale on BBC One next Tuesday (18 along ‘once in a lifetime’, adding: ‘Russell’s writing is always June). And, to many viewers, they all feel a little too so varied. Years and Years is a comedy, thriller and sci-fi all realistic for comfort. in one, so it’s a treat.

Penned by former Doctor Who writer Russell T. Davies, ‘I was sitting on my couch at home reading the script for the series charts the lives of the Lyons family over the next episode four, and I had such a violent reaction that I literally 15 years. It tells how their lives are transformed by world threw the script across the room.’ developments.

Assessing her own character in the drama, T’Nia says: When Russia annexed Ukraine, it caused a refugee crisis ‘Celeste is bold, she’s feisty. She’s happily married, in the UK, which proved to have deadly consequences for ambitious in her job, and has ambition for her family. the youngest Lyons son, Daniel, who is a refugee housing ‘She has a great fear of not being in control. And of officer.

Turn to page 4 ➥ His sister Edith, an activist, has suffered health problems after she was caught in the fallout of a nuclear attack launched by the US president.

Viewers also watched as populist leader Vivienne Rook swept into power in the UK with her outspoken Four Star Party, cheered on by the youngest Lyons child, Rosie, who has just lost her job to technology.

Stephen, the eldest sibling, was enjoying a comfortable life in London with his tenacious wife Celeste and their two children until their world was rocked by a financial crisis. It left them broke and facing a bleak future.

To make matters worse, their daughter Bethany told them that she was transhuman, and no longer wanted to live in her body.

Instead she planned to digitise the content of her brain and upload it to the cloud.

But after witnessing a botched operation, she was forced to confront the horror of transhumanism gone wrong.

Actress T’Nia Miller, who plays Celeste, Vivienne Rook (Emma Thompson) leads an outspoken political party

4 TELEVISION • WAR CRY • 15 June 2019

From page 3 course, as we see in the series, that all takes a downward spiral. Life becomes challenging for her. She struggles to hold it all together. I don’t think she’s coping, but she’s just got to plough through because of her children.’

In the final episode viewers will see Viv Rook’s regime tighten its grip on power, while Rosie is forced to confront troops surrounding her home. Bethany is also set to discover a scandalous truth about her father that will cause other family members to unite against him.

T’Nia explains that, while the series may seem quite scary, ‘ultimately, there’s hope’.

She elaborates: ‘Although the family are in a time of crisis, they come together, and their connection is what makes the show brilliant.

Love them or hate them, we all recognise them.’

We may fear the future, whether we’re worried about our relationships, finances or career. Like Celeste, we can feel powerless, desperate to take action but not know where to start or where to find hope for the future.

For centuries, Christians facing adversity or uncertainty have turned to their faith as their

Love them or hate them, we all recognise them

RUTH CRAFTER

BBC/Red Productions/MATT SQUIRE

source of strength, seeing God as a Father figure who will sustain them through their darkest times.

In the Bible, God promised to be with a group of people during their own time of crisis. He said: ‘Do not fear, for I am with you; do not be dismayed, for I am your God. I will strengthen you and help you; I will uphold you’ (Isaiah 41:10 New International Version).

He extends this offer of help to us all, through whatever we may face.

Whether we wish we could turn back time or simply fast-forward to a brighter future, we all have the chance to clock God’s offer and begin a relationship with him.

8 INTERVIEW • WAR CRY • 15 June 2019

Human writes?

JOHN BARTON has been looking into the origins and development of the Bible. He tells Philip Halcrow about exploring who wrote it, how it came to be written, how it was put together – and why it seems to be more than just another book

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John Barton

T the top of the Sunday Times general hardbacks bestselling list, Instagram influencer Mrs Hinch was providing ‘all the best cleaning tips to shine your sink and soothe your soul’ in Hinch Yourself Happy. Two places down, Michelle Obama’s memoir Becoming was telling the story of her personal struggles and professional achievements on the way to family life in the White House. At No 4 Love Island star Dani Dyer was offering her ‘guide to living your best life’ in What Would Dani Do? Next on the list was Oxford academic John Barton’s history of a book that has undoubtedly soothed souls; that contains the stories of many notable figures; and that has guided unnumbered people to change their life completely. His book is a study of the all-time bestseller: the Bible.

John, formerly a professor of biblical interpretation at the University of Oxford, describes himself as being ‘in awe of this very profound text that has come down to us’. His book, A History of the Bible, examines how the Bible came to play such an important role in the two religions that regard it as their holy book – Judaism and Christianity – and in the world at large.

But John acknowledges that it is very difficult to give chapter and verse on exactly when or how the Bible began.

‘If you take the narrative books of the Old Testament, there must be oral tradition behind them,’ he tells me. ‘For instance, the stories of Elijah and Elisha have a slightly folk tale-like quality, which suggests they were originally handed

15 June 2019 • WAR CRY • INTERVIEW 9

down by word of mouth rather than written from nothing, like a novel. But establishing what was in the oral tradition is difficult because, of course, we don’t have it. We have to reconstruct it according to what looks like folklore.

‘However, the actual texts that we have must be the products of scribes. In the ancient world scribes who could write with that level of skill – as opposed to the person who could just write their name – tended to be at royal court. So I would think that most of the older material in the Old Testament comes from the court in Jerusalem, although in many cases it rests on very old traditions.’

It is unclear, says John, exactly how far back BC those older traditions stretch.

‘Many of the laws in Exodus have

The gospels were seen as a collection of anecdotes about Jesus parallels in Mesopotamian law codes going well back into the second millennium.

‘There’s no consensus on when the earliest parts of the Old Testament go back to, but there is a thought that some of the poems – such as the ‘Song of the Sea’ in Exodus 15, where Moses celebrates victory over Pharaoh – could date back to the 9th or even 10th centuries BC. Most people wouldn’t say that it goes back to Moses himself, but it is old material. The Hebrew is archaic.

‘The great body of material, though, started being written only in the 8th century, which was the age of the prophets Amos, Isaiah and Hosea.

‘The development went on through the Exile, the period in the 6th century when many Jews were in Babylonia. The general theory is that a lot of Old Testament literature goes back to that period when the Jews needed to reassert their identity.’

A number of other books were written in the period after the Exile.

‘So, broadly the Old Testament was

written between the 9th or 8th century and the 2nd century. It’s a long period of time – a lot longer than the New Testament.’

The New Testament, whose books tell the story of the life, death and resurrection of Jesus and reflect the development of the Christian faith, was ‘less than a century in the forming’.

John argues that it differs from the Old Testament in other ways too.

‘They were different even in their beginnings. Many of the Old Testament books seem to have been written to be Scripture,’ he explains. ‘In other words, right from the beginning they held some kind of official status. For example, Deuteronomy is laying down the law and telling people how they are to live. From its foundations, it is a definitive guide.’

He contrasts such writings with the gospels and with the letters sent to the early churches by the apostle Paul, which now form a large part of the New Testament.

‘Paul’s letters were originally designed for specific situations, but they became universal.

‘Similarly, in the early years of the Christian era, the gospels were seen as a collection of anecdotes about Jesus rather than as Scripture. It was only around the middle and end of the 2nd century that the New Testament started to be seen as Scripture in the same sense as the Old Testament.

‘The difference seems to be summed up in the way they were written. The Hebrew Scriptures were always written on scrolls, whereas the Christian books were, from the earliest times, written as codices – that is, books bound to a spine, like a modern book. In the ancient world, codices were an informal type of book. They were used as notebooks. They were something you might scribble in. Official literature came on scrolls.

‘So an early Christian collection of the writings would have been sacred scrolls plus well-thumbed notebooks.

The contrast between Old and New Testaments is quite striking.’

As time went by, the Gospel of Matthew

Turn to page 10

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10 INTERVIEW • WAR CRY • 15 June 2019

From page 9 came to be seen as Scripture in the same sense as the Books of Moses.

‘People started writing commentaries on the New Testament books. But before the 2nd and 3rd centuries, the New Testament was more living literature than sacred literature from the past.’

The New Testament may have been transmitted in the format of well-thumbed notebooks, but John is keen to point out that it was not put together in the rumoured way referenced in a wellthumbed modern novel.

‘One of the big misconceptions,’ he says, ‘is that there were lots of books clamouring to get into the New Testament but the Church deliberately excluded them. This is what I call the Dan Brown thesis, which you can see in The Da Vinci Code.

‘It is accurate to say that there were many other books that are not in the New Testament, but almost all of them that we know about are later than the books that are in it.

‘It’s also true that in the 4th century, theologians wrote about these other books and said that people should not take any notice of them, but by then the contents of the New Testament were already pretty well fixed. The idea that the New Testament was selected from a much larger body of writings – and that the decisions could have gone either way – is probably not true.

‘The New Testament seems to have formed itself, well ahead of any rulings of what should be in it. Early Christian writers quoted and cited more or less only those books that are now in the New Testament.

From time to time they do quote from other books, but it’s clear that those other books are never as important.’

s well as pointing out that the Old A and New Testaments originated in different ways, John suggests that through the centuries Jews and Christians have continued to approach their sacred books differently.

‘Since the earlier centuries of Judaism

We have to negotiate a text that isn’t a simple confession of faith and Christianity, the Jewish approach has tended to be to take the Bible primarily as guidance on how to live, whereas Christians have often taken the whole Bible as prophecy and foretelling the future.

‘There is also a contrast in the way they interpret texts. Jewish scholars try to work out how the texts can be applied in terms of living; Christians are often interested in what the text has to say about the spiritual life rather than action.’

John is interested not only in Judaism and Christianity’s different explorations of the same texts but also in the way that neither the Christian faith nor the Jewish faith is ‘identical with’ its holy book. He says it is remarkable that the diverse writings of the Bible have come to play an important part in religions each of which, while marked by its own range of expressions, is a recognisable entity.

‘The Bible is not coterminous with Christianity or Judaism,’ he argues. ‘In both religions, traditions of belief, doctrine and practice have grown up which are related to the Bible but not always directly derived from it. Those systems have coalesced in more or less coherent forms, but they appeal to a text – the Bible – that is coherent but contains a variety of points of view.

‘I’m not saying that the Bible often contradicts itself, because it doesn’t particularly. But it is variegated.

‘Somehow as Christians we have to negotiate having a text that isn’t a simple confession of faith or a short statement of doctrine but is this baggy book with all kinds of variety.’

Navigating the Bible is more than an academic challenge for John. It is also a personal one. He is a priest in the Church of England.

15 June 2019 • WAR CRY • INTERVIEW 11

‘Whenever I read the Bible, I try to reflect on what I can learn from it,’ he says. ‘Sometimes I may be reading a passage that seems to contradict what I believe as a Christian. That’s notoriously true, for instance, of the stories in the Book of Joshua about the killing of all the Canaanites. You say to yourself: How can I make sense of having as my holy book a text which contains material that contradicts what I believe, as a Christian, about how we should behave towards other people?

‘I don’t know that I ever come to an entirely satisfactory answer. But I suppose I say that there was a development in religious sensibility and thought over time.

Modern Christians aren’t committed to those stories as a laying down of the law for how they should live. Instead, those passages provide information about our forebears in the faith.’

Reflecting on his own approach to the

Readers of the Bible are in the presence of great literature Bible, John says he does not believe that God directly dictated the exact words that were written down. But neither does he see it as a book like any other. When it is taken as a whole, he senses ‘some kind of divine hand’ at work.

‘In A History of the Bible I discuss the Bible in very human terms,’ he concludes. ‘I explore who wrote it, how it came to be written, how it was put together and how it came to be recognised as Scripture. But that shouldn’t disguise a general sense that when someone reads the Bible they are in the presence of very great literature – and a book which I can’t quite see as merely a human product.’

l A History of the Bible is published by Allen Lane

12 INNER LIFE • WAR CRY • 15 June 2019

Prayerlink YOUR prayers are requested for Morag, who has scleroderma and lung disease and is concerned about her family; and for Stephen, who is in prison.

The War Cry invites readers to send in requests for prayer, including the first names of individuals and details of their ­circumstances. Send your requests to Prayerlink, War Cry, 101 Newington Causeway, Lon­don SE1 6BN. Mark your envelope ‘Confidential’.

Becoming a Christian There is no set formula to becoming a Christian, but many people have found saying this prayer to be a helpful first step to a relationship with God Lord Jesus Christ, I am truly sorry for the things I have done wrong in my life. Please forgive me. I now turn from everything that I know is wrong.

Thank you that you died on the cross for me so that I could be forgiven and set free.

Thank you that you offer me forgiveness and the gift of your Holy Spirit.

Please come into my life by your Holy Spirit to be with me for ever.

Thank you, Lord Jesus.

Amen Extract from Why Jesus? by Nicky Gumbel published by Alpha International, 2011. Used by kind permission of Alpha International

Nigel Bovey gives chapter and verse on each book in the Scriptures

The prophets HE final 17 books of the Old Testament T comprise the section known as ‘the prophets’.

Apart from Jonah, the books and the messages they contain are set within historical contexts, all of which occur after the division of David and Solomon’s kingdom. Covering events from about 750BC to 350BC, they are defined by three seismic events – Assyria’s defeat of the northern kingdom of Israel, Babylon’s exiling of the southern kingdom of Judah and the post-exilic return of Jews to Jerusalem.

Throughout the prophetic books, there are references to Judah, Israel and Samaria, which may sometimes appear as interchangeable. As a rule of thumb, Judah refers to the southern kingdom, based in Jerusalem. Israel is the northern kingdom, based in the town of Samaria. Because Israel is wiped out by Assyria, after the Babylonian exile the former Judah becomes known as Israel and the former Israel is referred to as Samaria.

The prophets Amos and Hosea address the pre-Assyrian Israel. Nahum prophesies to the Assyrian city of Nineveh. Obadiah targets the nation of Edom. Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Joel, Micah, Habakkuk and Zephaniah speak to pre-exile Judah. Prophets of the exilic and post-exilic period are Daniel, Haggai, Zechariah and Malachi.

Whoever the intended audience, the prophet

has the same dual role. Called to be God’s spokesperson, a prophet is to tell the word of God and, sometimes, to foretell the works of God. Divine insights are gained through visions and expressed through figurative language. Most times, the prophet is a plain speaker.

Many pronouncements are warnings, reminding the reader that actions have consequences. Many have an immediate social,

A prophet is to tell the word of God and, sometimes, foretell religious, political or historical context and are fulfilled within the prophet’s lifetime.

In predictive terms, the major prophetic theme is that of the Messiah. Many prophets foretell the coming of a national redeemer, a saviour, a divinely anointed king who will establish God’s rule on earth through the nation of Israel.

For today’s Jews, the Messiah has yet to come. Christians, though, believe that Jesus is the Messiah and that one day he will return to establish God’s Kingdom in complete fulfilment of Old Testament prophecy.

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