Wednesday, 7 September 2016

The Creative Word: Canon as a Model for Biblical Education, Second Ed.,
Walter Brueggemann, Fortress Press, 2015, page 37-38

So, Brueggemann returns to his question, why does Israel tell stories?

At a deeper level, Israel's public memory is a counterexperience, a subversive alternative to an imperial consensus. Every time Israel tells one of its stories, it means an assault on and refutation of another one. This point is important and has been lost on much church education. We have been gently benign, as though our stories were simply casual alternatives to some others worthy of consideration. Or it is as though our stories were only a bit "more true", but not enough to press about. Not so for Israel. Israel understood that in its Torah, taught by its most authoritative teachers, everything was at stake. For the narrative means to dismantle alternative worlds as well as to construct new ones for the listening community.

Israel's story is the truth, the true truth, the truth that is worth fighting for. When Israel tells its story, other alternatives proposed or held by others, are exposed as untrue.