{N}THE HISTORY OF ISRAEL{/}

{K}THE BIBLE AND HISTORY{/}
God has spoken in the past to our ancestors through the prophets, in many different ways, although never completely; but in our times he has spoken definitively to us through his Son {N}{/}[Heb_1,1] - [Heb_1,2].
The Bible is inseparably "The Book of God" and "The Book of Man", or to be more exact "The Book of Communion between God and Man"; therefore it is impossible for us to enter into this Book neglecting either one of these two dimensions. By doing so we would run the risk of reducing the study of the Bible to only the historical and cultural level, or on the contrary, of forgetting that God in the heart of history, or of making the Word of God a collection of rules or a book of religious teachings. In fact the Bible is the Revelation of God's Love in the history of the world as well as in the life of each one of us.

{K}GOD RESPECTS MAN{/}
When I was a child I thought and reasoned like a child [1Cor_13,11].
God manifests himself throughout the whole history of humanity. When He chose a people, He walked with that people, walking along together and little by little shaping or molding them, in spite of their rebellions, doubts and repeated infidelities. God respected man, and for this reason the Bible appears deeply human to us, human not only in its contents but also in the way it speaks to us. From the first to the last page it seems linked to the cultures, the way of speaking, the collective psychology of the different ages and the diverse means used where it was written. There is a way of reading a text from Genesis which through the centuries echoes the old nomadic traditions which were repeated from generation to generation in their tents before being written down one day. Different is the case of an extract from the annals of the king of Judah, which was meticulously written down, but also with the partiality of a court secretary. A popular story that explains the name of a city or certain place cannot be read the same as a report on the foundation of the Church of Antioch or Corith. If we wish to read the Bible, we must in the image and likeness of God, respect the authors: respect their origins, their mentality, their way of thinking and writing.

{K}THE PROGRESSES OF HISTORY{/}
In spite of the surprising diversity of literary forms that the authors of the Bible used to express themselves (epics, poems, royal annals, prophetic oracles, prayers, proverbs, sentences, judgements on such and such kingdom or period...), nowadays it is relatively easier to move closer to the events that constituted the plot of the story of Ancient Israel, to capture its causes and repercussions, to place them within the general framework of the History of the Near East in the last thousand years before Jesus Christ. The comparative study of extra-biblical literature (tablets, papyrus, inscriptions in stone...), results of archaeological investigations carried out over the years from Egypt to Mesopotamia, evidence from other attached sciences on the history of the world, have all contributed in a great way to consolidate our knowledge.
