History of God in 900 words

When, just under a century ago, James Hastings began publishing his massive five-volume Dictionary of the Bible, he saw it as preparing the Bible for "a renewed reign" after a turbulent period in which many of the familiar landmarks of faith had disappeared. His aim was to make accessible to clergy and preachers the fruits of recent research in the belief that Christians had nothing to fear from judicious scholarship. Indeed he claimed that the solid core of critical studies, far from undermining Christian faith, were helping to establish it on firmer intellectual foundations.

It is a claim that has in some measure been fulfilled, and Hastings is still worth reading despite many changes in the field of Biblical criticism. To study Hastings alongside Wilfred Browning is to be impressed by the amount of 19th-century scholarship that has stood the test of time. Canon Browning's dictionary is addressed to a less theologically sophisticated readership. It is intended as an introduction to the Bible for those who prefer to gain their insights by browsing, or who want a handy reference book to guide their reading. It can also act as a simple concordance, and the brevity of the articles makes it ideal for those whose theological digestion is more limited than that of our Victorian forbears. It is also remarkable among such dictionaries in being the work of a single author, helped only by two consultants, so it has a consistency and coherence often lacking in such works.

The author has spent some 50 years as a New Testament scholar and teacher, and the many generations of laity and clergy taught by him, including myself, will recognise characteristic qualities of lucidity, conciseness and objectivity. He is not a man to press his point of view, and prefers to let the evidence speak for itself. Like Hastings his aim is to introduce readers to the best middle-of-the-road scholarship. Those unfamiliar with biblical criticism can be confident that they are being given a fair picture, even though at times it may be more radical than some would like. His article on the resurrection of Jesus, for example, ends up in much the same position as that of the former bishop of Durham. He is scrupulous in pointing out the difficulties in the Gospel resurrection stories, and sees the descriptions of the empty tomb and the appearances "more as theological interpretation than historical narrative". Instead he locates the primary witness to the resurrection in the Pauline epistles, and in the fact that whatever happened at the first Easter "created a new faith, a new community, a new future".

Surprisingly, his skill as a teacher suffers a temporary lapse in the Introduction where he refers in an aside to some scholars "who hold that the Israelites never entered 'the Promised Land' and were living in Canaan all the time". A search through likely dictionary references throws no further light on an opinion, only found in authors at the more extreme end of the critical spectrum, which Bible readers encountering for the first time are likely to find bewildering. This is a pity and could deter those who, as when Hastings did his work, need to be helped to appreciate criticism, rather than to fear it.

There are some masterly compressions. To write a history of God in 900 words, and to make it both interesting and significant, requires considerable skill. There is an engaging description of modern attempts to portray Jesus as "an economic reformer (an early Marxist), as an anti-Roman black messiah, as a Liberator of the poor; and as a pacifist, a socialist and a freemason".

Who reads dictionaries of the Bible? The publishers claim a market among students of the Bible, "whether at school, college, or in church or community study groups". This dictionary could be a useful starter, but serious students will soon want to go beyond it.

Contemporary ignorance of the Bible is profound and disturbing. The unthinking dismissal of it as unworthy of study by educated people, many of whom are experts in their own fields but feel that no knowledge is needed to express an opinion about religion, is depressing evidence of cultural fragmentation. The Bible is the source book of western civilisation, over which scholars have laboured for centuries. It is worth discovering what they and it have to tell us. To treat it as of no account is to behave like the proverbial ostrich (present in Hastings but sadly absent from Browning). "She leaves her eggs on the ground ... unmindful that a foot may crush them ... she treats her chicks heartlessly as if they were not her own ... For God has denied her wisdom and left her without sense, while like a cock she struts over the uplands..."

Lord Habgood is the former archbishop of York.