Adam and Eve were told quite clearly by God, `Don’t touch this tree,’ and they were disobedient, and God had to drive them out to punish them and that’s what has happened with us. God gave us Palestine, we’ve been disobedient because we’ve worshipped other gods, so God has had to punish us.” And there are some hits against the Babylonians. Michael Goulder believes that they actually tell us more about the authors, who were writing in exile in Babylon in the 6th century BC, than they do about the origins of the species.MICHAEL GOULDER: The Israelites in exile are asking themselves this nasty question: “Why is it that God promised us the land and has taken it away?” And the answer comes: “Well, it happened at the very beginning. But as soon as one becomes aware that each book was written in a particular time and context, with a particular purpose in mind, one is driven to find out who wrote and edited what, where, when, why? Take the opening chapters of Genesis, for example. That’s unlikely to be the order in which the books were written.JM: If one thinks of the Bible as a single, linear book, by people who were there, issues of authorship and editorship seem less important, and it’s not so difficult to think of the Bible as divinely inspired – the Word of God. What we don’t know is how old the narrative books of the Old Testament are – the histories.

They are arranged in the order of the events they narrate, so the first book is Genesis, because it tells us about Creation, and the last is II Kings, which is about the Jewish exiles in the 6th century BC. So it is quite likely that the Book of Proverbs is among the earliest material in the Old Testament. But in Genesis we have four different sources identified by scholars; some that could be as early as the 8th century BC and the latest being 5th or 6th century BC.JM: So if The Beginning is not the beginning, so to speak, what is? John Barton is Professor for the Interpretation of Holy Scripture at Oxford.JOHN BARTON: The first thing you need to have in writing is the laws of the community, and I would guess that the legal material in the first five books of the Bible, the Pentateuch, is probably some of the oldest material that we have got. Other things that are written down at a very early date in the ancient Middle East are collections of proverbs and sayings – we have many collections of proverbs which go back into the second or even the third millennium BC from Egypt and Babylonia. The earliest parts of the Bible actually come in the Book of Exodus and the Book of Judges. They’re war-like songs about Yahweh, the warrior God, rescuing his people from the sea. But is that the beginning? The theologian Karen Armstrong doesn’t think so…KAREN ARMSTRONG: The first chapter of the Bible is in fact quite late, written in about the 6th century BC.

I want to find out more, before deciding what its message might be for me. So where should I begin? Perhaps the simplest thing is to do what both Terry and I did in Beirut and to start at the very beginning – Genesis: Chapter 1, Verse 1. The Bible demands that you get off the fence and decide for yourself whether you believe in it or not.My answer at the moment is a very English “Don’t know”. I suppose the great point that came out of all this was that suffering need not destroy, that it can be creative.JM: There was one question I put to all the people I met during the making of this series: “What is the Bible?” And I found I got a different answer almost every time For some, it’s the Book, The Word of God. Others point out that it’s not so much one book as a library of 66 books, written by different authors at different times – possibly divinely inspired.

Some approach it scientifically, as an interesting archaeological text, while others say it’s just an ancient storybook, full of myths and legends And everyone seemed equally convinced that they were right. It simply made me more able to accept the reality of the human condition and of my own condition, rather than letting me live in a fantasy-land. I wanted to be relieved of that constant pressure and misery and unpleasantness – physical, spiritual and mental I didn’t find it in the Bible in the way I wanted it But that doesn’t mean to say I didn’t value the Bible. I’ve studied theology, but that doesn’t get rid of my naive understandings as a human being. It ought to, but in situations of crisis you revert to rather primitive ways of trying to get through the experience. And of course, as one grows up, one recognises that’s the wrong way to treat it.