The Bible is the DNA of the World.
And well, many philosophers seek only general principles, great abstractions, of the good, true and beautiful. There must be a system, with a more prestigious vocabulary. It must be the wholly, wholly, wholly, summarized in one book! And how disappointing it is, to turn the pages of Holy Writ, and find only a river of particulars! Of names and names, and the most tiresome lineages! Because Abraham begat Isaac, and Isaac begat Jacob, and Jacob begat Judah... And what they did, and what they said, and a story that never bends..
But the history of the world is not a generality, rather, there is no such thing as generality. Generality is a product of the weakness of language--it is an admission of finitude, that every word I utter is my incapacity to comprehend the ultimate details, the overwhelming complexity of every swarming atom, of every succeeding frame and slice of time, of the souls of a billion individuals dead, living and unborn. Rather, I say the word "atom", the word "second", the word "man", and find comfort in the semantic bubble, that purports to grasp the entire, when actually, the bubble is only a very thin-film thick.
See, but God exclusively views a centillion particulars. Not merely the "stars", no, not that, but each star has a name, oh, a singular, unique, irreplaceable name, and he calls each by its name--and not an arbitrary name, not simply the nominal, but the essential, the essence, where the color and the hue, the density and the dust, the pulsating of the core, the whirl and the gravity, the laughter and the light, all this is in the name--the name is what it is, the name is its being. And so here too, in the Bible, when God condescended to be read, he gives the names. And the pattern of the Bible is the pattern of history, as the DNA replicates, it is a story that spans the centuries, repeating, repeating, such that this life I'm living, I am Abraham, leaving my homeland, and I am David, committing my gravest sin, and I am Nehemiah, in the act of rebuilding, and I am Jesus... oh, breathless, I am Jesus, oh, I in him and him in me, one and only, sublimating, yet there is only one Jesus, and there is only one me, what is my name? God keeps it, as he knew me before I was born. And in the same fashion He knows you. There is only one history, His story, yes..
And, how can that be grasped? That there is only one history? That there is no such thing as repetitive plurality strictly conceived? And all this talk of alternate universes, and alternate realities, where you or I could have a different destiny, a different set of choices, well that's just blasphemy. That's just the fear of responsibility. Rather there is one history, and it is a history bursting, spilling over, with particularities, like the texture of the mouse in your hand, the momentary humid scent of the air, the pixels of light on the screen, the mental image that just flickered in your mind and disappeared, just now, now past, now irrevocable, pasted elements of this one history that we share, and are experiencing unfold. And take it to heart! That the Bible IS history, that it cellulates it, that it is the underlying genetics of the world we live in. That's why the apostles also called it a "mirror", but this mirror is as deep as it is reflective, and you will be recreated by what you find.