Two of the books in question are common elsewhere in Scripture. There are books of chronicles (Neh 12:33), like those which appear in 1&2 Kings and 1&2 Chronicles, and of course there is the Book of the Law or the Book of Moses (Ezr 6:18; Neh 8:1), which is mentioned frequently as you would expect.

But the other three types of book are virtually unique to the post-exilic writings, and they are used in distinctive and very prominent ways in Ezra, Nehemiah, Esther, Daniel and Malachi in particular. They are worth a bit of reflection.

Firstly, there is the Book of the Genealogy of the people of Israel in Nehemiah 7: a very long list of names of those who returned from exile (which incidentally makes it one of the most difficult chapters to preach on in the Bible). It is one of several such lists in Ezra and Nehemiah, each of which were extremely important to the people of that generation, and are therefore very significant in the overall flow of both Ezra and Nehemiah—although this is the only one identified as a “book.”

The second type of book is the Book of Life in Daniel 12: the book of the righteous, the book of the saved. This obviously draws from the book to which Moses refers in Exodus 32:32, and it reappears in Revelation 20. So it is not unique to Daniel. But it is highly significant in the plot of Daniel because it comes at the climactic point at the start of the final chapter; those whose names are written in the book will be delivered and shine like the stars, while the wicked, whose names are not in the book, will awake to shame and everlasting contempt.

The third type of book is the Book of Remembrance. This is probably the most familiar one from a narrative point of view, but the most underestimated for its theological significance: it is the book of memorable deeds which Xerxes has read to him in the middle of the night (Est 6:1). The king cannot sleep, so he asks for the book of memorable deeds (or remembrances) to be read to him, and it proves a crucial turning point in the story of Mordecai, Haman, Esther and all Israel. This book is essentially a record of the significant things that have happened in Xerxes’s kingdom, especially concerning those people who have been especially heroic, faithful, or loyal to him. And it sheds a lot of light on one other reference to books in the post-exilic writings, namely in Malachi 3, where the Book of Remembrance unexpectedly reappears.

Here is Malachi 3:16-18:

“Then those who feared the Lord spoke with one another. The Lord paid attention and heard them, and a book of remembrance was written before him of those who feared the Lord and esteemed his name. ‘They shall be mine,’ says the Lord of hosts, ‘in the day when I make up my treasured possession, and I will spare them as a man spares his son who serves him. Then once more you shall see the distinction between the righteous and the wicked, between one who serves God and one who does not serve him.’”

This passage—which is of climactic significance in Malachi, arriving just before the end and just after six successive dialogues between God and Israel, in the seventh section where God speaks uninterrupted—sees all three of the post-exilic books come together. It is a Book of Life, like Daniel 12, in which the righteous are distinguished from the wicked. It is a book of memorable deeds, a Book of Remembrance like the one Xerxes read in the middle of the night, which highlights the deeds of those who have been faithful and loyal to God over against those who have not. And it is a Book of Genealogy: a book of those of whom the Lord says “they shall be mine, when I make up my treasured possession,” like Nehemiah’s great register of those who returned from exile. It is a glorious triple-header.

This is a helpful way of thinking about what happens when we turn the page and find Matthew’s Gospel beginning with “The book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ.” And it should shape the way we read not just the very beginning of the New Testament, but also the very end, in which great books are opened and those whose names are written there—in the Book of Life, the Book of the Genealogy, the Book of Remembrance—are identified as God’s treasured possession and delivered once and for all.

Praise God that our names are written in that book!

He is talking about divorce within Israel, and explaining that the reason why God is not accepting their offerings is that divorce is rife amongst them. In response to the question, “Why doesn’t God accept our offerings?”, Malachi says this:

“Because the Lord was witness between you and the wife of your youth, to whom you have been faithless, though she is your companion and your wife by covenant. Did he not make them one with a portion of the Spirit in their union? And what was the one God seeking? Godly offspring. So guard yourselves in your spirit, and let none of you be faithless to the wife of your youth.”

You can see the three goods of marriage here fairly explicitly. Augustine said the three goods of marriage were proles (offspring), fides (fidelity), and sacramentum (sacrament). In other words, the three reasons why marriage existed were the procreation of children; the formation of committed, faithful, trusting, companionate relationships between husbands and wives; and the portrayal of the mystery of Christ and the Church. And Malachi covers all three: “She is your companion and your wife by covenant [fides]. Did he not make them one with a portion of the Spirit in their union [sacramentum]? And what was the one God seeking? Godly offspring [proles].”

But there’s a Trinitarian shape to these verses as well. “Did he not make them one with a portion of the Spirit in their union? And what was the One God”—literally “the One,” but the context suggests the Lord is in view—“seeking? Godly offspring.” So we have the one God, seeking godly seed (the Son), and giving a portion of the Spirit. Father, Son, and Spirit are again all condensed into a remarkable comment that, although Malachi was not operating with fourth-century Trinitarian categories, nevertheless draws out the three-personal life of God almost in passing, in the context of a comment about divorce and marriage.

I think that’s a pretty glorious double-triple. And the fact that it is hidden in this passage, which appears on the face of it to be about something that wouldn’t yield Trinitarian fruit, makes it all the more wonderful.

The same is true, it strikes me, of theologians.

I found myself thinking about this recently in light of three things. The first was a comment I saw on Twitter to the effect that Tom Wright, undoubtedly one of the most interesting and creative scholars of the 1990s and 2000s, had become a rather predictable (even boring) writer over the last few years. The second was listening to a typically polymathic Theopolis podcast conversation between Peter Leithart, Alastair Roberts, and James Bejon. The third, and most recent, was reading Simon Schama’s groundbreaking book on the Dutch golden age, The Embarrassment of Riches.

The Embarrassment of Riches is a masterpiece because it manages to combine an extraordinary level of detail about things you would never normally think about—why women sweep the steps in the way they do, how sermons interact with popular art, what people have for dinner, and how ordinary people live in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries—with a genuinely sweeping thesis about why Dutch people are the way they are. (Calvinism and geography both play key roles. The fact that the Dutch reclaimed their land from the sea while resisting Spanish Catholicism has deeply shaped the way they think about themselves, the world, wealth, prosperity, frugality, and diligence, which in turn is vital to understanding their success and influence over the last few hundred years.) In that sense Schama manages to be both a truffle hunter and a parachutist. His nose is constantly buried in the ground looking for details and truffles, but he is also able to stand back and present a much larger thesis, one that has implications for the way we understand not only the Dutch but the way nations and societies function more generally. That combination is what makes the book so compelling.

The best historians all do the same thing. One of the reasons I have so enjoyed reading Robert Caro, Richard Evans, Barbara Tuchman, Dominic Sandbrook and co is that they manage to both uncover extraordinary and granular detail, and then integrate it into a compelling overarching narrative. So despite Ladurie’s claim that historians are naturally one or the other—which I suspect is true—the most compelling works of history are able to fuse both.

I was thinking about this in relation to biblical studies because exactly the same tendency exists there. Some people are naturally wired to paint on a very large canvas. They want to tell the biggest possible story and change the way you see everything. Others instinctively move in the opposite direction, wanting to investigate details that are tangible, observable, and demonstrable, building an argument from the ground up. Both approaches are valuable. Good scholarship needs both. But most if not all of us have a natural inclination towards one or the other.

The interesting thing is that many of the major intellectual breakthroughs in biblical studies seem to come from people who manage to combine both instincts. Yet because each of us has a natural preference, what often happens is that someone whose instinct is really to be a parachutist does just enough truffle hunting to produce one or two genuinely groundbreaking works, in which detailed observation and compelling data support a sweeping and illuminating thesis. Having established their reputation in that way, they then spend much of the rest of their career reverting to their natural mode. They continue producing large interpretative frameworks, but without the same depth of fresh evidence to support them. Gradually the claims become broader than the data can comfortably sustain. I can think of several prominent biblical theologians for whom that seems to have been the trajectory.

The reverse can happen as well. Someone whose instinct is really to be a truffle hunter uncovers fascinating new evidence, succeeds in presenting it within a compelling wider narrative, and produces an important breakthrough. But afterwards they return to doing what comes naturally: writing highly detailed studies of increasingly specialised questions. These may be meticulous, and persuasive within their own sphere, but they no longer capture the imagination because they are not integrated into a larger story.

Perhaps that is simply how scholarship works. I don’t know if anyone can consistently do both over the course of an entire career. Schama did it with The Embarrassment of Riches, and then with Citizens on the French Revolution. But much of his output, excellent though it is, does not quite have that same double impact.

The same is probably true of biblical scholars. Leading figures often produce one or two landmark works that combine painstaking detail with sweeping vision, and then spend much of the remainder of their careers working predominantly in the mode to which they are naturally inclined. There is nothing wrong with that. But I think the pattern is worth reflecting on nonetheless. Ladurie’s observation is not simply a comment about historians. It describes a much broader phenomenon in intellectual life: the enduring tension between those who search patiently for truffles and those who soar above the landscape looking for patterns—and the rare but remarkable individuals who manage, at least occasionally, to do both.