These few reminders are enough to show that history and biblical traditions only cover a small, though one the most important, area of human history at the crossroads of three continents. Perhaps no other area of the planet has seen so many geological and human upheavals. But most of humanity bypassed this history and experienced life and God in its own way. We should never forget that.

Biblical people came late on the “cheeseboard” of nations and for long time they did not raise any questions about those who had not received God’s Word of which they were the bearers. And for that reason, God said nothing to them about it because when God speaks to us, He speaks in human language and within our own culture and, to some degree, God respects our limitations and our ignorance. However, God had already communicated His word and His spirit in a thousand ways. At various times, Israelites or Christians thought that everything coming from abroad was bad, that all wisdom born outside of Jewish or Christian lands was to be rejected. But there were also inquisitive times during which faith became enriched through its contact with other cultures, other prophets and other thinkers.

We should not therefore seek to many answers from the Bible about the way God spoke in other cultures, the way His Spirit was at work at their midst, about the way in which they are touched today by the energy radiating from the risen Christ and how they are saved by the one and only Savior. The Bible only asserts that God’s call to Abraham was the start of a great and unique adventure, one which leads straight to the Son of God, to His Word or Wisdom made flesh.