Are we doing a disservice to children with these books?
There is only one hero in the Bible. These book titles give the impression that there is a whole category of people who are ‘heroes’ in the Bible.
The people often characterized as heroes are, to the contrary, ordinary human beings - which is to say, sinful and flawed human beings.
The list names - Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Samuel, Saul, David, Solomon, Peter, James, John, Paul - are noteworthy and significant, but not heroes in the common sense of the word.
In fact, the text goes out of its way to show us that both the sins and the inabilities of these people. Not only are wrongdoings of each carefully catalogued, but their ineptitudes and insufficiencies are also listed.
In sum, the narrative is working precisely to prevent us from calling these people ‘heroes.’
By contrast, the one true hero of the metanarrative which spans all of Scripture is God. Numerically, adjectives like ‘righteous’ are applied far more often to God than to any one human being, or even all human beings together.
God heroically uses flawed and sinful human beings to accomplish His will.
God is the one true Hero.
The Bible is not a book with heroes and villains. It is a book with one Hero, one villain, and many ordinary human beings. For this reason, Jesus says that “no one is good - except God alone.”
If we attempt to rewrite Moses and David and Abraham and Joshua into heros, we create a scenario in which God uses only this superior class of people to perform His mighty deeds.
But if we realize that that these people were poor, miserable sinners - exactly like us - and if we realize that God used them anyway, then we can also understand that God can and will use us, despite our many imperfections, to carry out His will.
