Truth and Lies Bible
Our modern debate about the inerrancy of scripture is stupid on both sides. On one side, dumb Christians want us to not question anything. On the other, dumb skeptics say we should doubt everything. Both of these viewpoints are ahistorical, ignoring the nuance of words which have survived thousands of years and continue to shape reality.
Facts:
Bible was written by human hands
Most published book by far
Most translated
Highest grossing R-rated movie
Highest earning crowdfunding campaign
Biggest religion
Conformists want to bury their heads in the sand, but with this many hands involved, of course there are errors. If we believe the Bible is written by the Holy Spirit, it is spectacular the degree to which he humbled himself (borrowing this from St. Augustine) to the fallibility of humans, yet still reigns supreme.
If we deny the existence of God, then the story is the work of liars or lunatics.
If it is a lie, why has it been so effective? What evil genius could have thought up such an elaborate ruse?
If it is lunacy, why so contagious?
Ignoring these questions, modern skeptics obsess over semantics and quickly conclude it’s all meaningless. Thus goes the baby out with the bath water. It’s like saying: Because there are glitches in software, computers don’t exist! Or: Because someone clapped on the offbeat, everyone must stop dancing!
Both sides of this debate justify the other in avoiding the sublime mystery of the text.
The question is, as Pontius Pilot asks Jesus, what is truth?
BIBLE AS LITERARY MIRACLE
We reduce truth to history, but baffling all, this history is also a narrative masterpiece. At first glance the Bible is a horrific jumble of fear, anger, and love. The closer you read, the more is revealed. As St. Augustine points out, what is hidden in the Old Testement is revealed in the New Testament. Jesus’ dying words in the Gospel of Mark are confusing—“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”—until you read Psalm 22! There are countless examples: the stories of Isaac, Joseph, and David all shed new understanding on Jesus, yet do so backwards in time. Who could write such a “history” if not the author of history?
Both conformists and skeptics reduce truth to a form of static information to be put in a book, on a shelf, so as to not think about it anymore. But the stories in the Bible are truthful in a way that calls for action. These are stories to be lived. As a wiseman might say, these days: life is a videogame and the Bible is the cheat codes.
Is music true? Anyone thinking about that won’t be dancing much. Is math true? It’s just an idea, but it works. Is it true?!—God became man and died to save us from damnation.
HISTORY AS LITERARY MIRACLE
If we doubt that there ever was a priest, prophet and king named Jesus, we must doubt all history. No person haunts the historical record anywhere close to this crazy carpenter from the boondocks of a long-gone dusty Roman colony. Friend of fishermen, tax collectors, and loose women, and yet a moral champion—who could make this up? But do we doubt that Pythagoras was murdered by a mob? Do we doubt that Plato hung out with silly wiseman running naked in the streets? Why can’t we all agree that Pecos Bill really did rope a tornado? If we respect history, we must consider Jesus.
Challenging the comfortable modern armchair historian who thinks Jesus was just another wiseman among many, we must be either outraged or enthralled that Jesus claimed to be God. Not a god—the one and only Most High walking around in sandals, washing folks’ feet. Shortly after his bodily departure, the God-on-Earth claim engulfed the Roman Empire and, as soon as humanly possible, the entire world.
The Gospels were written decades after the disciples had traveled all over the known world. These stories had been retained by memory and oral tradition. What is more surprising than how they differ is how much they tell the same story. Did Jesus over-turn tables at the beginning of his ministry or at the end? Did Jesus walk on the water or did he just calm the storm? These are matters of memory and narrative structure. The general story is the same in all 4 accounts: John was baptizing in the Jordan, Jesus came preaching, he performed the most astounding miracles imaginable (really, can you imagine anything better?), was condemned, went willing through torture, humiliation, death, then lived again.
By the time of the Council of Nicaea, the Gospels had been canonized through three centuries of martyrdom. You have to know what you believe in order to die for it—unlike the Gnostics who were so privileged in their secret knowledge, they couldn’t be bothered by decapitation, incineration, upside-down crucifixion, and lions. Now we learn from bestselling novels and anonymous YouTubers, that these Gnostics wrote many alternate Gospels, which were discovered shortly after carbon dating was made impossible by the atomic bomb. Though the promise of secret knowledge is alluring, it assumes the general population is ignorant of common knowledge which might be found in a history textbook.
HISTORY, THEN AND NOW
The Council of Nicaea was convened by Emperor Constantine to resolve the conflict in Church dogma instigated by Arius, who challenged trinitarianism, arguing Jesus was the son of God, but not God. The church rejected Arius, but Constantine eventually converted to Arianism. Perhaps as Emperor, he was put off by the “King of kings” idea. Modern pushers of secret knowledge, like Dan Brown, expect their readers and subscribers to be ignorant of this “history.” Indeed, if all history was made up by powerful people trying to control the masses, why wouldn’t Dan Brown do the same?
The problem with the modern debate around the in/errancy of scripture is it that makes us the judges of God’s word. Instead of living, learning, and loving, we climb into towers of babble.
CONCLUSION
History or parable? Or both?
The Word became flesh. He sat in the garden, alone. The priests captured and judged him. They handed him over to the soldiers. The soldiers were confused. “What is truth?” They asked the Word. “We find no fault in him,” they told the crowd. Trying to save his life, they tortured him. They crowned the Word in sarcasm, but the crowds still demanded blood. The Word walked with the cross to which he was nailed. He died sooner than expected. Yet here we are, still speaking his name today.
Discussion question:
How is reading the Bible different if you do/don’t believe in God?
If you don’t believe in God, and you still believe in truth?
If you don’t believe,, how can you know?
To add: Bible as library. You don’t read a poem the same as a genealogy.