Chapter 4. Bible Can Justify Opposite Claims
The Bible is the primary written source of Christianity. Yet, this book contains numerous contradictory statements, which amounts to controversies in the Bible. How can we logically use this book to support our assertion if others can use the same book to disprove it? Through two millennia of transcriptions, including changes in definitions, culture, technology, and world beliefs, there exists no correct transcription of the original texts. More to the point, it isn’t even completely historically factual. There were no audio or visual recording of the events, not to mention the lack of timely news reports. Regardless, the Bible should be taken as a whole, contradictions and all. The primary message is that God loves us and everyone else.
The basis of Christianity comes from the Bible. It’s really a collection of dozens of separate books written by authors from all walks of life ranging from kings to laborers, and from military leaders to professional workers. Yet, these authors, who mostly never met one another, wrote them over a time span of more than a thousand years and were originally written in Hebrew, Greek and Aramaic – not English203. Regrettably, biblical words have been used to justify killing, including justifying violence to racial minorities, women, Jews, and homosexuals204.
Instead, I’ve heard it many times that the Bible is God’s love story to His people, but most Christians don’t really know what this means. In addition to being a military history book, it’s a law book full of rules that must be obeyed. It also contains fascinating stories, many of which contain R-rated adult themes. For instance, it contains stories about abortion, adultery, exhibitionism, homosexuality, incest, murder, polygamy, rape, robbery, slavery, suicide, torture, and war.
What do these stories really tell us? What should we learn from them? Are the messages today different than the messages intended thousands of years ago? And what do they say about our Christian faith? Are these stories accurate? Why are there so many interpretations and so many different denominations? What are we to believe; and who are we to believe? There are so many questions. Still, there are differing answers to each, depending on who we ask. Assisting us, there are tons of books available that provides us in-depth knowledge into the Bible, so I won’t do that for you in this book. However, I’ll briefly discuss its contents, the impact of language translations upon various versions, the context at the time it was written, the different interpretations, some of its controversial contradictions, and the resultant numerous denominations. For me, the message isn’t that complicated. Simply stated, the Bible is nothing more than God’s message through both literal and non-literal stories that He loves me and everyone else.
Content
In addition to more than seven million Christian book titles and fifty-six thousand Christian periodicals, there are over seventy million Bibles distributed annually205. The Bible contains many books, written by many authors from different times. Now, how were these books determined worthy of inclusion? What were the criteria? And, who made the decision? Why were some books not selected? To understand the Bible, we must understand why the contents were included206. These were decisions made by men, not God, though. True, we can say that the contents were inspired by God. But, God didn’t make these decisions, and He definitely didn’t personally write the books. After spending countless hours looking through Scriptures, I couldn’t locate anything indicating that God wanted a complete, closed, never-changing, single collection of books for a Bible. Nor, could I find anything written that He inspired the Bible, let alone telling us that our current Bible is both infallible and accurate207. Scriptures are inspired; the Bible isn’t208. Furthermore, God does inspire different people to do different things, even contrary to one another, while others may erroneously think their poor decisions were God-inspired.
Let me describe my recent divine inspiration. I had a dream one night early in 2011. This was a very vivid dream about writing my book, which was very clear to me the following morning. However, it still took me almost two years to put these ideas into written words. Much of this time was spent researching the source documents of my ideas to ensure that the facts in this book were verifiable facts. Then, I wrote my interpretation of these facts and laid out my understanding of everything I knew. Even now, can I truly say that I was divinely inspired? I really don’t know for sure, and I most definitely can’t prove it to you. What I do know is that I felt compelled to write this book, and that this book reinforced my understanding of the teachings of Jesus. Maybe, this is indeed divinely inspired. Having this personal experience, I fully understand how Christians can believe that their own decisions could be divinely inspired.
Now, back to the contents of the Bible. Only a few of the books specifically identify its author, leaving the others to guesses. Tables 8 and 9, obtained from the Christian Apologetics & Research Ministry (CARM), contain lists of the books of the Bible, its traditional author, and the approximate date written209. Instead of spending countless hours researching for this data, I chose to use the information from CARM, which is a non-profit Christian ministry that analyzes all religions such as Islam, Jehovah's Witnesses, Mormonism, Roman Catholicism, Universalism, and Wicca210. For me, this was close enough to the truth. I also listed the original language.
Table 8. Books of the Bible – Old Testament.
Table 8. Books of the Bible – Old Testament. (continued).
According to Dr. James Denison, President of the Center for Informed Faith, the early Christians used four criteria for accepting a book into its Christian Scripture, which later became the New Testament. First, an apostle or eyewitness must have written the book. Second, the book must be both credible and believable. Third, the entire Church, not just a single congregation, must accept it. And, finally, the entire Church must approve it211.
Table 9. Books of the Bible – New Testament.
From 50 through 100 CE, the New Testament books were written. However, other books were written during this period that could have been included, such as Didache in 70 CE and the Epistle of Barnabas in 100 CE212. Around 200, the Muratonian Canon with the oldest known list of books was developed213. By 367, Bishop Athanasius of Alexandria wrote the number and order of the books in his 39th Festal, Easter, letter of 367214. Almost a thousand years later, during the Council of Florence in 1442, the entire Church recognized twenty-seven books, though didn’t declare them unalterable215. Finally, the Council of Trent in 1546 made decisions on the Christian biblical canons for the Catholic Church, the Thirty-Nine Articles in 1563 for the Church of England, the Westminster Confession of Faith in 1647 for Calvinism, and the Synod of Jerusalem in 1672 for the Orthodox Church216.
Moreover, the Catholic and Orthodox Bibles contain the Apocrypha, ancient books not recognized by Protestants in theirs217. Apocryphal writings “denoted a composition which claimed a sacred origin, and was supposed to have been hidden for generations, either absolutely, awaiting the due time of its revelation, or relatively, inasmuch as knowledge of it was confined to a limited esoteric circle”218. Table 10 lists the books generally considered part of this Apocrypha, classified by either Jewish or Christian origin.
I caution you when reading these books of the Apocrypha since there is no standard English translation219. Furthermore, there are different titles used for the same texts, along with the same titles used for different texts. As well, these texts vary in depth and breadth of coverage since not every text is fully translated220. Correspondingly, there remains a wide disagreement on authors,
Table 10. Books of the Bible – Apocrypha.
dates, geographical origins, and theological orientations221. If you are interested in reading these, though, I recommend James Elliott’s 1993 The Apocryphal New Testament, which is a based on the 1924 work of M. R. James while retaining the same value. I believe that the introductions and bibliographies in Elliot’s book make this a better choice. There’s no doubt that the books of the Apocrypha were and continue to remain controversial; but, it can’t be denied, though, that fourteen of them were included in the original King James Bible.
As for the official selection of New Testament books, there were many who challenge the list chosen and recommend the inclusion of other books. For example, Archbishop William Wake formally disputed “the authority of those uncharitable, bickering, and ignorant Ecclesiastics who first suppressed” the New Testament Scriptures in his Forbidden Books of the Bible. A Church of England priest, Wake was the Archbishop of Canterbury from 1715 until 1737222. Wake, in his book, claimed that the dissension, personal jealousy, intolerance, and bigotry contributed to the evolution of the Bible. Moreover, according to Edward Hancock, a later contributor to Wake’s book, “bishops who extracted these books from the original New Testament, under the pretense of being Apocryphal, and forbade them to be read by the people, is proved by authentic impartial history too odious to entitle them to any deference”223. They both implied that the Nicene Council was a pious fraud in suppressing these books. Moreover, Wake’s book includes text from those missing books224.
Also missing from the Bible are the Gnostic Gospels, which is a collection of books based upon the teachings of Jesus and several prophets225. Andrew Bernhard comments in his 2006 text-critical edition of non-canonical gospels that the definition of “gospel” should be used for any text describing the teachings or activities of Jesus. These gospels were written from the second to the fourth century. Recently, these gospels received widespread attention as a result of Dan Brown’s 2003 bestselling novel The Da Vinci Code, which used them in its story. Brown’s book was a very intriguing and disturbing fictional book involving treachery, religious fanaticism, secret societies and an ancient conspiracy, making it widely popular globally. It also raised several thought-provoking questions about the reliability and accuracy of the Bible226. Even though it was cleverly written, Brown’s book contained numerous factual errors; yet, many people continue to believe these factual errors to be correct227.
Can we learn from reading these non-canonical books228? At least, reading them provides us more insight into the environment of the times and into additional literature that could supplement our further understanding of the canonical books. Table 11 contains a list of some of those missing books along with a brief description of each. For me, the four canonical Gospels are interpretive portraits of Jesus, not direct eyewitness accounts229. Regrettably, most people believe them to be accurate biographies of Him and an accurate history of the time. What most people fail to understand is that the early Christians believed that the remembered oral words of Jesus were more important than the written documents230. Initially, these stories were communicated orally, and it wasn’t until decades later when they were written down. Sadly, it’s these written words that we assume today to be an accurate account of Jesus.
Conversely, we can find others who would disagree with Wake while others advocate for the inclusion of these missing books. For one, Timothy Keller, an Adjunct Professor of Practical Theology at Westminster Theological Seminary and pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church (PCA) in New York City, wrote that many scholars don’t accept these missing books from the Bible and aren’t accepted by scholars. Actually, he believes that they aren’t better than the ones contained in the Bible and that any claim of them being “better sources than the recognized gospels on the teachings and deeds of Jesus is simply unsupportable”231. So, what should we believe? Should we try to get these missing books included in the Bible? Instead, should we protest any attempts to get them included? If you want to read them, you can easily obtain free copies of these books on the Web for your review. I obtained many of my copies from the Project Gutenberg site of free electronic books founded by Michael Hart in 1971.
What about the writers of the books in the Bible? How likely is it that the traditional authors listed in Table 8 and Table 9 above were the actual writers? Does it matter? Some people determine the credibility of a book based upon the credentials of the author. This means that for many people, the author is important. For me, I prefer to weigh the contents of the writings as being more important than the writer. As such, I consider the source of the documents in my assessment of the writing’s credibility. With that said, let me provide you my personal opinion of who wrote some of the books of the Bible. And, I refer to the mortal authors, not the divine inspiration of God, in my opinion.
The first five books of the Old Testament (Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy), are referred to as the
Table 11. Some Books Missing From the Bible.
Table 11. Some Books Missing From the Bible (continued).
Table 11. Some Books Missing From the Bible (continued).
Table 11. Some Books Missing From the Bible (continued).
Pentateuch. Moses was supposed to have been the writer of these233. However, most secular scholars suggest that these were not written by a single author and were likely written over several centuries234. I don’t believe that Moses wrote the first five books of the Old Testament, either, which included a description of his death. Yet, it’s written in the Gospels that Jesus claimed that he had235. I also don’t believe that King David wrote Psalms either. Still, it’s written in the Gospels that Jesus claimed that he had236.
Matthew, the tax collector and apostle, is the traditional author of the Gospel of Matthew. On the contrary, many scholars suggest that the author wasn’t an eyewitness, but instead probably written by an ethnic Jewish scribe and written between 70 and 100237. Luke, the companion of Paul, is the traditional author of the Gospel of Luke and Acts. But, the author was probably an unknown amateur Hellenistic historian238. John, an apostle, is the traditional author of the Gospel of John, three Epistles, and Revelation. However, many scholars believe that he wasn’t the author of these five books239. But, does it really matter who the mortal authors of the books are?
Many Christians believed that God wrote the Bible through divine inspiration of men as stated in 2 Timothy 3:16. Yet, there were some Christians who believe the complete opposite, such as Bart Ehrman, the James A. Gray Distinguished Professor of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill240. He was also the New York Times bestselling author of Misquoting Jesus and Jesus, Interrupted. Professor Ehrman specifically wrote that, “many of the books of the New Testament were written by people who lied about their identity, claiming to be a famous apostle -- Peter, Paul or James”241. Once again, there exist many learned scholars today who will be willing to provide contradictory assessments. Ultimately, only you can decide for yourself what you will use as the basis of your Christian faith.
As for its contents and analyses thereof, I prefer the tradition-rhetorical criticism process explained by Assistant Professor April DeConick of the Illinois Wesleyan University. This process is an approach to understanding literature by considering the author’s attempt to modify religious traditions while allowing for the traditions of the time242. This process involves assessing the conflicts present that motivated the author to create the text, the religious traditions of the time, the actual modifications of the tradition resulting from the new text, and the author’s most likely meaning of the text. Moreover, the books of the New Testament should best be understood from the environment of the authors, such as the Judaism and Hellenistic religious environment.
Otherwise, the reader would be unable to comprehend the writing and quickly succumb to illogical arguments given by experts.
Translations and Interpretations
Let me begin this section with a personal example. This is a story about my youth and my love of treasure hunting. It’s been more than forty years since any of this happened; but, this is my remembrance of it, putting these into written words for the first time. And, it’s my firsthand account of the events. Although some of this information may not be entirely accurate, the story and its overall meaning are indeed accurate. And, this is how I judge the translations, transcriptions, and interpretations of the Bible. Now, here’s my brief biographical story about treasures.
My grandfather, Bert Fortuna, Sr., had three things that he loved to do: fishing, hunting, and lovemaking. Yes, I said lovemaking. And, this is what my grandmother said. So, it must be true. Who could contradict her on this subject? As a child, I enjoyed two of these loves with him. We’d spend time together fishing near Spike Horn Acres, which was my grandfather’s cabin near White Cloud, Michigan, north of the city of Newaygo and near Croton Dam. I remember fondly of those seemingly long trips north from Grand Rapids. Sometimes, we’d stop for fresh plain cake donuts if we departed early in the morning. On the return trip, we’d usually stop for ice cream sundaes, especially those scrumptious hot fudge ones for me. All wonderful memories for a child who enjoyed sweets.
My grandfather taught me how to fish and spent time with me while fishing near this cabin. Sometimes, we’d fish in one of the small creeks running nearby; other times, we’d go via car to a hidden lake further into the woods. These were definitely fun times, even when we came back with no fish. But, there was always a story of how the big one got away.
In addition to fishing, I learned some hunting techniques, specifically how to use a bow and arrow. Behind the cabin was the family shooting range, which we used for practicing both bow and gun. Accordingly, I acquired skill in using different types of bows, from the simple ones to the compound bows. On one occasion while I hunted deer alone with my bow, I wandered into a nearby clearing, where I sat beneath a tree. Being overcome with the boredom of waiting for one to appear, I fell asleep. About an hour later, I heard a noise, which was a doe in the field about fifty yards in front of me. It spent several minutes just staring at him. And, before I managed to get the bow ready to shoot, the doe darted off. No one believed this story except for my grandfather.
The most memorable hunting experiences involved hunting for treasure, such as boxes of hidden loot from pirates and crooks. The two of us would-be treasure hunters would talk about different plans necessary to find these throughout Michigan. We even talked about obtaining a metal detector to search for a variety of expensive metallic objects, such as golden doubloons, below the surface. My grandfather provided me locations of these treasures, such as in the basement of abandoned buildings and old barns. However, spooks, probably dead burglars, guarded these boxes of loot. Once, we attempted to enter the cellar of an old farmhouse near Cedar Rapids. My grandfather had a map of the basement, which contained an “X” marking the site of the hidden treasure. Unfortunately, it was nowhere near the stairs. In the vicinity of the buried treasure was a decaying bed on a floor of broken glass with a large boot nearby, which was supposed to be a boot worn by one of the spooks sleeping on the bed. As we both began to descend slowly into this dark basement, my grandfather quickly ran upstairs and darted out of the house screaming that he saw the spook waking up. This convinced me to leave too, daring not to enter the basement and look for the treasure, leaving it to the scary spook for another day.
Through these experiences, I became very fascinated with haunted houses, believing that they contained the spirits of deceased beings who may have been former residents or were familiar with the property. As my grandfather explained, these ghosts were the spirits of dead people who haven’t passed over, becoming trapped inside the property where their memories and energy were strong. I further understood that these haunted buildings often contained spooks that made noises, appeared as apparitions, and moved physical objects. As a child, I had no desire to meet a spook face-to-face. Not even as an adult, either. They were just too scary.
In addition to searching for treasures in old abandoned houses, we would even search for treasure within old barns near the side of the roads. These barns were often found in a state of disrepair, maybe because they were no longer the centers of family and community life they once were. No matter if we grew up on the farm or in the city, I felt that barns spoke to the feeling of country life and America's rural past, being a symbol of rural architecture, rural life, and the rural community. Therefore, these barns, despite their shortcomings, continued to appeal to my senses, my memories and my imagination, such as searching for hidden treasures. On our way north to the cabin, we sometimes took a side trip to look for old barns. Even though we wandered through a half dozen of these barns throughout several trips, the one I remembered best was the barn with new windows in the hayloft area. According to my grandfather, the spooks installed them so that they could clearly see anyone approaching the barn, meaning there must be a treasure somewhere near. Because of that observation window, there was no way we were going to search that barn.
Sometimes, someone comes along in your life who knew how to get your attention while putting important things into perspective. That person would tell us how life works, providing their insights that life is really not complicated or political or negative. They would even listen to our opinions and value them, even if we were very young and inexperienced, especially for an eight-year old boy. My grandfather was one of those few people in my life. As one can imagine, I have wonderful memories of my grandfather from him showing his love through the time he spent sharing his loves, especially fishing and hunting.
So, why did I spend some time writing about my grandfather and treasure hunting in this chapter about the Bible? First, my hunt for treasures has changed since I was a child. As a child, I sought the treasure of fortune, the one with lots of gold, diamonds, and monetary currency. As an adult, I no longer seek fortune. Instead, 106
I hunt for the meaning of life today. I fully appreciate the fact that I can’t take my money with me when I die. As you should be able to tell by now, this book contains knowledge I found in my quest for this meaning. The other reason why I wrote about my grandfather is that this is a story that several people have questioned. For one, my mother told me several times that my grandfather wasn’t a good father to her and that he didn’t treat women as equals to men. This may be true, but my story doesn’t involve those topics. The primary topic of my story was that my grandfather loved his grandson and showed his love with his time and efforts. And, that was my interpretation of this story.
Now, back to the interpretations of the Bible. Previously, I discussed the mortal writers of the biblical books and not the assumed divine influence. I find it very difficult to believe that God wrote every word in every language of those books throughout thousands of years. Believing in complete divine authorship requires us to assume that God is a super manipulator by helping each writer write and transcribe the Bible. This would require us to believe that He was a super manipulator by watching each scribe copy the texts and each translator from one language to another, to ensure that there would be no mistakes, errors, or omissions of His words243.
We must remember that every translation of the oldest document from Greek, Hebrew, or Aramaic, reflected the biases of the numerous translators throughout time. There were no existing accurate or correct translations of the manuscripts, not even an original one. However, some copies were clearly more accurate than others. But, which ones were better? I caution you to never take a translation as an authority over a document written in its original language of Greek, Hebrew, or Aramaic. Such as, we must consider word choice, punctuation, word order, terms and terminology, past usage of words, present usage of words, and correct understanding of basic scriptural words and terms. Furthermore, we must understand that most documents written in the original host language didn’t have punctuation or word structure like the English language does.
Another fact is that many Jews couldn’t even read Hebrew, and this disturbed the Jewish leaders. Actually, most of the Old Testament was written in Hebrew spanning more than a thousand years244. Around 300 BCE, a translation of the Old Testament from Hebrew into Greek was undertaken which was completed about a hundred years later. Gradually this Greek translation of the Old Testament, called the Septuagint, was widely accepted and was even used in many synagogues during Jesus’ time245. Moreover, the New Testament was first written in Greek. We might think this was unusual and would have assumed that it was written in either Hebrew or Aramaic. But, the Greek language was the scholastic language during the latter part of the first century CE246.
To fully understand the translated texts, we should have a fundamental understanding of paleography. This is the scientific study of ancient writing, which was written on papyrus, parchment, paper, potsherds, wood, or waxed tablets247. Prior to the seventeenth century, this science didn’t exist, requiring early scholars to make guesses regarding the ages of documents. This science today requires an understanding in the production of the books, specifically the materials, textual formatting, and writing devices such as ink.
As mentioned previously, none of the original archetypal texts of any book in the New Testament exists today248. Further compounding the concerns is that the early Greek New Testament documents were written with no spacing between the words, requiring some training to individualize the words249. The following is an example of this paragraph with no spacing or punctuation.
ASMENTIONEDPREVIOUSLYNONEOFTHEOR
IGINALARCHETYPALTEXTSOFANYBOOKIN
THENEWTESTAMENTEXISTSTODAYFURTHE
RCOMPOUNDINGTHECONCERNSISTHATTHE
EARLYGREEKNEWTESTAMENTDOCUMENT
SWEREWRITTENWITHNOSPACINGBETWEEN
THEWORDSREQUIRINGSOMETRAININGTOIN
DIVIDUALIZETHEWORDSTHEFOLLOWINGIS
ANEXAMPLEOFTHISPARAGRAPHWITHNOSP
ACINGORPUNCTUATION
Can you imagine reading an entire book written like that of this preceding paragraph example without spacing and punctuation? And, can you imagine doing so without errors or misinterpretations from the original writer? I couldn’t do it, even after reading several books about it250.
The Latin Vulgate, a collection of texts that Saint Jerome compiled and translated during the latter part of the fourth century, was dominant in Western Christianity through the Middle Ages251.The first mass produced printed Christian book was the Bible, a version based on the Latin edition from about 380. John Wycliffe was the first to translate it into English252. Johannes Gutenberg printed this in mass quantities in Mainz, Germany from 1452 -1455. Of interest, translated in the thirteenth century, the Old French Bible is the oldest complete biblical translation to survive in Western Europe253. Since then, the Bible was translated into numerous languages.
Now back to my discussion about translations. There have been numerous linguistic and ideological approaches to translating these documents. For instance, one tran