I've been meaning to blog about this for a while now, and am finally doing it. I've had the question in my head recently, "Is the Bible True, or does it only contain Truth?". This question all goes back to my first year at Bethany, when I said something along the lines of, "The Bible is true", and someone said "Is it?". It led to a discussion, in which my only response was, "umm...yes?" followed my a wimper. This of course was before the days that I enjoyed debates and discussions, and actually cowered away from them (my how things have changed). So I raise the question, once again "Is the Bible True?".
This will likely sound horrible and very unChristian, but I would have to argue that the Bible is NOT 100% true, and only CONTAINS Truth. It's a big difference, and may seem to shatter faith, although when you really look at the contents of the Bible, you can't say that everything in the Bible is infallable, True, and Holy. First of all, we have to look at the types of books we have in the Bible. We have letters, we have poetry, we have stories, songs, legends, and proverbs. Now, I am not going to argue that the stories in the Bible are false, and didn't happen. I believe that they did happen, and are true. However, we have to take into consideration that, back in biblical days, it was not uncommon, nor was it frowned upon, to exaggerate stories. Also, it must be remembered that theses stories were passed down verbally for many years before written down. We all know what happens with verbal stories. We've played the game Telephone as kids...we know that usually what is left at the end is not what started. I'm not going to say that the stories are so embellished that only very small fragments are true, but I am saying that we have to keep in mind that things have been embellished slightly, or at least very likely have been. For example, the story of Gideon. We know that story as a man who led 300 men against THOUSANDS of me. Now, he likely had more than 300 men, and perhaps the enemy didn't have as many men as the story says...but the bottom line is...he was vastly outnumbered, and defeated the enemy with God's help in a miraculous way. Does it really matter if he was outnumbered 3 to 1 or 10 to 1? Not really.
These exagerations don't mean that we can't trust the Bible...nor does it mean that the Israelites were liars...it's what was done back then. Numbers were symbolic, for example the number 40. Was it exactly 40 years that the Israelites wandered wht desert? Exactly 40 days and nights that it rained? Who knows....but it was a long time. The number 40 , like the numbers 7, 3 and 12, were very symbolic and meant a lot to the Israelite people. That is why certain numbers appear numerous times throughout Scripture...it's not a coincidence.
Now I want to get into likely the part of the Bible that is most often misread, misunderstood and misinterpreted among Christians. The Psalms. Do you ever notice how we take Psalm 23 and make it out to be whole hearted, 100% infallible truth? We analyze it, tear it apart and meditate over it. I'm not denying its power and beauty. I love it, and think it is a wonderful psalm...but we must remember that it is written by a person, in poetry form. We don't study World War II based solely on the poem "In Flanders Fields", even though that is a wonderful poem. It doesn't contain the whole truth...it's one persons opinion, feeling and description. Now, does Psalm 23 contain truth that is consistent with the rest of Scripture? Of course it does. But the Psalm was written by one person, at a particular time of his life, during certain circumstances. He also wrote Psalms about destroyign cities, killing enemies and having no hope. We don't take Ecclesiastes "Everything is Meaningless" super seriously, nor do we take many of the Proverbs as purely accurate...and yet we read the Psalms as if it is the word of the Lord himself. The Psalsm are beautiful, evoke wonderful emotion, and can be very worshipful...but we can't make them more than what they are. They are poems, hymns and songs.
Finally I want to talk about The Letters, or The Epistles. We can't forget that these books are written by one person to a certain group of people, or in some cases to one particular person. Do they contain truth, and great wisdom? Yes, but we can't attempt to claim every insight and every word as a word written to us. For example, there is a verse in one of the letters about women not being alolowed to lead or speak in church. At first this seems sexist, but when you realize that this was written to one particular church, where the women were gossips, liars, loud, obnoxious and spreading falsehoods, it makes more sense. It's not saying that no women ever should lead or speak in church..it's saying These women in This church.
This blog very likely will be misunderstood as me trying to undermine the Bible. I will probably get nasty comments about how we just need to take all of Scripture as the Holy Words of God. I don't want to make the Bible seem unimportant, false, or incomplete. On the contraty, I want to make sure that we fully understand what we can actually get from the Bible. It's because people take Scripture out of context, and put Truth where there shouldn't be, that we have genocides, sexism, racism, slavery, wars, bigotry, hate, and why Christians are judgemental, and seen as "better than thou". Please, leave a comment, let me know what you think, and feel free to disagree. What do you think, "Is the Bible True, or does it just contains Truth?"
1 comment:
We often have to force ourselves to remember that the Bible, all though God breathed--inspired, was written by human beings who had their own perspectives, worldviews, and interpretations of events and their meanings.
Although, I would have to say I'm less willing to call the stories embellished as a fault of oral tradition. In oral cultures, throughout the world and all history, it's been noted at how remarkably accurate their story telling is. It's a cultural thing. The Jews, just as Native North Americans, are used to using oral stories to teach history. Us as a part of typical Western culture are not used to this. Thus we have a tendency to lose accuracy VERY quickly. If embellishment took place, which in places it did, for example the use of 1000s as units of measurement that were to make a statement rather than historical record, I would strongly argue that oral tradition was not to blame.
...oh and with Gideon, it wasn't 3 to 1 or even 10 to 1. It was 400 to 1. The opposing army had, according to the text (embellished or not) 400 times as many men.
Great post Keith. Hard topic. If you're interested check out 2 Samuel 24:1 and 1 Chronicles 21:1. Two historical accounts of the exact same historical even (which is also recorded in extra-Biblical writing) that name to VERY, VERY different causes for the event taking place.
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