The Bible Under Attack

Some people believe that the Bible is the inerrant Word of God. Some people believe that the Bible is an elaborate work of fiction. I think most people believe something somewhere in between.

I'm not even going to bother with the idea that the Bible is complete fiction. As far as the individual attacks on various parts of the Bible, though, let me put forth some discussion:

There is an organization called the Jesus Seminar, which, judging by the name, would seem to be a Christian organization, but, basically, this is a group of 'learned scholars' who have taken the opportunity to sit down and go through the New Testament, and decide (by a majority vote) which passages are true, and which are exaggerations or fabrications. This is a little like taking a group of people who have never seen a car, and giving them the owner's manual of a Porsche 911, and asking them to determine which parts of the manual are true. These people have never met Jesus, what criteria are they using to judge the veracity of the New Testament? Personal experience? If my experiences are dissimilar to yours, does that make mine invalid?

One common point of discussion (perhaps the word 'attack' is to severe) is that this book or that book wasn't written by the person who's name is on it. There are no written copies of the Gospels that date back to the time of the apostles lives, therefore they must not have been written by the apostles. Just out of curiosity, do we have any of the works of Shakespeare written in his own hand (I don't know, but I doubt it)? If Apostle Matthew didn't write the gospel of Matthew, then who did? Why did they attach Matthew's name to it? (well, okay, I know this one; it would have been to grant legitimacy to the document) More to the point, is there any real reason to believe that the Gospels were not written by Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John? I've heard it said that only one of the (alleged) gospel writers was even an eye-witness; I'm not sure which of the four he's referring to: Matthew and John were both disciples of Jesus, and Mark's position is somewhat unclear (he wasn't one of the twelve, but he may have been a follower, just the same). Luke was definitely not an eyewitness, but he became a Christian shortly after the crucifixion, and wrote down what he knew of the gospel story for the benefit of others. Luke's account shows that he had more than a little understanding of what would be required of an historian. Now, the fact that two of the four gospels are written be people who make no claim to be eyewitnesses at least partially refutes the idea that someone affixed Matthew's name or John's name to their account to add credibility (granted, the fact that Luke's account is accepted, even though he was not there, it doesn't necessarily follow that 'The Gospel According to Saint Arismus' would be accepted, but if Arismus was unsure of how a document written in his own name would fare, he might have attached an apostle's name to it). The other book that is frequently questioned is the book of Hebrews. This book claims to be a letter written by Paul to the Hebrews. Many scholars have compared this book to other Pauline epistles, and have concluded that the literary style is quite different. There is supposition that it was actually written by Priscilla, but she attached Paul's name to it because the early church wasn't ready to accept the writings of a woman. Let me take a little side trip for a moment. Anyone familiar with Shel Silverstein? I believe he is best known as an author of children's books, such as 'A Light in the Attic,' 'Where the Sidewalk Ends,' and 'The Giving Tree.' It's my understanding that these are all excellent books for children (I can't personally vouch for any of them, I haven't read them). Shel has also been a contributor to Playboy magazine, and has published some books with that organization. Now, the question is, do you suppose that Mr. Silverstein wrote children's books in the same style that he wrote for Playboy? The point being, there is more to literary style than just the identity of the author, the same author is going to write differently when his words are being directed to different audiences. Oh, but, you say, Paul wrote all of his epistles to Christians in the early church; where is the difference in audience? The difference is this: the book of Hebrews was the only epistle that Paul wrote to a body of believers that was familiar with Old Testament Scripture. He, having been raised a Pharisee, knew the Tanakh very well, and was able to use a lot more Old Testament references with the Hebrews than he could with any other of the epistles. IMHO, writing to gentiles must have been very much like writing to children--he would have had to have picked his words and phrases very carefully to make sure that no confusion arose due to his cross-culture communication. With the Hebrews, he could actually write what was on his heart, using the existent scripture, and use terms that were familiar to the Jews, drawing on their common upbringing.

Also, some people have brought up the fact that there are 'other gospels' that are not included in the Bible. Some have even made claims that these other gospels are older than the text from which the Bible is comprised. That's simply not the case. It is true that there are other documents out there that claim to be gospels, but they are not any older than Matthew, Mark, Luke or John. Most of the others are incomplete, as well. There is a well-known quote in 'The DaVinci Code' where contrarian scholar Sir Leigh Teabing 'reads' a passage from one of the gnostic gospels, but a good portion of that passage is supposition--the sentence in question is based on fragments of parchment (Dan Brown also pulls a linguistic 'fast one' here, pointing out that the phrase uses the term, 'companion,' which, in Aramaic, is the same word that would be translated as 'spouse.' That's true, but what Brown conveniently neglects to mention is that the gnostic gospels were written in Ancient Greek, which had very different words for 'companion' and 'spouse').

By the way, I don't mean to knock Dan Brown: He is a fiction writer, and, as far as I know, has never claimed to believe any of the things that Teabing espoused in the novel. Quite frankly, I think that by including religious controversy in his book, he helped to draw a lot of attention that the book probably wouldn't have gotten as just another murder mystery. That makes Brown a very clever man.