Is This For Me?

It occurs to me that many people have some confusion as to what was written to them, and what was not written to them.
Some churches actually teach that you shouldn’t read the Old Testament, because it wasn’t written for Christians. I think that is erroneous, as the Old Testament writings help one to understand the New Testament. There are many times that the New Testament refers to prophecies in the Old, which don’t make much sense without some knowledge of the Old. Further, there are many things in the Old Testament that help to illuminate the conditions under which the New Testament was written, so knowledge of the Old Testament can be very valuable in understanding the New Testament. Just as an example, I have posted before about how the Passover sacrifice compares to the crucifixion. Some of what was written in the gospels makes a lot more sense with an understanding of the Passover.
Some people are under the impression that, although the Gospels relate Jesus’ teachings, it is the epistles that really teach the message of salvation. This, too, is erroneous. The epistles were written to people who already had a relationship with Christ. Notice that generally the epistles are addressed to believers (Romans 1:7, 1 Corinthians 1:2, 2 Corinthians 1:1, Galatians 1:2, Ephesians 1:1, Philippians 1:1, Colossians 1:2, 1 Thessalonians 1:1, 2 Thessalonians 1:1, 1 Timothy 1:2, 2 Timothy 1:2, Titus 1:4, Philemon 1:1, etc. Hebrews is not addressed to anyone, James is addressed to “the twelve tribes”, but, in general), either a church, or an individual, that were already saved. I would imagine that might be possible to put together a study on salvation using only the epistles, but it would be difficult, at best; I’m not entirely sure, I’ve never tried—nor would I. The only reason that I suspect that it’s even possible is because the apostles writing letters to the churches would, at times, want to talk about what the church needs to offer to those outside the church. To be honest, though, the main purpose of the epistles was to encourage those who were already saved, not only to stay saved, but also to grow in Christ. In some cases, they were used to correct things that the churches were doing wrong. Realistically, though, if you want to learn about salvation, you should look at what Jesus taught in the Gospels, and then look at what the Apostles did with that teaching in the Book of Acts; keeping in mind that He worked with them for three years, and He wouldn’t have sent them out to spread His message unless He knew that they understood it.
There are also some people that seem to think that we shouldn’t worry too much about what the epistles say, because those were written to specific individuals or churches, and not so much to the modern church. Again, I think this idea is erroneous. The group of believers that I belong to may not be in the situation that, say, the church at Corinth was in when 1st Corinthians was written, but there is a good chance that we will be if we aren’t careful. It wouldn’t be in the Bible if it would never apply; God is not a fan of idle words. Think of it as having tools in a toolbox. Sometimes you may pick up a tool, and not recognize it, or understand what it is for, and you may be tempted to throw that tool away. You should probably put it in your toolbox anyway, because if you find yourself needing that tool later, you may not be able to find it again. God doesn’t give us tools for no reason. Sometimes He gives us tools long before we understand the reason, though.

Do You Agree?

Several years ago, I was riding with three other people, on my way to church, and we witnessed a hit-and-run accident. Each of us made a note of the license plate number of the car that was at fault, we called for police, and called an ambulance for the victim, and ended up showing up late for church. The accident became embroiled in a jurisdictional dispute, and no one came to take our statements for several weeks. When they did come, they wound up with four different license plate numbers. The first three turned out to be completely fictitious—those numbers had never been issued by the state. The fourth turned out to be a vehicle that was reported stolen several hours before the accident. No wonder he didn’t stick around to talk to the police. The four license numbers were close to the same, but three of them were remembered incorrectly. Does this make us liars? No, of course not, none of us intentionally provided false information. For most intents and purposes, it didn’t really make any difference—after all, the vehicle in question was a stolen car, even the correct license plate number didn’t help track down the people that caused the accident. Sometimes details just aren’t important.
Some people have made a big deal about differences in the four gospels. If they were all accurate, shouldn’t they all say the same thing? On the other hand, if they all said the same thing, what would be the point of having four of them?
For the most part, the inconsistencies are minor: I’ve posted before about the different accounts of who went to the tomb on Sunday morning; there is also an account in Matthew 20:30 that says Jesus healed two blind men, and another account in Mark 10:46 that says Jesus healed a blind man; Mark says that Jesus prophesied that “before the cock crow twice, thou shalt deny me thrice” (Mark 14:30) and that, in fact, the cock crew once after Peter’s first denial (Mark 14:68), and again after the third (Mark 14:72), Matthew says the rooster only crowed one time (Matthew 26:34, 74) (I’ve even known people to really stretch the point by comparing the prophecy in one gospel to the fulfillment in the other), Mark 15:27 says that Jesus was crucified with a thief on either side, Luke, being less sure of what the other two men were convicted of, simply refers to them as malefactors (Luke 23:33). Details. Does it really matter if Mary Magdalene went to the tomb alone, or with a group of other women? Does it really matter if Jesus healed one blind man or two? Does it really matter if the rooster crowed once or twice? I have to admit, I think Mark’s version of the story is more powerful: Here is Peter, caught up in the moment, and at his first denial, the rooster crows one time. At some level of Peter’s consciousness, that had to have registered as a red flag, but he was so concerned about the immediate situation, that he didn’t stop to think about what the significance of a rooster crowing might be. It happens every morning, doesn’t it? But there was that nagging thought that there was a particular significance to this particular rooster. After the third denial, the rooster crowed again, and for whatever reason, the people around him decided to drop the issue. With the pressure off of him, Peter realized what it meant, and even realized that if he had been paying attention, he could have stopped himself after the first denial.
What’s really interesting is that the minor differences in the accounts shows that these men wrote down the best of their recollections, or the best they knew of what they had learned from the actual witnesses; they didn’t sit down together and concoct a story—then the four gospels would all say exactly the same thing. Critics of the gospels point out that when Jesus appeared before Caiaphas, the High Priest, that, as bad as Caiaphas wanted to see Jesus put to death for something, he couldn’t get two witnesses to agree on anything (Mark 14:59). Now if this man, who wanted to convict Jesus, wouldn’t go to trial with witnesses that didn’t agree, how dare we, as Christians, expect people to believe gospels that don’t agree? Unfortunately, the Gospels only record one of the accusations made against Jesus, that, He said, if the temple be destroyed, He would build it again in three days; to people who didn’t understand what He was saying, that would have sounded more like the ravings of a lunatic than a criminal that needed to be put to death. I suspect that the real problem here is that they would have like to have had Him convicted of insurrection, but when one accused Him of saying that Jews shouldn’t pay tribute money, another witness spoke out and pointed out that He said, “Render to Caesar…” This is the sort of contradiction that Caiaphas was complaining about, not minor details that wouldn’t have made any difference. Jesus called that straining at a gnat.

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.