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More Notes on the Bible

Research by Kerry A. Shirts

The Bible is one of the great books of the world. However, there have been those who continually misunderstand just what it is, and how it came to be, and some of the problems inherent in the Bible. Fundamentalist Christians have the utterly mistaken idea that the Bible is perfect, that every word in it came from God directly to man and that all that God has ever spoken, done, seen, or felt is written and contained in the Bible. This is utterly and simply naive and worthless in getting to the truth of the Bible, or God, how he acts, thinks, feels, etc.

A perspective I have always thought of through the years, especially when dealing with the Bible with Christians who blatantly misunderstand, and refuse to consider really what the Bible is all about, who only are satisfied with prooftexting it, and from one verse out of thousands build their theology into an elaborate system of useless diatribes, is found in Smith's Bible Dictionary.

"There are at least 36 different authors, who wrote in three continents, in many countries, in three languages, and from every possible human standpoint. Among these authors were kings, farmers, mechanics, scientific men, lawyers, generals, fishermen, ministers, and priests, a tax-collector, a doctor, some rich, some poor, some city bred, some country born - thus touching all the experiences of men - extending over 1500 years."1

In fact up to our day one of our main problems is that "we are unable to reconstruct with confidence precisely which lists of books were considered authoritative by Jesus and his earliest followers."2

Richard Elliott Friedman has analyzed how the Old Testament was put together in a sort of mystery detective thriller.3 And there have been some debating and sparring over the gender of the authors of the Old Testament as well.4

On one thing most serious Bible scholars agree on, is that the Bible is not a perfectly written, grammatically correct, historically 100% accurate, perfectly preserved book. Does it need to be in order for it to be God's word though? Granted God, by definition is perfect, but men and women are not. And God chooses to go through human mediums when giving his instructions. In the process of editing, translating, transmitting the records, things get lost, shuffled around, changed, added to and deleted from.

William O. Walker, Jr., has, in fact, shown that the very concept and religious philosophical underpinnings of the "Son of Man" saying and applications in the New Testament as applied to Jesus, are in fact, human inventions and additions, most probably by the Hellenists in Jerusalem. His main suggestion is not to refute this idea, but rather to discuss his view that it was among the Greek-speaking Christians, not the Aramaic ones, that the exegetical tradition produced the Son of Man Christology.5

Not only do we have to do with this type of issue, as to what is added into the scriptures from later perspectives and what is left out, but we also have got to begin to realize that there is nothing we have concerning the original autographs of ***ANY*** of the New Testament writers. There is even question as to whether the evangelists themselves were eyewitnesses to Jesus' life!6

Realistically, the Bible is a human made document. Sure it deals with God's dealings with men and women, but it is written by men. It is transmitted by men, and lest we forget, we are told "copying is a source of both survival and corruption for a text."7 We must remember that in early Christian times the manuscripts looked like this: INTHOSEDAYSALMOSTEVERYTHINGWASWRITTENINCAPITALLETTERSWITHOUTPUNCTUATIONANDNOSPACESBETWEENWORDS.8

The Bible will not mean what it is meant to mean until we begin to have something of an understanding of just what it is and what it is not. Fundamentalist Christians miss this crucial concept completely and strain at gnats but swallow camels when they declare the Bible to be something other than what it itself says and displays. Without some sort of reality check, the Fundamentalist Christians are building their foundation of scriptural exegesis on sand and will never, worlds without end, convince the rest of the world about just what the Bible means, whether discussing salvation, grace, the law, or God.

Endnotes

1. Smith's Bible Dictionary," Revised and edited by F.N. and M.A. Peloubet, Thomas Nelson Publishers, p. 91.

2. "Harper's Bible Dictionary", Paul J. Achtemeier, ed., Harper & Row, 1985, p. 111.

3. Richard Elliott Friedman, "Who Wrote the Bible?", Harper & Row, 1987.

4. Harold Bloom, "The Book of J", Grove Weidenfeld, 1990.

5. William O. Walker, Jr., "The Origin of the Son of Man Concept as Applied to Jesus", in John Maier, and Vincent Tollers, eds., "The Bible in its Literary Milieu", Eerdmans Publishing, 1979, pp. 156-165. Cf. Gleason L. Archer, "Encyclopedia of Bible Difficulties," Zondervan, 1982, pp. 322f. Also William F. Albright, "From the Stone Age to Christianity," Doubleday, 1957, pp. 378ff; Jean Danielou, "The Lord of History", Meridian Books, 1968, pp. 219-225; John J. Collins, "The Scepter and the Star", Doubleday, 1995, has various treatments of the Son of Man idea from the Dead Sea Scrolls' perspective, as an eschatalogical Messiah figure. F.F. Bruce, "New Testament History," Doubleday, 1972, pp. 130ff, and 173ff discussing Son of Man in Apocryphal Enoch literature as well as Daniel and how it applied to Jesus. E.P. Sanders, "The Historical Figure of Jesus", Penguin Books, 1993, pp. 180ff, 246ff. James H. Charlesworth, "Jesus Within Judaism," Doubleday/ Anchor, 1988, pp. 40ff. An extensive treatment is Robert Eisenman, "James the Brother of Jesus," Viking Publishing, 1996 Index under Son of Man, many dozens of entries. Three other very excellent treatments are F.H. Borsch, "Further Reflections on the "Son of Man": The Origins and Development of the Title", in James H. Charlesworth, ed., "The Messiah", the Princeton Symposium on Judaism and Christian Origins, Fortress Press, 1992, as well as David E. Aune's article "Christian Prophecy and the Messianic Status of Jesus", and A. Yarbro Collins, "The "Son of Man" Tradition and the Book of Revelation". This is just a sampling of the rather vast studies that have appeared over the last century dealing with this utterly fascinating topic.

6. Leon Vaganay and Christian-Bernard Amphoux, "An Introduction to New Testament Textual Criticism," Cambridge Univ. Press, 1986, p. 90. Cf. P. Kyle McCarter, Jr., "Textual Criticism: Recovering the Text of the Hebrew Bible", Fortress Press, 1986, p. 11. See also Raymond Brown, "101 Questions on the Bible", Paulist Press, 1990, pp. 57f.

7. P. Kyle McCarter, Jr. "Textual Criticism: Recovering the Text of the Hebrew Bible", p. 12. Many examples of corruptions are shown by McCarter, namely changes that expand the text, intrusive words that provide clarity or emphasis, dittography, glossing, extending the meaning of passages, conflation, haplography, parablepsis, transposition, etc.

8. Eample in Manfred Barthel,"What the Bible Really Says", Wings Books, 1980, p. 294. Cf. David R. Cartlidge & David L. Dungan, eds.,"Documents for the Study of the Gospels," Fortress Press, 1994, p. 3.