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Notes About the Bible

Research by Kerry A. Shirts

Since Christians have been pontificating that we Mormons know nothing about the Bible and its teachings while they are almost the epitome of the true Bible scholar, I thought it would be educational for us all to see just who is saying what about the Bible. Now since in the past I have been accused of having a Mormon bias and slant on understanding history, the Bible, God, etc., (and I plead guilty), I will use only non-Mormon scholars so as to keep this on a level par for the playing. I mean heavens, far be it from me to either talk off the top of my head, or use bias Mormon scholars only! I will use only Christian bias scholars for these notes - GRIN! Now I don't claim any particular order and even flow, but I do note that no matter where I turn to, in the biblical world of scriptural or historical exegesis, Christians are wrong about the Bible. How he can even assume I lie and he thinks that perhaps Bruce Metzger may be a Mormon is utterly and incredibly beyond my ability to comprehend, for the gross silliness and terrible ignorance Christians display concerning Bible scholarship. In my view, anyone who cannot or does not acquaint themselves with the Biblical scholars, cannot possibly be well enough read in the scriptures to take too awfully seriously. Not that I am making an appeal to authority as *the* last word, but for crying out loud, I do think it's time Fundamentalist Christian "saved-by-gracers" ought to at least learn the ABC's of Biblical inquiries and research. You know, just the beginning simple basics at the very least! Credibility, after all, is not cheaply earned.

Michael C. Coogan's fascinating article "The Great Gulf Between Scholars and the Pew" in the magazine "Bible Review", is important for Christians of the uneducated status of David to understand. We learn there something about the Bible that Christians do not know, or at least clumsily pretends not to know. "The Bible is not one book by a single author, but, as the Bible itself clearly indicates, it is many books, by many authors who wrote over the course of more than a thousand years. Moreover, the Bible contains different points of view and often contradictory understandings and formulations of the nature of God, and of our relationship with him and with other human beings. The Bible is not in any simple sense the word of God, but rather the words of Amos and Isaiah, of Luke and Paul."1 Now, quite frankly, all one has to do in order to see the truth of this is read the Bible. I believe this is an honest assessment of what the Bible is and isn't.

Christians suffer from a serious ailment which comes from not understanding and the lack of reading seriously into his own religion, theology, history, and the Bible. Paul Watzlawick has said it best: "The belief that one's own view of reality is the only reality is the most dangerous of all delusions. It becomes still more dangerous if it is coupled with a missionary zeal to enlighten the rest of the world, whether the rest of the world wishes to be enlightened or not...to dare to see the world differently, can become a 'think-crime'..."2

Christians accuse Us Mormons of being deceptive in my research. They believe the Bible is perfect, and therefore, to say anything else about it (a think-crime) is bad, evil, an attack on the Bible, and Satanically ungodly. But just what are the facts concerning the Bible? Honestly?

"the number of errors [in the Bible]...amounts to about 6,000! It is absurd to try to make this factual reality conform to the popular impression that the Bible,...is totally error-free because God personally not only rendered it originally in true form, but has, over the past few thousand years, personally seen to it that the Scriptures continue to be his personal word."3

As I read it, this is ***NOT*** an attack on the Scriptures at all, but on a particular interpretation of what they are, i.e. Christian's understanding of the Bible. They will more than likely go on pontificating incorrectly that we are attacking the Bible. We are not. We ***ARE*** attacking false interpretations of what the Bible is however, and will continue to look for ***HONEST*** truth concerning what the Bible is and isn't.

A perfect Bible? Can an imperfect book be God's word? Of course, if humans have helped write, translate, transmit, and keep it. The Bible contains historical errors of all kinds. One example comes to mind, among many. The Book of Judges Mentions the events of the Israelite gathering following the outrage of Gibeah. This account is inconsistent with other parts of the Bible. Judges 20:11 says that all of Israel gathered against the city, knit together as one man. But this is improbable at best. "Throughout the period of the judges, the tribes of Israel did not unite even under the most pressing of dangers. They did not unite against Sisera or against the Midianites, or against the Ammonites. Indeed, Manasseh's fight against the Midianites nearly provoked civil war with Ephraim, and Gad's fight against the Ammonites did provoke such a civil war. Therefore it seems quite unbelievable that a united front could be set up on this occassion."4

I highly suspect that Christians will continue ignoring the true situation regarding the Bible. We are told in no less emphatic terms that the Dead Sea Scrolls have dramatically changed our perceptions of the Bible. What has changed is "...faith in unerring scripture and unwary idealization of our Bible as a literary or canonical whole...other people padded their originals with later material."5 And this is very well illustrated with the book of Jubilees. "Perhaps the most interesting aspect of the book of Jubilees is the manner in which the author at times subjected the text of Genesis-Exodus to a wholesale expansion. Where the biblical text may contain only a brief notice or nothing at all, Jubilees occasionally adds an entire story. This feature (and others), reveal that Jubilees is an early part of the ongoing, centuries old process of retelling and re-presenting the early biblical stories as individuals and groups try to relate the ancient tales to contemporary concerns and interests."6 Compare Nephi's attitude with the scriptures of his own day! "I did liken all scriptures unto ourselves that it might be for our own profit and learning." This is exactly what ancient Jews would do with the scriptures as we find in the Bible and Book of Mormon.

Some folks apparently don't understand that there were more gospels written than the four found in the New Testament. These extracanonical gospels are "dismissed as unimportant, on the hasty assumption that all of them were fanciful elaborations based on the New Testament gospels, or at least came from a much later period...Scholars now find it necessary to turn to the extracanonical gospels to learn about the development of even the earliest Jesus traditions. These texts disclose to us how Christian communities gathered, arranged, modified, embellished, interpreted, and created traditions about the teachings and deeds of Jesus...in earlier centuries many Christians had cherished other gospels, which they sincerely believed to carry the revealed truth about Jesus. It is only from the perspective of later centuries that these texts which nourished the faith of generations of Christians can be called non-canonical. The distinction between the canonical and non-canonical gospels did not exist in the period of Christian origins and therefore is not helpful for understanding the earliest centuries of Christianity in their rich diversity."7 This is brought home very, very clearly in Carsten Peter Thiede's fun little study. Thiede notes that "Whatever the exact reconstruction of the earliest stages may be [of the written Gospels in the New Testament], we do know from the prologue to Luke's Gospel that there were more literary sources he could use than just the completed Gospels of Matthew and Mark: '*Many have undertaken to draw up an account* of the things that have been fulfilled among us, just as they were handed down to us by those who from the first were eyewitnesses and servants of the word." (Luke 1:1-2).8 In fact, Thiede has a chart wherein he compares four definitions of the New Testament, namely that of Marcion, The Canon Muratori, that of Eusebius, and Athanasius, none of them having the same collection of books as any of the others, showing how fluid the idea of a canon was in New Testament times.9

Carolyn Osiek has noted the seriousness with which many early Christian groups took the so-called Shephard of Hermas as scripture. "But it was considered canonical by the influential second-century church father Irenaeus. Tertullian, another prominant church father of the next generation, considered it scripture until his own theology changed and he disagreed with it. The great third-century theologian and compiler of the "Hexapla", Origen, highly revered it, as did many other Christian leaders."10 Yet it was not included in the New Testament, likely because it lacks a developed Christology.

Again, we note that Bible scholars realize there are problems with the Bible and the manuscripts. "No *original* biblical documents, such as Paul's letters, have survived...All we have are copies of copies of copies, and so forth. Because of mistakes in copying, later elaborations and even intentional alterations, surviving manuscripts contain numerous discrepancies..."11

I would like to suggest that these few short notes help us in our learning what the Bible is and isn't. It is scripture to be sure, but not a perfectly written, perfectly preserved, flawless word of God. God works with us mortals and we are allowed to make mistakes and even lose whole books of scripture! Consider the Book of Enoch. Sir Richard Laurence notes that "The Book of Enoch was as sacred as the Psalms or Isaiah" to Tertullian.12 Of course, Jude quotes Enoch, but Enoch is not found in our present day Bibles, it having been expunged long ago from the Bible's covers.

We are told that "The compilation of the Bible was not an act of any definite occurrence...But who can deny that under such vicious and human circumstances much writing of as pure purpose and as profound sincerity...must have been omitted."13

Concerning the canon of the Bible, we are told, "The exclusion of many texts was often as arbitrary and dubious as was the inclusion of such magnificent and dangerous books as Ecclesiastes and Song of Songs."14

Besides the problems of which books belong in the Bible, we are confronted with the problems the Bible itself presents to us. What is the best way to read the Bible, a book about ancient cultures, who have a long history of editing? Aside from that "Equally formidible problems of interpreting biblical texts can complicate matters when war in the Bible is discussed. A good example...is the contradictory material about the conquest of Palestine by the Israelites... Deuteronomy represents Yahweh, the national god, as commanding the annihilation of the seven nations of Canaan; and Joshua 1-11 reports the successful carrying out of this...

Judges, on the other hands, tells a rather different story about the failure of the Israelites to wipe out the Canaanites and the consequent corruption of the nation under the influence of Canaanite culture. Between these two accounts...there is a serious contradiction - either they did or they did not annihilate the Canaanites! One account, at least, is wrong."15

75 percent of what the average Christian thinks about the Bible is interpretation and not scripture at all.16 The fundamental problem with saying the Bible says, is that it is more than likely what the expounder of the Bible means, not what the Bible says. Time and again I have found this to be the case with Christians, who love to lambast Mormons for not believing the Bible as they do.

Endnotes

1. Michael C. Coogan, "The Great Gulf Between Scholars and the Pew," in "Bible Review", June 1994, p. 45, 2nd column for the quote.

2. Paul Watzlawick, "How Real is Real?: Confusion, Disinformation, Communication", Vintage Books, 1976, p. xiii.

3. Steve Allen, "On the Bible, Religion, & Morality", Prometheus Books, 1990, p. 52.

4. Isaac Asimov, "Asimov's Guide to the Bible," 2 vols., Avon Books, 1968, quote in vol. 1, p. 258.

5. Robin Lane Fox, "The Unauthorized Version:Truth and Fiction in the Bible," Vintage Books, 1993, p. 104.

6. James C. Vanderkam, "Jubilees, How it Rewrote the Bible," in "Bible Review," December 1992, p. 60.

7. Robert J. Miller, Ed., "The Complete Gospels," Polebridge Press, 1992, pp. 3f. Cf. Miller's most interesting article, "The Gospels that Didn't Make the Cut", in "Bible Review," August 1993, pp. 14fff.

8. Carsten Peter Thiede, "A Testament is Born", in "Christian History", Issue 43 (Vol. XIII, No. 3), p. 24.

9. "Ibid.", chart on page 26. a MOST interesting comparison!

10. Carolyn Osiek, "An Early Tale that Almost Made it into the New Testament", in "Bible Review," Oct. 1994, p. 49.

11. Daniel N. Schowalter, "Lost in Translation," in "Bible Review," Aug. 1995, p. 36.

12. Sir Richard Laurence, "The Book of Enoch The Prophet", Wizard Bookshelf, 1977, p. v.

13. "The Lost Books of the Bible & The Forgotten Books of Eden," Preface.

14. Willis Barnstone, "The Other Bible," HarperSanFrancisco, 1984, p. xviii.

15. Robert P. Carroll, "War", in Morton Smith & R. Joseph Hoffman, eds., "What the Bible Really Says," HarperSanFrancisco, 1993, p. 148.

16. R. Joseph Hoffman, "Afterword", in "Ibid," p. 242.