This Friday evening we'll be meeting at the Wilma @ 6:45 PM to watch Slumdog Millionaire. Afterwards, we'll head next door to El Cazador for drinks and discussion. We do this because we believe that culture matters, and one of the best ways to engage our culture is to spend an evening with friends watching & discussing great movies.
Here's what this means for us as Explorers. As we move forward, we're going to be looking at the Gospel of Mark. This isn't a cop out - it's just being intellectually responsible. Mark is data; thoughtful people consider the data before coming to a conclusion.
Here's a hint about how to read this book. Rather than assuming up front that it couldn't have happened as Mark says, why don't we try assuming that it did? Try suspending your disbelief for a bit (trust me, you're not going to end up selling flowers in an airport if you do this). Try evaluating Jesus from the perspective of those who believed in him first, and see what you think.
There's plenty about Mark's Jesus that might still rub you wrong (and if that's the case, you'll have much better reasons for rejecting him outright). But you might just discover a Jesus you didn't know existed - a Jesus who is beautiful, potent, and real. The Jesus of Scripture, the Jesus of history.
If you were going to make a case against Scripture, how would you go about it? Most people intuitively feel like this book, this Bible, is a little hard to swallow, but how would you quantify that? What makes it so hard to accept as 'the Word of God'? That's the purpose of this post: to flesh out a case against Scripture.
If I were a prosecuting attorney, I'd use Scripture as a star witness against itself, to show 4 basic points:
no one can prove that the Bible is God's word (so there's a certain measure of doubt built in to the equation - how are we supposed to know for sure?)
the magnitude of Scripture's claims make us more dubious, not less (the way Scripture views itself actually makes it harder to believe, not easier - so how do we take it seriously?)
hand copies inevitably result in lots of copies and variations (a nice way of saying 'errors' - so how do we know which reading is right?)
everyone has different opinions and interpretations (look, even if we only had one manuscript, no one could agree on what it means anyway - so who's right?)
In short, if God was really going to communicate with us, wouldn't Scripture be one of the least likely ways for him to do it? It seems so prone to miscommunication, doubt, disbelief. Let's flesh out each of these objections to make the case clearer...
Look, if we're really serious about honesty (and Christians of all people should be), then lets just state the obvious: we cannot prove that the Bible is God's word. Anyone who says otherwise is either loopy or they're selling something. And 99.9% of Christians are going to agree with this assertion anyway (because it takes faith to believe, right?)
Of course, some people might want to try and salvage Scripture by suggesting that it doesn't actually claim to be inspired, or that if it is, it's the general ideas behind the words - the 'timeless principles' rather than the 'specific words' themselves. The problem with this approach that it doesn't actually jive with the data - Scripture itself makes some huge claims about itself. How do we know it's the Word of God? Because it says so! (hmm, isn't that a little circular?).
Go ahead: let's look at some of these claims for ourselves:
it claims to be the very word of God (cf. 2 Timothy 3:16 - "All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness...")
it claims that God is the primary author, not man (cf. 2 Peter 1:20-21 - "No prophecy of Scripture comes from someone's own interpretation. For no prophecy was ever produced by the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit")
Old Testament (OT) authors viewed their message (both spoken -and- written) as God's authoritative word (cf. Jer 26, 36 - OT prophets are always thundering "thus says the Lord!" and they see their written words just as binding as their oral statements).
Jesus and New Testament (NT) believers embrace the OT as God's authoritative word - they constantly say "it is written!" and then quote Scriptures to settle all arguments (cf. Matthew 4:4 - where Jesus rebukes Satan with Deuteronomy 8:3, "Man shall not live by bread alone, but every word that comes from the mouth of God!")
Jesus believes not just the ideas but also the words are inspired - in fact, at one point he bases his entire argument on the tense of a single verb in an OT passage (cf. Matthew 22:31-32 - "As for the resurrection of the dead, have you not read what was said to you by God: 'I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob'? He is not God of the dead, but of the living.")
Jesus sees his own words as carrying even great authority (cf. Matthew 5:21,27 - "You have heard it said... [he quotes the OT]... but I say to you... [then he offers his own commandment which goes further than the OT command]")
Jesus' followers see him as the ultimate word of God (cf. Hebrews 1:1-2 - "Long ago, at many times and in various ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us through by his Son...")
the Apostle Paul (who wrote most of the NT) speaks of his own message as being identical with the word of God (cf. 1 Thessalonians 2:13 - "when you received the word of God [eg. Paul's message], which you heard from us, you accepted it not as the word of men, but as what it really is, the word of God...")
the Apostle Peter (one of Jesus' top three disciples) speaks of Paul's writings as being on par with the rest of Scripture (cf. 2 Peter 3:15-16 - "our beloved brother Paul wrote to you according to the wisdom given to him... the ignorant and unstable twist [his words] to their own destruction, as they do with the other Scriptures")
the Christian Scriptures insist the miraculous elements are essential, not incidental (cf. 1 Corinthians 15:14,19 - "If Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain... we are of all people most to be pitied")
Uggh! Not only does the Bible seem to see itself as inspired, but it also seems adamant that much of what it says is meant to be taken literally rather than metaphorically. So Scripture makes it even harder to believe this is God's word, because it asks us to believe so much.
Feeling the weight yet? Now try this on for size. For the past 1500-2500 years, the Christian Scriptures were copied by hand. Scribes (even the best of them!) are human. Humans make mistakes, and over this big of a timespan, we'd expect to see a lot of them.
Sure enough, the data seems to support our suspicion - just looking at the NT, we discover that there are some 5000 Greek manuscripts, 8000 Latin manuscripts, and thousands more in other languages. That's a lot of copies. Now here's the kicker - if we look at larger 'book size' manuscripts, there is not a single hand-copy which is identical to any other. And if we tally up all the differences, there are some 30,000 - 40,000 total discrepancies. That's a lot of variations.
So even if the original 'autograph' (the master copy) WAS inspired directly by God, how do we know which our copies is closest? After all, we don't have the original (and how would we know it if we did?)! All we have are lots of copies with tons of variations! Egad!
Finally, let's pretend for a moment that we actually DID have the original - one manuscript, zero variations, copied perfectly by someone who got it straight from the horse's mouth (so to speak). Even if we could all agree on such a text, everyone still seems to have a different opinion or interpretation as to what it actually means. So even if it IS the word of God, how could we possibly know who is right?
Wow. The evidence seems pretty damning - how could any intelligent, rational, educated person living in the 21st century actually believe that a book like the Bible is the Word of God? It just seems so unlikely!
Ok, so that's my case AGAINST Scripture. Now let's try and make the case FOR Scripture...
Now here's the good news (if you're looking for the historical Jesus). The objections raised are not nearly as damning as they might seem at first blush. The purpose of this post is to flesh out a Christian response, to make a case for Scripture.
We'll do that by taking a closer look at each of the 4 basic arguments (working in reverse order). The counter argument runs something like this:
Lack of consensus? - We're actually masters of communication (and skepticism)!
Too many copies and variations? - It makes the text more accurate, not less!
Magnitude of Scripture's claims? - We can't prove the claims, but all the evidence indicates that Jesus' immediate followers actually made them!
But you still can't prove it's the Word of God, can you? - of course not! But that doesn't mean it's not hard data that deserves serious consideration!
Let's take a look at each of these in turn...
The basic thrust of that final argument is that even if we had a single text we all agreed upon, we still couldn't agree on it's meaning. There are too many interpretations. Communication (especially about religious issues) is simply too hard.
Many people probably feel this way, but it doesn't take much reflection to realize the situation is not as dire as it might seem. Sure every statement is subject to interpretations, but that's true of all speech and writing, not just Scripture.
For instance, when I tell Theresa at the Kettlehouse, "Hey, you look hot today," I might be making a casual remark about the temperature (eg. "Hmm, you're sweating more than usual. Must be hot in here!") -OR- I might be making a pass (eg. "Hey, you look HOT!” - *wink, grin*).
Both are interpretations are possible. But context and tone make my intended meaning obvious (and if you've been to the KHole in July, you'd know instantly which it was).
As humans, we are remarkably attuned to making such distinctions. We are not only capable of communication, we are good at it. We know how to send messages, and we know how to receive them. That's true for regular speech, and it's true for the written word as well (after all, why do students spend so much time reading books? Because they're a great medium for communication!). If we're good at unraveling what others mean when they speak, there's a good chance we can unravel what Scripture means when it speaks.
Now, we are not denying that some passages of Scripture are hard to understand. Nor are we minimizing the importance of listening carefully when interacting with someone from another culture (and Scripture is most definitely not coming from a modern, 20th c. American culture!).
The point, however, is that for much of Scripture, the meaning is surprisingly clear - that's why even small children can get the gist most of the time. Even passages which seem difficult often make much more sense when we read them sympathetically in the context of the rest of Scripture.
There was a key word in that previous sentence: sympathetically. A bigger problem with interpretation, of course, is not that we don't understand what Scripture says - it's that we don't particularly like what it means.
For example, when Jesus speaks of adultery as going well beyond the physical act to include even lustful gazing, his meaning is clear: most normal males are adulterers in their hearts. This is not a popular position (who wants to think of themselves as sexually deviant?). The easiest solution, of course, is to assume that it must actually mean something else, something that doesn't implicate me.
Want proof? Start paying attention to when this card gets used - we typically don't start saying, "well there's lots of interpretations..." until someone else makes an assertion we don't like (usually because it would implicate us).
And that brings us to another point - not only are we master communicators, but we are also master skeptics.
Think about that for a moment: we are remarkably skeptical when it comes to Scripture, and we are remarkably unskeptical when it comes to ourselves. It's like trying to convince a girl that the guy she is dating is no good - no amount of reasoning will change her mind if she doesn't want to believe it. Why? Because she has a stake in the argument. She has something to lose if you're right.
What's the point here? We like to think of ourselves as neutral observers. In reality, however, we all have a dog in the fight when it comes to Scripture, because Scripture makes claims on our lives. Of course this doesn't prove that it's the word of God - it just means that we ought to be as suspicious of ourselves as we are of Scripture. And most of us (even Christians) aren't.
This may seem counter-intuitive at first blush, so let me see if I can explain. Any time you copy something by hand, you inevitably make mistakes and introduce variations. You might misspell a word, drop part of a sentence, maybe even re-work a sentence without thinking about it. Copy the copies, and the same thing happens over and over again. The greater number of copies, the great number of variations and errors, right?
Yes and no. You might indeed have more variations. But you also have a greater number of sources to check a particular copy against. If you only have one or two documents, you'll have a hard time knowing where the errors are. But if you had dozens, or hundreds, or thousands, your odds of identifying the errors increase significantly.
Knowledge based websites like Wikipedia actually rely on this same principle. Since anyone in the world (not just experts) can 'correct' a document, you might think the quality of the content would go down (more 'errors', since no editor has perfect knowledge, and if you make everyone an editor, well who knows what they'll write!). Surprisingly, however, accuracy actually improves with this approach! Why? Because more eyes make make it easier to spot and correct errors.
The same is true for any ancient document. Over the past several centuries, the scientific field of textual criticism has blossomed. Some of you geeky types (like me) might actually want to know a little bit about the details about textual criticism.
For the rest of you, here's a summary of the key implications:
modern translations of the NT text are extremely close to the original autographs
most of the textual variations are minor, obvious, identifiable, and correctable (we can explain the cause and identify the original)
in most Bibles, any significant textual variations are clearly marked and the variant readings are given (ask me how to spot them!)
even if you substituted the worst possible readings for all variations, the NT would be intelligible and the message would be the same (in fact, the average reader probably wouldn't notice the differences; it's that close!)
All this means that the Bible sitting in front of you is trustworthy. It's a pretty darn accurate representation of what was originally written down some 2000 years ago. Of course, that still doesn't mean that it's God's word. But it does mean that it's a piece of significant historical data that deserves serious consideration.
It is very likely Jesus said the things Scripture has him saying (well, in Aramaic, not English, of course). So we need to deal with that data, not dance around it by asserting "Oh, well I'm sure he didn't say that!" If someone wants to construct a Jesus other than the one we read about in the Bible, they need to present historical evidence to support it.
There's a gaping hole in our defense thus far - have you noticed it? Someone could say,
"Look, all you've done is demonstrate that the Bible is an accurate representation of what the original authors wrote. But none of the texts claim Jesus as their author! So how do we know that his followers didn't just make things up?
How can we be sure they didn't co-opt the historical Jesus (a great teacher, surely), to create a religious movement of their own making (w/ a sexier, more dramatic, agenda driven Jesus). And how do we know that the later church didn't just suppress alternative accounts of Jesus, picking which books were part of the canon (the 'approved list') and which ones weren't?"
These are great questions. Several considerations may help frame an answer:
Extrabiblical evidence - First, it's worth pointing out that we don't just know about Jesus from the Bible - there are secular, non-Christian historians who mention him as well. Now granted, there are only six short references to him outside of the Christian Scriptures, but the fact that there are any at all is actually significant - that an unknown Jewish carpenter in a remote part of the empire could attract the attention (and scorn) of elite Roman historians is nothing less than remarkable.
In a book called Simply Christianity, John Dickson summarizes what we can glean from them (p18):
Early autographs = harder to fib - Second, it's also worth noting that the early dates of the manuscript evidence (above) actually make the Biblical evidence much harder to fabricate. The NT texts claim to be written by eyewitnesses or were based on first hand accounts of eyewitnesses. Scholars of all stripes agree that the original documents were penned within 20-70 years of the events they describe. That means any false claims would have been easily refutable by those who had been there.
Motive and cost - Third, such deception would require collusion of the grandest scale - one of Jesus' closest friends (Peter), his own half-brother (James) and a high profile enemy of the early church (Paul) all got together to fabricate an incredible scam. Why? To create a movement that would exert power and control? The earliest followers of Jesus had very little influence (most of them were poor or slaves). And at what price? For many believers, their faith cost them their lives. We might expect that of those who came later (eg. they just didn't know it was true), but what founders would be willing to die for something they knew to be false?
Which books are in? - You'll often hear that the Bible didn't assume it's present form until the middle of the 4th century, when a council of Bishops got together and "picked" which books where in and which were out. That's not quite true.
The earliest definitive lists that we have date from this period, and there was debate about some books prior to this, but almost all biblical scholars (even those who don't believe in Jesus) agree that for most early Christians, their canon was pretty much the same as our by AD 200. And even here, this was not so much a matter of "decision" as it was of "recognition".
This is an important point. How many of us would believe a certain list of books came directly from the mouth of God simply because a certain group of officials said so? None of us would! So what makes us think that people two thousand years again were any more credulous than us? Such a position is actually quite arrogant (eg. we're smart, they were obviously dumb), and dare I say it, American.
Ultimately, most Christians both then and now embrace a concept of "authoritative books" not because someone tells them too, but because they encounter something real in them. The best evidence against "alternative gospels" is to go read them - you encounter a completely different Jesus, and he's much less compelling.
Ok, so that's how we think about the claims of Scripture - we haven't resolved them per se, but we have suggested that we have good evidence to think they are very early. It's certainly not irrational or foolish to think that the people who hung out with the real historical Jesus personally believed he said and did exactly what they wrote.
It actually takes a lot of faith to think that the historical Jesus was dramatically different from what we see in the pages of the NT - those who argue this way do so on the basis of conjecture, not historical evidence.
Of course not! We can never prove that the Bible is God's Word to us - it really is a matter of faith, after all - but we can make a pretty compelling case that it's a huge chunk of substantial evidence.
Evidence like this needs to be weighed, considered, and evaluated. Regardless of your conclusions, any intelligent person owes it to themselves to actually consider the evidence, to develop an informed, thoughtful opinion.
So where does this leave us? The fact we can't know it for sure shouldn't really surprise us. The people who wrote Scripture actually seem well aware of it - they always assert that truth is something God himself has to reveal to us, cf. 1 Cor 2:14). It's actually quite easy not to believe.
Most of us have actually experienced this firsthand - anyone who doesn't want to believe something can always give reasons why they don't buy it. Think of your favorite conspiracy theorist - you can never convince them that their theory is wrong. It's not so much an issue with the data as it is with them: you can never convince anyone of something they don't want to believe.
So the real challenge is not just how to evaluate Scripture, but how to evaluate ourselves. How can we be certain that we're not just buying a gigantic conspiracy theory, one that desperately says Scripture is a hoax. Sure we'll be skeptical of some of the things it says. But we also need to be skeptical of ourselves. We need to be skeptical of our skepticism, we need to ask why we find it difficult to believe. Is the problem with Scripture, or is the problem with me?
At the end of the day, we have two Jesus' to choose from - the Jesus of Scripture, or the Jesus of our imagination. Only one of those has any historical basis.
| Text | Date Written | Oldest surviving copy | Gap from original | Copies in existence today |
| Thucydides' History of the Peloponnesian War | 400 BC | AD 900 | 1300 years | 73 |
| Caesar's Gallic War | 50 BC | AD 825 | 875 years | 10 |
| Tactitus' Histories and Annals | AD 100 | AD 850 | 750 years | 2 |
| New Testament | AD 40 - AD 100 | AD 350 | 310 years | 14,000 (5000 Greek, 8000 Latin, and 1000 in other languages) |
VISION - It's nice to know where you're headed.
