In the past years, the Bible has been abused to mix it with various political agendas (really, it is nothing new, the Bible has always been abused politically), but also heavily criticized for being non-authentical.
In the recent years I have spend a lot of my time studying the Bible and the criticism of it.
The conclusion I have come to is that the Bible does not deserve that criticism, but neither does the Bible grant you access to condemn other people on grounds of race, creed etc.
We must understand the Bible in the context it was written in. The Bible was not handed down to humans from God in one day. Rather it has a long and complex history behind, several hundred years in between the scriptures, written by various scribes.
This became evident by the professor Julius Wellhausen in the late 19th-century, who setup the Documentary-Criticism (or the Documentary-hypothesis) of the Bible in his book "History of Israel". In his criticism of the Biblical claim that the five books of Moses (also known as the Pentateuch) were written by Moses himself, his main argument, amongst others, were of the fact that God had different names, such as Yahwe and Elohim and he could date the books of Deutoronomy back to the 7th century and the scriptures of the Jewish priests exiled in Babylon to the 6th century.
Modern scholars and archeologists such as Israel Finkelstein and Niel Asher Silberman have now confirmed through various archeological findings that Julius Wellhausen was right:
The Bible had not one author or main author, rather it had many authors throughout time and place.
The Hebrew Bible was compiled by greek jews during Alexander The Great's empire and refined and "polished" and put to the text that we now know as the official Tohrah.
When we see the Bible in that context, we must review the Biblical origins. We must allow ourselves to see that the Bible itself has undergone an evolutionary process and has borrowed a lot of its philosophies from ancient cultures. For example the Jewish laws can be dated back to king Hammurabi's Laws. Others would be of greek origin and others from the surrounding area of Palestine.
When understanding the Bible, we must always remember that the Bible portrays history in the favor of the Jews, either as victorious or as poor victims of abuse. The real history is way more nuanced.
However, I do believe that the Bible, because of its long history of compilation from various origins, contains a lot of of ethical questions, written in such a way that it makes it a great book for a summary of ancient philosophy that still has its relevance in todays modern high-technological world.
In that regard, the Bible cannot be dismissed. While some people might say that you could as well study the ancient philosophy from its real sources (ie. reading Plato's dialogues) instead of reading the Bible, you miss the moral of the story. The Bible has its strength from combining the various philosophies and stories into one great philosophical story, and this is probably what made people to regard the Bible as God-given, back then.
And this also applies to the New Testament, the story of Jesus. The New Testament is a compilation of many scriptures, carefully selected by Rome, and compiled into what we know as the New Testament. Many people make a big deal out of saying that we have various of other gospels, such as Gnostic texts portraying a very different view of Jesus.
But I don't think this changes the moral or conclusion of the story either.
I would go as far as say that wether or not Jesus died on the Cross or if he were taken down too early before he was dead (by people who believed him to be dead) and fled to India where he lived to be 80 years old, I don't think that changes anything in the story.It's a minor detail that has no significance. The significance of the story is what Jesus taught, even if he didn't live a real person and were merely a legendary figure to be placed amongst dragons, and flying unicorns.
The New Testament too has its various authors who had different social backgrounds. That itself makes the Bible nuanced in its storytelling.
It derives a lot of its stories from various other sources (which it doesn't mention, nor does the Old Testament mention that the story of Noah's Ark and the Flood had its origins in ancient Sumerian texts, which I believe is a shame, but it has probably to do with writing one storytelling, rather than the actual intention of writing a factual book as such).
The sources that the Bible relies on is first of all Greco-Roman in its origin. It is basically a summary of ancient Greek philosophy in one book.
The birth of Jesus has its origins from Asia (Persia and India). Virgin birth-stories were quite common.
In short, the New Testament derives not only from ancient meditarrenian region, but as far as India and perhaps even China.
Even when the Bible has been debunked into being a fake story, it is still true in its teachings.
The teachings of the Bible are still relevant today. However, one shouldn't read it as a factual book or understand the texts literally. Rather, people should learn the lessons of the stories, even if the stories are untrue (didn't happen that way).
27 Nov 2013, 3:10 pm
