The Bible

The Bible: What It is The Inerrant Bible Biblical Myths The Demise of Biblical Archaeology Uncertain Authorship Haphazard Canonization and Textual Difficulties On Morality and Word Spinning Conclusions

"The dogma of the infallibility of the Bible is no more self-evident than is that of the infallibility of the popes."
Thomas Henry Huxley (1825-1895)

The Bible: What It is

The books in the Bible are divided into two main sections; known respectively as The Old Testament and The New Testament. Christians view the Old Testament as an account of the old covenant between God and the Hebrews. The Old Testament was also supposed to contain references and prophecies to the coming of Jesus Christ. The New Testament presents, through Jesus, a new covenant, this time between God and all mankind.

In some Bibles there exist a third section, known as the Apocrypha. These books are those which canonicity as the word of God is disputed in various churches. The Roman Catholic Church accepts some of these books as canonical and places them together with the books of the Old Testament.

The Bible is, thus, a collection of many different types of books. Not all the books carry the same message. For instance, Nehemiah, calls for the preservation of racial purity by the prohibition of inter-racial marriages, while Ruth has for its heroine a Moabite woman who married a Jew. As another example, the book of Proverbs extols living the good life which it says is God's reward for righteous living while Ecclesiastes says life is meaningless and prosperity is accidental.

The New Testament stands in an uneasy contrast with the Old. The Old Testament says that the Jews are the chosen people of God. This God may sometimes abandon them as a punishment for their unfaithfulness but the severance was always only temporary. Yet in the New Testament we are shown that the Jews are completely severed from God and are in fact responsible for the murder of his Son.

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The Inerrant Bible?

However, there is still a substantial group of theologians, the fundamentalists, who accept, or shall I say, assert, the strict inerrancy of the Bible. Note that the dogma of the inerrant Bible is not that only some parts of the Bible are true. It asserts that the Bible is completely and absolutely without any error. It is also the general observation of this author that most lay Christians, be they from fundamentalist churches or otherwise, hold what is an essentially fundamentalist view of the Bible: that it is inerrant.

Before starting our analysis, there are two ideas that must be clear in our mind. First we have to understand the logic behind our claim that that the Bible is not inerrant. Second we have to understand the difference between the concept of probability and possibility and why it is relevant for our analysis to follow.

We see that the Bible contains many mistakes and inaccuracies. The Bible

• contains internal contradictions.
• contains numerical contradictions.
• contains failed prophecies.

• the physical sciences
• the biological sciences
• mathematics.

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Biblical Myths

• have internal difficulties
• give the wrong age for the universe
• could not satisfactorily account for the origin of species.

In fact we can show that the creation myths in the Bible are not even original to it but were derived from earlier Babylonian myths.

While we are on the subject of myths, we must note that the flood myth, which many believe were somehow geologically proven is demonstrably false. Furthermore, it has been conclusively shown by archaeologists that the Biblical flood myth was derived from The Epic of Gilgamesh, an ancient Babylonian myth. In fact the very name Noah is derived from the name of a Babylonian rain goddess.

Other myths include the myth of Cain and Abel and the myth of the Tower of Babel. We can safely conclude that the first eleven chapters of genesis is pure mythology.

The Demise of Biblical Archaeology

The BBC journalist Matthew Sturgis account in his book It Ain't Necessarily So (2001) summarizes the current situation nicely:

A new generation of archaeologists has emerged...they are challenging the intellectual assumptions of their predecessors...During the years since World War II it has become harder and harder to escape this sense of doubt. The expected discoveries of specific biblical artifacts and buildings were simply not being made...Discrepancies between the biblical account and the ever increasing archaeological record become more noticeable and harder to ignore...Rather than using the Old Testament as a field guide, the current crop of archaeologists is increasingly putting the Bible aside...The very term biblical archaeology has become tainted, and is now rejected by many academics...The old quest to confirm the historical truths of the events in the Bible has been replaced by a new agenda: to build a full and detailed picture of life in the ancient Near East. If the Bible is consulted at all, it is approached with varying degrees of skepticism. The onus of proof has shifted: the text [of the Bible] is now considered historically unreliable until proven otherwise. [2]

Over the last decade, quote a number of books have been published outlining this state of affairs.

• T.W. Davis, “Shifting Sands: The Rise and Fall of Biblical Archaeology”, Oxford 2004
• I. Finkelstein, “The Bible Unearthed”, Free Press 2001
• A.D. Marcus, “The View from Nebo”, Little, Brown & Co 2000
• M. Sturgis, “It Ain’t Necessarily So”, Headline 2001
• T.L. Thompson, “The Mythic Past”, Basic Books 1999
• T.L. Thompson, “The Historicity of the Patriarchal Narratives”, Trinity 2002

• Abraham and the patriarchal narratives
• Moses and Exodus
• Joshua and the conquest of Canaan.

While it is true that David and Solomon existed, the archaeological evidence shows that the kingdom of David and Solomon were nowhere near how they are described in the Bible. Indeed Jerusalem during the time of David and Solomon was little more than a village with less than 5,000 people!

There are clear fictive elements in other Biblical books as well.

• The books of Judges, Samuel, Kings, Chronicles, Ezra and Nehemiah contain contradictions, elements of numerology and anachronisms.
• The books of Ruth, Esther, Job and Jonah are works of pure fiction.
• The book of Daniel is fraudulent fiction masquerading as a prophetic work.

The first step towards examining the integrity of a person is, of course, to know his or her identity. It is therefore not surprising that Jewish and Christian traditions ascribed the authorships of the books in the Old Testaments to well known Jewish kings and prophets: the very characters mentioned in the Bible. To Moses, certainly the most important figure in Judaism, was attributed the authorship of the first five books of the Bible: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy. In a similar trend, Joshua, Moses' successor, was supposed to have penned the book that has his name as the title. Other important figures in Jewish history, such as David and Solomon, also have books attributed to them.

There is a similar trend in the New Testament. Most books in the New Testament had their authorship attributed to the disciples of Jesus, or at least their immediate followers. For examples the two letters of Peter were supposed to have been written by the apostle himself, while the gospel of Mark was presumed to have been written by one of Peter's followers.

These attribution of authorship were accepted, almost without question, by Christians for close to two millennia. In the 19th century, with the use of the methods critical historical research to the books of the Bible, these traditional beliefs were slowly but relentlessly eroded. The research has reached a point where almost all the books in the Bible are no longer held to be written by the people tradition thought them to be. This valid discovery, however, is very rarely communicated to the lay public. When it is conveyed at all, it is normally preceded with attempt on behalf of the scholars to cushion the "blow" on the reader. As a result, to this day most lay Christians and (of course) all fundamentalists hold firm to these traditional attribution of authorship.

Let us look at the problem of authorship:

• Although Jewish and Christian traditions attribute the authorship of the Pentateuch to Moses, this attribution can easily be shown to be false.
• Traditional attributions are also false for Joshua and Samuel.
• At least some of the so-called Psalm of David could easily be shown to be of later composition.
• In fact we know precious little about the author of many of the books in the Old Testament.
• The gospels were not written by Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.
• The two epistles attributed to the apostle Peter were definitely not written by him
• Many of the epistles attributed to Paul were not written by the apostle.
• Almost all the other NT books had dubious attribution of authorship.

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Haphazard Canonization and Textual Difficulties

We will proceed to show that the method of collection was haphazard and by no means carried out with the unanimous consent of early Christendom. Let us looks first at the Old Testament:

• The Jewish OT canon, finalized at the end of the first century CE, was based on, among other things, the mistaken attribution of authorship, political considerations and haphazard selections of the "authoritative" textual versions.
• The Christian OT canon, is similarly confused. With the various denominations unable to agree on even which books are inspired!
• Some canonical New Testament books even refer to books not in the Old Testament Canon as though they are authoritative scripture.

The history of the New Testament canonization and textual transmission shows a process that is equally haphazard:

• The history of the transmission of New Testament manuscripts shows that the text became more and more corrupted as time goes on culminating with the faulty text used as the basis for the King James version.
• Some of passages beloved by Christians, such as the Johanine Comma, the Pericopae Adulterae and the passages describing Jesus' resurrection in the earliest gospel have been shown by textual criticism to be spurious!.
• Indeed we see that the often made claim by fundamentalists that the more than five thousand extant manuscripts of the New Testament point to something special is nothing but an empty boast.
• The canonization process was a hodgepodge of mistaken authorship attribution, faulty logic and the politics of heresy.

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On Morality and Word Spinning

• God commands atrocities, the type which rivals the worst atrocities of Hitler and Stalin.
• The Bible is essentially misogynistic.
• It condones slavery.
• The teachings of Jesus where they are original, are not good moral guides. Where they are good or positive, they are not original.

That leaves us with the liberal theologians. They try to explain away the contradictions, mistakes and moral flaws of the Bible with theological word-spinning.

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Conclusions

• It is filled with scientific errors, contradictions and numerous other errors.
• Many of its myths are not even original, but were derived from earlier middle eastern myths.
• The authors are largely anonymous.
• The canonization process is largely haphazard and accidental.
• It does not serve as a good moral guide and in fact had been largely responsible for the atrocities committed by believers.

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Notes

References

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