The basis of modern religions, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, is sacred literature. Even recent religions such as Mormonism and Jehovah’s Witnesses have sacred texts. Each of these religions considers their sacred text as the ‘true word of God’ as opposed to the others, which are something less.
If you start with the idea that a book is the sacred word of God, it is very difficult to even consider the validity of the text and stories in that book. For example, a Christian who professes the inerrancy of the Bible, has to admit to believing in talking snakes, talking donkeys, angels, giants and that all the people in the world are descended from two people and the incestuous relations between their children.
The inerrant Bible Christian must believe in a 6000-year-old universe, a worldwide flood killing every living creature but the few on a boat, a tower ascending to heaven, God speaking to some humans, and God choosing one particular group of desert nomads for His favor.
That Christian must believe that men such as Moses and Joshua performed miracles and that God commanded those men to kill with little discrimination.
Astronomically, that Christian must believe that the Earth is stationary, the stars are no further away than the blue sky of daytime, the moon radiates rather than reflects light, and that the sun and the planets revolve around the Earth. Those examples are just from Hebrew Testament.
Preachers may have many reasons for wanting their followers to believe in an inerrant Bible, but the main reason is control. If you believe the Bible is inerrant then you must behave according to the interpretation of the Bible by religious leaders. This correct behavior includes sacrificing to the temple and the modern equivalent, donating cash to the church. This process maintains the lifestyle of the priesthood and the religious leaders.
In the January 3, 2012, Sioux Falls Argus Leader, Billy Graham addresses this idea. Billy’s reader says, “My friend claims there were many groups calling themselves ‘Christian’ after Jesus died, and some even had their own versions of the Bible that differ from what we have. He says this means we can't trust the Bible, and he thinks I'm foolish to be a Christian. What can I say?” You can read all of Billy’s answer here.
Billy starts off by claiming that raising this kind of question is an attempt to avoid turning one’s life over to Jesus. Billy says people who question the validity of the Bible are just looking for an excuse for their unbelief.
Clearly, Billy is twisting the actions of those unbelievers to suit his case. I would offer a different scenario: good, honest, sincere, Christians read and examine the Bible and find they can’t overlook the contradictions and the weirdness. Studying the Bible causes these people to lose their faith. It is not necessarily someone who is already an unbeliever refuting the Bible; it is committed believers who are losing their faith because of the inadequacies of the Bible.
Billy goes on to tell a real whopper about the evidence for Jesus and the reliability of the Bible. Billy says that when the Gospels were written thousands people who had witnessed the teaching and miracles of Jesus were still alive. He then quotes from the second epistle of Peter, widely considered a forgery!
First, the earliest Gospel is probably Mark and it was written shortly after the destruction of the Temple in 70 CE, some 40 years after the death of Jesus. The last Gospel, John, was probably completed after 100 CE, 70 years after Jesus.
Someone aged 20 who witnessed Jesus preaching or performing miracles would have been 60 when the Gospel of Mark appeared and 90 when the Gospel of John became available.
Census figures from that time show that for every 100 people alive at age 20, only 9 were still alive at age 60 and only 1 exceeded the age of 80. If there were 1000 people aged 20 who ‘saw’ Jesus, the total that saw Him would have to have been on the order of 300,000 people, a huge crowd that would have been noted by Romans and others. If 1000 20-year-olds ‘saw’ Jesus, 40 years later only 90 or so would still be alive and 60 years old. 70 years after Jesus, only 10 of these might be alive at age 90.
Thus, there would not be a huge number of people still alive to criticize or fact-check the Gospels.
Second, the majority of the population in the time of Jesus and for some time afterwards was illiterate. The only access they would have to the written Gospels was if some one read them aloud.
Imagine this situation: Several dozen Christians get together for a service and the newly released Gospel of Mark is read aloud. [Note: it was not called the Gospel of Mark until well into the 2nd century CE.] After the reading, an old man calls out, “I was there, and that’s not what happened.” The old man would probably have to run for his life, if he was even believed and not ridiculed into silence.
If Billy were a Biblical scholar, and he probably should be, he would be aware of the numerous forgeries in the Bible. It is possible that he is aware of books written in the name of another, but doesn’t want anyone to raise any questions about the Bible. If he once allowed for one error or falsehood in the Bible, then the whole of the Bible is up for consideration.
Believers and unbelievers need to assess the Bible for truth and reliability. This should not be done by starting with an inerrant point of view, but from the point of view of what is consistent with the evidence and with other sources.
For example, seven of the letters attributed to Paul are internally consistent and probably written by the same person. Paul probably was able to read and write Greek and Hebrew. Six of the letters attributed to Paul are inconsistent and probably forged by others to influence the course of the early Christian church.
Peter and some others were probably illiterate and unable to even speak Greek, let alone read Greek and write proficiently in Greek.
The early church leaders, in the centuries following Jesus, picked books that agreed with and supported their idea of what the church should be like. Books that disagreed or supported other ideas were condemned and destroyed. They did have the analytic tools available today and thus could not accurately validate the many differing texts in circulation.
Billy disregards all the scholarly work that has been going on for the past couple of centuries and blindly says the books that are in the Bible are the ‘correct’ books. Then Billy states his last, and weakest case for disregarding the excluded books. Billy says those books are the work of Satan who is trying to get people to turn away from Jesus.
Billy has to take this kind of stance. He believes and preaches that the Bible is the true word of God. Books that were excluded from the Bible must be from some source other than God. If Billy were to say humans wrote those books, current humans might think the same of the books that were accepted. So, Billy blames Satan.
If you are interested in reading more about forgeries and the development of the early church canon, I strongly recommend Bart D. Ehrman’s books. You can buy Ehrman’s books here.
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