Bible Matters

To Chris Moses,

a friend

Contents

Title

Dedication

Preface

Introduction

Part One: What is the Bible?

1    What is the Bible?

2    Translating the Bible

3    The Bible Story

4    So is the Bible Story true?

Part Two: The Bible and Historical Truth

5    Digging up the Bible

6    The Development of Historical Criticism

7    Historical Criticism and the Hebrew Scriptures

8    Questing for the Historical Jesus

9    The Waning of Historical Criticism

10    Studying the Bible Today

Part Three: The Use and Interpretation of the Bible

11    The Bible and Christian Theology

12    The Bible and Ethics

13    Women and the Bible

14    Political Readings of the Bible

15    Another Perspective

Conclusion: What Does it all Mean – And Why Does it Really Matter?

Postscript: Language and Truth in the Bible

Glossary

Index

By the Same Author

Copyright

Preface

At the age of 30, Peter sold his house, left his career as a chartered accountant and company chairman, and started reading for a Master’s degree in theology at King’s College, London. Lots of people asked him why! It certainly wasn’t for the money or job security, and it wasn’t because he suddenly ‘got God’.

In 1996 Charlotte started reading for a degree in theology at Worcester College, Oxford. She chose to specialize in biblical studies, particularly the pre-exilic Hebrew Scriptures. People kept on asking her why; she didn’t want to be a vicar and wasn’t sure she even believed in God! She certainly wasn’t keen on rowing or the union. She wasn’t set on a career in the city and didn’t even want to be an academic theologian.

For both Peter and Charlotte, their reason for studying the Bible was Søren Kierkegaard.

For Kierkegaard, truth is the only thing that matters and that ‘truth is not a matter of knowing this or that but of being in the truth’. To anyone of moderate intelligence it is obvious that human beings cannot be the measure of all things. How human beings see things cannot be the way they really are – truth is bigger than us and our limited perspective. The only way to live truthfully is to recognize the existence of an independent absolute truth and that although we humans cannot claim to know it, we live in the face of it whether we like it or not.

This is the essence of the Bible and why it matters. As Kierkegaard said:

The Bible is very easy to understand. But we … pretend to be unable to understand it because we know very well that the minute we understand, we are obliged to act accordingly.

People explain their reasons for studying the Bible in many different ways. Some frame it in terms of sociology, others history, literary studies, linguistics, politics or psychology, a few religious knowledge. Few manage to communicate why the Bible really matters, perhaps because it is deeply countercultural in an age steeped in postmodern ‘incredulity towards metanarratives’. In the end, however unfashionable or uncomfortable this might be, the Bible bears witness to the truth – el emet.¹

Of course, the truth is way beyond anything that can be communicated simply, literally, directly. Truth is beyond mere words, beyond clear comprehension, but it is the very ground of our being. As the Bible explains, truth is even the guarantee of God’s mercy, justice and power,² so it is ultimate, absolute reality. Studying the Bible, and studying how people have studied the Bible, gives us a window into the nature of truth and how most people have avoided understanding and acting on it.

For both Peter and Charlotte, in this sense, studying the Bible is the ultimate philosophical activity and the reason they chose to devote their lives to it. Nothing else truly matters.

Peter and Charlotte Vardy

Montbrun-des-Corbières, France

Easter 2015

Notes

1  ‘God of Truth’, as in Ps. 31.5 and Isa. 65.16, Hebrew .

2  E.g. Deut. 32.4; Ps. 100.5; John 7.17; John 8.32.

The poem in the rock and

The poem in the mind

Are not one.

It was in dying

I tried to make them so.

R. S. Thomas, ‘Epitaph’

Introduction

Does the Bible really matter in today’s multicultural, scientifically informed and technologically enabled world? What have the traditions of a long-dead Middle Eastern culture to offer us in the enlightened West? Do stories about the God who sent bears to dismember children (2 Kings 2.23–24), who slaughtered Egyptian babies for the crimes of their King (Exod. 12.29) and who went so far as to drown the entire world (Gen. 7.21–23) have anything to tell us about how to build a better world, whatever we might think about the evidence for God’s existence?

Two centuries of intensive scholarship have made the meaning of the Bible less, not more, clear. The authority, even the importance, of the Bible has been challenged as questions about its historical accuracy have been raised and the apparent complexities of its authorship exposed. Richard Dawkins is persuasive when he says:

To be fair, much of the Bible is … just plain weird, as you would expect of a chaotically cobbled-together anthology of disjointed documents, composed, revised, translated, distorted and ‘improved’ by hundreds of anonymous authors, editors and copyists, unknown to us and mostly unknown to each other, spanning nine centuries.¹

Yet does such a reductionist view do justice to the Bible? How and why did a ‘chaotically cobbled-together anthology’, if such it really is, become the bestselling book of all time? Why did demand for the Bible drive the development of printing, lead to revolution and regime change across the world? Why have tens of thousands died through demanding the right to read the Bible or providing it to others? Why are concepts of God and human goodness still so shaped by the Bible? Why do its pages still exert influence on international affairs? Why do all sorts of people keep on opening the Bible and seeing in its pages something life-enhancing – how can it still inspire a Leonard Cohen to write ‘Hallelujah’ or a Tracey Emin to bare her soul on a wall?

Around 31.6 per cent of the world’s population identify as being Christian – over 2.5 billion people. For many Christians the Bible is the focus of their faith. Because of this the Bible remains the world’s bestselling non-fiction book. The Bible is available all or in part in 2,426 languages, covering 95 per cent of the world’s population. In 2007 The Economist estimated that 100 million copies of the Bible are sold or given away each year.¹ Nevertheless, levels of biblical knowledge and understanding among Christians remain incredibly low.

A recent Gallup survey² found that, for all their country’s apparent religiosity, less than half of Americans can name the first book of the Bible, only a third know who delivered the Sermon on the Mount and a quarter do not know what is celebrated at Easter. Further, 60 per cent could not list five of the Ten Commandments. In the same survey it emerged that 12 per cent think Noah was married to Joan of Arc! And while acknowledging that Christianity has changed,³ the hope that most Christians in the developing world have far better knowledge of the Bible than do most Americans is not supported by much evidence.

Further, for people of faith, understanding the Bible is about far more than recognizing famous stories and quotations. The meaning of each passage has to be unpacked theologically in relation to its context and wider themes in order to make sense of it and know how to apply it to life and belief in the modern world. Of course, there is little agreement over how Bible texts should be read or interpreted, let alone over how their wisdom should be applied. Different theological interpretations of the Bible exist within each faith tradition as well as between them, so the extent to which a person is deemed to have understood the Bible or any passage of it may well depend on the extent to which their interpretation concurs with that adopted by the person or denomination making that judgement!

•    Some Protestant Christians claim to take the Bible literally, seeing it as requiring them to denounce homosexuality – while also ignoring regulations about wearing mixed fibres or planting different crops side by side. On the other hand, most Catholics argue that the Bible has to be interpreted as a whole, by those trained in biblical interpretation. Of course, many people who see themselves as Christian see the Bible as a cultural resource like Shakespeare but never actually read or study it.

•    While some Jews try to follow all 613 laws in the first five books of the Bible absolutely, others see the Bible as a complex literary document whose value lies in what it can tell us about the people and societies that contributed to its development. Some Jews keep the Torah in its original Hebrew, written on traditional scrolls, and see true Jewishness in terms of being able to chant and interpret it in the synagogue; others see this traditional approach to preserving the text as unnecessary in an age of eBooks and iPads.

•    Some Muslim countries have made distributing copies of the Bible impossible, despite the fact that it contains the teaching of the second most important Muslim prophet – Jesus, Issa in Arabic – and many other prophets sent by Allah and fully acknowledged by the Prophet Muhammad.⁴ For some Muslims the Hebrew Scriptures and Christian teaching prefigures most of the Prophet’s teaching,⁵ consequently true Jews and Christians are to be respected. For others, such as followers of Daesh – so-called Islamic State – Jews and Christians are fit only to be persecuted or even killed.

So given that knowledge and understanding of the Bible is poor even among those who profess its central importance, and bearing in mind that there is little agreement about how texts should be interpreted or applied, is there much point in continuing to study the Bible? Has it become irrelevant?

In Bible Matters we will argue that far from being irrelevant, studying the Bible has become more relevant in recent years.

First, because Bible stories and the language in which they have been told continue to underpin Western culture – although many young people do not realize this and so are ill-equipped to get the most out of cultural experiences. Hollywood films, bestselling books, works of contemporary art and architecture as well as political speeches, marketing campaigns and pop hits reference the Bible, use and manipulate its cultural power. It is no accident that many theology graduates are drawn to work in advertising, journalism and the law, when their degree has entailed studying the foundations of our culture and some of the best examples of how to communicate and persuade in human history.⁶

The relevance of Bible study goes way beyond the power of its language. The Bible represents for Western culture a repository for many of our memories, symbols, archetypal stories, morals – the essence of our collective identity and what makes our societies what they are. As the OSCE Toledo Guiding Principles on Teaching about Religions and Beliefs in Public Schools concluded in 2007, knowing about the Bible and the beliefs and practices it has inspired is ‘an essential part of a quality education. It is required to understand much of history, literature and art, and can be helpful in broadening one’s cultural horizons and in deepening one’s insight into the complexities of past and present.’⁷

Second, studying the Bible is relevant because historical claims originating in biblical texts continue to cause tension. Was the land of Israel promised to the Jewish people by God? Were the Jewish people really displaced by the Romans? Will the last judgement be heralded by the arrival of the Messiah through the Golden Gate of Jerusalem? While some people doubt the historical reliability of the Bible, others see it as our most important record of the past and an essential guide for shaping future affairs. Examining the historical status of the Bible is important if we are to understand, let alone make progress in, world affairs and if we are to deal with the political manifestations of fundamentalism and literalism that divide our world now. Forgive us the clichés, but as Confucius said, ‘study the past if you would define the future’; and as George Santayana said, ‘those who cannot remember the past are doomed to repeat it’.

Third, biblical quotations are often used to lend authority to moral arguments that are often designed to persuade and influence. In Apartheid South Africa, protestors quoted Galatians 3.26–29 (‘There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus’) against oppressors who spouted Leviticus 25.45–46 (‘You may also buy some of the temporary residents living among you and members of their clans born in your country, and they will become your property. You can bequeath them to your children as inherited property and can make them slaves for life’).

Outside US abortion clinics, ‘pro-life’ protestors shout about the sanctity of human lives created ‘in the image of God’ and that murder should be avenged ‘an eye for an eye’, while ‘pro-choice’ campaigners ask how people who claim to venerate human life can judge, reject, constrain the freedoms of vulnerable women and doctors – even physically attack them – when Jesus taught ‘love your neighbour as yourself’, ‘judge not, lest ye be judged’ and regularly forgave sinners. It is important to be able to engage with people who seek to use the Bible’s authority to win arguments and change policy.

Further, some atheists have seized on apparent contradictions between specific biblical quotations, seeking to discredit the whole Bible – and through that, religions and people who respect them. In their focus on reconciling detail they often ignore the bigger picture, in which some of the apparent contradictions dissolve; yet their arguments have gained traction and convinced many people in the secular West that faith is anti-intellectual, even pernicious. In a world divided between secular and religious – and over many moral, social and political questions – it is important that people have the tools to engage with faith, to look for a bigger and more complete wisdom and stop proper scepticism becoming cynicism or even nihilism.

Finally, attitudes to the Bible reflect attitudes to truth and knowledge. In this context, biblical studies offers insights into our and other cultures and those of times past, into how disputes have developed and just maybe how they could be resolved. Sadly, few modern education systems offer young people much opportunity to reflect on the nature of truth and knowledge or attitudes to either in their own or other cultures; yet without appreciating the significance of truth, knowledge and attitudes to both, young people struggle to engage with – let alone contribute to – the modern world. At its best, religious studies, of which biblical studies is an important part, provides such an opportunity. It can anchor and give heart to the curriculum, encouraging and enabling young people to put the rest of their learning in context, to reflect, discuss, analyse and begin to evaluate fundamental existential questions and different peoples’ answers to them.

As we see it, studying the Bible is an essential part of education, not just in order to appreciate the cultural heritage and languages of the Western world, not just to understand why many Christians or Jews think and behave as they do, not just to learn from historical documents or a collection of literature, but because its pages contain unparalleled insights into what it means to be human. The process of studying the Bible causes us to ask questions – often uncomfortable questions – about who and what we are, about how we live our lives, about the nature and extent of freedom and responsibility, about what we can say and what we can know, about perspective, the nature of truth and reality, the limits of certainty and human understanding, about belief and about faith. And that is without even considering the question of God’s existence, which even the great atheist Sigmund Freud saw as the most important question of all.

Bible Matters attempts to show why the Bible matters, why everyone should study it and find out much more, whether or not they are religious or even believe in God. Of course, no book of this length and type can hope to explore the complexities of the subject matter. We hope only that it serves to awaken interest and start readers on a journey.

Notes

1  Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion, London: Black Swan, 2007, p. 268; ch. 7, ‘The Good Book and the Changing Moral Zeitgeist’.

1  See www.economist.com/node/10311317. Apparently Americans buy more than 20 million new Bibles every year (to add to the four the average American has at home).

2  Quoted in www.economist.com/node/10311317.

3  In 1900, 80 per cent of the world’s Christians lived in Europe and the USA; today 60 per cent live in the developing world.

4  christianity.stackexchange.com/questions/9351/in-what-countries-is-it-legal-to-own-a-bible-the-most-banned-book-in-the-world.

5  ‘Say ye: We believe in Allah, and the revelation given to us, and to Abraham, Isma’il, Isaac, Jacob, and the Tribes, and that given to Moses and Jesus, and that given to (all) prophets from their Lord: We make no difference between one and another of them: And we bow to Allah (in Islam).’ Surah 2.136.

6  This point was made recently by researchers from Exeter University who called for the Bible to be used to improve young peoples’ writing skills. See www.telegraph.co.uk/education/educationnews/10881096/The-Bible-should-be-used-to-develop-pupils-writing-skills.html

and blogs.spectator.co.uk/culturehousedaily/2014/06/the-bible-can-teach-us-and-our-politicians-how-to-use-words-properly, 6June 2014.

7  See www.osce.org/odihr/29154, p. 14.

PART ONE

What is the Bible?

1

What is the Bible?

It is far from clear what the Bible is. Reading it can be a very confusing experience. Even the title is confusing. The Bible suggests a book; the word seems to be singular. People refer to ‘the good book’ and describe teachings in Scripture rather than in the Scriptures. Actually the word ‘Bible’ originates in the Greek and Latin words for ‘books’ – and this is just what it is: a collection of books that are themselves often collections of smaller texts, very much in the plural.

Further, different people might understand the word ‘Bible’ to refer to very different books. Leaving aside for a moment the existence of different language editions and the variation that necessarily comes with translation, Bibles in the same language with the same title on the cover might contain different words and sentences, different verses and books in different orders.

The Development of the Bible

The sense we get from the Hebrew Scriptures, from the Gospels and Acts, is that they started off in a rich oral tradition, in which stories were passed on from person to person – in the case of the Hebrew Scriptures, in families and tribal communities from generation to generation.

Different tribes’ versions of stories might account for the duplication of some traditions and variations in the names of places or even people, such as references to the same mountain as both Sinai and Horeb in the Torah. In addition, stories probably changed over time as historical events made certain aspects more or less interesting. Different authors probably had different styles and concerns in putting brush to papyrus as well. Similarly, different people and different communities probably had slightly different versions of stories about and the sayings of Jesus, which might account for the variation between the four Gospels.

It seems likely that the first bits of both the Hebrew Scriptures and the New Testament to be written down were particularly sensitive to variation – poems and orations, sayings or teachings and particularly laws. Histories were probably transmitted in oral form for longer, told and retold with some variations, yet it would be wrong to assume that oral tradition was completely unreliable as a means of communicating and preserving truth. Even today, historians and journalists rely on interviewing people about what they experienced and what they have heard about significant events. Just because some of the details of a story change does not mean there are not central elements that stay the same.

By tradition, the Ten Commandments were carved on two tablets of stone and kept in the Ark of the Covenant (see Exod. 34). Moses wrote the books of law and these, perhaps along with some later historical archives, were later ‘discovered’ in the Temple during the reign of King Josiah in around 623 BC (2 Kings 22).

The collection of Scriptures grew during and immediately after the Babylonian exile (sixth century BC), with some new writing and a lot of editing and reworking carrying on as late as the century before Jesus, and small but potentially significant variations between editions and collections well into the early medieval period.

By tradition, Paul’s letters were written between AD 50 and his death in 64, while the Gospels were written shortly after this, between AD 64 and 120. The books of Acts and Revelation, and the non-Pauline letters emerged around the end of this time. It seems likely that when leading figures in the Early Church died it became necessary to record an authoritative version first of Jesus’ life and teaching and then of the works and words of the early Church leaders.

Of course, tradition is not necessarily accurate and there are good reasons to believe that traditional ideas about the authorship and date of some books of the Bible are wrong. This will be considered further in Chapters 7 and 8.

By the second century AD, within both the Jewish and Christian communities a definite sense that some texts were ‘authorized’ and others not had developed. It remained to produce a definitive list of authorized ‘canonical’ works, decide which order these should be kept in and which version of each work was deemed best, so as to avoid confusion.

The Development of the Jewish Canon

Within the Jewish tradition an ‘authorized’ collection of Scriptures might have existed as early as the third century BC. However, the belief that the canon was closed before the third century AD has been abandoned by historians. James VanderKam believes that ‘as nearly as we can tell, there was no canon of Scripture in Second Temple Judaism’.¹

Possibly as early as the reign of Ptolemy II (283–246 BC) the Scriptures were translated into Greek for those Jews who lived in Egypt. This translation is known as the Septuagint (LXX for short), after the 70 scholars who were supposed to have worked on the translation.² The Septuagint contains the Torah, a collection of Prophecy that is very similar – though not identical – to the later Masoretic collection.

By 180 BC a core of texts seems to have been collected and accepted as authoritative. This collection,³ called simply ‘the books’, included Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, the Torah, as well as Joshua, Judges, Samuel, Kings and Job and the Prophets Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel and the Twelve Minor Prophets in something close to their current form.⁴

The Dead Sea Scrolls, discovered in caves near Qumran in the years after 1948, contain 235 biblical and apocryphal fragments, including evidence for the existence of the Torah, some of the Prophets and some of the other Writings. Many of the fragments are quite remarkable for the degree of similarity they show with the Masoretic Text, the tradition on which most copies of the Hebrew Scriptures have been based since the tenth century AD,⁵ and some of them date back to the second century BC.

Philo of Alexandria, who lived from 25 BC to AD 50, quoted the Hebrew Scriptures extensively in his works, seeing them as the source of all wisdom – but he did not quote from the books of Ezekiel, Daniel, Canticles, Ruth, Lamentations, Ecclesiastes or Esther.

In the first century AD, the Jewish historian Josephus wrote:

For we have not an innumerable multitude of books among us, disagreeing from and contradicting one another [as the Greeks have], but only 22 books, which contain the records of all the past times; which are justly believed to be divine; and of them five belong to Moses, which contain his laws and the traditions of the origin of mankind till his death. This interval of time was little short of three thousand years; but as to the time from the death of Moses till the reign of Artaxerxes king of Persia, who reigned after Xerxes, the prophets, who were after Moses, wrote down what was done in their times in thirteen books. The remaining four books contain hymns to God, and precepts for the conduct of human life.⁶

By Josephus’ time the three-part arrangement of the Hebrew Scriptures – Torah followed by the Prophets (Nevi’im) and Writings (Ketuvim) – had been established and the canon had shaped up to nearly its final form, containing 22 of the 24 books of Hebrew Scripture.

The idea that the Jewish canon was finally closed and authorized at the Council of Jamnia during the late first century AD was proposed by the Jewish scholar Heinrich Graetz in 1871. For decades, Jewish and Christian scholars accepted that such a council had happened in or around AD 90. Nevertheless, today that idea has been discredited; not only is there zero evidence for any such meeting, but also close reading of the Talmud suggests that disagreements about which books and bits of books to authorize persisted between leading rabbis until at least AD 200.

The Development of the Christian Canon

In 1740 a fragment of Latin manuscript was published. It had been discovered in the Ambrosian Library in Milan by the historian Father Ludovico Muratori. Claiming to be a seventh-century translation of a Greek document, possibly written as early as AD 170, it reads:

at which point, he [Markus?] was present and thus set them down.

The third book of the gospel is the one according to Lukas … The fourth gospel is that of Johannes, one of the students … However, the Actions of the Envoys are included in one book. Lukas addresses them to the ‘most excellent Theophilus,’ … However, as for Paulus’ letters: They make it clear (to those who want to know) whose they are and from what place and why they were written …

the first to the Korinthians;

the second to the Ephesians;

the third to the Filippians;

the fourth to the Kolossaeans;

the fifth to the Galatians;

the sixth to the Thessalonikans;

the seventh to the Romans.

Although he wrote one more time to the Korinthians and to the Thessalonikans for their correction, it is recognizable that one assembly has spread across the whole globe of the earth. For in the Revelation, Johannes writes indeed to seven assemblies yet is speaking to all.

He wrote besides these one to Filemon, one to Titus, and two to Timotheos …

There are extant also a letter to the Laodikeians, and another to the Alexandrians, forged in Paulus’ name to further Markion’s school of thought. And there are many others which cannot be received into the universal assembly, for ‘it is not fitting for vinegar to be mixed with honey’.

Indeed, the letter of Judah, and two entitled Johannes, are accepted in the universal assembly, along with the Wisdom, written by the friends of Solomon in his honour. We receive also the Revelations of Johannes and Peter, the latter of which some refuse to have read in the assembly.

But the Shepherd [of Hermas] was written very recently in our time by Hermas in the city of Rome, when his brother overseer Pius was seated in the chair of the Roman assembly. Therefore indeed, it should be read, but it cannot be read publicly among the people in the assembly – either as among the Prophets (since their number is complete) or among the envoys, whose time has ended.

Now we accept nothing at all from Arsinous, or Valentinus and Miltiades, who also wrote a new book of songs for Markion, together with Basilides of Asia Minor, the founder of the Katafrygians.⁷

The dating of the so-called Muratorian Canon has been disputed (some scholars claim that it cannot have been written until the fourth century), but it certainly throws light on the development of the New Testament Christian canon and shows how a core (the four Gospels and Paul’s principal letters) was widely recognized well before a definitive canon was decided. Elsewhere, Irenaeus of Lyons is widely credited with having recognized this core in the late second century.

A major step towards defining the Christian canon was taken when Athanasius, Bishop of Alexandria, listed the 27 ‘canonical’ books of the New Testament and condemned the use of other ‘non-canonical’ Scriptures in his Easter Letter of AD 367. The letter reads:

4. There are, then, of the Old Testament, twenty-two books in number; for, as I have heard, it is handed down that this is the number of the letters among the Hebrews; their respective order and names being as follows. The first is Genesis, then Exodus, next Leviticus, after that Numbers, and then Deuteronomy. Following these there is Joshua, the son of Nun, then Judges, then Ruth. And again, after these four books of Kings, the first and second being reckoned as one book, and so likewise the third and fourth as one book. And again, the first and second of the Chronicles are reckoned as one book. Again Ezra, the first and second are similarly one book. After these there is the book of Psalms, then the Proverbs, next Ecclesiastes, and the Song of Songs. Job follows, then the Prophets, the twelve being reckoned as one book. Then Isaiah, one book, then Jeremiah with Baruch, Lamentations, and the epistle, one book; afterwards, Ezekiel and Daniel, each one book. Thus far constitutes the Old Testament.

5. Again it is not tedious to speak of the [books] of the New Testament. These are, the four Gospels, according to Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Afterwards, the Acts of the Apostles and Epistles (called Catholic), seven, viz. of James, one; of Peter, two; of John, three; after these, one of Jude. In addition, there are fourteen Epistles of Paul, written in this order. The first, to the Romans; then two to the Corinthians; after these, to the Galatians; next, to the Ephesians; then to the Philippians; then to the