The Bible: History or Myth ?

The Bible: History or Myth ?: "



The Bible: History or Myth ?



When you hear the word 'myth' associated with the Bible, what is the first thought that comes to your mind?

Many use the term myth in a pejorative sense to mean that the stories described are not factually true. Others define myth as non-historical tales that contain a moral message. Both of these definitions miss the richness of the term. Mythology is a form of literature that expresses fundamental truths in a way that ordinary discourse is inadequate to describe. The stories that make up the myths are often anchored in some historical reality, but this need not be so. Mythology adds a richness of detail and a concreteness to metaphorical language. Reading Biblical stories as mythology gives me the freedom to understand their underlying meaning in a way I never did when I was taught as a child that these stories were factually true.

Why do most modern scholars reject a reading of the Bible as history much less as literal fact?

1. In an age of science and technology, too much of the Bible is simply unbelievable to today's mind and turns people away from the underlying messages. From a scientific standpoint, many of the 'facts' in the Bible are simply wrong. One of many examples: according to Genesis, the universe is just over 6000 years old. According to physics, the Big Bang occurred 13.7 billion years ago.

2. Many of the stories are also scientifically impossible, like the tale of Joshua stopping the sun moving across the sky. This story assumes (as was the thinking then) that the earth was flat and was at the center of the universe. We simply know this to be false. Second, for the sun to stop would mean that the earth would have to cease rotating on its axis -- an event which would destroy the planet.

3. For many of the miracle stories, natural explanations exist. The authors of these stories lived in an age when people believed that solar eclipses were divine omens, disease was divine punishment, and mental illness was caused by demon possession. In the case of Jesus, healing was an important part of his ministry. However, today we can find faith healers in Haiti who practice voodoo and in tribal Africa who practice witchcraft. Many of these modern-day faith healers have patients who are actually healed by these practices. Doctors call this the placebo effect, an effect so powerful that drugs must undergo double blind experiments.

4. Some of the mythological stories in the Bible are not original, but were borrowed from other traditions. The Epic of Gilgamesh -- a Sumerian poem detailing the creation of the universe that predates the writings of Genesis by many centuries -- contains a flood story whose plot points are almost identical to the story of Noah.

5. The other world religions also contain rich histories of mythology and fantastical sounding (to us) stories. On what basis can we Christians claim that our miracle stories are legitimate, yet theirs are flights of fancy? The mythology surrounding the Buddha, who lived 500 years before Jesus, includes tales of how he healed the sick, walked on water, and flew through the air. His birth was foretold by a spirit (a white elephant rather than the angel Gabriel) who then entered his mother's womb! At his birth, wise men predicted that he would become a great religious leader. Twentieth-century scholars Mircea Eliade and Joseph Campbell wrote that certain archetypal religious myths are found across cultures, histories, and religions. Examples include the Cosmic Tree, the Virgin BIrth, and The Resurrection.

6. The Bible itself is full of inconsistencies. How can it be an accurate historical record, when the various books contradict each other? Here is UNC Religion Professor Bart Ehrman: 'Just take the death of Jesus. What day did Jesus die on and what time of day? Did he die on the day before the Passover meal was eaten, as John explicitly says, or did he die after it was eaten, as Mark explicitly says? Did he die at noon, as in John, or at 9 a.m., as in Mark? Did Jesus carry his cross the entire way himself or did Simon of Cyrene carry his cross? It depends which Gospel you read. Did both robbers mock Jesus on the cross or did only one of them mock him and the other come to his defense? It depends which Gospel you read. Did the curtain in the temple rip in half before Jesus died or after he died? It depends which Gospel you read ... Or take the accounts of the resurrection. Who went to the tomb on the third day? Was it Mary alone or was it Mary with other women? If it was Mary with other women, how many other women were there, which ones were they, and what were their names? Was the stone rolled away before they got there or not? What did they see in the tomb? Did they see a man, did they see two men, or did they see an angel? It depends which account you read.'

7. Reading the Bible as a literal historical account of events from the past limits the power of these stories. Rather than expressing universal truths, a literal interpretation limits the actions of God to certain events in history. God's actions in the world become finite, confined to certain historical events: like the chess master making individual moves on a chessboard frozen in time two thousand years ago. Reading these same stories mythologically, however, can bring forth their universal qualities.

8. A literal reading of the Bible alienates much of our society. The stories were written in a different age with different views on social justice -- an age in which slavery was legitimate, an age when discrimination based on gender, race, ethnicity, and sexual orientation was the norm. Too often because of this history, the Bible is used to justify intolerance today.

Reading the Bible as mythology is not a new concept. Two of the early Church Fathers, Origen (185-254 AD) and Augustine (354-430 AD), both interpreted Genesis metaphorically, rejecting literal interpretations. Early in the 20th century, German theologian Rudolf Bultmann called for a 'demythologizing' of the New Testament for many of the reasons given above. Rather, the movement in many fundamentalist circles today to read the Bible as inerrant (an extreme form of literalism, in which every word of Bible is viewed as true) is a late development from the 19th century as a response to the chipping away at the historicity of the stories since the Enlightenment.

I fear that an insistence on a literal or historical reading of the Bible will ultimately lead to the irrelevance of Christianity in our society. By throwing off the shackles of having to believe in the historicity of the Bible, we are free to interpret the stories as a testament to the religious experiences of people from a different age -- a testament that communicates a meaning about their experiences of Ultimate Reality, of God. I understand that their experiences of the divine ground in their lives were interpreted through the lens of a pre-modern view of the world, and my own religious experiences will take on a different form today.




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Where Did The Bible Come From?

Where Did The Bible Come From?: "

Where Did The Bible Como From ?

Since the early years of Christianity, various myths, legends, and even conspiracy theories about the origins of the Bible have enjoyed wide circulation. The discovery in recent decades of many books that were not accepted into the Christian canon has only added to this speculation, spawning numerous best-sellers and television programs. Though the number of theories has grown, however, the three most popular are sufficiently well defined that we can consider them as we might various options on a multiple-choice quiz. So read carefully and then make your selection.

The Big Three

A: Holy Dictation. Promoted by conservative Christians, this view stresses the inerrancy -- that is, the factual accuracy in all matters of faith, history, and science -- of the Bible. Authors, in the grip of the Holy Spirit, received a divine revelation directly from God that they transcribed without error. So while the biblical authors may have written in their own voice and style, the contents of their compositions were nevertheless divinely inspired and controlled. For this reason, there are no errors of any kind in the Bible; hence, if the Bible says the world was created in seven days then, indeed, it was created in seven days.

B: Imperial Decree. Popularized by historical works like The Gnostic Gospels and fictional books like The Da Vinci Code, this view suggests that the official and final contents of the Bible were established by ecclesial councils ordered by Emperor Constantine and his successors. The intent of these councils was both to provide theological unity to the fledgling Christian empire and to stamp out the rise of feminism and other movements in the heavily patriarchal and increasingly orthodox early Christian church. According to Elaine Pagels, divergent theologies like Gnosticism were a threat to the unity and power of the imperial-backed ecclesial authorities, while for Dan Brown there existed a conspiracy to suppress the 'true' story of Jesus' romantic relationship with Mary Magdalene, their unrecognized child, and Mary Magdalene's significant influence in the early church.

C: Forgeries & Falsehoods. Who wrote the Bible? All too often, this view suggests, it wasn't who the actual authors purported to be. Rather, much of the New Testament was written either by persons whose identity remains irrecoverably anonymous or by frauds impersonating famous and powerful Christians of an earlier generation. While the gospels represent the former case, many of the letters attributed to the Apostle Paul as well as those attributed to Peter and others represent the latter. As Bart Ehrman has recently argued, the checkered history of the composition of these books undermines the integrity of the New Testament as a whole.

So what do you think -- did you find a satisfactory answer? If not, it will help to remember that multiple-choice tests often offer a fourth choice, 'D: None of the Above.' As it happens, that choice would be the better answer for this question, as each of the first three possibilities is flawed. For instance, while Mormons have a story that describes the divine transmission of their holy book, Christians by and large have rarely made such claims. In fact, the theory of inerrancy -- a word never used in the Bible -- was only coined only a century ago by fundamentalist Christians seeking to defend the Bible from recent discoveries about its historical origins and fallible conclusions in the realms of history and science.

Similarly, there was no council -- imperial or otherwise -- that established the Christian canon once and for all. In fact, lists describing the most commonly accepted Christian writings that correspond closely to the present Bible were circulating a century or more before Constantine had his famous conversation. Later councils, like that at Carthage (397 CE), affirmed those books that had already gained wide acceptance. While early church leaders clearly opposed theological stances that were later to be described as Gnosticism, many of those writings had already lost favor in Christian congregations apart from and often before their rejection by ecclesial authorities. Similarly, although there is no question that the role and importance of women was grossly underemphasized in some books of the Bible, this reflects as much a strong cultural bias as it does any conspiracy. Further, at significant places in the New Testament women emerge as strong central characters. Note, for instance, that the women are the only disciples to remain at Jesus' cross and are the first witnesses and heralds of the resurrection in all four gospels.

Finally, passing off your work as another's is a more complicated issue than it might first appear. While claiming to be someone else for the sake of profit was roundly criticized in the ancient world as it is today, claiming the authority of a teacher or earlier leader in order to extend the thought and spirit of that author was met with more mixed reviews. Often, the symbolic and traditional importance of the work outweighs correct authorial attribution. For example, while most Jewish and Christian scholars recognize that King David wrote few if any of the Psalms attributed to him, almost no one argues that those Psalms have no merit or should be barred from the canon. At other times, decisions about the value of disputed works are based less on impartial criteria than on the critic's own stance toward the writings in question. That is, scholars both ancient and modern tend to reject such writings as forgeries when they themselves disagree with the content, yet affirm them as worthwhile when the works in question align with their own convictions. For instance, earlier in his career in his book Lost Christianities, Bart Ehrman not only lamented the exclusion of some extra-canonical books but also invited modern readers to reconsider their devotional and spiritual value even though he acknowledges that every one of the books rejected by the Christian church for inclusion in the New Testament makes a false authorial claim.

A Grassroots Process

So then where did the Bible actually come from? Or, perhaps better, what process led to the development of the contents of the Bible as we know them today? Typically, historians suggest two standards that influenced how early Christians came to give priority to some books over others as the New Testament canon came into shape, though neither of these elements ever functioned with the precision of agreed-upon criteria.

First, biblical books were frequently associated with one of the original apostles. The Gospels of Matthew and John are named after original disciples (although the texts that bear their names make no such connection), while Mark was thought to be a student of Peter and Luke a companion to Paul. With other books, however -- the Letter to the Hebrews, for instance -- it was more difficult to make such an association.

Second, books accepted as canonical tended to conform to emerging orthodox teaching. The key word in that last sentence, however, is 'emerging.' During the period in which the New Testament canon solidified, there was as yet no broad consensus about what would later become central tenets of orthodox Christianity. Often, the books that Christian congregations read most frequently influenced the development of accepted teaching as much as orthodox teaching shaped the choice of what books to read. This helps to explain the distinct pictures of Jesus presented in the four canonical gospels -- think, for instance, how different Mark's suffering Jesus is from John's cosmic Christ -- as well as the presence of books as divergent as Romans and Revelation.

Ultimately, the most important factors influencing the final inclusion or exclusion of books into the Bible tended to be far more pedestrian and pragmatic than any of the three theories we considered above might suggest: longevity and utility. That is, the books that ended up in the New Testament were those that proved themselves over the long haul as most helpful in sustaining Christian faith. While apostolic authorship and concerns for orthodoxy exercised some influence, the dominant factor shaping decisions about canonical status was to note what books Christians consistently read when they gathered for worship and instruction.

This 'bottom-up' process was by no means simple or uniform. Some books came in and out of vogue, trendy for a time or in a particular place only later to lose favor. It's only in the fourth century that enough of a consensus on what books were consistently helpful had emerged so that a prominent bishop like Athanasius could name with confidence in a letter to his congregations those books that had been widely accepted (367 CE). Athanasius' testimony in the preface to his list is telling: 'I beseech you to bear patiently, if I also write, by way of remembrance, of matters with which you are acquainted.' To view Athanasius' recommendation as establishing, rather than recognizing, an emerging canon is therefore to overestimate the significance and authority of ecclesial authorities over local congregations, the places where these books were actually read week in and week out.

If this sounds uncomfortably similar to a popularity contest, perhaps we might view it instead as the long-term process by which the early Christians sorted and sifted through various reflections on the faith until a grassroots consensus emerged on what books proved most useful in sustaining faith. Looked at this way, one doesn't have to reach for conspiracy theories to understand why the gospels of Thomas and Judas and similar writings were ultimately rejected. More often than not, these documents contained little of the narratives of Jesus' life, death, and resurrection that Christians had come to know and cherish. They are, as even a casual reading will grant, often strikingly dissimilar from the other gospels and writings of the New Testament. Because these works were often absent sustained reflection on the cross, usually lacked a coherent narrative, and sometimes contained rather peculiar theological assertions, is not difficult to conceive that they rarely caught hold of the imagination of early Christian congregations.

Proposing that the composition of the New Testament was a long process of recognizing an emerging grassroots and congregational consensus certainly isn't as dramatic as either the religious myths or political and ecclesial conspiracy theories often ventured. Nevertheless, there is something both sensible and comforting in imagining that over time Christians would esteem most highly those writings that most ably encouraged them on their path as disciples of Jesus. After all, what better benchmark to employ than giving authority to those writings -- even writings as varied as those found in the Bible -- that had the capacity to create and nurture faith?




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What Does the Bible Actually Say About Marriage?

What Does the Bible Actually Say About Marriage? "

by Greg Carey






Love

   

When you attend a wedding at church, what passages of Scripture do you expect to hear? Congregations occasionally invite me to speak on the current same-sex marriage debates, and I ask them this question. Their answers are remarkably consistent.

Someone invariably mentions 1 Corinthians 13, the famous "Love Chapter." Love is patient, love is kind, love never insists on its own way and so forth. Wonderful advice for marriage, but Paul was not talking about marriage. He was addressing a church fight: the believers in Corinth had split into factions and were competing for prestige and influence. We see echoes of this conflict throughout the letter, but especially in chapters 12 and 14, which surround this passage.

Others call out, "Where you go, I will go; where you lodge, I will lodge; your people shall be my people, and your God my God" (Ruth 1:16; NRSV). Another moving passage, but it's certainly not about marriage. Ruth addresses this moving speech to her mother-in-law Naomi.

The second creation story in Genesis comes up: "Therefore a man leaves his father and his mother and clings to his wife, and they become one flesh" (Genisis 2:24). This passage is certainly appropriate to marriage, as it reflects the level of intimacy and commitment that distinguishes marriage from other relationships. Jesus quotes this passage, too, but he isn't exactly discussing marriage. Instead, his topic is divorce (Matthew 19:5; Mark 10:8). When ministers read the Gospel passages at weddings, as they often do, the message seems a little off. I'd rather not hear about divorce at a wedding.

One other passage frequently surfaces in weddings but rarely in mainline Protestant churches, the Lutheran, Presbyterian, Methodists and United Church of Christ congregations that invite me to speak. Ephesians 5:22-33 commands wives to obey their husbands and husbands to love their wives. Conservative Christians may try to explain away the offense of this passage, but there's no escaping its ugly reality. Ephesians calls wives to submit to their husbands just as children must obey their parents and slaves must obey their masters. See the larger context, Ephesians 5:21-6:9.

Not a Lot to Say

The point is, Christian weddings rarely feature passages that directly relate to marriage. Only one passage, Genesis 2:24, seems especially relevant, while other passages require us to bend their content to our desire to hear a good word about marriage. Things are so bad that the worship books for many denominations turn to John 2:11, where Jesus turns water into wine at a wedding feast, to claim that Jesus blessed marriage. My church, the United Church of Christ, has developed a new wedding liturgy, but it retains this common formula: "As this couple give themselves to each other today, we remember that at Cana in Galilee our Savior Jesus Christ made the wedding feast a sign of God's reign of love."

So we know Jesus blessed marriage because he attended a wedding? That's the best we can do? No wonder it's common for couples to struggle over the choice of Scripture for their wedding ceremonies. The Bible just doesn't have much to say on the topic.

Let's Be Honest

Unfortunately, many Christians use the Bible to support their own prejudices and bigotry. They talk about "biblical family values" as if the Bible had a clear message on marriage and sexuality. Let's be clear: There's no such thing as "biblical family values" because the Bible does not speak to the topic clearly and consistently.

It's high time people came clean about how we use the Bible. When Christians try to resolve difficult ethical and theological matters, they typically appeal to the Gospels and Paul's letters as keys to the question. But what about marriage? Not only did Jesus choose not to marry, he encouraged his disciples to abandon household and domestic concerns in order to follow him (Matthew 19:29; Mark 10:28-30; Luke 9:57-62). He even refers to those "who have made themselves eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven" (Matthew 19:10-13). Whatever that means, it's certainly not an endorsement of marriage. Paul likewise encourages male believers: "Do not seek a wife" (1 Corinthians 7:27, my translation) -- advice Paul took for himself. If neither Jesus nor Paul preferred marriage for their followers, why do some Christians maintain that the Bible enshrines 19th-century Victorian family values?

Let's not even go into some of the Bible's most chilling teachings regarding marriage, such as how a man's obligation to keep a new wife who displeases him on the wedding night (Deuteronomy 22:13-21), his obligation to marry a woman he has raped (Deuteronomy 22:28-30) or the unquestioned right of heroes like Abraham to exploit their slaves sexually. I wonder: Have the "biblical family values advocates" actually read their Bibles?

Christians will always turn to the Bible for guidance -- and we should. If the Bible does not promote a clear or redemptive teaching about slavery, that doesn't mean we have nothing to learn from Scripture about the topic. The same values that guide all our relationships apply to marriage: unselfish concern for the other; honesty, integrity and fidelity; and sacrificial -- but not victimized -- love. That's a high standard, far higher than a morality determined by anachronistic and restrictive rules that largely reflect our cultural biases. Rules make up the lowest common denominator for morality. Love, as Paul said, never finds an end.



On Second Thought, Don't Get Married
by Dr. Neil Clark Warren

1 person liked thisMore than 2 million couples will get married in the United States this year alone. Several hundred thousand of these couples should reconsider, postpone their weddings or not get married.

Shocking new statistics released recently by the U.S. Census Bureau suggest that Americans may no longer need marriage. For the first time ever, fewer than half of the households in the United States are married couples. In the past decade, the number of unmarried couples increased 25 percent as more people chose to cohabitate. A Pew Research Center study last year put it more succinctly, finding an increasing number of Americans now believes marriage is "becoming obsolete."

This is a dangerous conclusion. It's true that far too many marriages, as currently constructed, end up disastrously. But with some common sense societal changes at the front end, marriage can still serve a vital purpose for a vast majority of adults.

Interestingly, around the same time the Pew study came out, the National Marriage Project at the University of Virginia, in their annual report on the health of marriage and family life, affirmed that more than three-quarters of Americans still believe marriage is "important" and that more than 70 percent of adults under age 30 desire to marry someday.

So it's clear that a majority of us still crave to be married. It's like we are hard wired to search after that person with whom we can spend the rest of our lives -- even in the face of these dire marital statistics.

I'm not trying to say that marriage is not in trouble. I am trying to say that there are some clear answers to the question of how marriage can get uniformly more satisfying for the people involved. And this I firmly believe: When done right, marriage can be the greatest institution on earth.

In his best-selling book, The Social Animal, New York Times columnist David Brooks says that "by far the most important decisions that persons will ever make are about whom to marry, and whom to befriend, what to love and what to despise, and how to control impulses." He cites multiple studies that have found a strong correlation between the stability of good relationships and increased life happiness.

But the skill of choosing a marriage partner has often been treated as relatively unimportant in our society and a whole lot less complex than it actually is. And herein lies the secret of why marriage has often turned out so disappointingly for so many.

It's frighteningly easy to choose the wrong person. Attraction and chemistry are easily mistaken for love, but they are far from the same thing. Being attracted to someone is immediate and largely subconscious. Staying deeply in love with someone happens gradually and requires conscious decisions, made over and over again, for a lifetime. Too many people choose to get married based on attraction and don't consider, or have enough perspective to recognize, whether their love can endure.

When people choose a partner unwisely, it's a source of enormous eventual pain. During my 35-year clinical career, I "presided over" the divorces of several hundred couples. I never experienced a single easy one. If one or both partners didn't get clobbered by the experience, any children involved often felt deep emotional sadness and loss. Sometimes this sadness kept impacting these people for years -- even decades.

A significant amount of research data, including an in-depth report by the Center for Marriage and Families at the Institute for American Values, buttresses my clinical impressions that parental divorce (or failure to marry) appears to increase children's risk of dropping out of high school. Moreover, children whose parents divorce have higher rates of psychological problems and other mental illnesses. And ultimately, divorce begets divorce; i.e., when you grow up outside an intact marriage, you have a greater likelihood of having children outside a marriage or getting a divorce yourself.

I have often suggested that more pain in our society comes from broken primary relationships than from any other source. If we could ever reduce the incidence of marital breakup from 40 to 50 percent of all marriages to single digits, I suspect it would be one of the greatest accomplishments of our time.

Of course, no one intends to be in an unhappy marriage. Bad marriages don't just happen to bad people. They mostly happen to good people who are not good for each other.

And inspiring marriages don't happen by accident. They require highly informed and carefully reasoned choices. Commitment and hard work are factors too. But after decades of working with a few thousand well-intended and hardworking married people, I've become convinced that 75 percent of what culminates in a disappointing marriage -- or a great marriage -- has far less to do with hard work and far more to do with partner selection based on "broad-based compatibility." It became clear to me that signs which were predictive of the huge differences between eventually disappointing and ultimately great marriages were obvious during the premarital phase of relationships.

When two people have a relationship which is predicated upon broad-based compatibility, there is every reason to be optimistic about their long term prospects. A marriage of this type has virtually no chance of becoming "obsolete."

If all of us together can focus on the challenge of getting the right persons married to each other, it just might change our society more than anything else we could do. Goodness knows, when marriage is right, little else matters nearly so much.

Dr. Neil Clark Warren is founder of eHarmony and chairman of its Board of Directors. eHarmony is an online dating website grounded in relationship science that matches single men and women for long-term relationships.

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