I. Introduction

A. In virtually every religion there are "fundamentalists" who claim that some particular written text is "the Truth" which must be accepted without question by all members of that religious group.

B. This claim that a particular written text is the infallible source of truth is especially evident in the Western religions, that is, in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.

1. In Judaism the sacred text is the part of the Bible often known as the Old Testament. It includes (a) the Torah (the five books of Moses--Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy), (b) the Prophets (which includes the former or earlier prophets--Joshua, Judges, I & II Samuel, and I & II Kings and then the later prophets--Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Hosea, Joel, Amos, Obadiah, Jonah, Micah, Nahum, Habbakkuk, Zephaniah, Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi), and (c) the Writings (which include poetry [such as Psalms, Poverbs, and Job] plus the Five Scrolls [Song of Solomon, Ruth, Lamentations, Ecclesiastes, and Esther] plus prophecy [Daniel] plus history [I & II Chronicles, Ezra, and Nehemiah].

2. In Christianity the sacred text is the Bible, which includes not only the Jewish texts known as the Old Testament but also the New Testament. The New Testament includes (a) the Four Gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke, & John), (b) the history of the early church called the Acts of the Apostles, (c) the epistles or letters of Paul [Romans, I & II Corinthians, Galatiians, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, I & II Thessalonians, I & II Timothy, Titus, and Philemon], other epistles or letters [Hebrews, James, I & II Peter, I, II, & III John, and Jude], and (d) the Revelation.

3. The Old Testament (or covenant) refers to God's promise to Abraham recorded in Genesis 17:3-10. [Read these verses.] Note that the key terms of this covenant are that Abraham will be "the father of many nations" which will be given "the whole land of Canaan" while for Abraham and his descendants, the obligation is, "Every male among you shall be circumcised."

a. Another version of the covenant with the Jews is given in Exodus 19:3-8. [Read these verses.] Now God's promise is that the Jews will be "a kingdom of priests and a holy nation" while the Jews promised to do "all that the Lord has spoken." Here the duty of the Jews is expanded to include following the Law generally, not just being circumcised. The Law included many restrictions, but best known are the Ten Commandments, supposedly given to Moses on Mount Sinai after the exodus from Egypt. They can be found in Exodus 20:1-17 and Deuteronomy 5:6-21. It is worth noting that the Jewish covenant is about the future of the Jewish people and contains nothing at all about life-after-death.

b. The covenant between Yahweh and the Jewish people comes to be related to "the book of the covenant," a book containing the laws which are to be followed, and the covenant is solemnized by a ceremony where the blood of sacrificed animals is sprinkled both on the altar where the animals have been sacrificed and on the people. [Read Exodus 24:6-8.]

4. According to Christians the New Testament (or covenant) refers to a new agreement made between God and those who follow Jesus. It is solemnized by Jesus's death on the cross and participation in the mass or communion service. According to Luke 22:20 at the Last Supper Jesus says "This is the the new covenant in my blood, which is poured out for you." (A very similar statement is recorded in Matthew 26:28, in Mark 14:24, and in I Corinthians 11:25.)

a. The relation between the old covenant where Moses was mediator and the new covenant where Jesus is mediator is explained in Hebrews 8:1-9:15, where Jeremiah's prophecy that there would be a new convenant is quoted. [Read Jeremiah 31:31-34, which is quoted in Hebrews 8:8-12.]

b. Christian believers are now promised "an eternal inheritance" (Hebrews 9:15).

c. The new Christian community is to be a replacement of the Old Israel. Thus there must be 12 disciples just as there were 12 tribes in Israel, even though a couple of their names are not the same in the Gospel lists.

II. If you really want to understand the Bible, you must move beyond the fundamentalist view that it is "the inerrant Word of God" and begin to view it as a natural object written by actual persons at an actual time.

A. The fundamentalist viewpoint lacks all sense of history. It ignores the fact that all of the Bible was written before the year 200 AD (or CE). That means that the authors knew practically nothing about what causes diseases, about the facts of astronomy which preclude the existence of a heaven above the sky or a hell beneath the Earth, about the antiquity of the Earth and of the universe, about the causes of natural changes such as droughts or floods or earthquakes, about the existence of other peoples living at other times and places, and so on. They didn't even understand that daylight is caused by the sun or that the Earth rotates on its axis or that it revolves around the sun. They didn't understand the importance of psychological phenomena such as wishful thinking and suggestibility.

1. Some fundamentalists fervently committed to the King James version of the Bible, completed in 1611, don't even realize that the Bible was not originally written in English! The Old Testament was written in Hebrew and the New Testament was originally written in Greek, the lingua franca of the whole eastern Mediterranean thanks to the conquests of Alexander the Great.

B. The fundamentalist point of view also rules out all effort to examine carefully the veracity of what is being stated.

1. Fundamentalists may recognize that the religious literature of other groups has a mythological nature and often contains outrageous claims, but they fail to recognize the same features in the Bible. Would any contemporary educated 20-year-old who had not previously been indoctrinated to believe them accept as true the story of the resurrection of Jesus or the other miracle stories reported in the Bible?

2. The notion that there can be "revealed truth" (a notion which fundamentalists often deny with regard to any other religious traditions) undercuts the most obvious questions about truth and credibility.

a. When there are obvious contradictions within the Bible itself, or when statements are made that are in conflict with what is now known to be true, does one not need to conclude that the Bible contains at least some false statements? Fundamentalists often respond to such problems by saying that one must reinterpret the texts so that they are consistent with each other or with other things that are known to be true on other grounds. For example, Genesis 1:28-31 makes it clear that the other plants and animals existed before humans were created while Genesis 2:4--9 clearly states that God creates a man before there are any plants or other animals. Joshua 10:12-13 clearly says that the sun stood still for about a whole day, which means in modern terms that the Earth stopped rotating on its axis for about 24 hours. Could such a thing possibly happen?

b. If everything in the Bible is accepted as absolutely true, won't fundamentalists be forced to accept some ideas which are anathema to them. For example, in Mark 10:18, Jesus clearly says, "Why do you call me good? No one is good but God alone." Will fundamentalists accept this verse as a true statement, especially since it is ascribed to Jesus himself?

c. When different Biblical passages in both Old and New Testaments go on for several verses almost word for word the same, can there be any doubt that someone is copying from someone else? On the other hand, when they differ (as for example regarding how many angels there were in the empty tomb after the resurrection of Jesus or precisely who it was the went to the tomb), how can these various accounts all be true? In the Gospels the lists of the 12 original disciples is not the same.

d. One should get into the habit of asking of things reported in the Bible, "How could the writer possibly know about that?" An obvious case is the account of creation. How could someone writing in the fifth century BCE possibly have knowledge about the beginning of the Earth? Another interesting example is the report in Luke 1:26-38 of the visitation of the angel Gabriel to Mary. It seems that the only possible source of knowledge about this event (which supports the idea of a virgin birth) would be Mary herself. A person not already committed to the veracity of everything in the Bible will certainly wonder about the reliability of this story about how Mary became pregnant since there can be no source but Mary herself.

III. So what can we say about how the Bible actually came to be written and how particular writings came to be recognized as a sacred text?

A. Biblical scholars are like detectives trying by many different means to determine what the original text said, when it was written, by whom it was written, for and to whom it was written, and why it was written. They also try to figure out how and why some texts became part of the accepted canon of sacred literature while others did not.

1. In a general way we must remember that the Bible was created in an agricultural society. One of the characteristics of such a society is that only a small proportion (maybe 2-3 percent) of the people were able to read and write, and that it is an even smaller group that has the time to write more than short messages and the resources to buy the materials needed for creating written materials than will last very long.

2. In an agricultural society, education will usually be limited to those with some political, economic, or social power and that the political and religious leaders usually work together to support each other. The written materials which survive will usually have been created for a prestigious person or group of persons.

B. With regard to the Old Testament, the "Documentary Hypothesis" is based on the view that the books in the first two-thirds of the Old Testament are compilations from earlier materials or documents is now generally accepted by Biblical scholars. A most influential spokesman for this point of view was Julius Wellhausen (1844-1918).

1. The most obvious clue is that one finds two different Hebrew words used for God. Sometimes the term used for God is "El" and its plural "Elohim," so this material is called the "E" or "Elohist" source. Writings using this term seem to reflect the viewpoint of the Jewish tribes which made up the northern kingdom of Israel during the period 930 BCE to 720 BCE after the united kingdom of David and Solomon had become divided. On other occasions the term used for God is "Yahweh," which in Hebrew means "I am what I am." This material is called the "J" source (because the German spelling of "Yahweh" starts with the letter "J" [note that the English word "Jehovah" is a corrupted form of "Yahweh"], and this material seems to reflect the viewpoint of the southern kingdom, known as Judah. When translated into English, "El" traditionally becomes "God" while "Yahweh" becomes "the Lord God." In Genesis 1:26 when God says, "Let us make man in our image," the plural form indicates that in this verse the original Hebrew word for God was the plural form "Elohim."

2. In addition to the "E" and "J" sources the scholars also distinguish a "P" (for "Priestly") source and a "D" document, which is so designated because it is our present book of Deuteronomy. The "P" source also uses the term "Elohim" for God, but it concerns itself particularly with priestly rituals and precise dating, numbers, and measurements. The "D" source includes more than the book of Deuteronomy, however, since scholars see that that book as part of a larger history that now comprises the biblical books of Joshua I, & II Samuel, and I & II Kings. The "D" material. like the "J" source, seems to reflect a Judahistic or southen point of view.

3. Some key dates Jewish history to keep in mind are:

a. the rule of David (1005-970 BCE, easily remembered as 1000 BCE),

b. the death of David's son Solomon and consequent division of that kingdom into northern and southern parts (931 BCE),

c. fall of the northern kingdom (Israel) to Assyrians in 722 BCE,

d. fall of the southern kingdom (Judah) to Babylonians in 586 BCE,

e. the Babylonian exile (586-539 BCE),

f. the return of Ezra to Jerusalem (458 BCE).

4. A critical event in the history of the Old Testament was the reworking of the written history under King Josiah of Judah near the end of the 7th century BCE, after the fall of the northern kingdom to the Assyrians.

a. The book of Deuteronomy and the historical books following it were compiled by a group of scribes under Josiah's leadership. For details about how archeological finds support this view, one can turn to the recently published The Bible Unearthed: Archaeology's New Vision of Ancient Israel and the Origin of Its Sacred Texts by Israel Finkelstein and Neil Silberman (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2001).

b. The story of Moses; the story of Noah and the Flood; the history of the Exodus; the giving of the Commandments,; the conquest of Canaan; and the establishment of a great kingdom under Saul, David, & Solomon; and the division into two kingdoms were reworked by Josiah's crew in a deliberate effort to create mythological base for Josiah's goal of bringing the former northern kingdom of Israel under his rule.

c. Many of the stories in the Old Testament are in fact myths taken from other cultures and modified to conform to the religious ideas of the writer. A recent book describing this borrowing and revising in detail is Gary Greenberg's Myths of the Bible: How Ancient Scribes Invented Biblical History (Naperville IL: Sourcebooks, 2000).

d. Some further additions were made to the Old Testament after the return of the Jewish leaders to Jerusalem under Ezra. In fact, some additions to the Old Testament canon such as the last part of the Chronicles and the book of Daniel were as late as the third century BCE.

e. An important event in the history of the Old Testament was its translation from Hebrew into Greek in the 3rd and 2nd century BCE. This widely used translation was known as the Septuagint because it was done by 72 scholars. Quotations of the Old Testament in the New Testament writings come from this translation.

C. A group of writings known as the Apocrypha (hidden or secret writings) were used by some Christians in the services of the early Church even though they were not part of the Old Testament. Most were written between 200 BCE and 200 CE. During the Protestant Reformation it was decided by Protestants to limit their canon to that part of the Old Testament which the Jews had accepted as part of their canon. Consequently, Catholic Bibles include the Apocrypha while Protestant Bibles generally do not.

D. With regard to the New Testament, most of it was written between 48 C.E. and 200 CE. A large portion of it consists of letters written by Paul, whose life and significance is explained in a book titled The First Christian by Unitarian minister A. Powell Davis. This book was just republished last year (2002) by All Souls Church--Unitarian Church in Washington DC.

1. The first collection of Christian writings was made by the Gnostic Marcion in the middle of the second century and consisted of an edited version of Luke's Gospel along with many of Paul's letters.

2. Many other collections were compiled by Church leaders in from 175 CE to 350 CE with some slight differences with regard to precisely which writings should be included. Most collections included the Four Gospels, Acts of the Apostles, the letters of Paul, and the Revelation of John. In the last two decades of the fourth century several meetings of church leaders officially adopted a New Testament canon, but differences of opinion about a few writings were still being debated at the time of the Reformation.

3. The earliest writings are the letters of Paul (the oldest apparently being I Thessalonians) and possibly the epistle of James. The earliest Gospel seems to be Mark (written about 65 CE) and the latest John (written about 90-100 CE). There is a widely accepted view on the first three Gospels (called the "Synoptic Gospels" because of the similar point of view in contrast to the Gospel of John) that the Gospels of Matthew and Luke both rely on the Gospel of Mark as well as some other source of Jesus's sayings.

4. The book titled the Acts of the Apostles is actually the continuation of the Gospel of Luke, as is evident from the first view verses of these two books, both of whom are addressed to Theophilus (which means "lover of God" in Greek).

5. An interesting aspect of the New Testament is how differently Jesus is portrayed in the Gospel of John as contrasted with the other three Gospels. There are also various specific discrepancies about when some events occurred.

6. Jesus's death seems to have occurred about 27-28 CE and it is believed that Peter and Paul were martyred together in Rome in 65 CE. Note that this means that all of Paul's letters are older than any of the Gospel accounts. What is particularly surprising about the whole situation is that Paul, who wrote much of the New Testament, probably never met Jesus, as one can gather from Paul's own words in Galatians 1:-11-23.

7. It is worth noting that at first the Christians were not much concerned about writing anything about Jesus since they believed that the end of the world was coming "before this generation" passes away, as Jesus was reported to have said. As the disciples began dying off, a crisis arose. John was the last to die. An interesting defensive argument is reported at the end of the Gospel of John. In John 21:21-23 we read the following:

When Peter saw him, he said to Jesus, "Lord, what about this man?" Jesus said to him, "If it is my will that he remain until I come, what is that to you? Follow me." The saying spread abroad among the brethren that this disciple was not to die; yet Jesus did not say to him that he was not to die, but "If it is my will that he remain until I come, what is that to you?"

This interesting defense is put into the Gospel of John, supposedly written by John before his death.
8. Paul is able to gain many converts to Christianity because he is visiting synagogues throughout the eastern Mediterranean where there are already many attendees (called proselytes) who are attracted to the moral teachings of the Jews but who don't want to follow the various Jewish laws, especially that which requires circumcision. Paul preaches just the message that they want to hear, that they can be Christians without following the Jewish Law. The result is usually a split in the Jewish congregations between those who like Paul's message and those who regard it as a betrayal of Judaism. The evidence for these splits is found both in Paul's letters and in the Acts of the Apostles. There is also conflict between Paul and some of the other disciples in Palestine and Syria which is described in some detail in Galatians 2:1-21.

V. Conclusion

A. Understanding the Bible requires much more than just reading it starting at the beginning and continuing on to the end. You can read it again and again in that manner and not even begin to understand what is being said or what its significance is. The fact that some religious fundamentalists can believe that every statement in the Bible is true underlines the truth of this statement.