JUNE 1999
Not for the faint of heart, the Bible is a very long read.
Almost 1,300 pages of tiny print, it is a mixture of fierce, bloody
battles, scores of twenty-generations-long, mind-numbing genealogies,
and quite a bit of indecipherable, symbolic secret code of some
sort. There is also a pinch of poetry thrown in for flavor. All
in all, though, it is for the most part boring, too often frightfully
violent, and at all times very confusing. It passeth human understanding.
I was unable to track down the actual
author(s) of the book.
Some of the sections have titles like "Mark" and "Joshua,"
but nowhere could I find who these people were or where or when
they had lived. This is why authorship must remain anonymous.
The book is divided into two main sections, the Old Testament
and the New Testament, "testament" apparently meaning
that the authors were "testifying" to the contents of
the book. The problem, though, is that none of the writers ever
claimed to have witnessed, personally, any of the described events.
So I can't really say if this is a work of fiction, nonfiction
or both.
For example, several of the earliest sections, for reasons
unclear to me, are believed to have been written by someone named
Moses. However, these sections always refer to Moses in the third person—Moses did this, and Moses said
that—and there is also an
account of Moses' own death. Since the personal pronoun "I"
is almost universally used to describe personal thoughts and experiences,
and since it is impossible to write an account of your own funeral,
we can be fairly sure that whoever wrote these sections was not
someone named Moses.
I encountered the same problems in the New Testament. A man
named Jesus supposedly did all manner of astonishing things. Yet
not one of the authors ever claimed actually to have seen any
of those astonishing things personally. (This was a disturbing
theme throughout the whole book.) Obviously, some unknown, unnamed
third parties had to have told the writers about these feats by
Jesus. But this forces the reader to wonder why the firsthand
witnesses weren't moved to put pen to parchment and describe what
were clearly wonders to behold.
As an example, Jesus supposedly performed miracles (such as
literally walking on water), healed very ill people with only
a few uttered words, and, most astounding of all, came back to
life after being dead for about two days! These are great wonders
indeed, but with the glaring omission of any firsthand accounts,
the reader will soon find himself doubting all of it. I, for one,
find Agatha Christie's murder mysteries far more likely to depict
real events.
Discerning readers usually dismiss secondhand accounts of anything,
preferring to get it straight from the horse's mouth—like a good
reporter. But I'm afraid the Bible cannot be called good reporting.
No newspaper editor worthy of the name would run stories such
as these without reliable, confirming sources. This book provides
none.
So, the reliability of the Bible as history is almost nil,
even though undisputed nations and leaders are mentioned. The
fact that historically correct names and places are often used
in the Bible is the basis for the argument that the entire book
is valid. However, this argument is unconvincing because anyone
could write an account of, say, a flying saucer landing on a rooftop.
Just because the writer might place this improbable event against
the backdrop of a correctly depicted 1970s USA, amid the swirling
Watergate scandal, would not authenticate the saucer landing.
The Bible suffers from this same credibility problem.
I found what I think are far too many grisly massacres and
murders, described in gruesome detail, in the Bible. This book
should definitely carry a warning that it is not suitable for
children. I could see no point in describing such bloody details
other than to claim bragging rights for an allegedly mighty group
of warriors. But this brings up another problem.
So many battles described in the Old Testament include impossibly
large numbers of soldiers. In the section named "Judges"
(8:10) there is a battle in which 120,000 Midianites are killed,
and in the section named "2 Chronicles" (13:17) 500,000
men were killed. And there are dozens more just like this. These
numbers are difficult to accept, and for a very simple reason.
In an arid region such as Palestine (Israel) the supply lines
for such massive armies would have been impossible to maintain.
That arid, scrubby territory could never have produced enough
food to maintain hundreds of thousands of soldiers, let alone
the civilian population as well. Even if bountiful Egypt (the
Israelites sworn enemies) had agreed to supply those armies, how
could the supplies have reached them? And how did they reach them
in any case?
Even with a complex railroad system, which these soldiers did
not have, or motorized vehicles, which they did not have, such
enormous armies could never have been kept supplied. Yet we are
asked to believe that battlefields of nearly a million soldiers
were able to be fielded, in an arid climate, using only pack mules,
horses and camels. This reviewer found such an untenable scenario
impossible to believe. So, although some of the biblical battles
may actually have taken place, the numbers mentioned are a human
impossibility. And this brings up another problem.
Many people claim that this book is inerrant somehow; that
it is the divinely inspired book of God. (There is worldwide disagreement
as to the name and nature of "God," but that's another
problem for another time.) But if this is true, then everything
I've written thus far should not be possible. I've checked and
rechecked the meanings of "inerrant" (incapable of error;
infallible) and "divine" (superhuman) and I am at a
loss to understand why anyone would believe the Bible is either.
In addition to the problems I've already mentioned, the Bible
is often contradictory, often silly (with talking animals) and
always confusing.
Moreover, the various groups claiming inerrancy do not agree
with each other as to the meaning of this book, which makes their
(contradictory) claims of inerrancy even more baffling. For example,
one group claims that the Bible teaches, without a doubt, that
birth control is a sin. Countless other groups disagree. One group
asserts that the Bible is clear in forbidding blood transfusions.
Countless others disagree. One group claims that the Bible was
"expanded" when God inspired one Joseph Smith to write
an addendum. Countless others disagree. And so on. With such irreconcilable
disagreements still raging about the meaning of the Bible, "inerrancy
" and "divinely inspired" must be ruled out.
However, setting aside historical accuracy and inerrancy, how
does the book measure up in prose, style and storylines? Well,
it's a mixed bag. There are some lyrical elements that are pleasing
to the ear when read aloud. These are especially pleasing when
read in the Elizabethan English of the King James Version, which
is still preferred by most of the book's adherents. However, when
weighed against the graphic violence, the inconsistencies, the
vagueness of authorship and the incomprehensibility of large sections
of the book (such as the entire section named "Revelation"),
the Bible is not worth the hundreds of hours required to plow
through it. In this reviewer's opinion, almost anything on Public
Television is a far better investment of one's time.
© 1999 Judith Hayes
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