THE BIBLE AS HISTORY

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As far as I remember, we (my peers) who were raised Roman Catholics did not get much direct exposure to the Bible (as we rely more on our priests); Protestants do. 


With regard to the Bible (Hebrew and Christian Scriptures), the belief system of many religious conservatives, mainstream Protestants, Evangelicals and some Catholics, may be said to fall into four inter-related principles, that: the Bible is inerrant (no errors); the meaning of biblical passages is clear and unambiguous; its authors inspired by God and the bible is the word of God and thus reflects accurately the will of God. Further, many religious conservatives believe that the Bible is to be interpreted literally. 

Many mainline Christians believe that the Bible contains the will of God. Fundamentalist denominations, such as the Southern Baptist Convention, and other conservative evangelical Protestant denominations generally teach a strict view on the inerrancy of the Bible. It is a belief that is tied with their understanding that God directly inspired its authors. The writers largely played the role of a secretary taking dictation.


On the other hand, Many liberal/progressive Christians believe that the Bible was written by individuals to promote their own evolving spiritual beliefs, and that many of the authors were severely limited by their tribal culture and by their lack of scientific knowledge.  Many progressive Christians believe that it is important to recognize that many biblical passages contain factual errors and that many do not reflect the will of God.

Many reject what the Bible's authors have to say on topics such as: genocide, human slavery, oppression of women, transferring sin from the guilty to the innocent, etc. (In Vietnam, some American soldiers "quoted from Joshua to condone the My Lai massacre. They claimed that butchering babies would purge Vietnam of the 'commie stain,' and that they [the soldiers] were on God's side." During the " 'ethnic cleansing' of the Muslims in Bosnia. [some Serbian Orthodox Christian believers]... quoted the book of Joshua to justify slaughter. They saw it as 'god's will' to slay the infidels.")

Below is a short essay by Prof. Anthony C. Grayling about the Bible and its being miscontrued as true/real history.


[Speaking of my perspective on religion, I say that I  have been raised in the Roman Catholic tradition; and spent almost 3 years in a Salesian of Don Bosco seminary. I was a practicing Catholic till I was 18 years where I came of age to gradually question all my so-called religious beliefs, immersing myself in readings about: other Christian denominations, non-Christian religions, writings of Catholic and non-Catholic theologians, philosophers, psychologists, and talking with a few open-minded friends (mostly believers), even attending post-grad philosophy and psychology courses; etc. I estimate I have spent a good 4 years of my early adulthood in pursuit of claimed "truth or truths" (whatever they are as traditionally thought). Of course I do not believe in such now. ]
- Bert


"Every sect is a certificate that God has not plainly revealed his will to man. To each reader the Bible conveys a different meaning." - Robert G. Ingersoll (1833-1899)


"Moses' law cannot be valid simply and completely in all respects for us. We have to take into consideration the character and ways of our land when we want to make or apply laws or rules, because our rules and laws are based on the character of our land and its ways and not on those of the land of Moses, just as Moses' laws are based on the ways and character of his people and not those of ours." Martin Luther's Works, Volume 46, p. 291. - Martin Luther (1483-1546)


"The Bible has been used for centuries by Christians as a weapon of control. To read it literally is to believe in a three-tiered universe, to condone slavery, to treat women as inferior creatures, to believe that sickness is caused by God's punishment, and that mental disease and epilepsy are caused by demonic possession. When someone tells me that they believe the Bible is the 'literal and inerrant word of God,' I always ask, 'Have you ever read it'?"
- Episcopal Bishop John Shelby Spong (1931-present)
. 

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THE BIBLE AS HISTORY

If you conduct a search of the internet on the subject of biblical archaeology, one of the first entries you find welcomes you with the claim that"amazing discoveries are being made daily which prove that the Bible is historically accurate and that the Scriptures are the inspired word of God."  Most people, whether they are religious or not, accept that much of the Bible is historical, even if it is history glossed from the viewpoint of a particular tribe's uneasy relationship with its god. It is precisely this view that Thomas Thompson contests in his controversial analysis of the Bible as a collection of literary, philosophical and apologetical works (The Bible In History: How Writers Create A Past).

Thompson's thesis is that the Old testament is not a record of Israel's origins and early days, but a later attempt to provide Israel with a heritage. To construct a heritage is to construct an identity, such writing of "history" is in large part an attempt to explain and justify not the past but the present.  By examining all  the evidence --literary and philosophical as well as historical and archaeological --Thompson shows how deliberately the Bible texts were aimed at fulfilling that task. The implications are dramatically controversial.

One is that there was no United kingdom of David and Solomon. Another is that the story of the early wanderings in exile of God's chosen is the record of a spiritual not an actual journey. Similarly, Nehemiah opens with Jerusalem in ruins as a figurative way of presenting Israel's need for rebirth. And Thompson demonstrates how the biblical texts are woven out of metaphors, as when the waters of the Red Sea part for Moses, of the Jordan for Joshua, of the Jabbok for Jacob, and as when David goes up to pray on the Mount of Olives in desperation of heart, which the New Testament writers represent Jesus as doing so.

When Thompson first advanced these views 30 years before he published his book on the subject, the result was academic ostracism and a stalled career. The standard view then was that because the Bible record is basically sound, archeological and other textual remains can be explained to terms of it. But an increasing weight of evidence calls this premise so far into question that there is now an increasing divergence between biblical studies and theology. Many scholars have come to agree with Thompson, and on good grounds. For if you seek external evidence to corroborate the biblical texts, extremely little exists for the period of the bronze and Iron Ages, in which the history of old Israel falls.  And when what looks like such evidence is found --for example, the Mesha stele referring to "Omri, King of Israel" --research shows that the inscription, once interpreted in the light of the Bible rather than vice versa, is far later than its biblical interpretation says it is.

Even more tellingly, there are great events in the record of Palestine on which the Bible is amazingly silent.  it says nothing about the great droughts that influenced Palestine's history.  It is silent about the immense battles of Megiddo, Kadesh, and Lachish, which determined its course. It says nothing directly about four centuries of Egyptian dominance of the region. And the reason is simple: "The Bible's language is not," says Thompson, "an historical language. It is a language of high literature, of story, of sermon, and of song. It is a tool of philosophy and moral instruction." As such its aim is to offer a spiritual history for a particular people, not the actual history of a time and place.

Secular reinterpretations of the Bible's historicity might now be more accepted in scholarly discussion, but it also remains a standard reflex for archaeologists of the region to speak as if the Bible is still part of their interpretative evidence. The city of Hazor, for example, once the greatest city of the region, has been extensively studied in recent years, and digs yield evidence of its violent destruction. Naturally, archaeologists relate this to Joshua's attack on Hazor --the Bible tells us that he slaughtered all its occupants and burned it to the ground. Solomon is said to have built a gate to the city, Thompson shows that the "Solomonic gates" there and in other cities were not, after all, not built by Solomon.

There should be no regrets over these intelligent reappraisals of the Bible character. The Bible is an extraordinary work of literature: it contains poetry, epic narrative, angry moralizing, celebration of virtue, and a spiritual history of Israel's quest  for a place in the universe. Those who see it as a work of factual history --even if they concede that it is polemical and tendentious in its anxiety to justify God to man, and to coerce the latter into proper observances toward him-- miss its higher metaphysical purpose. And that is: to give Israel an origin, securely rooted in divine ordinances.

Thompson's account shows how biblical texts express the period in which they were written. They come from an age of empire building, which suggested to those who lived through it that God should be an emperor too, and should rule over more than just one tribe.  And they come from an age in which philosophers thought that it is a criterion of what is only truly real that it should be transcendent and eternal, not merely temporary, as things in this world are, and this belief changed the very idea of deity. The result is a collection of writings which, although they are NOT history, made history.

Source: THE MYSTERY OF THINGS by Anthony C. Grayling ( professor of philosophy at Birbeck College, London and a Fellow of St. Anne's, Oxford. he is a Contributing Editor of Prospect Magazine and write a weekly column for THE TIMES Saturday review.)