The Rise and Fall of the Bible
Timothy Beal's 2011 book, The Rise and Fall of the Bible ought to be
regarded
as essential reading for anyone with a stake in Christian faith. To some
extent
this is also true with respect to Jews although Beal self-admittedly
focuses on the Christian Bible, not the Tanakh.
This is not -definitely NOT- some sort of unqualified endorsement of
Beal's book.
Quite the contrary; there are many problems with the text, not least
Beal's
conclusion that there are no fixed meanings to much of anything in the
Bible
and the purpose of faith is to arrive at relativistic "understanding."
Indeed,
I find that kind of outlook irresponsible and ridiculous. However, en route
to the final chapter, Beal, a very accomplished Bible scholar, introduces
readers
to a plethora of 'Bible problems' that anyone who has Bible-based faith
can hardly ignore once they are pointed out.
There also is a major "plus" to report. Beal provides some religious
autobiography
in the text so that readers can better appreciate his actual perspective
and how
he got to where he is now. And his story is similar to a number of other
stories
that I know about from life experiences of others.
Not my own experience, though, which was very different than Beal's.
He grew up in an Evangelical family in which devotional faith was the
center of life generally. My experience was close to the exact opposite
and just about all religious devotion in my early years was due to my own
individual choices. But let me stick to Beal and his comments.
It is all too easy to sympathize with Beal's dilemma, how to reconcile his
youthful and literalistic Biblical faith with the lessons he later learned
from serious Biblical scholarship. There aren't many assumptions about
the Bible that can possibly survive encounters with hard nosed archaeology
or even with the work of that Christian paragon but also a serious scholar,
Albert Schweitzer. What to do?
Bonhoeffer's solution was pretty much the solution I eventually gravitated
to,
which is also Lutheran in character generally. It goes pretty much like
this :
"Yes, there are serious issues with parts of the Bible, including sometimes
crucial issues. Regardless, there is a spiritual essence that shines
through,
something real and vital to anyone with a conscience. It is there to be
found
and, once found, never let it go. As well, despite the various mistakes of
fact
and assorted inconsistencies in the Bible, there is plenty that stands any
reasonable test of historical truth and everything that can be relied upon
should be relied upon. Honest faith does not depend upon belief in Biblical
inerrancy and faith in Christ does not require that everything said about
him
is 100% accurate. Besides, if there are mistakes or conundrums
we have the capacity to correct the mistakes and resolve
other problems if we make the effort."
Beal, like a large number of other former Evangelicals found a different
"solution."
Roughly it goes like this :
"Since the Bible stands or falls on inerrancy, once you find errors in its
pages
your whole faith falls apart and the best thing to do is find a substitute
for
heartfelt faith by cobbling together bits and pieces of cherished Christian
tradition
and values, then add these to current cultural views held by groups you
identify with," in Beal's case other academics.
I guess you can still call the resulting mix "Christian" but, to say the
least,
in my opinion this is at best "Christianity plus water." It is a weak
diluted
version of faith that, for me, is not worth very much.
In so many words, there are all kinds of problems in the book / with the
book.
I was especially put off by Beal's half baked treatment of the issue of
homosexuality,
for instance. It is a subject he has never (never) actually researched and
his
pontificating comments make this abundantly clear. He does not begin to
know
the extent and depth of the Bible's critique and he has zero knowledge of
psychoanalytic or other behavioral science research findings -yet feels
that he can and should sound as if he is all-knowing on the issue.
This is inexcusable.
Regardless, and you will find a few other problems, even if not as bad,
in parts of the book, there is an abundance of insights, exposition of
little known
facts, serious analysis of the Biblical text, etc. and all-in-all the book
provides a wealth of useful information and thoughtful discussion.
It also is a "good read," is well written, moves along, and has qualities
of a page turner that you don't want to put down. I simply had to read
the whole thing in two sessions of several hours, once I got started.
There is one other serious flaw that deserves some comment: Beal made the
claim
that there are so many inconsistencies in the Bible that it cannot be
regarded
as an authoritative text to guide moral judgement. This is preposterous.
For what it is worth, the Bible seems to me to consist of two kinds of
moral
example, (1) issues where, yes, there is inconsistency, and (2) issues
where there is absolute moral clarity. There are inconsistent messages
about premarital sex, for example, and about divorce, polygamy,
and still other such matters. There also is a lot of ambiguity about
slavery. Not exactly a surprise given the era of composition.
Heck, as late as the American Revolution and the US Constitution
there was a lot of ambiguity about slavery. So, as I see it, it is
unjustifiable
to pretend that about these matters there are no inconsistencies.
On other matters there is no such phenomenon, there is consistency
from beginning to end. This is obviously the case concerning homosexuality
and the 30+ verses that condemn it unequivocally -with no exceptions
for any reason.
You can also argue that, within marriage or other normal relationships
between the sexes, men generally were given greater responsibilities
and greater authority, but as I read the text, all relevant texts, the
Bible also
demands respect toward women, demands fairness in men's treatment
of women,. demands that women should be free to express themselves,
and so forth. And in the early Church it is a well known fact that women
sometimes assumed positions of leadership. In the Hebrew Bible (the OT)
women in the role of prophetesses sometimes assumed
community leadership roles.
This is, as I read the Bible, consistent from start to finish. Hence how
does it
follow that we should regard the Bible's moral teachings as "optional"?
Besides, on purely empirical grounds -what is best, empirically-
you can (and should) make the exact same case Re: homosexuality,
Re: women, etc., as does the Bible.
How a Bible scholar like Beal did not see this escapes me completely.
Part of the problem is the fact that his grasp of history is sometimes
weak.
He knows a helluva lot of stuff that I am innocent of knowing, there is
no question about that, but in other areas he is a babe in the woods,
wandering around in the thickets, clueless about what is there to be seen.
Hence Beal rarely looks to history to test Biblical statements AS IF,
since he does not know the subject, no-one else can make use of history
either, to resolve issues of meaning. Which is a patently false conclusion
to reach.
Sometimes a Biblical passage is perfectly illuminated simply by looking at
a parallel verse in Mesopotamian sacred literature, or, less often,
by comparison with the literature of Ugarit in northern Canaan.
But what Beal does know, the history of the Bible per se, as a book and
as a canon that was not finalized for over 300 years from the time of
Christ,
has special value and is a story that any Christian (and Jews too) really
ought to learn and reflect upon.
It is a commonplace that there was no New Testament as such until well into
the 2nd century AD. What is less well known is that once there was a NT,
it differed widely among various Christian communities. Some now well-known
epistles were not in some collections, apocryphal works were included in
others,
and few, in any case, were anything like complete.
I had not realized that part of the problem had to do with what may be
called
"book technology." Until ca. 150 AD most written texts were scrolls;
and Romans continued to prefer scroll format for another couple of
centuries.
Christians adopted the new codex format that allowed random access
early on, and within a century almost all Christian literature was
written
as a form of "book." But not books as we know them. Fewer pages
was standard, compared with now, for the reason that parchment
is made from animal skins and the equivalent of today's Bible
might require the deaths of a dozen or more sheep. Hence a
Christian "book" back then would probably only consists of
some of Paul's epistles or maybe the 4 gospels, but nothing else.
A full Bible, both testaments, had to wait until the middle ages,
essentially,
even of there were some few examples much earlier, owned by rich patrons
or institutions.
This had effects on Christian theology, just as the parallel phenomenon
did among Jews. Most early Christian authors, including those who wrote
the gospels, simply did not have access to texts we may now take
for granted. Hence, among other things, in Mark, a conflated "quotation"
from the OT which Matthew and Luke later corrected.
So there's that.
I think that Beal was right to make an issue out of historical
inconsistency in
the NT. For the fact was that, until the era of Constantine, there was no
one
uniform in all cases Bible to turn to. It wasn't until the 200s AD (you
might argue
that the 180s are more like it, but the principle is the same) that there
was
something like our modern-era canon. And while the Nag Hammadi texts
give us a good idea of what else was being circulated as Christian
literature
it is a certainty that there were still other "books" that believers
regarded
as authoritative and that early Christians used as such, which later came
to be
thought of as outside the pale and unacceptable.
In this situation, especially very early on before the 4 canonical gospels
had even been written (Mark probably dates to ca 75 or 80 AD and is the
earliest), and hence various positions that were taken by the gospel
writers
sometimes make no obvious sense -that is, as supposedly consistent
stories.
How did Judas die? There are three versions and they do not agree.
While two do say that he committed suicide one version says that
God caused him to have an accident whereupon he was
disemboweled and died that way.
Well, OK, I don't know about you, but for me the manner of how Judas died
is anything but important. Maybe he died from malaria, I simply don't care.
But the matter of post-crucifixion appearances of Jesus make all the
difference.
And Beal is correct, you cannot get Mark and Matthew and John and Luke
to agree, each tells a different story.
Likewise there are three versions of the story of Paul on the road to
Damascus.
All of which only broaches the issue of inconsistencies.
---------
Maybe as a matter of personal faith this can all be set aside for another
day.
But there is the theme that Beal began his book with, the decline, which is
serious if not catastrophic, in Biblical literacy in America. As I see
it,
RC, our version anyway, relies on such literacy. Hence this is not
just a problem of private faith but it concerns the fact that
without grounding in a common culture we cannot discuss
much of anything with each other And the young, especially,
know less and less about the Bible. Not just the young, of course,
most Americans can't even name the 4 gospels, let alone
much of anything else.
Beal spends a great deal of time in his book also discussing this problem
about which all there really is to add -for now- is that if any Radical
Centrist
is serious about RC this is another issue that needs to be addressed.
The Rise and Fall of the Bible is a valuable book. As noted, it is filled
with very questionable views that you may well object to. But as far as
I know there is no other book that deals with the issue of decline
in importance of the Bible -to everyone's detriment- in American
education
and culture. This is something that really needs to be thought about and
solutions
proposed that might actually make a difference. The significance of
Biblical
inconsistencies is that when people do read the Bible, if they are at all
perceptive,
these problems are noticed. They may well ask questions about them; the
answers
they receive may seek to protect doctrines of inerrancy but in the process
be perceived as evasions or even as dishonest or misleading.
It should be axiomatic that if someone is trying to preach or teach to
someone
that it is necessary to be honest as part of vital Christian morality or
values,
it is completely absurd to start out by lying or dissembling.
Much more might be said but this should set the stage.....
Billy
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