The Bible: Commentary and Controversy

This website is not written from a religious viewpoint; it is an attempt to present my own interpretation of, thoughts about, and questions concerning — certain events contained in the bible. Fundamentalists will undoubtedly consider this piece to be blasphemous. It’s certainly not intended to be; it simply results from one man’s relatively objective study of a famous religious work. I chose the bible instead of the Koran or other religious works because I am, at heart, a Christian. Some readers may find wisdom in it, some may find new answers to old questions, some may consider it to be a test of their faith, some may even appreciate the bits of humor scattered through it. Others may hold Twitter rallies, calling me a spawn of the devil.

The truth is it’s not written with any purpose other than to share my thoughts as I go from Paradise to Armageddon – if I live long enough to get that far – and to encourage others to do the same: to think, ask questions, come up with their own answers, and find new enjoyment in one of the best-selling books ever written.

I will not trudge through every episode, only discussing those that catch my fancy, so don’t breathlessly wait for me to discuss the begats, for example. I also, from time to time, will discuss concepts not literally in the bible, but that my readings and thoughts about the bible bring up. They will all, however, be derived from the bible.

Do these essays mean I doubt that the Bible is the word of God? I’m obviously not competent to say with any assurance whether it is or not. I do believe it was first told to men by other men, then finally written down and copied by men, possibly over millennia, and I know for a fact that storytellers, authors, translators, and copyists have a tendency to add little somethings of their own. In the advertising business, it’s an old (but true) joke that the strongest emotion is not love, or greed, or hate; it is the desire to edit another person’s copy.

But on to the matter at hand.

NOTE: I’ve numbered many posts directly reflecting passages in the bible; the lower the number, the earlier in the bible. After that, since the references get a little hazy, you’re on your own with the unnumbered posts.

No one seems to know where the Old Testament really came from.

Professor John K. Riches, Professor of Divinity and Biblical Criticism at the University of Glasgow, says that “the biblical texts themselves are the result of a creative dialogue between ancient traditions and different communities through the ages.” The secular view.

Timothy H. Lim, a professor of Hebrew Bible and Second Temple Judaism at the University of Edinburgh, says that the Old Testament is “a collection of authoritative texts of apparently divine origin that went through a human process of writing and editing.” The semi-believer’s view. (You obviously have to believe in a divinity if you can say the work is of “apparently divine origin.”)

Some say Moses wrote the five books of the Torah, the heart of the Jewish Old Testament, also called the Pentateuch, but there’s considerable conversation about what language he might have used. In fact, there’s considerable conversation about whether Moses even existed.

Others say the Old Testament was written by many authors at different times between 1200 and 165 BC. Whoever wrote Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy – Moses or a panoply of scribes — it is generally accepted that he/they was/were setting down what had been passed down orally for hundreds of years.

The new testament, or “Gospel,” is said to have existed first in the minds of Christians and repeated orally – as was the old testament. Time passed, and those memories began to be written down, starting with the Epistles, then the Acts, then the Gospels. The earliest version to survive in the Bible is Mark’s Gospel, probably written between AD 75 and 85, obviously long after the resurrection. It was used – together with other sources – as the basis for the Gospels of both Matthew and Luke, each written a few years later, with the Gospel of John to follow around 100 AD.

Who wrote them, and when, is not nearly as important to me as the intent. I believe the bible is a long, sometimes wonderful, sometimes horrific collection of parables and life lessons that you can appreciate whether or not you believe in the existence of God.

It’s interesting, and possibly telling, that there is no historical corroboration of most events described in the bible. You’d think, perhaps, that the seven plagues, the parting of the Red Sea, and the resulting destruction of Pharaoh’s army was cataclysmic enough that it might pop up somewhere in the world’s literature, but evidently it does not. Jesus, however, is another matter. Most scholars of antiquity agree that he existed; they are not so unanimous about his life and miracles.

Whether the events of the bible are true or false is for people much smarter and more pedantic than me to prove. Anyone who wants to dispute or dishonor the messenger may do so to their heart’s delight; the message remains unchanged.

Of course, any discussion of the Bible must begin with the identification of the specific “Bible” being discussed – the Catholic Holy Bible, Protestant Holy Bible, Greek Holy Bible, Eastern Orthodox Holy Bible, or many others.

For purposes of identification, I will primarily use Young’s literal translation of the bible, which was based on “received text,” being the accepted printed Greek and Hebrew texts. While not pretty, or lyrical, like the King James version, it removes as much as possible any bias on the part of the translator and lets me draw my own conclusions. However, when I quote passages from the bible I will tend to use a more modern version, for fuller comprehension.

So let’s start at the beginning.

But first, an update. As I said, I began this journey to gain a more detailed appreciation of the bible, and to better understand its principles, and God, and the events described in it. Unfortunately, I’m afraid reading it took me down a different path – the path, as you might say, of an unbeliever – which I am not. But I became throughly disenchanted with the old testament god, and with the seedy, greedy, salacious, improbable events in this holy book. So I apologize for diverting from the path described above, but perhaps this site might be interesting from the perspective of biblical ingenue turned critic, and what might have turned him that way.

BD