Bible: is there substance behind the story?
For nearly all of the first hour of our session we grappled with that question. Not knowing that we would discuss this question, I started our session repeating what has been something of a mantra; the Bible was written by persons of faith. It was written to persons of faith. It was written for their faith. To ask the Bible to be more than that is to ask the Bible to be what it is not. That doesn’t mean, however, that the actual questions that we have are not worthy of discussion. Nor does it mean that there are no historical facts in the bible.
Let’s begin with a few facts that may have different meanings for different folks but they remain facts. The facts may seem obvious but they are worth keeping in mind. The bible that we have in hand is first a book, really a library of books, extending over at least a thousand years. So everything in it has to be mediated by the words. As believers we believe that the Bible is the word of God but that doesn’t mean it is not also the word of human beings. In fact, the more we understand the human words, the more fully we can appreciate the word of God. Further, we have no extant physical books that are the original material on which the books were written. Thus every bible stands on the shoulders of unknown numbers of persons who passed the books down. They form a tradition, even if we think sola scriptura. Now the Bible we have in hand is written in English, thus it is a translation and every translation has to be an interpretation, an attempt to convey to us in English what it meant to an ancient people in their time and place. There is not one translation, but many.
For the record, the bible from which I have drawn my notes, for the most part, is the electronic version on the website of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. The notes help us to understand what we have come to know about the historical setting in which the books were written, sometimes who wrote them, sometimes when they were written, and much more. The notes attempt to create a context for our faith understanding of the bible.
As I listened to our group, there seemed to be two major factors out of which our question continues to be raised. First we were taught almost from infancy that the bible is true, after all it is the word of God. For a majority, but not all, of the members of our group true meant actual historical events. To be exposed to historical scholarship as our study group has been is to challenge the bible as we first learned it. This is unsettling.
There seems to be a second factor which is expressed in terms of substance behind the story. The inference maybe more nuanced but ultimately it infers that either there is substance behind the story [read actual historical events as narrated] or the story is fiction, made up, not historically true, therefore, not substantial. The problem with this factor is that, I believe, it is a false dichotomy. It is not either or. It all depends on the nature of the literature. Ancient writers simply were not aware of such distinctions. They wrote out of belief, thus for them, nearly everything spoke of God, in ways that we find very difficult to fathom.
As I compose this segment, I realize I need to bring this down to earth. So I will take one example, the flood. Maybe for most of us the word “flood” means water overflowing its banks, destroying what is in its path, drowning, etc. But it also can symbolize life, life that overwhelms us, that we can feel like we’re drowning, that we can wonder why is this happening to me, that I need help, etc. The original author probably made no such distinctions. The flood was both of these at the same time.
We come along thousands of years later. Life today, maybe more than thousands of years ago, can flood over us, overwhelm us, we don’t feel like we’re in control, and we want to be in control. Life today also presents us with a context in which we distinguish between fact and fiction, between fable and history, etc. We live in a world in which the overwhelming evidence is that it is at least 13 billion years old, that our earth is 4 billion years old, that human beings have been on this planet for more than 100,000 years. Etc. Etc. For me, the story of Noah and the Flood expresses many truths. The first that comes to mind is that our misdeeds have consequences but not in the simplistic sense that would argue God brought Hurricane Katrina onNew Orleansbecause of the behavior of the people ofNew Orleans. To hear such thinks saddens me because first of all it fails to understand both God and the Bible and secondly it presents an image of believer that has little or not attraction to me. For the story reminds us that God forgives, God is committed to us, that every rainbow is a reminder of faithful God. Even more, though, as a Christian I believe that that God became flesh in the person of Jesus of Nazareth and that he is the very Word of God, God Incarnate, and so the Christian Scripture was written to tell us of him.
Well I better stop to ask you what your thoughts are, questions, observations, etc. I will comment on the Genesis passage next week, our final week of this study year. Remember we will change our format for the summer months, so keep in touch.