...yes that's the book for me. Are we supposed to treat the Bible as a perfect, personal answer-book?
Although finals are not completely over, I've somehow been able to start reading some non-school related books. I can't remember where I saw first this -- possibly Streak's Blog? -- but as soon as I heard about The Rise and Fall of the Bible: The Unexpected History of an Accidental Book by Timothy Beal, I knew I wanted to read it.
Manuel and I have had a lot of conversations lately about theodicy and what happens to those who don't actually hear the Gospel or have Scripture translated in their language. A lot of these questions can be drilled down to how one views the Bible itself, so I thought it would be interesting to learn more about the Bible's history. I know I need to check out a Bart Ehrman book, as well, so hopefully I can include one of his books in my summer reading.
I'm only a few chapters in, but I'm enjoying it so far. Beal shares his personal story of his early relationship with the book, as a teenager. He writes:
Like my peers, I believed that the Bible was God's Word written down for me, answering all my questions about who God is and what God wants for my life, from the mundane to the ultimate. Or at least I knew that was what I needed to believe. (p. 12)
However, Beal quickly found that, when he actually read the Bible, he found conflicting information, and some characters who weren't exactly role models:
The most famous biblical characters, so often lifted up as models of faith, seemed just the opposite: Abraham, who, unable to trust in God's promise, twice passes off his wife, Sarah, as his sister in order to save his own skin; Rebekah, who plays favorites among her two sons, helping the younger, Jacob, steal the birthright of the elder, Esau; King David, who repeatedly exploits those who love him, who takes whatever he wants, including women (married or not), who shows no remorse until he gets caught, and whose alienated son dies trying to kill him and take his throne; and Jael, Rahab, Ehud, and many other lesser-known biblical heroes and heroines who achieve greatness through trickery and betrayal. Often, "biblical values" struck me as foreign, as if they had come from a radically unfamiliar time and place. Which in fact they had. But that made me anxious. It worried me that I couldn't get beyond the Bible's strangeness to discover its purportedly timeless relevance. (p. 9)
I am so glad Beal brought up the strange-ness and not-so-moral cast of characters found in the Bible. I grew up learning about Noah's ark and the supposed worldwide flood that God seemed to have used to wipe out anyone who wasn't on that boat. It's disturbing, isn't it? Once I realized how sinister that story is, if it is literally true, it would sort of bother me if I noticed something like a nursery decorated in a Noah's ark theme. The pairs of animals are cute, but nearly the whole word was supposed to have drowned in that story!
The tale of Noah's ark is just one example of a "Bible story" from my years in Sunday School that I later re-examined. That's why I'm excited to keep reading Beal's book, because I find it so interesting to study the Bible (both its contents and its actual history) away from a traditional setting. Perhaps in some church settings, the inconsistencies, ambiguities, and complexities have not been legitimately wrestled with. The result is that many folks, myself included, end up feeling disappointed or even lied to when they later take a closer look. The idea of what the Bible says sounds great, but often Scripture itself seems to contradict our faith.
Pardon this imperfect analogy from a soon-to-be-attorney, but many U.S. Supreme Court cases discuss the notion of a "penumbra" of constitutional rights. Certain rights, such as the right to privacy and freedom of association, are not specifically enumerated in the Constitution, but the Supreme Court has held that Americans do have those rights. The landmark decision that explains the idea of penumbra is Griswold v. Connecticut, which struck down a prohibition on providing contraception to married couples. Obviously the Constitution does not explicitly provide rights to married couples seeking contraception. But many rights can be implied because they "emanate" from the Bill of Rights - hence the term "penumbra."
There is nothing wrong with this theory, but when it comes to interpreting the Bible, I wonder if many Christians tend to extrapolate ideas that may cause problems. Inerrancy is the first possibly human-created dilemma that comes to mind. The idea that the Bible is infallible and should be our instruction-book (per 2 Timothy 3:16) becomes difficult when the text itself seems contradictory.
David Fitch shared his interview today with The Other Journal, and his thoughts on inerrancy:
TOJ: You claim that the evangelical belief in the “inerrant” Bible has not really been about the truth but about “being in control of the truth.” It appears that just as evangelicalism continues to fracture into different hermeneutical camps, large church personalities have effectively replaced denominations in defending doctrine. Over this next decade, how do you see the fight of inerrancy shaping up?
DF: There’s a splintering of evangelicalism, and strangely, I would say that the majority of evangelicalism realizes that “inerrancy” is an apologetic strategy whose time is over. It is a strategy that in fact undermines Scripture by defining its authority via a reference point outside itself, by what is an “error” and who gets to define “error,” as opposed to what Scripture is in its relationship to the Incarnate Christ. Nonetheless, it wouldn’t surprise me if the New-Reformed movement among evangelicals makes inerrancy once again a shibboleth to determine who is a true evangelical. Once this happens, I think we’ll all be energized to expose the defensiveness in this move and move on to a true faithfulness.
All that is to say, I look forward to gaining a better understanding of the Bible's history via Beal's book, and possibly learning not to undermine such a culturally rich book.
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