Q&A 151
Q. That's precisely it! How are you so sure the Bible and all its stories are not made up?
A. Because we have first and second hand witnesses to all those "stories" who aver just the contrary.
One first hand witness, a teenage fisherman - St. John - explicitly mentions in his Gospel after narrating what he witnessed at Golgotha: "He who saw it has borne witness - his testimony is true, and he knows that he tells the truth - that you also may believe." (Jn 19:35)
A second hand witness - a physician or medical doctor as we call them nowadays - carried out numerous interviews to collate what we now know as the Gospel of Luke and the Acts of the Apostles. He notes "Inasmuch as many have undertaken to compile a narrative of the things which have been accomplished among us, just as they were delivered to us by those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and ministers of the word, it seemed good to me also, having followed all things closely for some time past, to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus, that you may know the truth concerning the things of which you have been informed." (Lk 1:1-4)
Q. You're avoiding my question: how do you know those so-called witnesses - whether first or fifth hand - didn't all sit down and agree together what stories to churn? As in if I ask you how you know the Bible is not fantasy fiction you can't tell me because it says so! That's going around in circles.
A. I agree. However if you ask me how I know the Bible is not fantasy fiction I'm obliged to start with what lawyers call "direct evidence": a smoking gun with fingerprints, a witness, an original recording of the murder, etc, before I can move to "circumstantial evidence": a receipt for a gun, a Facebook hate post, etc.
Q. So what's your direct evidence in this case?
A. What the writers themselves have to say. St. Peter summarises the qualifications they were looking for in anyone who was to preach the Gospel with them - someone who was to fill in the gap that Judas left: "So one of the men who have accompanied us during all the time that the Lord Jesus went in and out among us, beginning from the baptism of John until the day when he was taken up from us - one of these men must become with us a witness to his resurrection." (Acts 1:21-22). They were looking basically for someone who had WITNESSED everything Jesus did and said. This is what the Christian religion was then, this is what the Christian religion is now: witnesses. Witnesses handing on what they have received from other witnesses. Witnesses sharing their testimony.
Q. And then?
A. And then the texts themselves - our smoking gun, our indirect evidence...
Q. What do you mean?
A. We know for example that many parts of the Bible were written simply as letters from one person to another such as from St. Paul to bishops he had ordained such as Timothy and Titus or else to a community such as his letters to the Christians in Corinth. Even from a casual reading, the authors never wrote them as part of a "system" that had been deliberated and formulated. They were remedial - written to address specific concerns raised by Christians or else observations the apostles had made in the way the Christians were living out their new-found faith. Concerns like when is Jesus coming back? Do we have to be circumcised before we can become Christian? How should we celebrate the Eucharist? And observations like cases of incest in the community, Christians who refused to work, division among the Christians, etc.
Then there is the difference in time between different books being penned and the order in which they were written that basically don't seem like what we'd expect from a "system".
Q. How exactly?
A. Well from a system that was deliberated and put together you'd expect some kind of logical sequence in their writing. We'd expect the apostles to first of all write about who Jesus was, what He did and said. Then you'd continue the story with what His followers did and said and so on. Instead, we find that Paul and James begin writing like 20 years after Jesus ascends into heaven and the story of Jesus and His life comes 10 years later.
Q. I don't know what to say... I mean: I don't doubt the existence of a human in history called Jesus of Nazareth. I think there is sufficient evidence both in the Christian religious system (Bible and stuff) and outside the system (nonChristian historians). What I think is made up is the stuff he supposedly did: it's all been mythicized from where I stand. They apostles may not have sat together and cooked things up, but in all sincerity: how could a man possibly be God!? I agree if he was God then he could do all those miracles and stuff, but that makes a very, very and unmerited assumption: that Jesus was in fact God. I think the New Testament texts lie. It's all a myth, a fairy tale, a fantasy.
A. But you do realise that standpoint raises questions even more unanswerable than the question of how a man could be God.
To be continued...
14th May 2017