Inspired Writings

From where do thoughts come to us? Logically, one would think they arise out of the life experiences, reading, and the pondering of the thinker. A letter that a distraught friend finds inspiring, a creative solution to a complex problem, and sage advice at the right time (Proverbs 25:11-13), all constitute the essence of an inspired thought arising within a person. A successful writer will write what s/he knows. If s/he wants to write convincingly about something in an unfamiliar area, s/he must live the subject area until it becomes like a second skin, and then, just perhaps, s/he will have a pregnant thought that can be nurtured and expressed convincingly.

            In my experience, sudden “inspiration” enters my brain, as an unprompted, errant thought that surprises me. It does not enter firing all synapses in my brain, fully formed, like an authoritative dictating voice. It is fragile and malleable, and I must massage it into a “solid” abstract idea, that will, with pondering, perhaps, become a concept forming the basis for writing.

Inspiration begins as a passing brief thought that must be fleshed-out into a formal idea, which I must work at developing into a concept.¹ The ephemeral thought that quickly passes through the mind constitutes the essence of inspiration. Ideas and concepts, on the other hand, must be hammered-out of experience by the hard work of the one who had the errant thought. People that are inspired may produce a written text that others may come to value as inspiring because it speaks to them. In our culture we generally call a written text inspired if it inspires us. The exception to this general practice is the Bible. In our culture it is generally regarded as inspired, when most of it is anything but inspiring. It does, however, contain inspiring passages that have even made their way into secular culture.²

Calling a written text inspired or inspiring is a judgment that others bestow on the significance of the writing. It is a personal judgment. Nothing at the level of paper and ink inevitably makes the written text inspired; the author’s written ideas and concepts may inspire others, but it is the writer that is inspired and not the written text. The written text is a record of the inspiration that previously came to the writer, which others may or may not find inspired or inspiring. One can never know if the author of a written text was actually inspired to write.

In Hebrew Bible/Old Testament (OT) and the seven deuterocanonical writings that one finds in the Catholic OT,³ it is always the writer who is described as being inspired by God (Job 32:8, Wis 15:11; LJr 6:4; 1 Mac 4:35; 1 Esdr 9:55). Only once (so far as I can tell) are written texts in the Bible (both Protestant and Catholic) described as inspired. Second Timothy 3:15-16 claims that the “Holy Writings” (iera grammata) are inspired (theopneustos, or literally, “God-breathed”). The term “Holy Writings” is “the name for the Holy Scriptures of the Old Testament in Greek.”⁴ Second Timothy, along with First Timothy and Titus, is one of three texts in the New Testament (NT) attributed to the anonymous writer, dubbed the “pastor,” because the content of the three texts is concerned with church matters. That the pastor claims to be Paul, and is not, makes the pastor a pseudonymous author. The earliest evidence for the three “pastoral” writings is a papyrus fragment of Titus, which has been dated from 100 to early 3^rd century common era.⁵ In general, however, the pastoral texts are thought of as 2^nd century.⁶ In the early second century the NT did not even exist. Hence, the writings that later came to be included in the NT had not yet achieved the status of canonical literature in the sense of the Greek translation of the OT. Hence, the author of 2^nd Tim 3:15-16 was referring to the OT Scriptures. The NT had clearly achieved the status of canonical texts (Athanasius calls them “Divine Scripture”) by the 4^th century however, to judge by the Easter letter (39) of Athanasius Bishop of Alexandria in 367,⁷ although he stops short of calling the NT writings “God-breathed,” as the pastor did.

Why would someone think the 27 NT written texts are “inspired”? What is it at the level of the written text that might lead someone to the idea that they are inspired as their authors may have been? Is it because one believes the original writers to have been “God-breathed”? Such a belief says nothing specific about the written texts themselves, and believers in other religions counter with their beliefs in their own special religious literature, which they find inspiring or inspired, such as for example, the Koran (Islam), the Rig Veda (Hinduism), the Avesta (Zoroastrianism), Tao Te Ching (Taoism), Guru Granth Sahib (Sikhism). But believing a thing to be so does not make it so.

Is it because one regards the ideas of the written texts as inspired or inspiring? That, of course, is something everyone must decide for themselves, because if any inspiration happened, it happened to the original author of the text. The written text itself is produced by the flawed abilities of the human author. Whether the original author’s written ideas are to be accorded the quality of inspired or inspiring is a personal decision for every reader. What does your dentist think?

Charles W. Hedrick
Professor Emeritus
Missouri State University

¹These three words are generally conceived as synonyms in English.

²Hedrick, “Is the Bible Inspired?” Wry Guy Blog, Thursday, December 5, 2019: http://blog.charleshedrick.com/search?q=is+the+bible+inspired

³The seven deuterocanonical books, not a part of the Hebrew Bible or the Protestant OT, were originally in the Christian Bible (the Septuagint) before being removed by the Protestant reformers. They were later declared canonical for the Catholic OT at the fourth session of the Council of Trent 1545-1563: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Council_of_Trent

⁴Martin Dibelius, Die Pastoralbriefe (HNT 13; 2^nd ed.; Tϋbingen: Mohr-Siebeck, 1931), 74.

⁵https://christianpublishinghouse.co/2020/07/26/papyrus-32-p32-p-rylands-5-a-very-early-greek-fragment-copy-of-the-epistle-of-paul-to-titus/

⁶W. G. Kϋmmel, Introduction to the New Testament (H. C. Kee, Trans.; rev. ed.; London: SCM, 1975), 384-87.

⁷https://www.scrollpublishing.com/store/Athanasius.html

Pondering the Inspiration of Scripture*

The Greek word graphē is usually translated by the English words, scripture or writing. By capitalizing the first letter of the word (Scripture) translators intend their readers to understand the word Scripture to be referring to Sacred Writings. According to the lexicons graphē is used exclusively so in the New Testament, regardless of whether, or not, the first letter is capitalized.

            Sacred Scripture is a writing believed to have been inspired by God, as it is stated in 2 Tm 3:16: "Every Scripture (graphē) is inspired by God (theopneustos)." That is to say, the writing is "God breathed," or infused by God. The ancient Hebrews believed that the prophets were inspired by God (Hos 12:10; 1 Kgs 13:20; 1 Kgs 17:1-2; Ex 12:1-2; Ex 15:1-2; 2 Sam 7:4-5; Neh 9:30; Zech 7:12; Ezek 24:20-21), and linked the prophet's inspiration to writings believed to be written by the prophet (Jer 30:1-2; Jer 36:1-2). Thus, the inspiration of the prophet came to be transferred to the "writings" of the prophet, and in this way the writing also became the Word of the Lord; as they believed the spoken word of the prophet was as well. The early Christians continued this practice of extending inspiration from writers to their writings, as 2 Tim 3:16 clearly shows (cf. 2 Pet 1:20-21).

            Truth be told, however, one can never know if a person is inspired by God and likewise one can never know for certain what inspires an author, even if the author specifies the source of inspiration. One only knows for certain what one is told. And the only way of telling if a text is "inspired" is by the judgment of literary critics on the literary excellence of the writing and/or the number of persons who opined it either inspired or inspiring. In both cases, however, that a writing is inspired by God or by the author is a matter of opinion. There are no objective criteria of a writing by which one can identify, or quantify, inspiration of texts. Inspiration is not a physical feature of a piece of literature like language, handwriting, and stated ideas. In the church, however, people believe the New Testament is inspired simply because they have been taught to think that way. It is a learned response and does not represent a critical judgment upon the inscription or inspiration of the texts.

            If one insists that a given text has been inspired, on what basis can one reasonably eliminate the human author as the actual genius behind the inspiration? Personally, I think that Psalm 23, a thoroughly religious piece, is both an inspired text and an inspiring text. It crosses the lines of most religions and offers strong encouragement for those walking through "the valley of the shadow of death." Another thoroughly secular piece in the New Testament that I consider inspired and inspiring is 1 Cor 13:1-13. God is not even mentioned in these sentences. I also consider the poem "The Road not taken" by Robert Frost to be both inspired and inspiring and it has nothing to do with religion or ethics.

I cannot say with any degree of confidence if it was the genius of God or the unknown human author that inspired these three narratives. It could have been both, I suppose; who can say with any degree of confidence? It is possible that "God" provided a degree of inspirational "spark" to motivate the writer's writing, but the psalm, the essay on love, and the poem were obviously crafted through the natural abilities of the human author. To call any of them "Word of God," however, is a bridge too far. Such a description overlooks the role of the human author in their creation.

What do you think?  

Charles W. Hedrick
Professor Emeritus
Missouri State University

*I have written earlier on this subject: see Hedrick, Wry Thoughts about Religion, blog: "Revelation and Meaning," Saturday, August 31, 2013: http://blog.charleshedrick.com/search?q=revelation+and+meaning

"Is the Bible Inspired?" Thursday, December 5, 2019: http://blog.charleshedrick.com/search?q=is+the+bible+inspired

Is the Bible Inspired?

While searching for Baptist churches online in the Kansas City Northland, I ran across this statement of one church’s belief about the Bible:

We believe the Holy Scriptures, consisting of Old and New Testaments only, to be the plenary, verbally inspired word of God, inerrant in the original manuscripts, authoritative, infallible and God-breathed…¹

That is to say: the writings of the early Christians are without error and infallible because they are “inspired” (i.e., God breathed). Is that true do you suppose? The idea that this high status is extended only to the “autographs” (i.e., original texts) of the biblical texts is a tacit recognition that the Bible we use in church on Sunday morning is not inspired and hence is not without error or infallible. What we use in church are not the autographs (i.e., the original author’s copy of a text), but are copies of the autographs. In fact they are reconstructions by Modern scholars. Here is a shocking datum: no two ancient copies of the some 5000 ancient Greek manuscripts surviving from antiquity, virtually all dating from the 3rd century and later, agree alike in all particulars. Most textual critics work with the assumption, however, that the original readings of the autograph of a given biblical text are there somewhere among all the copies of a given text that survived from antiquity, but no one knows exactly what those readings were. Nevertheless text critics imagine they are restoring biblical texts to the “original autographs.” What they achieve, however, are the earliest probable exemplars. The texts of the Bible we use in church are imperfect copies of the original autographs.

Second Timothy 3:16, however, claims that “all scripture is inspired by God.”² Is that true do you suppose? The term “inspired by God” (theopneustos) is only used this once in the New Testament, but there are a few scattered instances of its use in “pagan” literature. The “sacred writings” (2 Tim 3:15) for which this claim is made is probably the Hebrew Old Testament (cf. 2 Tim 2:19; 2 Tim 5:18). The term “all” or “every,” however, suggests to my ear that the author of this text may have had other individual writings in mind not limited to the Hebrew Old Testament. It could not have been the “New Testament,” however, which did not exist as a recognizable collection when Second Timothy was written.

The really odd thing is that not even God can inspire a text, unless s/he uses an eraser and rewrites the text with the divine quill. That is because texts are inanimate things. Of course, God can inspire the authors of texts to write, but they are still hampered by their abilities and life situations, and the written product will reflect the abilities and inabilities of the author. Nevertheless, any text (no matter how poorly written) has an innate potential for inspiring readers, but when inspiration occurs, it is caused by the reader’s response to the text. In other words, it is the reader that is inspired, not the text. I cannot think of any text that everyone would agree has an innate identifiable quality that can be described as “inspiration,” and that includes the Bible. Although I find First Corinthians 13 to be an inspiring text, that does not make the chapter inspired, for others may disagree, and I am unable to explicitly quantify “inspiration.” The Bible also contains texts that are not inspiring. In my view 1Tim 2:8-15 is an example of an uninspiring text because of its clear hatred of women.³

When we talk about “inspired” texts, we are actually describing how we respond to the text rather than to some aspect of the text. Whereas one may claim that the Bible is “God-breathed,” another may make that claim, for example, for the Book of Mormon because it was given to Joseph Smith by an angel—just as Moses received the Torah (Gal 3:19, Acts 7:38, 53; Heb 2:2; Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews, 15.5.3).⁴

What claims does your church make for the Bible?

Charles W. Hedrick

Professor Emeritus

Missouri State University

¹http://www.heritagebiblebaptist.com/sof.php

²See Hedrick, “Revelation and Meaning,” Wry Thoughts about Religion, Saturday, August 31. 2013: http://blog.charleshedrick.com/search?q=revelation+and+meaning

³Misogyny is the appropriate expression to describe such views as this text contains.

⁴See Hedrick, “How did Moses Come by the Torah,” Wry Thoughts about Religion, Tuesday, September 30, 2014. http://blog.charleshedrick.com/search?q=moses+and+law

What does the Term “Word of God” as applied to the Bible Signify?

The word "Bible" means simply "books."  The term is applied to a Jewish collection of books (ta Biblia) in the ancient Greek translation of Daniel 9:2.  These books included Jeremiah, which was treated as a prophetic book with special hidden meanings.

            In the early first century the content of the Jewish Bible was debated.  All Jews accepted the Torah as word of God.  Pharisees also included Prophets and Writings in their Bible, but Samaritans and Sadducees did not. When Jerusalem and the temple were destroyed in 70 CE by the Romans, in the postwar reconstruction of Judean religion led by the Pharisees, the Jewish Bible came to include: Law, Prophets, and Writings.  These Books were regarded as divinely inspired.

            Early Christians used the Jewish Bible in Greek translation (i.e., the Septuagint) as their Scripture.  The Septuagint also included certain other texts not in the Jewish Hebrew Bible.  Christians referred to the Greek collection with the additional writings as the sacred Scriptures (2 Tim 3:15-16), which were inspired by God.

            Early Christians associated these books with the "old" covenants that God had made with ancient Israel.  They conceived of themselves, however, as a people with whom God had established a new covenant (Hebrews 8:8-12; quoting Jeremiah 31:31-34).  On the basis of Jeremiah's "prophecy" the old covenants were found to be obsolete, meaning "inadequate" for the new covenant people of God.  Nevertheless they retained the Old Covenant books (i.e., Old Testament), since they considered them inspired, reading them from a Christian perspective.  Eventually a new collection of Scripture emerged for the Christians; it included the Old Testament Books plus a smaller collection of New Covenant books (i.e., New Testament).  The New Testament Books used today were first listed by Athanasius in 367 CE.  The Old Testament collection of the Protestant Bible was brought into accord with the Hebrew Jewish Bible by Martin Luther in his 1534 German translation.  Collecting the non-Hebrew language texts in the Old Testament at the end he designated them "Apocrypha" ("hidden), a designation Jerome had used.

            Hence the Bible is comprised of three parts (Law, Prophets, and Writings), if you are referring to the Jewish Bible.  It is comprised of two parts (Old Testament, the same as the Jewish Bible, and New Testament), if you are referring to the Protestant Bible.  It is comprised of two parts (an expanded Old Testament, which includes the Apocrypha, and New Testament), if you are referring to the Roman Catholic Bible. The Apocrypha was declared to be inspired in all its parts at the Roman Catholic Council of Trent in 1560.  Today Protestants do not include the Apocrypha in their Scriptures, although it was part of the Old Testament in the first edition of the King James Version of 1611.

            The expression "word of God" appears in the New Testament, although it is unclear in many instances what the phrase signifies.  In those instances that are clear "word of God" refers to a number of things: to something preached (Acts 4:31; 11:1; 13:5, 46; 1 Thess 2:13; Heb 13:7; 1 Pet 1:23-25), to the word God spoke in creating the world (2 Pet 3:5-7), to the resurrected Christ (Rev 19:11-18), to God's son Jesus (Heb 1:1-4), to the Torah (Mark 7:13).

            In an essay entitled "In Praise of Books Richard Aungerville, Bishop of Durham (1287-1345) refers to "Scripture inspired by God."  In his introduction to the 1382 English translation of the Bible John Wycliffe referred to the Bible as the "Word of Truth," and in the later version of 1388 as "Holy Writ."  William Tyndale in 1534 refers to his translation of the New Testament as "Scripture" and "word of God."  The Coverdale Bible of 1535 on its title page refers to the Bible as "the word of God."  The introduction to the King James Version of 1611 and 1769 says: the Bible "contains the word of God, nay is the word of God," but also seems to regard the act of "preaching" as the "sacred word." Another statement suggests the idea that the Scripture communicates the word of God, apparently meaning that the Scripture in some way contains the "word of God."

            During the Reformation of the sixteenth century, the reformers (Luther and Calvin) referred to the Bible as the Word of God, but they "did not mean that the book and the revelation were the same."  The authority of the Bible as the Word of God derives from its content.  "There was no acceptance of the Bible simply as 'sacred book.'"  To put it differently: the word of God is contained in the biblical content; the Bible is not a written icon.

            This hasty and incomplete survey through Christian history suggests that that the phrase "word of God" can refer to a number of things: writings containing the word of God, an act of preaching, Jesus, the word God spoke at the act of creation, the resurrected Christ, the Torah.  In the Judeo-Christian tradition the term Holy Scripture or inspired Scripture is applied in one tradition exclusively to the Jewish Bible, in another exclusively to Jewish Bible and New Testament, and in another exclusively to Jewish Bible, Apocrypha, and New Testament.

            It appears that the phrase "Word of God" can be applied to whatever one wants.  If you believe that it (whatever it is) is the word of God, then so it is.  As applied to a collection of books, the phrase "word of God" carries with it a claim that books so designated are special religious literature, having an unspecified divine authority.

 

Charles W. Hedrick
Professor Emeritus
Missouri State University

For the Reformation see Dillenberger and Welch, Protestant Christianity (Scribners, 1954), 45-46.

When did the Bible become the Word of God?

In my previous essay I showed that when the Bible becomes the Word of God depends on which Bible one is talking about: Jewish Bible, Protestant Bible, or Roman Catholic Bible.

            The Jewish Bible: The discovery of the book of the law in the temple suggests there was no special religiously authoritative book in Israel before 621 BCE (2 Kings 22-23; compare 2 Chronicles 33-34).  Based on the reforms instituted in Israel by Josiah it is clear that this book of the law (thought to be Deuteronomy) held a special religious authority, for people determined to govern their lives by its words for religious reasons.

            The phrase "word of God" is little used in the Jewish Bible (for example: 1 Sam 9:27; 1 Kings 12:22; 1 Chronicles 17:3, 25:5; Ezra 9:4; Proverbs 30:5; Isaiah 40:8).  Generally the "word of the Lord" is used instead.  Most of these references to the "word of the Lord" refer to an oral communication by God through a particular human intermediary, but in several instances the word of the Lord is associated with written texts: Moses writes the words of the Lord in the book of the covenant (Exodus 24:1-7); Jeremiah sends a letter of the words of the Lord to the exiles in Babylon (Jeremiah 29:1-4); Jeremiah dictates words of the Lord in a  letter against Israel and Judah (Jeremiah 36:1-4); Jeremiah dictates to Baruch sayings of the Lord against Israel, Judah, and the nations to be written on a scroll (Jeremiah 45:1-5).

            In the books of the Jewish Apocrypha (first and second centuries BCE), however, it becomes clear that special religious authority has been conferred upon the twenty-four books of the Jewish Bible, which were thought to be the revelation of God (Ezra 14:1-48; Sirach, Prologue and 24:23).  The phrase "word of God" is not used to refer to this collection, however.

            The Bible used by the early Christians is the Greek translation of the Hebrew Jewish Bible, the Septuagint (which includes The Jewish Bible plus the Jewish Apocrypha).  The legendary account (2nd century BCE) of the Jewish Bible's translation into Greek for use by Jews in the Diaspora confers the status of inspired books upon the translation as well.  The story goes: a number of scholars were brought together for the translation, put into different cubicles, and each in seventy-two days under inspiration produced the exact same translation.¹  It was this translation that early Christians used and regarded as "sacred Scriptures" (2 Timothy 3:15-16).  By 367 CE in Egypt, however, the books of the Apocrypha were not considered part of the canonical scriptures.  Bishop Athanasius of Alexandria described the books of the Old Testament (the Jewish Scriptures not including Esther) and the books of the New Testament, as we know them today in the following way: they are "included in the Canon and credited as divine."  These books are "fountains of salvation that those who thirst may be satisfied with the living words they contain."  Athanasius describes a number of other books that, although not included in the Canon, are "appointed by the Fathers to be read by those who wish for instruction in the word of godliness."  These books are: Wisdom of Solomon, Wisdom of Sirach, Esther, Judith, and Tobit; and two of the Apostolic Fathers, Didache and the Shepherd [of Hermas].  There must have been some fluidity throughout the churches in what books were and were not considered canonical, for in the oldest Bibles (4th and 5th century: Codex Alexandrinus, Codex Sinaiticus, and Codex Claromontanus) the "canonical books" are being used along with books that were not on the canonical list, such as the Epistle of Barnabas, the Shepherd of Hermas, 4 Maccabees, two Epistles of Clement, Psalms of Solomon, Acts of Paul, and the Apocalypse of Peter.

            The Roman Catholic Bible, which includes the Jewish Apocrypha, removed all question about the status of these books; the Roman Catholic Church declared them to be inspired in 1560 at the Council of Trent.  So by the 16th century the various parts of the Bible (Jewish Bible, Apocrypha, New Testament) used as Scripture in the English speaking world have been accorded the status of divinely inspired Scripture.  As far as I can see, it was not until the 16th century that the appellation "word of God" came to be applied to the Bible.

            These are the expressions by which the Bible has been described in order to set it apart as special religious literature from just any old book: Scriptures, Holy Writ, sacred, inspired by God, the Word of Truth, the Word of God, the Revelation of God, Divine, and the like.  I consider these expressions to be heightened poetic or figurative language, which expresses a religious opinion about the texts.  By elevating the language used to refer to the texts, one thereby puts them into a special category.  The terminology used to describe the books, however, says nothing about the essential nature of the books; it only describes how the one using the language feels about the books, or the regard in which one holds the books.  Is the Bible (of whichever community) the "Word of God"?  It is if one believes it is; but that confession says nothing about the content of the texts.

 

Charles W. Hedrick

Professor Emeritus

Missouri State University

 

_______________________

[1] C. K. Barrett, The New Testament Background: Selected Documents (London: SPCK, 1957), 208-13.

Is the Bible Really the Word of God?

This essay is now published in the Springfield News-Leader!

The short answer is: if you believe it is, then so it is!  But the early followers of Jesus did not share this holy view of the Bible—were it otherwise the Bible would not contain contradictions and errors, which it does.

 

Mr. Paul Summers, in a News-Leader column (1/4/14) made a case for homosexuality being sinful based on two main propositions: 1. "The Bible is the very word of God," and 2. "There is no contradiction in the Scriptures because God cannot lie."  Mr. Summers is wrong on both counts.  The truth of the matter is that his argument is based on his belief about God and the Bible.  The Christian Bible (meaning it includes Hebrew Scriptures and a collection of Christian texts) has many instances in which it disagrees with itself, as many conservative scholars well know.  Otherwise they would not argue that the original autographs of the Bible do not contain contradictions and errors.  The problem with this argument is that no original autographs exist!  Most New Testament texts are third century and later (two small fragments each of John and Matthew exist from the second century), and the bulk of the Hebrew Bible manuscripts date from the ninth and tenth centuries Common Era.  Hence the "original manuscripts argument" is specious at best, for it claims nothing about the manuscripts that have survived from antiquity, which do contain contradictions and errors, and from which we derive the versions of the Bible that serve the church today.

 

            It is also the case (unless you believe differently) that the Bible is a human word about God (and other things), since human beings authored the original texts and other human beings later copied them, freely making changes as it seemed best to individual scribes.  The Bible becomes God's word for many by means of the belief that God inspired its original authors (probably not the later scribes, since under the "original autographs theory" scribes introduced the contradictions and errors).  There is no evidence to validate the inspiration of these writings, however, except the belief that such is the case.  And in any case a number of theories exist about how inspiration may have occurred.

 

            I have no objection to Mr. Summers believing both of his principal propositions—many people do.  What I object to is his attempt to sell his personal beliefs about the Bible to the public as fact; hence he misleads the public in suggesting his belief is based on historical data when there is no data to demonstrate either proposition.  Indeed the evidence at least partly suggests a different explanation.

 

            The Bible is God's word only if you believe it is!  It is better understood, however, as a human search for God.  It should finally be noted that what authorizes Mr. Summers' argument about homosexuality is not God, but rather his own personal belief about the Bible.

 

Charles W. Hedrick

Professor Emeritus

Missouri State University

Do Contradictions in the Bible make any Difference?

Here is the definition of a contradiction: "a situation in which inherent factors, actions, or propositions are inconsistent or contrary to one another." For me this raises the question: Does even one contradiction between biblical texts make any difference as to how one understands the nature of the Bible? Here is one verifiable contradiction between two biblical writers: Paul, the earliest writer of the New Testament (around 50 CE) and the anonymous writer of Second Peter, the latest writer in the New Testament (around 150 CE). In Rom 8:18-25 Paul says that the creation (ktisis) itself "will be set free from its bondage to decay and obtain the glorious liberty of the children of God" (8:21). He continues his thought about creation in 1Cor 7:31: "the world (kosmos) in its present form (schema) is passing away." Second Peter (3:10), on the other hand, announces that "the heavens will pass away with a loud noise, and the elements will be dissolved with fire, and the earth (gē) and the works that are upon it will be burned up." Since the creation (i.e., the entire created order of things) cannot both be a redeemed ktisis and a burned up ktisis, it would appear that these writers contradict one another on the future prospects of creation, as they understood it.¹ What difference might this one contradiction make on how one understands the nature of the Bible? Or put another way, what does it mean for the Bible that it contains contradictions? What follows is my attempt to address the significance of even one contradiction in the Bible.

It means that these two authors do not share the same view as to the ultimate end of the creation. It should also be added that the authors of Third Isaiah (65:17) and the Apocalypse (Rev 21:1-4) disagree with Paul and agree with the author of Second Peter that the whole of creation will ultimately be destroyed. The author of Ecclesiastes, however, seems to disagree with the idea that the earth will be changed in any way: "A generation goes and a generation comes but the earth remains forever." (Eccl 1:4).

It means that there is no single biblical view about the ultimate end of the creation and that, in turn, means the Bible ("God's Word" to many people of faith) is not the ultimate authority on everything in life, as I have heard some ministers claim. Three different positions are taken regarding the entirety of creation, one by Paul and another by the anonymous author of Second Peter and others, and a third view by the author of Ecclesiastes. If one position is selected to represent the "biblical view," then the others have been rejected as being invalid explanations.

            It means that the Bible is better viewed historically rather than theologically. Here is a Southern Baptist view of the "Scriptures":

The Holy Bible was written by men divinely inspired and is God's revelation of Himself to man. It is a perfect treasure of divine instruction. It has God for its author, salvation for its end, and truth, without any mixture of error, for its matter. Therefore, all Scripture is totally true and trustworthy. It reveals the principles by which God judges us, and therefore is, and will remain to the end of the world, the true center of Christian union, and the supreme standard by which all human conduct, creeds, and religious opinions should be tried. All Scripture is a testimony to Christ, who is Himself the focus of divine revelation.²

This statement, however, does not describe the Bible; it is a theological description of what many (not all) Southern Baptists believe about the Bible. Describing the Bible in a neutral way is a complex enterprise. There are just too many variables to be considered. Here is an attempt at a brief description and even this description does not cover all the issues:³

There are three ancient religious collections (Jewish, Catholic, Protestant) that are called the Bible:

These three collections constitute the traditional remains of two different religious communities, which extend from the Israelite Exodus to the writing of 2 Peter. They reveal different social, cultural, ethical, and religious traditions covering around 1200 years. The Jewish Bible is a library of traditional writings of the ancient Israelites containing among other things the history of the Israelite people told from a religious perspective, along with its ancient laws, prophetic literature, hymnbook, wisdom literature, etc., from the 13th century BCE to roughly 400 BCE (second temple period). The Apocrypha consists of additional Jewish religious texts written between 300 BCE to 70 CE. The New Testament (50 CE to early second century) contains among other things stories, personal correspondence and theological essays.⁴

It means that the texts comprising the biblical collection are not "a perfect treasure of Divine instruction" or that the biblical matter is "without any mixture of error," simply because it contains contradictions, which must be considered errors and inconsistencies. That in turn means that the Bible could not derive from a perfect deity and could not be "God's Word."

The Bible does not belong to the Church and Synagogue but rather its collected texts, before being collected, belonged individually to the historical movement of human civilization. In short, the Bible is a collection of human words about different views of God in antiquity. One contradiction appears to do a great deal of damage to modern pious views about the Bible.

Something to think about.

Charles W. Hedrick
Professor Emeritus
Missouri State University

¹For a brief discussion of the fate of the earth, see Hedrick, "Will the Earth Abide," pp. 35-37 in Unmasking Biblical Faiths (Cascade, 2019). The contradiction between Paul and the author of Second Peter is but "the tip of the iceberg." Here is another contradiction of which the reader may be unaware between the Christian Old Testament and the New Testament. How did Moses come by the Torah? In Exodus and Deuteronomy Moses is described as receiving the Torah the first time directly from God (Deut 9:9-10). Moses broke the first set of tablets and was given a second set, again given directly to him by God (Deut 10:1-5). In the New Testament, however, Paul (Gal 3:19; see also Acts 7:38, 53; Heb 2:2) says that the law was "ordained through angels" (RSV). So, did Moses receive the law directly from God, or was it mediated through angels? For a discussion of how Moses came by the Torah, see Hedrick "How did Moses come by the Torah?" pp. 266-68 in Unmasking Biblical Faiths.

²The Baptist Faith and Message Statement, June 14, 2000: https://sbts.edu/about/bfm

³For a more complete picture of its complexity, See Hedrick, Unmasking Biblical Faiths, 87-97.

⁴Hedrick, "What about the Bible gives it the Status Word of God," Unmasking Biblical Faiths, 94.

The Bible's Story: A Brief Summary

My title is a double entendre that you might catch if you think about it for a bit. First there is the story of the Bible. That is to say, the story the Bible tells from Genesis through Revelation. The other possibility is the story about the Bible. That is to say, how the Bible came into being.

          The Bible’s story begins with the first inscription of each of its writings, the Old Testament (OT) first, and finally the inscription of each New Testament (NT) text. At the time of inscription each writing of the Old and NT existed alone in the ancient world as a part of the literary stream of Western civilization. They were not part of a selective group of writings. Only later did people, who valued their messages, gather them into groups with other writings. They were initially understood individually apart from other writings. The OT contains the writings of the ancient Israelites. It is “old” to Christians but today it is the holy Scripture of modern Judaism.

          I must now leave the story of Israel’s ancient collection of sacred scripture for another day, and will turn to the Bible’s “postscript”: The NT. It is a small collection of twenty-seven initially isolated writings, which date from the fifties of the first century AD into the early second century—or from the Pauline letters to the inscription of second Peter, the latest NT writing. The NT is the Christian part of the Bible. The Jewish Scriptures being treated in the NT as a resource book of prophecies and religious ideas by the Christ followers of the fourth century and later.

Paul’s undisputed letters (1 Thessalonians, Romans, 1, 2 Corinthians, Galatians, Philippians, and Philemon) are the earliest writings of the collection and date from the 50s and 60s of the first century, some 15-30 years from the crucifixion of Jesus. They are “undisputed” because virtually everyone thinks a particular man by the name of Paul composed them. The other writings bearing his name or the supra script title “according to Paul” in some translations (2 Thessalonians, Ephesians, Colossians, 1, 2 Timothy, Titus, and Hebrews) are not regarded in critical scholarship as being composed by Paul (critical scholarship makes decisions on the basis of historical evidence rather than church tradition). Hence, their authorship is “disputed,” which means: critical scholars regard them as anonymous or pseudonymous writings. These texts were not written by Paul but by an unnamed and unknown disciple of Paul.

The General or Catholic Epistles (James, 1, 2 Peter, 1-3 John, Jude) was the latest group of writings to be gathered together and used in the early ecclesiastical communities, although 1 Peter and 1 John were popular in the 2^nd and 3^rd centuries. We first hear of a group of seven “Catholic Epistles” from Eusebius, Bishop of Caesarea (4^th century).

Although the book of Acts initially was part of a unitary work of two volumes with the Gospel of Luke, they were early separated and each had its own subsequent literary history. In the 2^nd century Acts gained in popularity in early orthodoxy helping to document the concept of apostolic tradition. The book of Revelation (the Apocalypse) was well accepted in the Western church and widely cited as scripture in the 2^nd century, but Eastern Christians tended to reject Revelation. The full recognition of Revelation did not come about until the late 4^th century.

There are two ways that authorship is determined: following church tradition or by offering a historical rationale for or against authorship. Except for Paul’s undisputed letters, the authors of the rest of the NT texts are anonymous or pseudonymous, meaning their authors are unknown. In antiquity texts were titled by their first lines, not unlike some modern poetry. Their supra script titles were added by the later church.

Who gave the New Testament its present arrangement of grouping texts by literary type (gospels, acts, epistles, and apocalypse) is likewise unknown, but it would have been persons concerned with the religious life of the early Christ followers, who found the texts helpful for the religious life of the community. For that reason, other texts, not in your Bible were used in worship in many churches, such as the Gospel of Thomas, the Shepherd of Hermas, the Apocalypse of Peter, 1 Clement, Barnabas, and others.

Bishop Athanasius of Alexandria, Egypt in his Easter Letter #39 in 367 gives the earliest complete listing of the NT texts used in Christian worship and education today.

          If we stand in the middle fourth century and look backwards in time to see the state of these NT writings, we are immediately faced with the following situation. There are over 5000 manuscripts of the Greek NT and no two of them agree alike in all particulars. Further, virtually all early manuscripts date from the third century and later are fragmentary, virtually scraps of texts. Not until the fourth century do we find whole manuscripts that survived, collected into a single volume, although not all of our NT is included in the collections, and certain other texts not in our NT are included.

          The latter half of the 18^th century saw the beginnings of a scientific approach to studying the differences between the surviving Greek manuscripts. Ancient scribes who copied the manuscripts would make mistakes in copying and add their own thoughts in the margins. Later scribes would copy the marginalia into the body of the writing. None of the manuscripts that survived is an original author’s copy. To accommodate all this diversity in the texts, Scholars that are referred to as text critics developed the science of textual criticism. The goal of the text critic is to determine the wording of the original author’s copy by comparing the Greek manuscripts and the ancient versions in other ancient languages. It is an ongoing process requiring the seasoned judgement of the text critic, and as each new ancient manuscript is discovered it must be analyzed and compared to the present readings for an improvement of the text. A critical version of the Greek New Testament in koine Greek (the Greek vernacular of the ancient language) is published with an apparatus of approximately half a page listing all the significant variations to the text-half at the top half of the page. Translators are currently working from the 28^th edition of this publication giving the current judgment of text critics as to what the original author’s copy of the NT texts read.

          Non-Greek readers of the New Testament will only encounter these different readings by comparing different translations of the NT, because each translator decides for himself or herself the Greek wording to be translated into English.*

          In the first and second centuries there is evidence of some 34 early Christian Gospels. From this wealth of possibility, the church by the 3^rd century selected a fourfold gospel collection. Given here in their order of dating: Mark, Matthew, Luke, and John were valued as deposits of an oral tradition that remained viable into the second century and competed with the written gospels. No Christian artifacts from the first century exist.

Matthew and Luke are thought, with good reason, to have used a common sayings source (called: Q[uelle]) that no longer exists except in the agreements of Matthew and Luke against Mark. Their common use of the sayings source accounts for the verbatim or near verbatim passages shared in Matthew and Luke. And the Gospel of John is thought to have used a lost source called “The Signs Source,” which also no longer exists.

This information is something to consider when you describe the New Testament to others. My take on this information is this: If one describes the “Bible” as “the Word of God,” honesty requires that one also recognize and include the role of human beings in its production as well in the description. My recommendation that does this is: The Bible may be inspired by God but it is clearly designed and produced by human minds and hands.

Charles W. Hedrick
Professor Emeritus
Missouri State University

*For examples of Bible translations differing in the Greek text that each translation uses see Hedrick, “Variations in the Bible,” Wry Guy Blog, May 23, 2023: http://blog.charleshedrick.com/search?q=variations+in+the+Bible

Sources Consulted:

Athanasius, Easter Letter, #39: https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/2806039.htm

Eusebius, The Ecclesiastical History (trans. Kirsopp Lake; 2 vols. LCL: Harvard).

Harry Y. Gamble, “Canon/New Testament,” in The Anchor Bible Dictionary (Doubleday, 1992), Vol. 1. 852-861.

Charles W. Hedrick, “The Four/34 Gospels” Bible Review 17.3 (June 2002),20-31, 46.

Hedrick, When History and Faith Collide: Studying Jesus (1999; reprint Wipf &Stock 2013).

Bruce M. Metzger, The Text of the New Testament. Its Transmission, Corruption, and Restoration (3^rd ed.; Oxford, 1992).

Graydon F. Snyder, ANTE PACEM. Archaeological Evidence of Church Life Before Constantine (Mercer, 1985).

Who decides What Offends God?

I hear someone saying: "a trick question!  Obviously, the injured party decides what offends him or her."  But the problem is more complicated.  The Jewish/Christian God hasn't really spoken for himself (audibly) since Old Testament/New Testament times—at least certain ancient texts claim that God once spoke for himself.  In the Bible, however, others speak for God by putting words in God's mouth (so to speak). In modern times we humans are more skeptical that God speaks (or ever spoke) audibly.  People hearing voices (divine or otherwise) are thought mentally unstable, and locked away.

            The absence of God's audible voice is likely one (subconscious) reason that Fundamentalist and Evangelical Christians tout the Bible as "the Word of God."  Without the words coming directly from God in some fashion, the message is suspect, and we humans would have no idea of what offends God.

            However impermeable we may think the Bible is as a stable platform for specifying God's likes and dislikes, the fact is the Bible is permeable and porous, comprised of several layers, and includes voices other than the Divine.

            The English translator of the ancient Greek or Hebrew text you read as being "from God" is another voice.  Each ancient word has a range of possible translations in each literary context, and the translator chooses what seems in the translator's mind to be the best fit for a particular context.  Hence what you read in English is the product of the translator's mind, experience, and personal theological views.

            For example, the New International Version of the Bible, a favorite of Evangelical Christians, for Matthew 19:12 reads in part: "for some are eunuchs because they were born that way; others were made that way by men; and others have renounced marriage because of the kingdom of heaven."  The Revised Standard Version of this same verse reads: "for there are eunuchs who have been so from birth, and there are eunuchs who have been made eunuchs by men, and there are eunuchs who have made themselves eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven" (a eunuch is a castrated male).  The translators render the text quite differently.  What do you suppose it actually says?

            Textual critics who prepare critical editions of the ancient texts you read also contribute to the permeability of the text.  To establish the critical edition they compare all copies of manuscripts; no two of which are exactly alike.  They evaluate all of the variations in the manuscripts, debate them, and then vote to decide what the text originally read.  Decisions are made on the basis of the scholars' reading of the evidence, experience, expertise, personal theological views, and debating skills.

            The composers of the ancient texts themselves contribute the greatest impermeability to the "inspired" text.  The texts of the Bible, according to Fundamentalist and Evangelical beliefs, are "inspired" by God.  The expression "inspired" is explained as meaning "God-breathed," suggesting that even though God no longer speaks audibly, the words of the Bible are imbued with the authority of God—meaning they tell us what God expects of us human beings.  Of course, "inspiration," if any, competes in the mind of the original writer along with his/her experience, background, prejudices, inherited theological beliefs, etc.  For example, the writer of Leviticus did not create that text in a moment of time, but its author composed it out of the earlier experiences of ancient Israel as a people.  The original composition has drawn on Israelite traditions that evolved out of the life of the community.

            So who decides what is offensive to God?  Likely the modern religious community decides which ancient offenses should be avoided and which can be ignored.  Here is a case, on point.  The ancient writer in Leviticus represents God as audibly saying that it is forbidden for a male "to lie with a male as with a woman," for "it is an abomination" (Leviticus 18:22).  And God likewise finds it an abomination to eat anything that comes out of the water if it does not have fins and scales (Leviticus 11:9-12); that is to say: eating shrimp or catfish is as offensive to God as homosexuality.  Modern religious leaders have a lot to say about the sinfulness of homosexuality, but, so far as I am aware, they say nothing about the sinfulness of eating shrimp or catfish.  Is God still offended by the eating of shrimp and catfish do you suppose?

            Religious leaders are fond of reminding us that the biblical view of marriage is one man married to one woman, but God wasn't always offended by a man having multiple wives, and includes laws regulating the treatment of multiple wives in the Law Code (Deuteronomy 21:15-17). King Joash of Judah, who had two wives, was commended by the biblical writer for "doing what was right in the eyes of the Lord" (2 Chronicles 24:1-3).  And other heroes in biblical history having more than one wife (viz., Jacob, Elkanah, and David) were never condemned as sinners for that reason.

            While no reliable list of sins, stable and current, exists, someone is always willing to tell you what sin is.  It appears, therefore, that sin is whatever we allow ourselves to be convinced is sinful.

 

Charles W. Hedrick

Professor Emeritus

Missouri State University

Have you ever Doubted your Faith?

Someone asked me recently: have you ever doubted your faith? The question itself is interesting as a question. For one reason, it seems to be lacking a prepositional phrase specifying the object of faith. For example, have you ever doubted your faith in God, Jesus, the Holy Spirit, or the Bible? Or perhaps the questioner intended that the word "faith" in the question evoke the entire spectrum of my religious beliefs. Or perhaps the question is more secular and the questioner was asking whether I have ever doubted faith in friends, family, or country, and in this secular form it has the general thrust of have I ever doubted the confidence I placed in something that I believe to be certain, like gravity, for example. If all these observations are possibilities, then I must refine the question and pick the subject that is most interesting to me.

Here is the question I choose to address: have I ever doubted aspects of my personal religious faith? The short answer is yes, and I suspect that every one of us has moments of doubt about aspects of religious belief. At least I hope so. From my perspective doubting something you think is certain is a positive ability, not a liability. Doubt is a warning mechanism of the mind that can lead to a correction of misplaced confidence.

Like everyone, my personal religious faith has never been static. It began with the child's prayer I was taught, "now I lay me down to sleep; I pray the Lord my soul to keep; if I should die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take." But through the years it has become more sophisticated, logical, and rational with education, as my understanding of life and my place in the cosmos evolved. My faith began with what I was taught in a Southern Baptist Sunday School in the Mississippi Delta of the 40s and 50s. Hence, it was traditional and conservative. Since childhood, however, my faith has been a thing in process, shedding childish ideas and developing in, what I regard as more mature and philosophical ways. There is a statement attributed to the Apostle Paul (that he likely did not compose), which best characterizes the development and remaindering of the faith of my childhood: "When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became an adult, I put an end to childish ways" (1 Cor 13:11 NRSV). Doubt has played a major role in developing and remaindering my religious faith. A major premise for me has been the following: faith may not require me to believe something I find to be patently false or impossible given the world as I experience it.

Briefly here are three examples of where this process has brought me. God, if God there be, is spirit and does not exist in the sense that we normally use the word "exist." As spirit, God is not an entity that occupies space and time, as we human beings do. God, as understood by human beings, appears to be an invention of the human mind, whose character and nature change with the confessions of each religious group and individual. God does not correspond exactly to any of the many ideations of the human mind that claim to describe God. And if God does correspond exactly to one of these ideations, how could we tell? The Jewish and Christian Bibles present at least three different concepts of God. Thus, God, if God there be, is shrouded in mystery. There can be no direct knowledge of God. We learn about God from what others tell us, from the study of religions, and from those who claim to have experienced God, but all these sources offer us radically conflicting opinions.¹

Whatever else he may have been, Jesus was certainly regarded as a Judean sage, thaumaturge, and healer, or at least the author of the earliest canonical Gospel, Mark, regarded him as such, and those features are reproduced in the other three canonical gospels. His popularity with the masses and laxity in following the traditions of the elders ran him afoul of the Judean religious leaders. He was arrested, found guilty of blasphemy, and eventually crucified for political reasons by Roman authority. The early followers of Jesus, however, believed him to be much more, and used grandiose titles to describe him: God (John 20:28), son of God, Lord, the Anointed of the Lord (Christ), son of David, King of Israel. These honors are not verifiable by naked eye but rather are verified only through the eyes of faith. These days I prefer to think of Jesus as my brother in faith.

In Acts and Hebrews, Jesus is portrayed as a pioneer (archēgos), perfected through his own sufferings and his suffering qualified him to lead the way to glory for many other sons of God (Heb 2:10; 12:2). In this way Jesus, the Judean sage, became the firstborn among many brothers (Rom 8:29). My view of Jesus may make me appear as an apostate or certainly a heretic (they are not the same thing²), since it by-passes divinity for humanity as a classification for Jesus. There were various views about the nature of Jesus in antiquity, and it depended on whom you asked as to whether Jesus was divine. People holding a view different than the so-called orthodox view must nevertheless be classified as being in the stream of Christian history.³ Whatever group was dominant became the judge of what was orthodox.

In church I was never taught data about the Bible except for the most obvious information. Generally, I was taught to regard the Bible as "God-breathed"⁴ and to pattern my life on its precepts. My views have changed. I no longer think of the Bible as a "Holy Book" but as a collection of texts that reflect the evolution of the faith of two religious communities, Jewish and Christian. There are currently three versions of the Bible: the Jewish Bible, the Protestant Bible, and the Catholic Bible. Their contents are not the same. The Protestant Bible with which I grew up uses the Jewish Bible, which it regards as Old covenant books; to these texts were added certain new-covenant writings, twenty-seven other texts (the New Testament), which were assembled as a collection by the fourth century common era and added to the Jewish Bible. By the fourth century followers of Jesus regarded all these books in Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek as in some sense "inspired" by God. Modern Christians transfer that high value to its translation into modern languages, forgetting that no translation is an exact reproduction of the original.

I have only touched the surface of my view of the Bible today as compared to where I began. My hasty summary nevertheless shows that if the Bible is "inspired" by God (a view that cannot be proven), it is also to be regarded as a human product. Human beings collected and canonized the writings, and text critics established what they regard as the original wording of the texts and they still debate what words should appear as the original wording.⁵

I have learned to live with the evident lack of certainty in matters of religious faith. The major difficulty with religion is that too many are absolutely certain that their religious faith is the true faith.

Charles W. Hedrick
Professor Emeritus
Missouri State University

¹C. W. Hedrick, Unmasking Biblical Faiths (Eugene, OR: Cascade, 2019), 168-70 and in particular: "Out of the Enchanted Forest. Christian Faith in an Age of Reason" pages 13-24 in When Faith Meets Reason (Santa Rosa, CA: Polebridge, 2008).

²Hedrick, "How do I Describe Myself," Wry Thoughts about Religion, Friday, February 15, 2019: http://blog.charleshedrick.com/2019/02/how-do-i-describe-myself.html.

³Hedrick, "Is Belief in the Divinity of Jesus Essential to Being Christian," Unmasking Biblical Faiths, 221-233.

⁴But this could only refer to the Jewish Scriptures in Greek (the Septuagint) for the New Testament had not yet been collected and given the status of "inspired Scripture."

⁵Hedrick, Unmasking Biblical Faiths, 87-102.

What Distinguishes the Bible from other Collections of Holy Writ?

The term "Holy Writ" refers to Scriptures used by a religious community.  The term is figurative and claims a special religious authority for the Scriptures.  Any collection so designated would be considered authoritative for faith and practice by the community using the collection.  Any collection of literature purporting to give the reader clarity of insight into the divine will and/or that serves as a guide for life in this world or for a world to come is Holy Writ.  The only thing distinguishing the Bible from other collections of "Holy Writ" is its content, but not the claim that it is exclusive.  Each collection is touted as an exclusive authority from God, or at least its adherents think so.

            Authoritative religious texts are often supported by claims of special origin.  For example, the Bible is the Word of God because it is thought to be inspired (2 Timothy 3:15-16).  The Book of Mormon, the sacred Scripture of the Latter Day Saints, was written on golden tablets, and their hidden location was revealed to Joseph Smith by the angel Moroni.  The Jewish Torah is written by God himself and given to Moses (Deuteronomy 9:9-10; 10:1-5), or it came from God to Moses through the agency of angels (Galatians 3:19; Acts 7:38; Hebrews 2:2; Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews, 15.5.3)

            In the contemporary world a number of Holy Scriptures are imbued with the same authority as the Bible.  A few of those collections that currently compete with the Bible are the Rig-Veda (Hindu), the Avesta (Zoroastrianism), the Qu'ran (Islam), Tao Te Ching (Taoism), Tripitakas (Buddhism).

            The existence of multiple sets of Scripture claimed as exclusive religious authority does not necessarily disprove the claim that "my Scripture is true but others are not," since that claim only represents "my" opinion.  Multiple sets of authoritative Holy Scripture, however, do raise theoretical questions about one's own religion, in light of the fact that others claim the same exclusive authority for their Scripture.

1. Multiple sets of Holy Scripture refute the claim of uniqueness for any one set.  Although each set may be unique in content, no test exists to demonstrate that its content is "revealed truth." True, some sets of Holy Scripture may be more ethical, or more historical, or more rational, or more ancient than is the case with others, which by comparison may seem more harsh or unreasonable in their religious instruction.  These features, however, are not measuring the mysterious, innate, but ultimately vaporous, quality "sacred revelation," claimed somehow to reside in all Holy Writings.  In other words content alone is not what transforms narrative into revealed truth.
2. Multiple sets of Holy Scripture raise the question of the "there-ness" of all Gods.  Gods are not "mortal beings" like humans, and do not exist in space and time.  Gods are immortal/eternal we claim; they are not limited by time and do not exist in space.  Nevertheless we think of them as "there" somewhere, but do not define "there" as a place within the physical universe, but "there" as a "spiritual" dimension apart from the physical universe.  Competing sets of Holy Scripture challenge the "there-ness" of any God in the following way: If the innate essence of revelation or holiness claimed for any set of Holy Writings cannot be quantified or identified in its particulars, but is merely due to individual or group opinion, then God becomes an unnecessary postulate.  Gods may be "there," but our Scriptures are not due to them.
3. Multiple sets of Holy Scripture argue against the idea that one God is responsible for the multiple sets of Holy Scripture with their contradictory revelations.  The exclusive claims made for each set renders that idea impossible, as is suggested by the difficulty later Gentile Jesus followers had with the Jewish Scriptures.  They inherited the Jewish Scriptures as divinely inspired (2 Timothy 3:15-16), but the church held a different faith than that of the Israelites and the later Jews.  They resolved the disconnect between the old faiths and the new faith by prophetic interpretation of the Old Testament, which allowed them to disregard its literal understanding in favor of a figurative understanding.  Thus they were able to claim the revelation of one God behind what they saw as an outdated Old Testament and their new books of faith.  Not all embraced that solution, however, and Marcion, for example, rejected the Old Testament as Scripture.  Many critical scholars have long recognized that the adoption of the Jewish Scriptures as part of a Christian canon is an artifice.  Hence, multiple sets of Holy Scripture imply multiple Gods.
4. One's affirmation of the religious truth of any set of Holy Scripture is generally due to geographical happenstance, and cultural conditioning.  Had I been reared in Greek culture rather than the Bible belt, I would probably have been baptized Greek Orthodox, and my Scriptures would have been a modern Greek translation of the ancient Greek Septuagint (which is different from the Hebrew).  Had I been reared in ancient Persia, I would no doubt have been Zoroastrian and the Avesta my Holy Scriptures.  Had I been born in Cairo, I would surely have been Muslim and the Koran my Holy Scriptures.  In the absence of any critical thinking skills I would have held to the truth of each of those Scriptures as avowedly as I affirmed the Bible in my youth.  In short, our belief in the inspiration and authority of any set of Scriptures is the result of cultural conditioning and what we are taught.

Charles W. Hedrick

Professor Emeritus

Missouri State University

 

(This ends the short series on the Bible as the Word of God)

The Lowly Punctuation Mark in the New Testament

Something to which we pay little attention when we read the New Testament are the punctuation marks in the text. In a sense, we take them for granted. The truth is that in the earliest extant Greek manuscripts of New Testament, texts only received a few marks by their first inscribers. Originally punctuation appeared in a text “as an aid in reading, especially in reading aloud, by marking the various resting-places for the voice.”¹ Texts in antiquity were read audibly and not silently.  The words of the sentences were not separated, but sentences were written in a continuous string of letters. The result of this lack of standardization in Greek texts of the New Testament is that “modern editors are compelled to provide their own punctuation and hence often their own interpretation. The latter is very definitely the case, e.g. when a mark of interrogation occurs (found in [manuscripts of the ninth century] AD at the earliest).”²

            What this means in a practical sense is that punctuation in translations of the Bible is due to the interpretation of modern editors of a text. Editing a Greek text for use by readers or translators means separating the string of letters of a line of text into specific words, correcting the ancient scribes’ errors, and deciding how the text should be punctuated. These procedures constitute an initial interpretation of a text. Translators of a text into modern languages usually work from such a “critical Greek text” that has already undergone these interpretative procedures.

            It is not uncommon that editors and translators of a text will themselves make errors in their interpretation of the text, or at the very least disagree in what should appear in critical editions of Greek texts and their translations. Editors are, after all, human and prone to error, and that is why we have different editions of critical texts and translations.³

            Here are two examples showing that what has been construed as interrogative sentences in the Gospel of John make good sense in the context as statements. My two examples demonstrate that editors of a text can come to different conclusions about a question mark. In John 14:2 a sentence that is construed as a question by one translation is construed in another as a statement:

If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? (New Revised Standard Version).

If it were not so, I should have told you; for I am going to prepare a place for you. (The Revised English Bible).

The Nestle-Aland 28^th edition of the critical Greek text punctuates the sentence with a question mark.

            Here is the second example. In John 20:29 a sentence that is construed by one translation as a question is construed in another as a statement:

Have you believed because you have seen me? (New Revised Standard Version).

Because you have seen me, you have found faith. (The Revised English Bible).

The Nestle-Aland 28^th edition of the critical Greek text punctuates the sentence with a question mark.

            What is the difference between a statement and a question? Basically, a statement is the expression of an idea. A question is the expression of uncertainty and/or request for information. Hence in John 20:29 the paper character of Jesus affirms that the basis for Thomas’ faith is seeing the resurrected Christ (REB). In the NRSV, on the other hand, the character Jesus is unsure why Thomas believes. In the REB version of John 14:2 the character Jesus appears to admit an error on his part; that is, he should have told them he was going to prepare a place for them, but failed to do so. In the NRSV, on the other hand, Thomas finds faith precisely because he has seen the risen Jesus, which Jesus notes is not true of everyone.

One finds this same disagreement between construing the text as a question and a statement between the translators of the REB and the NRSV in John 6:42. I have also found a number of other places in John’s text where it appears to me that the sentence arguably works just as well as a question or as an affirmative statement: John 7:26, 9:40; 11:8, 16:19, 19:10.

            I do not know how familiar readers of the New Testament are with the above information. The information, however, should make a difference to them. What is the significance of this ambiguity in the Greek text of the gospel of John of which the translators of the Revised English Bible and the New Revised Standard Version were surely aware? In the first place the problem of ambiguity lies with the extant Greek texts. They are ambiguous enough that they can reasonably be read at some points in two different ways by readers of ancient Greek. In the second place it is a virtual certainty that the original Greek text of the gospel of John would not have been any different because scribal practices were similar. That is to say, the author’s original hand-written copy is likewise flawed. Readers of the author’s copy would have faced the same ambiguity.

            The Bible is extolled as divinely inspired by Christian believers, but many of its passages (like Psalm 23 and 1 Corinthians 13) are also regarded as inspired and inspiring as is all exceptional literature. In the end the biblical text that reaches the hands of the reading public is due as much to human inspiration, ability, skill, and flaws as all literature is.

Charles W. Hedrick
Professor Emeritus
Missouri State University

¹George B. Winer, A Grammar of the Idiom of the New Testament (7^th ed. Enlarged and improved by Gottlieb Lϋnemann; Draper, 1892), 55-56.

²Blass, Debrunner, Funk, A Greek Grammar of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature (University of Chicago, 1961), 10. E. M. Thompson, An Introduction to Greek and Latin Palaeography (Oxford: Clarendon, 1912), 60; both of these authors say that the question mark appears in the 8^th or 9^th century, common era.

³The current critical Greek text in use by Western scholars is the so-called Nestle-Aland Critical text: “Novum Testamentum Graece.” Based on the work of Eberhard and Erwin Nestle. Edited by Barbara and Kurt Aland, et al. We are currently in the 28^th Revised Edition of the Novum Testamentum Graece.