So I came across this video (see below) floating around facebook that
perpetuates some of the most common false claims about the origins of the bible.
See the video for yourself:
It doesn't take an extensive knowledge of history to see that
many of the claims that this video makes are demonstrably wrong. And sadly, many of these claims are
already acknowledged to be wrong by biblical scholars, but you don't see religious
leaders passing this information down to their congregations.
I counted off eight claims that I want to address.
Claim Number 1
'We have over 20 different
translations in English alone'
Yes, there are indeed over 20 English translations, in fact
this number is closer to 50. The video
seems to portray this as a strength, it is not. In a book that is supposed to be the perfectly inspired message
of a god, you would expect that it would be clear enough to only need one
"translation" for each language.
The fact that we have multiple English versions is because there is a
lot of disagreement, among theologians, as to how to interpret the original
languages, and it's also due to the fact that we have multiple different
versions of the oldest copies to choose as our starting point. It's important to note that we have no originals, even our oldest copies are copies of copies of copies.
Claim Number 2
'The stories were past down from
generation to generation orally, and each generation took extreme care to make
sure that every detail was preserved and not embellished'
This is an unjustifiable claim. How could you ever prove,
or disprove, how successful they actually were at passing down their oral
stories. If there are no written
records of the original verbal stories, there is absolutely no way that we can
know if they've changed, or by how much.
We can certainly point to cultures that still practice this type of oral tradition, and they
can indeed pass some stories down word for word. But how many stories can you remember word for word, and how many
generations are we talking about?
Besides the difficulty of training someone to remember a story word for
word, there is also the problem of the storyteller changing the story during
their own lifetime, before passing it down to the next storytelling
apprentice. If the primarily story
teller dies before an apprentice is fully trained, how would their stories be effected? There is simply no way to back
up the claim that those stories were handed down unaltered.
Claim Number 3
'Around 1400 BC (BCE) god inspired
Moses to write down the first five books'
This is debated among biblical scholars and apologists, and
the prevailing view is that Moses did no write the first five books. Most biblical scholars recognize the that
the fist five books were written by at least four different groups, based on
four distinct writing styles. To claim
one person wrote all of them is simply wrong.
Lookup the "Document Hypothesis" or "JEDP theory" of the
Pentateuch (first five books of the bible) to read more on this disagreement.
Claim Number 4
'Over the next 1500 years about 40 other
men, from 3 different continents, wrote down the rest of the 66 books of the
bible'
Over the next 1500 years would bring us to about 100 AD
(CE), and yes it would be true that just about all of the 66 books, that we
typically find in today's version of the bible, were (more or less) around by
that time. However, there were many
Judeo-Christian writings by 100 AD (CE), including over a hundred other
gospels and there were already different factions of Christians that
followed different collections of writings (see here).
Claim Number 5
'At the council of Jamnia in 90AD
(CE) confirmed 39 books that make up the old testament'
The dishonesty of this claim should make anyone angry. The "Council of Jamnia"
was a hypothetical event, that was first purposed around 1871. In reality, the Jewish canon was indeed
closed somewhere around this time, but there may not have been a singular
council, or event, that officiated the canonization process. You might say "what's the big deal, so
what if we don't know the exact event that closed the old
testament..." What should make
you angry is that this video brought up the council of Jamnia specifically to
show how much we know about this part of the history of the bible. Instead, it should show us just how
willfully dishonest they were in making this claim.
One last point about the Jewish canonization, the very
purpose of canonization is to close the writings from any further editing. In other words, before canonization the
Jewish writings were allowed to be changed, stories could be added, modified
and removed. It wasn't until
canonization, that the Jewish leaders said "no more changes". This is another reason why we can not accept
the first claim this video made - the claim that these stories were passed down without
modifications.
9/23/13 Addendum - Another reason the statement about the council of
Jamnia is dishonest, in the context of how the bible came together, is that
this canonized version of the old testament wasn't the version used in
Christian bibles for over a thousand years.
From the 5th to the 16th century, bibles used an older (pre-canonized)
version of the old testament which came from a Greek translation called the Septuagint. The Septuagint was about 300 years older
than the canonized version. It wasn't
until the protestant reformation that the canonized version of the old
testament replaced the older version. This
new canonized version excluded many of the old testament books that Christians had
become used to, so the early protestant bibles kept those stories but moved
them to a section they called the apocrypha. About 100 years later the apocrypha was
removed completely from protestant bibles.
However, you can still find the apocryphal books in Catholic bibles,
they've never removed them from their
old testament.
Claim Number 6
'Around 250 AD (CE) Christians fell
under great persecution'. 'In 303 AD
(CE) Rome ordered all Christian books be destroyed'
Yes, it is certainly true that the early Christians were
prosecuted by Rome. However, the video
stated this in order to make the claim that those heroic early Christians were
able to save all these writings for us, and isn't that amazing. While I'm sure many early Christians may
have sacrificed themselves in order to protect the copies that got passed down,
it should not amaze anyone that the surviving copies survived. What you should be asking is, what about the writings that were
lost? As I said before there were hundreds of other gospels,
only four made it through the Roman prosecution and through the prosecution of
different Christian groups against each other.
Claim Number 7
'The Council of Carthage (about 400 AD) met to confirm 27 books
that make up the NT'
This claim makes it sound like the bible came together just
as we know it today, but that is far from true. Plus, the first bibles were actually made much
earlier. Around 340 CE, the emperor
Constantine ordered 50 bibles be made, they were called the Constantine
Bibles, and we may still have two copies of them (see the Codex Sinaiticus and Codex Vaticanus). If you look at those two codices, it is
interesting to note how different the content is, to modern bibles, and how
many chapters of the gospels (as we know them know) are missing. Those missing chapters didn't show up till
hundreds of years later. These "additions"
to the gospels relate to the next claim the video makes.
Claim Number 8
'Over next 1000 years, during the dark ages, monks copied bibles
faithfully'
In general, the monks did a fine job, but mistakes did creep
in, versus were also altered to make them harmonize with each other, and parts
were added and deleted to "improve" the content.
Two of the best examples of alteration is that the ending of Mark 16:9-20, and the
story in the about Jesus standing up for the woman taken in for adultery (the
"he who is without sin" statement) from John 7:53-8:11 was added to
the gospels hundreds of years later.
If people spent more time delving
into the history of the origins of the bible, I think everyone would
benefit. Knowledge is the key.
I would recommend a few videos for those that are interested in learning more about the
history of the bible:
Banned from the Bible - by the History Channel.
(1h31min)
Banned from the Bible II - by the History
Channel.
(1h31min)
Who wrote the Bible - Discovery Channel
(1h28m)
