This week I want to press biblical literalism to its strangest and most destructive boundaries. My purpose is not to ridicule the convictions of sincere but uninformed Christians. I do it because I can no longer stand by in silence while watching this ancient book be misquoted, misapplied and misused in the service of human prejudice. The current conflict in my own church in which homophobic bishops from the Third World quote the Bible to condemn homosexuality, about which they know less than nothing, is illustrative of the problem. To this expression of ignorance weak-kneed prelates like the Archbishop of Canterbury, wring their hands and accept this bigotry as a legitimate expression of Christianity, seeking to keep the Church unified in ignorance and prejudice. I presume that in another era this Archbishop of Canterbury would have tried to build Church unity by coddling slave holders rather than forcing them to deal with their killing racism. The Bible cannot be used with credibility to support a life-destroying homophobia and I do not care how upset that makes anyone. That attitude is completely at odds with the Jesus of John's gospel whose stated purpose was to bring abundant life to all, yes to "all," not to "some."
The late Senator Daniel Moynihan of New York once said, "Everyone is entitled to his or her own opinions. No one, however, is entitled to his or her own facts!" Here are some biblical facts that are rather inconvenient to those who try to turn the Bible into being the literal and inerrant word of God.
Fact number one: If Abraham lived at all, it was around the year 1850 BCE, while Moses lived around 1250 BCE. Yet the earliest part of the Old Testament was written in the middle of the 10th century BCE. This means that everything we know about Abraham has come to us by way of 900 years of oral retelling and everything we know about Moses passed through some 300 years of oral transmission before either of their stories was written down. The literalists are thus forced to assume that, in those 900 years in Abraham's case or 300 years in the case of Moses, every detail was passed on accurately with no additions, deletions or exaggerations. Such an assumption is patently ridiculous.
Fact number two: The life of the Jesus of history was lived, according to our best efforts at reconstruction, between 4 BCE and 30 CE. However, no gospel was written earlier than 70 CE or later than 100 CE. So no gospel is an eye witness account. Everything we know about Jesus was passed on orally for 40 to 70 years or through two to four generations before the gospels were written. When that story did get written it was cast as an interpretation of Jesus, based on Jewish messianic expectations. Narrative details were obviously lifted out of the Jewish sacred story about such heroes as Moses and Elijah and then retold as if they were events in Jesus' life. When we examine the most memorable parts of the gospel tradition, such as the accounts of Jesus' birth and death, we discover that both were crafted not from eyewitness memory but from older Hebrew narratives. Matthew's story of the star in the east, and the wise men who followed it, was built on Isaiah 60. The story of the crucifixion was organized around Psalm 22 and Isaiah 53. Neither account makes any pretext of being recorded history, but that is the way in which generations of biblically illiterate people were destined to read them. Literalists are never quite able to explain how the traumatic words from the cross: "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" recorded in the first two gospels to be written, evolved over the years into the peaceful: "Father into thy hands I commend my spirit" in Luke or into the triumphal acclaim: "It is finished" in John. The secret is that none of the words from the cross are literal. All are interpretive creations.
Fact number three: The gospels were originally written in Greek, not Aramaic the language, which Jesus spoke. So before the literalist reads the first word attributed to Jesus in the first gospel to be written, it has already gone through a translation. Has there ever been a perfect translation? Of course not! Linguistics is an inexact science. Two expert translators will never agree on the exact meaning of even a single spoken or written line. When lecturing through a translator in Finland I once referred to those who are "gay and straight." My translator rendered those two words "happy" and "a ruler." Translations are a risky business! Therefore, literalists must believe the unbelievable of a perfect translation to sustain their convictions. That is simply not a possibility for those who understand the vagaries of human life.
Fact number four: In the original texts of the gospels, there were no capital letters, no paragraphs, no punctuation and no space between words. The gospels were originally written in line after line of letters. The separations between words, the forming of paragraphs and the application of punctuation in our Bibles today were all imposed on the texts by later interpreters using their tools of grammar. If the Bible is the inerrant "Word of God," all the interpreting grammarians had to be inerrant also. The credibility of literalism collapses at this realization.
Fact number five: The gospels were hand-copied until the time of the development of the printing press in the 15th century. Thus inerrancy requires the belief that no copier ever made a mistake in copying the text, ever inserted a clarifying phrase or deleted something that cast doubt on another part of the story. Today New Testament scholars debate the origins of some obvious later additions to the gospels. For example, there are three different endings to Mark's gospel, two of which appear to be later additions. No one quite knows where the story of the woman taken in the act of adultery really belongs. John's gospel seems to have an appendix that was added later. There is no way to check these realities since the oldest copy of a complete gospel that we have dates only from the 6th century. A scroll or codex of one of the gospels might last 10-15 years before a new hand written copy had to be made. A sixth century manuscript would be something like the fortieth copy of the original texts. That is as close as we can get to the originals. Those who believe the Bible to be the inerrant word of God have also got to believe in the inerrancy of all the scribes who copied each book by hand through at least forty versions.
Add these facts up and the claims of biblical inerrancy become little more than claims for religious magic that somehow preserved inerrant oral transmissions, inerrant gospel writers, inerrant translators, inerrant grammarians and inerrant copyists. Yet on these claims, which are nothing short of absurd, the literal "Word of God" has been used to justify an anti-Semitism that led to the Holocaust; the excommunication of some heretics and the burning of others at the stake, religious torture and the Inquisition; the cruelty of slavery and segregation, the violation of the scientific enterprise whether it was by condemning Galileo or compromising Darwin; and the diminishing of women as less than human, which today leads to displays of rude behavior on the part of some bishops and archbishops who refuse to receive communion with another bishop, even a presiding bishop, who is a woman. Finally, there the continuing virulent homophobia in our time that threatens to tear apart any church that finally moves beyond this killing prejudice.
If the claim of the inerrancy of scripture is the mark of those who call themselves fundamentalists, we should firmly say to these fearful, to the point of being pathetic, believers: "That attitude toward the Bible is not a viable possibility for the Christian Church in the 21st century and we will no longer respect that claim as containing any truth." Fundamentalism has turned the Bible into a "golden calf" and that idol has no more life in it than any other humanly constructed idol, and like all idols is the source of great violence.
The time has come to say, "Enough! In God's name, enough!" We will no longer be intimidated by pious but uninformed biblical claims. Fundamentalists, in both their Catholic and Protestant forms, are not entitled to their own facts! Their view of the Bible is not only dead, but it should be dead. It cannot ever be revived. The future of Christianity does not lie in that direction. The Christian Church must move out of bibliolatry and into a living faith. (Bold added)
Thughts?? Warm regards, Roger