Title: An Anvil that has Worn out Many Hammers?

Subtitle: Rethinking the reliability of the Bible—with a special emphasis on the four gospels

Author: Christopher Travis Haun for http://rethinker.net/biblia

Update: October 2008

Feedback: Please feel free to email any criticism, questions or suggestions to cthaun[at]rethinker[dot]net

"Infidels of eighteen hundred years have been refuting and overthrowing this book, and yet it stands today as solid rock. Its circulation increases, and it is more loved and cherished and read today than ever before. Infidels, with all their assaults, make about as much impression on this book as a man with a tack hammer would on the Pyramids of Egypt. When the French monarch proposed the persecution of Christians in his dominion, an old statesman and warrior said to him, 'Sire, the church of God is an anvil that has worn out many hammers.' So the hammers of infidels have been pecking away at this book for ages, but the hammers are worn out, and the anvil still endures. If this book had not been the book of God, men would have destroyed it long ago. Emperors and popes, kings and priests, princes and rulers have all tried their hand at it; they die and the book still lives. No other book has been so chopped, knived, sifted, scrutinized, and vilified. What book on philosophy or religion or psychology or belles lettres of classical or modern times has been subject to such a mass attack as the Bible? With such venom and skepticism? With such thoroughness and erudition? Upon every chapter, line and tenet? The Bible is still loved by millions, and studied by millions.”

– H. L. Hastings

The story presented in the Bible is an unbelievably amazing story! For some that’s the problem; it is too amazing to believe. The story starts with the most high God—let’s call him Yahweh--creating the cosmos, forming the earth, and designing life on earth. The narrative speeds quickly in the narrative through the drama of the bilateral covenant made between God and first-man Adam and, later, the unilateral covenant between God and start-over man Noah. It slows down to give greater detail about the covenant between Yahweh and Avram/Abraham. It seems like the story really starts with Abraham. And the entire rest of the Bible doesn’t make sense unless you understand how it is rooted in the unilateral covenant between Yahweh and Abraham. If you don’t understand covenants, you don’t understand the Bible. Covenants are what God seems to have preferred to use to establish relationships with humans. The story goes on to delineate the empire-shattering miraculous signs Yahweh performed when bringing the Israelites out of slavery in Egypt and making them into “a people of his own” through a bilateral covenant mediated by Moses. It proceeds to unfold the drama of Israel as an unfaithful wife to their husband Yahweh. It seems they’re constantly falling into the adultery of idolatry with other gods. They’re constantly breaking their bilateral covenant. Then a remnant minority seems to come back to Yahweh. And for the sake of the unilateral covenant to Abraham, God doesn’t destroy them but builds them back up again. This happens over and over for hundreds of years. Somewhere in that cycle a unilateral covenant is made between Yahweh and King David. It’s an expansion of the Abrahamic covenant—another branch on the trunk of the Abrahamic covenant. Also in this cycle the prophets begin talking about a New Covenant. In a time when justice has become perverted and Israel under the yoke of Rome, a Rabbi named Yeshua starts to gain notoriety for his words and his works. He claims to speak for God. He claims to be the promised one—the fulfillment of all the covenant promises and prophecies about Messiah. This Yeshua—or Jesus—supposedly works great miracles, signs that he is sent from God to speak for God. The Jews coax the Roman overlords to crucify Jesus. But death becomes the beginning rather than the end. The death was the blood that ratified the New Covenant. And supposedly Jesus conquered Death. His ambassadors supposedly carried this news around the Roman world while supposedly also performing miraculous signs. The time of God’s patience continues for a few thousand years while his unthwartable purposes unfold. And then God deals with the great problem of evil in a very final way and recreates the heavens and the earth.

A truly astonishing and amazing story, without doubt. But is it a true story? And by true I mean did it really happen in history? All of it? Some of it? What is fact and what is myth? What is accurate and what is exaggerated and embellished? Was the text redacted later? Did the followers of Jesus in subsequent centuries put words in Jesus mouth that he never spoke? Was it corrupted by the scribes under the employment of Emperor Constantine? Can we trust it as an historical set of documents?

Regarding the claims about Jesus Christ, it has been pointed out that we must make a choice between four options: Either Jesus was…

a liar,

a lunatic,

a legend,

or the Lord.

Few (if anyone) opts for the liar or lunatic options. Apart from theologically conservative Bible Schools and Seminaries, it seems that most scholars today seem to answer saying the Jesus of the New Testament is ultimately legendary. This is the trend. They would clarify that the man Jesus is no longer doubted to have been a real historical figure. Two centuries ago scholars got away with such inane musings; today however it is clear that the evidence that Jesus of Nazareth existed as a human in real history cannot be seriously doubted. So most skeptical scholars seem to be saying that he needs to be demythologized. They’d say that the extraordinary claims about Jesus are mythological legends made up by his followers. Something similar seems to be being done with all the books of the Bible. In the philosophical tradition of Hume and Kant, whether modern or post-modern, the answer in vogue with Academia in general is that all of the Bible—from Genesis to the Gospels to Revelation—are a mixture of spectacular myth surrounding a historical kernel. This rethink will attempt to rethink the skepticism that is in vogue and it will attempt to rethink what the believers may say. I’ve had enough interaction with the questions and evidences and objections to feel somewhat comfortable predicting that I’ll remain a believer in the historical reliability and transmission of the Bible books. But I am hoping to have my mind stretched and I’m not planning to toe the party line and simply reheat what has already been served. This rethink will hopefully explore some of the difficulties that intrigue me. This rethink will ultimately attempt to consider all sixty six books of the Bible. But at the first it will focus on the books of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Is the Bible an anvil that has worn out and continues to wear out the hammers of the critics and skeptics?

In April 2008 I enjoyed the Greer-Heard forum on the textual reliability of the New Testament documents. The main voices were Bart Ehrman and Daniel Wallace—two thinkers who have had impacts in my rethinking on the question over the years. I’m putting my thoughts on the debate in another rethink—link here.

F.F. Bruce’s book The New Testament Documents: are they reliable? (Click the link to view it online for free at books.google.com!)

F.F. Bruce The Canon of Scripture

David Dungan’s book Constantine's Bible: Politics And the Making of the New Testament

My first question is: What are the main questions?

Geisler and Turek argue like this that the New Testament books are historically reliable and that this is evidenced by:

a. Early Testimony

b. Eyewitness testimony

c. Uninvented (Authentic) testimony

d. Eyewitnesses were not deceived

I think I like this approach a bit better than the standard three tests: internal test, external test, and bibliographic tests. (But it may be two different ways of saying the same thing.)

More later…

Online Book:

http://www.apologetics.org/books/historicity.html

Excerpt from Scaling the Secular City by J.P. Moreland

Chapter Five: The Historicity of the New Testament

General Tests for Historicity

The Presence of Eyewitnesses

Arguments Supporting Eyewitness Influence

Three Objections to Eyewitness Influence

The Gospels and Jewish Oral Tradition

Marks of Historicity in the Gospel Materials

The Form of Jesus' Sayings

Other Distinctive Features of Jesus' Sayings

The Presence of Irrelevant Material

The Lack of Relevant Material

Counterproductive Features

The Time Factor

The Expansion of Christianity

The Historical Jesus of Radical Critics

The Speeches in Acts 1-12

Online Video Clips:

http://www.jesusfactorfiction.com/

This site isn’t heavy on information. But sometimes that’s a good thing, particularly for introductory purposes. It has some good sound bytes to consider such as:

· Can anyone know whether the Bible is true?

· Does archaeology confirm or contradict the Bible?

· Do science and the Bible agree?

· Does fulfilled prophecy show that the Bible is God’s word?

· Has the Bible been changed over time?

· What makes the Bible so special?

· Is the New Testament we have today the same as what was originally written?

· Are there good reasons to believe that the Bible is God’s Word?

· How can the bible help me?

· How can I interpret the Bible?

I seem to remember Daniel Wallace shows up in a least one video from this site.

The New Testament: Can I Trust It? By Rusty and Linda Wright

http://www.leaderu.com/offices/rusty_wright/newtestament.html

In Defense of the New Testament Documents - Part 1 of 3 – J.P. Moreland (audio recording)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y07pU_1bmbE

Trust the Text

http://www.dts.edu/media/publications/kindredspirit/article/?ArticleID=3f0f74e8-9aa1-466f-a466-2fd44de00f8c

(A bit about the textual criticism Daniel Wallace has been involved in.)

(to be continued later. . . )

Boneyard…

I remember well the day in my youth when archaeologist John Romer pointed out to me the problem that supposedly over a million Jews wandered in the Sinai wilderness for forty years after escaping from Egypt. But no sign of their march can be found today. And this despite being able to find Bedouin campfires in the area from two millennia ago. (This objection may have been answered here.)

Consider the Book of Mormon for perspective. From a historical standpoint it would be an exaggeration to say it is built on sand. It is rather built in midair upon nothing but fantasy and imagination.

What are the questions?

We have a set of 66 books which make some amazing claims. What are those claims?

What gives the authors the right to make those claims? Were they eyewitnesses? Or are they just inventing stuff like mythologist.

Did they have ulterior motives?

You asked about the gospel of Judas?

Since the 1960s there has been a movement in one segment of academia to accept various gospel-like books found in Nag Hammadi, Egypt, as “the books of the bible that didn’t make it into the bible” because the catholic church, which they say decided which books belong in the bible and which do not, just simply didn’ t want these Egyptian gospels in their bible. But some scholars, like Eileen Pagels in particular, would like us to believe that these Gnostic gospels are just as legitimate of expressions of early Christianity as Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John’s gospels are. Ever since the publishing of Dan Brown’s The Davinci Code, people on the popular level are fairly gulliblized into believing this bullcrap.

Here’s the real problem with the Gnostic gospels, including the Gospel of Judas and the Gospel of Thomas. First, the gospel of judas wasn’t written by judas. It was written about 200-250 years after Judas killed himself. And the gospel of Thomas wasn’t written by Thomas. It was written about 200 years after Thomas died. These books were written about 200 years after the real gospels and they weren’t written by Christians. They were written by devotees of a neo-platonic/Hellenistic/Gnostic cult which created a counterfeit Jesus, a counterfeit God, counterfeit gospels, and counterfeit method of salvation using an amalgamam of jewish, greek, biblical, Egyptian, and Mesopotamian undercurrents of thought.