THE BIBLICAL CONTENT THAT FEW CHRISTIANS ACTUALLY READ
Most of the stories in the Bible – especially the Old Testament or Hebrew Bible that makes up two thirds of it – are myths and legends, some derived from surrounding cultures, others fabricated from whole cloth. Nevertheless, they are taught to children as if they are true, and deployed to control their beliefs and behaviors for the rest of their lives.
The purpose of Fun Bible Stories is to introduce you to the biblical content you are likely to have missed, even (or especially) if you went to Sunday School. In the process, we hope to make the Bible easier to understand and enjoy for believers and non-believers alike. Most people learn their Bible stories in Sunday School, confirmation class or weekly church service, which significantly limits the scriptural material to which they are exposed. While many understandably take comfort in various inspirational passages and gripping narratives, very few people indeed have read the entire book.
There are several reasons behind this reality. For one thing, the Bible is not easy reading. Even newer translations written in more “modern” language tend to be long-winded, repetitious and cryptic. The chronology is hard to follow and events are inserted seemingly at random. Some accounts contradict previous passages; other narrative segments are so confusing as to discourage any further reading. When this occurs, Fun Bible Stories often inserts an “it’s not you, it’s the Bible footnote.” These are included to support you. Many biblical stories don’t make sense to anyone, so don’t feel as if you should have paid more attention in Sunday School.
Furthermore, priests, rabbis and ministers are tasked with expediting spiritual relationships with their God, not creating biblical scholars. In general, the clergy is unlikely to highlight stories that invite too many questions.
With over six billion sold, the Bible is the best-selling book of all time, yet relatively few people have actually read it from cover to cover. The venerable tome itself is a disorganized collection of stories, history, fables, poems, genealogies, prophecies, erotica, legal codes and instructions for cult sacrifices, written down during a period extending from about 2,850 to 1,900 years ago, and based on even older oral traditions with origins in the dim mists of time. Originally composed in Hebrew, Aramaic or Greek, the canonical whole was translated into Latin following hundreds of years of disagreement as to what got in and what didn’t. Eventually, additional material from numerous earlier sources produced the dozens of modern English versions in use today. The material that now makes up the Bible was not first bound together as a single book until the fourth century CE.
In terms of content, there are many versions of the Bible that include or exclude dozens of peripheral works depending on the inclination of the particular religious denomination. A few of these apocryphal works are found in some Bibles and not in others, while many of the most fascinating have not made the cut for any mainstream version.1 And new translations are created on a regular basis as people continue to attempt to improve God’s word.
Each contributing author and editor along the way has had a point of view or agenda. Their priorities have variously included validating a divine real estate grant.2 For all these reasons, it would be surprising if the Bible were not a bit of a challenge to read and understand on one’s own.
While this fascinating tome is by turns inspiring, frightening, beautiful and instructive, it is also extremely difficult to truly comprehend at every level. Those who attempt to study the Bible for themselves quickly encounter material that is repetitive, contradictory, confusing, absurd, out of context, disturbing or boring. Even those who believe the Bible is the literal word of God are hard pressed to insist that the book is easy to understand.3
For all these reasons, it is not surprising that few people have the patience or motivation to slog through all of this material.
Why the Odds Are Against You
Most readers are introduced to the Bible by parents or some other authority figure, almost always with the implicit understanding that the contents are factual and the stories indisputable. Many Christians believe the Bible is the inerrant word of God and expect their offspring to share that belief. Many others never confront how they feel about it, but are for this very reason unlikely to communicate doubt to their family. In this vacuum, a child is highly likely to absorb the implication that they are supposed to be reading truth. This establishes a perceptual tension on the part of the beginning reader that is unique in all of literature. And yet, as eager as folks seem to be for their children to read the Bible, they are not so keen for them to read all of it. That’s why few lay students are assigned to read the entire document.
The Bible is a thick, daunting book that requires time and determination to get all the way through. Equally forbidding, it contains hundreds of examples of content likely to generate unwelcome questions4 and on occasion, horrified reactions. As a result, young children are typically read sanitized versions of the fun myths, while older students and adults are more likely to be assigned palatable sound-bytes in the form of “scripture lessons.” These selections typically include inspiring stories, parables,5 rhythmic verse, laws6 and sage wisdom. The lessons are supplemented by similar readings from the pulpit during the weekly service, so most modern Christians know the Bible primarily through pre-screened excerpts selected by God’s earthly workforce. Heavy on the Psalms and Proverbs, light on the Leviticus and Ecclesiastes.7
In other words, the scriptures most Christians base their faith upon is a sterilized portion of a much more complex document.
In spite of these challenges, there will always be the daring rebels who decide to tackle the entire Bible from Genesis to Revelation on their own. And these intrepid souls will surely encounter brow-furrowing roadblocks immediately, for example, the stunning discrepancies between Gen. 1 and Gen. 2 or the fact that Cain takes a wife even though no other people have been born.8 Confronting puzzling, strange or contradictory material naturally produces a certain amount of vexation for a neophyte reader, particularly a young one. If you are this reader, you may grow frustrated, concluding that you are insufficiently educated or blessed to understand scripture. Depending on your tolerance for challenge and with whom you share your uncertainty, you may well give up the project entirely.
But perhaps, against all odds, you are a renegade9 determined to persevere in your quest to read and understand the Bible coast to coast. In that case, you will need to confront some of the pressing questions others have wrestled with before you.
You will not be the only person to wonder why God accepts warlord Jephthah’s burnt offering of his daughter as thanks for victory over the Ammonites (Judges 11:29-40). You will not be the first to react in stunned amazement to Lot’s two-night drunken incest party with his daughters in Genesis 19:30-38. And should you stay with the scriptures as far as Song of Songs, you will join a long line of puzzled truth seekers who wonder how a book of graphic and unambiguous erotic poetry got into the Bible in the first place.
Who can help you answer these questions?
Seeking Answers
As a child confronted with troubling or confusing scriptural material, you would naturally ask your parents first. The outcome of that process has a wide range of potential outcomes, depending on your parents’ religious position and their level of knowledge. In a surprising number of scenarios, your parents would not actually know the answer to your question.10 They could handle that challenge a number of ways. They might try and sidetrack you with a vague explanation or fall back on the ever popular “we can’t always know the mind of God”.11
There may be an unsaid reproach hidden in this response, hinting that you might have overreached by asking questions in the first place. God will perhaps forgive you for this, providing you stop asking questions.
If you persist, your embattled parents might refer you to a member of the clergy, generally a professional who makes their living explaining and promoting God.
There is no predicting the outcome of such a conversation. However cordial the discussion might seem, there is virtually always background noise that communicates disapproval. Is there some reason you have chosen to read the Bible on your own? Is your reading a result of a church sponsored study group or are you off on your own? Are you questioning God’s sacred Word?12
How clergy deal with queries and doubts hinges on factors such as the religious denomination and the personal beliefs of the cleric. A strict Bible literalist will undoubtedly advise you to have faith in God’s word and put your questions aside, which is certainly an option. Potentially more enlightening, you might have access to a more liberal pastor/minister who admits to certain doubts on their own part, sometimes accompanied by a whimsical smile and the suggestion that God’s ways are not always obvious to mortals – even them.
If you are lucky, you might find yourself talking to a minister, priest or rabbi with a high level of formal religious education from one of the top tier theological institutions. These highly erudite individuals will have already encountered doubts and misgivings regarding some of the Bible’s less convincing narratives. How each individual has dealt personally with these matters is not knowable. While they may well be able to provide additional context for your studies, it would be surprising indeed if any member of the clergy crossed the line and openly questioned the essential truth or holiness of the Bible while still employed by a religious organization. [APP15] Understand that there are large numbers who have their private doubts, but business is business.
You may not even be aware of it, but when you challenge the legitimacy of the Bible, you become a small threat to a trillion dollar global commercial enterprise. Religious organizations deal with such dissension in various ways, but none of them welcome it.[APP16] The core of their business model is spiritual certainty.
Help From Scholars
On the other hand, scholars, historians, anthropologists and linguists also possess enormous knowledge regarding the scriptures. In the past two hundred years, critical scholarship has made great strides in understanding who wrote the Bible, as well as when and why. This is information that can greatly enhance the Bible study experience, whatever the ultimate objective of the student. In most cases, there is a consensus answer to your query, even if it is an agreement among scholars that no provable answer is possible.[APP17]
At the most basic level, your knowledge that the scriptures are the product of numerous sources – edited with various degrees of competence and redacted to promote numerous agendas – serves as confirmation that you are not the problem. What seems to be a contradiction really is a contradiction. What seems to be bizarre really is bizarre.
It is not your imagination that throughout the Hebrew Bible, Yahweh can’t make up his mind as to whether humans can gaze directly upon him or not. It is not your problem if you notice that the god who lectures Job seems more obsessed with his sea serpent Leviathan than he is with principles of justice he has set forth unequivocally elsewhere. You are not the only person to wonder what kind of deity sends bears to murder teenagers for making fun of Elisha, a B-list prophet. And you have not misread the fact that the opposing descriptions of Judas Iscariot’s death and disposition of bribe funds really are fundamentally different in Matthew and Acts.[APP18]
Historically and geographically, we often read the scriptures as if the narratives were taking place on a stage. But in reality, Palestine’s unique location on the southeast corner of the Mediterranean Sea was the locus of the rise and fall of numerous African, European and Asian civilizations during the 4,000 or so years spanned by the Biblical narrative. The religious drama of the Israelites and early Christians took place on an interactive world stage shaped by Sumerian, Egyptian, Phoenician, Canaanite, Assyrian, Babylonian, Persian, Greek and Roman cultures.[APP19] In many cases, the Hebrew scriptures were heavily influenced by the context of political conditions.[APP20]
In the specific case of Exodus, what you read in the Hebrew Bible is influenced by both the time period in which tradition places the events and the time period during which it was written down and edited, nearly a millennium later.[APP21]
It is also useful for the first time Bible reader to be aware of anthropological context. If the Exodus story did take place around 1250 BC, what do Egyptian records have to say about these cataclysmic events? If millions of Israelites camped at the foot of Mt. Sinai for a year, what archaeological record confirms it? Why does the literature and law of Egypt, Sumer, Babylon and other surrounding civilizations contain material so similar to Hebrew Bible writings, while offering significantly less historical validation? Scholars of the ancient Near East have a great deal to tell us on these topics.
In a similar vein, what were the religious beliefs and worship practices of the Canaanite tribes who occupied the same land as the Hebrews for millennia? Why does El/Elohim have the same name and share so many similar characteristics as his Canaanite counterpart of the same name?[APP22] For that matter, what influence did other spiritual and cosmological belief systems have on the evolution of Hebrew and Christian thought? Egyptian cosmology, Zoroastrianism, Greek philosophy and possibly even Buddhism influenced the authors of the Bible.
Consistent with the mission of Fun Bible Stories, it is our purpose in the Appendices to provide this additional context in a concise format. What you will find here is almost without exception a representation of the prevailing mainstream scholarly consensus on any given topic. When sources are in disagreement, or when no point of view can ever be conclusively proven, it is so noted. The objective is to save you years of study and frustration by making up-to-date Biblical research accessible. In many cases, the Appendices continue discussions begun in the foot notes of the main text.
You are as qualified as anyone to read the world’s most compelling piece of literature and take away what is valuable for you.
NOTES
[1] 1 Enoch for example fills gaps in Genesis, chronicling the activities of the Watchers, who mate with human women, produce 10 – 15 ft. tall progeny and teach human sorcery, astrology and share makeup tips. This book is referenced in the canonical Book of Jude, but was ultimately excluded from mainstream editions.
“Enoch, in the seventh generation from Adam, also prophesied against them when he said, Behold, the Lord is coming with tens of thousands of his saints, to pronounce judgment on humanity and to convict all the ungodly for all the godless deeds that each has impiously committed and for all the defiant words spoken against him by godless sinners.”
– Jude 1: 14-16 [NCB]
[2]. This matters in the modern world, as biblical sources are cited to justify the founding of the modern state of Israel.
[3]. If the Bible were clear, there would be no need for a global priesthood to explain God’s intent and what he really meant to say. If God is indeed the author of the Bible, we must take him exactly at his Word.
But which version of his Word?
{4]. For example, when the story of Noah’s flood is told, we skip right over the section in which Noah makes burnt offerings with the animals he has just spent months saving. We go right to the rainbow, even though it is explicitly the smell of the burning flesh that pleases God to the point that he decides to not destroy mankind by flood again (Gen. 8: 20-21). This is an early indication of the important of cult sacrifices to the authors, who are thought to be members of a priestly school.
[5]. Many of Jesus’s parables are counterintuitive and equivocal, suggesting the koans of Buddhism. Siddhartha Gautama – the historical Buddha – preceded Jesus by about five hundred years.
[6]. Depending on the religious denomination, laws are cited selectively according to cultural predisposition, even as others are ignored. Traditionally, there are more than six hundred laws in the Hebrew Bible, including one dealing with the structure of one’s roof (Deut.22:8).
“When thou buildest a new house, then thou shalt make a battlement for thy roof, that thou bring not blood upon thine house, if any man fall from thence.” [KJV] Good construction policy, but YHWH has a tendency to not stay in his lane.
[7]. While Psalms and Proverbs give us inspiring praise poetry and quotable wisdom, Leviticus provides details on how to wash and to burn the entrails when sacrificing animals. Which is more likely to be read to the fourth grade Sunday School class?
[8] APP10. And no matter how Bible apologists spin it, his wife would be his sister.
[9] The term renegade is only partly facetious. Most religious professionals understand that widespread amateur study of the Bible could lead to problems. There is a reason the Catholic liturgy was in a language the faithful could not understand for more than fifteen hundred years.
[10]. Because there might not be an answer. “Dad, why did the Levites murder three thousand of their fellow Israelites right after God commanded “Thou shall not kill?”
[11] For at least one seeker, lame answers to these queries led to forty years of study on the topic and ultimately to authoring the True Scripture series.
[12]. To fully appreciate the Bible and its discrepancies, one must read the entire Bible, probably several times. For example, the first time through, you might not notice that the two books that comprise First and Second Chronicles give an account of King David’s rise to power and reign that is so different from the one found in 1 Samuel and 1 Kings that it isn’t possible for both narratives to be true. This is the essential core of our problem with Bible literalists. The Bible contains thousands of other irreconcilable internal contradictions of simple facts, major and minor. No exegesis can resolve this conflict.
Two accounts that contradict each other cannot both be true by definition; therefore, the Bible can’t be inerrant.
APP15. In short, professional clergy are unlikely to expend much energy or spiritual capital pointing out troublesome scriptural passages during a religious service, especially before the offering.
APP16. The Church no longer burns heretics, but there are other ways of punishing error.
APP17. Scholarship in this case is not the same as theology. One can’t engage in true scholarship if one is not allowed to question fundamental assumptions in the face of new evidence.
APP18. The Judas contradiction in Matthew 27: 3-8 and Acts 1: 16-19 is a “two-fer.” The cause of death is not the same cause of death in both books, and the account of what happens to the Chief Priest’s blood money is not the same in the two passages. The descriptions are not ambiguous or metaphorical. They can’t both be true.
APP19. For a larger context, read Appendix C: Archaeological, Geographical and Historical Context.
APP20. With few exceptions, the other nations occupying the Holy Land are demonized in Hebrew scripture.
APP21. Aside from the Exodus, which is not a historical event, Hebrew writings were most influenced by the events of the Babylonian Exile and subsequent return to the Jerusalem in the sixth century BCE. Despite the bravado of the narrative, Judea was under the political control of the Hebrews for only about four hundred years (and Samaria/Israel even less). God’s promise to David was broken.
APP22. See Appendix D: El Shaddai, Yahweh, God and Allah for more.
APP23. The fact that few non-theology scholars consider the Exodus to be a historic reality in no way diminishes the value of comparing the traditional narrative to the geography and topography on the ground.
APP24. Henotheism: worship of a single god with the acknowledgment that it is one of many.
APP25. For the ancients, the proper worship of Yahweh and other regional deities – especially sacrificial offerings – far outweighed theological considerations. This fact is widely ignored by modern practitioners of both Judaism and Christianity.
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