The Bible - proving the facts, proving the fiction

May 15, 2006 2:20 PM

So how do we know the Bible isn't just a book of fiction that someone has written?

In the same way that the Da Vinci code is just a work of fiction? Could someone find the Da Vinci book in thousands of years and think that this is the new Bible? (I'm not looking for flames or heated arguments - it's just a scenario that occurred to me...)

posted by wibbler to religion & philosophy (42 comments total)

The Bible is just a bunch of stuff that a bunch of guys wrote. With these kinds of religious books myth and fiction and reality all blur and fuse, so the question as posed is meaningless.
posted by Meatbomb at 2:23 PM on May 15, 2006

Well, there are contemporary reports that jive with some of the things in the bible, so it's obviously not COMPLETELY made up. Just mostly.
posted by borkingchikapa at 2:31 PM on May 15, 2006

Faith?
posted by y6y6y6 at 2:34 PM on May 15, 2006

Sure, wibbler, it's possible. If enough people start treating Dan Brown's book as a religious text (ignoring the plausibility of that for a second) and if that trend continues for long enough, it could happen. It might very well happen with the Flying Spaghetti Monster (pasta be unto him). All it takes is some faith.
posted by emelenjr at 2:39 PM on May 15, 2006

Well Da Vinci Code has always been in the fiction section and in thousands of years if someone stumbles across a copy of it, they should be able to piece together the fact that it was a popular fiction book that spawned a movie with some ancient actor named Tom Hanks.

The Bible is different in that it has never rested in the fiction section. We can trace back the different translations and know that in the ancient world it was considered the word of God. It also cannot be traced back to one singular author (or at least one singular mortal author, depending on your personal beliefs).

Who wrote the Bible would be the basic question, and while I am by no means an expert on the subject - I defer to Straight Dope, because they are pretty good a research on wide reaching questions.

A better comparison may be to ask why the Bible is given anymore weight than the Quran? Would the tales of Zues, Odin, or Tiamat be given more weight if their religious texts were still around?

The short answer is faith, but even that has varying degrees. Some believe the Bible is full of allegory while others believe it is 100% infallible and accurate word of God.
posted by Ateo Fiel at 2:40 PM on May 15, 2006

For a exhaustive and scholarly answer to that question, see N.T. Wright's series "Christian Origins and the Question of God," Jesus and the Question of God. N.T. Wright is both a former professor of New Testament Studies at Oxford and the current Bishop of Durham, so he's well qualified to answer the question.

I note, however, that the question you're asking can be applied to our knowledge of almost any historical figure or event - frequently, all we have are writings and some shards of pottery and other debris that seems consistent with the writing.

(On that note, for an analysis of the Gospels from a testimentary rather than historical perspective, you might read The Testimony of the Evangelists, by Simon Greenleaf, who was, in his time, the country's leading expert on the law of evidence and a founder of Harvard Law School. His analysis is now a bit dated, obviously, but there is still something to be learned from the way that he approaches the question.
posted by gd779 at 2:43 PM on May 15, 2006

Could someone find the Da Vinci book in thousands of years and think that this is the new Bible?

It's possible, but this question implies that this is what happened in the case of the Bible, which is incorrect.

Christianity is not the result of people stumbling upon a book and deciding to base a religion on it, nor is Judaism a result of the spontaneous discovery of the Torah and the rest of the Old Testament.

The Bible is a means for the transferral of stories (in the case of the Gospels) of Jesus's life, works, and resurrection specifically to convey their religious import.

Regardless of your opinion on the specific facts in the Bible (did Jesus really walk on water, raise the dead, etc.), their mythic significance can't be denied -- as exampled by the fact that there are Christians who have faith in Jesus's divinity but not in the literal truth of the Bible.

Myth and fiction are not the same thing. Whether you believe that the Bible is "fiction" or not, it's certainly not fiction in the "same way" that the Da Vinci Code is fiction. Dan Brown's book was written as an entertainment and as a commercial enterprise. The books of the Bible were written to convey social, religious, and historical information.
posted by camcgee at 2:45 PM on May 15, 2006

Religions are born of more than just writings. You need a few megalomaniacal preachers with a heavy sales pitch, then mix in some politics, favoritism, mysticism, and theatrics and you've got a new religion. Celebrity endorsements are a key marketing strategy as well. Community programs make the whole thing palatable to the concerned neighbors.

As far as myth making, recycling old stories from previous religions (just change the name of the characters and the timing of the events) is common practice. You can also embed a few actual facts and real people into the story, even mix in some science to make it seem like the answer to everything. Sell the whole package as "secret suppressed ancient knowledge that gives super powers to ordinary people" and don't forget to file your church expenses as a tax exemption.
posted by StarForce5 at 2:54 PM on May 15, 2006 [1 favorite]

There's archeological basis for many things in the Old Testament. I don't want to use the word "proof"; but certainly we know that a bunch of things in the OT are not entirely fabrications. A problem for the NT and Christianity, though, is that there are no contemporary verification of Christ's existence—in spite of the fact that there are really quite extensive contemporary accounts of that period.
posted by Ethereal Bligh at 2:59 PM on May 15, 2006

I dont think of the Bible as a history book. First of all, if you were born in Tibet, you would probably be Buddhist and would not think twice about going to heaven or hell. You would be happy and would not worry about Catholicism(or whatever religion in relation to the bible) being the right religion, especially if it doesnt unite the people, but separate them.

Now, if you were a scientist who happens to not be religious, you would simply look at the impossible logistics of this book enduring so much time without being completely distorted. Just look at your own history and youll see what I mean.
This delusion that people want to believe to make themselves feel better and feel like they can depend on something other than their own flesh and blood seems to give them enough incentive to not open their minds towards anything else. Thats just shutting your eyes and saying you can see better than everyone.
Now, Im not saying that Im right, im as diluted as a lot of people. Why? Because my brain doesnt let me see anything past my own experience and memory. If i see something, I filter it through this illusion that is me. So now, instead of seeing a book, I project myself onto this book and say "hmm, this jesus guy was cool, maybe the whole book is right! I mean, Jesus seems like a very moral dude, so the whole myth is probably true, cuz this book says he was magical!"
And dont forget about politics and power. A book that people followed so much could be manipulated in such a way that made people exactly like a government may want them to be. Especially before the printing press. This is a bit outlandish for me as well but I wont discard it completely. Everyone knows what people in power can turn into. Look at the Bush family.
I suggest reading up on everything from philosophy to harry potter, even things you wouldnt like that go against your opinions, then sort out what you dont think is true. But dont limit your information!
Always look past yourself and try as mush as you can to find the truth of things and not your own personal happiness. Because sometimes truth can hurt and make you want to not look at it again.
So yeah, who knows if the bible is true. Maybe its all true! Im serious, why not? But I cant really believe that after reading what ive read and living this life.
BTW, read this book:
Ishmael
and this one:
Origins of Conciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind

Im not saying the answer is here... but there are definitely some great ideas to think about.

(disclaimer: this was more of an emotional response than an objective one, but it is based on some beliefs of mine. Just some immediate thoughts that came to mind. If you were offended, please excuse the tone.)
posted by theholotrope at 3:04 PM on May 15, 2006 [1 favorite]

Worth watching is The God Who Wasn't There, which claims that the Bible is a collection of mythical allusions.
posted by Neiltupper at 3:14 PM on May 15, 2006

BTW, OP, that would make a great book.
posted by Izzmeister at 3:15 PM on May 15, 2006

I'm also convinced that in a few thousand years archaeologists (or the new squid lords) will excavate Las Vegas and label it the Capital of the World. Think about it--quasi-representative architecture from many cultures, a center of commerce, lots of meeting tables, private and public, where the World's affairs were clearly conducted. Also, strip clubs.
posted by mcstayinskool at 3:31 PM on May 15, 2006

I recommend The Pagan Christ, which provides a close reading of the bible stories (from a seminary trained journalist who is well respected up here in Canada) who identified which bits of the bible are close to, identical to or obviously plagerised from earlier works or myths.

Also well noted are the bits that are missing from the bible. The author makes the argument that it's exceedingly odd that no one mentions the fact Jesus doesn't have any kids or get married. His point, if I remember correctly, is that if Jesus didn't have kids and a wife THAT would have been exceedingly odd and someone would have recorded it, but since they didn't. . .

Anyway, I think the paper back has just come out.
posted by tiamat at 3:36 PM on May 15, 2006

A work of fiction turning into a religious text in a few thousand years? It doesn't take that long.
posted by mcstayinskool at 3:40 PM on May 15, 2006 [1 favorite]

Coincidentally, Discovery Channel had a Da Vinci Code documentary on last night which mentioned the Nag Hammadi library. It's a bunch of documents found in 1945 that are very old and only sometimes corroborate the current books of the Bible. Almost like an alternate source, which fiction wouldn't have.
posted by smackfu at 3:46 PM on May 15, 2006

You don't.

Next question!
posted by Decani at 4:09 PM on May 15, 2006

no contemporary verification of Christ's existence—in spite of the fact that there are really quite extensive contemporary accounts of that period.

I may be incorrect about this, but I seem to recall that the writings of Josephus do make some brief mention of Jesus. Josephus wasn't strictly a contemporary, but within decades.
posted by weston at 4:46 PM on May 15, 2006

When considered as stories, the historical veracity of the Bible or the Da Vinci Code or Star Wars is kind of irrelevant. The kinds of stories that capture mass imagination do so because they are true in every way that matters.

You can boil damn near every story down to the basic Heroic Myth. The hero is pulled from the world he knows and into the Abyss. There, he endures many trials - often his greatest fear. Following great hardship and sacrifice, the hero emerges with the boons of his victory. These are the strings that storytellers have plucked since before we were writing stories down.

Buddhism, Islam, Judaism, Christianity and every comic book you've ever read has this mythic bedrock beneath it. Historical accuracy is less important than mythic resonance. So just about any story has the potential to cross into religion, given enough time and retelling.

The Jesus fan club happened to have Emperor Constantine as a member, for reasons we can never know for sure. He gathered the Council of Nicea to do a really savage editing job on the vast amount of Christ fanfic floating around. A few hundred Gospels were pared down to the first draft of the manageable bundle we quote today. The story has gone through revisions every time it entered a new language or culture, same as any other.
posted by EatTheWeak at 4:46 PM on May 15, 2006 [1 favorite]

Well Da Vinci Code has always been in the fiction section and in thousands of years if someone stumbles across a copy of it, they should be able to piece together the fact that it was a popular fiction book that spawned a movie with some ancient actor named Tom Hanks.

The Bible is different in that it has never rested in the fiction section. We can trace back the different translations and know that in the ancient world it was considered the word of God. It also cannot be traced back to one singular author (or at least one singular mortal author, depending on your personal beliefs).

A better comparison would be with the book of Mormon, which was written in contemporary times and we have a much more detailed story of it's creation.

So how do we know the book of Mormon isn't just fiction? Well most people think it is, but some don't.
posted by delmoi at 4:53 PM on May 15, 2006

That Straight Dope page gets a lot of info from Richard Friedman's 1997 book, Who Wrote The Bible?, praising it mightily in the process:

It's a marvelous book, written for the lay person, and you feel like you're reading a detective story as Friedman disentangles various threads and ties the authorship to historical events.

Can't recommend it highly enough for anyone seriously interested in this question.
posted by mediareport at 4:57 PM on May 15, 2006

I am pretty sure the OP is not taking as a premise that the bible is god's word or has accurate historicity. He is, I think, just wondering how we know it was not written as a book of fiction. One reason is that we can use archeological and other scientific tools to date the creation of the text to a time that precedes the idea of popular fiction as we know it. We also can track down a number of variations to the the text. It's as if there were 100 flavors of "The Da Vinci Code."

Also what people have already said about the relationship between text and religious practice.
posted by mzurer at 5:18 PM on May 15, 2006

Nothing was "written as a book of fiction" thousands of years ago. The category "fiction" is a modern one. The great historian Thucydides made up long speeches and put them in the mouths of historical figures and would have been astonished if you'd objected. The stories in Homer and the playwrights were "mythical" but taken as real by their audiences, who nevertheless did not think they'd happened in the same way as yesterday's rain. People did not think then as they do now. Science changed everything.

Could someone find the Da Vinci book in thousands of years and think that this is the new Bible?

A Canticle for Leibowitz!
posted by languagehat at 5:30 PM on May 15, 2006

People like Meatbomb hope and pray (no pun intended) that the Bible is false.

People such as this have never so much as read the Bible, much less given any thought to researching the Biblr to see how is can (and is) proven to be factually correct.

I challange you to read The Case For Christ. Written by a New York Times best selling author who set out to disprove Christ then actually proved to opposite - eventually he became a Christian.

...and PS, the information found in the Da Vinci Code is false. Even Tom Hanks is trying to tell people that.
posted by bamassippi at 5:36 PM on May 15, 2006

People like Meatbomb hope and pray (no pun intended) that the Bible is false.

and you do the opposite (only much, much harder).

I challange you to read The Case For Christ. Written by a New York Times best selling author who set out to disprove Christ then actually proved to opposite - eventually he became a Christian.

a review, from infidels.org.
posted by mcsweetie at 5:52 PM on May 15, 2006

Thanks mcsweetie, but you seem to be just as bad as Meatbomb. Actually, if I'm wrong... there's no consequence.

However, if you and Meatbomb are wrong, there's Hell to pay (pun intended)

Don't mistake me as an ignorant Christian trying to bring you down. Also, don't mistake me as someone who just believes everything on "blind faith."

This topic is waaay too complex and waaay too detailed to discuss in this thread.

I doubt you've read the Bible. Since oyu have nothing to lose by reading it, I suggest you go for it.

While you're at it, read the Koran and whatever guide the world's other religions have to offer as well.

It's more than obvious that this world... heck, this universe is too complex and to detailed to simpyl be an accident.

I believe that God is real because of what was fulfilled and testified through Jesus Christ. I believe that what Jesus Christ said is fact and can be trusted because he lived a perfect life, died, and was resurrected... thus conquering death. I believe these events happened because there were eyewitness accounts that have been documented on more than 5,000 pieces of paper, Egytian papyrus, lamb skin, etc. I believe these can be trusted for multiple scientific (yes.. factual) evidence.

...ok, Grey's Anatomy is on. Email me if you wanna talk about this in more detail.
posted by bamassippi at 6:11 PM on May 15, 2006

So how do we know the Bible isn't just a book of fiction that someone has written?

The most direct answer is that linguists have shown that the Bible is a collection of texts written by different people at different times, spanning centuries. Which is basically what the Bible pretends to be. This is not disputed by anybody. So it has not been written by "someone".

The answer to the "fiction" question is whatever you want it to be.
posted by bru at 6:12 PM on May 15, 2006

in thousands of years if someone stumbles across a copy of it, they should be able to piece together the fact that it was a popular fiction book that spawned a movie with some ancient actor named Tom Hanks

Given the unstable nature of modern paper, film stock, plastic and magnetic media (as compared to papyrus, vellum, stone, rag paper), I sometimes wonder if there won't be a huge gap in primary source material starting about, say, 1840. Of course a lot of stuff will get replicated over and over again in whatever is the technology du jour, Bibles and Shakespeare mostly, but The Da Vinci Code? Won't our descendants a millenium from now have enough else to mock us for without that?

Nothing was "written as a book of fiction" thousands of years ago. The category "fiction" is a modern one.

Respectfully disagree, in a "yes, but" kind of way. I point to Apuleius and Petronius. (On the other hand, Mrs Jones (more a Lawrence Stern/Laclos and Austen/Dicken's kind of woman) disagrees with me on this, so there you go.)
posted by IndigoJones at 6:24 PM on May 15, 2006

Read Joseph Campbell. The stories are there to convey to readers the raw experience of God that the writers had. However, religious experience begets a mythology, time turns that mythology into theology, theologians canonize the message, but they can't write down the direct experience of the divine.

EatTheWeak and camcgee have it right. Don't let the word mythology throw you. We simply mean a story of religious experience where the details aren't so important, it's the way the story makes you feel that's the important thing.
posted by Mr. Gunn at 7:33 PM on May 15, 2006

I second the suggestion to read Who Wrote the Bible? I think anyone who reads more than a few books of any part of the Bible could tell it wasn't written by just one person. (Short answer--it's a mishmosh of many genres written by many people). But people have been researching this very question for thousands of years. We do know a lot (or are pretty sure) about where it came from and how it came together, if you're looking at it from a phenomonological point of view. I'm sure there are countless resources on this, but Who Wrote the Bible? happens to be pretty readable to folks who don't study this stuff for a living.

If you're looking at it from a religious point of view, which I don't think you are, it's simple--they don't call it a leap of faith for nothing.

It's interesting to speculate on which books from our culture will be found and considered important thousands of years from now, perhaps when the Abrahamic religions have died out or mutated beyond recognition. But I think the numbers can tell us the pretty boring answer--as popular and numerous the Da Vinci Code is, if they're going to find a book of ours, it will probably be...The Bible. (And there are tons of books that sell more than the Da Vinci Code and less than the Bible...they're just not fiction...maybe they'll think The Purpose Driven Life was our Bible, but I don't think so, since it will be abundantly clear that the Bible is our Bible). And whatever books they do find of ours, I'm confident that they probably will be able to figure out roughly, if not exactly, what they will have been. I think it's much more likely that they'd vastly underestimate the Da Vinci Code's influence (or not find it at all) than that they'd consider it much more important than it is.
posted by lampoil at 8:06 PM on May 15, 2006

weston, while Josephus does mention Jesus, this bit is now agreed (though not universally) to have been added much later by Eusebius. See e.g. http://www.truthbeknown.com/josephus.htm. The other contemporary Jewish reporter - Philo of Alexandria - also does not mention Jesus (see http://www.jesusneverexisted.com/philo.html). In short, there is no contemporary evidence for the existence of Jesus. The earliest reference to Jesus was by St Paul, who was almost certainly born after the presumed death of Jesus and is therefore no witness. It is, of course, almost impossible to prove someone did not exist but, frankly, the evidence is very slim.
posted by TheRaven at 8:22 PM on May 15, 2006

If for The Bible you substitute "Dianetics" and for Jesus you substitute "L Ron Hubbard" I think it is quite easy to see how this could have happened.
posted by fshgrl at 8:55 PM on May 15, 2006

Tacitus on Jesus.
posted by i_am_joe's_spleen at 8:58 PM on May 15, 2006

One more comment... I need to apologize for my earlier comment on "If I'm wrong..." It was misleading in my true feelings about Christianity... and those feelings are too vast to explain here.

I will say that I am a believer and I have experienced truly amazing things in my life.

Email me if oyu have any questions.
posted by bamassippi at 9:44 PM on May 15, 2006

this bit is now agreed (though not universally) to have been added much later by Eusebius.

My understanding was that while there was general consensus that the passages had been corrupted or interpolated into the form in which we've got them, but that it's not agreed they were was fabricated outright. I'm also thinking there's another passage mentioning Jesus besides the testimonium passage you've mentioned -- I seem to remember reading something that was entirely political / historical in context, no religious shinery at all. The information is buried years in the back of my brain, though, so I'm not reliable. And the point that early Christian philosophers didn't quote the testimonium is a fairly strong one.
posted by weston at 9:54 PM on May 15, 2006

Speaking as a believer--of course the Bible is rife with fiction, by which I mean accounts of historical events that not only aren't confirmed by archaeology but could never be so confirmed, because they didn't objectively happen. But as others have pointed out, it's not a work of fiction in the sense that The Da Vinci Code is, since it isn't a single-author work written at a sitting, as it were, but instead a collaborative and assembled compilation of texts from different periods written (down) by people who did not have the modern distinction between fact and fiction.

That said, the fundamental difference between the Bible (or any bona-fide religious text) and a work of narrative fiction like Dan Brown's book is that the religious text doesn't principally offer historical narrative. It principally offers a Way of Liberation--from sin/guilt, from being bound to worldly ephemera, from [insert what's troubling you.] You can quibble endlessly about the facts or "facts" recorded in the NT, for example, but these are essentially beside the point, the point (= the essential truth) being the religious experience you can attain by faithfully following the Way of Jesus, which is quite thoroughly and accurately described. Equally you can quibble endlessly about the historicism of the entire Pali Canon, but to do so is to miss the point--the point is the account of the Way of Being taught by Buddha, and the religious experience you can attain by following that Way with dedication. The evidence of truth in both cases is the inarguable religious experience that people have had and continue to have, consequent to following these respective Ways. I say "inarguable" because, though one can argue with the interpretation placed on an experience after the fact, it makes no cognitive sense to argue with the experience itself:

"I put that chip in my mouth and experienced a salty taste."

"No you didn't experience a salty taste, you just think you did."

"I sat in Zazen for five years and experienced satori"

"You're deluding yourself, it was all in your mind"

The Da Vinci Code doesn't, as far as I can tell from a single zip-through reading, present anything that might count as a Way of Liberation or a discipline to follow in order to achieve an encounter with the Almighty/the Absolute; hence it isn't ever likely to be picked up as a religious text.
posted by jfuller at 4:25 AM on May 16, 2006

A work of fiction turning into a religious text in a few thousand years? It doesn't take that long.

But what's interesting about Scientology is that the 'religious' texts are actually gnostic. Whatever you say about the Bible (and in spite of neo-gnostic 'Bible Code' types) it's not considered to be hiding a secret narrative. At least, not these days: gnosticism has been repeatedly smacked down (or watered down into a kind of orthodoxy) from the earliest attempts to establish the canon.

The 'just finding' thought experiment is unsound: even finds like the Dead Sea Scrolls and Nag Hammadi have historical context, even if it's only from early refutations. It's hard to imagine The Da Vinci Code turning up in a context that didn't include lots of other material on neo-gnosticism (Baigent/Leigh/Lincoln and the dozens of books written in its wake): after all, the main reason why Brown won the plagiarism case was that the court considered the backstory a matter of common currency.

But I'll leave the question of Biblical historicity to those who've studied it properly.
posted by holgate at 5:06 AM on May 16, 2006

I point to Apuleius and Petronius

Fair enough, and one could argue that the Hellenistic writers were the first modernists. But it's kind of a moot point, since we're talking about stuff composed well before that. Give my regards to Mrs. Jones, who obviously has her head screwed on right!
posted by languagehat at 6:12 AM on May 16, 2006

I don't understand how anyone can recommend The Case for Christ as anything other than how to make money from gullible people. If you cut out all of Strobel's self-aggrandizement, pretention and red herrings, it would be about 10 pages long.
posted by RobotHero at 9:43 AM on May 16, 2006

I would warrant that the current biblical inerrantists take the bible more literally than did contemporaries of the bible. Otherwise we wouldn't have four gospels; they would have quit with the first one, because it was already perfect.

You could compare the retellings of the story to historical fiction. They knew they were filling in the details, but they believed they had the important facts straight. Anne Rice's Christ The Lord would be a better analogy than The Da Vinci Code.
posted by RobotHero at 10:12 AM on May 16, 2006

If for The Bible you substitute "Dianetics" and for Jesus you substitute "L Ron Hubbard" I think it is quite easy to see how this could have happened.

Maybe, but there's something fundamentally different about Dianetics as compared to The Da Vinci Code. The Da Vinci Code doesn't even claim to be true.
posted by juv3nal at 11:12 AM on May 16, 2006

Regards re-gifted, thank you.
posted by IndigoJones at 5:26 PM on May 16, 2006