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Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!


THE BIBLE:THE BELIEVERS GAIN

Monday, Dec. 30, 1974
Time magzine cover story

The event shines across the centuries like a beacon. In a Bethlehem stable, a child was born, wrapped in swaddling clothes, laid in a manger. But the rude circumstances could not conceal an extraordinary birth. Angels filled the sky, praising God and proclaiming peace on earth. Amazed shepherds came to honor the babe. Wise men from the East, guided by a miraculous star, arrived to do homage with gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh.

To Christians—and perhaps to a good many others at this time of year —the familiar details seem etched on the heart. Yet they have been questioned by liberal scholars for years. Though often believers themselves, these scriptural experts have challenged nearly everything in the Nativity story: the angels, the star, even the wise men. As recorded in the Gospel of Matthew, the only one to mention them, the Magi are not the familiar three kings of Christmas legend (later piety gave them names, ages, races and crowns), but rather an unspecified number of astrologers, perhaps from Babylon. Even in that guise, some critics suggest, their existence is questionable, possibly merely a preaching device used by the evangelist to suggest the import and universality of the astonishing event: God become man.

The Nativity is hardly alone among biblical stories to come under the scrutiny of scholars. Even more than the Gospels, the Old Testament has been subjected to exhaustive investigations going back into the 18th century. Faced with mounting scientific evidence for evolution, many biblical critics long ago moved away from belief in the "six days" of creation reported in Genesis. More crucially, especially for the Christian doctrine of original sin, they began to regard Adam and Eve as prototypes of humanity, not real people who committed some terrible primordial sin. Genesis to the contrary, said the scholars, the flood that Noah escaped did not cover "all the high mountains under the whole heaven"; nor was Jonah actually swallowed by a "great fish."

In the judgment of many biblical scholars, especially mainstream Protestants in the U.S. and Europe, a number of these scriptural issues have long been resolved. But others are still being examined. Roman Catholics especially, who contributed little to biblical research for centuries after the Reformation, are enthusiastically at work, encouraged by Vatican II to re-examine the Scriptures. They are embracing a wide variety of biblical opinions, some of them as liberal as Protestant views. Germany's Hans Küng, for example, has joined those rejecting the belief that Christ was born of a virgin. As Catholics swing away from the right, Protestants have been nudged by new research toward a more traditional view. In 100 licensed sites in Israel, archaeological digging continues to turn up new evidence that the Bible is often surprisingly accurate in historical particulars, more so than earlier generations of scholars ever suspected. By establishing physical settings of scriptural accounts and certain details of corroboration (finding horned altars like those mentioned in 1 Kings 1: 50, for example) recent archaeology has enhanced the credibility of the Bible.

Fundamentalists and other conservative churchmen never needed such corroboration. To them a literal biblical faith is a badge of honor, and their battles in its name have
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Scriptures seem more acceptable now than they did when the rationalists began the attack. Noting one example among many, New Testament Scholar Bruce Metzger observes that the Book of Acts was once accused of historical errors for details that have since been proved by archaeologists and historians to be correct.

There are other levels of biblical truth that today's believers and nonbelievers alike can share. A purer, more accurate text, for example, closer to the original than scholars or laymen have enjoyed since antiquity. A more accurate understanding of its meaning, made possible by the abundance of excellent translations. The erosion of literalism, moreover, may have put the Bible's poetry in sharper relief. With a literal whale out of the way, readers can appreciate the splendid parable of Jonah: the story of a stubborn man trying to avoid doing good for an enemy.

The Jonah parable goes beyond that humanistic dimension, however. What Jonah resists is a call from God to preach repentance to the sinners of Nineveh. No manner of scientific search can establish the reality of a call from God. This is not a miracle, but it is a supernatural idea, and it requires from any critic who hopes to grasp it something more than secular understanding.

The miraculous can be demythologized, the marvel explained, but the persistent message of the Bible will not go away. Both in the Jewish and Christian Bibles it is irreducible: some time, some where, God intervened in history to help man. Whether it was at the time of the Exodus, the giving of the Law, the Incarnation or the Resurrection, or any of those many smaller interventions that are still so cherished, ordinary human history was interrupted, and has never since been the same.

 Complete article: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,909023-1,00.html


Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!