God’s Truth
When was the Bible Written?
Abstract
© Dr M D Magee
Contents Updated: Sunday, July 25, 1999
Genuine Until Proven Otherwise
Dr Ernest Phibber invites us to consider the question of when the sixty six books of the bible were written because most of them were written by a named person and they could not have been written by those people unless they were written in their lifetimes. The way to approach this, Phibber tells us, is to accept that each of the books of the bible is genuine until proven otherwise. The books of the bible are innocent until proven guilty.
The technique of analysing the old texts of the bible is called the “higher criticism”. Our mentor now attacks the “higher critics” for ignoring what Jesus had to say about the bible and for pulling “the bible to pieces”. Today, Phibber tells us, most “higher critics” do not accept that the bible is infallible and most “bible-believers” (unsurprisingly) do not accept the higher criticism. For Phibber the bible is innocent until proven guilty but anyone who proves it guilty is rejected as an unreliable witness. Ergo, no one succeeds and the “bible-believer” is left with his beliefs intact. Very scientific! Very Just! What an efficient way to establish God’s Truth.
Phibber discusses various objections to the Jewish scriptures beginning with the fact that Moses could not write—because writing had not yet been invented. To cut a long story short Phibber spends some time showing to us that people who in Victorian times thought writing was only 3000 years old were wrong. Point conceded. If they thought that, they were wrong, but it is immaterial to the bible because it is not 3000 years old. Not that it should have been any objection anyway for a Christian. Any Holy Ghost that can produce from a man anything that God wants, could surely have enabled sages to remember his commandments for as many years as were necessary until writing was invented. Our mentor is throwing us a red herring to prove that the higher critics or any other critics of the bible are dimbos, before going on to the more difficult stuff.
Phibber grants us that “a great deal of compiling has occurred in the writing of the bible” but, in identifying the separate bits constituting the whole, Phibber tells us that the “critical scholars” were uncritical scholars. In fact, from idiosyncrasies of style such as the word used for God, emphasis on priestly matters and so on, the critical scholars deduce that different parts of the Pentateuch can be categorised as stemming from differing traditions. “Bible-believers” have to disregard all this because it means that the Son of God, Jesus, in believing it was all written by Moses, must have been wrong and therefore, if the Trinity is to be believed, God himself also was.
Phibber lists four main points against the critics but, though he says he will, he does not deal with them explicitly. He asserts that Moses did write the Pentateuch, indeed, that written records might have dated back to the time of Adam! Can you believe that this man really is a scientist? He tells us nothing about it, but refers us to another source. Next he addresses the “song and dance” about the two contradictory stories of creation in Genesis—they are not contradictory! The first is a God’s eye view of creation and the second an Adam’s eye view.
Two Versions
Our mentor agrees that God revealed these two versions separately and they were brought into Moses’s compilation called Genesis at a later date. There seems little point in refuting what Phibber says here. You merely have to read Genesis 1:1-2:3 and Genesis 2:4- 2:9 and you will note that, for example:
- in the first and more sophisticated legend, the world begins as a watery chaos whereas in the second but more primitive tradition the world begins as a waterless waste
- God creates herbs before man in the first but creates man before herbs in the second
- in the first birds and fish are made before man whereas in the second tradition beasts and birds, but not fish, which are not made at all, are made after man
- in the first men and women are created together but in the second women are rendered inferior by being made from man.
Anyone who reads the two legends carefully will come up with about fifteen to twenty differences which cannot simply be dismissed as differences of viewpoint. Of course, nowadays, no one with any sense reads the bible except for its mythological or historic value. Those obliged to read it for its religious value, as schoolchildren still are in some parts of the world, are inclined to skip much of it as being boring or irrelevant and simply accept their Sunday school teacher’s assertions for an easy life. That is why most Christians still do not know there are two versions of the Creation in Genesis—three really, as the story of the Flood, properly understood, is another.
Phibber explains that the odd foibles and the different styles of the two versions arose because Moses did not write it all himself but used several secretaries who gave different parts their own individual flavour. Phibber knows! All of this took place, nevertheless, under the supervision of the Holy Ghost ensuring that the books were inspired and infallible as God in his aspect of the Son of God, Jesus, believed. Thus Dr Phibber patches the two traditions together making excuses for the inconsistencies but knowing that God must be right so the bible must be infallible.
Those who believe in infallibility devise no end of fantastic stories to protect it. The Greek version of the Jewish Scriptures were translated from Hebrew by seventy scholars long before the time of Jesus. Tradition has it that the books were given separately to the seventy men and each was checked against the others when they had all finished to make sure there were no errors. And, you know what—all seventy versions were identical! Not only were there no errors, all seventy scholars had used the same words, grammar and style in making the translation. Which was the greater miracle, this or the writing of the Torah?
Phibber again reminds us that he is a research worker himself and he knows what a temptation it is to turn a blind eye to uncomfortable facts and, to the outside observer (himself), that is what critical scholars are doing. Can you believe this? This man is constantly turning a blind eye to uncomfortable facts refuting the inspired nature of the bible and has the gall to say it is others who do it.
Place Names
Phibber gives us a discourse on scriptural place names telling us that where a scribe explains an old name by putting in brackets the new name next to it, the critical theorists claim the old names have all been made up by some unknown scribe. The truth, he says, is that Abraham wrote the original account and Moses updated it by putting in the “modern” names. Phibber knows! God speaks to him! What the scholars really say, of course, is that old accounts were compiled and re-edited by later scribes who at that stage added the “modern” names. How, though, to account for the use of later names by Moses writing before these names were in use. Our master has an answer—the later names were already in use at the earlier date together with the older name and, sometimes, several others!
Finally, our tutor asks how the position of Sodom and Gomorrah could be used in describing the extent of Canaan by scribes for whom Sodom and Gomorrah did not exist because they had been destroyed as far back as the time of Abram. Our Ernest Phibber seems to consider this a triumph. Mind you, how could Phibber know the ruins did not exist? The story could have been invented to explain ancient ruins! Anyway, as ever he is tilting at windmills because nobody is disputing that the scribes of Ezra and his successors had older documents and traditions to work on. The argument is not about whether the authors of the Pentateuch had earlier sources—we all agree that they had—but it is about when the Pentateuch was written, at the time of Akhenaten or Rameses by a chap called Moses or about 800 years later by a scribal college founded by Ezra.
Phibber now takes us into a discussion of style. Literary critics make judgements based on style yet our teacher tells us this is fraught with danger. He reminds us again that he is a scientist and writes scientific papers. He also writes Christian tracts and the styles are quite different. So, he claims, he is himself living proof that style tells you nothing.
But the proper question for Phibber to address is, “would he swap his style in mid-tract?”. The answer in general must be, no. So if, in the course of an Old Testament book you detect changes in style you must wonder why it has happened. The answer is likely to be because an editor has brought together different accounts and has put them together without extensively rewriting them. In the olden days, before there were laws of copyright, such practices were common, and this is just what the authors of the Jewish scriptures did.
We actually know this from the bible itself quite plainly. Different post-exilic scribes, probably in different places, unlike the seventy authors of the Septuagint, put together Jewish tradition in different ways. The compilers of the Old Testament liked both so put them both in scripture. Thus, several times the same historical sequence is described in different books. The Books of Chronicles are such an example. Dr Ernest Phibber would not subscribe to the Holy Ghost being a careless editor, presumably, but no doubt would conjure up some other reason for God wanting to say something several times.
Phibber explains to us the method of the style critics. They do their analysis of style and come to the conclusion that different parts of the bible were written by different hands.
Doesn’t that sound reasonable to you? Eminently scientific, surely? Not according to our Phibber! He points out that they make an assumption at the beginning and come to the conclusion that the assumption is valid—a circular argument. And their assumption?—that the Holy Ghost had no part in the writing of the bible. They do their analysis, find evidence of different hands and conclude that the Holy Ghost had no part in the writing of the bible. The analytical Phibber concludes, “any scientist doing that sort of thing would soon find himself looking for another job”.
I seriously wonder how this so called scientist managed to hold down a prestigious and lucrative government post for so many years. You or I would ask why a scientist should even consider that a supernatural entity like the Holy Ghost has effected anything which can be explained without it.
Michelson and Morley should have begun their experiments to determine the speed of light by assuming that the Holy Ghost might have some influence on their result. Thus, when they found that the speed was the same in two directions at right angles it did not disprove the existence of the aether but proved the existence of the Holy Ghost! Can Phibber really be a scientist? Can he be sane?
Whether he is or not, he now gives us a story about an over confident scholar who tried to win a court case of plagiarism by applying his skills. He lost, thus proving that biblical scholars are entirely useless—a bit like “analytically minded” bible-believers, I would venture!
Phibber continues with a long quotation from a “good” higher critic, Professor H H Rowley, who is much more modest about the achievements of his field of inquiry. Rowley says the situation is much more fluid than it was just after the turn into the 1900s when scholars were inclined to certainty. And indeed they were.
Certainties
Now, interestingly enough, our teacher, being a physicist, will know that the discoveries in science in the Victorian era, which were indisputably momentous, led physicists to believe that they had solved the key problems of physics. They were wrong. Waves were to become particles according to Planck and particles waves according to De Broglie. Everything was to become relative according to Einstein and everything was to become uncertain according to Heisenberg. Marx and Weber had solved society. Freud had solved personality. W G Grace had solved cricket!
So the certainties of the Victorian era was not limited to biblical scholars, it was the Victorian hubris of the times. Indeed, one could say that a sign of increasing maturity in any field is a loss of certainty leading to more subtle and detailed inquiries. But this is something Phibber cannot comprehend because he is totally certain that everything in the Christian bible is literally the word of God. Should there be any doubt, the doctor tells us, the Lord Jesus Christ should be allowed the casting vote—and naturally he thought the Old Testament was true. It is as sensible as saying that Peter Pan should be left the casting vote on whether Never-Never Land is true!
Phibber next takes us to the New Testament which allows far less scope for guesswork than the Old. The “powerful testimony” to the resurrection of Christ given in 1 Corinthians 15 is cited because the epistle was written only about a quarter of a century after the crucifixion when many of the people mentioned were still alive. They were, of course, but they were in Jerusalem whereas Paul was hundreds of miles away. Communications in the Roman Empire were good by contemporary standards, but not at all like ours today, and indeed a few paragraphs later on our tutor tells us that books “spread very slowly from land to land”.
Since Paul’s letters were not letters in any ordinary sense of the word but books of Christian edification, it is evident that Paul could write with little fear of contradiction. And it is quite possible that hysterical people like Mary Magdalene were deluded or deluded themselves in their distress at the failure of their leader to wrest the kingdom of God from the Romans. The rumours that Jesus had risen were useful to the leadership of the Church in Jerusalem but even more useful to Paul whose formerly pagan congregations expected their gods to be reborn or resurrected.
Dr Phibber then tells us that a fragment of John’s gospel has been dated to 150 AD when, according to the John Rylands librarian, “the ink of the original autograph can hardly have been dry”, a slight exaggeration which is forgivable, our teacher tells us. However the “slight exaggeration” to Phibber is one of seventy or more years whereas the “slight exaggeration” meant by the librarian was probably no more than two or three decades.
Further testimony is brought by our guide to persuade us that the New Testament was written in the first century AD. We can concede Phibber this point in essence—regarding the gospels, but as Jesus died, Christians believe, about 30 AD, they were still written almost seventy years after the events they record. Their original authors wrote with their audience in mind rather than any desire to tell the truth, and editors remained at work on the original manuscripts well into the second century. They, like their modern day counterparts, wanted to tell God’s Truth. Whatever will persuade the readership to believe will serve as God’s Truth however mendacious it might be.
