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Where To Put Our Faith

May 15, 2005
by Jeffrey Pierce

As Christians, many of us follow the Bible and treat it as the infallible Word of God. The passages found within its pages are used to justify countless choices and control the decisions with which we direct our lives.

In other words, we are placing our faith in the men that wrote and compiled a book, not in love as embodied by God.

The deeper that we delve into the history of the early Christian church and the formation of the Bible, the more evidence we find that the Bible is a reflection of man's interpretation of what it's like to experience God, not something that was created by God Himself. The positions for and against this argument can be endlessly debated, so let's look at some simple facts.

Time and Memory

While there is some debate regarding the date of the actual authorship of the various books of the New Testament (and in some cases, debate regarding the authors of certain books), it is widely accepted that the first Gospels were written no earlier than 70 AD. It's assumed by many scholars that Jesus was born somewhere between 6 BC and 3 BC and that he died around 30 AD. If this is true, then the first version of the Gospels weren't written until almost forty years after the death of Christ. Think back for a moment to something that happened in your childhood, an area for many of us that is less that forty years in our past. Now tell someone else about those events. If that person wrote an account from the memories of what you told them had happened forty years earlier, how accurate do you think that would be?

That's exactly what happened with the Gospel of Mark. Mark wasn't a disciple of Jesus; he was a student of Peter. Even with the best of intentions, mistakes would be made in creating a text in this scenario.

Errors In Transmission

It's an error to assume that the books of the New Testament were written at one time or by one author. What's more is that the canon of the New Testament (the books considered holy and part of the Bible) was not conclusively established until almost four hundred years after the death of the Christ. Until that time, not only were there numerous books of scripture studied and referenced that modern Christians have never heard of, but many of the books we accept today were questioned and/or rejected by fathers of the early church. It was the actions of a small handful of men over the course of many decades who decided, not only which books were canonical, but which versions of those texts were accurate.

Origen, one of the greatest philosophers of the early Christian church was born to Christian parents in Egypt around 185 AD and died in 253 or 254 AD. An extraordinarily prolific writer, Origen wrote numerous commentaries on New Testament canon. Keep in mind that the New Testament did not exist as a cohesive unit at this time, but that various texts were studied and considered holy by the Christian church, although Origen expressed reservations concerning the books of James, II Peter, II John and III John. There were so many diverse opinions on which texts were canonical and which were merely the works of men, that opinions differed greatly from one area of Christendom to the next. Some of these books included The Didache, The Epistle of Barnabas, and The Shepherd of Hermas. Robert M. Grant writes in, The Formation of the New Testament, that, "It would appear that while he [Origen] was at Alexandria he regarded the Didache, Hermas and Barnabas as canonical, but that after moving to Caesarea he became aware that they were not accepted there."

The first version of the New Testament to contain the twenty-seven books found in our version of the New Testament, in the same order we find them today, was translated independently by St. Jerome who replaced many contradictory Latin translations of the New Testament with his own translation of those texts. It was also St. Jerome who decided which books should be included in the New Testament. Up until this time, there had been various canons argued and debated within the church. St. Jerome's translation of the Gospels was completed in 384 AD - almost four hundred years after the birth of Christ.

Under the entry of "The New Testament," the Catholic Encyclopedia (an "impartial record of different views of acknowledged authority on all disputed questions" that was approved by the Catholic Church) reads:

No book of ancient times has come down to us exactly as it left the hands of its author--all have been in some way altered. The material conditions under which a book was spread before the invention of printing (1440), the little care of the copyists, correctors, and glossators for the text, so different from the desire of accuracy exhibited to-day, explain sufficiently the divergences we find between various manuscripts of the same work. To these causes may be added, in regard to the Scriptures, exegetical difficulties and dogmatical controversies. To exempt the scared writings from ordinary conditions a very special providence would have been necessary, and it has not been the will of God to exercise this providence. More than 150,000 different readings have been found in the older witnesses to the text of the New Testament--which in itself is a proof that Scriptures are not the only, nor the principal, means of revelation."
Picking and Choosing Scripture

The next time you read your Bible, pay attention to the footnotes. You will find commentary throughout the New Testament referring to the problem that the compilers of those books faced - there were so many versions of each text that it was impossible to determine the accuracy of many passages.

Since we've been studying the Gospel of Mark, let's stay just within that book to find examples of this problem.

Depending on the translation that you're reading, you may discover different passages of scripture. If you find yourself reading chapter seven of the Gospel of Mark in the New International Version of the Bible, you may notice that the text jumps from verse 15 to verse 17. Verse 16, "If anyone has ears to hear, let him hear," can only be found as a footnote as the translators of the NIV chose to leave it out of the main body of the text. The reason behind this is found in the footnotes of the English Standard Version (which also omits the verse), where it begins, "Some manuscripts add verse 16." As this is a commandment of Christ ("If anyone has ears to hear, let him hear") it would seem important to include it. Although it's not quiet as startling as the footnote to Mark 1:1 ("The beginning of the gospel about Jesus Christ, the Son of God") which comments, "Some manuscripts do not have 'the Son of God.'"

All told, within the sixteen chapters of the Gospel of Mark there are thirty instances where there are discrepancies between the manuscripts that the translators used to compile the NIV. One of these is a comment that, "The two most reliable early manuscripts do not have Mark 16:9-20." Three verses are excluded from the text and appear only as footnotes, Mark 7:16, 9:46, 11:26.

What's included in these omissions?

We've already looked at Mark 7:16 ("If anyone has ears to hear, let him hear.") Mark 9:46 contains an elaboration of what hell is like ("where their worm does not die and their fire is not quenched.") Mark 11:26 contains a major point of doctrine ("But if you do not forgive, neither will your Father who is in heaven forgive your sins.") that is simply inconceivable to omit from the Bible unless their are serious questions regarding the validity of the passages the translators had to work with.

Which doesn't make a great deal of sense if you consider the comment by the translators of the NIV, "The two most reliable early manuscripts do not have Mark 16:9-20." This passage of text was included, even though "the two most reliable early manuscripts" did not contain it and yet Mark 11:26 ("But if you do not forgive, neither will your Father who is in heaven forgive your sins.") was included only as a footnote that most people won't be troubled to read.

Scriptural Discrepancies

As we saw in today's commentary on the fifth chapter of the Gospel of Mark, Jesus cast the demons out of the possessed man, the demon entered the pigs and the pigs threw themselves into the lake (the Sea of Galilee) and drowned. The story immediately follows Jesus calming the storm and is featured in the Gospel of Mark (Mark 5:1-20), as well as the Gospels of Matthew (Matthew 8:28-34) and Luke (Luke 8:26-39.) (The Gospel of John makes no reference to the event.) In each book, Jesus calms the storm, enters the same region, is met by the demon possessed man, the demons are cast into a herd of pigs and the pigs throw themselves into the lake/sea.

Luke mentions, "When Jesus stepped on shore, he was met by a man from the town. The man was controlled by demons." (Luke 8:28) and Mark relates, "Jesus got out of the boat. A man with an evil spirit came from the tombs to meet him." (Mark 5:2)

The problem is that both the Gospels of Mark and Luke clearly talk about one demon-possessed individual. The Gospel of Matthew clearly says there were two men, "Jesus arrived at the other side of the lake in the area of the Gadarenes. Two men controlled by demons met him." (Matthew 8:28)

Other than that one simple detail, it's obvious that it is the same story. The Gospels of Luke and Mark contain additional details, but all three books clearly reference the same event. It's been argued that the authors of Luke and Mark simply didn't mention the second demon-possessed man, but there are three problems with this argument.

First, this simple discrepancy vastly changes the spiritual nature of this account. The demon (Legion) is clearly named as an individual composed of many aspects (a distinction difficult to grasp for people uninitiated in such things, but accurate nonetheless.) If we accept the argument that the author of Matthew included details that the authors of Mark and Luke did not, this would be the first account of a single demon simultaneously possessing and controlling more than one individual. If such a thing were possible, it would literally change the very nature of the spiritual realm as one demon could begin collecting those he possesses and forcing them to work in concert toward that demon's ends. It's not inconceivable as an application of this new spiritual law that armies of the possessed could be raised to oppose God's work here on earth. This is clearly not the case.

What's more, if Legion was capable of simultaneously possessing more than one individual, then he would be exhibiting omnipresence, the ability to be in more than one place at a time, a characteristic that is only attributed to God. To suggest that this was a possibility is to the elevate the demon to the same level of God, a stance that is simply unacceptable and inaccurate regardless of your interpretation of scripture. Even by employing simple logic, we find that the demon "ran and fell on his knees in front of Him [Jesus]," (Mark 5:6) clearly indicating that it was submitting to Christ's greater power and authority.

Second, the author of Matthew did not include details that the authors of Mark and Luke omitted and was certainly not more committed to accuracy than the authors of the other two Gospels. In fact, the account reflected in Matthew is by far the shortest and the most cursory of the three accounts. The account in the Gospel of Matthew (Matthew 8:28-34) contains a total of 157 words. The account in the Gospel of Luke (Luke 8:26-39) contains 370 words. The account in the Gospel of Mark (Mark 1:20), clearly the most detailed of the three, contains 414 words. If the argument was made that one of the authors took more care with the accuracy than the other two, it would be the author of the Gospel of Mark who took the most care to include the most details that we would consider to be the most accurate, not the author of the Gospel of Matthew who gave it the most cursory treatment of the three.

Third, if we accept that the authors of both Mark and Luke chose not to include this important detail, then we are agreeing that these passages are not an accurate reflection of the event. For the Bible to truly be the unaltered Word of God then it must, by that very definition, be completely and entirely accurate. If our very salvation depends on the accuracy of a text, then we cannot be asked to discern for ourselves which passages are accurate and which are not. To do so is akin to God holding out two closed hands and saying, "I hold the key to heaven in one hand and the key to hell in the other one. Pick one." And if God is the very embodiment of love, this is clearly not the case.

What Is the Bible?

The Bible is exactly what it appears to be - the experience of a group of men who experienced God. Is it divinely inspired? If you definition of that statement is, "Did God dictate the words that would be written down and command those translators and interpreters not to change a word of the text?" then the answer is an unequivocal, "No." We've seen for ourselves, simply looking at the footnotes held within the NIV's translation of the Gospel of Mark, that there are numerous omissions and discrepancies within even our modern Bible. But if your definition of the statement is, "Did the men who wrote these passages have a very real spiritual experience with our very real God?" then the answer is an overwhelming, "Yes!"

The problem is that, because the Bible was written by men, it also reflects the prejudices and beliefs of men. The Apostle Paul commanded people regarding the length of their hair (1 Corinthians 11:14-15), that women should keep their heads covered when they pray (1 Corinthians 11:5-6), that women shouldn't braid their hair, wear jewelry or expensive clothes (1 Timothy 2:9) and that a woman is not permitted "to teach or to have authority over a man; she must be silent." (1 Timothy 2:12) These things are not godly and are not from the teachings of Christ. In fact, in Mark 2:23-28, the disciples of Christ were walking through a grainfield on the Sabbath, picking heads of grain - an offense "unlawful on the Sabbath" (Mark 2:24) and certainly against the laws enforced by the Pharisees. After essentially explaining why these laws could be violated, Jesus replied, "The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath." (Mark 2:27)

So why would Paul preach something that Jesus steadfastly opposed? According to Acts 26:5 Paul stated, "They have known me for a long time and can testify, if they are willing, that according to the strictest sect of our religion, I lived as a Pharisee." We can take it on faith that Paul met Christ on the road to Damascus (Acts 9:1-17) however, many of his teachings and letters reflect the religiousness of him having "lived as a Pharisee" prior to his conversion.

In other words, instead of relying on the love of God, Paul fell back on his own knowledge and experience of what religious path should be when writing the letters to the various churches. In doing so, he inadvertently began to unravel a portion of the message that Christ specifically brought in His ministry. And through our own debates, interpretations, insertions of dogma, choosing what books are godly and which are not, we have continued to fill Christianity with a spirit of legalism over the following 2,000 years.

What Do We Do?

We need to begin looking at the Bible for what it is, a witness and testimony both of men experiencing God first hand and the fallible nature of mankind. We shouldn't despair that Paul fell short after having been converted; we should take hope that even he was imperfect and use his life and ministry as a measuring stick to keep our own path from faltering.

The men who wrote the books of the New Testament undeniably experienced the power of God first hand. But their experiences of those events were passed by word of mouth for at least forty years after the death of Christ and then imperfectly passed from person to person for another three centuries before they reached a semi-cohesive form. This does not invalidate the majesty or divinity of the scriptures. What it does is create a parallel between the New Testament and our own spiritual paths. Just as we need to analyze our own lives and our own hearts and winnow out those things that are not spiritual, that are not godly, so we need to look at the scriptures in the same way.

The only filter we have for the scriptures is the nature of God. And love is the very nature of God.

Paul did a good job of describing love in 1 Corinthians 13. It's not perfect a perfect definition, it's ertainly not all-inclusive, but it is a safe, solid measuring stick. In part it reads, "Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres." (1 Corinthians 13:4-7) If we put the various passages of scripture to the test and filter them through the concept of love, then we are filtering them through the heart of God. Anything that is not of God will not pass that test.

In this way, we can begin to put our faith in a living God who wants us to experience His love first hand, rather than relying on the interpretation of what God is as seen through the eyes of other men. We will seek an ever-closer relationship with God, a more inclusive understanding of the heart of God instead of striving for a more legalistic definition of our lives as filter through the pages of a book. The Bible is certainly valid, but created by men, it is filled with the short-comings of men. We must seek God first. When asked what the two greatest commandments were, Christ did not suggest that we study the scriptures, that we adhere to the letter of the law, or that we do a better job of following the directives of spiritual teachers. In Mark 12:29-31 Jesus said the most important commandment is, "Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.' The second is this: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.' There is no commandment greater than these.'" If we follow just these two simple commandments, not just in our own lives, but if we use them as a filter when approaching any spiritual topic, including the Bible, we cannot stray from the heart of God regardless of what we are told by men.