Do you believe that the Bible is nothing but a bunch of fairy
tales? I ask this, not because I think
that, but because a surprising number of people do. I will grant you that many
modern scholars don’t take a lot of the bible seriously or literally and many
see no historical value, though from an archeological point of view much of
what is written has been proven to be accurate as they uncover artifacts, but
still many biblical scholars as well as Christians and Jews alike don’t take
much of what was written seriously, instead suggesting it is more of an
allegory or poetry to tell a story of the people of Israel. One author that I
had read some years ago even suggested that Moses made the whole thing up for
the purpose of uniting the tribes in a common ancestor. Let’s take a look.
In the first 11 chapters of Genesis you have a few stories,
creation, giants and the flood that, in all fairness, might seem to be a bit
over the top in believability. If the bible was the only source for that
information I could understand the skeptics
yet in just about all cultures,
in ancient times, they have variations of the same stories. Whether or not they
actually happened in the manner described by the Native peoples here in America
or whether or not it happened as the epic of Gilgamesh suggests is not really
the point, the fact that these stories exist at all is enough to convince me
that something happened and it affected the collective consciences of the
ancient peoples to the point where they all wrote their own versions of the
events.
The prophet, Ezekiel, saw what he described as “a wheel
inside a wheel” while having a vision from G-D. Some have suggested that what
he is describing a UFO, while others, going back to the fairy tale theme would
suggest that he was hallucinating. I would argue that his vision was quite real
and he was doing the best he could to describe things that he didn’t begin to
understand. Imagine someone coming to our time from 200 years ago and that
person seeing an airplane. That person would have no real good description for
what they saw so they would describe it as best they could based on what they
know. It wouldn’t be that the plane wasn’t real; they would just be hard
pressed to describe it.
After that the rest of the bible, and I am only referring to
the Tanakh or OT, is the Story of Abraham and his decedents, the laws that G-D
gave them and eventually how they screwed up. It’s also about redemption as G-D
promises to redeem His people despite their collective failure and a promise of
better days to come.
What truly makes this so believable to me is because the
warts on the main characters are all included. Think about it; if you were
going to write a bunch of fairy tales about your ancestors wouldn’t you want to
write it in such a way as to make them look good? I would. I would want every
one of my ancestors to be the smartest, brightest, best looking people on the
planet without a single flaw, yet this is not what the writers of the bible
did, they left the flaws. You have Abraham, being afraid and lying about his
wife being his sister. You have Jacob who had two wives and two concubines and
family in fighting. His sons, not to be out done, did everything from selling
Joseph into slavery, to sleeping with prostitutes. It’s not a pretty picture.
Once you get to the book of Judges, you have everyone doing their own thing and
the various stories of the rulers who led them either into evil or back to G-D,
but no matter how you look at it was ugly. Even the great heroes of the bible,
Samson, Moses, David and Solomon, just to name a few, all screwed up badly and
none of those facts are hidden as you read the stories. So for me I accept the
stories, with all the warts and ugliness as being true. If that’s a fairy tale
then it’s one I will gladly believe.
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