What About The Bible?

Sermon by Pastor David Layman

May 21, 2006

Psalm 119:103-105
Hebrews 4:12-16

In the highly fictional book the DaVinci Code, the leading character,
Robert Langdon, makes this statement: Every faith in the world is based
on fabrication. (p. 346 Doubleday, New York) Leigh Teabing, one of the
characters, intones The Bible did not arrive by fax from heaven...The
Bible is a product of man...not of God. (p. 237). Its true that the
Bible didnt arrive by fax from heaven. God didnt send a fax; He sent
His Son, Jesus. Id rather behold the human face of God than receive a
fax any day! And Gods Spirit touched lives through Jesus. When Jesus
was rejected and crucified, and then raised from the dead, God sent His
Spirit and the Good News of Jesus spread. The Bible is in part a product
of human beings--people inspired by the Spirit of God! Dan Browns book,
The DaVinci Code, is based on fabrication. Its ironic that The DaVinci
Code, which attacks the Bible as being inaccurate, is itself filled
with historical inaccuracies. If author Dan Brown was a college history
student, he would be flunked for the inaccurate things he says about
Constantine, the Council of Nicea, the Gnostic gospels, the Dead Sea
Scrolls, and the gospels themselves. But because so many Americans are
ignorant of history, and of how the Bible came to be, skepticism may
take the place of faith!

We need to recognize that we live in a very different world when it
comes to reporting news and events than 2,000 years ago. When the
moveable type printing press was invented, the printed word became a
major source of communication. But that didnt happen until 1500 years
after the time of Christ! Knowledge and news was commonly transmitted by
oral tradition, not by writing, 2,000 years ago. Even on the American
frontier, young Abraham Lincoln attended a blab school as a child.
They didnt have a lot of books in rural Indiana in the early 1800s. So
a teacher would teach orally, and the students would listen, perhaps
repeat out loud, and learn. When Jesus began his ministry, they didnt
have printed copies of his speeches to hand out to the press for the
next days newspapers. They didnt have computers, word processors, or
paper!

Being creatures of the 21st century, we might think that theres no way
Jesus listeners might remember much of anything, without being able to
take notes, or read it in the paper the next day. But that is in part
because we rely so much on the written word, weve let our minds grow
lazy. We dont concentrate on listening as much as we could. We dont
try to memorize much. In 8th grade, a teacher made us memorize the
helping verbs. I can still recite them, although thats been over 40
years ago: Is am are was were be being been has have had do does did
shall will should would may might must can could. I might add that I
dont recite these very often. Who needs to? And with the helping verbs,
theres nothing funny about them, theres no distinct picture in my mind
to help me remember them. There was no emotional connection to make me
want to remember them. I just remember them! When people walked away
from listening to Jesus teach, he said things that stuck in their minds.
On their way home, people would be repeating Jesus sayings to one
another and learning them. Then theyd tell them to their neighbors when
they got home. And to their friends the next day. And the parables would
have been told and retold, and remembered! Clever and surprising stories
have a way of sticking with us.

More than this, as Presbyterian missionary to the Middle East and
scholar Ken Bailey notes, Jesus used rhetorical methods that helped
people remember. Parallelism was common to the Jewish people. For
example: The earth is the Lords, and the fulness thereof, The world,
and those who dwell in it.... Consider this teaching of Jesus (Matthew
6:24):

No one can serve two masters;
For a slave will either hate the one
and love the other,
or be devoted to the one
and despise the other.
You cannot serve God and wealth.

This is a case of inverted parallelism, with the climax at the center.
In the modern day sense, Jesus didnt write a book. But Jesus crafted
his teaching in such a way that people could fit it into the common
parallelism of their day, and remember it. Who needs to write a book
when you can get the message into your listeners heads, so that 40
years later, they can recite it just like someone in their fifties can
recite the helping verbs?

When some people learn that Matthew, Mark, Luke and John may not have
achieved their final written form until 30 to 60 years after Christs
resurrection, they might jump to the conclusion that the gospels are not
that reliable. Some may naively conclude that within a year of Jesus
crucifixion, all four gospels were found in written form and available
at the neighborhood Waldenbooks, and on Amazon.com. But it likely didnt
happen that way. Few people had books and writing materials. For a
number of years, you had the 11 remaining disciples and other early
followers going around communicating in the way people communicated back
then--verbally, teaching, preaching, talking. Many of the early
followers of Christ were hoping that his second coming would be soon.
Why go through the laborious process of writing everything down by hand,
if Jesus was returning soon? Thirty some years after Jesus death,
persecution began in Rome and elsewhere. Paul and Peter were put to
death in Rome, and the earliest followers of Jesus, probably in their
fifties and sixties, began to think, Weve got to make written records
of this teaching.

Perhaps the first written gospel was by Mark, the son of a well to do
lady of Jerusalem, whose house was a meeting place of the early church.
Mark would have grown up hearing stories of what Jesus said and did by
those who knew Jesus personally. Mark was a nephew of Barnabus, the
early Christian apostle, and travelled with Paul. Many believe Marks
gospel records much of the preaching material of Peter, and was written
by Mark in Rome with Gentile believers in mind, around the time of
Peters death, in the 60s.

Aristotle didnt write a book. But some of his followers later recorded
what hed said. Aristotle lived in the 4th century BC, but the earliest
surviving manuscript of anything written about Aristotle dates back to
around 1100 AD, some 1400 years after the life of Aristotle. Roman
historian Tacitus wrote around 100 AD, but the earliest copy of his
writings we have dates to 1100 AD, one thousand years after he
originally wrote. We have full copies of New Testament books that date
back to 200 or 300 years after the New Testament was written, and
fragments going back to 125 AD. We have over 2,000 Greek manuscripts of
the gospels! Granted, there might be occasional smudges or variations
due to scribal error. But nothing which deals with the essential message
of Jesus teaching, death and resurrection. The only fair way for us to
evaluate the New Testament writings as literature is to compare them
with other writings of their own era. Mark D. Roberts, a Presbyterian
pastor with a Ph. D. in New Testament from Harvard, says that the
gospels are similar to ancient Hellenistic biographies. In that day, it
was common for authors to arrange some events in thematic rather than
chronological order. Its a blessing to have four gospels, four accounts
of the amazing life, death and resurrection of Jesus. Four accounts of
Jesus life give us a deeper understanding of who Christ was, and how He
touched the ancient world, and how He also touches our lives today!

A Bible that is never opened has little power to transform our lives or
the world about us. Our calling is to open the book, and let Gods word
move in and through us. For as Hebrews tells us, The word of God is
living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword...

The Diary of a Bible

January 15. Been resting for a week. A few nights after the first of the
year, my owner opened me, but no more. Another new years resolution
gone wrong.

February 3. Owner picked me up and rushed off to Sunday School.

February 23. Cleaning day. Dusted and put back in my place.

April 2. Busy day. owner had to present devotions at a church meeting.
Quickly looked up a lot of references.

May 5. Grandmas in town. Back in her lap. A very comfortable place.

May 9. She let a tear fall on John 14

May 10. Grandmas gone. Back in my old place again.

May 20. Baby born. They wrote his name on one of my pages.

July 1. Packed in the suitcase. Off for a vacation

July 20. Still in the suitcase. Almost everything else taken out.

July 25. Home again. Quite a journey, though I dont see why I went.

August 16. Dusted again and put in a prominent place. The minister is to
be here for dinner.

August. 20 Owner wrote Grandmas death in the Family Record. He left his
extra pair of glasses between my pages.

December 31. Owner just found his glasses. Wonder if he will make any
resolutions about me for the new year?

CLICK HERE TO GO BACK TO THE START OF THE MAIN PAGE OR use the "Back button" on your browser to get back to where you left the main page.