"A Christianity dependent on the inerrancy of the Bible probably cannot survive the reality of the discrepancies. But there are lots of other forms of the Christian faith, many of them unscathed by the fact that the Bible is not a completely perfect book." BE
"It's better to have an informed faith than an ignorant faith." Dr. Bart D. Erhman mentioned this in an interview with Drew Marshall back in 2016.
I think faith in the essence of its meaning doesn't require knowledge (ignorant). Faith is faith, but faith can be enhanced by knowledge (informed).
If you read my other posts on this blog, I made it pretty clear that faith is a grey area for me right now. I have been pretty cerebral for a while when it comes to my comprehension of the universe and everything in it... including me. Things need to make sense to me and that has been working for me for now, but there is one problem. My brain has been lacking in the Jesus area. That's right. Since I have been processing "God" with my brain, I need something more than...
"Jesus loves me, this I know. For the Bible tells me so."
"As time went on my views continued to evolve. I did not go from being an evangelical to an agnostic overnight. Quite the contrary: for some fifteen years after I had given up on my views of the verbal inspiration of the Bible, I continued to be a faithful Christian—a churchgoing, God-believing, sin-confessing Christian. I did become increasingly liberal in my views. My research led me to question important aspects of my faith." BE
(Oh Boy... that sounds familiar.) Bart Erhman is my second attempt at reading a PHD University Professor and Bible Scholar. Peter Enns was my first. I am a middle aged bible school dropout that never hopes to grace the doors of a seminary. Seminaries are where others have gone to unearth the answers to some troubling questions about a man who lived two thousand years ago. Suffice it to say then, I need to read books written by people who have invested their lives and careers in asking questions and maybe even discovering some answers.
"Jesus, Interrupted" is so appropriately subtitled "Revealing the Hidden Contradictions in the Bible (and Why We Don't Know About Them)" Reading this book, I have a troubling thought running laps in my brain. Why am I just getting this information now? I took time off after high school to study the bible, and we never discussed the discrepancies. Somehow, I spent fourteen months and never asked the questions I am asking now, and never entertained the idea that there was more to the Bible than the belief that I was being introduced to. The evidence in my journal entries from my time at bible school would state that I was more interested in my social life than in digging into the deep dark secrets of a collection of books written some 2000 years ago.
"Most people who are not conversant with biblical scholarship probably think that knowing about the historical Jesus is a relatively simple matter. We have four Gospels in the New Testament. To know what Jesus said and did, we should read the Gospels. They tell us what he said and did. So what’s the problem?
The problem is in part that the Gospels are full of discrepancies and were written decades after Jesus’ ministry and death by authors who had not themselves witnessed any of the events of Jesus’ life." BE
Maybe the other problem is that faith is easier to process, then the historical evidence unearthed about the very documents that have fed the faith. My main defence in acknowledging the messiness of the biblical text is that I live two thousand years after the story.
Right now, I am imagining life in the year 4020... and someone unearths my journals and blog posts. I have a feeling that they may only get a glimpse of who the real Ruby Neumann is. If that is my conclusion in imagining my own story, maybe then I am allowed some grace in understanding that I don't have the whole story of Jesus. What I do have has been filtered through a lot of hands and a lot of editing. Even if someone read my journals forty to a hundred years from now... they still won't have the whole story. And I am doing something Jesus didn't do... I am writing my story as I live it.
I remember playing the telephone game in youth group. We would have about ten people in a circle. The youth leader would whisper a sentence into one person's ear and then they had to whisper what they heard to the next person and so on around the circle... only having one chance to pass along the message. That last person who got the message and had to say it out loud NEVER got it right. It was NEVER the same as the original statement from the youth leader.
"Imagine playing telephone not among a group of kids of the same socioeconomic class from the same neighbourhood and same school and of the same age speaking the same language, but imagine playing it for forty or more years, in different countries, in different contexts, in different languages. What happens to the stories? They change." BE
"One might be tempted to despair at establishing anything historical about Jesus, given the chaotic state of affairs. With sources like these, how can we know anything at all about the historical Jesus?" BE
I guess that is where faith comes in... right? That is what you might be tempted to tell me right about now. But I'm not reading this book because at the end I can just ignore the mess, sweep it all under some theological carpet and have faith. That ship, my friends, has sailed.
So far, without the faith element, Bart has introduced me to a real Jesus. Right now, I don't know much about that real Jesus, but just the idea that he existed is huge for me. It is the starting point I was looking for.
"Christianity as we have come to know it did not, in any event, spring into being overnight. It emerged over a long period of time, through a period of struggles, debates, and conflicts over competing views, doctrines, perspectives, canons, and rules. The ultimate emergence of the Christian religion represents a human invention—in terms of its historical and cultural significance, arguably the greatest invention in the history of Western civilization." BE
Years ago, I tossed out the idea that the religion of Christianity was a foundation for me. It was more of a boat anchor tied to my neck than a foundation. Maybe there is a purpose to it, and I'm not going to say there isn't one, I just need something more than a religion. I think I need the Jesus that didn't start a new religion, but spend his years on this planet trying to stop religion from hindering the things that really mattered. So if Jesus really existed, and as messed up as some of the written story is, maybe I can find something redeemable in the mess and maybe that is faith.
The last chapter of the book is entitled "Is Faith Possible?" I stopped reading at that point. I really want to find out if I have an answer to that question before I get Bart's thoughts. I want to take the thoughts I gleaned from the first seven chapters and sit on them for a bit. So far... this is what I have...
1. Jesus existed
2. He didn't write anything down and his followers didn't take notes.
4. Jesus and his followers spoke Aramaic
5. The written accounts were in Greek, written at least a minimum of forty years after his death.
6. The bible on my shelf is in English
7. Doing the math... I have no clue what Jesus really said when he was on Earth.
So now I am left to figure out the value of what was written down. Is it something that can help me improve my life here on Earth, because that is what I am looking for... improvement for my life here on Earth. Even if those words left behind are helpful on my journey... I am still left to figure out where Jesus fits in to the picture. I hope it is more than just the ultimate romance novel. But if that is all I have, it is still more than what the world is giving me. And now I come back to the value of having faith. Faith... not knowing... something maybe this agnostic, clueless blogger can find.
Now I am ready to find out from Bart if faith is possible. On to chapter eight...
"Probably the one question I get asked more than any other, by people who know that I am an agnostic scholar of the New Testament, is why I continue to study and teach the New Testament if I no longer believe in it?
This is a question that has never made much sense to me. The Bible is the most important book in the history of Western civilization. It is the most widely purchased, the most thoroughly studied, the most highly revered, and the most completely misunderstood book—ever! Why wouldn’t I want to study it?" BE
I entitled this post "An Atheist saves my faith"... and after reading chapter eight and finishing the book, the tears in my eyes are testifying that it's not true... it is more than true. What is being saved is not faith as a noun... but faith as a verb. I can still trust in something and someone even in the middle of a very messy story... and maybe right now, it is just because that someone makes sense and that for me just might be enough.
Bart goes on to say just how valuable the story still is and how much it has to teach us. Maybe two thousand years after the story, I can't prove much about Jesus, but that is okay. Since, according to Bart and other bible scholars, there is enough documented evidence that Jesus existed, I can trust that and start there. People must have thought that who Jesus was and what he said made a difference enough to pass the story along for two thousand years. I can also start there. The messy details don't need to bog me down.
If I am going to trust in a Creator, and trust that this Creator Loves, because that much still makes sense to me (Creation and Love)... then maybe I can trust that for that Creator to Love, it meant becoming intimately involved with the creation. And maybe that was Jesus. However that happened is what is left to some good stories and little more faith. I understand there are some big questions still and overwhelming obstacles that deserve some more discussion... like the pain and evil we have in the world. But I already did a blog post on that book.
Thank you Bart for introducing me to a real Jesus. Maybe faith can take it from here. I'm still comfortable with the agnostic adjective for now, but maybe I'm not as clueless, because of an effort to be a little more informed.
"Faith is not a matter of smarts." BE
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