How Can I Believe the Bible?

My Christian-all-her-life wife and I used to have this discussion about believing. Understand, this was when I didn't. "The bible says this, the bible says that, yadda yadda yadda" she told me. "How do you know Jesus was who He said he was?" "Because the bible says he was", she'd reply. "Yea, but how do you know that's accurate?" "Well, at some level you just have to have faith."

People have dropped stuff like that on me all my life. "You just have to believe." "Isn't it easier to believe than not?" "Isn't it safer to go with it than keep doubting?"

The answer is, no. I've gotta understand. I have to have proof. What kind of idiot just believes something without being able to confirm it? “But your soul is at stake.” “I don’t think so.”

My poor saintly wife (she really is). I told her, “you don’t believe in Jesus, you believe in that ancient book.” Two thousand years ago that stuff was written down about Jesus…in Greek. I’ve been to Cyprus for work. Being surrounded by Greek signs, Greek speech, Greek culture is like being on Mars for an American. The phrase “It’s all Greek to me” didn’t come about for no reason.

The Old Testament was written in Hebrew which is even more alien.

I believed the Bible to be the result of stories handed down from generation to generation through tribal story tellers for hundreds and thousands of years. Those legends get “enhanced” and bloated with supplemental information. Ever do the rumor game with a line of people and compare the original secret to the end product?

Eventually, in my presumptions, all this was written down in Hebrew and Greek once such languages existed. From there translated to Latin which allowed the church to dictate the important parts to the peasants through the middle ages. Then translated to middle English (King James can seem Greek) and then into NIV or NLT or whatever. Lots can get lost in the translation, changed, enhanced.

All this does not lead to a confidence in the information within that a person can base their life credo on.

Fortunately I was wrong. There are serious flaws in that logic and assumptions I’ve determined. This is yet another case of me being too sure of my own intellect and unwilling to trust those authors or the head Author.

Here’s where many people get this wrong, including some Christians. Historians place most of the writings of the books of the New Testament as being created between 60 and 90 AD. That seems like a long time, but not hundreds of years like many of the Gnostic writings which “build” on the older texts. The early Christians did pass down the word of what Jesus did before the books and letters were written. That timeframe, however, allowed many to live across that span and dispute them if necessary. The apostle John survived that long to personally keep the story straight.

The books of the New Testament were written by people who were with Jesus and gave first hand accounts, or those who knew the original apostles from shortly after His death and resurrection. In the telling of those stories, Christians had no motivation to lie about Jesus doing Miracles or acting in such unexpected ways. They were killed for those beliefs.

In fact Christianity only survived because it spread faster than it could be killed off. The word, now documented in the bible was passed surreptitiously between the believers who were persecuted by the occupying Romans as well as the Pharisaical Jewish order of the society of the time.

Ironically one of the most prolific writers in the New Testament was one of the most ardent persecutors of the faith. Saul of Tarsus, a trained Pharisee who presided at the stoning death of the apostle Steven became the leader of the gentile (non Jewish) church until his death at the hands of the Romans. Paul, the name he took on after his personal experience with the risen Lord, went from militant anti-Christian to the hit lists of many other anti-Christians in the course of a few weeks at his conversion. He became so outspoken about the truth of Christ that he won the trust of the Jewish Christians who then had to protect him from his own Jewish order.

I also got over the translation problem I’d always cited. It seems strange to me now that the New Testament wasn’t written in Aramaic or some other now dead language. Even the Latin has faded but Greek is still an active language in the world. The translations we read in English or Spanish today are direct translations from a language that is still spoken, written, and read. Greeks, who know English, would certainly point out any faults in translation. If it were not written in Greek, it would be harder to trust.

You know I’d never read the Bible. Pretty short sighted to judge something without investigating it, huh? It amazes me, but even most Christians haven't read it through. Where there is a question about wording or meaning, most Bibles point it out and highlight the possible different meanings that could have been intended in the original Greek. At the end of Mark where some versions had a couple extra controversial paragraphs at the end, the debate is usually highlighted to allow the reader to make their own decision.

And what about all these different translations? I didn’t realize how many there were actually. There are dozens of modern translations compiled in the last century. What is really amazing about the time I’m writing this is that we are truly in the information age. All these different versions are accessible in book form for comparison. Better yet, all the most popular are available at biblegateway.com. You can look up a passage in the NIV (New International Version) which seems most popular with many current Christians. You can then look up the same text in the King James version, the New Living Translation, or a Spanish or Bulgarian version if you choose.

There’s a Young’s Literal Translation which is a very direct translation from Greek words to English, but it’s pretty hard to read and get meaning from. You can also back check any verse at Greekbible.com. Click on each word in Greek and it will pop up the direct English translation for that word. Really kewl!

As a non-reader of the bible I had a much different impression of the content. There’s a lot of “real” there. Stuff they don’t teach you in Sunday school. Stuff that’s not easy to explain or even contradicts doctrine. My first year as a Christian I read the whole thing cover to cover. There are a few inconsistencies, but it seems that actually adds credibility. It’s not written by humans after all, but as it says, from the Holy Spirit working through man. Passages that, when read one day, are hard to understand can be very relevant on another, and may provide different meaning on yet another occasion.

In short, reading is believing. Man doesn’t write a message so comprehensive and versatile. It has to be God’s Word.

God’s Word also can’t be put in a box. Many of the differences in the branches of Christianity, the division of the Body of Christ, come about through differences in interpretation. Many try to interpret the Bible literally so as to get the “right meaning”. People add up the ages of the genealogy in the Old Testament and assert that it’s only been 6,000 years since the earth was created. Similar theologians once prosecuted Galileo for heresy because his findings contradicted the “biblical truth” that all heavenly bodies revolved around the earth. Because of the differences in understanding combined with their pride, they declare they are right (and heaven bound) and others are wrong (and doomed).

What I find amazing are people who read between the lines literally and conclude that anything not specifically mentioned in the New Testament must be sinful…

In order to find a Bible you can believe, you have to read it critically for yourself rather than listening to the rhetoric about it or what someone else gets out of it. In the 1500s, a person could be burned at the stake for translating the Latin Bible into English or any other language that could be read by commoners. That made it easier for the church to control the masses. Now, you have so many easily readable translations and paraphrases that put the Message into modern relevant language that you have no excuse for not reading and deciding for yourself.

My favorite is the New Living Translation which is very close to the NIV used in most evangelical churches, but is easier to read and more meaningful to me. Some verses though, can’t sound as majestic if not in the King James Version.

You know what else is awsome about the experience between my wife and I through my conversion is that she found more solid evidence for believing the words of the Bible than what she had before.

So there ya go. I pray this entry has at least given you enough faith in the book to get a copy and crack it open. I welcome your comments back on what you’ve found.