Holy Bible or Holey Bible? Part 1

Of course, I believe that it is the holy bible. why else would I be spending my time here talking about all these if I believed otherwise?

I will attempt to talk about the authenticity of the bible and its claims here. it won't be very convincing to some of you but hoping that you would keep your mind as objective as possible, however hard it may be, you might just agree with me on some points, if not all of them.

I used to think that the bible was some moral code for Christians to follow. you must not do this.. you must do that.. it was only 2 years ago when I started reading the bible that I realised it isn't a book about dos and don'ts. it is also not a self-help book for you to inspire yourself or encourage yourself when you are down. it is not a book of quotes for you to impress anyone. it is not a bedtime story book. it is also not a book containing mysterious sayings and codes and prophecies about the present world. most importantly, the bible we have today is not something that is cooked up by many creative authors, nor is it invented by cunning Christian leaders who wanted to start a cult.

the bible is a collection of books written by over 40 authors over a period of 1600 years. wait! didn't you just say that it is not cooked up by people? don't Christians all claim that the bible is God's word? how can you say that it is written by God when there are 40 over human authors who breathed and died just like all of us?

again, this won't be convincing to some of you but lets try.. yes, the bible is God's word. although it is written by so many human authors, God himself is the ultimate author of the books. he probably didn't use a pen to write it down. but through his spoken word and what he did on earth, people diligently recorded down these things in the books. in the 4 gospels of Luke, Mark, Matthew and John, we have the eye-witness account of what Jesus did and said.. I always like analogies so lets say LKY wants to have a biography of himself. but he won't be the one writing it down right? normally, these great people will be telling the biographers what they did in their lives. or they might relate it verbally and voice-record it down before someone translates it into words and pages. so is LKY's biography any less authentic or is there any doubt to the real authorship even though he didn't pen the words himself? probably no right? so that's what happened in the bible. we, as Christians, have no doubt that the real authorship of the bible is God himself.

the bible is divided into the Old Testament and the New Testament. the OT contains books about the creation of the world, God's promises to his people, his commandments, about kings, prophets.. there are also songs and poems. as you can see, it wont be very necessary to talk about the OT as yet, not that it is any less important.

the New Testament begins with the 4 gospels of Luke, Mark, Matthew and John. Gospel means good news. good news about what? good news about Jesus Christ who had come into the world to save people from their sins. (in the OT, the people had been told that a saviour will come into the world to save them) the rest of the NT contains mostly letters to the early Christians encouraging them to stand firm despite all their sufferings, reminding them about what Jesus had done for them and teaching them to hold firm to the truths and not believing in the other false teachers..

so how do we know that the bible is really true and explains events that really happened, specifically that Jesus died and rose again? how do we know that people did not fancifully make this up and create a new religion?

for a start, the 4 gospels that talked about Jesus Christ were based on eye-witness testimony.. they were based on real-life witnessing of what happened.. these witnesses were not merely bystanders who caught bits and pieces of what happened to Jesus. they were also not your usual market-place aunties who heard something from someone else who got it from another someone. the 4 gospels are testimonies of people who interacted with Jesus, listened to his teachings, witnessed his death and even saw him and talked to him after his resurrection.

before I go further, Jesus had 12 disciples whom he picked. these 12 people were very close to him and went with him wherever he went, and he taught them personally about many things. of these 12, Judas Ischariot eventually betrayed him and was excluded. these people are also known as the apostles.

the 4 gospels of Mark, Matthew, Luke and John were written by the people whose names have been attached to the books. how do you know? anyone can write any book and claims that this is the gospel of whatever.. he can even claim that Jesus took a pen and wrote it himself.. that would be more convincing right? why didn't the Christians then think of this? because they didn't make all these up! Strictly speaking, the gospels are anonymous. but the early church and probably people who interacted with these 4 authors mostly agreed to the authorship of the gospels. Matthew, also known as Levi, the tax collector and one of the 12 apostles, wrote the first gospel in the NT. John Mark, a companion of Peter the apostle, wrote the gospel of Mark. Luke, a medical doctor (!) and follower of Paul the apostle, wrote the gospel of Luke. Lastly, John the apostle wrote the gospel of John himself. how do I know all these? I don't. but there are many scholars who devote their whole lives investigating the NT and delving deep into historical documents and they are convinced that the 4 gospels were really written by those 4 people and these were first- or second-hand eye-witness accounts of events. The earliest historical document is that of Papias, a Christian writer, in AD 125 who affirmed that Mark had carefully and accurately recorded Peter's eyewitness observations. another writer called Irenaeus also wrote in AD 180 to confirm the authorship of these 4 gospels.

to tell you the truth, the 4 gospels don't seem like your usual biographies or historical texts when you read them. they are written a bit "weirdly" in modern day context; there are no dates; and specific events are told in great detail while large parts of Jesus' life are left out. but we have to remember that these were written about 2 thousand years ago. most of the literary texts of that time were written this way. more importantly, the authors had specific reasons for describing some events in greater detail than others, to spread the message that Christ had come and died and resurrected and through which we have the forgiveness of sins.

and this leads me nicely to my next point. non-Christians will never argue or question about the discrepancies among the 4 gospels or about whether specific events took place in this place or that or the family lines of Jesus and stuff simply because you have never flipped open the bible. but you will argue with me: aren't all these gospels written by Christians? definitely, they have every reason to fabricate and lie to push their own agenda and to twist and colour history to the specific shade they wanted.. Don't their theological motivations to make Jesus out to be God, to be the saviour cast serious doubt on their ability and willingness to accurately record what happened? this was one of the many questions and doubts at the back of my head when I started reading the bible. and until now, I have to admit that there can be no satisfactory answer.. there is no doubt that these 4 people were Christians. 2 were apostles. the other 2 were disciples of Peter and Paul, both apostles. so the possibility that they embellished certain events to make their story more convincing remains. but in the past and even now, people rarely wrote about dispassionate, objective history with no ideological purpose. from an alternative point of view, an unbeliever who witnessed all that Jesus did and yet refused to believe in him would never write a book about him, or perhaps he would even write a book that distorts certain things about him so as to convince people not to believe in him.

to draw a modern day parallel, some people, for anti-Semitic purposes, downplay the atrocities of the holocaust. similarly, the Japanese refuse to admit the great number of massacres and atrocities they did. but it has been the Jewish scholars who deligently recorded eyewitness accounts, preserved documents and wrote books to record accurate history about the holocaust. the Chinese and the Malayan people would probably have done the same thing about the Japanese invasion. these people are the ones who are the most faithful and objective in their reporting of historical truth. I believe that is what happened regarding the Christians and the bible.

and some of the things described in the gospels are really outrageously bold and even "absurd". some things like Jesus making a blind see again. Jesus walking on the sea.. Jesus rising from the dead.. if these things didn't really happen, and there were so many other people at that time, people would have stood up and condemned the teachings of the apostles, rather than allow these things to be written down and accepted as truths. in fact, there were many critics and opponents of Christ at that time, mostly Jews who refused to accept that Jesus is the saviour promised in the Old Testament. based on the "political" climate at that time, when the Christians were outnumbered and "outpowered", it would have been easy for the critics to simply point out the falsehoods, inaccuracies and discrepancies in the Christian message. instead of saying Jesus did not perform the miracles, some of them wrote that Jesus was a sorcerer but he did not do those things by God, as he claimed.

the early Christian movement was weak and fragile, started mainly by the apostles and their disciples. for persevering in reporting what they saw and heard and touched, most of them were jailed, tortured and crucified. if Jesus did not perform those miracles, if he did not die and rose again, I cannot understand why these people were willing to go to such an extent to insist that Jesus did those things, let alone make up all these things out of nothing.. human reasoning tells us that they must have seen and heard the risen Christ. and the early Christians must have been really convinced that all these things occurred or they would not have diligently copied what the original authors wrote and faithfully passed it down.

inevitably, when you start flipping through the bible, you will read about really unimaginable things. the parting of the red sea. Jesus making a paralytic walk again. I am a big skeptic of miracles and supernatural events, even till today.. when I first started going to church, I am always amazed how those people can believe in such things.. then I talked to some of these people and they were surprisingly sane, educated and intelligent.. in the words of our great Father of all ministers, "you said that you went to JC and university, and you are telling me that you believe" in all these miracles and rising from the dead and stuff.. and some of them are even working full-time in church.. and studying the bible as if it is some textbook and analysing it verse by verse.. if this is just something invented by Christians, why the heck are these people getting so serious about it and spending their entire lives working in a church? why are they giving up precious time to study the bible and to teach the bible? why are they so fervent about it and passionately asking people to believe? I reasoned that if something so absurd and ridiculous as a blind man seeing again and demons going into pigs can be believed by these people, there probably might be some truth in them..

and every saturday or sunday, as I stepped into the church or like today at the indoor stadium where over 10,000 people were present to commemorate the Presbyterian Synod's 125th anniversary, I am somehow convinced that we all believed in all that is described in the bible.. even before we start examining the evidence for them.