Prophecy Historicized vs. History Prophesied

Secular Biblical scholarship is premised on the notion that prophecy is simply not possible.  Thus, if a Bible text contains a recognizable description of events subsequent to the author's time, why, then, the putative author could not have written it. Thus we hear of 'Deutero-Isaiah'; since Isaiah is a historic figure contemporary with Hezekiah, remarks about Cyrus cannot have been written by him. How, after all, can Isaiah possibly have known anything about Cyrus, a historical figure born centuries later?

Bible believers do not share this assumption. Indeed, Isaiah marked out as the dividing line between the True God and the pagan nothings, that God knew, and could communicate to man, the future: "Remember the former things of old, for I am God, and there is no other; I am God, and there is none like Me, declaring the end from the beginning, and from ancient times things that are not yet done, saying, 'My counsel shall stand, and I will do all My pleasure,'..." (Isaiah 46:9-10).

God foreknows not only what will happen, but everything that could have happened but never did. It seems to be beyond human comprehension how He could know an infinity of possible worlds, but when you look at scripture, it has to be that way. First of all, He knows what will be: "Known unto God are all his works from the beginning of the world." (Acts 15:18).

But not only that, He knows what might have happened...but didn't.  For instance, He answers David, "Then said David, O LORD God of Israel, thy servant hath certainly heard that Saul seeketh to come to Keilah, to destroy the city for my sake.  Will the men of Keilah deliver me up into his hand? will Saul come down, as thy servant hath heard? O LORD God of Israel, I beseech thee, tell thy servant.  And the LORD said, He will come down. Then said David, Will the men of Keilah deliver me and my men into the hand of Saul? And the LORD said, They will deliver thee up. Then David and his men, which were about six hundred, arose and departed out of Keilah, and went whithersoever they could go. And it was told Saul that David was escaped from Keilah; and he forbare to go forth." (1 Samuel 23:10-13; Matthew 11:21).

So God told David what people would do...except that they didn't do it, because forewarned by the prophecy, David skipped town.  So His foreknowledge is so complete as to include those things which would have happened under other circumstances, but never actually happened.  He foreknows all events of all possible worlds.

We, finite creatures bound by time, are like a caterpillar crawling along a twig.  Beneath our myopic gaze lies one little segment; we can only guess at what lies ahead, and reminisce about what lies behind.  But God does not grovel along the twig; He sees the whole complete: the "end from the beginning".

God's foreknowledge does not in and of itself constrain anyone, any more than my perceiving that 'You are sitting in your arm chair' constrains you to sit in the arm chair.  To Him, the entire continuum of past, present and future lies open to gaze. This is precisely what He foreknows, our freely chosen actions: "If then our freedom is preserved, however vast the number of inclinations it has to virtue or to vice and, again, to what is becoming or to what is unbecoming, it, along with everything else from creation and from the foundation of the world will be known to God before it comes to be for what sort of freedom it will be...And so, God's foreknowledge is not the cause of everything that will come to be, even of our freedom when we are made active by our own impulse...But if God takes the order for the governance of the universe from His foreknowledge, then all the more is our individual freedom useful for the ordering of the world." (Origen, On Prayer, Part One, B. VI.3).

It's a free country, and scholars are certainly entitled to reject the very possibility of God communicating future events to man. Great caution should be exercised, however, to avoid circular 'arguments' in which conclusions about dating drawn from the presupposition that prophecy is impossible are then used to rebut the possibility of prophecy; e.g., 'Second Isaiah lived contemporaneously with the events he 'prophesied', therefore there is no such thing as prophecy'.  This begs the question, since the theory that there is such a party as 'Deutero-Isaiah' is premised upon the denial that prophecy is possible.

The assumption that prophecy is simply not possible is indeed quite widespread in the world of unbelieving Bible scholarship; thus, so far at least the authors are correct in saying, "The scholarship represented by the Fellows of the Jesus Seminar is the kind that has come to prevail in all the great universities of the world." (The Five Gospels, p. 35).

But wait -- the Fellows of the Jesus Seminar are fully prepared to take it to the next level!  Not only can prophets have no special insight into the future, but actual historic events cannot correspond with prophesy even by coincidence, nor by intent.  So, the manner of Christ's entry into Jerusalem having been prophesied, Jesus cannot have so entered Jerusalem, even though there's nothing supernatural about it at all: "Entry into Jerusalem. The account of Jesus' entry into Jerusalem is based on Zech 9:9 and Ps 118:26. The story was conceived to fit the prophecies." (The Five Gospels, p. 228).

This seems to be a generalization of the principle, 'A watched pot never boils.' It's the same type of magical thinking people employ when they say, 'It didn't rain because I brought my umbrella'.  It's as if my saying, 'The Yanks will win the World Series', will 'jinx' them so that they cannot win the World Series, though this otherwise is not an impossible nor a supernatural outcome.  The Fellows of the Jesus Seminar actually believe that, Christ's humble entry into Jerusalem having been prophesied, He cannot have so entered Jerusalem...even though that's actually a more economical alternative to entering the city on a richly caparisoned war-horse!

Brick by Brick

"The Fellows generally follow the rule: the simplest is the earliest." (The Five Gospels, p. 63).

Secular Bible study starts from an evolutionary perspective that would have gladdened the hearts of Charles Lyell and Charles Darwin. Grain by painful grain, the trickling water wears away the stone, until inexorable uniform processes slowly produce visible results.  Thus the Fellows' rule, "the simplest is the earliest."

Even in the fields where that postulate originated, it's been superseded by punctuated equilibrium, the gaps in the fossil record having proven unbridgeable.  And what business did it ever have in the field of religious history, where new sects and movements spring forth like Athena fully formed from the brow of Zeus! No such brick-laying process is observable with those new sects whose origination is open to history.  Did Mary Baker Eddy first timidly propose that folks should pray about sprains; then the successor generation, gaining boldness, recommended prayer for the flu; finally producing the painfully won gains of the third generation, commending prayer for cancer? Of course not; either you have the whole project complete, or not at all.  Who would even have paid attention to a lady commending prayer for sprains?

The common historical perspective assumes a new sect is built brick by brick, as a bricklayer would lay a course of bricks, one element at a time. This is the reason they try to spread out the writing of the New Testament over as long a period as possible; to give themselves the several generations which correlate with the vast ages of Lyell and Darwin.

But what evidence is there that it ever works this way? The 'prophet' Elijah Muhammad made the bold claim that Wallace D. Fard was Allah walking around on the street.  Such a bold claim must have taken several generations to work up to, right? Well, no; Fard himself made that claim: "On Wednesday morning, November 23, Fard was apprehended while leaving his hotel room at 1 West Jefferson Street...According to police and press transcripts, Fard identified himself as the 'supreme being on earth' and claimed responsibility for starting the Nation of Islam, assisted by Ugan Ali, who was also arrested." (An Original Man: the Life and Times of Elijah Muhammad, Claude Andrew Clegg III, p. 31).  Far from advancing Elijah Muhammad's more esoteric teachings after his death, the sect he founded made a lunge for the Islamic mainstream under his son's leadership.

Is there any reason why the Holy Spirit cannot be as bold and quick as His imitators?

Case Study: Nation of Islam

Cynicism

"Jesus appears to have much in common with the Cynic teachers who wandered about in the ancient world, offering their sage advice." (p. 317).

Everything old is new again, they say.  But to those who love the Lord, it's less than obvious that He has "much" in common with Cynics like Diogenes: "Diogenes was a primitivist: happiness, he taught, means 'living according to Nature' -- that is, satisfying one's simplest 'natural' wants in the simplest manner.  Desire for anything beyond the minimal bodily satisfactions should be condemned as 'unnatural'; so, too, should any convention that inhibits the satisfaction of the basic requirements...Diogenes conveyed his principles by bon-mots and drastic action (for example, by masturbating in public to show how simply one's sexual desires can be satisfied)." (Anthony Flew, A Dictionary of Philosophy, p. 82).  Perhaps the 'Fellows' understand the Cynics to have been hippies, and thus soul-mates to their "party animal" Jesus.

Jesus inculcated piety toward God: "Jesus answered him, 'The first of all the commandments is: "Hear, O Israel, the LORD our God, the LORD is one. And you shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength."'" (Mark 12:29). The Cynics distrusted and even mocked the gods, whom they assumed to be plural:

"It was a proper answer, then, that Antisthenes used to give them when they asked alms of him: 'I do not support the mother of the gods; that is the gods' business.'" (Antisthenes, Frag. 70 Mullach, Frag. phil. Graec. ii., p. 169 Loeb Edition, Clement of Alexandria).

"Diogenes the Cynic used to say of Harpalus, one of the most fortunate villains of his time, that the constant prosperity of such a man was a kind of witness against the Gods." (Cicero, Of the Nature of the Gods, Book III, XXXIV).

When someone drew Diogenes the Cynic's attention to the votive offerings at Samothrace, his reply called into question the religious enterprise itself:

"When some one expressed astonishment at the votive offerings in Samothrace, his comment was, 'There would have been far more, if those who were not saved had set up offerings.'" (Diogenes Laertius, Lives of the Eminent Philosophers, Book VI, Chapter 2, 59)

Diogenes Laertius also reports that his Cynic namesake "advocated community of wives" and "saw no impropriety" in "stealing anything from a temple." (Diogenes Laertius, Lives of the Eminent Philosophers, Book VI, Chapter 2, 72-73). So here we have a 'Jesus' domesticated for modern times, a truly modern 'Jesus' who mocks religion.

I am He

"In addition, these are I-sayings, which most of the Fellows doubt can be attributed to Jesus: it was uncharacteristic of him to speak of himself in the first person." (p. 343).

Thus the 'Fellows'. But to go by the recollection of Jesus' own followers, He just couldn't stop with the "I-sayings": "You are of this world, I am not of this world. I told you that you will die in your sins; for if you do not believe that I am, you will die in your sins." (John 8:24).  Oh, but Jesus did not say that.  And what is the evidence that Jesus did not say that?  Because it's an "I-saying", and "I-sayings" are "uncharacteristic" of Jesus. The proof that "I-sayings" are "uncharacteristic" of Jesus is, of course, the fact that He did not actually say all the mass of "I-sayings" reported of Him...as may be proven by the fact that "I-sayings" are "uncharacteristic" of Him.

Harmony

"Luke invents new words for Jesus to say: 'Go and prepare the Passover so we may eat.' This is irrefragable evidence that the evangelists do not hesitate to create words for Jesus to speak in their narratives." (p. 387).

Skeptics find a 'Bible contradiction' wherever one author reports Jesus as speaking words not recorded by another.  A 'newspaper contradiction' of like type might be found if, say, one paper reports Mr. Lincoln as having said, on the occasion of the Battle of Gettysburg, "Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure."  But a rival paper runs the quote, "But, in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate -- we cannot consecrate -- we cannot hallow -- this ground."  Since this blatant contradiction cannot be resolved, we are forced to conclude that Mr. Lincoln was a fictional character.

Book Market

In our contemporary book market, reminiscences by insiders are at at premium. If I sat down and penned a book, 'The Lady Diana I Never Knew,' how likely would I be to find a publisher? Since I never made Princess Diana's acquaintance, I'd not have many personal anecdotes to offer the public. Biographies are mostly written, nowadays, either by those with first-hand information about the subject, or by professional biographers and historians thought competent to tackle the job of sifting through the first-hand accounts.

To hear it from the 'Jesus Seminar', you'd think the ancient book market worked in reverse. They claim the gospels were penned by people who'd never met the Lord, nor knew anyone who did. But I can find no evidence that the ancient book market worked any differently than does the modern in this regard. The books about Alexander the Great were written by a.) insiders, or b.) professional historians. Although the ancient book market was not structured the same way economically as our own, writing a widely-read book opened income opportunities for an author then just as now. No one then wanted to read 'The Alexander I Never Knew,' just as no one now wants to read 'The Diana I Never Knew.'

Very early in the second century Pliny is reporting a wide diffusion of the Christian faith: "The contagion of that superstition has penetrated not only the cities but also the villages and country places..." (Pliny the Younger, letter to Trajan). So there must have been a demand while the eye-witness generation was yet alive for first-hand accounts, which were as valued in the ancient world as today. And unless 'the historical Jesus' lived alone in a cave, there must have been people who could meet the public's demand for speakers offering first-hand reminiscences of His life.

What would stop his inner circle from availing themselves of these opportunities? Surely the apostles were not motivated by greed in setting out on the speaking circuit; these brave men were faithful unto death, leaving no doubt as to the purity of their motives. Nevertheless it would have taken considerable self-denial for them to choose fishing instead. Why would these men have chosen to remain toiling at difficult and demanding physical occupations when the main chance came their way? They brought to market just what the public wanted: first-hand accounts of the life and times of Jesus of Nazareth.

Yet the Jesus Seminar insists that no such accounts were ever offered to the eager public, only accounts by people who did not know the Lord and knew no one who had. Did the profit motive not operate in antiquity?

When Paul talked with Peter, what are they likely to have talked about but the Lord? They can't have argued all the time: "But when Peter was come to Antioch, I withstood him to the face, because he was to be blamed." (Galatians 2:11). That letter was written before any of our four gospels was penned; some of Paul's letters are among the earliest documents in the New Testament. Perhaps it's from Peter that Paul knew of sayings of the Lord not recorded in our gospels, like "I have showed you all things, how that so laboring ye ought to support the weak, and to remember the words of the Lord Jesus, how he said, It is more blessed to give than to receive." (Acts 20:35).

When Paul's traveling companion Luke is preparing his gospel, he already has access to "many" written sources: "Since many have undertaken to set down an orderly account of the events that have been fulfilled among us, just as they were handed on to us by those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and servants of the word..." (Luke 1:1).

Ancient authors talk about a book market: "He [Zeno] went up into Athens and sat down in a bookseller's shop, being then a man of thirty." (Diogenes Laertius, Lives of the Eminent Philosophers, Volume II, Book VII, Chapter 1, 2). But modern secular Bible scholars have ascertained that there was no ancient book market...because most everyone was illiterate! Is this what the classical authors themselves say?

Ancient Literacy

Garbage In, Garbage Out

Secular historians take denial of any possibility of supernatural occurrences as starting premise for doing history.  This has long been proposed as the correct starting premise, not a conclusion derived from the study of history: "In his view, historians who employ proper methods do not emerge from the examination of history with the discovery that no miracles have occurred, but rather bring to the study of history the certain knowledge that none has occurred." (Raymond Martin, The Elusive Messiah, p. 31). This presumed impossibility of the miraculous is a widespread assumption underlaying modern critical scholarship of the gospels: "Bultmann explained that 'this closedness means that the continuum of historical happenings cannot be rent by the interference of supernatural, transcendent powers and that therefore there is no "miracle" in this sense of the word.'" (Raymond Martin, The Elusive Messiah, p. 43).

While historians may begin their quest with whatever presuppositions they like, care should be taken to avoid circularity.  Often this denial of the supernatural which is in fact the starting premise of modern critical scholarship is reported as if it were the conclusion of the enterprise, founded on some imagined physical or documentary evidence.  This is the logical fallacy known as petitio principii, i.e., begging the question. The fuss kicked up by the Jesus Seminar's color-coding derives from the popular assumption that 'scholars' must base their conclusions upon evidence. This assumption is unwarranted.

Modern Times

Uniformitarianism

Christians believe Jesus of Nazareth to be utterly unique:

"No one has seen God at any time. The only begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, He has declared Him." (John 1:18).

Jesus Himself claimed to be the only way to God:

"All things have been delivered to Me by My Father, and no one knows the Son except the Father. Nor does anyone know the Father except the Son, and the one to whom the Son wills to reveal Him. " (Matthew 11:27).

"Jesus said to him, 'I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me.'" (John 14:6).

The secular study of history proceeds on the premise of uniformitarianism: that things happen today as they have ever happened. The Christian proclamation of a unique event: the incarnation of God in a man, Jesus of Nazareth, an event not repeated in every town, in every generation, but once for all, does not fit easily into the historian's premise of uniformity. This premise is the starting point from which the historian proceeds, not a conclusion for which he can adduce proofs. This methodological principle is not an order given by the historian to the world, because the world cannot be expected to conform itself to orders given by historians, but an instruction on how to proceed the historian gives to himself.

That history always follows the same course cannot be demonstrated. If God can freely intervene in human history, then His very freedom introduces discontinuity. But strangely enough, it would mean much progress in this field of study if historians hewed to their own principle, instead of imagining antiquity as a never-never land in which people behave in a way no one has ever seen people behave.

Odd Gods

On the theme that a little more uniformitarianism would cure secular Bible study of its ills:

Certainly if God became man, there would be nothing unexpected in His saying so. People report facts known to them all the time. This is what is open to the historian's inspection: that the claim has been made. The background in the heavenlies is veiled to his gaze. And this claim is by no means uncommon. Just as Simon Magus' Samaritan followers let on that he was the "great power of God:" "'But there was a certain man called Simon, who previously practiced sorcery in the city and astonished the people of Samaria, claiming that he was someone great, to whom they all gave heed, from the least to the greatest, saying, 'This man is the great power of God.'" (Acts 8:9-10), so in the latter day Father Divine's devotees spoke.

Amongst claimants to deity are ranked Wallace D. Fard, who made this claim in an interview with the Detroit Police, and Yahweh ben Yahweh, currently incarcerated. Most of the persons who make this claim are deranged. Those close to Jesus, going with the odds, initially thought so as well: "But when His own people heard about this, they went out to lay hold of Him, for they said, 'He is out of His mind.'" (Mark 3:21).

A noteworthy contribution to contemporary Jesus scholarship is 'Jesus the Jew,' by Geza Vermes, which proceeds on the principle that Jesus cannot have claimed to be God, or indeed anything or anyone unusual, because then He would have been atypical. Nor could His followers have made this claim on His behalf, because then they would have been out of the ordinary:

"A final word must be said about the bridging of the gulf between son of God and God. None of the Synoptic Gospels try to do this. Indeed, it is no exaggeration to contend that the identification of a contemporary historical figure with God would have been inconceivable to a first-century AD Palestinian Jew. It could certainly not have been expressed in public, in the presence of men conditioned by centuries of biblical monotheistic religion...Whether Jesus himself would have reacted with stupefaction, anger or grief, can never be known." (Jesus the Jew, Geza Vermes, pp. 212-213.)

The gospels records indicate that Jesus and His followers did not receive the kind of unanimous acceptance that can reasonably be anticipated for the ordinary and unremarkable. Jesus was crucified, Stephen was stoned, Paul imprisoned. So perhaps Mr. Vermes does have a point in suggesting that the claims they made were not such as would receive immediate or automatic acceptance. To assert that no such claim can ever have been made is, of course, unhistorical, given that such claims are made in the present day by inheritors of "centuries of biblical monotheistic religion" such as Father Divine and Wallace D. Fard. Jesus differs from the many other claimants to this title known to documented history only in the truth of His claim.

Claimants to deity were of course common amongst the pagans; Herodotus records cases of outrageous imposture. They are also found in the monotheistic fold. The Druze even call themselves 'mowahhidun,' 'monotheists:' "The main actors were Tariq al-Hakeem, also known as al-Hakim bi-Amr Allah, the Caliph who claimed to be God, and Hamza bin Ali ibn Ahmad, the main architect of the movement. It was Hamza who first publicly proclaimed that al-Hakim was God. al-Hakeem was opposed by orthodox Muslims for what was considered apostasy...Because the Druze considered Tariq al-Hakeem to be the incarnation of God, they were persecuted by orthodox Muslims, especially after al-Hakeem's death in 1021." (Wikipedia, Article 'Druze.') Though 'official' Islam is hostile to deifying human beings, the trend persists: "To this day there is a sect known as the Aliallahi in Iraq and Iran that divinizes Ali." (Seyyed Hossein Nasr, The Heart of Islam, p. 77.)

If we are expected to believe that a Jew cannot claim to be God, then what about all the other Jews who have claimed to be God, like Jacob Frank, the eighteenth century Polish Messianic aspirant who claimed to be the second person of the Trinity? Sabbatai Sevi, a seventeenth century Messianic claimant, signed letters as "the Lord your God:"

"Shabbetai Zevi signed these pronouncements as the 'firstborn son of God,' 'your father Israel,' 'the bridegroom of the Torah,' and other high-flown titles; even when he started signing some of his letters 'I am the Lord your God Shabbetai Zevi' only a few of the believers seem to have been shocked." (Gershom Scholem, Kabbalah, p. 262)

Several of these latter-day claimants, whether in imitation of Christianity or by way of re-inventing the wheel based on Old Testament Messianic texts, rediscovered God's triunity: "Some time before his death Shabbetai Zevi dictated a longer version of this doctrine. . .institut[ing] a kind of kabbalistic trinity, called in zoharic terms the 'three bonds of the faith.' It consisted of The Ancient Holy One (Attika kaddisha), The Holy King (Malka kaddisha), also called the God of Israel, and his Shekhinah." (Gershom Scholem, Kabbalah, p. 269). These individuals too were "conditioned by centuries of biblical monotheistic religion." Flatly to rule out the possibility that persons in the past declared themselves divine cannot be reconciled with a uniformitarian approach to history.

It isn't to discredit Jesus that I bring up the numerous also-rans. The existence of counterfeit money does not prove there is no real money, but the contrary. Rather, when author Geza Vermes rules out the possibility that Jesus claimed what contemporary observers report He did claim, he is not writing as a historian, but as a devotee. History does not record that men "conditioned by centuries of biblical monotheistic religion" cannot claim to be God. This author, however, finds the claim inappropriate.

One well-known contemporary figure who has been dipping his toe in the divinization pool is the Rev. Sun Myung Moon, who has made eye-catching claims both on behalf of a son who died in an auto accident and on his own behalf: "The Reverent Moon's hubris culminated later that year in a secret ceremony in which he actually crowned himself and Hak Ja Han Moon as Emperor and Empress of the Universe. Preparations for the lavish, clandestine event at Belvedere took months and hundreds of thousands of dollars." (In the Shadow of the Moons, Nansook Hong, p. 148). It is unclear in what tradition Rev. Moon should be classed; perhaps those who found their own assemblies, like Rev. Moon,--or, for that matter, like Jesus,--are most efficiently classed under their own new religion.

Jesus the Messiah

A Cat Can Look at a King

My late cat Velma was a huntress. Her interest in this activity surfaced very early in life; in fact I named her 'Velma' after Velma Barfield, the notorious serial killer. Bowing to necessity, I made no effort to impede her safaris; my only request was that she not drag her triumphs into the home. 'Nature red in tooth and claw' belongs outdoors, I explained, not in the living room. By dint of much yelling and screaming I succeeded in communicating to Velma my feelings on the matter; but these feelings Velma was not willing to honor. In spite of having every reason to respect the opinions of the humans about her, who controlled her food supply, her living conditions, and were much bigger than she, Velma stuck to her guns. Her only concession to my sentiments was to adopt the rubric, 'don't do it while she's looking.'

Perhaps Velma looked to the day when Mom would finally 'get' how cool it was to drag a still-warm, bloody rodent on triumphal march across the living room rug. In any case it never occurred to her to subordinate her opinions in the matter to mine. This independence of judgment, claimed by the pea-brained cat, is denied by Bible scholars to those human beings who lived and struggled in Bible times. For example, Moses cannot have been a monotheist, they explain, because most of the people who lived in that day were polytheists. If Moses were a monotheist, he would have differed from the norm. Therefore, those monotheist sayings the Bible ascribes to Moses' authorship cannot have been spoken by him, but by latter-day scribes whose identity is unknown. (It is a curious corollary of this concept that, while originality is denied root and branch to those persons you may have heard of, such as Jesus, Paul, Moses, etc., no amount of originality is denied to persons no one has heard of: the anonymous scribes who are proposed by this theory as the source of all novelty.)

We all have known enthusiasts who insisted up to their last breath that the income tax is unconstitutional, that Anastasia lives, that the great tragedy of history is that Trotsky was assassinated, etc. My own late father alleged that people from outer space had built the pyramids, information which, he claimed, he had seen on TV. According to Bible scholars, no such persons existed in Bible times. We also know those resembling the New Yorker cartoon character who, amidst passers-by wearing t-shirts proclaiming causes like 'Save the Whales,' sported a t-shirt reading 'I Couldn't Agree More.' According to Bible scholars, this Mr. Milquetoast-type was the only form of humanity found in Bible times; the wayward juvenile, the child throwing a temper tantrum, the crank, did not exist; the only existent humans sought to conform their views to prevailing currents.

To add to the peculiarity of this view, if we adopt the consensus modern view of chronology (somewhat later than the Bible's own dating), then Moses flourished after Akhenaton's monotheistic reform had crashed and burned. Moses, brought up in Pharaoh's daughter's household, must have been aware of this signal event in Egyptian history. Some theologians in Akhenaton's employ offered ambiguous and inadequate expressions of monotheism, others offer perfectly acceptable expressions. This means that, to preserve the theory of Moses as polytheist or henotheist, these Bible scholars must assume that Moses was aware of, but made a conscious decision to reject, monotheism in favor of polytheism!

This imputation of a characteristic to the humanity of Bible times: blind and universal conformity,-- which no living observer has reported seeing in the humanity we see about us, is, again, an offense against the premise of uniformitarianism.

Chaos Monster

Modern Bible scholars reveal a 'Chaos Monster' described in the Bible. One can, as Bible-believing Christians do, read the Bible over and over again without encountering her. But she must be there, after all, because a 'Chaos Monster' is found in Babylonian mythology, and if no 'Chaos Monster' were found in the Bible, the Bible would be different from Babylonian mythology, rather than the same.

"On occasion (Isa. 51:9-11) there is linked to a reference to the Exodus (vs. 10) an allusion to the ancient creation myth (vs. 9), in which the god (in the Babylonian version, Marduk) cleft asunder the Chaos Monster (in the Babylonian version, Tiamat; but here in the west Semitic form, Rahab) in order to create the world. It is as if the prophet wished to say, in poetic language, that the struggle with primeval chaos begun at creation, and again taken up in the Exodus when God created for himself a people, is once more to be resumed." (John Bright, The Kingdom of God, p. 140)

Strangely enough for a primeval 'Chaos Monster,' 'Rahab' is listed as a place amongst places: "I will make mention of Rahab and Babylon to them that know me: behold Philistia, and Tyre, with Ethiopia; this man was born there." (Psalm 87:4). It is unclear how a man can be born in a primeval 'Chaos Monster,' though a man can easily be born in a place. Coinage shows that the crocodile, a real, not a mythological beast, was the emblem of Egypt, much as the bear is the emblem of Russia today. Exodus records the struggle, not between God and a primeval 'Chaos Monster,' but between God and Egypt, whose emblem is the crocodile. Isaiah 30:7 applies the title to Egypt: "For Egypt’s help is worthless and empty, therefore I have called her, 'Rahab who sits still.'" (Isaiah 30:7 NRSV). Although it certainly sounds like Rahab the crocodile is Egypt, if we so understand her, then where is our primeval 'Chaos Monster,' without whom the Bible would differ from Babylonian mythology?

George Washington

Raised in an irreligious environment, I grew up believing the Bible to be a collection of childish myths. The first Bible I owned was a Jerusalem Bible with elaborate notes. When reading a section of the Pentateuch, I would carefully peruse the information provided explaining which of the four authors cited had produced this material. Call me naive, I naturally assumed there must be in existence manuscripts which include some of this material but not the rest; why else would the editors impose upon their readers in this fashion? Imagine my surprise when I discovered there exists no manuscript incorporating any of this material which lacks the remainder. Rather, the text was divvied up on the basis of the different names of God employed.

I wondered if this theory had been properly tested with modern material whose authorship could be reliably ascertained. Consider, for instance, George Washington's First Inaugural Address, which cites, in order, "...it would be peculiarly improper to omit in this first official act my fervent supplications to that Almighty Being who rules over the universe...", then "In tendering this homage to the Great Author of every public and private good...", next "No people can be bound to acknowledge and adore the Invisible Hand which conducts the affairs of men...", then "...distinguished by some token of providential agency...", on to "...since we ought to be no less persuaded that the propitious smiles of Heaven can never be expected on a nation that disregards the eternal rules of order and right which Heaven itself has ordained...", then "...but not without resorting once more to the benign Parent of the Human Race in humble supplication...", wrapping up with, "so His divine blessing may be equally conspicuous..." (George Washington, First Inaugural Address, delivered April 30, 1789.) This very brief address, which is not concerned with topics in theology, contains no fewer than five distinct divine titles.

It seemed to me then, and it seems to me now, that theories of this sort find a receptive audience, not because their verity is established by credible and sufficient evidence, but because they seem very 'daring' to persons who, unlike myself, are of a religious background. These people care passionately about the Bible and about Jesus in a way that no scholar really cares about Homer. The efforts of this class of scholars, of whom the Jesus Seminar is the most egregious example, serve to manufacture a Jesus with whom they can come to terms, who is no threat to their sense of themselves. Because there is no reason to think that the Jesus of history was someone with whom these people can come to terms, their efforts are properly categorized under the head of Bad Religion rather than scholarship.

Jeane Dixon

Jeane Dixon was a self-styled 'psychic' who spoke with Parade Magazine in 1956: "As for the 1960 election Mrs. Dixon thinks it will be dominated by labor and won by a Democrat. But he will be assassinated or die in office though not necessarily in his first term." (Quoted at Suburban Myths web-site). According to the methodology used in modern Bible study, this information cannot have been published in Parade Magazine in 1956, because it actually happened. Therefore it was published subsequent to the assassination. This 'discovery' in its turn 'proves' that it is impossible to predict the future.

Ms. Dixon, who fearlessly predicted this and many other events, was wrong so often as to richly satisfy the Biblical criteria for a false prophet. Yet even a false prophet cannot be wrong all the time. A false prophet calling coin tosses cannot call them all wrong; after all the odds are 50-50. If our false prophet draws also upon native shrewdness, then he or she might make a career of calling President elections.

Yet, believe it or not, this is just how they do it. Suppose a text contains a prediction that the temple at Jerusalem will be destroyed. This text is therefore dated subsequent to 70 A.D., because this is when the temple was in fact destroyed. Not only do these scholars not believe in prophecy, they do not believe in statistics. They are assuming all Christian prophecy must be 100% wrong all the time; otherwise how could a successful prediction be used as a dating device? Yet it is simply not possible for any attempt at prophecy: not guessing at random, not newspaper horoscopes, not Chinese fortune-cookies,-- to be 100% wrong all the time.

Criterion of Dissimilarity

"...the earliest form of a saying we can read may be regarded as authentic if it can be shown to be dissimilar to characteristic emphases both of ancient Judaism and of the early Church." (The Jesus of Heresy and History, John Dart, p. 151)

No one is surprised to see hot dogs fly off the assembly line at the meat-packing plant, because the machinery is geared to produce hot dogs. This criterion is a machine geared to produce a 'Jesus' unrecognizable to the church.

I've added Ernest Renan's 'Life of Jesus' to the Thriceholy library, so that readers may discover in this unitarian devotional work the motives and thought-patterns underlying modern Bible scholarship. When Renan intones of John's gospel, "The spirit of Jesus is not there," does his bias follow from historical evidence, or betray a theological preference?: "Jesus never once gave utterance to the sacrilegious idea that he was God." (Chapter 5, The Life of Jesus, Ernest Renan). A fine 'scientific' endeavor, which proceeds to deduce historical 'fact' from what is imagined to be "sacrilegious"!