Bible brains

In some circles, I am considered a fairly brainy fellow. Unfortunately, these are not circles which can put me on the Board of the Central Bank, give me a $225,000 vehicle, or grant me a broadcast licence. Not only that, but since I wrote a column titled “A Bible review” last Boxing Day I have found out that, far from being intelligent, I am in fact a fool. The Bible, as one Christian wrote, says so: “The fool hath said in his heart, there is no God” (Psalm 53:1), began his letter to me. And not only do I say this in my heart, but I also write it in the newspapers: which I suppose makes me not merely a fool but, literally, a damned fool. Indeed, the letter-writer assured me that, even if I lived a good and just life but did not accept Jesus as my Lord and Saviour, I would surely go to Hell (along, I suppose, with all those equally damned Hindus, Muslims, Jews, Buddhists, Bahais, and animists). Frankly, though, I figure Hell would not be a bad prospect if it saved me having to meet people like the letter-writer: but of course that just shows how utterly unintelligent I truly am.

So let me confess. In my Boxing Day column, I argued that the Bible was not factually correct. For example, it uses phrases like “the four corners of the Earth” (Revelations 7:1) which suggests that the Christian God believes the Earth to be flat. But, according to the letter writer, “this phrase is a simple colloquial expression and should not be taken literally.” He then goes on to quote Isaiah 40: 22, which uses the phrase “circle of the earth.” According to the letter-writer, this “clearly describes the earth as a sphere or a globe.” Me, I am so dotish I didn’t even realise that the former quote was figurative but the latter literal. After all, Revelations describes four angels standing on these four corners, whereas Isaiah talks about circle of earth’s inhabitants “as grasshoppers that stretcheth out the heavens as a curtain.” Boy, God sure fooled me there, didn’t He? You see, I figure I should use reason, not unquestioningly accept what a collection of ancient scrolls says. And the Bible specifically warns people about thinking: “For in much wisdom there is much grief: and he that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow” (Ecclesiastes 1:18).

I myself find that increasing my knowledge increases my joy, but this verse certainly explains why almost all our religious spokespersons take such pride in ignorance. Indeed, believing that the Bible is the inerrant Word of God clearly requires you not to use your brain: which, I suppose, is a sort of miracle in itself (I certainly find it astonishing).  As one example of Biblical error, I cited in my previous column the story of Jericho whose walls were supposedly brought crashing down by the trumpets of Joshua’s army. I referred to work by archaeologist Kathleen Kenyon who, by dating Mycenaean pottery shards found in the ruins, found that the destruction of Jericho occurred 70 or more years before Joshua lived.

Another letter writer, one Sylvan James of Debe, refuted my assertion by quoting Kenyon writing of “a Canaanite woman who may have dropped the juglet beside the oven and fled at the sound the trumpets of Joshua’s men.” Said James, “Miss Kenyon’s report therefore disagrees with Mr Baldeosingh’s interpretation of her findings!” In my foolishness, I would have thought that Kenyon’s comment was obviously speculative. But Mr James believes the Bible to be the Word of God, so he must be much smarter than me. And he also uses exclamation marks! True, James forbears to mention that Kenyon’s quoted comment comes from her book, Digging up Jericho, written before she concluded that the Biblical account of Jericho was false. But true believers have knowledge of God and, as everyone knows, once you have that you needn’t worry about silly things like hard fact.

This, I now realise, is my main problem. With my absurd respect for fact, I cannot believe in a God who gets the value of pi wrong in 1Kings7:23. I cannot believe a divinely inspired text would tell of Isaac seeking help from “Abimelech, king of the Philistines” (Genesis 26:1) when archaeological research says the Philistines didn’t reach the area till after 1200 BCE. It also makes me doubtful when Genesis 24:10 talks about a servant of Abraham taking “ten of his master’s camels” to transport goods, when analysis of ancient animal bones shows that camels weren’t widely used until after 1000 BCE and scholars tell us that Abraham probably never existed in the first place. I also ask myself why would the one true God be a plagiarist, stealing the story of Noah’s ark from the Enuma elish of the Babylonians.

Added to this ridiculous respect for fact is my even more ludicrous love of logic. If God is omnipotent, how come He didn’t make sure the Bible was free of error? If God is omniscient, how come He didn’t know where Adam was after the latter had eaten the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge? And, to ensure that I am beyond all redemption, I am also foolishly rigorous about moral reasoning. If God is just, how could He punish Adam and Eve for doing evil when, by His own decree, they had no knowledge of right and wrong? If God is merciful, how could He kill 42 small children for mocking the prophet Elisha’s bald head? If God is intelligent, why did He give men limitless desire and limited performance, but do the opposite for women? But true believers have an answer for such quibbles: “God moves in mysterious ways,” they say. To which I have no answer at all: which no doubt proves that Bible believers know much, much more than I can ever hope to.

E-mail:kbaldeosingh@hotmail.com
Website: www.caribscape.com/baldeosingh