This is the first in what will probably be a series of responses to a post by Arthenor’s Ramblings. Arthenor’s post gives the context for this discussion. Here I simply want to address his points with regards to how effective (or not) the Bible is as a tool for divine communication.

First, let’s get some facts straight. The Bible consists of two parts. There are the Jewish scriptures that make up the Old Testament and the Christian scriptures that make up the New Testament. The Jewish scriptures were put into writing by a number of different, anonymous authors over the span of roughly a thousands years, give or take. These writings were selected from presumably a pool of writings and edited together - often in rather interesting ways. The Christian scriptures, on the other hand, were written over the period of roughly 150 years following the death of Jesus (who did not write anything himself - too bad). While most of these writings are effectively anonymous as far as recent scholarship is concerned, we do know at least a little about one of the authors - Paul of Tarsus - who was a prolific letter writer.

The Jewish scriptures were written down in Hebrew, the language of the Israelites, while the Christian scriptures were largely composed in Greek - one of the learned languages of the day. Hebrew and Greek are just two of many languages that existed in this period. While the Jewish scriptures seem to be exclusively focused on the people of Israel, the Christian message is one that preaches universal salvation to everyone - Jews and Gentiles alike.

So while the Jewish scriptures were seemingly only relevant to Hebrew speaking Jews, the Christian scriptures contain important messages for all of humanity. Essentially, your eternal fate depends on your ability to receive and evaluate this information. What do you do if you do not read Hebrew or Greek? Well, the Bible had to be laboriously translated - a process that is fraught with difficulties. Unless you read Hebrew or Greek - a much smaller minority nowadays - then that means that you cannot read the word of God in its original sense.

But let’s not forget another important fact. In the ancient world, the vast majority of people were illiterate - they could not read at all! Not only does writing down “God’s message” in one particular language specific to a time and place limit the pool of people who can understand it, but writing as a medium effectively limited the pool of people who could receive “God’s message” without an intermediary for many, many centuries.

The facts tell us, at the very least, this:

God choose a few select individuals at a certain place in a certain period of time, most of whom we do not know anything about, to give an important message. These individuals then either wrote this down themselves or passed it on orally in their own language to spread the message. Only a tiny percent of the population could actually consult these texts. This message had to be passed on from one person to the next in order to spread out. Copies had to be made, in which errors were likely to be introduced. Eventually, as language changed, translations had to be made, in which conceptual errors were likely to be introduced. And on and on. This message, for example, did not reach any population in North America until 1492 - over 1,400 years after Jesus died.

Arthenor writes:

There are, of course, other methods God could have used to spread His message. He could have pre-programmed us with the knowledge of His message, spoken to each of us from heaven in a booming voice individually, sent angels to tell and reminds us, etc. However, God chose to use (1) direct communication to certain individuals who (2) wrote down that revelation (3) which others can learn from and share. Knowing whether this was the best method would require knowing all of God’s goals in such communication. If simply making a set of principles known to all human beings was the goal, the method does seem inefficient compared to other possible methods. However, if God’s goals in communicating also including other purposes, such as, challenging us to be a part of the process of communicating truth to others, it would not be so inefficient.

Christians claim that one’s own eternal life rests on knowing this set of principles. To what end would “challenging us” to be a part of this process of communication serve other than to frustrate the goal of evangelizing the world? Spreading the good news?

There seems to me to be no other possible conclusion: this is a terrible method for spreading such an important message for a God but quite expected if we conclude that all religions, including Christianity, are human constructions. At least with the latter there is no surprise that the basic principles of the religion originated with a few select individuals in a certain place and at a certain time in history. Writing and word of mouth were the only tools that man had at the time. God has no such limitation.

Imagine that the CEO of a international company with employees all around the world has a vital message for each of his employees that effects their future with the company in profound ways. Now imagine that the CEO chooses to pass on this message by telling one employee in India. This employee then proceeds to write the message down - in Hindi - and passes it around on paper for others to read and make copies of by hand. Eventually this message finds it way, through the mail, to other branches in other countries. Of course, now it must be translated from Hindi into all of these other languages like English, French, German, Arabic, etc.

This takes time, of course. By the time the message reaches some branches years have gone by and many employees have left the company without even knowing what that message was! Can we even be sure that the message has been faithfully transmitted? Imagine that some sects within the company have sprouted up offerring competing interpretations of the CEO’s message - but the CEO apparantly is not offerring any help in sorting this out. We could even imagine “new” messages sprouting up from within certain branches that claim to supercede the “old” message!

Now imagine I tell you that the CEO had the ability to simply e-mail all of his employees at the very beginning. Surely you cannot come to any other conclusion other than the CEO used an inefficient means of conveying his important message when a far more efficient one was available to him (you have to imagine that the employees are too stupid to send e-mails themselves - but they can receive them).

And surely the CEO doesn’t look any better if he claims that he was simply “challenging” the people to be a part of the communcation process.

Arthenor adds:

For example, consider Jesus’s ministry. He frequently spoke to the people in parables, which purposely obfuscated the message. When the disciples asked Jesus why He taught in parables, He replied that it was given to them to know, but not to others [Matt. 13:11].

Yeah - doesn’t help your case much!