Wednesday, October 7, 2020

Was the Bible all Made Up? (Just a Fairy Tale?)


There are many arguments against the perfect and authoritative nature of the Bible, but there is one argument that I have noticed holds alot of weight with non-believers. I know people who see evidence that the earthly locations in the Bible are real places, they can see evidence that people mentioned in the Bible lived and walked the earth and they can see evidence that many events recorded in Scripture historically took place, and yet they still do not believe the Bible is a real historical account. The notion of talking snakes (Genesis chapter 3), talking donkeys (Numbers 22:21-39) and dragon like creatures (Job chapter 41) existing on earth is a stumbling block to most people's sense of rationality. So when non-believers encounter these things in Scripture, they dismiss them and argue that the Bible is nothing more than a well crafted and convincing fairy tale.
This prop photo was created by Scottie, a 57 year old gay man,
who posts other photos like this on his website.
For these non-believers, textual arguments from Scripture do not matter much to them. They believe they can simply dismiss any claims the Bible makes about itself, such as 2 Timothy 3:16 where it is written, "All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness." They tend to believe arguments from Scripture for Scripture are founded on circular reasoning, which is defined as "a logical fallacy in which the reasoner begins with what they are trying to end with." These non-believers are looking for evidence of the Bible's fidelity outside of the Bible, and it is sound for them to do so. It is true that there are many works of fition centered around historic places and set during historic events, such as the story of Peter Pan. In that fairy tale a boy who can fly visits children in London during the beginning of the 20th century. None of Peter Pan is historically true, even though the story takes place during historic time periods at historic locations. Applying this argument to the Bible follows like this: Just because the stories of the Bible took place during real history does not mean the Bible is histroically true. This argument needs to be sound or else people should believe Spider-Man is a real person simply because there are stories that says he lives in the real city of New York during the 20th and 21st centuries. Truth is, the Bible is historically true and is not a made up story; a point I hope to illustrate with the rest of this post.

If the Bible were a made up fairy tale, that people believe simply because it has a ring of truth to it, is there perhaps a real life fairy tale that people believed which one could compare to the Bible? Can one examine a group of people's devotion to a fairy tale versus people's devotion to the stories in the Bible? Yes, one can, because there is such a real life fairy tale that many people believed.

In the year 1917 in the suburban town of Cottingley, Bradford in England two teenage cousins (Elsie Wright and Frances Griffiths) took photographs of themselves with fairies they encounted in their backyard. These photos attracted the attention of Sherlock Holmes mystery writer Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. He had the photographs inspected by physicists in hopes that they would be genuine photos of fairies. Many scientists and reporters examined the photos, and believed the photos had to be real because the facial expressions the two cousins made in the photos looked so earnest. With more photos from the cousins and more credible people examining them, these fairy photos maintained consistent popularity all the way to the year 1921 (four years from when the first photo was taken). Even afterwards in the 60s and 70s, there were still scientists and reporters examining the photos and the cousins' story that they had seen and interacted with real fairies. The end consensus on the photos was that they could possibly be real but simply could not be verified. This changed, though, in the the year 1983, when both cousins confessed that they made up the whole thing. Those two cousins with a few cutout drawings and some well crafted photography convinced a large amount of knowledgeable adults that fairies really existed. Many people believed their life altering claims, based on their photos and their personal accounts, but in the end all these claims were recanted by the cousins themselves.
Two of the photographs created by Elsie Wright and Frances Griffiths
Compare the waining devotion these two cousins had to their convincing real life fairy tale to the devotion James, the real life brother of Jesus, had to the stories in the Bible. When James was young, he was not a firm believer that his brother was God in flesh and Lord over all. It was not until he saw His brother resurrected that James believed the stories about Jesus. In response to this James, who was an official in the Jewish temple, claimed that Christians did not have to follow Jewish laws in order to have peace with God. He claimed that all people had to do to be made right with their Creator was to believe in the death and resurrection of his brother, Jesus. For these claims, the Jewish leaders made threats on James' life. They told him that all he had to do to keep his life was renounce these stories about Jesus being God and coming back from the dead, so that Jame could remain steadfast to Jewish law. James could not deny the story of Jesus' resurrection, so the Jewish leaders killed him. There are two accounts of how James was martyred. One is that the Jewish leaders stoned him. Another is that James was thrown from the top of the Jewish temple. In both accounts neither the stoning nor throwing James from the temple kills him. Because of this, the Jewish leaders go to the dying body of James again and ask him to renounce his claims about Jesus' life and death sanctifiying Gentiles (non-Jews) before the Lord of all creation. Even on the verge of death, James stood firm in his beliefs. For this, James, the brother of Jesus, was beaten to death by the Jewish leaders who once revered him. Now, neither of these accounts of James' martyr come from the Bible. In fact these accounts come from the respected historians Josephus and Eusebius.
An Orthodox Icon of James, the brother of Jesus.
So, what's the difference between the real life fairy tale of two cousins and their camera and the stories for which James, the brother of Jesus, became a martyr? The difference is in how devoted the people spreading the story were to what they were saying. The two cousins renounced their claims, despite their concinvicing photographic evidence and the scholars who favored their claims. James, who had no photographs of the resurrected Jesus nor did he have scholars from that day supporting his claims, died for his beliefs. James, like the early followers of the Bible's stories, was more devout to what he believed than the two cousins who fabricated their convincing photographs. Sometimes the fidelity of a story can be seen in how zealous the people spreading that story are, and nothing shows someone's zeal for a story more than them dying for it. No one threatened the two cousins to denounce their fairy tale, but even unto death James, the brother of Jesus, would not deny the truth about Jesus Christ, Lord of all.
A photo of the Garden Tomb in Jerusalem, a possible location for Jesus' crucifixion, burial and resurrection.
Written on the tomb's door is "He is not here, for He is risen."
I am sure this post will fail to convince many non-believers that the stories of the Bible are real. I do not need to worry about this, though, as only God can open up peoples' eyes to see the truth or their ears to hear His words (Matthew 13:15). More than believing in talking snakes and dragons, the real stumbling block non-believers have with Scripture is believing the reality that Jesus was crucified for their sins (1 Corinthians 1:23).

In this world full of fakes, fabrications and even fairy tales I should have nothing to do with silly myths, but should rather train myself in Godliness (1 Timothy 4:7). I need to fix my eyes on Jesus, focusing on the Joy He considered in the opposition He faced, so that I "will not grow weary and lose heart" when I face similar opposition for my beleifs (Hebrews 12:2-3). Since the world hated Jesus, so will it hate me if I continue to tell the stories of Jesus Christ (John 15:18). I take heart knowing that the truth I proclaim angers the world to the point that it wants to kill me, because I know that "for to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain" (Philippians 1:21).

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