Asking SD staff, Who wrote the Bible?

Cecil's Columns/Staff Reports
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SD staff’s articles on ‘Who wrote the Bible?’

(http://www.straightdope.com/mailbag/mbible1.html)

are very instructive.

Now, I would like to address our patient researchers:

Please tell me from your own personal convictions or evaluations, in the same scholarly vein as the above series of articles:

Did God write the Bible?

No offense intended, I would be most indebted if you can give us your own personally arrived at view in 500 words or less.

A thousand words are still all right, though.

But most important of all, in as categorical a fashion as your assessment of the grounds for one way or the other guarantees.

Susma Rio Sep

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My personal belief is that the bible (which for me is the Hebrew Bible) was divinely inspired, but not dictated letter-for-letter. I thought I made that personal belief clear in Part 1 of that Bible-authorship sequence. It’s a topic where every writer has biases – from the most religious/traditional to the most scientific/archaeological – and I thought it was important to make my biases known.

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Dear Dexter:

I respect your bias.

What I would like to know, as an investigator of facts, whether you have found grounds to state categorically that God wrote the Bible or God did not write the Bible.

Let’s suppose that I am trained as a criminal investigator, and I have worked long and successful years as such, in establishing the fact of a crime committed, or no crime committed.

One night I received a call from another precinct about my son having been arrested for shoplifting.

Upon arrival at that precinct, I told my colleagues there that this must be a very bad mistake.

“My son could never have done any shoplifting; I know him; my wife and I brought him up to be meticulously honest; he’s never done anything of this behavior.”

My colleagues told me, “Susma, please do your investigative routines, and tell us your conclusion; see if you will reach the same as ours.”

Can you attempt something like what I would do as a criminal investigator even when my son is the suspect in shoplifting.

Namely, to come to a categorical finding that God wrote the Bible or God did not write the Bible, on the basis of examining the grounds supporting either alternative.

Susma Rio Sep

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Susmo, since I was the other author of thr reports, I have to tell you that what you’re looking for is really impossible to tell. In order to categorically state that “God” wrote the Bible you really have to go through a number of steps first :

1 : Firstly, proving the assumption that there IS a God, which I would submit people have been trying to prove without success since the dawn of man.

2 : Then you would have to prove that the “God” you had proven was, in fact, the Judeo Christian diety and not some Roman, Greek, or any other culture’s God.

3 : You would then have to prove that such a deity had an interest in actually writing a Bible.

4 : And lastly, the proof that he actually did do it.

I’m sure I’m skipping quite a few steps here, but you get the idea.

But if you’re looking for grounds to state one or the other, I would have to say no. The Bible is too full of internal inconsistancy and outright error to have come from the pen of an supposedly omniscient being.

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Or we can go the easy route. If you can submit a sample of the original text and a sample of God’s handwriting, I’d be willing to pay for a professional analysis and get back to you with the results.

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Before anything else, I have nothing against God, understanding God in the most noble way He would want to be understood, according to my human sense of nobility, of course.
What I would expect is that we first make all the assumptions of God we can in the Bible itself, whatever the version or edition, but sticking to that one version for the time being.

Then on the basis of these assumptions, we study the grounds offered in the Bible itself, on their face values.

Then draw the conclusion.

I think your last paragraph satisfy in a way my parameters.

Thank you so much.

God bless you.

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Please read my second post.

God bless you all for your accommodation and patience.

I am as one seeking knowledge and learning, before I go.

Susma Rio Sep

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Well, frankly, I don’t think you are. I think you’re trying to prove a preconcieved notion. Consider your advice to me in your previous post. You cannot make assumptions about God from a book which you are trying to prove and then use those same assumptions to prove your intial point. You have to go to outside sources. Otherwise it’s just circular reasoning which really proves nothing.

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With all due respect.

I beg to disagree.

When we read an autobiography.

We can draw all the assumptions made there about the author himself.

The very first is that he exists, namely, in his own autobiography.

And we draw all the assumptions about how he writes about himself, in his autobiography.

Then within premises wet forth, we can draw the conclusion that he did or did not write the autobiography.

So also with the Bible.
I assure you most sincerely, Brother Eutychus, I am indeed as one seeking knowledge and learning.

God bless you.

Susma Rio Sep

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With all due respect.

I beg to disagree.

When we read an autobiography.

We can draw all the assumptions made there about the author himself.

The very first is that he exists, namely, in his own autobiography.

And we draw all the assumptions about how he writes about himself, in his autobiography.

Then within premises wet forth, we can draw the conclusion that he did or did not write the autobiography.

So also with the Bible.
I assure you most sincerely, Brother Eutychus, I am indeed as one seeking knowledge and learning.

God bless you.

Susma Rio Sep

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Okay, let’s back up one step and hold it right there.

Who ever said that the Bible was an autobiography?

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You have a point there, Bro. Euty.

Let’s leave autobiographies aside.

Can we proceed then on the fact that the Bible exists.

It is a piece of collected writings.

In this collection there are characters protrayed.

One of them is God.

Now, we want to establish in this writing, what God says about Himself and what he does in the writing called the Bible.

Now, can we draw a conclusion that the God so portrayed in the Bible did or did not write the Bible in which He is portrayed as existing and acting?
God bless you.
Susma Rio Sep

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As I said before, not without any external sources, no. If I read a biography of Benjamin Franklin I can judge what he says about himself by what his contemporaries and peers said about him and make an informed decision if what he said about himself was worthwhile or true.

I would submit that God, if he does indeed exist, has no contemporaries or peers.

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<< Now, can we draw a conclusion that the God so portrayed in the Bible did or did not write the Bible in which He is portrayed as existing and acting? >>

Sigh. And the answer is no, we cannot “prove” it. We can barely “prove” that Shakespeare wrote his plays, and there’s considerable discussion about whether Lee Harper wrote TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD. If we can’t be certain about those, how can we be certain about a book written over many many centuries by many many authors?

We certainly know that God did not write all of the books of the Bible. Paul wrote various letters, for instance, if you accept the New Testament as part of the Bible; and the scribe Baruch wrote parts of the book of Jeremiah, and many of the Psalms are attributed to David, and so on. So even if you are a traditionalist, you wouldn’t say that God wrote the entire bible.

In fact, the only part of the Bible that tradition says was dictated directly by God is the Pentateuch (the first five books), which tradition says was spoken by God on Mount Sinai and written down by Moses. The rest of the Bible was clearly written by human beings – they may sometimes describe things that they say God told them, but no one claims that God wrote all words of those later books.

For instance, let’s say that Isaiah wrote something like: “God spoke to me from the whirlwind and said, ‘Say these words to the people…’”

Now, clearly, God did not write “God spoke to me from the whirlwind.” Isaiah wrote that.

So, the answer to your question is that we can be very very very sure that God did not write the entire bible. Whether God wrote ANY of the bible is a matter of belief and conjecture, not of scientific proof.

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In all honesty, I think, Bro. Euty, we are now into some kind of valid approach to establishing the statement ‘God wrote the Bible, or He did not’.
Not to be in any way engaged in adulation or false commendation, I must admit that the last paragraph of your first post satisfies my yearning for knowledge and learning.

You see, I have a lot of tentative conclusions and a lot of questions.

I try these conclusions on others who are I see to be more knowledgeable, more perceptive, more exacting in the quest for knowledge and learning.

When I obtain some partial concurrence, I am happy.

I am happy indeed that I see a good deal of concurrence from the said paragraph of your first post.

Thanks a lot.
So, shall we continue trying to untangle what it is we are trying to untangle at the present moment?
Now, I know that you people have a job to do.

If you would accommodate and be patient with me…
Here I go:

The Bible exists and you and I exist.

We both read the Bible carefully on what it says about God, his character and his deeds and his words.

Then someone else asks us, ‘That God you read about in the Bible, do you think on the basis of what you read about Him, did He write that Bible?’

I use the word ‘categorical’ in my first post; maybe it is not the happiest choice of word.

More acceptably to all concerned readers, perhaps I should use another word or a phrase.
Here I go again, as the third person asking us two, namely, we two who read the Bible:

"Give me a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ answer, 'Did the God you read about in the Bible, on the basis of your reading, and putting yourselves inside the Bible but with your intelligence fully functional and independent: ‘yes’ or ‘no’, did He write the Bible?

Is that a valid question and can it be answered as to make sense?

You did give me to a good extent a ‘no’ answer.
However, we have lapsed into the question of whether the question can be answered as to make sense, without being circular or without proving nothing.

I on my part think it’s not circular reasoning and it does prove something.

But then we have to put in a lot of reservations.

Just the same, I as the third person in this exchange, I want a ‘yes’ or ‘no’, based on your acquaintance with the grounds as the grounds are found also in the Bible.

Sounds circular again, I guess.
If I may, just the same:

God bless you and God bless us, and God bless all of us.

Susma Rio Sep

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Dear Dexter:

Thanks for your reply and elaboration on your view.

It is honestly instructive to me.

Would you care to continue this exchange?

Here it goes:

Dexter, quick, you are one learned and intelligent person, tell me, your life depends upon your answering correctly:

One word, “Did God write the Bible, yes or no?”.

For my part, I answer ‘no’.

If I am still alive, I will have to confess to all that the answer is not very comfortable at all.

But that’s the only answer I can give, one word, two choices.

Let’s hear from others here.

Susma Rio Sep

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You lost me here. Is he going to be shot for an incorrect answer? :wink:

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Not really.

In the play-act only, if he answers incorrectly.

I am inviting him to join in a play-act with me.
Let me give you an example of another play-act.
"I was with Jesus walking into a tough neighborhood.

A bully came up to me and slapped me on one cheek.

So I offered him my other cheek.

Jesus then asked me: ‘Quick, Susma, what do you do now? you know my teachings.’

I thrusted my right knee real fast and hard into the bully’s balls.

Jesus told me: ‘Well done, good and faithful disciple.’"
I think Jesus likes that.
Susma Rio Sep

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Not really.

In the play-act only, if he answers incorrectly.

I am inviting him to join in a play-act with me.
Let me give you an example of another play-act.
"I was with Jesus walking into a tough neighborhood.

A bully came up to me and slapped me on one cheek.

So I offered him my other cheek.

Jesus then asked me: ‘Quick, Susma, what do you do now? you know my teachings.’

I thrusted my right knee real fast and hard into the bully’s balls.

Jesus told me: ‘Well done, good and faithful disciple.’"
I think Jesus likes that.
Susma Rio Sep

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Please accept my most sincere regrets.

Double posting from me is not intentional.

My computer and my ISP are rather modest and limited.

So, sometimes I check to see whether the post has been sent.

There being no notice of ‘sent’.

I do some chore and come back.

Still no notice.

I tinker around the computer a bit.

Later, it turns out the post has been sent twice.

Yes, I’ll be patient and wait until the ‘sent’ message appears.

Susma Rio Sep