This is actually several questions in one. I’m not sure I’ve ever encountered anyone that is asking all of them at once. Usually, the speaker means, “Is the Bible TRUE?”…yes, it’s asked with all caps. Another speaker might mean, “Is the Bible an accurate historical text?”…similar, to the previous question, but often asked with a different agenda. And, yet another might ask, “Is it history, or fables, or myths, or facts or fiction, or real history?”…to which one might be able to answer, truthfully, “why…yes, it is.”  and still be speaking accurately.

I’ll deal with truth and fact in my next post, but first on to the historical nature of the Bible…after a brief tangent. By “Bible” I mean what Christians call the Old Testament (but in a different order from the Jewish Canonical understanding), and Jews refer to as Tanach (Torah, Prophets, and Writings…that Jewish Canonical understanding). I prefer to use the term Hebrew Bible, and when I refer to “The Bible” that is the text I mean.

OK, now to the historical nature of the Bible.

There are many ways to view what we find within the Hebrew Bible. The gamut includes the range from fundamentalist (anyone in any religion that accepts and believes in the strict, literal interpretation and meaning of a religion’s scriptural tradition) to the total rejection of all information. We do ourselves best service when we view the text as an historical source, to be compared and contrasted to other documents from the Ancient Near East (generally, the ancient version of today’s Middle East).

When we study history, we are investigating a record of past human experience. Thus, history is a study of people and human activity. But, how is it possible for us to understand society, culture, a way of life, as being necessarily so far removed, not only in time, but also in distance from the sources of the stories? The link up is with people and the activities that they have recorded through time.

People are universally faced with basic problems:

How to live with nature
How to obtain food
How to live with fellow humans
How to live with the self
How to live with the incomprehensible.

And, when you think about it a bit, these basic needs that we have fall into rather universal categories, in no particular order: economic, environmental, socal/legal, psychological/spiritual, even scientific.

The Bible is a people’s record of all of these things, all of these concerns, problems, and needs. And, that means, in a word or two, that the Bible is a history.

Sometimes it has contradictions, both internal as well as related to known accurate documents from other societies. Sometimes it never mentions important events that other societies did indeed mention. Often, VERY often, it refers to God as an explanation for all sorts of events, happenings, things (and, yes, this dependence on God often hinders our understanding and study of history).

We can explain God’s activities from a fundamentalist perspective, accepting everything as fact, and thus distorting reality: for example, in Joshua, it is related that the sun and moon stood still, which is impossible…as I will deal with at another time.

We can also explain it all from the perspective of a “rationalist”, rejecting all but verifiable fact: leaving us with very little, for sure. The rationalist perspective will manufacture fact to substantiate the story, as with the Ten Plagues of the Exodus story. In several aspects, this view differs little from that of the fundamentalist. One such aspect is that the rationalist will accept the biblical account without critical examination.

On the other hand, a more realistic approach is much more appropriate. First, the Bible is primarily a literary record. Second, an artist in any medium will portray what he/she sees as significant, as their particular perspective on life. The artist is not reproducing the reality of the events, but rather is portraying the events to the audience as experienced by the artist. This is also the case with the biblical authors. If events do not lend themselves to a particular framework (determined by the author) then they are ignored.

To the biblical authors, nearly everything seems to be the result of God’s actions and will and desires-

Different authors have different perspectives on the nature, will, desires, purpose, personality, and characteristics of God –

And, human causes pale before the authors’ ‘certainty’ of the ‘real cause’ i.e. God (or gods).

So…yes, the Bible is a history, primarily told by ancient Israel and Judah, representing the perspective of many different authors, writing over many centuries from approximately 1100 BCE until 150 BCE. They represent different theologies, geo-political opinions and perspectives, and social concerns…among other things.

Is it true? Sometimes.

Is it false? Sometimes.

Is it in between? Sometimes.

Is it Reality? Not really.

But, it IS fun.