the not so strange case of the Bible

from the Vulgate Bible, Italy, 14th C - something to do with St Jerome

I've decided to resurrect this blog, for the purpose of ruminating on belief and non-belief in a less combative way. I was going to start a new blog, with an appropriately neutral title - Reflections of a Non-believer, or something like. To be honest, George Pell doesn't strike me as a sufficiently interesting person to address myself to, but I think I'll continue with this form after all, for the conservative catholic church is a kind of opposite pole that attracts me in some kind of repulsive way, and Pell is as worthy a symbol of this pole as anyone, I suppose. But mostly I won't bother with addressing Pell, or the catholic church, directly.

Not so long ago I read a book called Testament, a modernised version of the Bible, sans chapters and verses, and claiming to leave the boring bits out. It left out a few controversial and cruel passages too, but there was enough cruelty left in, especially in the Old Testament, to leave a sceptical reader wondering how such a book could be the basis of a religion which has claimed, at least in recent times, to promote universal love. Allow me to descend to the glibness of remarking that if you want to be cured of religion, read the Bible.

While blogging on Testament, I occasionally received comments from believers. One, a priest, suggested that the Bible should be read slowly and its detail mined carefully and lovingly. This is fair comment, but it could just as well be applied to many avowedly secular texts. As an English literature graduate, I know how rewarding, and pleasurable, such detailed analysis and reflection can be - Emily Dickinson's poetry (secular or not) being particularly worth pondering in this way.

However, if the priest was hoping that, by a slow and painstaking reading and rereading of the text, I might come to some enlightened belief, then his hope was in vain. For their are some fairly obvious facts that can't be turned from - and I prefer to call them facts, rather than beliefs. One is the fact that the Bible was written by men, not by a god. Some 'sacred writings' were written by women, too, of course, but unsurprisingly they didn't make it into the team that was finally selected. Believers will of course claim that god wrote the Bible through these men, but that's a matter of faith.

The other fact is that, as a historical document, the Bible has been found to be more or less entirely unreliable. This isn't at all surprising, given that history, the modern discipline, was not really a concept for the Bible's authors and their contemporaries. Texts were written then to promote and to idealise particular cultures and their beliefs, and their destiny. To engender pride and cohesion. It's just as well, really, that the books are full of exaggerations, distortions and falsehoods, for many of the tales told don't reflect well on the depicted god.

While reading Testament, I occasionally researched other versions of the stories that most struck me in other translations and modernisations of the Bible online. Naturally, a source I often turned to was the Skeptic's Annotated Bible - not a separate translation, but a relentless expose of the absurdities, cruelties and inconsistencies to be found in the King James Version. One moderate Christian commentator questioned my reference to the SAB, which he dismissed as 'a bit of a joke'. Of course the SAB is often hilarious, but it isn't so easily dismissed (and in any case, such a dismissive wave of the hand doesn't constitute an argument). To me, it performs a very important function, in that it's a constant reminder of the human nature of the text, so patently parochial, vindictive, fearful, amoral and at times savage, so historically and culturally circumscribed that the idea of its standing as a testament for all peoples and all times seems, to this reader at least, hilarious in its inappropriateness. On the other hand, maybe it is more appropriate than some non-believers would be prepared to admit, for maybe we are at every age and within every culture, a parochial, vindictive, fearful, amoral and savage lot. And maybe, within all that selfish blinkeredness there's also a striving towards something transcendent, or at least better. And the Bible offers that too of course, but I'd be wary of the devil in the detail. We can find much better ways to be better than by following the Bible.