“The question, after all, is not only who wrote
the bible, but who reads it.”
In “Who Wrote the Bible” by Richard Elliott
Friedman
Some of the texts date to 400 AD or later, such
as the second half of Matthew, the whole of John and the whole of Revelation. I
would consider a "complete, unabridged Bible" to consist of all texts
either used by, or referenced by, any Abrahamic sect whatsoever from 2,200 B.C.
through to 1,400 A.D., plus the Book of Mormon (it is as legitimate as any
other sect, which isn't saying much). In other words, a document from which you
could reconstruct the actual founding of the original sect by Babylonian or
Sumerian priests amongst the Canaanite animists and magi, all travels by all
the differing groups, and the root causes of every schism, through to the
present day. No such book has ever been compiled, but the word
"Bible" means "The Book". Singular. The only true singular
book you could ever have that can be true to every Abrahamic group (and if it
can't be, it's not singular) is a book that includes everything that has ever
been relevant to any of them. This is the same way the Saxon Chronicles are
treated. There are (ok, were) many versions (a fire destroyed a great number of
them), but the Saxon Chronicles as a unified concept refers to the compilation
of this material. The abstract concept of the "complete" Saxon
Chronicles refers to all of the versions, whether they survive or not, as an
entity. Not a physical entity but what a computer scientist or mathematician
would call a logical entity. A set is a logical entity, it exists but it doesn't
exist in any physical sense. In this aspect I’m siding with Friedman. I can't
quite accept that all Bibles are equal, as we can identify authors and
therefore can identify later forgeries, material that doesn't belong in a
unified collection, etc. We can define a logical entity that truly is The Book,
the superset of all material that has ever existed, organized into logical
subsets by some means. The Old Testament is a logical subset. It's a collection
of material that has enough commonality to be a distinct grouping. But it does
not exist, in any sense. Different Old Testaments use different books, so the
Old Testament is the superset of all the different books that fit in this grouping.
All of the real Old Testaments are subsets of this master set. The universal
set, the set that contains all the material ever used in any Bible by ANY
Abrahamic sect, contains a great deal of material that no longer exists. So
what? The universal set still exists, the fact that we can't establish what's
in it would still be true even if all the material survived and all records
preserved. It's a limitation of logic. But there has been only one history. At
time “t”, person “p” only held specific things to be true. If they had held any
other beliefs, we would have a different history. The infinity of possibilities
doesn't apply because only one of them happened. Time is sequential, so only a
finite number of intervals have ever existed. These produced a finite number of
different belief systems. Even if everyone had their own, it was still finite.
If you imagine everything ever thought or said by these people as being written
down (with duplication removed), you'd have a lot of writing but it would be finite.
A lot of these events are of no consequence, so
we can imagine those removed as well. For similar beliefs, you only need the
common bit once and the differences noted. Keep going and you end up with a
stupendous theoretical book, but one which is not only finite but well within
human capacity to both imagine and, indeed, record. Bigger volumes of data are
handled all the time.
The information is lost to humanity, but so
what? In order to understand why the Iraqi followers of John the Baptist regard
Jesus as a Satanist, you have to have knowledge that doesn't exist. But we
still know that we need that information to understand the big picture and
therefore we still know we need to have place markers for where the information
would have been. The need doesn't vanish because some scroll got burned.
Circumstantial evidence cannot scientifically
prove that an unobserved phenomenon is true. How did life on earth form? Living
cells consist of a number of molecules including proteins and nucleic acids
(DNA, RNA). Proteins are chains of amino acids which are linked together with
the aid of RNA. There are 20 amino acids which can be linked together to form
any number of combinations which in turn determines the type and function of
the protein. How were the first amino
acids created in the primordial seas without the assistance of RNA? Or maybe
RNA was created first? As you can see, a single protein is outrageously
complicated (just look up the structure of a protein molecule if you still
don't believe me), but nucleic acids, DNA and RNA are even more complicated.
DNA, RNA, proteins, lipids, and carbohydrates are not molecules that randomly
come into existence in a chaotic, torrential environment (this is called
spontaneous generation, proven wrong by Louis Pasteur), they are the products
of an omniscient/omnipresent being. A single prokaryotic cell (bacteria) is
more complicated than a space shuttle yet are we to believe the space shuttle
was designed but not life? Science tells me that spontaneous generation is impossible.
If you want to know how a cult that practiced snake-charming in tombs with
saucers of milk acquired a belief that handling snakes was the way to Heaven or
that the dead would rise from their graves, you’ll have to read this. Nevertheless,
relativism is only true if an objective observer is capable of absolutism.
