Judean Wilderness
Because the timeless, global reputation of the Bible doesn’t just rest on one unusual fact, but on many converging lines of evidence, let’s add a second to the first we’ve already begun talking about.
We began last time noting that some of the Bible’s credibility lies in the fact that it does not just tell us what we might expect to hear. For instance,
1.Both testaments describe in detail the weaknesses and failures of the people whose story they tell (i.e. leaders of Israel and the disciples of Jesus). Historians view potentially embarrassing reports of ones own group as an indicator of authenticity.
Peter’s Denial
Why would the nation of Israel, or the church of Christ retain a body of literature that catalogs their personal and collective moral, social, and spiritual failures?
By present day standards, many would see such admissions as being unpatriotic and damaging to national interests (for Israel), and unfriendly to the collective reputation (of the church).
So here’s a second familiar fact about the Bible that remains most unusual.
2. Written by at least 40 authors over a period of 1500 years, all pens contributed to a well timed, orchestrated plotline that came together in the most unexpected of ways. Even though the hero of the Bible told both friends and enemies that Moses and the prophets were telling his story; and even though he said repeatedly that he had to suffer and die to save their lives, no one foresaw how it would all come together.
Not until a guarded tomb was found empty, and groups of disciples were reunited with their resurrected Teacher did they begin to see how he put the words and sentences of the ages in a whole new light.
Only then did they realize that what they had seen with their own eyes brought fulfillment and significance to a storyline that stretched from Moses to the present.
Today we are as they were– in the middle of the drama of the universe, knowing more than than those who went before us, but still not able to see clearly what lies ahead.
P.S. as I hope to spend some time bringing some of these thoughts together, please help me test the merits and expand the implications to any of the above…
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