A message from the pulpit. "Pulpit", that's a funny word. It almost sounds naughty.

Some wonderful friends of ours are strong churchgoers who have been enjoying lots of Bible study of late. I don’t know if it is because of my upbringing, or just that I, myself, am somewhat conservative in some areas of my life, but I seem to attract, and relate well, to fundamentalists of all sizes and shapes. Anyway, I was visiting these friends of mine and we had a lengthy and interesting theological discussion over a sumptuous dinner that the hostess had prepared. In the conversation, I basically quoted the movie “The God Who Wasn’t There”, a fantastic documentary that I recommend everyone, whether a strong believer or not, watch. There is a part of the movie where they surmise how the Gospels could not possibly have been written by anyone who actually witnessed any of Jesus’ miracles. I remember finding this terribly interesting at the time and passed it on at this recent dinner. But, after my hosts kindly disagreed, because they believe in the Bible’s 100% infallibility, I realized that I had no facts to back it up.

I did some research on this, and came up with these interesting facts, in this case about the Gospel of Matthew:

According to Wikipedia (I know, I know, but I just don’t have a theology library next door) “The majority of scholars date the gospel between the years 70 and 100.”

The life expectancy of people from the Classical Roman times until the Middle Ages was 20-30 years. By the absolute latest possibility, Jesus died in 36 AD. So, someone who was a young man (old enough to observe and understand Christ’s miracles) of let’s say 15 would have been dead long before 70 AD when Matthew was written. If Matthew had been 15 in 36 AD (by all accounts he was portrayed as an adult, so older than 15), he would have been 49 by 70 AD--the earliest that Matthew is thought to have been written. The possibility of someone reaching that age in that era of human civilization would not just be rare, but very much unlikely. This is why most theologians believe that the Gospel of Matthew was not actually written by Matthew.

“Beginning in the 18th century, however, scholars have increasingly questioned that traditional view, and today the majority agree Matthew did not write the Gospel which bears his name.” (Ehrman, Bart D. (2004). The New Testament: A Historical Introduction to the Early Christian Writings. New York: Oxford, pp. 92-92. ISBN 0-19-515462-2.) I find it interesting that even theologians of the 18th Century were questioning the validity of the authorship of the first gospel, yet today there are still millions who believe it because it is the book’s title, and, therefore, author. Of course, they are “taught” by equally conservative ministers whose understanding of the Bible is a little too “reading is believing” mixed with the obligatory “blind faith” that they teach.

All of this should not force one to doubt Christ’s divinity or the miracles of Christ, in my opinion. It should, however, dissuade one from believing in the absolute truth of a book that was transcribed by imperfect men. In my opinion, it is the message of Christ, which should be foremost in our minds, it is, after all, the real proof of His divinity: his divine message, which transformed the world as we know it.

I feel that Christians who refuse to pull back the veil to have a real look at the Bible are fooling themselves for many reasons. But, my job as a thinking person and an open-minded individual is to remove the veil completely and confront, head-on, the many possibilities of the Bible and its meaning. Why is it that theologians who spend their entire life learning the languages of the Bible, learning about sociology, anthropology, history, archeology, etc. are, by an extreme majority, liberals on the question of the Bible’s infallibility?