Urban Myth No.4 - "The bible was made up"

Around my house we have a saying. "Making gear up".

No, it's not about manufacturing drugs.

It refers to the practice of talking in such a way that you just 'make up' facts as you go along. All my kids have done it at different times. They'll come in talking absolute rubbish like it's a scientific law and expecting everyone else to understand and agree with them.

Mostly this happened before they went to school.

That said, from time to time, they'll just start creating a story with Doctor Seuss type plot that seems to come straight from fairyland. Interestingly, I've heard people say very similar things about the bible. So the urban myth we're addressing today is...

"The bible was made up"

Now, to be fair, ALL books are made up. Fiction or Non-fiction. An author or authors sit down, collect their material and write a book.

The question then really is, what are they made up of?

Before I get to talking about that. Let's just do a spec sheet of the bible...
 - There are 66 books
 - Written by 40 authors
 - Over 1600 years approximately

The reasons I added this is, to verify this claim, you'd have to confirm it for every book, author and event. To add further to this, the bible is made up of the following sorts of literature...

 - Creation stories
 - Poetry (including love poems)
 - History
 - National records
 - Prophesy
 - Song lyrics
 - Letters
 - Memoirs
 - Biographies

This is where it gets interesting. I say interesting because songs and poetry are by definition 'made up', or to use a better word, 'inspired'. Events, people, experiences have caused people to 'make up' a song.

However, that is not to say that they don't contain historical facts and truths.

Records, letters, memiors, etc are generally not 'made up'. They are recorded carefully for future posterity. The important thing about much of the bible is the events recorded are often able to be traced via other sources.

The New testament is a one place where many biblical events have be traced by other historical sources.

However, lets take an old testament example. Jericho was conquered by the people of Israel via the destruction of the city walls as recounted in Joshua chapter 6. Walls reputed to be very large and strong. For the last few hundred years, the failure to find such walls meant that the biblical account was literally 'made up'. However, that's no longer the case.

In 1997, the wall was uncovered by an archaeological team.

The situation with Jericho's walls is one that has happened with other parts of history as recorded in the bible. People can't find the specific piece of evidence, so they discount the whole story. Then all of a sudden artifacts are uncovered.

I wonder if part of the problem for us is how alien the bible can seem to modern minds. Weird places, names, people, forgotten cultures, dates, etc. Having spent most of my life reading the bible, I understand this.

Even after some years at bible college, parts of the bible can sound to me like another planet.

However, that does not mean the bible is an invention of the human mind. To begin with, the odds of that are way to far fetched. Sixty six books, all made up by so many different people, from different times, different places, different languages, all made up and all grouped together in such a manner? That is crazy talk.

I think Mark Twain's words help us here...
"Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn't"

The reason we continue to read, struggle with, question and critique the bible is because it's so significant and truthful. Otherwise, we might have dismissed it and dispensed with it centuries ago.