The Old Testament – oh, come on.

The Study of History

A couple of days ago, I started watching a TV documentary series on ancient archeological sites. I’m always a little skeptical of these documentaries; they never seem to tell you where they get their information. This one, in particular, was not exactly beyond question in its research.

Over and over the narrator told me, “For a long time, scholars didn’t have a clue what this symbol/structure/city was for. Then, so-and-so decided it must be a ____.” He then spent the next ten minutes detailing an elaborate theory of what said structure or symbol was like (spaceships were involved). Meanwhile, I remained unconvinced that so-and-so’s theory was any better than the dozens of guesses that came before it.

The Old Testament

As I finish up this series on the Old Testament, I ask that you keep this documentary in mind, because this is what much of history is like. We don’t have video cameras or experiments to tell us exactly what happened. History is more like detective-work than scientific experimentation; it means cobbling together evidence and trying to piece together a reasonable story. Depending on your starting assumptions, you can come up with some very different – and equally plausible – versions of what happened.

Because of this, discussions of history often degenerate into endless circles as people with different assumptions talk past each other increasingly angrily. Due to this, and because other people have already covered this topic in great detail, I’m not going to spend a lot of time going through the arguments, or even the evidence, connected with the Old Testament’s account of history. Instead, I want to spend time looking at an assumption that has lain at the heart of almost every discussion I’ve had on this subject. I call it the “oh, come on,” argument.

Oh, Come On

Oh, come on. You don’t really believe in all that stuff, do you? Worldwide floods, giants, the Red Sea parting? Prophecies and angels, miracles and demons? A tree of the knowledge of good and evil? A talking snake? Be serious.

This is the twenty-first century; we’re civilized now. The world isn’t like all those fairytales; it’s all about money and trade and government policy and infrastructure and bureaucracy and diplomas and news coverage. Change comes gradually, through the shifting of time and the evolution of society, not with watershed battles and great men. Come on. Be reasonable. Educated people don’t believe things like that.

Well, this educated person does.

The Real World

You say the world is gradual, orderly, boring. I don’t know what kind of world you live in. But I’ve seen floods overwhelm small towns and hurricanes swamp small islands, terrorist attacks shake the world, a record winter shut down the northeast US, a tsunami devastate Japan, mass shootings devastate communities, civilized countries erupt in violence, bombings rock our major cities, refinery explosions drive people from their homes, wars and campaigns of terror shed the blood of innocents, and a global pandemic in a matter of weeks shut down the entire orderly, boring, civilized world.

I don’t know what kind of life you’ve lived. But I have a relative that was here and healthy one day and dead the next. I watched a motorcyclist thrown across a highway and hit by a car at 60 mph. I’ve been on foreign borders where guards pointed machine guns in my face. I’ve stood in places that a few days later were the sites of terrorist attacks. I’ve been trained to use deadly force if necessary as part of my job in this enlightened, orderly, boring, civilized world.

I don’t know what you believe. But I think the most important and enduring things in life are still the things that can’t be seen, measured, or bought. I think things like love, sacrifice, and heroism are more than fairytales or fine sentiments or evolved instincts. I think in the end, truth is more important than fame and compassion more important than money, even if the whole world says otherwise. I think there are still things worth fighting and dying for in this tattered, weary, broken, marvelous world.

I don’t know what your assumptions about the world are. But if you think it’s primarily defined by the things we control, think again. If you think everything can’t change in a moment, you haven’t been around lately. If you think one man’s decision can’t change the course of a country, you haven’t read much history. And if you think you’re justified in rejecting the Old Testament out-of-hand because so-and-so’s theory says it’s impossible, it might be worth taking another look.

photo: By Simon Q (Flickr: Lightning Strikes) [CC BY 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons