The Rise and Fall of the Bible: The Unexpected History of an Accidental Book

 

The Rise and Fall of the Bible: The Unexpected History of an Accidental Book – Timothy Beal

With a book title such as this, it just might easily scare away many of the devoted devout. So the first thing that needs to be said in order to allay any potential fears of believers is that the author of this book, Timothy Beal, is in fact a Christian.  The difference between Timothy Beal and many of the mainstream familiar Christian authors today is that Beal actually reads and studies history.  He can answer questions that most regular church attendees (and leaders) cannot.  Most Christians, if we’re honest, believe certain things because our leaders tell us they’re true. If there’s a consensus among like-denominations everywhere concerning questions and answers about our faith, then what we’re all told over and over again must be true. Right?

Especially when it comes to the Bible.  A challenge: navigate to any Evangelical, Reformed, and/or Bible church website and read their “mission statement”, or “statement of belief”.  What you will find in the statement is that the particular church believes that the Bible is the “inerrant and infallible word of God”.  If this is your church (and it probably is), is there any harm in asking why your church believes this?  What exactly is the difference between “inerrant” and “infallible”?  If you’re a Christian, do YOU know?  I didn’t think so. And more importantly, does it really matter?  Professor Beal thinks it definitely matters. In fact, the idea that our Bible is “inerrant” has only been around for a couple of hundred years.  So the fact that this “new” belief now exists, it has caused a bit of recklessness and turmoil in the church today. When we look at 21^st century Christian culture, we can easily see that Bible, in a sense, has replaced God.  We’ve turned the Bible into a God. But since, we argue, it essentially IS God, there isn’t any harm in this practice, and it should probably be encouraged as well.  Beal educates us in this work that this was never the intention of the Bible at all.

It needs to be pointed out that the author is not trying to “challenge” nor “debunk” the Bible. He claims there’s nothing to debunk.  The problem, as this book illustrates, is that Christians, particularly in the last couple hundred years, have been reading the Bible incorrectly and have been treating it in a way that it was never intended.  In summary, the author attests that the Bible was never written to be a “Book of Answers”, yet it was instead written to be a “Library of Questions”.

He uses a lot of analogies that are incredibly insightful, yet somewhat silly as well.  Our Christian culture today, he tells us, is inundated with “Bible everything”.  We have so many different versions and translations to complement our pop culture, it makes our head spin.  We’ve all seen the ubiquitous “kiddie” Bibles that permeate Wal-Mart’s bookshelves with picture filled, “pop-up” Bibles for toddlers less than one year old.  We also have publications of things such as the “Golfer’s Bible”.  No, this isn’t a book devoted to everything related to golf, but rather an actual Bible with a catchy leather-bound cover with a drawing of a golfer.  Of course, interspersed between the pages of actual scripture, there are supplements included on things such as “How to Improve Your Swing.”   Yes, today’s market does have a demand for such things.

Yet as we explore the history of Christianity, we learn that the Bible has never had the same level of reverence as it does today.  Most don’t know that our compilation of the scriptures that was included in a single “book” didn’t exist until the late 4^th century.  Ask yourself this: If God really wanted to give mankind a book such as a Bible that was “THE ONLY SOURCE OF TRUTH”, would he really have waited until 400 years until after Jesus?  We must then remember that over 90% of Europeans couldn’t even read until the 11^th century, and that “books” as we know them today certainly didn’t exist when Jesus had his Earthly ministry.  (Side note: the author talks a lot, too much really, about “scrolls” which were used when writing before the 2^nd century.)

So we read a lot of church history and the Bible’s role in it. To be honest, I wished there would have been more in-depth details about the last 2,000 years than what is actually here, but he does include enough to show us how we didn’t always revere the Bible quite the same way many do today. We come across a lot of “modern” beliefs about the Bible that have only existed for a couple hundred years.  It should be pointed out, for instance, that the “The Rapture” has only been taught for the last 200 years or so.  (Roman Catholics have always believed it to be nonsense.) Before the 18^th century, the church has always believed that they were in the midst of something called the “end times” but a concept of being “left behind” while the most holy were zipped up to Heaven before any sort of tribulation was non-existent.

This book is a very important book.  As I look around many Evangelical and Bible churches, it’s shockingly sad and somewhat scary to see how far the church has removed itself from Jesus.  Many today seem more concerned about politics and ridiculous conspiracy theories about everything than they do about loving, forgiving, and helping the poor.  In fact, I wish the author would have expounded a bit more on these issues.  He talks about some things in this book, yet I wish he would have gone more in depth. As an example, he doesn’t believe homosexuality was ever meant to be looked at as sinful in most aspects, yet it would have been more insightful to have read more than what he actually provides. 

Books like this are very necessary for present-day Christianity, and one hopes that it can, as the Bible is supposed to, get us asking a lot more questions as a family instead of turning into a “members only club” that mainly focuses on vehemently barking angry answers at strangers due to our flawed interpretations. It saddens me that so many younger people have either stopped going to church or left the faith completely.  Although when I see what many churches actually say and do, it sadly isn’t surprising.  We definitely need to study our history more; and not be afraid to ask more questions.