The Bible conspiracy theory; was the Christian holy book just written by a bunch of clever men who wanted to create a religion? What a lot of people don’t realise is that as well as requiring extreme human ability in both writing and deception, this theory also just doesn’t line up with the facts. Historians have a virtually unanimous agreement that this book was authored by more than forty people across the timespan of about fifteen centuries. With its name originating from ‘ta biblio’ meaning ‘the books’, the Bible can be likened to a library of texts, authored by people from all walks of life. These writers varied from kings to peasants, philosophers to fishermen, and included leaders, poets, tax collectors, musicians, scholars, statesmen, shepherds, and many others. They wrote all across Asia, Africa, and Europe, with the original writings being in Hebrew, Greek and Aramaic; over 14 literary styles were utilised: from romance and poetry to law and eye-witness testimony. And yet despite the huge diversity among authors, time periods and genres, the Bible as a whole amazingly presents one unified story of God’s redemption for humanity. Keep a lookout for our next thought where we will look more specifically at some of the prophecies that are fulfilled in the Bible and show that rather than this being a conspiracy, there must have really been a divine hand behind this incredible book.
I’m Bobby-Jean Russ from Thinking Matters and this has been your Thought for the Week. For more reasons to believe visit thinkingmatters.org.nz