Not for the Squeamish

A movie that I have yet to see is A Few Good Men. Yes, I know it has been out for nearly 17 years now. But I seldom get to the movies, and when I do it is for very special movies.

The reason I mention A Few Good Men is because of the familiar line by Colonel Jessep, “You can’t handle the truth!”

I just read through Kugel’s lengthy overview of the Psalms. I say overview because he references a number of biblical scholars dating back many centuries that have examined the Psalms in their original language and have reached conclusions that startle me. And I can tell that there is a lot more to their individual research than is presented by Kugel. The discoveries don’t surprise me. Not at this point anyway. But the fact that their discoveries don’t have wider acceptance really surprises me. Especially in the ranks of those in highly honored places of leadership in denominations. I hear ministers and lay people talk about men and women who are believed to be very informed on the scriptures but those persons don’t seem to be aware of the discoveries I am finding, Or, big word in this case, or they have decided the discoveries are either illegitimate or would cause too much chaos within the church body.

In a very condensed version, most scholars believe very firmly, that the Psalms were not written by David. There are a host of reasons, from titles to the Psalms to events referenced in the Psalms that happened hundreds of years after David lived. Most scholars believe that the Psalms were written to be used sort of like memorized prayers. The Catholic Church uses memorized prayers for just about anything mankind encounters. I am definitely not opposed to memorized prayers, unless it supplants true communion with God in prayer, especially private “in your closet” type prayer.

An examination of the Psalms yields the understanding that there is a Psalm for most of the events and situations modern man encounters. They are not so specific that they can’t be applied to many similar situations, but they are specific enough to get to the core of the intended reason for prayer and praise.

The most amazing thing I am learning from this Bible is that the human part of the authorship is not close to what we have been led to believe. It appears that Moses was not a historian or a writer. It appears that David had too much on his plate to have written more than a couple or few Psalms if any. On looking closely at the scriptures we find 3 separate accounts of Saul becoming king of Israel. Then following closely we find 3 totally different accounts of David’s ascension to the same throne.

There are 2 separate and different accounts of creation. And much of this information has been seamed together to be read as a continuous story. It looks more and more to me like stories from a host of authors from different viewpoints and with different agendas.

And this reminds me of Colonel Jessep. I wonder how much of the truth about our Bible Christians can handle? What if David was not the king described in the Bible? What if Moses didn’t really live but is a combination of a number of men of his time? Would those facts tear my faith apart? Is my faith the Bible or is my faith Christ? How much of real truth about ancient writings can my faith take? What if the world is as old as scientist believe it is? What if creation took a thousand million years? Does that take my faith away?

Well, for me, no. I am approaching a line of thinking that contends the Bible is a story about God's relationship with man, but only part of the Bible. I think, and this thinking is certainly in the preliminary stages, that part of what we call the Bible is about God and God's relationship with man, but there is a lot of extra baggage included. And it is the extra baggage that has caused us so much pain and division. Too much incongruent history and legends, too many writers included, and way too much too much meddling in what God expects of His people.

King James would have done the world a much bigger service by not tampering with the scriptures. Paul should have had his letters burned. And John the revelator should have kept his dreams to himself.