Miracles of the Gods: A New Look at the Supernatural (114 page)

Chapter Two - Who Really Speaks Through The Bible? - Are The Original Texts 'God's Word'?

More than a hundred thousand million people in this world call themselves Christians. What is it that ties them to their creed? A common basis is necessary for the purpose. That basis was and is the Bible.

The word Bible comes from the Greek: ta hiblia. books. Under the entry 'bible' in the dictionary it says: 'Book of books, Holy Scriptures, the collection of writings which are regarded by the Christian Church as documents of the divine revelation, God's word, and as binding in faith and life ...'

Against their better judgment, the churches proclaim that the Bible is 'God's word'.

To the ears and simple heart of the humble Christian this proclamation from the anointed tongues of theologians sounds as if God in person had inspired the Book of Books and/or dictated it, and as far as the New Testament is concerned he is left to believe that the companions of Jesus of Nazareth took down his speeches, rules of life and 'prophecies' in shorthand, observed his miracles at first hand and soon afterwards noted the miraculous events down in a chronicle. The Christian then is supposed to accept the Book of Books as a collection of authentic reports. Professor Hans Conzelmann, Professor of New Testament Studies, Gottingen, admitted that the Christian community really continues to exist because the conclusions of critical examinations of the Bible are largely unknown to them That is not the proper Christian way, but it is true.

The Bible is not what it is represented to be and even the Holy Ghost is no longer what it was originally supposed to be. I know that my theological critics will raise their eye-brows and say: 'But we know that perfectly well, you can read it in our theological literature.'

They are right. But: the churches, large and small, live among and by the public. They accompany the simple man from the cradle to the grave, at important stages of life they make themselves

'indispensable' by their ceremonies, they exercise their power and fill the church coffers in public. So it is quite unfair to say that all the errors (publicly diffused as the ultimate truth) of religious biblical dogma are available (and admitted) in the books of remote theological libraries. How many of the more than one hundred thousand million Christians ever cross the threshold of one of those libraries?

***

Joachim Kahl [l], graduate in theology of Phillips University, Marburg, states: 'The ignorance of most Christians is largely due to the scanty information provided by theologians and ecclesiastical historians, who know two ways of concealing the scandalous facts of their books. They either twist reality into its exact opposite or conceal it.' I call both methods cheating the faithful.

The layman has a right to be liberated from erroneous Christian dogmas that have long since been superseded; he can, since it happens in the name of the Lord, demand that he be told the truth in an intelligible way in language without complicated and impossible theological gymnastics.

In the Constitution of the Council on the Church on 21st November, 1964, in the statement of 28th November, 1965 on the relationship with non-Christian religions, as well as in the solemn credo of