There is an area of scholarship known as higher criticism, and as it pertains to the Bible it deals with the language and structure, and what may be learned from it. Having studied this, a certain class of men have come to the conclusion that the Bible is not what it confesses to be, that in fact it is a ‘pious fraud,’ a book of lies written to elevate the morality of the people.
The problem with many things that are professed, proclaimed, put forward as truth, in all areas of life, is the unwittingness, or unwillingness, of the proclaimer to follow the thing proclaimed to it’s natural end; i.e., to press the argument to it’s full and complete end, with all its implications. It either ignores, hides, or fails to contemplate what in the end must be the true result.
Then there is it’s darker cousin, the intentional sophist. Lovers of pragmatism over men, not caring for anything but their own appetite, they construct great arguments of sand, hiding their true goals behind great clouds of smoke, pursuing their true selfish goal no matter what the cost to others, swallowing men whole as if it were a light thing. Any means they justify, deceiving all the way.
If we are to be followers of Christ, we must follow this to its full end. We must accept all, or none at all. If we reject some, we must reject all (that is, if we are intellectually honest).Is the Bible true? The claim of the higher critic is that it is a book of myths and lies. But the question is really quite simple if considered to the full:
The Bible proclaims throughout that it is written by God. Now, this is either true, or a lie. If it is true, then everything is true – claims to authorship (Moses, et al.), events (Jonah, etc.), miracles, etc. If false, then, as the critic says, it is a book of myths and lies – and useful only as kindling.
But consider: these very same men, in the very next breath, claim to believe in God. But how can one have faith in God based on a book which he believes to be false, when that is the only place one may go to learn of God, seeing as he hides himself? This shows (by their actions): 1) intellectual dishonesty, 2) intellectual immaturity, or 3) self-deception. Any one of these is sufficient to show that their ‘assured results’ are anything but, and that we should dismiss them, as they have shown an inability to think maturely, or even properly (or worse, they are out and out liars).
But as to who wrote the Bible, men can only write convincingly of what they know – not being a neurosurgeon, if I tried to write an essay on neurosurgery, professing to knowing many things about it, and claiming to be one, any true neurosurgeon would easily see through me, that I didn’t know what I was talking about.
How, then, can the Bible be a ‘pious fraud?’ It speaks unerringly of the human condition, but what man or men are that aware of themselves? It speaks that all liars are condemned – the writers would only be condemning themselves. The morality proclaimed within it no man possesses – how then would any man conceive of it to write it, which all honest men confess is morality of the highest order? Does this not prove that it is of Divine origin, and not human? (And if, by the by, they were extraordinary men who of themselves did write it, the critics contradict themselves; for they say that man evolved, that these men were in a lower state than us, being ‘superstitious,’ and all; and yet, by saying that men wrote it, they by default are saying that these men were more spiritually aware of themselves than we are, the much-vaunted ‘modern man.’)
Any man moral enough to write a ‘pious fraud’ (for the critics claim that it was done to elevate the people – an altruistic, selfless, ‘honest’ purpose) wouldn’t do it. Anyone who would, wouldn’t possess the morality requisite to the task.