- That the story of Jesus was accurately told orally for a hundred years.
- That the hundreds of contradictory written fragments and letters from the time after that don't matter, because:
- The editing process to sort everything out was also guided by God, again, indirectly.
- That the Gospels were then transmitted down with no textual errors in copying or translation thereafter, thanks to God, indirectly.
- That the parts of the Bible and the Gospels that don't make sense don't contradict any of the above.
This post will attempt to deal with all of the above items, taken from (e:jim)'s list of "things one would have to take on faith" to be a Christian.
The story of Jesus was passed down orally for some time before the gospels were written down. However, it seems that at least Matthew Mark and Luke were written before the year 72--so there was maybe 30 years, tops. (For the relationship between Matthew, Mark and Luke, see: (WIKIPEDIA - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synoptic_gospels)
I base this on the fact that Luke was written as a two-volume work with the book of Acts--they make this clear in the first chapters of each book, and are consistent in language and themes. Anyway, one event that occurs in Luke is Jesus predicting the destruction of the Temple.
We know from history that this indeed did happen, in the year 72. The book of Acts, which follows the apostles and the early church follows Paul as he heads to Rome, which takes us further down the path of history, but not all the way to the destruction of the Temple.
Oddly enough, many scholars take this as evidence of Luke being written after the destruction of the Temple, due, in part to a bias against "supernatural knowledge" (i.e. "Jesus could not have predicted the future") This is bad logic, in my opinion, on two fronts. One: if Jesus was who he claimed he was, this prediction is certainly possilbe, and two: it wasn't THAT hard a prediction to make, given the political climate at the time. Divine revelation was not necessary to figure out that the Jews would rise up and the Romans would act destroy the Temple in retaliation.
It would have made sense for the author of Acts to include this prediction coming to pass, but he did not. Therefore, I conclude that Luke was likely written before 72. For more, see: (WIKIPEDIA - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gospel_according_to_Luke#Date)
(There you will see that my opinion is the minority opinion, but the latest possible date is around 150.
100 years is a long time for something to be passed on orally in todays culture, but things were different in oral cultures.
Anyway, after the oral period of transmission (and Paul's letters are generally dated earlier than the Gospels), the stories were, in fact, written down.
You would have to have a lot of faith to think that there was no error in the recording (by today's standard, at least) because one does not need outside "fragements and letters" to find contradiction (although the small amount of "other" material that talks about Jesus came much later, was discusssed, and dismissed as unreliable). All of the contradictions needed to dismiss a strict literalism is right there in the Bible!
Rather than "get the story straight," those that put together the Bible included all of the differences. There is not one story of Jesus, but four!
What we find is not a historical account, by todays standards, but a collection of a number of different witnesses, and perspectives. This does not make it easy to put together a strict, blow by blow biography, but we do have greater reliability where the different sources agree. The variation in the accounts actually demonstrates them to be more dependable--it shows that there was no collaboration, but different people telling the story the way they best could. Even if four of us had witnessed an event yesterday, it is unlikely that all of us would give the same account.
Do we have to believe that God was involved in the editing process? No more than we would for other historical documents. There are plenty of early manuscripts, as well as early translations and references in other works.
There is no assertion IN the Bible that God specifically guided the editing. No such assertion is needed for the translation, due to the preponderance of early material. While there is some variation, it is small, and in most good academic translations (I like the NRSV), it is noted in the footnotes .
The idea of "innerancy," strangely enough, is an idea that is foreign to the Bible. The Bible itself makes no such claim, and it is not necessary. If we take the texts of scripture (and the others that aren't included) and look at them just as any other historical documents, enough truth will emerge enough to understand who Jesus was, the basic facts of his life, and what he taught. There is also plenty of evidence for his resurrection, which is really the ultimate test, and will have to wait for another post.
I will admit that I don't know to much about the history of the bible. But one thing that you touched on that I think it is important to remind people of is that the Bible Is a book of books. What I mean by that is Mark was its own book, and Luke was it's own book. Sorry I can't remember the name of the convention or get to gather or gathering was called. But what went on was a bunch of religious leaders got together and decided what books to include (to be Cannonised) in the bible, and what ones not to include. I'm not sure what criteria they used to decide what books where part of the bible. But what that tells us is that there are other (sorry can't think of the real famous one) Religious books from the time that were not part of the bible. That cannonising is a good explanation of why stories conflict. I would say because event though things might not be exactly the same they give the same message. Some people would say that means that the deciders of what to include did so for there faith and some would say they picked the books that would give them the most power. I'm not saying either of those things. But I think when people read and try to take the Bible word for word they need to remember that even if they believe god is "all powerful, and all knowing, and maybe even perfect" that man is not, but most people don't think about everything was written by men. To use a modern example two people can see a car crash and the way they both tell the story of what happened is often different sometimes multiple witnesses see the same thing and see it slightly differently.