The Honesty of the Bible: Is it Evidence of Its Divine Origin?

One argument in favor of the Bible’s divine inspiration is its honesty in portraying human failure. “If,” it is said, “the Bible were of mere human origin, the Israelites and the early church would never have portrayed themselves in such a ruthless fashion. The Bible exposes people’s sins while attributing their victories to God. Such self-exposure on the one hand, and such humility on the other hand, are not natural to people. They must have a divine origin.”

Now while this argument can be used in support of the authenticity[1] of the New Testament, particularly of the Gospels, it fails to underline the reliability—much less the divine origin—of the Old Testament.

Like any other nation, ancient Israel consisted of different social groups that pursued different interests. Sometimes society worked together harmoniously, and at other times the different groups were set against each other. That was, and still is, a simple fact of civilization.

Now when we come to the books of the Old Testament, we discover that they did not spring from a single social group, but from several different spheres of society. And we furthermore discover that the groups “specialized,” so to speak, in certain types of literature. For example, the majority of the historical books of the Old Testament were written (or composed from other sources) by prophets. It is in them that we find most of the passages that expose the sins of political leaders, corrupt priests, and false prophets.

It is true that these passages are ruthlessly honest, but we are mistaken if we consider this to be a unique characteristic of the Bible. Pagan nations, too, had their prophets and seers; and although there were always those who merely prophesied the political status quo, there were also prophets who openly criticized politics. In fact, one could say that power struggles between priests, prophets, and kings were the rule rather than the exception. This tension between the commissaries of the gods and human rulers within Paganism is shown well in C. S. Lewis’ Till We Have Faces, his only novel set in pre-Christian Paganism.

But perhaps the most famous example can be found in the first few pages of Homer’s Iliad.[2] There, King Agamemnon calls Calchus a “prophet of evil” who has “never yet prophesied smooth things concerning” him, but “ever loved to foretell that which was evil.” The prophet has brought the king “neither comfort nor performance,” and now he is even blaming him for the present trouble. He says that they are a judgment from the god Apollo because the king would not accept a ransom for the kidnapped girl Chryses.

This dialogue could come straight out of the Old Testament. One would only have to exchange a few names (most importantly, the “Lord” for Apollo) and it would fit in well with the other stories of 1 & 2 Kings. The prophet Calchus does exactly the same thing as the prophets of the Old Testament. First, he ruthlessly exposes people’s sins; second, he explains the present judgment and warns of more to come; and third, he offers a solution by showing the path of repentance. In this case the sin was Agamemnon’s refusal to set Chryses free; the judgment was the death of mules, dogs, and men, who were shot by Apollo’s arrows; and the way of repentance, the unconditional surrender of Chryses. In the Bible the sin was (for example) Solomon’s idolatry; the judgment was the split of the kingdom; and the way of repentance, the obliteration of idolatry on part of Jeroboam and subsequent kings.

Another example is the prophet Teiresias in, among other plays, Sophocles’ Oedipus the King. Although the context is quite different than in King David’s case, his words to Oedipus “You are the accursed defiler of this land”[3] are strangely reminiscent of Nathan’s “You are the man!”[4] In both cases the prophet cannot help but be brutally honest with the king.

The honesty of some books of the Old Testament is therefore no proof of the Bible’s divine origin. It is merely proof that, similar to Pagan nations, the prophets of Israel exposed the sins of the people—including those of its rulers—and called on them to appease God in order to escape from judgment.

This is further substantiated by the fact that when a history book is not written by a prophet, certain sins are being glossed over. Of the major Old Testament history books, Chronicles is perhaps the only one not composed by prophets but by priests. And curiously enough, in Chronicles the sins only strike us through their absence. The priests’ role in society and the historical situation at the time of writing[5] caused them to ignore most of the sins that the prophets had exposed. They make no mention of David’s adultery with Bathsheba and the subsequent murder of her husband, Uriah. The only time Uriah is mentioned is in a list of “David’s mighty men,”[6] without any reference to the fact that David had taken his wife and murdered him. Solomon’s idolatry, too, is entirely left out of the picture.

The Old Testament, then, is not as honest and scrupulous about people’s sins as some would think. Only the prophets are scrupulous. That fact, however, can be fully accounted for by their role in society, independent even of the question of whether they were actually inspired by God.

More in The C. S. Lewis Book on the Bible: What the Greatest Christian Writer Thought About the Greatest Book.

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[1] Though not necessarily its divine origin.

[2] I realize, of course, that Homer is no historian but a poet. The Iliad is to a great deal fictitious, which means that the dialogue between the seer and Agamemnon probably never took place. I nevertheless used it as an example because it is a reflection of Pagan culture. In the same manner I could use a passage from a book by John Grisham to illustrate the crookedness of certain lawyers in our time, even though the particular lawyer in John Grisham is a fictional character.

[3] Sophocles, Oedipus the King. Born in 495 BC a little north of Athens, Sophocles was one of the great Greek playwrights of the so-called Golden Age.

[4] 2 Samuel 12:7.

[5] That is, the situation of Judah after the Babylonian exile.

[6] 1 Chronicles 11:41.