Thor's Day: Mark Twain down to earth

Does the Bible lie?

By Morris Dean

Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens, 1835-1910] wrote in his posthumously published book Letters from the Earth that the Bible

is full of interest. It has noble poetry in it; and some clever fables; and some blood-drenched history; and some good morals; and a wealth of obscenity; and upwards of a thousand lies.

Surely that can't be right. People aren't necessarily lying when they write down as true things that are false. Maybe they just don't know any better. In order to be lying, you have to know that what you are presenting as true, isn't. But I am willing to accept that when the Gospel writers and the author of the Pauline epistles (to mention just a few of the Bible's contributors) said that Jesus rose from the dead, they actually believed that he did. And they probably believed that the loaves and the fishes were multiplied to feed the multitudes. Writing down what they believed to be true wasn't lying.

But Mr. Clemens also wrote (in "Bible Teaching and Religious Practice," Europe and Elsewhere) that

The Christian's Bible is a drug store. Its contents remain the same; but the medical practice changes...The world has corrected the Bible. The Church never corrects it; and also never fails to drop in at the tail of the procession and take the credit of the correction. During many ages there were witches. The Bible said so. the Bible commanded that they should not be allowed to live. Therefore the Church, after eight hundred years, gathered up its halters, thumb-screws, and firebrands, and set about its holy work in earnest. She worked hard at it night and day during nine centuries and imprisoned, tortured, hanged, and burned whole hordes and armies of witches, and washed the Christian world clean with their foul blood.
    Then it was discovered that there was no such thing as witches, and never had been. One does not know whether to laugh or to cry...There are no witches. The witch text remains; only the practice has changed. Hell fire is gone, but the text remains. Infant damnation is gone, but the text remains. More than two hundred death penalties are gone from the law books, but the texts that authorized them remain.

Oh, I see. The authorities haven't come out with corrected editions, even when untruths are acknowledged, so...they are lying?

But what about the popular claim that the Bible is "the word of God" – that is, that God is somehow the author of the Bible? Mr. Clemens comments on that in his Notebook:

When one reads Bibles, one is less surprised at what the Deity knows than at what He doesn't know.

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Copyright © 2014 by Morris Dean

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