Why is the Bible remarkable

Any book can be remarkable. It could bear a great story. It could bear lessons about bravery, morality, sensation, unpredictability, love, and so on.

If a book excels in it’s category, say as a fictional crime thriller, it is remarkable. Many copies will be sold, people will speak about it.

This is the first reason why the Bible is remarkable. It contains stories about God, heaven, origin, sin, purpose, and so on. The stories of the Bible contain all extremes: wars, slaughter, forgiveness, believe, sacrifice, morality, laws, prophecies, healings, resurrection, day of judgement, this list is endless.

In addition to being remarkable, stories can be ‘unbelievable’. The status of unbelievable is reached when the story really happend. When the experience of the writer is a real and uncommon event, it triggers our curiosity. We want to know more, we want to verify. Did it really happen? How did it happen?

When we ask a writer about the event to verify the truth of the story, the writer will answer with facts like time, date, place, witnesses, and so on. The claim that (s)he was there, in combination with assertiveness, in combination with verifyable facts in the story, in combination with the absence of contradictory stories, make us believe that the story really happened.

The absence of any of these, either being the eyewitness, being certain, knowing facts, or the presence of contradicting stories, will make us doubt.

The other way around is true as well: more eyewitnesses, more certainty of those who speak, more coherence in their stories, a high the number of verifyable facts and the absence of conflicting stories will convince us of its truth.

The unbelievable part about the Bible, the idea of history, simply rise when reading the Bible, because:

• The Bible stories often refer to known historical cities, kings, eras, gods, habits, transportation methods, cloths, laws, peoples, and so on
• Consistency among the facts: at the time of Moses there were Pharoahs with known cities like Phi-Ramesses. At the time of Jesus there were Romans with known cities like Rome. The timeline in the Bible from Jesus back to Moses corresponds with the time between the know Egyptian pharoahs and the Roman emperors.
• Most stories are written in dull descriptive narrative; ‘in this year, that happened’
• Amost every writer explicitly refers to previous books (and in case of prophesies to the subsequent books)
• The existence of numerous family registers, going back to Adam and forth all the way to Jesus, of which most names can be verified from previous books
• 4 different authors write explicitly about Jesus life on earth, including the details about his teachings, actions, trial, death, resurrection and ascension.
• The consistency of the message throughout many of the stories: fall of men, redemption of men, judgement day.

Our real struggle with the Bible is the existence of many criteria which lift the stories from remarkable to unbelievable. From fiction to non fiction.

With non fiction our struggle is next level, divine: if emperor Augustus lived, if Nazareth exist(ed), if 4 people describe the teachings of Jesus Christ, the possibility is that the teachings and prophecies of Jesus are historical, thus true.

Abovementioned struggle is from ‘outside-in’. The struggle to see the stories of the Bible as the stories that happened, stories of truth.

The next struggle is from ‘inside-out’. If we reach the point where we believe that the stores are history, if Jesus is who the stories describe, if it is true, what does it teach? What are its implications? Something for another day, another topic.