In part 1, we began our critique of the popular argument that the Bible is uncannily consistent, without historical error or contradiction, despite having been written by many authors from diverse locations over 1500 years. We’ll conclude our critique with a search for the Bible’s promised common theme and then wrestle with a challenge aimed at those who doubt the value of this argument.

Problem 2: what’s the Bible’s “common theme”?

Clue #2 to the Bible’s divine authorship, according to these apologists, is its common theme. Here it is in their words:

The Bible has 66 books by 40 authors, written over 1500 years, in 3 languages, on 3 continents, and yet there is one consistent theme: the glory of God in the salvation of man through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, the Messiah of Israel. (Source)

This collection of books shares a common storyline—the creation, fall, and redemption of God’s people; a common theme—God’s universal love for all of humanity; and a common message—salvation is available to all who obey the Gospel and follow God with all of their heart, soul, mind and strength. (Source)

Yet despite this marvelous array of topics and goals, the Bible displays a flawless internal consistency. It never contradicts itself or its common theme, . . . [God’s] love, grace, and mercy [extended] to unworthy people who deserved to be cast into the lake of fire for all eternity. (Source)

Since Jesus isn’t on every page of the Bible (or even in every chapter, or even in every book), this fails.

Even when you look at the Christians’ favorite prophecies of Jesus (Isaiah 53 or Psalm 22), at best you find clumsy parallels with the crucifixion story. If this imagined common theme existed, it would surely be found in these prophecies of Jesus. But read those chapters, and there is no mention of love, grace, mercy, or salvation from hell. There isn’t even death by crucifixion or the resurrection.

A challenge to skeptics: duplicate the Bible’s marvelous record

One source demanded that the skeptic find an example comparable to the Bible’s consistent message despite diverse authorship.

I challenge you to go to any library in the world, you can choose any library you like, and find 66 books which match the characteristics of the 66 books in the Bible. You must choose 66 books, written by 40 different authors, over 1500 years, in 3 different languages, written on 3 different continents. However, they must share a common storyline, a common theme, and a common message, with no historical errors or contradictions.

This challenge flops since the Bible is not particularly consistent. It’s full of contradictions and errors.

But let’s forge ahead and respond to the challenge anyway. Can we find another set of books that comes from comparably diverse origins while being internally consistent? I think we can. Let’s use books written about World War II. Here’s how we can respond to these criteria.

• 66 books written by 40 different authors. There are 60 thousand books written about World War II. Let’s imagine sorting through these books to find the one percent that fit most harmoniously together—that’s 600 books from 600 authors. Of course, these books could be eclectic and range from high level, comprehensive histories of all theaters of the war to narrow aspects such as the SS, Hitler, Allied air power, the Manhattan Project and so on. But of course the Bible’s books are eclectic as well. Genesis begins with mythology, the books of Kings and Chronicles document history, Esther is the story of a Jewish woman who saved the Jews in Persia, and Amos was a prophet in Israel in the mid-700s BCE.
• Three different languages. We can find books written in English (from the U.S.), French or Arabic (from Tunisia), and German (from Germany). This was a world war, and we could probably find books from sixty modern countries, compared to a tenth that number for the Bible.
• From three different continents. The U.S. gives us North America, Tunisia gives us Africa, and Germany gives us Europe. But we can do better. Add books written in Japanese, Chinese, Burmese, Tagalog, and more, and we have Asia. We can also add Australia—that’s five continents. How many languages have WW2 books been written in? Certainly dozens. Perhaps hundreds.
• Written over 1500 years. No, the Bible wasn’t written over 1500 years. A better estimate is 1000 years: 900 BCE (for parts of Genesis) to 100 CE (Revelation and some epistles). This is where the Bible wins, because the period of authorship of our WW2 books would probably only start in the 1930s. That means that the Bible has a roughly 10× greater date range.
• No historical errors or contradictions. The Bible is a bigly failure here. It’s hard to quantify this on a Scale of Embarrassment, but one percent of WW2 books, deliberately selected to avoid contradiction, sounds like they would make a more consistent story than the hodge-podge in the Bible. Any Christian apologist who disagrees can start with responding to my list of Bible contradictions.

So how did we do? The Bible wins on timespan by a factor of ten, but our WW2 collection has ten times the number of books, ten times the number of authors, ten times the number of languages, ten times the number of modern countries of authorship, and five continents instead of three.

Instead of WW2, there are many other historical events that would reduce the Bible’s timespan advantage—say, the Battle of Agincourt, the Battle of Hastings, or the Roman Empire—though I don’t know if they could beat World War II on the other criteria.

But this is a tangent. The biggest embarrassment for the Bible in this contest remains. Its errors and contradictions make clear that no omniscient divinity was behind it.

Continue to #51, 3 Stupid Arguments from Alvin Plantinga

Related articles:

• Simplicity: the Trait Missing from Christianity
• The Bible Story Reboots. Have You Noticed?

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Image from Ryan Wilson, CC license
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