You're listening to the Bible for normal people the only God ordained podcast on the internet. I'm Pete ends and I'm Jared bias.

Well welcome everyone to this episode and our topic today is the Bible and the quote problem of history and quote yeah what's our topic man and it's a pretty cool topic.

I think so and it is a bit of a heavy topic. There's a lot of concepts that might be new for people and just a reminder if you're looking for.

Some people to interact with about this ask questions have more conversation we have this slack group.

I'm seeing go to patreon.com front slash the Bible for normal people learn more about it but.

It can be helpful to not have to look over your shoulder at the coffee shop and see if you're going to be accused of being a heretic for having these conversations it's a group of people who are already.

I'm asking these questions you know and you know we had experience in seminary where after class you can go out and hang out with people maybe go to a pub or something and talk about this stuff and that's that's sometimes you have topics we just need to go back and forth a little bit and I think this is one of them because this really hits at the heart.

Of what causes.

A little bit of distress sometimes for people are just like I don't really know what to do with this anymore and that is the quote problem of history so yeah what do we mean by the problem of history what do we mean Jared by that.

Well it's recognizing in our Bible which I think a lot of listeners is it's why they listen it's why we go through these face shifts is we start to notice things in our Bible that aren't.

Passing the mustard of historical research like what the historians say about events that happened aren't lining up with our Bible right and sometimes just it's even simpler than that is just paying attention and seeing.

How you know again there we always talk about this there are four gospels they tell the story of Jesus differently you don't have to be a scholar to see that you just read and say it's right how come it says this in Matthew in this in Luke and John doesn't even care you know so why does that happen.

Even just on the level of reading the Bible like a normal person you're going to be confronted with the problem of history in the Bible and the Old Testament version of that of course is.

The two histories of Israel the first one is basically in the books of Samuel and kings and the other one is in the books of first and second chronicles and if you get if you're just a little bit closer of a reader.

We get it from the very beginning with the two creation accounts yeah in Genesis one one to two and then two to three we have these if we're paying attention we can see these right and you see the two stories of creation.

And you know assuming that those are even historical then you have that problem like well how did it happen but there you even have the added problem you know that people in our time are probably a little more conscious of than maybe from centuries past but you know is this really six days or.

A garden with two magic trees in the middle and then a snake that talks so what do we do with history so it raises the issues of things like myth which we may or not the historical problem is our Bible bumps up against a few things is what I'm hearing say it bumps up against our close reading meaning our own logic says if.

Luke has Jesus giving the same sermon on a plane and Matthew has it on a mount yeah well they couldn't both been true so we're bumping up against our own logic we're also bumping up against science and we're bumping up against archaeology yeah and that's what that's what we're talking about but even if you know Luke and Matthew's sermons of Jesus.

Even if they could be both historically true it's the very fact that we're asking the question right it's our sensibilities make us ask those kinds of questions so I mean the another way of putting it is that the Bible doesn't make it easy for us when it comes to oh this is history or what is history you know it it asks a lot of us and again for some people this isn't a problem but for many others it's like this is what makes you stop in your tracks things like miracles you know.

Not just the miracles can happen but we ask the question we talk about it people rise from the dead this is not a common experience that we have so they're on different levels there is a problem of history just from reading the Bible sort of on our own without any supervision it just sort of happens right right well let's talk about why this is a problem because you were hinting at it there for a minute about the well I would want to use the word historical consciousness it's it's understated.

So there's a lot of understanding there was a world six to 700 years ago and before and then there is a world six or 700 years ago and after and there's this really significant dividing port that scholars and theologians talk about in the modern period that makes this more of a problem if you would have asked a medieval monk how they handle the historical problem with the Bible they would likely have no idea what you're talking about.

Is it that led it to being a problem in the first place because it is a problem for us in a way that it was not a problem for the ancients that just didn't they didn't think about it we don't see in our Bible people wrestling with the historical problem we don't see theologians for hundreds of years or anyone really for hundreds of years wrestling with this but wait a minute the text says this what do we do with the historical account is this historically accurate and why does that matter these are very modern questions right and you know I think the last thing we want to do is present a simplistic

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