Bible musings

Every now and then I feel an unsought skepticism when I’m reading my Bible.

Last week I read the story of Joseph and Potiphar’s wife in Genesis 39. I was struck by how very personal the scene is, and wonder: how did all these details get preserved? What attracted Potiphar’s wife; Joseph’s response; the climactic scene where he flees, leaving his garment in her hand. Who observed and recorded this? Did Joseph keep a diary? Did he tell the story to his grandchildren? It seems like strangely intimate fare for oral tradition.

These questions don’t occur when I read about the larger events — floods, captivities, wanderings, battles, inheritances. But with the very personal, small scale, anecdotal stories, they do. Who told about Lot’s daughters sleeping with him? Or Ham laughing at his father Noah, passed out in a drunken stupor? Or Judah’s seedy behavior toward Tamar?

Who recorded Jesus’ prayer in Gethsemene, given that those with him fell asleep — though it’s conceivable, there, that one of them stayed awake long enough to register the little bit that’s recorded. It seems heartless that they would sleep after hearing prayers like that and seeing bloody perspiration like that. But he had already plainly said his heart was “exceedingly sorrowful, even unto death,” and yet they fell asleep. I may start to criticize, till I remember that I’m surely not beyond such callousness myself.

That’s what brings me back to the plausibility of these tales. They have the crazy, mixed-grain, often humiliating ring of truth. If the patriarchs were going to fabricate stories about their own history, surely these aren’t the kind they’d come up with. They’d come up with more heroic fare. Same with the disciples: who but those with the knowledge that they are under grace, humble servants who are forgiven and loved by the only One whose opinion matters, would ever tell the tale of Gethsemene?

When we feel the temptation toward image control as believers, the Bible is a bracing admonition to the more humiliating and incredible, but ultimately more convincing, testimony of truth.