Ian Carlos Iracheta

The Bible as a Literary Mirage

One of the most enthralling aspects surrounding the Bible is the colossal abyss that yaws between
what this most ancient book is thought to be, and what it verily is. For something that has been
completely immersed in the worlds cultural tableau ever since the days of yore, and that
continues to occupy a paramount place in todays society, it is quite bewildering how the Bible has
always been enshrouded by a miasma of misconceptions. The fact that most people dont learn
about their religion in a direct manner, i.e. by personally reading scripture, but by a pious proxy,
has only augmented the level of vexatious misconstructions and general ignorance in reference to
this unarguably invaluable book. In fact, in order to prove this point, one needs not look further
than to the very first verse of the very first book to find a thought-provoking disjunctive between
what the Bible actually says, and what the collective consciousness of humanity has arbitrarily
declared to be axiomatically true. Were one to poll the western populace as a whole about how
the Bible starts, it wouldnt be striking if most people were to answer a somewhat paraphrased, or
even severely distorted version of In the beginning was the Word. However, this ostensibly
plausible answer in the eyes of the human hive mind is off by approximately forty-three books;
that is, a whole testament away from where the right answer lies. In fact, this often-quoted verse
appears in the Gospel of John (1:1) in the New Testament, where the apostle quickly retells the
story of Genesis, but the creation of the world is obviously first narrated in the eponymous
chapter whose opening verse is the not colossally, yet sufficiently different In the beginning God
created.. Genesis 1:1
Other instances of brobdingnagian solecisms attributed to the visibly non-reliable concept of
common knowledge are not a literary delicacy, only to be enjoyed on special occasions, but a
recurring theme whenever the Bible is discussed. The laymans knowledge about this literary work
is teeming with wild guesses and blatantly erroneous ideas. Apart from the aforementioned
example, two other prominent ones immediately spring to mind:
According to the Bible, Mary is the mother of Jesus; however, centuries of nondenominational
cultural attrition have changed in the mind of the average person that simple statement from its
correct form to the virgin Mary is the mother of Jesus. It is only by reading the Bible that we can
receive the discombobulating surprise that the vestal epithet with which this eminent feminine
biblical character was bestowed by the Christian agenda is either wrongly interpreted by the pious
demographic, or completely inappropriate. In the Gospel of Mark, we learn that Jesus is not an
only child and that he actually has several brothers and sisters. Since no divine intervention is
announced anywhere in the New Testament in regard to their conception, one can surmise that
unlike Jesus, his brothers, James, Joseph and Judas, and his unnamed sisters, are the offspring of
Joseph rather than of the manifestation of the Holy Spirit. This of course means that the words
virgin and Mary dont belong together in their traditional semantic arrangement.
This conclusion is not one that can be easily refuted by claiming an error in interpretation. In fact
this truth is unavoidable because of the obvious presence of both allegorical and literal meaning in
Ian Carlos Iracheta

the Gospel of Mark. In the third book Jesus is told by a throng of people that his mother and
brothers are looking for him, and he replies Who are my mother and brothers? Here are my
mother and brothers! (Mark 3:34) while pointing at the crowd around him. Evidently, the only
way in which this passage makes sense is if both his literal and metaphorical family play a role on
the scene.
Another apparent non-sequitur in Biblical logic that has been wrought by the extraneous minds of
the populace into a more logical, and in a way more coherent result is the famous book of Job. In
it, after being deprived of his offspring, his cattle, his slaves, and finally his health in what is
basically a glorified bet between God and Satan, -who isnt the devil here - Job spends the ensuing
thirty-five books in what can only be described as a raucous tantrum about his affliction. He
burnishes the plot by telling the four friends that visit him that he is in the right, and that therefore
God is being unjust. His friends then proceed to sporadically interrupt him and tell him that he is
mistaken and that God is never unjust, something that God himself denies at the end of the book,
while talking to the five men from the heart of a column of wind.
This pseudo-exordium has the purpose of shaking the readers paradigm and general set of
assumptions vis--vis the Bible. By challenging some of our most steadfast beliefs with the
vanquishing ram of empirical evidence, we can actually discover that perhaps our stalwart
postulates de facto constitute the cornerstone of the proverbial empire built on sand, instead of
the bedrock foundation which we had hitherto considered them to be. The underlying quality of
the aforementioned passages is that they are thought to be remarkably different by our collective
cultural conscience. Well, this attribute can be extrapolated and not just applied singly to specific
literary extracts, but to the Bible as a whole. Maybe just like in the case of Job, the other books
arent what they are thought to be. It is like this that the most contentious of issues regarding the
Bible is introduced; the infamous question that has been uttered several times throughout history:
Is the Bible the word of God, or a literary text?
It is historically visible that the Bible was written in a hefty percentage by man; therefore, it is
undeniable that it cant be the direct work of God in its entirety. Theologically speaking, the sheer
volume on contradictions, plot holes and other literary debacles should be attributed to this
quality; that is to say, what makes the Bible not perfect isnt a godly mistake, but the centuries of
attrition it suffered by the hand of man. The pragmatic consequences of this literary erosion can
be evidenced in the fact that anyone who decided to live his life following the Bibles teachings in
their simultaneous entirety would probably live in a perpetual, figurative crossroad because the
whole contents of the Bible werent all peacefully amalgamated into a single canon.
With the infallibility traditionally attributed to God, such a chaotic result as the one evidently
present in the Good Book would be simply impossible. Individual contradictions need not be
scrutinizing analyzed, as it only is necessary to briefly compare the God of the Old Testament to
the one of the New Testament to resolve that they are the result of completely different
theological Weltanschauungs. From this stems the point that the Bible is in its majority the work of
Ian Carlos Iracheta

human beings, and therefore, a literary text, since that is the loftiest result to which men can aim
for.

It is important to remember that this does not invalidate the religious value that this book has had
heretofore possessed, as it has been said several times that any form of art is a mirror of reality.
However, sitting on the proverbial fence as a conscientious observer is not a valid option on this
most controversial issue. It is not heresy to regard the Bible as being the work of man and not of
God; in fact, regardless of theological issues, anyone who takes a modern Bible and thinks it to be
the literal, verbatim work of God is guilty of a cantankerous obstinacy and a narrow-minded denial
of reality. The Bible is a book that, since the dawn of literate time, has been translated,
rearranged, edited, censored, elongated, etc, myriad times. The colossal number of human pens
that have entered into it could have, by sheer volume, eclipsed the divine quill that might have
provided the general outline for the text.