Is the Bible true? And if it is true, in what way is it true?

I can hear the groaning in your head from here. Shh!

I know, it’s Sunday and Christmas was only on Thursday and your brain has been put on half time because it’s not really needed to watch Strictly Celebrity Christmas Special and listen to family chit chat, and any way most of your body resources have been diverted to the digestive system which is still trying to deal with what you ate on December 25th and every time it starts to get on top of it you’re shovelling more in and… you haven’t quite had the opportunity to sober up for days. And, look, most of the congregation aren’t here anyway So, all said, why is he bothering me this morning with stupid questions like ‘is the Bible true and in what way?’

Worry ye not and rest ye merry, I did the thinking for us a few weeks ago before the first infant voice squeaked Away in a Manger in the wrong key, and I’m just reading this  now by a clever process learned at theological college whereby text enters the eyes and exits the mouth without engaging the brain. Bishops are black belts at this art. So,  all the necessary thinking has already been done. Carry on snoozing, but keep listening.

So, it’s day four of the Christmas Season and today we’re celebrating the feast of the Holy Innocents, which, for the benefit of any visitors— because all St Mary’s regulars know precisely who they are— for the benefit of visiting relatives, the Holy Innocents were Bethlehem’s male children under two that Herod had slaughtered in his panic after the Wise Men told him about the birth of the new king. As Herod thought he was king, this meant a challenger, and, as that challenger was unlikely to be toddling round Bethlehem wearing a royal romper suit,  he decided the best way to deal with that was to kill all the boys who’d recently been born. On the fourth day of Christmas…

So, back to that first brain freezer question ‘Is the Bible true? And if it is true, in what way?’

I ask, because the tale of the Holy Innocents is, well, possibly problematic. Depending on how you like your truth, it might not even be true. St Matthew was very concerned to show that Jesus ‘fulfilled the scriptures’. He might occasionally have not bothered to scrutinise his sources too closely if they fit what he wanted to say. Maybe it was a story too good not to retell.

So. It might just then make sense to ask, is this story- Herod’s mass infanticide- is it a story of historical truth, something we can know that, even if some of the details might be hazy, actually happened, like Caesar’s murder in the senate or Hadrian practicing his bricklaying in Northumberland; actually happened like the Spanish Armada or the American civil war, actually happened like the treaty of Versailles or the Russian Revolution. I’m sure a part of us might rather prefer it not to be true, because, it’s really a wretched tale.

Well, let’s have a think.  Despite a terse and soon–over Bible story, in Christian tradition, the slaughter of the Holy innocents is presented as an atrocity of shocking infamy, which of course it would have been. In which case you might want to ask why is the only mention we have of it in an even vaguely near contemporary writing, the one in Matthew’s gospel? Surely Josephus might have made mention in Jewish Antiquities: after all it haspretty much everything else in it? He didn’t. Perhaps one of the Pliny’s could have noted the scandal… but they seem to have forgotten.  Or for that matter, Mark, Luke or John might have written about it, but you’ll search high, low and fruitlessly in the rest of the New Testament for anyone to bring it up. As it stands, nobody mentioned the murder of the Holy Innocents apart from Matthew, and then probably at least 70 years after it had allegedly occurred.

That doesn’t mean it didn’t happen.  

First century, Bethlehem was a tiny place, the sort of place where everybody knew everybody else because there wasn’t that many people to know. And net curtains had yet to be invented. So, the smallest of small towns: had Herod set off on a murder spree, probably a handful of children at most would have have their lives taken from them to quench the king’s paranoia. That doesn’t make the event any less of a crime, of course, but it does make it less likely to be noticed.

And then, how would anybody outside of town have found out? Who would have known? Particularly if Herod’s henchmen had been given orders for it to be done in secret. These were the days long before the internet, 24 hour news channels, radio bulletins or even newspapers. 

And Bethlehem was, well, nowhere. A tiny town in a part of the world most of the world didn’t know existed and couldn’t have cared less about even if they did. Not top priority for the news bulletins.

Then we might want to ask, had the news somehow spread, and people bothered to listen, would it have been a great scandal? In a world  that exposed unwanted infants,  was economically reliant on slave labour, killed criminals by crucifixion and entertained itself in stadia watching people being ripped to pieces by wild beasts. In such a world, would anyone have batted an eyelid if the client king of nowhere had had a few peasant children killed? It’s harsh, but probably not.

I’ve gone all this way– and I hope it’s not made your indigestion any worse– all this way, I’m afraid, just to say, you know, we just don’t know if the slaughter of the Holy Innocents is history or not and we probably never can. Admittedly, history in general is like that: what we don’t know is so much more than what we do know and what we do know, historians are always arguing about.

However, the question I started us with today was not whether this Bible story was history, but is it true? 

And to that question we can confidently answer, ‘yes it is’. It is true in the way that all the Bible is true. Not in a ‘this happened, then this happened, then this was next and here’s the chit to prove it’ sort of way. But in the way that it tells us about God, the source of all truth, the ultimate truth.

So, we find truth of this tale is not in its historical veracity but comes from its place in salvation history. 

Here is the truth it tells.

The truth is,  that from the very start Jesus was a threat to the powers of this world; he still is and so we his followers are too. 

The truth is that from the very start people hated Jesus because of what he was. 

The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world… and people loved darkness rather than light because their deeds were evil.

The world still prefers that darkness.

The truth is that however blameless your life might be, if the world thinks you are a threat they will seek to destroy you, just as Herod sought to destroy Jesus. If you are a follower of Jesus, you are a threat.

But, also, the truth is, the kingdom of Herod cannot survive the coming of the Kingdom of God. The gates of Hell will not prevail against it.

The truth is.

The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.