by Christopher Farrar
Have you ever been accused of heresy? It happened to me a few weeks ago. In one of my Facebook groups I had posted a newspaper story about some pottery that was found in the traditional Hebron burial place of Abraham and Sarah. I introduced the story this way: “Was Abraham real? The short answer: It’s hard to say.” And the fact is that every effort to find historical or archaeological evidence has failed, not just for the man himself but also for the time period in which he could have lived.
One reader had this response: “Either you believe ALL SCRIPTURE or none of it. This is HERESY.” Another agreed with him and both indicated that they were unsubscribing. The group has 30,000 or so members so I don’t think they’ll be missed, but the reaction left me scratching my head.
For one thing, we live in a multi-cultural, multi-religious country. Heresy? Really? Isn’t this a notion that properly belongs with the Spanish Inquisition of 1492?
For another, why do some people feel the need to circle the wagons so tightly around their religious beliefs? Why do they care what archaeologists think about the historicity of Abraham? Is their faith that fragile?
And finally, isn’t this symptomatic of a profound intolerance for a deeper understanding of the world we live in? Isn’t this an intolerance that we find not only in the study of the Bible but also in many other spheres of human experience?
The world is a complicated place. We really shouldn’t expect simple explanations. The Hebrew Bible is an amazing record of the relationship between humanity and the God of Israel. What’s wrong with trying to understand it in its full complexity?