reverend, i'm curious, how do you know so much about the bible and language and the ulterior motives of the writers of the gospels (and, by extension, about the period and society within which they were written), but you do not extrapolate this knowledge to reach the conclusion that it's all likely BS?
it is fascinating. I think it was simply an unavoidable consequence of a monotheistic religion. they consolidated the universe into one god, but realized in order to explain so much earthly suffering the only explanation is that god is an angry deity. and you touch on another interesting dichotomy when you reference that he knows the future. how do people of faith reconcile the free will of humans vs god knowing everything that's going to happen? this has always baffled me.
So to your first point- I wouldn't say that I'm 100% certain that I know what was going on in their heads, but I've read a lot of people who are much more knowledgeable than I am on these topics. But consider this sort of what-if scenario. What if In 1,000 years after some sort of major event in which our current societies are destroyed, someone found Lincoln's Gettysburg Address. They'd be able to read something of the context by the content of the document. And then suppose they found the Constitution a few years later, and that would help to fill in some gaps. And then they found an academic paper on the Address from the 1970s, that would give them more insight.
Essentially, this is what religious scholars do. We have various manuscripts of the Bible (and the slight differences between them can be telling), we have some religious literature from the surrounding regions from roughly the same time, we have some archeology which gives us insight into what daily life must have been like, we have early letters (200s) from Bishops writing about some of these issues.
I wouldn't say they're BS at all. Imagine that the Gettysburg Address were given, but we didn't have Lincoln's manuscript and they decided not to make it publicly available (as the Bible wasn't written down for a generation after the events of the NT took place). So then perhaps a northern decided they should write a newspaper article about the speech, and a southern did the same, and a visiting Englishman as well, and how about an African slave. They'd be telling the same story, but with a different mindset and they'd want their audiences to hear different parts of the story. Perhaps they'd leave something out if it didn't help with their agenda. Perhaps they'd add other stories or sayings of Lincoln that helped their point. None of that detracts from the actual Address. And by comparing the different versions, we learn something about a fuller picture of the actual Address, but also what was important in these different communities.
I'm mostly here speaking of the NT and the gospels specifically, but I think the analogy somewhat fits. The other piece, is that for Christians who properly understand the place of the Bible and Scripture, is that it points towards Jesus. In the same way that no one argues "The Gettysburg Address forever changed the course of American history" (at least, it doesn't really make sense to say the document changed history, but rather, the author did), but plenty of people would argue that "Lincoln is the greatest president this nation has ever known." The same should be said of the Bible- it points us towards something bigger than itself. But unfortunately, sola scriptura has been misunderstood and misapplied.
And furthermore, Christians believe that Jesus/God is known through prayer, other people, nature, etc., not just through Scripture. So even if the Bible is flawed and has some bs in it, that's not a deal breaker for me (but for many Evangelical Christians, it is, that is why they dig their heels in so deeply when it comes to issues of "Biblical marriage," or whatever the issue de jour is.).
And to your second question- I don't know that I'd argue that God knows the future, and many theologians say the same. Some would say God is outside of time, and therefore past/present/future are constructs that only exist from our vantage point, but they aren't "real." Others though would say that God, by being God, chose to be what we (Christians) think of as God. So God could have been Zeus-like or whatever, but God chose to be God. And in doing so, God took on some limits/definitions, and one of those is that God cannot know what has not happened, because it hasn't happened yet. It's sort of like asking can God create a rock so large that God couldn't push it up a hill? Or can God create a square-circle? Those questions are surd. They make no rationale sense and have no answer. Some would argue that asking, can God know what has not yet happened? is the same sort of question. That being said, if we understand omniscience not as knowing the future, but knowing all that is possible to be known, we have an understanding of omniscience that works better. If God knows all the laws of physics, and the hearts/minds of every living thing, and everything that happened in the past, and the current state of all things, God could reasonably predict the future with stunning accuracy, but God still could be surprised, leaving free-agency soundly intact.
And I realize this will seem like a cop-out to some, but recently retired UNC prof Marilyn McCord Adams is known for reminding students that "God is very, very big, and we are very, very small." It would be as if a goldfish tried to make sense of our actions and motivations. Again, I realize that might not be an agreeable argument to all, but if we can at least agree (whether you believe it or not) that we're speaking about the proposition of the being/entity/thing that created all that is and ever shall be, and (at least in the Abrahamic faiths) and still active in some sense, then the idea that there are simply limits to our understanding has to be accepted. Doesn't mean we can't use our God-given brains and the gifts of logic/reason, but let's not make our full understanding into an idol.
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