COMMENTARY: The Bible Was Shaped by Authors Who, Like Us, Had Imperfect Memories

c. 2005 Religion News Service INDIANAPOLIS _ Standing in the pulpit, this time seeing their faces, I tell about my first visit to this large Methodist church 40-some years ago. Our high school choir sat in the rear balcony, I say, and saw little of what was happening below. All that I remember is the […]

c. 2005 Religion News Service

INDIANAPOLIS _ Standing in the pulpit, this time seeing their faces, I tell about my first visit to this large Methodist church 40-some years ago.

Our high school choir sat in the rear balcony, I say, and saw little of what was happening below. All that I remember is the young soprano whose fervent solo on “Balm in Gilead” touched my heart deeply. “I wish I could remember her name,” I say.


After worship, a dozen people come up to me, saying: “Her name was Bernice. She went on to sing opera.”

None of them was there that Sunday. They are connecting several dots: high school choir, African-American girl, ethereal voice, local fame as a singer. Maybe they are correct. Maybe not.

Before the bearers of Bernice’s name reach me, a young woman races up, her Bible open to Romans 1. She says I was wrong in making a particular point during my sermon. I tell her to read the entire Bible, not just the parts that prove her point. She frowns.

Is this where faith has come? I wonder. Arguments about stray Bible passages, fingers pointing to single verses as if a triumphant “So there!” could undo another person’s life experience and faith journey. Her Bible verse trumps my beliefs? Proving me wrong is her work for God?

Consider that choir performance years ago. Four decades is about the time gap between the actual ministry of Jesus and when unknown authors began writing their gospels. Eyewitnesses were few. Mostly, the evangelists put together stories that people had passed around, stories that were vivid and yet differently detailed, not all remembering the same events, most, including the evangelists, talking about a man they hadn’t seen. Some remembered “hearts burning,” but whose hearts and what caused them to burn came out differently.

Should we fight over a singer’s identity? No, those naming her as Bernice simply want to help. The point is that something powerful occurred and that powerful things continue to happen, because that is the way of music and of God.

Even if we could “prove” her identity _ study the high school yearbook, write the director in California and see if he remembers, post a notice _ the point would still be the “burning,” the power of God alive today.


We need to recognize that the four Gospels tell substantially different stories, that Paul’s letters convey a Messiah who sounds different from the Gospel accounts, and that specific details of nearly all events were already being forgotten four decades after they occurred. Does that make them lifeless? Not at all. In telling about an event from years ago, I am still so moved by it that my emotions surge.

Even if I am misremembering every detail, something happened that has had transforming power, something deeper than a name, something about being 16, about hearing an angelic voice, about sensing the pathos of race, about the power of music to take us outside ourselves, about glimpsing some enormity that the next four decades would bring more into focus.

Rather than get hung up on specific details as related by people who weren’t there, I need to examine that transforming power, I need to see their desire to help, I need to ask what that long-ago glimpse of deep meaning says to my life today.

If I ever found that soprano and learned her name, I wouldn’t race back to others and say, “See, her name wasn’t (or was) Bernice after all.” I would want to say to her, “Thank you for the gift you gave, a gift you probably weren’t aware of giving. Now tell me more. What else do you know of life and of God? And I will tell you what I know.”

And if I never found her _ which is the likelihood _ I would tell you about hearing her, and you would tell about your experiences, and together we would discern something of God alive today.

MO/PH END RNS

(Tom Ehrich is a writer, consultant and leader of workshops. His forthcoming book, “Just Wondering, Jesus: 100 Questions People Want to Ask,” will be published by Morehouse Publishing. An Episcopal priest, he lives in Durham, N.C. His Web site is http://www.onajourney.org.)


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