Myths in the Bible
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About this ebook
Henry A. Buchanan
Henry Alfred Buchanan was born in Georgia more than ninety years ago. He grew up on a red dirt farm near Macon and attended church at Mount Zion Baptist Church. The Lord called him to preach; he studied at Mercer University, then at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary where he earned the degree of Doctor of Theology. Doctor Buchanan loved the heroes of the Bible from his boyhood. And he takes the teachings of Jesus very seriously. He always wondered where Cain and Able got their wives, and who Cain feared would kill him. He marveled at the falling of the walls of Jericho. He wanted to find the meaning of it all. Buchanan was born to write, and he has written twenty-seven books and some newspaper and magazine articles. He did most of his work in Kentucky, but moved to Texas because that’s where the Georgia girl, Anne Ellis, lives. They married. In Texas he keeps on writing and there may be another book after Myths in the Bible. Watch for it!
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Myths in the Bible - Henry A. Buchanan
CONTENTS
Introduction
Prologue To Myths In The Bible
The Old Testament
The Creation
The Flood
The Tower
Abraham And Isaac
Jacob/Israel
Joseph
Moses
Joshua
Samson
David
Samuel/Saul/David/Solomon
Elijah
Jonah
Daniel
Job
The New Testament
Jesus
The Apocalypse
An Afterthought
Epilogue
About The Author
Books by Henry A. Buchanan
Alfie’s Story—Little Boy Growing Up
Alfie and the Moonshiners
And the Rest of Alfie’s Story
In the Tobacco Patch
Jay Cee—A Political Novel of the Presidency
The Televangelist
Oedipus Revisited
No Greater Love
The Devil and Tom Walker
Terror! Terror! And Tom Walker Two
NEXT: Iran and the War that Wasn’t . . . Yet
The Goat Also Laughed
The Tale of the Cat Who Had No Tail
The Sinner Messiah
The Day Christ Came Back
The Shellman Story—Hanging the Preacher
Little Chicken Tales
The Marriage Myth
For Love of Leander
Oscar and Ethel
My Conversations with God
A Preacher’s Tales
Alfie and Papa’s Other Boys
Essays
A Letter to the Editor
DEDICATION
To my wife, Anne.
And to my friend, Klel, for the many
hours of challenging and stimulating conversation.
INTRODUCTION
I was warned not to write this book. Don’t you ever use the word myth when you are writing about the Bible.
The angry bibliophile was almost apoplectic because he had read my reference to the creation myth in a newspaper article. The threat was visible in his face, audible in his voice. Obvious in his bodily stance. He clutched his own Bible in his hand as he threatened me.
But I have written the book now, and I do not know what to expect. A horsewhipping Texas-style, or something worse? Shooting people is common now. En masse or an individual shooting to settle an argument.
Should I stand barefoot and trembling on holy ground as I wait for the wrath to come? I had cleared it with my Lord. He said to me Write, for the memory of man is faulty.
So I have written Myths in the Bible, and I stand exposed. My only defense is that I am right. I have written truth.
Now I offer the book to you, Dear Reader. In reading again the well loved stories of how God and man have struggled for that power inherent in God and offered to man, I have come to live the struggle, and if you see me limp, you may know that as He did with Jacob, He touched my thigh and left His mark on me.
PROLOGUE TO
MYTHS IN THE BIBLE
A t the middle of the twentieth century A.D., I arrived at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky. My wife was with me and we were assigned a room in a wing of Mullins Hall. The showers were at the other end of that wing and the dining room was in the wing opposite ours.
I had just completed my studies for a Bachelor of Arts degree at Mercer University, a Baptist school of high repute in my hometown of Macon, Georgia. My faculty adviser, Dr. George Ghord, had urged me to attend the seminary in order to be better prepared for the preaching ministry to which I had been committed at age twelve. I had been studying the Bible and doing some preaching in small town and country Baptist churches but intensive studies at the flagship seminary of the Southern Baptist Convention would make me far more competent to preach the Word and be pastor of a church. I was ready to be taught.
I signed up for classes in both Old Testament and New Testament, and the study of the Greek language in which the New Testament was written. I would be required to study Hebrew too, the language of the Old Testament, but I put it off until my third year, just in case something might happen to me and I would not survive long enough to have to study Hebrew which posed a formidable challenge. I would have to study Hebrew for one year though because Hebrew was the language God spoke when He was preparing His people for the Christ, at which time He would switch over to speaking Greek. But I must become well acquainted with both Hebrew and Greek in order to effectively preach the Word of God which was in the Bible. At this point I was informed by my revered teachers that there are no myths in the Bible. It was all true, both historically and factually, with no margin for error, unless some scribe had made notes on his own while recording or copying the original Word which God had spoken. And there were no myths, a term equated with fiction, untruths, even a lie.
Up to this point in my reading of the Bible I had not even wondered whether there were myths lying in wait there to trip me. I simply believed the stories were true, prepared my slingshot to reproduce the feat of the boy David, and down any giant who challenged me. It was all true and I had never considered whether there might be more than one kind of truth. My parents had taught me that telling the truth even when I had done wrong, was better than trying to lie out of it. Miss Florrie, my grade school teacher, had reinforced my parental training, and I had never heard of myths in the Bible or anywhere else. Now the teachers at the seminary were telling me there are no myths in the Bible.
So I assumed there must be myths in the Bible. And I would find them.
But first I must find out what a myth is, and for this