I love searching for treasures on tables stacked high with slightly musty, peeling, discarded books at the library book sale. In the final days, you can stuff a grocery bag full of books for $2.00! While rejoicing in my finds, however, there is a part of me that grieves for the loss of books from the library shelves. I know that libraries have limited space; they can’t keep everything. But, most of my bargain priced treasures are old books. Clearing the old makes way for the new. With every sale, some very good books that a younger generation will never read are removed simply because they are too old to stay on the library shelves.
While I feel a sense of loss that some of my favorite stories are out-of-print and off the shelves, there are some who harbor scorn for the old books. I have heard this disdain quite often recently with regards to my favorite old book… The Bible. Famous people like Bill Nye said it on television while debating Ken Ham a few years ago… “It’s just an old book!” I have seen it on social media… “I don’t want to hear about the Bible, it’s just an old book!” I have had friends tell me to my face, “It’s just an old book, why do you read it?”
This dismissal seems so obvious to those who are speaking it. They think that it is logical. No one could believe anything from a book that is 2000 years old!
In thinking along these lines, I began a mental book shelf clearing of all of the books as old as the New Testament or older. If it is logical to simply dismiss without any thought as to content any book that is as old as the Bible, what other books must we clear from our shelves? With just a little investigation, my pile of ancient library discards became quite large and far-reaching.
The fields of ethics and philosophy will have to get by without Plato and Aristotle.
Ancient World History and Archaeology will cease to be studied…. all of their original texts are BC era.
Language study will suffer a huge setback because the famous Rosetta Stone is too old to shed any light on deciphering hieroglyphics.
Modern Medicine must live without the writings of it’s founder, Hippocrates.
Children and adults alike will never know either the maxims “slow and steady wins the race” or “a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush” along with the delightfully illustrative stories that accompany them (and all of the other fables of Aesop) merely because Aesop, in the 6th Century BC, wrote too long ago.
Similarly, Confucius and his wise, pithy sayings-from 5th Century BC- are tossed out with the rest.
Physics must live without much of it’s foundational texts, including the brilliant discovery by Archimedes that different materials have different densities.
Mathematics also will suffer, for Euclid was centuries before Christ, and his marvelous Elements, which is still studied by many today for in depth Geometry study is just too old.
Even the very same logic that one thinks they are using by dismissing the Bible for being “too old” has its origins in texts and with authors much older than the New Testament, like Aristotle.
Much of the sciences, education, literature, of course history, and, yes, religion of our modern world has its roots and bases in antiquity. This article in Wikipedia lists the plethora of Ancient literature we have acquired and kept.
In reality, we don’t discard an idea or a discovery because it is found in “just an old book”, even if the book is thousands of years old. We keep anything that is found to be useful or proven to be truth. So, the question is not “Is the Bible too old?” but rather, “Is the Bible true?”. And some, for millennia, have found the Bible to be, indeed, truth. Others, however, find the teachings of the Bible to be foolish and offensive. This fact itself is one of the truths that the Bible explains.
I Corinthians 1:18 For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.
The Word of God, the Bible is truth to those who are being saved, and it doesn’t matter how old it is.
With Joy!
Kathleen
What’s amazing to me, is despite the Bible’s age, it’s still read and treasured by millions. Even more wonderful, the Bible will never fade with the years, it will be around until the end of time.
Yes, Gloria! I have been reading and studying the Bible for over 40 years, studied at a Bible college, heard thousands of sermons, and read many commentaries etc, and still I learn new things each time I go to the Word. It is so amazing that it is truly “living” and “active”. Yet, to those who don’t believe, it is foolishness.