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Q

How did the writers of the Bible know exactly what happened, even if they weren't there?
https://www.quora.com/How-did-the-writers-of-the-Bible-know-exactly-what-happened-even-if-they-werent-there/answer/Hans-Georg-Lundahl

Hans-Georg Lundahl

Studied religions as curious parallels and contrasts to Xtian faith since 9, 10?

Answered 1h ago

The usual answer for history (since creation of man) is that he was told by other men, either directly those who were there or via intermediates.

For the one and only piece of prehistory, namely the days of creation before the creation of man, God gave Moses a vision.

Other answer

Alex Pismenny

Catholic Christian.

Answered 12h ago

Depends which writer and also what does “exactly” means.

Moses, we believe, wrote the first five books of the Bible. Genesis speaks of the creation of the world and the human prehistory. In order to write that down he received a vision from God. That, as we now understand, was given in terms Moses could understand; with our knowledge of astrophysics, geology, genetics, and so forth we would consider Moses’ vision quite imprecise. But the Book of Genesis was not intended to be a manual of science. Things that are important for us to understand are such as the relationship between God and His creation, and us men; the nature of sin, the nature of our free will, the role of Satan, — and these things are described in the Book of Genesis with adequate level of precision, adequate for people without modern education to understand.

The other books were more or less historical and legal books that combine Moses’ personal knowledge and memory and other revelations from God.

Many other books in the Old Testament are wisdom literature, predictions of the future, and poetry; those seem to be out of scope of your question.

As Christians, we find nothing strange in Moses, or anyone else to that matter, receiving direct revelation form God. We, after all, have our faith based on the historical evidence that God did want to communicate with us and, in fact, took on a human form to do so.

The New Testament consists of the four Gospels and the Acts of the Apostles. Those are written by the evangelists who often were direct witnesses of the teachings, the Passion and the Resurrection of Jesus, or had access to such witnesses. So they could write with sufficient precision about things that were common knowledge among the disciples. So, the evidence of the resurrected Christ, for example, are accounts clearly composed from what multiple people such as the women at the tomb saw, and told the Evangelists about it.

There are some episodes told in the Gospels that require past explanations, and we can assume those were given in due course. For example, when the evangelists describe the content of Christ’s prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane, possible some apostles could overhear Jesus praying aloud, but I think another explanation is that they asked Christ about it following His resurrection.

Remember that Jesus stayed with the disciples for forty days, teaching them what they needed to know in order to continue building the Church. We can assume that factual questions were posed and answered by Jesus.

Remember also that the Evangelists did not have a modern attitude about the written word; oral memory was probably more important to them than writing things down. Minor discrepancies exist in their accounts, e.g. the manner of death of Judas or elements of the Nativity gospels.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

1h ago

"Genesis speaks of the creation of the world and the human prehistory. In order to write that down he received a vision from God."

• 1) There is no such thing as "human prehistory".
• 2) The human history, Moses got from human participants i n events, like the detailed account of day six from creation of Adam given in Genesis 2, from Adam.
• 3) The real prehistory, the one preceding creation of man, Moses did get in a vision. This concerns only Genesis 1.

"That, as we now understand, was given in terms Moses could understand; with our knowledge of astrophysics, geology, genetics, and so forth we would consider Moses’ vision quite imprecise."

Feel free to enumerate one imprecision for each field.

"But the Book of Genesis was not intended to be a manual of science."

Neither to bungle in science.

"Things that are important for us to understand are such as the relationship between God and His creation, and us men; the nature of sin, the nature of our free will, the role of Satan, — and these things are described in the Book of Genesis with adequate level of precision, adequate for people without modern education to understand."

It seems your grasp on contents of Genesis is imprecise, for one. You have basically covered up to chapter 4. There are 50 chapters in Genesis. Chapters 12 to 50 cover four generations, Abraham to Joseph and his brethren. Chapters 2 to 11 all history previous to Abraham and chapter 1 involves prehistory as in history before any human could record it, recorded by God and given in a vision to Moses.

For another, you are failing to grasp a very fundamental aspect of the faith.

It is NOT important for you to undestand that Abraham at age 100 had a second son. It is not important for perhaps 80 % of the faithful of all times, if not 90 or 95. But the things which are important for us to understand were revealed through a historic revelation, and it is very important for us to realise that this historic revelation is entirely reliable. So IF you have read the relevant chapters of Genesis, you HAVE to believe Abraham had a second son at age 100.

And same holds true for each and every aspect of the rest of the book or the 72 other books, especially now thinking of those treating of history, and it applies mutatis mutandis to the rest too.

“Remember that Jesus stayed with the disciples for forty days, teaching them what they needed to know in order to continue building the Church. We can assume that factual questions were posed and answered by Jesus.”

We can therefore also assume that the patristic view of Genesis, the one I gave, as having endorsement of successors of the Apostles through the centuries, is also endorsed by Our Lord Jesus Christ.

“Minor discrepancies exist in their accounts, e.g. the manner of death of Judas or elements of the Nativity gospels.”

There are no discrepancies here, the accounts given can be combined to coherent accounts. ALSO part of patristics.

“For example, when the evangelists describe the content of Christ’s prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane, possible some apostles could overhear Jesus praying aloud, but I think another explanation is that they asked Christ about it following His resurrection.”

That one, as well as content of the defense speech in Acts, has been answered by C. S. Lewis. The words in Gethsemani are very few compared to what Christ would have been able to say while they were sleeping. St Luke is not taking down the whole speech verbatim, even if he tries so with the beginning, then he resumes.

And John 3 implies that Nicodemus later converted, as tradition says he did.

Alex Pismenny

Aug 22

I was giving a brief overview; thank you for the corrections. Maybe you should post your own answer? I’ll add my thoughts following your criticism later.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

Aug 22 · 1 upvote from Alex Pismenny

I already did post an answer, a distinctly shorter one.

I’m looking forward to your thoughts.

Alex Pismenny

11h ago

I clarified and corrected some parts.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

4m ago

I’ll take a look. ...

Inserting

new version

Depends which writer and also what does “exactly” means.

Moses, we believe, wrote the first five books of the Bible. Genesis speaks of the creation of the world and the human history following the creation of man. In order to write creation history down he received a vision from God. That, as we now understand, was given in terms Moses could understand; with our knowledge of astrophysics, geology, genetics, and so forth we would consider Moses’ vision far from how we would describe the Creation today Is it, though, imprecise? The Book of Genesis was not intended to be a manual of science, neither contemporary to Moses nor contemporary to us. Things that are important for us to understand are such as the relationship between God and His creation, and us men; the nature of sin, the nature of our free will, the role of Satan, — and these things are described in the Book of Genesis with adequate level of precision, necessary for people without modern education to understand.

The rest of the Genesis and the other books of the Pentateuch are historical and legal books that combine Moses’ personal knowledge and memory and other revelations from God.

Many other books in the Old Testament are wisdom literature, predictions of the future, and poetry; those seem to be out of scope of your question.

As Christians, we find nothing strange in Moses, or anyone else to that matter, receiving direct revelation form God. We, after all, have our faith based on the historical evidence that God did want to communicate with us and, in fact, took on a human form to do so.

The historical content of the New Testament consists of the four Gospels and the Acts of the Apostles. Those are written by the evangelists who often were direct witnesses of the teachings, the Passion and the Resurrection of Jesus, or had access to such witnesses. So they could write with sufficient precision about things that were common knowledge among the disciples. The evidence of the resurrected Christ, for example, are accounts clearly composed from what multiple people such as the women at the tomb saw, and told the Evangelists about it.

There are some episodes told in the Gospels that require past explanations, and we can assume those were given in due course. For example, when the evangelists describe the content of Christ’s prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane, it is possible that some apostles could overhear Jesus praying aloud, but I think another explanation is that they asked Christ about it following His resurrection.

Remember that Jesus stayed with the disciples for forty days, teaching them what they needed to know in order to continue building the Church. St. Luke writes:

for forty days [Christ was] appearing to them, and speaking of the kingdom of God (Acts 1:3)

Certainly factual questions were posed and answered by Jesus as needed, alongside the theological questions.

Remember also that the Evangelists did not have a modern attitude about the written word; oral memory was probably more important to them than writing things down. Minor apparent discrepancies exist in their accounts, e.g. the manner of death of Judas or some details of the events surrounding the Nativity. But the discrepancies are minor and can be reconciled without much effort; the events of the Nativity was most likely what aging Mother of God told St. Luke. They combine verbatim recitations of the dialogues with the Archangel and with Elizabeth alongside less precise memories of the census and the flight to Egypt; the latter was retained with less precision because compared to the encounter of the Annunciation and the exalted moment of the visitation with Elizabeth had displaced, naturally, the practical worries that were on the shoulders of St. Joseph.

I elaborated some parts following constructive criticism offered by Hans-Georg Lundahl, for which see the Comments section.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

4m ago

... Did.

You have certainly improved overview of contents of Genesis (Genesis speaks of the creation of the world and the human history following the creation of man), but some things I objected to still stand:

“ In order to write creation history down he received a vision from God. That, as we now understand, was given in terms Moses could understand; with our knowledge of astrophysics, geology, genetics, and so forth we would consider Moses’ vision far from how we would describe the Creation today Is it, though, imprecise? The Book of Genesis was not intended to be a manual of science, neither contemporary to Moses nor contemporary to us.”

You seem still to imply there are parts of it which cannot stand scrutiny as compared to more modern knowledge of astrophysics, geology, genetics, and so forth - I’d like to know what.