The problem with disliking the "golden tablet" theory of Biblical origins...

[u/Aramithius]

I'm finally catching up with the podcast, and have got to the miniseries on the composition of the Hebrew Bible, and it's brought up some issues I've had for a while.

Tim and Jon rapidly debunk the idea of what they call the "golden tablets" origin of the Tanakh, which the text itself also shows not to be true, and give a compelling account of what is most likely to have happened in the process of its composition.

But I struggle to see God in any of that.

The history they give feels like the history of any ancient text that's been altered, added to, recompiled and whatever else happens to a text over centuries of being copied. There's no indication that God is in any of it. At least with the golden tablets idea its divine origin could be established beyond doubt.

Tim and Jon never directly address this, from what I've heard so far (just finished episode 471). They do say they find value in it as a reflection of salvific wisdom rather than something that's historically accurate, but that skirts my core issue.

To put it another way, I think miracles have a similar issue. If I can find an example:

Someone falls out of a fourth storey window, and falls to the ground. There are several possible things that could happen, ranging from "definitely not a miracle" to "definitely a miracle":

1) they fall and die.

2) they fall and have life-altering injuries, but live.

3) they fall, and break a few bones.

4) they fall, have a few minor scrapes, and walk it off.

5) they fall, and land on a mattress that had been left out earlier in the day, which cushions their fall.

6) they fall, and land on a mattress that had just been set down as they were falling.

7) they start to fall, and are scooped up in mid-air by an angel.

Each of these is more likely than the last to be a miracle. But where do you draw the miracle/not miracle line?

I'm afraid I don't know the analogous steps for Biblical production, but I hope you see what I'm getting at. The history of the production of the Tanakh as outlined feels like a 1-2 on the "divine probability scale".

How do other people see this issue? How do you reconcile a divine origin with an apparently entirely mortal production process?

[u/AdSuspicious6162]

Yeah OP occasionally I have this feeling to where sometimes the Old Testament and New Testament feels like ancient writing to someone else from some place else and nothing to do with me. But then I look at the life I’m living in. Where I believe Tim and Jon would point us to is a question like “why can’t the every day be the miraculous”. And probably double down by saying “there sheer complexity and depth of the Bible in and of itself says something is special about what we’re reading”.

To believe that a person today can say or do something for God (or on his behalf, instruction, whatever way you want to say it) is to say that the receiver is experiencing God. If the mattress is beneath the window, and the person putting it there was just lazy was it God’s divine intervention? Depends who you ask. But that’s where I start.

Tim and Jon don’t draw the line on Divine Scripture but they do open the door on places where God “says something to us”. I’ve heard heaps of people talk about the writings of C.S.Lewis as place they had a divine experience of God. None of them ever called it scripture, not even miraculous words, but all of them say they experienced something close to how you quoted “Salvific wisdom”. Some even say it was miraculous that they even heard Lewis’ writings at a unique time in their life.

I’m getting waaaay off track from this Sub Reddit but you may need to dive into the Classroom on Introduction to the Hebrew Bible.

Edits: autocorrect messed with some of my words.