The Ring of Truth

I shall never forget the day my father showed me my first counterfeit coin.

"Look at this, son," he said. "I've been done!"

He held it lightly between the fingers and thumbs of both hands, and bent it easily into a horseshoe shape. I gasped with surprise and watched, fascinated, as he bent it back to its original shape. He passed it to me and I examined it. It still looked like a genuine half crown.

"How did you know it was a dud, Dad?" I asked.

"Because of this," he replied, taking it from me and dropping it on the shop counter.

"Hear that dull clonking noise? Now listen to the ringing note you get from a real one." He dropped a genuine half crown beside the counterfeit. There was no mistaking the different sound.

Even my schoolboy ear could detect the ring of truth.

Experience Counts

In every walk of life people learn to sense the difference between true and false.

Old hands in the teaching profession can glance down an examination room, and pick Out the one boy who is trying to crib. The customs officer gradually learns to spot which suitcases are worth opening. The experienced magistrate can nearly always tell when a witness is lying. In every walk of life things either ring true, or they ring false.

But before you can detect the ring of truth with any certainty you need experience. It is therefore significant that those who know the Bible best trust it the most.

A Bible lover once told an anecdote about a pompous colonel at a dinner table.

"In my opinion," he declared, "the Koran is vastly superior to the Bible."

"Excuse me, Colonel," said a clergyman. "Do you mind if I ask you two questions? Have you ever read the Bible from beginning to end?"

The colonel admitted that he had not, and waited uneasily for the second question.

"Have you ever even seen a copy of the Koran?"

When the colonel again answered that he hadnt, the clergyman asked him what he thought of himself. "You publicly declare that a book you have never seen is vastly superior to a book that you have never read right through!"

That story rings true. I have met dozens and dozens of people like the colonel, who condemn the Bible vigorously but have never read it. On the other hand I know people whose whole attitude to the Bible changed entirely when once they started to read it. As they read it, they could see that here was a book that rang true.

As an example, take the fourth book of Moses, called the book of Numbers. You will see that it consists of three main elements:

1. Lists of names, places and statistics about the nation of Israel. (Hence the name, "Numbers".)
2. Detailed laws and regulations (mainly of a religious character).
3. Stories of things that happened to Israel, and things they did, during their forty years in the wilderness.

Now does this book ring true, or not? Many people who have studied it are convinced that it does. Those lists of names may make very dull reading today, but their very existence, scattered throughout the book, has the ring of truth about it.

If those lists were written by Moses, we can see the reason for them. They were very important to the people named in them. But it is very hard to imagine why a forger, writing hundreds of years later, should bother to compile such lists.

The historical parts of the book also ring true. Nearly all the stories show up Israel in an unfavourable light. Some of them throw an unfavourable light upon Moses himself. But they all portray human nature just as we know it to be: generally weak, obstinate, prejudiced, ungrateful, hasty, faithless-but now and again rising above itself, and reaching heights of glory.

In the years between the two world wars the greatest living Englishman spent a quiet life at Chartwell. Churchill was biding his time, waiting until his country needed him again.

In those days he had plenty of time to think, and his great mind did not shrink from reaching unpopular conclusions. He, almost alone, told the world the truth about the Nazi menace.

And Churchill also told the world that the books of Moses rang true.

He wrote in his essay on Moses:

"We must, at this point, examine briefly the whole question of the miracles . . . We [meaning himself] reject, however, with scorn all those learned and laboured myths that Moses was but a legendary figure upon whom the priesthood and the people hung their essential social, moral and religious ordinances. We believe that the most scientific view, the most up-to-date and rationalistic conception, will find its fullest satisfaction in taking the Bible story literally .. . We remain unmoved by the tomes of Professor Grad-grind and Dr Dryasdust. We may be sure that all these things happened just as they are set out in Holy Writ. We may believe that they happened to people not so very different from ourselves, and that the impressions those people received were faithfully recorded and have been transmitted across the centuries with far more accuracy than many of the telegraphed accounts we read of the goings-on of today. In the words of a forgotten work of Mr Gladstone, we rest with assurance upon The impregnable rock of Holy Scripture."¹ (The italics are mine.)

Why did Churchill reach such an unorthodox conclusion? First, because he read his Bible thoroughly and carefully. And secondly, because he was never a man to be swayed by the weight of public opinion; he was prepared to think things out for himself.

Ding and Dong

It is easier to detect the clear "ding" of the true coin when you can compare it with the dull "dong" of the false.

You can apply this test to the gospels. In addition to the four gospels of our Bible, there are a number of so-called gospels. They were written in the second, third and fourth centuries.

Here is a typical passage from the "Gospel of Nicodemus", describing the entry of Jesus into Pilates judgment hall:

And Jesus going in, and the standard-bearers holding their standards, the tops of the standards were bent down and adored Jesus. And the Jews seeing the bearing of the standards, how they bent down and adored Jesus, cried Out vehemently against the standard bearers . . . [It goes on for a whole page, with the Jews arguing about whether the standards really bent down miraculously. Then Pilate agrees to try and repeat the miracle.) . . . And the procurator ordered Jesus to come in the second time. And the runner did in the same manner as before, and made many entreaties to Jesus to walk on his cloak. And He walked on it, and went in. And as He went in, the standards were again bent down and adored Jesus."²

Now compare this with the simple dignity of the Biblical accounts:

"And when they had bound Him they led Him away, and delivered Him to Pontius Pilate the governor." (Matthew)

"And straightway in the morning the chief priests held a consultation with the elders and scribes and the whole council, and bound Jesus and carried Him away, and delivered Him to Pilate." (Mark)

"And the whole company of them rose up and brought Him before Pilate." (Luke)

"Then led they Jesus from Caiaphas unto the hall of judgment. (John)

Another example. There are many ancient accounts of the creation of the world in the sacred books of mankind. Here are two typical specimens:

Berosus, a Babylonian priest, said that the god Belus came out and cut the woman Omoraka asunder, and of one half of her he formed the earth and of the other half of her the heavens. Later, Belus commanded one of the gods to take off his head and to mix the blood with the earth, and with this mixture to make men and animals.

Manu, the reputed writer of the Hindus most sacred books, said that Brahma was hatched out of a golden egg. He lived in it for a time, and then made heaven Out of one part of the egg and earth out of the other.

Against these, the Bible gives us another alternative:

"In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was waste and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. And God said, Let there be light. And there was light."³

There is obviously a tremendous gulf between the other books and the Bible. All other ancient creation stories sound like the product of a vivid imagination running riot. The Biblical record still makes sense in this scientific age. It reads like a sober statement of some momentous facts.

Truth is Often Painful

When the translators of the Bible into English produced their "Authorised Version" in 1611, they dedicated it to King James I. Their "epistle of dedication" is still printed in some editions of this version. It begins like this:

"Great and manifold were the blessings, most dread Sovereign, which Almighty God, the Father of all mercies, bestowed upon us the people of England, when first He sent your Majestys Royal Person to rule and reign over us...

Talk about flattery! And it goes on and on in the same vein for two whole pages. Obviously the translators knew which side their bread was buttered on.

Doubtless King James had his good points. He must also have had some faults. But you will find no hint of them in this very human document. It portrays King James as perfection itself.

How differently the Bible speaks of its greatest heroes. It gives a balanced picture of them all. It tells us what to admire in them, and why God blessed them. With equal frankness it informs us where each one fell down.

So we know that Abraham, the father of the Jewish race, betrayed his wife to save his own skin. That Jacob, whose other name Israel was given to the nation, cheated his twin brother. That David, Israels greatest king, was once so consumed with passion that he followed adultery with murder.

Is there another ancient history book that makes no attempt to whitewash its heroes? That has the ring of honest truth about it whenever it talks about the nations leaders? If there is, I have never known an atheist who could produce it.

You may have seen a copy of Adolf Hitlers book, Mein Kampf. This is an example of flattery in the reverse direction-an ambitious politician flattering his people. Hitler told the Germans that they were a superior race and they loved him for it. History might have been very different if he had told them they were a bad lot.

But the Jewish national book told the Jews the plain, painful truth. They were the most privileged nation on earth. And yet their Bible told them in nearly every book that they were utterly unworthy of their privileges.

Here are just a few examples:

1. God delivered them from a life of cruel slavery in Egypt. But they kept wanting to go back.
2. God fed them miraculously with "bread from heaven" in the desert. Yet they kept grumbling that it didnt taste very good.
3. God promised to bring them safely into the Promised Land. He said that He would use His power to drive out their enemies. But they were afraid to go in.
4. Once in the Land of Promise they promptly started worshipping idols.
5. For the next thousand years their history was one long story of idolatry. interrupted by spells of comparative godliness when occasional good leaders were at the helm.
6. Then God punished them with a spell of captivity in Babylon. When He gave them the opportunity to return home, many of them preferred to stay in idolatrous Babylon.
7. Those who did go home behaved badly, right until the end of the Old Testament period. The very last book of the Old Testament, on its last page, says, "Even from the days of your fathers ye are gone away from mine ordinances, and have not kept them."⁴

There is the ring of truth about a book like this. No flattery, no suppression of unpleasant facts, but history as it ought to be told-clearly and objectively.

A hundred years ago Henry Rogers summed up his reasons for believing in the Bible like this:

" The Bible is not such a book as man would have made if he could-or could have made if he would."

In Chapters 2 to 8 we saw the truth of the first half of this statement. Man (unaided by God) simply could not have produced a book like the Bible.

Now we have seen the truth of the other half of Rogers statement. Man (left to himself) would not have produced a book as full of painful truth as the Bible.

A Perfect Match

Few people today seem to have heard of Professor J. J. Blunt, who was once the Margaret Professor of Divinity at Cambridge. Yet he was one of Englands most diligent Bible students.

In 1847 he published a book⁵ reporting the results of many years of research. He specialised in comparing one part of the Bible with another, and finding what he called "undesigned coincidences" between two (or more) books. This is the sort of thing that he discovered.

He brought together the three following passages, from the books of Numbers, Joshua and 1 Samuel respectively:

"There we saw the giants, the sons of Anak, which come of the giants. And we were in our own sight as grasshoppers." ⁶

"And Joshua came at that time and cut off the Anakim. Joshua utterly destroyed them with their cities. There was none of the Anakim left in the land of the children of Israel; only in Gaza, in Gath and in Ashdod did some remain.⁷

"There went out a champion out of the camp of the Philistines, named Goliath of Gath, whose height was six cubits and a span (about 9 feet)."⁸

Now, says Blunt in effect, see what these three passages tell us. They were written by three different authors at three different periods of history. Yet they match each other just like a cup, saucer and plate from the same teaset.

The first passage reveals that before Israel entered the Promised Land there were many giants there. These giants were called "sons of Anak", or "Anakim" (which is merely the plural form of the Hebrew name "Anak").

The second passage says that when Israel conquered the Promised Land, they destroyed nearly all this race descended from Anak. But they did leave a few of these giants in three towns: Gaza, Gath, and Ashdod.

The third passage casually mentions that the giant Goliaths home town was Gath. Is it likely that the writer of this third passage was a fiction writer who scoured the earlier books of the Bible, until he found the "right" town to put his giant in? Or was it just a fluke that he happened to pick one of the only three appropriate towns in all Israel?

No, there is the ring of truth about this set of passages. They sound much more like accurate history than cunningly contrived fiction.

Ahithophels Treachery Explained

In another chapter Blunt brings together a whole string of apparently unrelated chapters from one book, with remarkable results. The Bible passages involved are too numerous to quote here in full. I shall just give the substance of them and quote the references.

But first, a little background information. There were two great tragedies in the later part of King Davids life. The first was his terrible moral lapse, when he committed adultery with Bathsheba and then murdered her husband, Uriah the Hittite. The second occurred when his own son Absalom rebelled against him and temporarily seized his throne.

The Bible tells us that the second incident was Gods punishment on David for the first. But it does not tell us that there was also a purely human connection between the two incidents. The Bible left that for some future student to dig out for himself.

This is what Blunt discovered.

When Absalom decided to stage a rebellion, he sent for a man called Ahithophel the Gilonite to join him.⁹ Now this was a very surprising action. Ahithophel was Davids own right hand man, "mine own familiar friend in whom I trusted", as David called him.¹⁰

It was a remarkable act of treachery on Ahithophels part. It was so unexpected to David that he never could get over it.¹¹ Yet Absalom clearly expected Ahithophel to change sides readily. Why?

Blunt found a clue to the answer in one of those long lists of names that many Bible readers skip over. In the list of the 37 officers of Davids guard occur two vital names: Uriah the Hittite (the man David murdered), and "Eli am the son of Ahithophel the Gilonite"¹² - that is, the son of the traitor.

So the son of the future traitor and the murdered man had been close colleagues, and probably friends. But this is not all. From an entirely different part of the book we learn that Bathsheba, the wife of the murdered man, was "the daughter of Eliam".¹³ Uriah had evidently married the daughter of his fellow-officer. (It was common in those days for older men of the upper class to marry very young women.)

With these facts before us it is easy to see why Absalom anticipated Ahithophels treachery, while David was astonished by it. The girl that the elderly David had seduced was Ahithophels granddaughter. The man David had murdered was Ahithophels grandson by marriage.

Blinded by his own passion, David could not see what effect this had upon Ahithophel. But Absalom was well aware that Ahithophel was seething with anger, and ready for revenge.

A later chapter confirms that revenge was one of Ahithophels motives. When they first captured Davids palace, Absalom asked Ahithophel what to do next. "Go in unto thy fathers concubines (wives)"¹⁴ was the reply. As much as to say: "Pay him back in his own coin. He stole another mans wife; now you steal his!" The record continues:

"So they spread Absalom a tent upon the top of the house, and Absalom went in unto his fathers concubines in the sight of all Israel."¹⁵

Thus the wheel had turned full circle. It was upon his housetop that David was walking when he caught his first glimpse of Bathsheba washing herself and lusted for her.¹⁶ Now, in the selfsame place, her wily old grandfather arranges Davids public humiliation.

It goes without saying that this fascinating story-hidden-within-a-story could not have been deliberately contrived. No forger would hide his forgery so carefully that it remained undiscovered for nearly 3,000 years, as this did. Either these passages represent a whole series of lucky coincidences or-much more probably-they are an integral part of real history, told with meticulous accuracy.

There are something like a hundred of these undesigned coincidences in Blunts book. Nearly every one of them has the ring of truth about it.

A somewhat similar book by Paley and Birks, restricted to New Testament history, lists many more.¹⁷ Bible students are constantly discovering still more of them for themselves.

Try discovering large numbers of undesigned coincidences in any work of fiction you like to choose. You will not succeed. They are the hallmark of true history, not fiction.