It takes a good man to start asking questions. It takes a better man to ask the right questions. And it takes the best of men to find answers. Copernicus inherited an understanding of the solar system that had the earth in a static position at the centre. He got curious and thought a heliocentric lay-out was better. True, nobody felt the motion as the earth rotated and orbited. That was not important. The big question has been with us ever since.
We may well question the depiction of the fall of the angels in Milton’s ‘Paradise Lost’. We shan’t get very far if we ask how many kilometres they fell. Nor shall we benefit from asking whether Milton’s account is true. It’s like asking whether Salisbury cathedral is true or whether Handel’s ‘Messiah’ is true. Posing the wrong questions is a sure way to receive wrong (i.e. meaningless) answers.
Zeppelin was a brilliant engineer. He was looking for answers to the best way of travelling by air. To do so he asked questions about lighter than air machines relying on hydrogen. The future lay not with those who were asking the wrong questions but with those who were asking how to travel through the air by any means. This was the appropriate question he should have been asking.
When instead of listening to Jesus’ stories or Old Testament narrative (and recognising their quality) we ask whether we have reliable accounts preserved on flimsy materials, we are wandering into records subject to decay. To think otherwise is to phantasize about literary creativity. But there is no other course of action – unless we are to set up shop and publish our own speculative version of what might have been written.
The Bible is the best of books because it asks (and deals with as far as possible) the right questions and offers the best answers. Can we expect more?
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