Though I usually stay on the fringes of the cult-vs-excult conversation, I do like to eavesdrop from time to time and sometimes add my own comment to what is being said. Something I find very interesting (and often fairly irritating) is how often we encounter the born-again atheist who comes across as very much like the smart-arse 10-year-old who enjoys sneering at the little kids who still believe in Father Christmas; the polemicist who, with an air of superiority, assures us that the biblical documents are fairy stories, utter twaddle, nonsensical garbage written by bronze-age goat herders who knew nothing about anything and devised magical explanations for everything. They have a lot to learn. Those smart-arse 10-year-old born again atheists, I mean. They have a lot to learn.

One of the first lessons which I took to heart years ago when setting off on what turned out to be a long journey through philosophy, logic and classics, was to pay particularly close attention to ideas, beliefs and opinions which challenge our own thoughts. I adopted the principle that if someone holds to a set of beliefs which appears to me quite nonsensical, before drawing the conclusion that person is an idiot or is brainwashed I ought to look closer and try to see why an ordinary intelligent person might hold such beliefs. So, my rule thumb: if it looks just plain silly, then I have probably not fully understood it.

In my approach to the biblical narratives, law-codes, poetry and political commentary, I do not ask, “What must I believe?” or, “What is God saying to me in this?” I don’t try to find any middle ground between fundamentalist belief on the one hand, and ardent belief de-bunking on the other had. I come to it from a different place altogether asking the simple question, “What real situations could have prompted ordinary people to tell these tales, to write this poetry and all the rest. And what I discover is a great company of people just like ourselves and our own contemporaries. Some are devising the ingenious mathematical theorems which were to lead in time to yet greater theorising; some are designing and building awe-inspiring structures which would inspire the architects and engineers of future generations; among them are the earliest astro-physicists laying the groundwork for understanding the cosmos and beyond.

And many of these folk come together from time to time to tell their tales – to inform, to entertain, sometimes to mislead. Just like ourselves. And I guess, just like every generation from the earliest times, they had their conspiracy theorists who could hoodwink the unwary. And they would have had their belief-debunkers who sometimes got it wrong in their eagerness to score a hit.

This is the outlook with which I have tackled all of my writing over the years, but especially it is my starting point for my thoughts about the biblical narratives in my book, Stories in the Scriptures.

If any of you would care to read it, I’d be very interested to know what you think of it.