Questions I get from drunk people at parties, part 1: Do you really believe that everything described in the Bible is true?

Being a candidate for the priesthood, I usually get lots of attention at parties by people who wish to ask questions of a more theological nature. To say the least, this is not always enjoyable. However, one of the most common questions I get is "Do you really believe that the historical events in the Bible are true?". 

Now this is quite a mouthful, seeing as the Old Testament (and the New Testament, and indeed the entirety of the Bible) are multiple books with different origin and genre, and attest to different events which arguably may or may not be described as historical. You may just compare obviously non-historical books, such as the Song of Songs, to those with obvious historical claims such as the Book of Judges and the Book of Kings, and those who are historically ambiguous, such as Jonah and Genesis (!). A fast answer to the questions is that while the New Testament present fairly accurate history, the Old Testament is a bit more historically ambigous. I do not believe that the detailed events as they appear written in the OT correspond exactly with what actually happened. I believe that many of the historical accounts that are found in the Bible are historically accurate, such as the Gospels, but there are things, mainly in the OT that probably did not occur as it is described. One reason for why I believe this is that archaeological findings suggest that events in the OT did not happen as described, such as the Great Deluge, and the rapid conquest of Canaan by Joshua. I am far too ignorant in this issue to make judgement on the historicity of the major corpus in the OT, but then we are sort of missing the point!


Scripture was written by fallible people who were inspired by God, and they describe their experience of that God. If we wish to read the OT open-mindedly and attentively, we need to don the theological glasses. For the aim of the biblical texts are rarely to present accurate history, but to present a theology. It describes the nature of God and the nature of the relationship of God and man.  Basically, the OT are theological texts more so than historical texts (and I wish to say that for the entire Bible), and we therefore need to treat them that way. So, instead of looking for congruence of history in the OT, we need try to understand the view of God which is present there, in light of the person Jesus Christ. Only then can we gain a valuable experience that is applicable to Christian and Sceptic alike. It is so for the Christian, because such an approach is more pertinent to her worship and to her faith, and it is so for the Sceptic because such an approach produce a vastly superior quality of criticism than does the historical-critical perspective, at least in my opinion.