BETWEEN THE LINES OF SCRIPTURE
I have a friend who often speculates about things not told us in the scriptures, along the line of how somebody might be misunderstood (St. Thomas the Apostle who was dutifly buying the groceries or performing some other good deed when Jesus appeared the first time). I told him he has the mind of a writer of historical fiction, coming up with details and sub-plots that “might have been” and might help us, to some extent, to enter into the reality of happenings in the distant past about which we only have scanty accounts. Perhaps the nine lepers who didn’t return to thank Jesus “actually” elected one of their number to come back represent them all.
It’s a different thing than the way some commentators on the Bible pooh-pooh anything miraculous as either a misunderstanding, an exaggeration, or a fabrication. These folks sometimes have declared that certain things did not exist or could not happen, basing their conclusions on the way things happen ‘in the natural,’ so to speak. But archeologists and scholars persist in coming up with proof that the Bible was right all along. I remember, for example, hearing about evidence being turned up that the Kingdom of David really existed, contrary to certain claims that it seemed not to have. Or how investigators discovered the actual Pool of Siloam, and noted how its design fit perfectly with the account of Jesus sending the blind man to it to wash away the mud paste Jesus had applied to his eyes so that he might see.
A person writing between the lines might conjure up a sub-plot explaining why no record of the Kingdom of David was at first found because, say, David’s enemies destroyed almost all traces. Such skullduggery did go on in Egypt, in fact, where all traces of 18th Dynasty King Akhnaten were largely erased. Now let’s see, about that blind man …
