Why (and how) were the private conversations and inner thinking in the Bible documented in the first person?

1.	Given that there were neither voice/video recorders nor “mind readers” (to read the individual’s inner thinking) at the scenes, and that the various Books in the Bible were written by a third, fourth or fifth party many, many years later; why (and how) were the private conversations and inner thinking in the Bible documented in the first person?  This is particularly puzzling for the Old Testament (except Moses’ five Books) because in the New Testament, it can still be explained that perhaps the resurrected- but- not- yet- ascended Christ returned to give a detailed account of the inner thinking / first-person private conversations of every incident to the disciples with the aim to document them subsequently, whereas there was none so available for the Old Testament.


2.	This question has puzzled me for years.  In the OT and NT time, the authors had no voice/video recorders.  Indeed, many books were written years after the incidents.  Many of the authors were not even present at the scenes.  How then, were the authors able to write down in first person the individual’s conversations and inner thoughts with such vivid details, be it a trivial (between commoners by the roadside) or a major incident?  Why were the authors able to put special emphases on certain first-person words and phrases as if they had pre-viewed the whole gone-by scene via a voice/video recorder?  It is as if these recorders could even play the first person’s unspoken inner thinking, be it that of a king in the heat of a battle who subsequently got killed and was not able to tell anyone else his fleeting thoughts; or that of a certain staunch non-believing Canaanite till death (and therefore he would not have communicated his inner thinking to the author); or that of the casual utters of a commoner who would not have enjoyed the luxury of a scribe around him to record his very thoughts about God or someone else…..?

3.	Narrowing down to the many first person conversations in the four Gospels, it appeared that there was someone who stuck close to Jesus all the time, carried a huge amount of papyrus and scribbled every thought, teaching and conversational detail.  It is noted that the four Gospels were, however, written quite a number of years later.  Did the authors make use of these great big piles of daily journals saved up during the days of Jesus, or simply they wrote by memory?  If by memory, would the details of the private conversations not have faded over the years?  Would it then not have been more logical for the teachings/conversations to be recorded in a third-person narrative manner?

4.	Some have answered me that the first-person stance gives emphasis on the conversations as if you are watching a drama and - you will therefore remember it.  Well, exactly this is what triggers the questions in me – had all these first person conversations been made up? (On a side note, there also appears to be many contradictions throughout the Bible with regard to the first person conversations recorded under the same event).

5.	Indeed, almost 10 out of 10 Christians kind of answered me the same with : “Do you doubt that the Bible is not God-breathed……;  You should reflect because your question shows your lack of faith….;  Can God not work something supernatural to help the authors write something they never knew…….;  That’s only the absent-minded you, I can recite every details of mine and my counterparts’ conversations from weeks or even years ago……”.  While I do not deny that their answers contain certain truth, the impression I always got though, was that they really did not know.  The “God-breathed” answer was an easy way out.  I almost always felt like being bible bashed and I needed to watch out to whom I ask.

6.	The Bible is strewn with the same “issues” throughout, particularly the Old Testament.  I cite a few examples below for both the OT and NT to illustrate what puzzles me :

Old Testament :

6.1	1 Samuel 18 : 21 – “I will give her to him,” he thought, “so that she may be a snare to him and so that the hand of the Philistines may be against him….”.  (Saul on contemplating to give his daughter Michal to David). 

-	How would Saul, in his prideful self, reveal his inner ulterior motives to a scribe for subsequent documentation in the book of Samuel for all to see?

6.2	2 Kings 4 (The Widow’s Olive Oil)

-	The whole chapter reads like the scripts of a drama, with all the detailed first hand conversations provided.  Which third person (and indeed the book was written quite some time after the incident) would have been able to document in first person the exact details of each and every conversation?


New Testament :

6.3	Jesus at Gethsemane and subsequent trials :

-	Jesus sweated like blood and asked God to take away the cup.  It is unlikely that Jesus sat down and spent time reciting to the sleepy apostles word by word His sweating like blood and His every chain of thoughts including His petition.  Unless despite His suffering from loneliness, sadness and disappointment with the apostle at the time, He still deliberately wanted them to record his sweating / petitioning details.  It should be noted that it was dark and the sleepy apostles were unlikely to have carried around pocket scribbling materials.  There was not much time left before the soldiers arrived anyway.  

-	A whole group of witnesses (i.e., Pilate, Pilate’s wife, Pilate’s followers and/or some of the priests/Parisees) with good ears and in close proximity to the main protagonists needed to have believed and dared to gather later during the post-crucifixion persecution period to tell the authors every conversation detail.  Otherwise, the conversation details between Judas and the chief priests, the private conversation details between Pilate and his wife on her dream of prosecuting an innocent man, the conversations between Pilate and the chief priests, the trial conversations with Jesus etc could not have been detailed in such vivid first person stance.  Jesus was seized and He could not have been allowed to detail all His conversations to his appointed authors while he was being humiliated, punished and incarcerated.  And even if some Pharisees/Pilate followers eventually did believe and recited all the conversation details to the authors, the conversations should more appropriately be recorded in the third person because there had bound to be conflicts among the individuals’ recollections.  But the Bible was written in the first person as if transferred exactly from a voice recorder?  

-	For the records to be in the first person, it seemed as if the authors had the authority of a detective to interview each of the protagonists to weed out the irrelevance and record the crux of the private conversations in first person details as seen in the Bible?

6.4	Luke 7 : 39 - “When the Pharisee who had invited him saw this, he said to himself , “ If this man were a prophet, he would know who is touching him and what kind of woman she is – that she is a sinner.”. (Jesus dining at Pharisee Simon’s house when a woman wept and poured perfume on His feet).

-	It was an inner thought of the Pharisee.  If he did not speak it out, only Jesus, by His power, knew what the Pharisee was thinking.  For the thought to be written in the first person, the Pharisee would need to have subsequently believed to tell Luke the author to record his inner thinking in the book of Luke.  Otherwise, it would have to be Jesus who told Luke immediately after.  But the Bible is filled with similar inner thinking throughout.  Would Jesus have spent time tirelessly reciting to each of the authors other peoples’ inner thinking one after another on a daily basis?

7.	It is very difficult to explain for the Old Testament.  

8.	For the New Testament, the answer to 6.3 and 6.4 above (i.e., the New Testament first person records) may be that Christ, after rising from death and while still on earth, took time to recite to the apostles everything.  But that raises 2 further questions : 
(1) Would the arisen Christ use His precious limited time on earth to labor with reciting/dictating to the authors His and others’ every inner thinking and conversation of so many gone-by events when He apparently would have far more important and urgent things to do? And; 
(2) If the arisen Christ actually did so, then the recorded inner thinking and conversational details should be identical among the group of apostles/disciples.  Why then, for the same event, would these first person records differ from author to author, as noted in the four Gospels?

Clarify • Share • Report • Asked March 17 2014 • Philip Wong Supporter