Between the earliest writings of the Old Testament (around 1200 BCE) and the latest writings of the New (around 100 CE), about thirteen hundred years passed.* The last biblical writers were as far removed from the first as we today are removed from the invention of gunpowder and the rule of Charlemagne. The idea that every writer over that great span of time was on the same page at every moment in spite of the myriad of complex and changing social and political factors is hard to accept in theory and impossible to accept when we read the Bible and see the diversity for ourselves.
