The Bible — A Book Full of Losers
On the possibility of historical knowledge
The claim is often made that history is written by the winners.
What exactly does this mean?
Here’s one way to take it:
The losers never get to tell their side of the story. As a consequence of losing, they’re either unavailable to describe what has happened, or they lack the resources to do so. Thus, history books are written by the winners, from their own slanted perspective. Their self-congratulatory version of events is the official story.
Or here’s a related, but slightly different interpretation:
In their accounts — which will go on to be the official ones — the winners cast themselves as the heroes and the losers as the villains. The winners depict themselves in the best possible light, and the losers in the worst possible light.
On either interpretation, the adage is used to discredit historical knowledge. If the historical record is vulnerable to this manner of distortion, then it cannot be trusted.
But is it true?
Perhaps in some cases it is, though let’s briefly consider a few cases which seem to problematize it.
The Bible doesn’t portray Jews and Christians in a very heroic light.
In the Old Testament, the Jews — which, by the way, are presented as God’s people — are depicted as incorrigibly corrupt. They are constantly backsliding into paganism. There’s a righteous remnant, sure, but (a) by definition a remnant is a minority, a smaller subset of the larger whole, and (b) the remnant often gets it wrong in various ways.
The negative depiction is at the collective as well as the individual level. Take two examples of individuals you’d expect to receive hagiographic treatment: Abraham, despite being the “Father of Faith,” is at crucial moments shown to be utterly faithless; David, despite being “a man after God’s own heart,” is depicted as a murderer and adulterer.
And these depictions aren’t by writers with an anti-semitic agenda; if anything, they had a natural incentive to whitewash.
In the New Testament, the Gospel accounts depict the disciples as obtuse, incredulous, and cowardly.
How’s this for an example of undying conviction:
Having arrested Him, they led Him away and brought Him to the house of the high priest; but Peter was following at a distance. After they had kindled a fire in the middle of the courtyard and had sat down together, Peter was sitting among them. And a servant-girl, seeing him as he sat in the firelight and looking intently at him, said, “This man was with Him too.” But he denied it, saying, “Woman, I do not know Him.” A little later, another saw him and said, “You are one of them too!” But Peter said, “Man, I am not!” After about an hour had passed, another man began to insist, saying, “Certainly this man also was with Him, for he is a Galilean too.” But Peter said, “Man, I do not know what you are talking about.” Immediately, while he was still speaking, a rooster crowed. The Lord turned and looked at Peter. And Peter remembered the word of the Lord, how He had told him, “Before a rooster crows today, you will deny Me three times.” And he went out and wept bitterly. (Luke 22:54–62)
Beyond the Gospels, the New Testament letters — most of which were written by the Apostle Paul — generally present the earliest Christian churches in a state of moral and doctrinal crisis.
But that’s just the winners showcasing the innumerable shortcomings of the winners! Just what you’d expect!
The adage under discussion — history is written by the winners — seems to also conflate two distinct aspects of the historical record.
There’s a difference between not allowing the “losers” to tell their side of the story, and not preserving their side of the story.
Christian monks weren’t motivated to copy and recopy books by heretics. But that’s not the same thing as suppressing or destroying their literature.
Let’s take another historical example: the Civil War.
Certainly, the winners wrote accounts of the war. For instance, Generals William Sherman and Ulysses S. Grant wrote independent accounts of the war.
The fact that the Union’s two most successful generals wrote accounts of the Civil War doesn’t mean the losers were prevented from telling their side of the story. For instance, in the 1880s, Jefferson Davis wrote two accounts of the Civil War.
A Short History of the Confederate States of America (Classic Reprint)
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So it’s not as if the Confederates were censured.
Likewise, perhaps the classic history of the Civil War was penned by Shelby Foote, a Southern novelist. Admittedly, that was long after the event.
On the other hand, it’s striking that General Robert E. Lee never wrote an account of his own. Here’s the point, though: it’s not because he was forbidden from doing so.
Of course, we can only speculate why some participants wrote about the Civil War while others did not.
For starters, it’s more fun to write about winning than losing. What would Lee write about? How I Lost the Civil War? Not very inspirational.
Perhaps Lee was too demoralized to write about the conflict between the North and South. In addition, he probably had his fill of war.
I suspect Davis wrote about the war to rehabilitate his tarnished reputation. To my knowledge, he didn’t have much respect from either side. He was viewed as a weak, ineffectual leader.
By contrast, Lee was lionized by southerners and respected by many northerners (although Frederick Douglass had a decidedly less exalted view of Lee). So Lee, unlike Davis, didn’t need to rehabilitate his image.
The larger point is that losers often have a chance to tell their side of the story. Whether they do so is up to them. And in the case of Bible writers, the self-portraiture is often far from flattering.
The lot of them are losers. Plain and simple. But that’s a critical part of the story, isn’t it?
Berny Belvedere contributed to this story.
