An Evolutionary Explanation of the Bible Wheel

[Richard Amiel McGough]

For most of the years since I discovered the Bible Wheel in 1995 I felt it was pretty much "self-evident" that God had designed it. The patterns seemed so obvious and profound. I could not imagine how they could have happened by chance, and it seemed impossible that some secret group of humans had done it since the Jews would have had to anticipate the later Christian NT when they put together the OT. So it seemed like an air-tight iron-clad case. I filled my website with the evidence. I wrote a 412 page book. I was dumbfounded that most folks, including Bible-believing Christians, could not see what I saw.

My conviction was strengthened by that fact that no one came close to presenting anything like a significant challenge to my claims despite endless hours on very hostile forums hosted by Christians, Jews, and Skeptics. I believed that the Bible Wheel was truly perfect in the sense explained in the Bible Wheel Challenge:

THE BIBLE WHEEL CHALLENGE asserts that the Christian canon is truly perfect in the twofold sense that 1) no rearrangement of its books would improve upon the patterns discovered on the Bible Wheel, and 2) any rearrangement would cause an obvious degradation of existing patterns. The challenge is for the opponent to suggest a rearrangement and present arguments for why such a change would produce patterns equal to or superior to those presently seen in the Bible Wheel. This challenge simultaneously proves the invincibility of the Bible Wheel even as it demonstrates the vacuity of the skeptics canard that "patterns mean nothing because they can be found in anything." It is an extremely powerful challenge because it can not be refuted without interacting with the data, and the data is the touchstone that proves the Bible Wheel.

Unfortunately, I never could find even one person out of the seven billion on this planet who would respond to this challenge. So like most things, if you want something done right, you need to do it yourself.

I think I've finally found a way to explain the Bible Wheel without any appeal to God, angels, or any other metaphysical woo-woo. I think the Bible Wheel evolved through a scribal selection process as the text was edited and rearranged by the countless scribes over the centuries before the printing press.

This idea came to me two days ago when Rose and I were on our three mile morning walk. She mentioned how the Bible Wheel was not as perfect as I thought it was. She explained that though it might be "optimal" given the 66 books, it was no where near as good as it could have been if I could have edited those books myself to make them fit the pattern even better. And that's the key to the error in my Bible Wheel Challenge. Yes, the structure of the Christian Canon may be "optimal" given the 66 books, but it is nowhere near what we would expect if it were designed by an infinitely intelligent God who was free to write the books any way he wanted to.

And then I realized that this is exactly what we see in the evolution of species. They "look" designed because they are made of many parts that work together in amazing ways. People ask "how could that tiger just happen by chance?" Their error, of course, is that it didn't happen by chance. It happened through a process of natural selection acting upon variations in the gene pool. And the lack of "perfection" becomes obvious when we look closely at the animals that were supposedly so well designed. We see thousand of "design flaws" everywhere we look. This is because evolution has no "foresight" and so might go one way and then another and so arrives at a good, but not optimal structure. This is exactly what I see in the Bible Wheel. There is enough evidence to show that it did not "happen by chance" but it's not nearly good enough to prove that it was "intelligently designed." So where's the midpoint of these two excluded extremes? Evolution.

Michael Shermer accurately describes humans as "pattern-seeking story-telling animals" that are "quite adept at telling stories about patterns, whether they exist or not." Now put these pattern-seekers in front of a "Holy Text" that they meditate upon day and night for fifteen hundred years (before the printing press) and watch how the document evolved over time. I'm not talking so much about the text itself, but rather the arrangement of the text - the order and content of the Canon - that resulted in the Bible Wheel. There were hundreds of variations for people to choose from. It took centuries for the final form to emerge under the action of the selective pressure of the scribes looking for, and imposing, patterns.

A brief look at the variations of the Christian canon during the first five centuries of the current era shows how many "genetic variations" were available for the scribes to select from. Here is a table given in James Moffatt's Introduction to the Literature of the New Testament, (3rd ed. T&T Clark Ltd, 1981) where Moffatt he presented the variations in hte arrangements of groups of books. The abbreviations "Evv, Acts, Paul, Cath, Apoc." stand for "Evanglia (Gospels), Acts, Pauline Epistles, Catholic Epistles (James, Peter, John, Jude) and Apocalypse (Revelation). Column B shows the pattern that was finally "selected" before the order was locked in place by the printing press. It is what we see in all modern Bibles.

Moffett's Table of the various orders of early NT Manuscripts (source)
A	B	C	D	E	F	G
Epiph.: Jerome: א: Codex Fuldensis, etc.	Council of Carthage: Amphilochius: Philastrius: Rufinus: Syriac Canon (om. Cath. and Apoc.), etc.	Chryso- stom.	Apost. Constit. ( ii.57).	Codex Alexandrinus: Athanasius: Cyril: Leontius (6th cent.): Cassiodorus: Nicephorus (om. Apoc.), etc.	Council of Laodicea: Cyril of Jerusalem: John of Damascus, etc.	Augustine: Innocent 1.: Isidore of Spain (7th cent.), etc.
Evv Paul Acts Cath Apoc	Evv Acts Paul Cath Apoc	Paul Evv Acts Cath	Acts Paul Evv	Evv Acts Cath Paul Apoc	Evv Acts Cath	Evv Paul Cath Acts Apoc

Now this table is represents only the most common arrangements. A much larger and more detailed list of 26 variations is found in The Canon Debate, edited by McDonald and Sanders, only one of which is identical in every way to the modern canon. An interesting curiosity, which may show the selection process in action, is the coupling of the book of Acts with Revelation either at the end of the canon or immediately after the Gospels. Was this a scribal intuition that these books "should" go together? If so, they would be pleased to see their intuition satisfied with the alignment of Acts and Revelation on Spoke 22. Likewise, the Song of Solomon was the final book on the canon list by Rufinus (404 C.E.), perhaps as an intuition of the love story being a consummation of the canon. If so, he too would be satisfied to see it's alignment with Acts and Revelation on Spoke 22. It is a well-documented fact that many medieval Christian leaders wrote joint commentaries on the Song and the Apocalypse.

My hypothesis is also confirmed by this discussion of the arrangement of books found in A General Introduction to the Bible by Norman Geisler and William Nix. After discussing the various patterns of the canon in Hebrew, Greek, Latin, and English Bibles, they said this:

Because the present structure of the English Bible has been subject to several historical variations, it would be too much to assume that it is God-given. The order as we have it is not, however, purely arbitrary. In fact, the order shows evidence of being purposefully directed, at least insofar as it falls into meaningful categories, because it presents the historical unfolding of the drama of redemptive revelation.

This fits my thesis well. The pattern is obvious and too well designed to be chance, but there is too much evidence of "historical variations" (or shall we say deliberate manipulation?) to say that it is "God-given."

So that is my thesis. I think it is possible that the order of the canon, and hence the pattern of the Bible Wheel, was slowly selected from a wide variety of hundreds of possibilities over a period of fifteen hundred years to fit the intuitions and desires of the pattern-finding and pattern-creating scribes. This hypothesis explains how we got the patterns that could not have happened by chance, and why those patterns are inferior to what we would expect if the Bible were deliberately designed by an infinitely intelligent and wise God.

[RC Christian]

What you just stated is what's been milling around in my mind trying to find words to be expressed! That resonates beautifully...and it came the week of the 21st anniversary of the long road. Good job with presenting that so well. I've got the book sitting here on my desk right now and I was just pondering these thoughts earlier, when I pulled it off the shelf to look at the 1611 KJV Title page. The process would be much like an author who keeps looking for the flow of the story to find it's tie-ins back and forth with different parts of the work...how all masterpieces are created.

[Richard Amiel McGough]

What you just stated is what's been milling around in my mind trying to find words to be expressed! That resonates beautifully...and it came the week of the 21st anniversary of the long road. Good job with presenting that so well. I've got the book sitting here on my desk right now and I was just pondering these thoughts earlier, when I pulled it off the shelf to look at the 1611 KJV Title page. The process would be much like an author who keeps looking for the flow of the story to find it's tie-ins back and forth with different parts of the work...how all masterpieces are created.

Thanks for the good words my friend. Maybe one day we will be able to clink something more solid than digital beer steins.

I have to say that this was a real breakthrough for me.

[RC Christian]

Thanks for the good words my friend. Maybe one day we will be able to clink something more solid than digital beer steins.

I have to say that this was a real breakthrough for me.

...and it all started when you edited-out 528..."Key"...from your post, just before I told you about the number being in the movie "Inception"...strange how things flow. Breakthroughs and paradigm shifts do tend to come during those highly synchronous, meaningful times, don't they...

[Richard Amiel McGough]

...and it all started when you edited-out 528..."Key"...from your post, just before I told you about the number being in the movie "Inception"...strange how things flow. Breakthroughs and paradigm shifts do tend to come during those highly synchronous, meaningful times, don't they...

Yeah, that synchronicity was wild!

And that reminds me - I wanted to say "Thanks" for helping me break open my imaginary barrier. If it weren't for our discussions, I very much doubt I would have been inspired to post the Dumbo dream. I've carried that around with me for 21 years. It involved things I wasn't comfortable talking about. Now it's all out in the open. I feel a little naked, but that's a lot better than suffocating in an old musty closet. It's great to open the door and get out into the world. Thanks again!

[RC Christian]

Yeah, that synchronicity was wild!

And that reminds me - I wanted to say "Thanks" for helping me break open my imaginary barrier. If it weren't for our discussions, I very much doubt I would have been inspired to post the Dumbo dream. I've carried that around with me for 21 years. It involved things I wasn't comfortable talking about. Now it's all out in the open. I feel a little naked, but that's a lot better than suffocating in an old musty closet. It's great to open the door and get out into the world. Thanks again!

Thank you! I told you, that was the best (and funnest) flow I've had in a long time. Man, I love that stuff...gives "meaning" to life. To me, the Dumbo dream is "more" impressive than had you been 'searching' for it with the left hemisphere. It testifies of that 'transcendent something' that we get to tap into every now and then...the same something that all the great geniuses were able to tap into.

[Richard Amiel McGough]

Thank you! I told you, that was the best (and funnest) flow I've had in a long time. Man, I love that stuff...gives "meaning" to life. To me, the Dumbo dream is "more" impressive than had you been 'searching' for it with the left hemisphere. It testifies of that 'transcendent something' that we get to tap into every now and then...the same something that all the great geniuses were able to tap into.

Cool. Now we just gotta learn how to tap into it a little more frequently.

But not tonight, it's bed time.

Good night!

[RC Christian]

Cool. Now we just gotta learn how to tap into it a little more frequently.

But not tonight, it's bed time.

Good night!

Yep, about that time.

[kathryn]

Hi Richard and Rose....Could you give some good examples on how you would improve on the pattern of the wheel?

[debz]

Cool. Now we just gotta learn how to tap into it a little more frequently.

I believe, as stated before, that this was a good example of "revelation" -- it couldn't be figured out, it was "revealed" to you by Someone outside yourself in a common way the Spirit speaks: through dreams. And you can learn to tap into it more frequently

I still believe the Wheel confirms Divine Design, and just because theologians and academics in the religious world rejected it means squat. It seems it was the discouragement from "them" that causedd you to begin to doubt everything, and to begin to seek purely intellectual "answers." Something to ponder more...?