Faiths are built on these two cornerstones:

1. Unprovable Beliefs

2. Undisprovable Beliefs

Even the auto correcting dictionary of my iPhone is underlining the word UNDISPROVABLE.

What is so difficult for the human mind to accommodate ‘Undisprovable’ as a word, when Unprovable is already a part of the vocabulary of a decent dictionary?

To get to the Undisprovable, one has to have gone beyond the parameters of Time, which are History and the Senses. An idea or a piece of history, which cannot be found out either through the writings of contemporaries or through remains of an archaeological discovery, or not palpable to the senses, are UNPROVABLE , but if an assertion of a fact is mentioned relating to the same period, even if the asserter is unable to prove, the leg on which that Fact stands would be UNDISPROVABILITY.

When such an undisprovable fact is sanctified through revered religious voices, these facts get set as FAITHS.

For example whether Soul exists at all, is not as important as to whether it is a provable fact as much as whether it is an undisprovable fact.

Many charlatans and many sages have asserted facts which fall in this category – Undisprovable fact. But believing in some, have led to salubrious effect on the society and some beliefs have led to deleterious effects. The effects have to be seen on humanity at the individual level, and not on a group, vis à vis an undisprovable fact.

This is the reason why in most of the Modern Laws, the person who asserts a fact has to prove it. If he doesn’t succeed, that assertion is not considered a proven fact.

Let us take one of the most mysterious happenings in the history of Israel- the reign of Abijam or Abijah, the son of Rehoboam, the son of King Solomon, the son of King David.

He ruled only for a period of three years, according to the Kings as well as the book of Chronicles, from the Bible.

I prefer to call him Abijah, as the ending ‘jam’ doesn’t sound good to my ears, for a man’s name. Abijah is engaged in a very decisive war with Jeroboam – the founder of the Kingdom of Israel minus the tribes of Judah and Benjamin. A very capable man who threatened the peace of Solomon, but ran away to Egypt and stayed till the death of King Solomon. Upon his return, he is set up as the King by the ten other tribes against King Rehoboam, the Foolish. Grandson of King David, he neither inherited the skills and cunning of his grandfather, nor the putative “Wisdom” of his father King Solomon.

King Solomon himself was mostly responsible for the plight of Rehoboam. King Solomon died with the kingdom’s coffers dry, replenished only through exacting taxes imposed. Added to this were his advisors, who were hotheaded young men. Why Rehoboam should have had hotheaded young men, as advisors, at an age of 41 years, would be a good question, but no undisprovable factual answer could be adduced from the text of the Bible. With such a flawed inheritance and a bad governing attitude, Rehoboam falls a victim to the creation of the ten tribes. Worse still is the fact that Rehoboam, who boasted that the girth of his little finger was thicker than his father’s waist, listens to a prophet stating that the division was from the Lord and Rehoboam accepts that meekly.

Rehoboam was so enfeebled that he had to accept that decision of the ten tribes, because of his own weakness.

Abijah did not accept this so called “came from God” theory and gives his own explanation to Jeroboam and his forces of 800,000 men of war. Abijah says that by a covenant of salt, the whole kingdom of 12 tribes were given to King David and his heirs in perpetuity by God, and that his father, Rehoboam while he was still young and tender hearted, couldn’t withstand the vain men and sons of belial, whom Jeroboam, the servant of Solomon, had threatened Rehoboam with! At one stroke, Abijah demolished the past, present and future of Jeroboam. Words which talk of the pedigree of a servant disobedient to the word of God, disobedient to the king, a thug, and taking advantage of a newly anointed but an inexperienced king!

None, none in the Bible is spoken to in such terms. Abijah strips Jeroboam with his address. Meanwhile, Jeroboam had started encircling the mount on which Abijah had set his army in array. Abijah further adds that, since Jeroboam, as the scum of the Israel, had dared to fight the God’s anointed, God would fight the war on behalf of Abijah.

The fact as reported by the Chronicler is that 800,000 enemies were to be countered by an army half the size, yet Abijah was not trying to be ‘wise’ like Rehoboam and accept the loss of 10 tribes as God designed, as propounded by the dispersed levitic prophets! But invoked the name of God and was willing to stake it out against a much bigger force. A proposition not considered wise in any warfare. Mysteriously, how Abijah won this war is not mentioned except that God gave victory to Abijah. It was not a mere victory, it was a slaughter, 400,000 men utterly slaughtered 500,000 men and Judah gets back Bethel and vast swathes of land in Ephraim – the tribe of Jeroboam! It was a 125% slaughter. You may choose to believe it or not, but i chose to believe it, not because i am a newly minted fan of Abijah, but because it took the next king of Israel Baasha 35 years, to start the first war with Asa, the son of Abijah! That was also not a war but an act of effrontery of starting construction in Ramah, which was the traditional lands of the tribe of Judah.

If it took 35 years for the kingdom of Israel to recover, some deep injury must have been inflicted by Abijah. In those 35 years, the tribe of Israel was hobnobbing with the Syrians. Asa builds, rather rebuilds the diplomatic ties with Syria, by sending gold and other precious things to Benhadad and breaks those pre-existing ties between Syria and Israel – reminding Benhadad of the earlier ties which, Asa claims as having existed between his father, Abijah, and Benhadad’s father!

So now let us get to the UNDISPROVABLE FACT!

So how did four hundred thousand men rout eight hundred thousand men? Worse still how did they manage to kill five hundred thousand men?

Asa says his father Abijah and the father of Benhadad were allies! In that short span of three years of Abijah’s kingship, he is not reported to have been engaged in any big battle, except for the fact that border skirmishes had taken place. Nothing so decisive as the one which happened in the mount Ephraim, had taken place!

In the meanwhile, the Book of Kings states that the Prophet Iddo had written about Abijah. But history says all his writings have been lost for good – as of now‼️

In this scenario, why cannot i insert a highly probable history, that Abijah had already built an alliance with Benhadad’s father, regarding which Jeroboam was not aware of. And as Jeroboam was surrounding the mount, why can’t i say that there were Syrians who had been lying in wait behind the encircling Israelites?

Why can’t i say that Israelites did not want the Chronicles of Iddo to survive, after Ahab and Jehosaphat became allies! Especially after both the Kingdoms became United through matrimonial alliances during the reign of Ahab?

Am i not entitled to start stories like Dan Brown’s DA VINCI CODE– which merely are stories which have taken bits and pieces of facts from the Bible and strung together EMBOLDENED only based on the UNDISPROVABILITY of those assertions?

Yes, i have the Liberty, so does everyone, but discretion is required by the reader to distinguish between what is an UNDISPROVABLE fact and a highly probable fact.

But beyond all this, if i assert a Faith, i don’t have to stand on facts- but we have to ensure that our faiths do not disturb others’ Faith. That’s the bedrock on which all Faiths are to be ‘bedrocked’ not merely laid.