3. Why bother to think about the Bible?
There’s some pretty odd stuff in the Bible! In fact, some of it is so odd that you wonder how it got in there in the first place. Part of the reason why it seems so strange is that it was written at a time when people thought very differently from the way we think today. Their understanding of the world was different, and their cultural practices were far removed from anything we would recognise. In acknowledging these differences, it has been well said that no one should ever simply read the Bible: you should either study it, or leave it alone.
The Bible is a collection of writings, mostly by unknown authors, with the earliest ones being written over a thousand years before the later ones. People often have a very black and white attitude to the Bible, and seem to think that the only choice is between accepting it all in a literal sense - or rejecting it all. And given that some of the stories are clearly impossible (such as the wonderfully ludicrous one of Jonah living in the whale for three days), they dismiss the whole thing. But they don’t have to. There’s so much good stuff in the Bible, that we need to reclaim the initiative from those whose approach to it is both unintelligent and unimaginative.
It’s obviously not possible to be a Christian and not take the Bible seriously - but it is possible to be a Christian and not take the Bible literally. The problem is that lots of people are very touchy whenever questions are raised about the Bible, which makes it very difficult to get them to think (really think) about it at all! Whatever else it may be, the Bible is, first and foremost, a religious book: it’s the story of the religious journey of a group of people over thousands of years; and it’s also been (and remains) the core religious text of an enormous number of people over thousands of years. It’s about religion – and it also is religion. Without it, the three great world monotheistic faiths, followed by over half the people in the world, wouldn’t exist. Its importance cannot be overestimated
The Bible is a collection of ancient documents written by a whole series of people over many centuries. Hardly anyone would think of God as a being who has a body and could hold a pen and write things down. It would therefore be agreed that the Bible is a completely human book, in terms of its physical production. Many would want, to say however that although it was written by men, it was inspired by God, and is therefore the ‘Word of God’. But what does this actually mean? How might God ‘inspire’ someone to write something? Could we tell the difference between something God has inspired someone to write, and something he hasn’t?
Is the claim that God (understood as a sort of super-person) dictated the words which unknown Bronze Age inhabitants of the Middle East then spoke and which eventually became passed down? Or is it that God somehow thought the words into the heads of people who then spoke or wrote them? Or what? The whole idea makes little sense to many people, but the Bible is so central to the development of Christianity (as well as Judaism and Islam) that we need in some way to mark it off as being special. Perhaps we can continue to call it the ‘Word of God’, so long as we make it clear that such a phrase is being used metaphorically rather than in a woodenly literal sense.
There’s no getting away from the fact that the Bible is a very human book. It was not written by God, it was not edited by God, it was not translated by God. In the beginning, of course, none of it was written down at all. Most of it started life as sayings or stories that were handed down from generation to generation as part of an oral tradition and doubtless became embellished in the process. Eventually they got written down, which fixed them a bit more, but before the invention of printing they were handed on by being copied out, and inevitably mistakes were made. And when they were translated from the original Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek, they suffered still further alteration because translation can never be exact.
Sir Alec Issigonis, the designer of the Mini, once commented that a camel is a horse designed by a committee, and the Bible is a bit like that! It’s a book (in fact, a whole series of books) edited over the centuries by a whole series of committees, from Hebrew scholars three hundred years before Jesus to leaders of the Christian Church in the fifth century) who decided which of the enormous numbers of religious writings in circulation, were to be included. And just as the camel is a curious beast, so the Bible is a curious production. Some books (such as Revelation) might have been better left out, while other books might usefully have been included. It’s all a matter of judgement – human judgement. We’re the ones who decide which authorities to follow; and to say that a particular text is ‘inspired by God’ means that we happen to regard it as uniquely authoritative.
Many people find the anti-intellectualism of so much Christianity the strongest possible reason to have nothing to do with any of it - which is why those of us who are perfectly happy to go along with the scientific view of the world (what is the alternative?) need to make it clear that it is possible to take both the Bible and the modern world seriously. The bottom line is this: do you think that you can (and should) read the Bible literally - or not? If you do, you’re saying that it is, in effect, the same sort of work as a physics textbook. If you don’t then you’re on a very slippery slope because once you allow that intelligence and critical faculties and awareness of metaphor have some part to play, there’s no obvious point at which you can call a halt! You are bound to ask questions like: which are the mythical bits? which are the historical bits? which are the metaphorical bits? And how can you possibly distinguish between them?
The Bible is a magnificent book, with a huge list of characters, a strong central plot, and plenty of intrigue, betrayal, love and hate. Drama and poetry and bits of history are all mixed in, with some uplifting stuff and some very peculiar stuff as well. But provided we use our intelligence and don’t try to read it all in the same way, it contains enough inspiration and challenge to last anyone an entire lifetime.
Tony Windross, Vicar of St Peter's, Sheringham.
Why bother
A fuller treatment of this topic, plus 36 others, can be found in ‘The Thoughtful Guide to Faith’
also written by Tony Windross, published by John Hunt (2004) and available from all good bookshops at £9-99.