Many people here – and all over – want to read the Bible like it’s a set of some kind of newspaper reports from the last century, or (worse) like a laundry list where everything is of equal importance, or, as Dr. Micahel Heiser puts it in the video below, like a textbook.
It’s none of those things, it’s ancient literature. Dr. Heiser has a recommendation for how to read it–
Dr. Heiser gives some reasoning in his talk, but there’s more to it. So dive in and give objective reasons for how you think we ought to read the Bible.
That seems like good advice as reading it as fiction would encourage one to open both their sympathetic and their rational minds with the former taking precedence. Watching now.
Perhaps there is no correct way. There are plenty of flippant answers including, carefully,
or
with the Holy Spirit
If I suggested it was religious propaganda would that be taking things too far?
It assumes the existence of God, and it is trying to encourage faith and a set of beliefs (or two)
There might also be a few No Nos, but I am reluctant to claim them when so many people think otherwise.
Scripture is like no other literature, so perhaps it needs special attention rather than a fixed approach.
I would caution against assuming it as fiction, that would seem to be self defeating
It is certainly greater than its words or content.
But it s not God in written form, (OK, I said it)
I’ve heard that for Hebrew readers, it’s supposed to be relatively straightforward to distinguish differences of the various texts in the Talmud - at least as different authors or styles/eras of writing.
I disagree that the culture and thinking of the writers is part of the context. It is not a part of the text at all. Writing is not limited to the author’s own thinking and can go beyond this in many different ways, such as imagining how completely different people are thinking. I do agree it is part of the meaning of the language and thus part of the translation process.
I disagree that we can accurately capture the thinking of the writers. There are too many assumptions involved: assuming that we accurately know when it was written, assuming we are right in our conclusion about how these people thought, and assuming the writers are acting in accord with their culture (religions are often even typically counter-culture). I would calculate this as introducing 3 factors 50% uncertainty which is comes to only 12.5%
Then there is the authorship of God which is not limited to the culture and thinking of the writers. Nor is it limited to a singularity of meaning for authors often intend what they write to be understood in many different ways – and I would expect God to be particularly adept at this.
In conclusion, I would say the culture and thinking of the writers is not irrelevant and can be a valuable tool in understanding the text. But it is not part of the text and inserting it into the text would still count as rewriting the text – as if you could do a better job at writing the Bible than God Himself.
Finally, I would say this falls into the trap of trying to make religion into some kind of objective science which I think is contrary to its purpose. What we want will always be a part of understanding what the Bible is saying to us and that is as it should be.
if what you are saying is that there is no definitive understanding I would wholeheartedly concur .However the notion that there is would be very appealing especially to the objective mind set. It would appear that there are some people who are afraid of their own thoughts or the validity of them. Having a specific meaning would be almost essential for them. it is there, and they do not have to decide or make decisions about it.
Richard
I have been reading (once again) the gospel according to Matthew and wondering the interpretations he made about the text in the Hebrew Bible (OT). If someone would make that kind of interpretations today, many even on this Forum would protest that the interpretations go too far. Yet, we Christians believe that what he wrote reveals truths from the earlier scriptures because the Holy Spirit revealed these points and inspired the writing.
In the interpretations made within the biblical scriptures, I see layers. The layers may be the way how messages told to persons within a particular context (including their worldview and culture) may also speak to us modern people. To understand the texts correctly, we need to respect the message told to the original receivers (as they understood it) but also pray that the Holy Spirit would reveal the additional and more general/permanent layers (teachings) in the text.
If my understanding about the layered structure of the prophetic biblical texts is close to the truth, we cannot understand the messages completely without knowing something about the world and context of the receivers. However, it should be possible to understand something about the general truths in the message without knowing much about the original context.
If we do not understand the context as the original receivers experienced it, we probably miss some parts of the message, and there is a high risk that we misinterpret other parts of the message.
Not exactly. I would not use that wording because it sound too much like saying Christianity has no meaning (definition) at all. I just oppose the effort to force it to be entirely the same for everyone where what we want is irrelevant as is the case in objective science.
I would not say there is nothing objective about the Bible. It is part of its nature as a written text to separate it from our own mind and opinion to some degree. The Bible does have an objective existence – same text (with variation from the translation process) for everyone. It gives us a common ground for thought and communication. Thus in opposing the idea of turning it into an objective science I am likening it to reality itself which certainly has objective aspects to it, while also observing there is no evidence that reality is exclusively objective.
And whole point of the Bible is help us deal with the demand of life for subjective participation where what we want is important. Indeed, I think the Bible says what we want has more importance than anything we can measure. Think of the sermon on the mount where Jesus extends the law beyond written rules to the realm of mind and desire.
Really? LOL So you think what we measure is more important than what we want?
I think you haven’t really read what I wrote and are responding to something else entirely.
Indeed! But saying there is no definitive understanding supports doing this. That is going too far!
What we want is not the measure of what is good. The point is that what we want should never be ignored as irrelevant. The Bible and religion make it clear that we need to change what we want to what is good. For objective science what we want is simply irrelevant and that is why religion should never be treated as an objective science and to do so is delusional if not outright harmful.
One of my complaints against Biblical Christians is that they do not think beyond what they assert. What they discern is more important than their own values or sense of both morality and social interaction. If that is what it says…
however, and i am guessing you actually sussed this is that what we understand starts from Scripture rather than from our own beliefs. We can assess what we read and decide if it is what we agree with, but it is something else to just try and prove that Scripture is saying what we want it to.
I think the biggest issue is genre. That was one of my biggest takeaways from Spark’s God’s word in human words. Anyways, my views on the Bible are not immutable. I still wrestle with its role and understanding but I think not reading it “like a laundry list where everything is of equal importance” is well stated. In the debate about inerrancy my response is that the Bible is good enough. This is a section on how I have come to view the Bible in this larger writing I am still working on:
Theology: the Holy Spirit and the Word of God
I have opined that the Bible is good enough to serve the purposes for which God intends it. But what might those purposes be? To mediate the sacred and train us in righteousness. Scripture is only infallible insofar as it is used by God for those purposes. The Bible does not save people. God uses scripture to bring people to truth and save them. God saves people through Jesus, not cellulose with ink on it from a human publishing company. The Bible is a tool or instrument used by God. In my view 2 Timothy 3:15-17 summarizes what the entire Bible is and teaches over and over again: sacred writings there to “instruct [us] for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus” and to “equip us for every good work.” Note that I did not proof-text hunt that verse. It is a theme I see repeatedly in Scripture. The Bible wants us to be saved, it wants us to be in a right standing before God and to obey his commands. God was perfect before making us. We do not complete or perfect Him. Creation is a result of love overflowing and Jesus’s sacrifice is a model of selfless living. As cliche as it might sound, love is the central hermeneutic of the Christian faith and all of creation. This can be found in one form or another on almost every page of the Bible. I say the Bible is good enough because God chooses to use it to mediate the sacred. Even if God did not inspire the authors to compose the Bible, I would still consider it infallible in its intended purposes by the mere fact that God is using it as his instrument for teaching us about salvation. This is actually a statement about God more so than Scripture. I believe God did move over those ancient authors (or most of them) and compelled them to write, putting ideas and thoughts on their hearts. I just do not believe he necessarily overrode their free will. He let them tell His story from their perspective while maintaining His divine prerogative to have included what He wanted in Scripture. I also believe He moved over the Church during canonization but again, without fully erasing free will.
I follow Karl Barth in thinking that scripture is vulnerable to human errors and that without the illuminating light of the Holy Spirit, it will look like any other human work. Jesus’s quip about “Pearls before swine” is apt here. The Bible is not the Word of God. Jesus is the Word of God. The Bible is a witness to the sinless and perfect Word of God. it is a holy and venerated instrument that the triune Godhead uses to mediate the sacred:
“The Bible has proved and will prove itself to be a true and fitting instrument to point man to God and his work and his words, to God who alone is infallible. Since the Bible is a human instrument and document, bound and conditioned by the temporal views of nature, of history, of ideas, of values, it to that extent is not sinless, like Jesus Christ himself, and thus not infallible, like God. No wonder that seen from the perspective of the worldviews and the concepts of other ages; the question may arise whether we have to conclude that the Bible is not solid. I should never say such a thing, but would admit rather the occurrence of certain, let us say, tensions, contradictions, and maybe if you prefer, “errors,” in its time-bound human statements.” – Karl Barth
I affirm that the Bible is a reliable witness to the Word of God and can equip us to do every good work and that makes it normative for Christians everywhere when read under the irradiating influence of the Holy Spirit.
Exactly! That is one danger of making it an “objective science.”
The other way in which this goes wrong is with whole objective treatment of the Bible as literature. In that case you can simply reject the notion that we have to follow this antiquated writing. But then it fails in its subjective purpose also.
Well that is a difference between us. For you starting with the Bible and going beyond it this is true. But for someone going in the opposite direction, like me, this is not the case. I am finding the Bible has value starting from thinking which doesn’t come from the Bible.
But i do not think you wold claim that the bible exactly matches or enforces your starting beliefs, more that it can harmonise with them. Perhaps I am wrong.
This is not quite correct. The Bible is the record available/accepted by Christians of what God has said, and that is what the Bible most often refers to when it speaks of the word of God. When we say Jesus is the word of God what we mean is slightly different – we mean He is its fulfillment. Jesus makes it real and gives it substance. So even while we are warned in John 9:50 that an obsession with scripture without Jesus misses the point, the plain fact is the Bible is our primary and most trustworthy access to the person of Jesus.
This is a valid point but I think it is overinflated. Those probabilities are evenly weighted which would need to be established, not assumed. It is true that when we build a historical reconstruction on a number of probability based assumptions that the likelihood of it being accurate goes down based on the number of prior beliefs required. Dating the works, determining the authorship, textually reconstructing them, translating them, and even interpreting them are all uncertain links as well. Sometimes these are even intertwined. How you translate a text might depend on who you think wrote it, to whom it was written and where. It doesn’t even seem possible to interpret anything without understanding some aspect of the writers thinking. But I agree we should not pretend we have direct access to their minds. We have access to what’s written on the text in front of us and other texts from the same and subsequent time periods. From that we can try to understand what the author meant. The more we know about the time period and author the better guess we can make but there is a lot of uncertainty.
I have no issue with someone calling the Bible the word of God. I said the Bible is not the Word of God. You may have missed the uppercase. Jesus and the Father are one. A book and the father are not one. The book is what we Christians use as our sacred scripture and opinion of it can range from very liberal ones that view it as an entirely human work to very conservative ones that border on bibliolatry. The purpose of the word (graphe?) of God is to point to the Word (logos) of God.
That happens frequently with many participants. I usually reply by elaborating further in order to increase understanding. It can be very frustrating when I cannot comprehend enough to elaborate, but over-reacting leads to very unproductive exchanges as happened not so long ago with Jay313 – I am still learning too.
How do you explain the fall of mankind into sin and the need for salvation, then the restoration of mankind back to sinless existence?
Even the example of Ananias and Saphira, when they lied to the Holy Spirit, they were struct down dead at Peters feet in front of eyewitnesses…it went around the church community of the day scaring the ■■■■ out of everyone who heard it. The consequence of sin was very definately a physical death…this event is clear sbout that.
The theme of the bible clearly illustrates that God took the tree of life away from mankind so that he could not continue to eat of it and live forever!
The only means of restoration is through the physical sacrifice of Christ on the cross. That theme is presented to us throughout the bible as historical.
Personally, i think attempting to explain away historical accounts is as stupid as pretending there is no such thing as gravity…we have bucket loads of archeological evidence that supports the historical narrative here….even the existence of Joseph, the Exodus, Isaiab, Jeremiah, the story of Daniel, Ezekiel…the historical evidences are overwhelming and cant be avoided.
