. . . and that doesn’t hurt its holiness or its validity! When I was a child my Sunday School teachers used to say that God whispered the words of the Bible, and someone wrote them down. There is some level of comfort in this idea, and many Christians I love defend it passionately, but there are problems with this theory. Men of varied culture and history penned the words, men translated the words from language to language, and men deliberated, disagreed, and decided which ancient writings to include in what we call the Bible. Understandably, therefore, there are hundreds of problems when we attempt to see the words as handed down directly from God.
I understand and respect the need for some to yell “heresy” about now! I speculate a twofold reason for this passion: 1) The human need for God to be tangible, thus the equating of the Bible with God. (With our physical bodies we can’t touch, see, or hear God, but we can touch, see, and hear the Bible.) 2) The fear that if any discrepancy is found in the Bible that would mean God was not real or that the Bible was not Holy. Well, I hope to dispel both of these ideas here. The Bible does contain hundreds of discrepancies. Yet God is very real, and the Scripture is Holy.
The Bible is inspired by God. It amazingly records and preserves the Hebrew/Jewish people’s history with God, the life and teachings of Jesus, and the beginnings of the Christian Church. Inspired, yes. There is, however, a critical difference between spiritual revelation and human words. Have you ever tried to put a spiritual revelation into words? One does not fit perfectly into the other, but words are all we have with which to communicate. The words of the Bible were mostly penned by writers who lived in close relationship to God, and were under some level of the power of the Holy Spirit as they wrote, but nowhere do we read that they were immaculately conceived, or that they were transfigured as they wrote. They were not perfect or omniscient people. Many of them made judgments in their lives for which they would be arrested today, and maybe even given the death penalty. They included adulterers, murderers, a former persecutor of Christians, . . . Despite their humanness, however, the writings they left us are the most valuable and precious tangible gift from God to us. An awe-inspiring set of writings that have revolutionized our world for many centuries. The all-time best-selling book worldwide, and with good reason!
Although most Christians have a Bible in their homes, however, only a small percentage of them ever read it from cover to cover. They claim its value. I’ve heard many say that if their house caught fire, their Bible would be the first thing they’d grab on the way out. Yet it has largely become an icon. They like to talk and read about what it says, but many Christians don’t pick up the actual Bible except to carry it under their arms when they go to church. Yet many of these same Christians are the most defensive of its perfection. Why? Because they have equated it with God. Many Christians, knowingly or unknowingly, worship the Bible. It has unknowingly become their idol, and the idea that the Bible might have a tiny error in it is as blasphemous to them as saying that God makes mistakes.
God does not make mistakes. God is omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent. God is not confined to or limited by our finite understanding of who God is. Nor is God confined to any writings, no matter how great and how inspired. Language is humanity’s means of communication. God is not confined to written or spoken human language. Humans, on the other hand, even when given a spiritual truth or revelation, can only process it through our own finite mental and spiritual understanding. Thus our attempts to explain will never be equal to God’s perfection. God inspired the writers of the Bible, but author it, God did not.
A present day example of this distinction: I visited a church where the pastor preached an inspired sermon. He was passionate about living for God, and his relationship with God was not questionable. He claimed God gave him his sermon, and I believe him. Yet, perhaps due to his level of education, his sermon did have a couple of errors. Not because God doesn’t know everything, but because the pastor doesn’t. Still God is using him, just as God amazingly chooses to work through such imperfect children as you and me!
The book we know as the Bible is actually not one book but a compilation of 66 different inspired writings, written in several different genres by many different authors over a span of many centuries. Some of these writings are personal letters. Others are books of poetry, or allegory, or law, or history, or prophecy . . ., each of which should, by nature of the genre, be read a little differently. The Biblical writers, just as writers today, wrote to and within the confines of the cultures of which they were a part.
Related: How Does a Red Letter Christian Read the Bible? – A Jesus Shaped Proposal
I have heard many Christians proclaim emphatically that the Scripture needs no interpretation, that it speaks for itself. As humans, however, there is no such thing as reading anything (the newspaper, the Bible, this blog . . .) without applying our own interpretation to that reading. We all read through the eyes and ears of our own education and experience. Most of us developed our own interpretations from those of our spiritual leaders past and present (pastors, teachers, parents, spouse . . .), although we may be totally unaware of their influence. All of us interpret, but not always responsibly. A most complete interpretation of each individual book of the Bible involves several questions, like:
Who wrote it?
When was it written?
For what purpose was it written?
To whom was it written? (Who was its intended audience?)
What genre is it?
What was the culture in which the author lived?
What did the words mean in their original language? (If you have ever mastered a second language, you know that translation is definitely not an exact science.)
How would the original readers have understood it?
Did God Write the Bible...
