Becky checked this one out from the library, then passed it to me thinking I might like it. And I did. Timothy Beal manages to write much more eloquently than I could about opinions I also share. Opinions not so much about the Bible as about the common way it is used.
He writes about the origins of the Bible from its roots in Jewish scripture to collections of early Christian leaders' letters to becoming compiled in it's current form. If you can even claim it has a "form". One thing Beal emphasizes is that the phenomenon of multiple versions of scripture is not new to modern Christianity. Even ancient Jewish scriptural scrolls often came with commentary essays, which would in turn sometimes become conflated with the scriptural writing itself. A tradition that has continued from ancient to modern times.
He does not consider that is necessarily a bad thing. It requires that we read scripture thoughtfully. Reading different books of the Bible as personal testimony about holy events can be a thought provoking, enriching experience. It can inspire us to seek our own such experiences.
By contrast, modern evangelical Biblicalism tries to portray the Bible as a single, incontrovertible "voice of God" narrative. Multiple authors, sure, but all saying the same thing. The tendency is to reduce the Bible to some sort of Holy Magic 8 Ball. "The Word of God is sufficient for all things." Or, "open it to any passage and you will find God's answer for you."
My observation is that this is how you get otherwise reasonable people to take the Creation Museum seriously. Or deny that Jupiter has moons. It drives me absolutely bonkers when people try to use the Bible as a biology text book. Or physics or history or any other kind of text book. That's not what it is. It is simply the testimony of Prophets about God and His relation with us and those prophets' teachings about how we ought to treat each other. As if that were a simple thing.
11 hours ago
