The Evangelical Universalist Forum

Ways of reading Scripture

@Cindy Skillman

(I gather the above will get Cindy’s attention. Someone correct me if I’m wrong!)

Greetings Cindy!
You wrote, very roughly a year ago, in “George MacDonald vs Grace”

I am one who takes a very literal God-somehow-dictated-all-Scripture view. And finds it isn’t working very well. I’m not interested in proving your methods wrong, but in finding out what they are. How do you read Scripture? How do you find inspiration from the middle of uninspired stuff, if that’s what you do? And what do you mean by a Reformation era method of interpretation? It may well be what I do. Of the people I know face to face who read the Bible, almost all of them would take a literal view of it. Which shows how few Christians I know. EU is different!

Also, I act as if different human authors make no difference because the Holy Spirit inspired it all. I think I’m wrong here. And PLEASE lets keep
it friendly; I’ll be surprised if I don’t reneg later, on not trying to prove your methods wrong. This is very likely to turn into a literal vs other
debate on scripture and keeping that friendly will be a challenge. We are brothers and sisters because we believe in Jesus, not because of how
little or much of scripture we take literally.

Let’s NOT talk about evolution, except that it is much tied up in the interpretation of Genesis 1.

Thanks, and God bless you,
Nicholas

Hi, Nicholas

Great topic!

First the historical stuff (and please keep in mind I’ve learned all of this from others and may have gotten some of it wrong. I am very much prepared to be corrected. Please don’t take any of the things I say as the holy writ of an experienced scholar. I’m just one more person (like you) who has struggled with the understanding of scripture that we, as laypersons, have been taught. I always assumed that the perfection of the Bible was a basic tenet of the faith. It’s not, really.

This started with learning how to hear from God for myself. If you look through scripture, it’s jam-packed with people hearing God’s voice (not audible in most cases, but still hearing Him.) When I, at very long last, discovered how simple it was to do this, it made me wonder. Most of the things I wrote down that I received from Him were difficult to dispute with, but some of the things, looking back on them, I wondered whether I’d heard correctly. I think that in most cases (except where I tried to get Him to tell me about future events :unamused: which He doesn’t do all that often), I did hear what He was able to say to me, considering that He had to send the message through a given value of “me getting in the way.” I had to wonder whether the original authors of the scriptures had the same problem on occasion, and whether or not God really kept that stuff from getting into that which we call His word.

First off, calling it HIS word is often a bit of a stretch. It’s filled with people talking ABOUT Him and about their own history. Only in the prophecies do we have words directly attributed to God. Even then, guess how the prophets GOT that? Probably the same way I do. Given they were unquestionably wiser and closer to God than I am, I still think there’s space there for occasionally seeing things through their own filters. Plus we have things like Jesus saying: “Moses gave you that law because of the hardness of your hearts, but it was not so from the beginning.” I had always wondered about that. Why would Jesus say MOSES gave them that law? I thought it was God. Moses talks like it was God, but maybe that’s just Moses acting on his delegated authority. Other than the prophetic bits, we have the diatribes of Job’s questionable friends. I’ve heard many sermons based on something one or another of Job’s friends had to say, despite the fact that Job’s friends (save the last to speak) were rebuked by none other than God Himself for the things they said. I used to agonize over that psalm where the writer says basically, “Blessed is he who smashes YOUR babies brains out on a rock.” Why would this bother me? OBVIOUSLY these are the words of a man who has seen horrible things and is feeling a very human emotional response (which I might also feel, if not proclaim in poetical form). But I could not see it this way because I’d been indoctrinated with the idea that every word in the Bible fell straight from the lips of the God of gods.

People were inspired to write ABOUT God. It doesn’t follow (nor does the scripture claim) that God dictated and they wrote down whatever He said. (That would be called plenary inspiration, btw).

If you’ve ever read the OT in chronological order, you’ve probably noticed that God seems to become kinder as the years flow by. Or maybe the people’s perception of God matured. He stopped being (to them) an angry warrior god whose primary concern was that his tribe superseded all the other tribes and began to become the King of kings and the Lord of lords who cared for all. We see some of this in the stories about Abraham, but it falls off from there, dipping to a low as the people tell Moses, “No, YOU go and talk to Him. Tell us what He wants, and we’ll do it, but don’t let Him talk to us again lest we die.” Even Moses seems to give us a god who visits the sins of the parents on the children. (I think, after quite a lot of study, that this should probably have been translated that God deals with the sins of the parents in their children for generations–which is a mercy AND a judgment rather than being vindictive–as it does sound.) Later we see one of the prophets (can’t remember which) saying for God, “The soul that sinneth it shall die,” in the context that God does in fact NOT punish the children for their parents’ sins.

To sum up thus far: The Bible contains many words which the Bible itself attributes to other sources than God: human beings, evil spirits, the devil. The conception of God seems to evolve and mature as the writings become later in time, or at least, later on in the story.

Now here’s another one that shocked me. Historians (and we’re including dedicated followers of Christ who have devoted their lives to these studies), tell us that the Pentateuch was in all probability edited together toward the end of the Babylonian Captivity, probably by Ezra with help from Jeremiah. The first time I heard this, I doubted it, naturally. Still, the more I heard it and looked at the evidence and the sort of people who were putting forth that evidence, the more I wondered whether most pastors haven’t in fact been taught this, come to believe it, and are inhibited from sharing it with their congregations for the obvious reasons that the people would never listen long enough or in an unbiased enough way to see their point and fairly evaluate the possibility of it being true. I won’t go into the history of it. If you Google something like “How was the Pentateuch written” or “History of the Bible/Pentateuch,” you should find some good articles to consider.

I also have learned that many Jewish Rabbis believe the Pentateuch to be the SYMBOLIC history (and not the literal history) of Israel. Bit of an eye-opener, that. Again, do a search and see what you think.

By Reformation era exegesis, I mean that the whole Sola Scriptura thing seems to me to require that any person can read the translated scriptures and come to a simple and consistent understanding of what they say. CLEARLY (if only evidenced by the multiplicity of denominations we have in the Protestant church), this is NOT playing out as expected. The RCC was wrong in denying parishioners the Bible in their own language. Laypeople should DEFINITELY read the scriptures. That said, allthough I think the RCC had its own reasons for doing this, not all of them noble, they had a point. A simple face-value reading of the scriptures has led to many misunderstandings, not least of which would be our many views of end-times prophecies. I think there are a lot of considerations in understanding scripture:

1.) Translation. Many translations are based on much older translations which were made in a time that biblical scholarship was not as advanced as it is today. Translating a “dead” language is not easy. Many words had to be guessed at; many others were later found not to mean what we thought they meant. Sometimes idioms were literally translated, leaving us all scratching our heads. In more recent times, many of these words and idioms are better understood (due to continued discovery of and more sophisticated examination of ancient documents both religious and secular). Like the Rosetta Stone, these additional documents help us to interpret themselves and other ancient documents (such as the scriptures) with a much greater degree of faithfulness to the original language and intent.

2.) Cultural relevancy: We have a tendency to assume the scriptures were written directly TO us. I agree they were written (or at least preserved) FOR us and others, but it’s painfully obvious they were not written TO us. They were written with their original audiences firmly in mind. The writers could never have conceived of a world such as that in which we live. We would be as bafflingly foreign to them as they certainly are to us. How many women today (aside from a few Appalachian fundamentalists) believe it is shameful to get their hair cut? Not so many years ago though, we did, and even today long hair is often seen as somehow more virtuous in women and less virtuous in men. Yet this is a feature of the culture of Paul’s day, and was never the point. The point was respecting one another’s needs. For a woman to uncover her hair at the time was as much as to disavow her relationship with her husband or father–to, as it were, spit in his eye. It was shameful for a woman to have her hair shorn because this is what was done to women believed to be sexually promiscuous. There are a lot of these sorts of things in the Bible. We should expect this, since it is a collection of ancient documents directed to cultures very strange and foreign to us.

3.) The Canon : Why are certain books considered canonical and others not? From what I’ve read, the church found certain books helpful and so they were included in the canon. The Eastern Orthodox have a different canon from the modern Protestant church. Coptic Christians have a different canon. Other smaller groups do, too. The Roman Catholic Church (RCC) also has its own canon. Martin Luther almost succeeded in removing the letter of James and the Revelation from the Protestant canon, yet we hold those books sacred today. What if he’d succeeded? If he hadn’t kicked out the books of the apocrypha, would we be quoting them here? Martin Luther was just a man, yet he had this much influence. The men who assembled the canon were also just men. And why close the canon just then? Were none of the writings of the early fathers worthy of inclusion? Don’t we still hear from God today? What’s so sacred about the canonical council and the determination of the (Roman) church to include this and exclude that? Couldn’t they have gotten it wrong? A real eye-opener for me was watching the election of the last Pope and hearing all the discussion of how this man or that was considered (not least being that perhaps it was his turn, or his country’s turn, or his ethnicity’s turn, etc.) It was a bunch of elderly men VOTING. NOTHING was said of them even praying about it. (Though I hope they did–surely they did.)

Ultimately, the Bible doesn’t seem to me to be the sacrosanct whole I’ve always been taught it is. Jesus told the Pharisees, “Ye search the scriptures for in them ye think ye have everlasting life, yet ye will not come to Me that I may give you life.” The scriptures are there for one primary purpose. NOT “Basic Instructions Before Leaving Earth,” NOT a user’s manual for life, NOT some law we’re supposed to try to follow. The scriptures point us to Jesus. If a given scripture doesn’t seem to paint an accurate picture of HIM, I assume I’m missing something–some cultural nuance, some mistranslation, some context I’m not seeing, some overall picture not yet available to me, some human opinion ABOUT God rather than an accurate picture in itself. It’s even possible (in Cindy’s world) that the writer just plain got it wrong because his filters were too strong to let in the pure light of God.

All in all, I think the Hebrews were remarkable people; able to depict themselves warts and all, for everyone to read about. Their tribal meanness, their failure to be a light to the nations, their inhumanity to one another and to strangers, their unfaithfulness to God; it’s all there in unflinching technicolor. We’re all like this; most of us refuse to admit it. The Old Testament is their story and they, to their credit, do not paper over their own moral inadequacies. The Old Testament shows us their evolving and maturing understanding of God most high. JESUS and no one else is the culmination of this. HE is the perfect image of God to the people of the earth. The whole build-up peaks in the revelation of Christ. “If you have seen ME, you have seen the Father.”

Please don’t feel you need to respond with all of your objections at once, Nicholas. I fully expect you to have some, and if you don’t list them all together, it will be easier to discuss them. I’m going to tag [tag]Paidion[/tag] in on this, since I think he’s likely to have some helpful things to say. He and I often disagree, but he’s a very wise senior brother in Christ and I think he could contribute a lot to the conversation, if he has the time.

Blessings, Cindy

Thanks for a really good post Cindy. I’m quite a lot overwhelmed by volume
and quality. I may become pretty quiet in this topic. And you will be
changing my views. The verses below are all KJV, with an ugly way of quoting,
and italics printed as normal text. Not that I’m caving in or anything!

But let’s look at what Jesus said about scripture.

He is emphatic that his own words won't pass away (and must be true).

Mat:024:035 Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away.
And exactly the same in Mar:13:31 and Luk:21:33.

Likewise about the law (nomos): presumably he means it is letter perfect.
BUT what does nomos mean -- don't ask me.

Mat:005:018 For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass,
one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law,
till all be fulfilled.
Luk:016:017 And it is easier for heaven and earth to pass, than one
tittle of the law to fail.

And again -- for both Jesus and Paul -- what is scripture?

Joh:010:035 …the scripture cannot be broken;
2Ti:003:016 All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is
profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for
instruction in righteousness:

I wished that Jesus would at least say the Pentateuch was inspired, but he
didn’t. All this opens a good-sized can of worms, and I’m certainly not
able to find the needed larger can to contain it. Others may.

Yours lamely,
Nick Hawthorn

In general, this is still the sanest advice I’ve come across, from the essay : transcendentalists.com/unita … ianity.htm
The whole thing is essential reading, but here a few excerpts. When these things are forgotten, perspective is lost imho. :smiley:

-We regard the Scriptures as the records of God’s successive revelations to mankind, and particularly of the last and most perfect revelation of his will by Jesus Christ.

-Whatever doctrines seem to us to be clearly taught in the Scriptures; we receive without reserve or exception. We do not, however, attach equal importance to all the books in this collection. Our religion, we believe, lies chiefly in the New Testament. The dispensation of Moses, compared with that of Jesus, we consider as adapted to the childhood of the human race, a preparation for a nobler system, and chiefly useful now as serving to confirm and illustrate the Christian Scriptures.

  • Our leading principle in interpreting Scripture is this, that the Bible is a book written for men, in the language of men, and that its meaning is to be sought in the same manner as that of other books…Human language, …admits various interpretations; and every word and every sentence must be modified and explained according to the subject which is discussed, according to the purposes, feelings, circumstances, and principles of the writer, and according to the genius and idioms of the language which he uses. These are acknowledged principles in the interpretation of human writings

-We profess not to know a book, which demands a more frequent exercise of reason than the Bible. In addition to the remarks now made on its infinite connexions, we may observe, that its style nowhere affects the precision of science, or the accuracy of definition. Its language is singularly glowing, bold, and figurative, demanding more frequent departures from the literal sense, than that of our own age and country, and consequently demanding more continual exercise of judgment

-With these views of the Bible, we feel it our bounden duty to exercise our reason upon it perpetually, to compare, to infer, to look beyond the letter to the spirit, to seek in the nature of the subject, and the aim of the writer, his true meaning; and, in general, to make use of what is known, for explaining what is difficult, and for discovering new truths.

  • We reason about the Bible precisely as civilians do about the constitution under which we live; who, you know, are accustomed to limit one provision of that venerable instrument by others, and to fix the precise import of its parts, by inquiring into its general spirit, into the intentions of its authors, and into the prevalent feelings, impressions, and circumstances of the time when it was framed. Without these principles of interpretation, we frankly acknowledge, that we cannot defend the divine authority of the Scriptures. Deny us this latitude, and we must abandon this book to its enemies.

-If reason be so dreadfully darkened by the fall, that its most decisive judgments on religion are unworthy of trust, then Christianity, and even natural theology, must be abandoned;

-The worst errors, after all, having sprung up in that church, which proscribes reason, and demands from its members implicit faith. The most pernicious doctrines have been the growth of the darkest times, when the general credulity encouraged bad men and enthusiasts to broach their dreams and inventions, and to stifle the faint remonstrances of reasons, by the menaces of everlasting perdition. Say what we may, God has given us a rational nature, and will call us to account for it.

  • We answer again, that, if God be infinitely wise, he cannot sport with the understandings of his creatures. A wise teacher discovers his wisdom in adapting himself to the capacities of his pupils, not in perplexing them with what is unintelligible, not in distressing them with apparent contradictions, not in filling them with a skeptical distrust of their own powers. An infinitely wise teacher, who knows the precise extent of our minds, and the best method of enlightening them, will surpass all other instructors in bringing down truth to our apprehension, and in showing its loveliness and harmony.

-It is not the mark of wisdom, to use an unintelligible phraseology, to communicate what is above our capacities, to confuse and unsettle the intellect by appearances of contradiction. We honor our Heavenly Teacher too much to ascribe to him such a revelation. A revelation is a gift of light. It cannot thicken our darkness, and multiply our perplexities.

Wow! Great post, Dave. :smiley:

Hi, Nick.

For original languages, you want Paidion (whom I’ve already tagged) and [tag]JasonPratt[/tag], but I’ll give you my take on these things as best I can.

First, I agree that Jesus’ words will not pass away. That said, they CAN be misunderstood for all the reasons I pointed out above, and for several others as well. It seems important to me that we remember Jesus is speaking as a Jew under the law to Jews who are still under the law as well. He isn’t really the first New Covenant prophet so much as He is the fulfillment of the Old Covenant (and the last of its anointed preachers.) Note also that He has a higher (and not so literal) view of the OC. For example, He refuses to stone the woman caught in adultery, He allows His disciples to gather grain on the Sabbath, and He actively commands a man to take up his bed and walk on the Sabbath (not only breaking the Sabbath by healing on it, but causing another man to also break it). You could say that He was only breaking what the priests and Pharisees THOUGHT of as the law–at least where the Sabbath was concerned. Still, He did tell the people to obey these authorities because (He said) they sit in the seat of Moses.

Jesus did, however, blatantly override the law in His mercy for the adulteress. You could look at this two ways. One, that He was showing the law as it OUGHT to have been understood (but in this case very much counter intuitive to Moses’ strict commands concerning punishment for adulterers). The only other option I can think of is that it was MOSES’ law, and that no human being can fulfill it; He doesn’t expect human beings to succeed at fulfilling it; and He (being God’s Messiah) is going to take the full weight of the law onto Himself; thus He grants the adulteress mercy. (And it does always irritate me that she was “caught in the act,” but the male participant somehow isn’t there about to be stoned too, as the law demands.)

Again, in case I didn’t make it clear enough (sometimes I lose my train of thought), JESUS fulfilled the law. We know that none of us ever could fulfill it. That was the weak point in the law; us. The law was brought in by Moses. (“Moses gave you the law, yet not one of you obeys it.”~~Jesus) Grace and truth come by Jesus Christ. I think the whole grace thing really began with Abraham, in the covenant God cut with him that dark night when Abraham dreamed that a burning torch and a smoking oven passed through the butchered halves of the animals. In THAT covenant, God covenanted with God, leaving Abraham out of the deal altogether, represented by (we Christians presume) Christ. When Jesus died, He died in our place, as the covenant partner representing not only Abraham, but all who were to be blessed by Abraham’s seed. Abraham’s race broke the covenant; Jesus died (as the blood covenant required) as our representative. In Him, we all died too, just as in Him, we were raised. Thus the covenant has been fulfilled by the death of the Testator, bringing in a new covenant in God’s grace. Now HE will do it. It’s very hard on the pride, but clearly we’re not up to it.

The scripture for Jesus and Paul (and the early church) is the Septuagint translation of the TANACH, and possibly some of the apocryphal works. Given by inspiration doesn’t require plenary inspiration, nor does it require perfection. We have a bazillion books that are profitable for teaching this or that, yet none of them is perfect. The Septuagint is profitable; it doesn’t need to be perfect (though I think it actually IS the perfect thing that it IS, which is (imo) the story of the Jews and their growing relationship and understanding of God. Much of it is symbolism. It doesn’t have to be literal history in order to be perfect. It isn’t really the perfection of the scripture that’s at issue here. It’s more the nature of scripture. Is it an “age of rationalism” scientific type text. Absolutely Not. Is every word true? Clearly not. There are words that it itself SAYS are not true; words we know full well are not true. They’re part of the story though, and so they belong there.

Where you say: “I wished that Jesus would at least say the Pentateuch was inspired, but he didn’t,” I’m not sure what you mean by “inspired” in this sentence. If you’d clarify that, it would help me.

Thanks!

There is a famous story about Hillel, a great Jewish sage and rabbi, that goes something like this: A person came up to Hillel and said that he would convert to Judaism only on one condition, that he could be taught the entire Torah while standing on one foot. Hillel’s response was “That which is hateful to you, do not do to your fellow. This is the whole Torah. The rest is commentary, now go and learn.”
I view the bible in much the same way. I believe the word of God is what Jesus said because He was God in the flesh. The rest is commentary. So I read and learn. :slight_smile:

I’m quite out of my depth in this topic that I started, so I won’t add much. Jesus spoke of the law (nomos) as being inspired such that not a jot or tittle
could pass from it. That’s what I hoped applied to the Pentateuch, in Hebrew because that’s where jots and tittles are. But I have no idea what
nomos refers to. Jesus said that the scripture (graphe) (he referred to one Psalm in particular) could not be broken and Paul said all scripture was
inspired by God. No, I can’t elaborate on that. Strong statements about graphe, the meaning of which I have no idea. I panicced and thought because I don’t know the meanings of these two words, they mean nothing. Really stupid of me. And I follow long trains of thought very poorly.

Thanks Cindy for your posts,
Nick

I think that the scriptures as proclaimed in the liturgies of the Eastern Orthodox Church are without error. I think the problems many people (both Christian and non-Christian) have with the scriptures are in reality problems only with misinterpretations of the scriptures. The scriptures themselves contain only light. :slight_smile:

It’s my understanding, Nick, that “the Law” is just shorthand for the Jewish scriptures, though I’m sure that depends on the context. As Geoffrey points out, interpretation is a big factor.

I agree that all scripture is inspired by God. When I paint a picture, it may be an inspiration gleaned from something I’ve witnessed, or from a photograph (in most cases, a little of both). But, and this is the important part, the painting is NOT the thing itself. It’s an interpretation (my interpretation) of the thing. So the scriptures, inspired of God as they are, seem to me to be the writer’s interpretation of that inspiration. Does this make sense? It’s a hard concept, and I’m kind of struggling here.


Let’s say the photo (above) is the inspiration. It’s not. It can’t compare to the actual experience, but I can’t put the RIVER here. :wink:
Make this analogous to the prophet’s experience of God.


And this painting is my declaration of the river. Make that analogous to the prophet’s words. He is trying to tell you what God is like, but he is limited by the limitations of the written word, and also of his own skill both at hearing God and at interpreting for us, the words and the presence of God.

I painted my experience of the river to the best of my current ability, but it is not the same as the photo. It’s my interpretation of the photo, inspired BY the photo. The photo is my (technologically assisted) interpretation of the river, inspired BY the river, but it is not the river. The experience of the river is something you have to get for yourself. Hopefully this helps clarify my understanding of inspiration . . . :slight_smile:

Hello Cindy!

How was scripture inspired? I guess we have pretty well no experience of this.
But here goes.

You suggested that God shows the author of scripture a photo of something,
because he’d be incapable of understanding the reality. Then the author paints
a picture based on the photo, and the picture will only approximate the photo
and be even further from the reality. I hope this is roughly what you said. My
idea of what you said is an example of loss of precision.

Not sure that a painting is the best analogy. The author’s “output” would have
been (I think) spoken words which some scribe wrote down. If God had given
the author words, he could have spoken them with perfect accuracy. But
scripture contains lots that doesn’t claim to be spoken by God. I reckon
God moved in the authors to say what he wanted even then. Ecclesiastes (which
I love) looks like it is nothing but Solomon’s thoughts, yet we agree that it’s
inspired. I’d say God and Solomon somehow worked together and produced
something that was both God’s word and Solomon’s. My mind boggles. Would you
say it’s errant but nonetheless inspired? (That is the book I read in the few
days before I was born again, so I have a high opinion of it.) Ecclesiastes
may be an extreme kind of inspiration.

Often scripture contains visions or dreams, sometimes with commentary by God or
an angel, sometimes without. For the latter, the author describes what he saw
as best. But wouldn’t God still have a hand on him? Here it would look more
like painting from a photo than word for word inspiration.

2 Peter 1:21 says: For the prophecy came not in old time by the will of man:
but holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Spirit.

Moved is a very wide term in the Greek.

Hope this sheds light rather than darkness!

[tag]Paidion[/tag]

Two of Jesus’ strong statements about scripture were:
Matthew 5:18 For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass,
one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law [nomos], till all be fulfilled.
John 10:35 …the scripture [graphe] cannot be broken;

But I’d love to know what nomos and graphe really mean.
Can you help Paidion? Or anyone else?

Hey, Nick

You’re not far off from what I was trying to say, but but the little bit that’s different doesn’t matter. What you said (1st paragraph) is true too, because sometimes God does give you a picture. Usually what He gives me is more like an idea that isn’t quite fully there until I write it down. I most definitely write it down in my style; can’t help that. Others may just get a word or a phrase and then that keeps collecting meaning as they ponder on it. But occasionally He’s given me a picture – not really a vision – just a flash of something almost real that makes a vivid impression.

The thing is though, I don’t think He ever (or hardly ever) dictates word for word (plenary inspiration). If you look through the various books of the prophets, you’ll see that even when they’re writing “Thus sayeth the Lord,” the writing continues in their own style, which is different from the styles of other prophets’ writings. The various styles of the NT writers are even more obvious, even when they’re quoting the OT. EVEN when they’re quoting Jesus (and I hesitate to say that, but they do quote the apparently same statements using different phrases). It’s as though they’re eye witnesses writing as best they can remember, what He said. People of those days were trained in memory, but they didn’t typically value a word for word recital so much as a remembrance of the meaning of what was said. That doesn’t mean their words, or the words of the OT writers were unreliable at all. What it does perhaps mean is that we ought not to dissect the scriptures the way we often do. Maybe it’s the meaning of the writer we should be looking for rather than the analysis of every little word. (Especially since most of us don’t even speak the languages those words were written in.)

When I first started memorizing scripture long, long ago, I used the KJV because it was (I’m told) designed to be easy to memorize. It has that whole poetry thing going on. (Which also kind of makes me wonder now, how faithful you can be to the original if you’re trying to turn it into poetry, but that’s another thing.) I was really anal about getting every word exact because I figured, these words and these sentences dropped fully formed from the lips of God, and it wouldn’t do to mess up even one of the least of them. It didn’t even occur to me at the time they were written in ancient Greek, not Shakespearean English. I mean, I knew that – but I just didn’t parse out what that meant. The English is not (if even the original languages were) plenarily inspired.

Some like to say, “Well, the KJV is the only inspired English language version.” Which KJV? The 1611? Because that would seem to make the most sense; yet that’s not the one they read. I’ve seen these folks argue that we NEED an inspired English version or else we’ll have divisions, etc. There’ll be no gold standard we can trust absolutely. Yet amongst the KJV only crowd, there are many, many divisions. Maybe it’s God we have to trust absolutely. Maybe the Bible, wonderful though it is, is NOT God. It’s there to testify of God in Christ Jesus.

I don’t think it’s too much of a problem if people do believe in plenary inspiration. It makes it easier to have a discussion with them really, because their interpretation methods make it easy to show them where (I think) they’ve got it wrong. Even then though, it’s REALLY hard for them to accept UR–even though the Bible tells them so. The problems come in when the more sensitive of souls are told to take things like the Joshua wars literally. THEY know it’s wrong to kill all the women and the old men and young and even the little babies, leaving only (sometimes) the virgins as booty for the warriors. They may try to make excuses for God and mitigate the situation, but trust me; it’s really, REALLY hard to do that. I’ve tried for years; decades in fact. What a relief to realize that historically, none of it probably literally happened at all. That doesn’t make it untrue, either. It makes it true the way the story of the Good Samaritan or the Prodigal Son are true, and THAT is a far deeper truth than the driest historical “facts” (if anyone can ever really be sure he has even gathered an historical “fact.”)

God calls His son (Israel) out of his bondage in Egypt (symbolizes the world/flesh), and purifies him in a wilderness experience. This meets with a LOT of resistance and whining, becoming rather than a few months’ trek, an epic journey of 40 years, which the first generation of freed slaves never even completes. They die never having truly obtained the freedom that was theirs because they wouldn’t/couldn’t trust God. The next generation battles with the 'giants in the land," killing the sin (inhabitants) of the land (their souls), keeping that which is innocent and good but rejecting all else. Unsurprisingly they, too, fail to destroy the flesh. More evidence that the law, while good, brings nothing of life, but only becomes the strength of sin (as Paul says in Romans). We need a savior. Truly we cannot obey the law; only Christ can do it for/in us. Only the Father can conform us to the image of His Son. Only the Spirit can guide our steps in that epic journey.

This is GOOD stuff told in story form–the very form we are best adapted to receive. Israel knew this, understood it, but we rationalists with our dry and pared-down “just the facts, Ma’am” culture, try to make sense of what we foolishly believe to be the account of historical events, and conclude that God must be evil to have commanded genocide. Whatever explanations and excuses we come up with for such behavior always fall short, because that is not what the story is about at all.

But I am talking and talking and talking – this is more or less how I see it. The Bible is a wonderful book, but it is not an easy book and it is not a cut and dried revelation to us (even if we could any of us agree on what it says). The Bible is a book written about God by human beings. It’s not actually the word of God though it contains some words of God. I don’t remember if it ever even claims to be the word of God, but I do know that it claims JESUS is the Word of God. Ultimately this is a relationship. It’s not some cheap piece of big-box-store furniture we can put together if we can only decipher the “Chinglish” instructions. This is a relationship in which the Holy Spirit reveals Christ to us; a journey in which we follow our Shepherd; a reunion in which we are reconciled to the Father of Lights. It isn’t enough to memorize the Book; we must know the Word.

Apologies, I haven’t really read this thread properly yet, only the opening post.

As far as I understand, there are very few scholars, even ultra conservative ones, who believe that scripture was directly dictated. That’s because there are numerous problems with such a theory. Just a few - the differing styles of the authors wouldn’t technically be a definitive argument against dictation (or Mechanical Inspiration, as it’s often known) but it would certainly be a little bizarre if God had used even differing nuances and preferred phrasing for the different authors. Related to that would be the example of the Gospel of Mark, which is written in poorer, less refined Greek than the other gospels - clearly it would be very weird if God had purposely dictated poor Greek for Mark to write down.

Other examples - at the start of Luke, the author reveals he has thoroughly investigated his account, not that it had just been dictated by God. In 1 Corinthians 7, Paul differentiates between his own opinion and that of God. You could also point to some of the Psalms - for example in Psalm 13, David complains “How long will you hide your face from me?”. If divine dictation was true, that would mean that God would have had to dictate a complaint against Himself for David to write down to Him, a complaint that had it been dictated would completely contradict the whole basis of the complaint that God is hiding Himself from David!

You’d be hard pressed I think to find a Christian scholar who actually took seriously the idea that God dictated all scripture. Instead you’ll find that positions are generally bit more nuanced than that - these position try to take into account the authority and inspiration of scripture, yet don’t push it to such extremes as it being divinely dictated.

And that post wasn’t good. I said (approximately) that I believed God had somehow dictated the scriptures. I should have emphasized “somehow” and explained myself. I thought that by some wonderful interaction between divine and human authors, scripture was inspired word by word and was exactly true, and was fully divine. Not that God had dictated whole books and all the authors did was write it down. My thoughts are changing. I hope I’m not lying to make my original position look better than it was. I’m finding that belief in perfect scripture dies hard, if at all. (By the way, I quote from the KJV partly because I have a handy verse-finding program that uses the KJV.)

And, Johnny, thanks for your post. It was fine.

The Greek now “νομος” (nomos) means “a law”, any law, not necessarily the law of Moses or the law of Christ (Matt 5, 6, and 7.)

The Greek word “γραφη” (graphā) means “a writing,” any writing or text, not necessarily a sacred writing. Even the English word “scriptures,” though it now refers only to the sacred writings of a religion, originated from the Latin “scriptura” which originally was used in reference to any writings.

The change in the understanding of God’s charcter may be seen when one considers the question, “Who incited David to number Israel?” In earlier days of ancient Israel, God was considered to be the author of all things, both good and evil. 2 Samuel is believed to have been written about 1050 B.C
.
There we read:
Again the anger of the LORD was kindled against Israel, and he incited David against them, saying, “Go, number Israel and Judah.” (2 Samuel 24:1 ESV)

Later (verse 10) David undestands that he has SINNED by numbering Israel.
But David’s heart struck him after he had numbered the people. And David said to the LORD, “I have sinned greatly in what I have done. But now, O LORD, please take away the iniquity of your servant, for I have done very foolishly.”

Doesn’t it seem rather odd that David came to believe that he had sinned by doing what the LORD incited him to do?

But later, later even than 538 B.C. when Judah began to return from the Babylonian exile, Chronicles was written. It seems that by that time Satan entered more into the picture, and evil was attributed to him rather than to God. Thus, we read there:

Then Satan stood against Israel and incited David to number Israel. (1 Chronicles 21:1 ESV)

When one reads the rest of the story in both accounts, one can see that both are descriptions of the same event.

Concerning Matthew 5:18, My understanding of this verse is that God came to fulfill His own laws and to bring back the knowledge and the truth of who He is. At that time, there were a lot of things being passed off as God’s laws that weren’t His. People were being forced to follow rituals and practices that were traditions of men. God came to set the record straight, so to speak. Mark 7:7-9 says this: And in vain they worship Me, teaching as doctrines the commandments of men. For laying aside the commandment of God, you hold the tradition of men-the washing of pitchers and cups, and many other such things you do. All to well you reject the commandment of God, that you may keep your tradition.