I delivered this on Sunday at Fusion, and I’m sharing it here, too.  The idea is to probe questioning and begin discussion.  Join in!

What is the Bible?

I think we can all basically agree that this is an important book

It’s certainly one of the most distributed books of all time

It’s definitely the most translated book of all time

Millions of people—probably billions of people are reading it today all around the world

We talk about it here every Sunday and throughout the week at B3 and one to another.

A lot of us read it a lot.  Maybe every day, maybe every once in awhile, maybe every now and then

Most people read it at two of the most significant days in our lives—our weddings and our funerals

So we both celebrate with it and mourn with it—and all kinds of places in between

We have Bible churches and Bible colleges and Bible studies

There are millions of other books that tell us how to read this book and tell us what it’s all about

There are hundreds of different translations just in English

There are high schools and universities and communities and denominations and religions

that are defined by the way they read this book

Some people call themselves “biblical Christians” or tout “Bible-based teaching” in their churches

Some people say they read the Bible “literally” and some people say they read it “metaphorically”

Some people want to “interpret the Bible”—others think they don’t need no interpretation and they just read the thing ‘cause they can read thank you very much

We talk about context and pretext and subtext

What is this text?

Really, what is the Bible?

We sometimes call it the Word of God, the Holy Bible, The Word, etc.

Most of us know “Bible” has something to do with the word “book”.  Is it the book?  Is it a book?

Let’s start with the most undisputable facts:

It’s books, not book.  Thinking of the Bible as a single book is actually a somewhat newer phenomenon in our tradition.  Obviously we know that there are many books inside, but the terminological difference here between the singular and plural is subtle and significant.  The word “Bible” comes from the plural noun “biblia” and was known shortly after as τὰ βιβλία τὰ ἅγια—“the holy books”

So talking about “the Bible” as one thing is saying something already.  I think we’re implying a kind of unity and singularity.  Do we want to do that?

It’s a collection of Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek texts from all different times and all different places.  How could it be that people writing from so many different political regimes and schools of thought and accepted social customs, that people writing in so many different genres and different styles and different languages, how could it be that they are all making one thing, telling one story?

If the authors of all the books of the Bible were here right now, what do you think they would say about that?

But is that the point?  Does it matter what the people who wrote these books thought about them?  Can God lift a text out of its context?

The Protestant Bible has 66 books.  Other Bibles in the Catholic and Orthodox traditions add a few more.  Wisdom, Tobit, Maccabees, Baruch, Sirach and others.  How did that happen?

Along time ago, before Jesus even, scholars began to translate Hebrew into Greek, the language that was becoming more and more the go-to language of the times.  When these bilingual Jews translated the Hebrew texts, there were a few books that were sort of up for grabs.  Some Jews considered them significant, inspired works.  But ancient Jewish scholars rejected them as being equal with the Five books of the Law, the Prophets, and the Psalms, etc. for a number of reasons, most notably that some of these other texts were newer—Only a hundred or so years old, as opposed to three or four hundred. They called this translation the Septuagint, which means 70, because supposedly 70 different translators worked together on it.

After that, Greek speakers and readers became familiar with these “apocryphal” books.  The New Testament got written in Greek a little ways after that.

More than a thousand years later, and after many years of usage and after some debate from the thinkers of the church about whether or not they were equal with the other writings,  more than 10 books got dropped from the canon.  The Reformation theologians thought only the books that the Jews were sure of should be in.  Period.  Some people weren’t even entirely sure about the New Testament—Luther specifically questioned whether the Book of James should be in scripture, at one point calling it “a letter of straw.”  Should we automatically follow the lead of these forefathers of the faith, though?  Has anyone hear even heard of, never mind read, Baruch or Sirach?

Part of what I’m getting at is this: what is the canon of scripture?

First off, what the heck is a canon?

It meant something like standard or measuring stick originally, and it’s come to mean a settled, official list of something.

This dispute over the apocryphal or deutero-canonical books, “the later canon” of the Old Testament was not officially decided on by the Catholic church until the 1500s.  That was a long time after the New Testament had been settled, a few minor questions aside.

So awhile back Christians decided that we had to make a tidy list of the books of scripture that were in the club.  In the 300s, there was something called the Council of Nicea (Nicea is a town near Istanbul) that brought all these priests and political officials together to decide what books belonged in the New Testament and what books didn’t.  There were fistfights.

But we ended up with the New Testament.  And we all seem to be pretty happy with what they came up with.  Sure, there a couple people who will go seek out the books they rejected and say this, that, and the other thing.  But for the most part, we really don’t think about it.  It’s rare enough that we find a few peaceful moments to open up the darn book and read something.  Are we really going to spend that time questioning whether or not they got every detail right about it thousands of years ago?

And really, we trust God, right?  Why would he have let his church make such a huge mistake?  If God can raise the dead and do miracles and save our souls, surely he can help us get the Bible right, right?  Shouldn’t we just have faith in the Council of Nicea?  That God was there, took care of things, and now we can move on to something more interesting?

But hasn’t God constantly let his church and his people make colossal mistakes?  Isn’t that what so much of the Old Testament, the Hebrew Scriptures are all about?  And can’t we see obvious signs in the history of the Christian church that God is letting us sort out our own issues: Inquisition, Crusades, Slavery, Racism, Sexism, Entitlement to trash the Earth?

But come on, wouldn’t God want to get this one thing right?  His Word?  How else could we even begin to understand who He is?  It just makes sense that God would guide the creation of the Bible and the Council of Nicea.

Maybe. But why are we so sure?  Why are we so less sure about the other church councils on the veneration of Mary, Christ literally being in eucharist, and infant baptism?

Well, all that aside, here we are with the Bible our Protestant heritage has given us.  66 books.  Genesis to Revelation.

But the last 200 hundred years have raised a lot of questions about this book.

Scholars and students and pastors all started asking the questions that a post-Enlightenment culture would want to ask:

Yeah, I’ve read it, but is it real?

Is Genesis mythology?

Can we really trust the histories of the Hebrew people in Exodus, Joshua, Samuel, Kings, etc.?  Are they even really works of history as we think of it today?

Did Jesus really rise from the dead?

Was there even a real person named Jesus?  How can we even prove it?

Scholars in the 1800s and the 1900s put the Bible through the meat grinder of cross examination.  They challenged a lot of things that were held as gospel truth for a long time.

They challenged whether the Bible was really accurate at all

They challenged how “inspired” it really was and what it even means to be “inspired”

They challenged whether Paul really wrote Colossians, Ephesians, and I and II Timothy

They challenged whether the Gospel of John really recorded the words of Jesus

They challenged the miracles

They said some of the Old Testament was Hebrew propaganda

They challenged the way Christians had used prophetic passages to predict Christ

They said actually this was written much later than you thought

and this probably wasn’t written by the guy you thought it was

A lot of people in the church didn’t pay much attention.  Some people thought they were all just crazy liberals who were trying to undermine the true gospel.  Some people thought it should be us vs. them.  But others just wanted to come to a place on Sunday where they could hear the words of peace and truth they had grown up with.  To a place of encouragement and familiarity.

How should we think about writers and scholars that question the Bible?  Are they enemies, heretics, liars— friends, brother and sisters?

Some people say that the Bible is God’s perfect word.  Is it inspired or inerrant or infallible?

Did God verbally inspire every author in every time and place and only every author at every time and place?  Is every “and” or “but” just right?

Does it get every historical, scientific fact right?  Or maybe we can let some that stuff slide—maybe it just gets everything right about our salvation?

How can we know that?  What’s our evidence?

And what do we have to believe about the Bible to be good Christians?

Anything?

Interestingly, the Nicene Creed, the church’s classic early statement of faith, has almost nothing to say about the Bible. It says that the Holy Spirit spoke through the Prophets.

That’s it.

It really wasn’t until quite a bit later—after the Reformation— that the church started making pretty specific claims about how God “made” the Bible.

But enough of that.  How should we read this book, this Bible that we have?  One chapter at a time, a story at a time, a verse at time?  A book at a time?

With some historical context?  Or can we just pick it up and read?

And can all these verses and chapters and books and authors really be telling a single story?  Is it even reasonable to think that a letter from 60 AD and a book of depressing poetry from 500 years before that and a catalogue of visions and judgments and political commentary from even before that could make a single book with a single thesis?

These are questions to chew on.  Let’s talk about them.  Let’s listen carefully to each other.

I want to end with a personal reflection on this book.  It’s not a theological or historical or critical reflection.  It’s a reflection that comes out of reading this thing on and off and back on and back off and so on for probably 11 or so years.

This is a library

and a sanctuary

and a book of life.

I have sometimes found in it

a beautiful and amazing vision

that imagines human beings bound

together with God and together

together

in the kind of love that won’t hold it over you

when you act so selfish you forget everyone else exists

or when you had a huge blowout because you were stressed.

I have sometimes thought this book was wrong

or didn’t make any sense

or didn’t apply to me

and I have sometimes wondered if there’s much truth in here.

I’ve often found it filled with hope

and compassion.

This book tells a lot of stories

that only people who are

burnt out

and beat down

and screwed up could get.

This book is a treasure that is more

scandalous, more surprising, more mysterious,

more challenging, and more interesting

than I have often given it credit for.

It is a lamp unto my feet and a light

unto my path.