Alan

I think all of scripture is inspired by God, but that not the same as saying it’s the word of God is the sense of conveying a permanent and comprehensive record of God’s opinions and instructions. Scripture was written by real people who interpreted their encounter with God through the lens of their culture, values and experience – as do we. We disregard large chunks of Old Testament law as no longer applicable or relevant, despite Matthew 5:18.

Dear Rhian,

To participate in this discussion and others I keep a Bible next to the computer so I know what the contents of the passage referred to is. I like your statement "Scripture was written by real people who interpreted their encounter with God through the lens of their culture, values and experience – as do we."

However, you also wrote: "We disregard large chunks of Old Testament law as no longer applicable or relevant, despite Matthew 5:18."

Does that mean you accept the New Testament in toto? Couldn't the miracles cited in the NT be included in the narrative as the story to be accepted in the culture of that time required the inclusion of such wonders?

Hi David

No, I don’t accept the NT in toto. My reference to Matthew was intended to draw attention to the inconsistency of those who claim that they do, but them feel free to disregard large chunks of the Torah despite Jesus’ apparent insistence that his followers should do no such thing. In my view this passage reflects Matthew’s highly Jewish worldview and is not found in the other gospels, but those who claim to treat the whole bible as a divine instruction manual need to explain their disobedience of this particular command.

Like the Hebrew Scriptures, the New Testament was a product of its time and culture, and was mostly written many decades after the events of Jesus’ life and death. I agree that miracle stories reflect a worldview that is very different from our own, for example with illness and misfortune attributed to divine displeasure or demonic activity, and the distinction between the “natural” and “supernatural” drawn much less sharply than we do today. The bible also contains many different genres and narrative styles, including myth and parable, that were never intended to be taken literally. The crisp modern distinctions between fact and fiction, story and history would be alien to the bible’s authors.

That’s why I believe that biblical literalists who insist, for example, that Jesus really did walk on water are not in fact being authentic to what was meant and understood by the biblical authors and their audiences.

It is also why I think we should take the essence of Jesus’ message – love, forgiveness and inclusion – and interpret them in the context of our own culture. That’s why I think it is Christian to accept homosexuals and support their right to marry, but not to condemn and marginalise them

Dear Rhian,

Well put. The Bible was cobbled together in 400 AD (or so) by various churchmen - you think they didn't re-write a few things to represent their world view? Another thought - when you think about it, isn't it remarkable that a religion should adopt an instrument of torture and execution as its sacred symbol, often worn around the neck. Lenny Bruce once quipped, " If Jesus had been killed twenty years ago, Catholic school children would be wearing little electric chairs around their necks instead of crosses." Do those people who hold up the Bible as an inspiration to moral rectitude have the slightest notion of what is actually written in it - and even worse, that they should bossily try to force (whether fact or fiction) all this on the rest of us? Freedom of religion - Or freedom of prejudice?

Fair question, Lexi. Fair comment Tuesday too.
Do those who hold up the Bible as an inspiration to moral rectitude have the slightest notion of what is actually written in it? Yes, most certainly. Most evils Bible-believing Christians oppose are clearly evils – deception, greed, theft, murder, oppression. Remember it was Bible-believing Christians who first challenged slavery (Wilberforce), started the union movement (Tolpuddle martyrs), organised battlefield medical services (Nightingale), stood between the Australian Aborigines and murdering settlers, started the flying doctor in Australia, started most aid agencies and so on.
To the powerful people these Bible bashers were opposing in all these fields, no doubt they seemed very bossy indeed.
Unnecessary problems have certainly arisen, however, when Christians have bossily forced on others values which are not actually Biblically-based. Fortunately this is nowhere near as bad as it once was.
Where it persists today, church members are actively working through the questions of Biblical content and social applicability. Hence this article.
But you are right, Lexi (and others), we still have a way to go.

Hi Lexi

Most if not all of the books of the New Testament were written in the first century, but they circulated as independent texts for some time, along with a variety of other religious writings which didn’t make it into the final canon of 27 books. Our oldest NT papyri are from the 2nd century, and although most historians date the formal canon to Athanasius in the 360s, earlier collections of books containing most of our NT and regarded as distinctively authoritative were circulating much earlier. So it’s not quite true to say the bible was “cobbled together” in the 4th century, and I doubt very much any of it was being re-written by then – the texts would have been too familiar, too respected and available from too many independent sources. Plus, modern scholars are fairly adept at spotting later edits in the text, and there’s no evidence of this from as late as the 4th century.

However, there is evidence that the gospels and especially Paul’s texts were edited and conflated in their early years, and incorporate some introduced material. The longer endings of Mark are later additions, and the last book of John may be also. Some of the Pauline letters and parts of letters are believed to be written by later authors in Paul’s name, a practice that seems shockingly dishonest to us but was quite common and accepted in ancient times.

Lenny Bruce’s quip is less offensive to Christians than you might think. The death of God on a cross IS a scandal and a horror, and the paradox that the cross is also a symbol of hope and triumph is at the centre of the Gospel message. It’s good to be reminded of that, as the familiarity of the cross can cause us to forget how vile and grotesque crucifixion was, and what and extraordinary reversal the resurrection represents.