NEWSWEEK magazine two days before Christmas published a cover story about the Bible: The Bible: so misunderstood it’s a sin. That article got a lot of my fellow Christians worked up and freaked out.
I understand why.
They don’t know any better. They haven’t heard that kind of talk before.
Most Christians don’t know much about the Bible.
- They know almost nothing about how we got it.
- And barely more about what it says.
As the Newsweek writer Kurt Eichenwald reports, “A Pew Research poll in 2010 found that evangelicals ranked only a smidgen higher than atheists in familiarity with the New Testament and Jesus’s teachings.”
Chew on that a while.
I don’t doubt the finding for a second. In fact, I built my career on the fact.
If people read the Bible, I wouldn’t have to spend my life writing books about the Bible in an attempt to draw people inside Scripture to read the thing for themselves. That’s what I do. That’s pretty much all I do.
Most Christians seem content to sit on their butt and let the preacher read the Bible for them.
What troubled many of my fellow Christians is that the Newsweek writer said even if we do read the Bible, we haven’t really read the Bible.
He said, “At best, we’ve all read a bad translation—a translation of translations of translations of hand-copied copies of copies of copies of copies, and on and on, hundreds of times.”
Big deal. I’ve been saying that for years.
Well, not the part about “a bad translation.” From what I can tell, the people copying copies of copies of copies were paying attention to what they copied.
Copy?
The Newsweek writer’s article is basically a list of problems that most Bible scholars have been aware of for a long time. Like passages that don’t show up in the oldest copies of a book.
For example, the earliest version of the Gospel of Mark stops at chapter 16, verse 8. It’s an awkward ending, and most scholars I know of speculate that some editor copying a copy from a copy decided to add some of his own copy. He inserted info he knew about from other Gospels and perhaps from some teachings he had heard.
Sadly, that editor added some stuff about handling poisonous snakes. That generated a pile of dead Pentecostals.
Most new Bible translations now delete that apparent add-on to Mark.
I don’t have a problem with cerebral scholars finding humanity in the Bible. Inspired humans wrote the Bible, but they were humans. As scrolls wore out, humans replaced old scrolls with freshly copied scrolls.
I don’t have a problem with humanity in the Bible. I see plenty of humanity in the Bible, and reported some of it in Strange and Mysterious Stuff From the Bible. But I see God, too.
I worship God. I do not worship the Bible.
I remember the first time I heard that idea – that we should not worship the Bible. My New Testament professor, Dr. Rob Staples, used a word picture from Bethlehem to illustrate his point. It went something like this, “It’s as though some people go to the birthplace of Jesus and instead of worshiping Jesus they worship the cradle that holds him.”
The Bible is not Jesus. The Bible holds the story and teachings of Jesus.
There may be humanity in the Book, with words dropped and phrases picked up and translations getting it wrong.
So what?
Regardless, I can love God. And I can love my neighbor as myself.
Or at least I can try, for Jesus’s sake. I’m pretty sure the Bible writers and translators all got that right. But even if they didn’t, there’s a Spirit inside me that says it’s the right thing to do.
It may seem odd, given the fact that I write books about the Bible, but I don’t hold most tightly to the Bible. I hold most tightly to the Christ revealed in the Bible. There’s a difference.
If we recognize there’s some humanity in the Bibles that we hold in our hands, we’re a little more reluctant to thump people over the head with one particular phrase in one particular verse based on one particular interpretation.
I’d rather not be that particular.
So, about that Newsweek article. Read it. And read the Bible references the writer quotes.
Think. Learn. It’s good to do that.
Thank you for taking this question — and I agree with all your statements — especially about worshipping the Bible. What disturbed me was the conclusions and presenting slanted information about what Christians believe. Being a gay Christian (I guess I’m outing myself), and knowing the hostile and unchristian behavior of many of my fellow Christians, I found this article mean spirited (even though it didn’t attack me) and an attack on the Christian faith. Dr. Christopher Smith, wrote a nice response that I would like to share, his conclusions are very similar to yours.
[To shorten this helpful comment, I’ve inserted the link instead of the full article to which Wayne is referring. SMM]
http://understandingbooksbible.wordpress.com/2014/12/29/thoughts-on-newsweek-article-the-bible-so-misunderstood-that-its-a-sin/
Thanks, Wayne. I agree that there seemed to be a mean streak in the Newsweek article. But I pretty much expect some of that, given the mean streak Christians have often shown to those outside the faith.
Aside from the hint of animosity, I thought the writer made a lot of valid observations that biblical scholars have been making for decades.
I think if the Christian readers had been doing more Bible study and reading of commentaries, the article would not have been so much of a shock. But what the writer does better than the biblical scholars is… write.
He writes in an engaging way that makes people want to read. So they finally get to read some of the questions and critiques that biblical scholars have been making for years.
Each one of his points is a point we need to talk about as we study the Bible. We don’t have to agree with his conclusions, but we should respect the facts, even if they are just part of the facts.
I don’t think we should be afraid of articles like this or feel particularly defensive.
Instead, I think we should work down articles like this, and offer our observations and comments point by point in a calm and rational manner.
I would do that if I had the time. But I’m writing a book and working on a proposal for the book I’m supposed to write after that.
If you have some time on your hands, why don’t you give it a whirl?
Well it’s very clear the intent of the author of this article, that’s for sure! Even though he states, “This examination is not an attack on the Bible or Christianity,” it very much is! How can you say, “The Bible is a very human book. It was written, assembled, copied and translated by people,” with no mention of it being inspired by God, and think you aren’t humanizing the book? He has removed God’s presence in the Bible, and in doing so, made it a fallible, mistranslated history book. Who would want to read that? As with most articles on the subject I agree with many points presented, as there being many translations that were not correctly translated into our language, but for the ones that were (such as the NASB, HCSB, etc.,) I don’t feel I should be “on the lookout” for errors that man placed there. I know they where accurately translated. All in all—as you’ve stated Steve—we should neither worship a book nor the words in it but the Christ revealed in it. And that revelation is what makes it Holy Bible!
Thanks David. About the phrase “inspired by God,” I mean that when I say that I see God in the book. The phrase “inspired by God,” while accurate, is stretchable. It can mean different things to different people.
To some, it’s the magic bullet that holifies (I made that up) all of the Holy Bible, to attribute every word to God, as though the human writers were taking dictation. To others, “inspired by God” means it was inspired in the same way God inspires us today to say and write the kind of messages that reflect his character.
There’s a lot of discussion going on right now about what that phrase means as it relates to the Bible, and just how inspired the Bible is. Does it get an A++ rating for inspiration, while the inspiration God gives writers today gets only a B++ rating?
I think we Christians need to think and talk more about that. Many Christians, however, would rather not.