eBible Questions byJames

eBible Questions   (the Whole Series byJames)



eBible Questions 1 - What is the Bible?

We think of the Bible as a single book, perhaps bound in quality leather, with gilded pages. Some treat this book with awed reverence, while others do not mind if the book gathers dust on a coffee table. But what is on the inside? and how did it get there?

The Bible was never a golden tablet, etched by some divine laser, parachuted down out of heaven as a finished product. The word biblia means something like "library," although the image of an oak shelf with books isn't right either. Very few of the items in the Bible were composed the way books are composed, and they certainly don't fit together neatly the way a nicely published series of books might. Open the Bible, and you find something far better than golden tablets from the sky, far more precious than nicely bound volumes on a shelf, and more valuable than some ouija board that gives easy answers to all our questions.

We find, spilling out of the pages of the Bible, a mind-boggling mixture of all kinds of materials, something like the Sunday morning newspaper: before Church, pick up your paper in the driveway and you'll find stuffed inside news, opinion, ads, features, comics, stories, advice, games, obituaries, lists, horoscope, coupons, reviews - and you're not sure you'll ever get to it all. What do we find in the Bible? Stories, historical narratives, genealogical tables, legends, erotic love poetry, songs, somebody else's mail, prayers, jokes, utterly biased biographies, inexplicable visions, excerpts of sermons, tales of dysfunctional families, legends, legal statutes, cooking directions, ballads, a child-rearing manual, and more. How loving, how tender, how wise was God not to give us antiseptic shining tablets with timeless truths, but something more real, more human, so we might comfortably slip inside the pages and discover that God is not found in some ethereal, invisible realm just above the clouds, but right down here in the reality of mundane life. The Bible's diverse, earthy contents tutor us in the way God pokes around relentlessly and finds us in the middle of our family squabbles, our falling in love, trying to get some sleep, humming a favorite song, making supper, our wobbly attempts to pray, our plodding efforts to be good.

And like the morning paper, the Bible really is news. It's not the same old same old. This news isn't the monotonous repetition of what we hear all the time in this world; this news isn't a mirror that reflects back to me my biases and preferences. Something decisive has happened; the world has shifted on its axis, and you miss it until you immerse yourself in the pages of this seemingly haphazard clump of writings that are the Bible. Nothing is ever the same, and when we get it, we won't even notice the screen door slamming behind us as we take off after the God who chose such a clever way to connect with us.

James
james@mpumc.org Back to top
eBibleQuestions 2 - How was the Bible formed?

The Bible is different from the Koran (Qur'an), the sacred scriptures of Islam, which claim to be the direct dictation of God's words spoken to Muhammad, written down verbatim by a scribe. In a . . . . . .
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