Soil from Stone

A short essay from a class I’m taking online. It was impromptu, so I didn’t put a whole lot of thought or time into it, but I still thought it worth sharing…

The Bible is the most remarkable body of literature on Earth. It includes oral tradition, court records, poetry, correspondence, history, and prophecy in a consistent and accurate whole. The reader must keep in mind the cultures, languages, and circumstances of the various authors to reach a full understanding. He can’t read as if Paul’s letters were written in English. He can’t even completely trust that the English translation accurately conveys the author’s intended meaning. Aside from the usual difficulty involved in understanding any text absent inflection and body language, politics and religious dogma and a natural failure to understand cultural memes that would have informed a contemporary reader make a perfectly accurate understanding almost impossible. Add the challenges of translation, especially from an essentially dead language to a living and evolving one, and the obstacles to true understanding seem insurmountable. It is all the more amazing, then, that we can read the Bible in English today and, so long as the entirety of its teachings are considered and not a single passage in isolation, still have a very good idea of what God is trying to tell us through it.

I can understand how some people come to elevate the Bible above God himself, treating the physical material of paper and ink as if it is itself something to be worshiped. We must keep in mind all the filters through which we read and study. Most people don’t read it in the original languages and some sections of scripture no longer even exist in their original forms. We don’t have access to the actual words that God spoke to Adam in the Garden, only a paraphrase that was passed down from person to person and translated from language to language. That’s not to say that the meaning of the words we do have can’t be trusted–as I already pointed out, the Bible is astonishingly consistent from end to end–but that they are frequently not word-for-word transcripts. Even in those places where the text is precise, the words are not always inspired or truthful. Letters and messages from kings and generals are reproduced for history and context, not necessarily because they contain any great truths. Some passages contain advice that doesn’t rise to the level of command let alone divine command.

The Bible is an amazing collection of Scriptures, but it is not all we need to understand the world or even all we need to understand God and our relationship with him. It is essential, but not everything.