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Thank you for
inviting me to speak. I want to take you on a journey
today. As you are familiar with my book, you know I came to a crossroads in my
Christian experience, where I began to
question some long-held traditional beliefs, did some research, and began to
change many of my viewpoints. Today, I’ll share an important leg of my
spiritual evolution—how I came to rethink what sacred texts are.
First,
what do I mean by sacred texts? Well, the Bible of course, but also other
documents less familiar to most of us. Has
anyone heard of the Gospel of Mattathias, Gospel of the Egyptians, I Letter of
Clement, Letter of Barnabas, The Shepard of Hermes, or the Wisdom of Solomon?
Most people haven’t. But these are all books that either a prominent church
father or the early church accepted as part of the Bible!
When I was in
the evangelical tradition, I was taught there were only two ways to look at the
Bible.
1 – The [conservative] “correct” way - a uniform, infallible,
authoritative, clear set of rules for humankind. An instruction manual. Submit
to scripture. Obey the Word of God.
2 – The liberal way - contains many historically
inaccurate accounts and is largely unreliable and irrelevant for the modern
world. Yes, read the Bible as great literature. But it doesn’t hold real answers to the
questions of life.
One of my
main discoveries is history teaches us both of these views are wrong. There’s a
middle way that is more true to the evidence. The first place that points us to
this middle way is the historical record of where the Bible came from. Let’s
examine some facts. Imagine that I’m tacking these facts on a board and later
we’ll tie them together.
· The
NT was not dropped from the sky in its entirety – it is a collection of books
that took years to compile and there was substantial disagreement about it.
· The first
complete, uniform, recognized listing of the NT wasn’t until 363 AD and it didn't include
Revelation, which wasn’t accepted until 397 AD.
· The
four gospels were written 30-60 years after Jesus. Paul’s letters were written 15-33 years
after Jesus. The first followers relied on oral tradition, not scripture, for the Jesus story. For
decades, even centuries, there was no NT in its modern form.
· The
Bible of the early church was the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the OT
which included the Apocrypha, 11 books that Protestants don’t accept.
· There
were many gospels besides the four – e.g. Hebrews, Egyptians, Peter, Thomas; some
thought to be forgeries, some not.
· The respected church father Clement of Alexandria had a 2nd
century NT that included many books that never made it into the NT.
· Revelation
was never fully accepted by the Eastern Church (today, it's not used in liturgy); it was rejected by many church
fathers.
· Luther
advocated that the NT should be graded, some books more inspired than others. He thought Hebrews, James, and Revelation should be secondary.
· The Bible
we have was copied over and over. There’s strong evidence that some NT passages
were inserted by copyists to reinforce a theological bias.
· Scholars
and historians have found errors in the NT (and the NT never claims it is inerrant); but most of them are immaterial; however,
a few aren’t.
· There
are good reasons why some of the other sacred texts were not included in our
Bibles; e.g. bizarre teachings and forgeries; but the Bible itself has bizarre
teachings, e.g. women can’t speak in church and the Jesus-like-he's-on-acid book of Revelation. Also, a consensus of scholars say I
& II Timothy and Titus are inauthentic.
· There
are good reasons many books were included, e.g. Jesus’ and Paul’s sound,
timeless, egalitarian, teaching on love, forgiveness, and community that
revolutionized Jewish and Roman society.
Conclusion: Now, let’s tie these facts together. What can we conclude? Perhaps you’ll agree with me, that these facts show it's better to hold the Bible more loosely in terms of it being a universally applicable, uniform message from God. Don’t grip it so tightly. Come to respect it more, not less, as we see both the wisdom of God within its pages and the human element in its formation… and that the early church, although they generally agreed on some of the books, often accepted books that are not in it and questioned books that are. The New Testament is not always internally consistent and wasn't considered infallible.
This "lighter" approach is taking the Bible and other sacred texts more seriously, in historical context, albeit not always literally. When we do that, we can look past the dross and find the gems of the Bible—the principles that teach us about what God is like and how to live our lives; but not in a legalistic way, but a way that is consistent with how the Bible was compiled and copied and what it teaches in its historical/cultural context.
