David Orendorff, Psalm 78:1-7 

It is Bible Sunday and we have with pleasure given Bibles to our children. But what have we given them? What is this book? What is its purpose? What is its value?

Much of what follows is academic. I apologize to folks for whom this kind of sermon is lacking. I am going to paint with a very broad brush and my definitions are admittedly arguable. You can argue with me later at the scripture class.

Like all things religious or spiritual, the Bible is controversial. What is called the fundamentalist/modernist controversy over the Bible began in the late 19th century and heated up in the 1940s. Hard line fundamentalists believe the Bible is written by God and is thus the literal word of God dictated to various scribes who were no more than a pre-modern recording device. As such the Bible is inerrant, its history and science are fact since God could never make a mistake. If our world view, our understanding of history and science deviate from the Bible then we must be wrong.

The function of this viewpoint is to argue for the absolute authority of the Bible in life. As the literal and inerrant word of God every sentence and every word in every sentence is the very voice of God speaking directly to us and so we must listen intently and obey completely its directives.
The hard line modernist believes the Bible was written by humans; by those who thought they knew what God was saying and wanted. Therefore it has errors of history, science and even theology. The writers were shaped by current events, childhood, prejudices, and the current states of science and history. They made mistakes.

The hard line modernist thus argues that the Bible has no more authority than any other piece of literature. Everything within the Bible is debatable and individually we must decide what is true and what we should do.

For most of us the Bible is something in between these two extremes. I won’t and can’t speak for what you think of the Bible. I will share my understanding and pray that it is helpful to you. But be warned, how I tell the story of the Bible will betray my opinion. I cannot speak without revealing my bias.

I believe both humans and God wrote the Bible. I believe that it was humans, wonder and wart together, that wrote the words. But I believe that it was God who moved their souls with the desire to write. Thus the Bible is a creation of the relationship between God and humanity, another one of those both/and things. Here is my reasoning for why it has the genius and idiocy of humans in it.

The Bible is not one book but a collection of books gathered over 2000 years. The Hebrew or Old Testament portion has roots in a preliterate oral tradition that may goes 3000-4000 years. The materials of the gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke and John) also come from oral tradition. It was between 30 and 50 years before they were written down. The letters of the NT are just that, letters.

As you might guess we don’t have any of the original books. What we have is a multitude of variant copies made by scribes. To show the complexity of getting a text to translate I have included in your bulletin a copy of a quick reference guide to the various papyri and manuscripts used to form the New Testament. On one side of the sheet is a list of possible texts with their estimated dates and general content. The earliest possible texts are papyri from around 200 CE. The earliest papyri are not a collection of gospel and letters, but parts of single books (see papyrus 1 for example¹ ). At this early stage we don’t see a collected set of New Testament writings. It is not until the 4th or 5th century that the books are brought together and the Bible as we now know it begins to emerge. Between 1946 and 1957 the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered and many portions of the Hebrew Scriptures are still being rewritten. 

The process of gathering the books together into one book is pretty cloudy and is still going on. The gathering of the Hebrew Scriptures happened mostly in Judaism and started earnestly in the 4th century CE. For the Christian Scriptures a combination of scholars, conferences and popular usage largely determine which books became our Bible. The Catholics, Orthodox and Protestants currently all have somewhat different Bibles. Even today we are continually making revisions in the text of the Bible as we find new documents, archeological evidence, or language shifts are clarified.

On the other side of the a sheet in your bulletin is what would have been today’s gospel lesson (Matthew 25:1-13 - The Parable of the Ten Maidens) in both Greek and English. Notice the footnotes which list the source texts and variant readings. Deciding which reading is the original is an ongoing source of debate among Christians. Some don’t matter but some are significant.

Once we have settled on a text the challenge of translation begins. The Hebrew Scriptures were originally written as a pneumonic tool for the one who was to speak the text aloud. As such it was simply a string of consonants without vowels, punctuation, sentences or paragraphs, to remind the reader of what was in the oral tradition.

Debbie Brown reminded me of one of the more interesting translation debates. If you have seen Michelangelo’s Moses you will notice he has horns on his head. This is from one of the early translations describing Moses coming down the mountain after talking with God. We have since gained a better text and translation and the horns have disappeared.

The New Testament gospels were probably first told and then written in the common language of Aramaic. We have no Aramaic copies of these originals. From the late second century we do have a Syriac translation, the Peshitta, of the Aramaic which is somewhat controversial but very helpful. Everything else we have that tell us the stories of Jesus come to us as translations into Greek. And so when we then render an English translation it is at least two languages away from the original.

Because of this cloudy process of receiving individual texts, the collection of books, deciding on a most original text, the challenges of translation and the unavoidable process of personal interpretation I do not believe that what we hold in our hands is the literal word of God, even if it had originally been so.

All this leads me to believe the Bible we have in our hands has human hands and minds all over it. But it doesn’t mean that God is not in the Bible as well.

Now, why do I believe it is inspired by God? I believe the mistake in fundamentalism is not in the authority it assigns to the Bible but its limited view of how language works. Some language is in fact literal (e.g. - It is raining). Some language is symbolic or metaphorical (e.g. - It is raining in my soul.) Some of the Bible is literal (e.g. much of the Law of Moses, Paul’s greetings to specific people, many historical events) but most of the Bible is metaphorical (prophetic poetry and psalms, wisdom sayings, parables, the meaning of miracles). Even much of what is told as history (David killing Goliath) has meaning and purpose beyond the simple facts (God is with David and guides David’s stone and our stones when we face the enemy). Much of what we would read as the literal language of science (the creation stories in Genesis and John) is not meant to be good science, but is about our relationship with God who is our creator, sustainer and redeemer, and about our relationships with each other.

It is in the symbol and metaphor that God speaks and operates in our lives. When I read and live Psalm 23 my understanding of life is moved toward God’s gift of grace. When I hear Jesus tell about the Good Samaritan or the Lost Son in a parable I think of how I treat the wounded around me and how I receive those who have betrayed and deserted me, and I am changed by the voice of God in the story.

More and more the Bible has great authority for my faith and my life. I have given my life to its study. I very seldom read any book more than once but this one book of books I have read over and over, some passages a hundred times. I am not only a preacher with one sermon; I am like John Wesley, a man of one book. I have learned enough Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek to kind of read it in its original script. I have learned the disciplines of text, redaction, form and narrative criticism to better read and understand. I read word studies and commentaries, history and sociology to broaden my view and deepen my appreciation. And every time I pick up the Bible to read I pray for right understanding.

From this book, vastly more than any other book, God speaks to me. And when I pray both before and after reading the Bible, God’s presence often increases. God speaks to my mind as I wrestle with the earliest of questions beginning in the book of Genesis. God speaks to my heart as I am moved by the love of the prophets and Jesus. God speaks to my hands as I am guided by the Holy Spirit to right (I pray) action. It is from the Bible that I take my directions for life.

As you might guess, there are things in the Bible that I don’t agree with. I long ago decided that if I disagree I had better know why. Not liking what it says is not a good enough reason to disagree. To think or act contrary to the Bible is to rebel against my family and its history and its faith. I use Wesley’s quadrilateral principles looking at scripture with tradition (what have others over time thought) reason (what makes logical sense), and experience (my life). I speak with other Bible lovers by reading and in conversation to seek understanding.

I am concerned that our culture is being less and less literate in the Bible. I am even more concerned that many good church folk don’t know the Bible, its history or its messages. Without knowing the Bible we do not know our roots, our triumphs or defeats, and we are a shallow people of current whimsy. Without knowing the Bible we are easy prey for religious shysters of all kinds and fall into the same old traps known to Abraham and Sarah but a surprise to us. It is like not ever looking at the family album and hearing the family stories that shape us.

We try at Bear Creek to help folks be Biblically literate. The Upper Room and other daily devotionals encourage a daily reading and praying of scripture. We offer small groups which can choose Bible study. We have, in the past, offered a remarkable class on the Bible called Discipleship and I pray we offer this again. Every Sunday Robert does a very good job of researching the scripture of the morning in the scripture discussion group. I know some of you belong to Bible study groups with friends or in your neighborhood. The Cokesbury store on 123th has all kind of wonderful resources to aid the Bible student. If you are not studying the Bible it is because you have chosen not to do so, I pray you will change your mind.

It is Bible Sunday and today we have given our children a most precious and powerful gift for life, if they choose to use it. And they are most likely to use it if we do, if we make the Bible authoritative and meaningful for our life.

Shalom and amen.

1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Papyrus_1 [↩]