A Quote by Thomas L. Thompson
We can now say with considerable confidence that the Bible is not a history of anyone's past.... The Bible's "Israel" is a literary fiction... Not only have Adam and Eve and the flood story passed over to mythology, but we can no longer talk about a time of the patriarchs. There never was a "United Monarchy" in history and it is meaningless to speak of pre-exilic prophets and their writings... The Bible deals with the origin traditions of a people who never existed as such
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read the Bible to the children, until they are old enough to read for themselves ... The Bible, not nursery versions of it. There is a Bible in words of one syllable; I am happy to say I have never seen it. Such a monstrosity should be put alongside of the Rhyming Bible, of which, I believe, only one copy is in existence.
People cheer the Bible, buy the Bible, give the Bible, own the Bible - they just don't actually read the Bible.
I know many of you would say "What about the Bible?" The Bible says this, the Bible says that, the Bible is the inspired Word of God. I think the Bible is the inspired word of man - about God, and some of that is now expired.
This is not a matter of subjective theory, but of plain, historical fact. If there had never been a nation of Israel, there would have been no patriarchs, no prophets, no apostles, no Bible and no Saviour. In John 4:22, Jesus Himself summed all this up in one simple statement: "Salvation is from the Jews." Christians from all other racial backgrounds owe to the Jewish people a spiritual debt which can never be calculated.
The Bible has a human history as well as a divine inspiration. It is a history full of interest, and it is one which all those who value their Bible should know, at least in outline, if only that they may be able to meet the criticisms of sceptics and the ignorant.
The Bible did not arrive by fax from heaven. The Bible is the product of man, my dear. Not of God. The Bible did not fall magically from the clouds. Man created it as a historical record of tumultuous times, and it has evolved through countless translations, additions, and revisions. History has never had a definitive version of the book.
The Bible has lost every major battle it has ever fought. The Bible was quoted to defend slavery and the bible lost. The Bible was quoted to keep women silent, and the Bible lost. And the Bible is being quoted to deny homosexuals their equal rights, and the Bible will lose.
It's important for people in the Church to realize that the way they talk and think about the Bible isn't the way Bible scholars talk and think about it - and I'm including "Bible-believing" scholars there. There is a wide gap between the work of biblical scholars, whose business it is to read the text of the Bible in its own worldview context, and what you hear in church.
The Bible never says anything about dinosaurs. You can't say there were dinosaurs when you never saw them. Somebody actually saw Adam and Eve. No one ever saw a Tyrannosaurus Rex.
Do not study commentaries, lesson helps or other books about the Bible: study the Bible itself. Do not study about the Bible, study the Bible. The Bible is the Word of God, and only the Bible is the Word of God.
The people we call the prophets I think are the earliest dissident intellectuals, and they're treated like most dissident intellectuals - very badly. They're imprisoned, driven into the desert. King Ahab, the epitome of evil in the Bible, condemned Elijah as a "hater of Israel." This is the first self-hating Jew, the origin of the term. It goes right up to the present. That's the history of intellectuals.
As Luke 24 shows, it's possible to read the Bible, study the Bible, and memorize large portions of the Bible, while missing the whole point of the Bible.
There is a quiet revolution going on in the study of the Bible. At its center is a growing awareness that the Bible is a work of literature and that the methods of literary scholarship are a necessary part of any complete study of the Bible.
The man I lived with is a Christian, so I would talk to him about it. What would this person do in the Bible? What's the story around this person? Generally, when people talk about characters in the Bible, there's one thing they're known for, like Job.
So that when you come to read the actual Bible you have a lay of the land. And you come to the Bible knowing that it's not mostly a book about you and what you're supposed to be doing. It's most of all a story. It's this wonderful love story - about a God who loves his children with a wonderful, never-stopping-never-giving-up-unbreaking-always-and-forever love.
As a Christian, Israel has a very special place in my heart. There's no question about that. I grew up with a Bible, and the back of the Bible has all these pictures of Israel in it. And so all these locations are incredibly significant to me personally in my faith.
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