Bible's "revelations" must be
scrutinized (3)
The
quintessence of Christianity is to experience God as a father
The Bible taken within its context
The Bible supposedly contains
"revelations" from God, which are, according to what we have said,
experiences of the divine. What we call the Bible, today, was not a book as it
is in its present form; this is kind of deceiving. The Bible is rather a
collection of writings, by many, many authors, perhaps hundreds, and written
perhaps through a period of twelve centuries.
The Bible contains almost every genre of
writings, including poetical, metaphorical and fiction. Some of its writings
are just imagination, created stories, which perhaps have a metaphorical
meaning.
All these writings were written for people
and communities of their own time, and had a meaning for the people of their
era. They were not intended, per se, for future generations. To assume that the
sayings of the Bible are words of God for all ages is to take the writings out
of context.
Discerning the truthfulness of the
Bible
Not all writings of the Bible come from
experiences of the divine. The Bible contains, in my opinion, some true
experiences of God in which there was a "revelation," in the sense I
explained before; but never was there a kind of "dictation" from God.
God didn't write the Bible, humans did.
I have dealt with the discernment of the
Bible in a previous document; you may see it here. It is
difficult to discern what is "divine" in the Bible, because no
experience of the divine can be proven as factual.
The writers of the Bible might have
thought that God was talking to them, or "saw" him or
"heard" his voice; but these experiences can not be proven. The
authors of the Bible might have used particular styles to express their own
ideas, without coming from God.
The acceptance of the Bible as
"sacred" text
The collection of writings that forms the Bible, was accepted as "sacred" several centuries
after they were written. At the time they were written, they were only writings
addressed to particular communities; each one belonged to a particular time and
people.
As an example for Christian readers we
might mention Paul's letters or the book of Revelation. They were only simple
messages or letters, addressed to particular communities or churches of their
time; they were human writings that only several centuries later were
considered "sacred," or "holy and divine" words.
More in the book