Duh Bible

Aight, here's my well thought-out take.  

A) There's people who say the Bible is the “inerrant” “Word of God,” and they know what it means so don’t disagree.

B.) There's people who say “The Bible is just a selected collection of myths and meaningless stories,” and it means nothing today.

I disagree with all of them.  Here’s why.  

“Inerrancy”: What does that mean?  There are clearly factual errors in the Bible, and many of the stories are so clearly mythical (Job, Jonah, The Creation, etc.) that “inerrancy” cannot refer to factual inerrancy.  So it must mean some sort of “spiritual inerrancy.”  Well, what does that mean?  Here’s what I think.  There is a message for people in the Bible, and that message comes from God, and that message is, obviously, inerrant.  But the Bible itself is not a manual or a collection of incantations, nor is every word in it (in which language and which translation?) to be taken as literally true or even “binding,” if that makes any sense.  Moreover, while the message God has for all of Mankind is the same, the message He may have for or “with” any one individual man or woman – like a conversation -- is probably going to be different from the “group message,” simply because every individual is distinct or unique.  

Finally, whenever someone says the Bible is inerrant, you can be damn sure that guy also means: “And my like-minded friends and I know what it means and are going to drill it into your head, without variation and allow no dissent.”  

Now, if someone came up to me and said “the Bible is inerrant, but I have no idea what it means or may mean to others, but I kinda think I know what it means to me,” then I would be happy to agree with that person.  

Next, as I understand it, the Word of God was with God at the beginning, all life was created through Him, and then he took on flesh and lived among us, etc, etc, John 1:1.  That does not describe the Bible, which consists of ink on paper surrounded by an outer covering of leather, paperboard and the like.  

What I think the Bible is is this:  It is a collection of writings by human beings with all of their individual prejudices, foibles, cultural blinders, mental hang-ups, and on and on, of the very real revelation of God to a small tribe in the Middle East, and later to an even smaller bunch of fishermen and shepherds and tax collectors, etc.

So there ya go.  Are there myths?  Sure – these people were writing about the genesis of the cosmos eons before there were even telescopes.  But the darn creation stories have an awful lot of depth to them.  I’d venture to say that the choice of these stories – “false” as they are from a sort of newspaper reporter’s perspective – was inspired because they also say so much that is universally true.  Is it all myths?  Nah.  The historians agree that David and Jesus existed, at least, though plainly there isn’t any agreement on exactly who they were.  And the records of Jewish Kings seem to be real, especially since so many of them are not flattering.  Plus, don’t forget the poetry (Psalms/Song of Sol.) and the Prophets.  

So a pox on ye both:  The revelation is real, and the message(s) is(are) in there.  Now go read it and leave me alone.