A Little Bible Isn't Gonna Kill Ya

The Bible is a library of books each telling us something in a different way. There is history, law, poetry, allegory, prophetic vision and a bit of everything else under the sun—and, of course, beyond the sun (and that which is underneath as well!)

The Bible was written by more than 40 authors over some 1,600 years—from roughly 1,500 BCE to 90 ACE. Life in this era was steeped in myth but hardly lacking in philosophic, scientific and technological discovery.

Inventions created during this time include: tumbler locks, arches, crossbow, lighthouse, battery (250 BCE in Baghdad), blown glass, forceps, and, perhaps most mercenarily, a coin-operated holy water dispensing machine.

Philosophers and scientists were no less productive; the Greeks alone tell the tale:

• Pythagoras’s highly abstract mathematics
• Socrates and Plato’s teachings regarding:
• Virtue, knowledge and happiness
• The relationship among the soul, the state and the cosmos
• Law, mathematics and nature
• Heraclitus and metaphysics
• Anaxagoras’s discovery of the true cause of the eclipse
• Archimedes the sand counter and, with his ingenious inventions, defender of Syracuse (in Greece, that is)
  

So, if so much changed during the time the Bible was written wouldn't it be surprising if the Bible didn't change from beginning to end?

Many folks believe God inspired biblical authors to transcend their parochial influences and deliver truths for all ages. But have you read Leviticus lately? I mean do we really want to kill people for cheating on their spouses? Literally?

Isn't it self evident that the Bible's writings (and, for later ages, the choice of those writings) were influenced by their times? The Bible was written and assembled by a dynamic process akin to a dialogue across the ages. As such, during the 1,600 years it took to write, it's not surprising that the subjects of the Old Testament spent more time killing people than those from the New Testament did loving them.

So given the acceleration of discovery over the last 1,900 years or so--particularly in the last few hundred years--how do we continue the dialogue?

I'm hopeful that we'll all figure that out.