In the beginning was the Word, but it took a while for the hundreds of thousands of words in the Bible to be composed, written down, painstakingly copied, preserved, passed around, tested, accepted, collected together, bound into book form and translated to give us the Bibles we have available to us today.
Its use, status, standing and influence have waxed and waned across the centuries. The Bible was once trusted and read far more widely in Western society than it is today. It has been a book of great significance in shaping thought, the arts, literature, systems of government and so on. English literature and art alone are difficult to fully appreciate and understand without knowledge of the Bible. As Marilyn Robinson writes:
The
Bible is the model for and subject of more art and thought than those of us who
live within its influence, consciously or unconsciously, will ever know.
Literatures are self-referential by nature, and even when references to
Scripture in contemporary fiction and poetry are no more than ornamental or
rhetorical—indeed, even when they are unintentional—they are still a natural
consequence of the persistence of a powerful literary tradition.[1]
But while
it is generally believed to be the most published, distributed, read, and
influential book in history, it is being increasingly sidelined—even by Christians.
Some estimates suggest that as few as 20% of Christians read the Bible
regularly.[2]
There are many possible reasons for the reduction in the importance of the
Bible as part of daily life, including crowded lives, competing philosophies,
and challenges from science. Some have lost faith in the Bible as a reliable
book and struggle to see it as relevant.
It isn't possible in a quarterly magazine but in Issue 42 we consider a number. JamesPietsch in his article on the relationship between critical thinking and
Christianity, addresses the importance of facing such doubts about the Bible and challenging them
head on as we persevere in the faith.
One
approach to restoring confidence in the Bible is to combat the ignorance that
exists, even within the church, about the Bible: Where did it come from? Is it
genuine? Who wrote it and when? How early and reliable are the oldest copies? How
consistent is it with other sources from antiquity? Why are there so many different
versions? Is there any coherent unity to its diverse elements? This issue of Case aims to shed a little light on some
of these issues as it explores the Bible’s story.
 |
| Dr Andrew Shead |
Andrew Shead addresses the question of the biblical canon: How and why did various
texts come to be included in or excluded from the Bible over the centuries?
Staying with history, archaeologist Karin Sowada looks at what archaeology
can—and cannot—tell us about the people, places and events recorded in the
Bible’s pages.
Turning to
the story within the Bible’s pages, David Höhne examines the relationship
between the Old and New Testaments. He concludes that the writers of the Bible
shared the understanding that they were writing different chapters of a single
unified metanarrative: the story of God’s love for the world he had created,
and the salvation of his lost people through the life, death, and resurrection
of Jesus Christ.
We have also
included brief accounts of the holy books of the other two great Abrahamic
faiths—Judaism and Islam. Old Testament scholar, George Athas, explains what
constitutes the Jewish Tanakh, and how it relates to the Old Testament and
other sacred Jewish texts, such as the Talmud and Mishnah. Samuel Green from ‘Engaging
with Islam’[3]
does the same for Islamic texts, explaining the origins, nature and structure
of the Qur’an, and its relationship with the Christian Bible.
Our ‘Books
and Ideas’ segment also includes a review and excerpt of Into the World of the New Testament, providing Bible readers with
background knowledge of the context in which Jesus lived and the New Testament
was written. The excerpt examines the
different strands of religious thought around at the time of Jesus, including
the Pharisees, Sadducees and Samaritans. The segment closes with a review of a
collection of writings by previous Case
author, Edwin Judge: Engaging Rome and Jerusalem.
If you subscribe to Case Quarterly you should have your copy already. If you don't you can purchase single copies HERE or subscribe for just $55 per year.
[1]
M. Robinson, ‘The Book of Books: What Literature Owes the Bible’, New York Times, 22 December 2011. Retrieved 30 July 2015.
[2]
GSI Report, NCLS
2006, February 2011; P. Hughes, & C. Pickering, Milk to Meat Bible Engagement Report (milktomeat.com.au, 2010); and
Bible Engagement among Young Australians:
Patterns and Social Drivers, unpublished research report initiated by the Bible
Society and other partners.
[3]
S. Green, ‘Engaging
with Islam’, http://engagingwithislam.org/.
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