The Bible may well be the best proof that God works in mysterious ways. Rather than one writer being divinely inspired to pen a clear outline of the duties men and women have to God, to each other and to the world around them, he commissioned numerous writers. Many are anonymous and never even wrote anything down, passing the wisdom along verbally.
This process produced a book more than 1,000 years in the making. Instead of a blueprint for humanity, the Bible is a mix of essays, poetry, short stories, moral tracts, numerologies, do's and don'ts, and genealogies. Adding to the confusion today is that the Bible was written in several ancient languages, meaning that practically all contemporary readers are seeing it in translation. And while the Bible is divinely inspired, there is no evidence that translations are.
For all of its insistence that the Bible is inspired, the article from which I took the above quote contains a number of remarkable admissions.
I generally find that Catholics have a much more accurate and healthy understanding of the history of the Bible and its role in Christianity. Relying as they do on the Pope (rather than the Bible) to discern God's perfect will, Catholics are freer to discuss the Bible's obvious limitations. By contrast, Protestants, who deny the Pope's authority, invest the Bible with the undeserved patina of infallibility that once belonged solely to the Pope.
No comments:
Post a Comment