CF,
We are just ending our fifth year of studying the Bible with a number of seminary trained theological people, many of whom have differing interpretations of the various meanings of the book. We have spend between 750 and 1000 hours doing this.
Some of the conclusions that we have formed about the Bible are that it is a very diverse and interesting read. We do feel that it was divinely inspired but we also realize that it was mostly written over two thousand years ago. Many of the sections involving slavery and women were in the context of the times in which they were written. The South used the Bible to justify slavery but people have been using sections of the Bible to justify many things that have been taken out of context for years. If we had been talking in the first decade of the twentieth century, women would still not have had suffrage and their rights were still greatly restricted. But, in counterbalance to that, we have the way that Jesus used and praised women in his ministry and how, as with the woman at the well, he approached them as equals when, in the times that it occurred, they were not even held equal by their peers. If one uses the woman at the well as an example of Jesus teachings in action, then, we will not exclude those who others might exclude but will approach them and try to improve their lot in life with Christian charity.
When one studies the Bible, it is best to have the aid of a trained professional to help guide one through what is often a difficult maze of thought. We did a year and a half study of the book of Isaiah and if we had not had aid, we would not have understood one tenth of what was really being said and interpreted. The Bible was written in the context of its time and there has been a mound of history written just trying to understand what the writers were talking about. As a trained historian, we have fallen in love with the Bible partially because we realize that even far more recent history has been the subject of interpretation and reinterpretation as the generations have proceeded apace! Things that we studied in graduate school forty years ago have been challenged and supplanted with a new generations thoughts and research and ideas.
There have been those who use things like the book of Genesis to interpret that the earth is only six thousand years old, but, in reality, we all know that God would have not let us find all of those fossils if he did not mean for us to find them. He gave us free will and a curiosity for a reason and in so many instances, the Bible bears that fact out. When the Bible talks about God creating the stars in the heavens and we find out that there are possibly one trillion galaxies such as our own Milky Way in the universe it simply greatly expands my interpretation of how really great God is because I do believe that he created and overlooks the whole thing to this day. To me, the acquisition of more knowledge simply expands the greatness of God! Those who deny science and history and anthropology and archeology are denying the things that God created because he also gave us the ability to create them.
And you are surely correct in what you say when you say that what we should take out of the Bible above all else is the fact that God is a God of love because that permeates the whole book and is especially prevalent in the New Testament!
My studies of the Bible will continue for the rest of my life and I will continue to find new views of what it says as I encounter new teachers because the Bible is a big enough document to affect all those that come to its teaching in so many different ways!
IOVHO,
Regards,
Joe
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