Christian Relaunch

The Bible

"I am a simpleton, am I, to quote such an exploded book as Genesis? My good wiseacre readers, I know as many flaws in the book of Genesis as the best of you, but I knew the book before I knew its flaws, while you know the flaws, and never have known the book."

John Ruskin, Fors Clavigera, Letter #41 (May 1874).

The (Christian) Bible has two parts, describing the two covenants that God has made with men. (They are sometimes wrongly called "testaments".)

(1) The Tanakh ("Hebrew Bible") is an expression of ancient Israel's awareness of its covenant with God. Christians call it "The Old Covenant".

(2) The New Covenant Book is the extant writings of the first generation of Christians.

The New Covenant Book records how God came among us. As highlights, I suggest Matthew 5-7; Mark; John; Acts 1-2; Romans 1-8 and 12; 1st Corinthians 15; 1st John; and Revelation (aka "Apocalypse") 21-22.

But the New Covenant shines even more clearly with the Old as background. I suggest Genesis 1:1-12:3; Exodus 1-20; 2nd Samuel 7; Amos; Jeremiah 31:31-34; and Isaiah 52:13-53:12. And in Acts 7 and Hebrews 11 the New Covenant Book itself describes the highlights of the Old.

For a fuller abridgment, amounting to maybe half of the Bible, I suggest Genesis, Exodus, Numbers, Joshua, Judges, 1st Samuel, Amos, Hosea, Psalms 1-41 ("Book 1"), Ecclesiastes, The Song of Songs and the whole New Covenant Book.

Most of the errors of Christianity arise from neglect or misinterpretation of the Bible.

The New Covenant Book, and to some degree the whole Bible, presents a consistent and coherent view. Apart from checking the translation, our chief defense against error is context; we must read the whole chapter (sometimes the whole "book", and preferably the whole Bible), and not base doctrines on brief quotations.

On the other hand, the opposite error, Biblicism, regards every detail of the Bible as reliable.

Biblicism is akin to a form of Docetism (an Atheanthroposial heresy) known as Apollinarianism. It conduces to some unsustainable beliefs.

For instance, various statements in the Bible contradict one another. It can be fun hearing Biblicists' explanations of how "both can be true", and if they are stubborn enough then no amount of proof will persuade them, but I see no need or reason for such ingenuity. The Bible was written by humans, and making mistakes is a necessary part of healthy human life, not a harmful deviation. (We can learn from our mistakes, but we never cease making them.)

My writings contain many quotations from the Bible.

I mainly use the Revised Standard Version, but where I consider that to be misleading I use other translations, including occasionally my own.

For the Hebrew YHWH (the "Tetragrammaton") I use "Yahweh", which seems the likeliest original pronunciation. The practice of circumlocution (writing and saying "the LORD" instead) arose from superstition masquerading as reverence. The earliest extant copies of the New Covenant Book circumlocuted when quoting from the Hebrew, but the original authors may not have done so. And even if they did so, and even if they were right to do so, it need not follow that we should do likewise, for they were probably quoting a generally accepted translation. In the days when everyone knew the King James Bible there may have been a case for following their example, but today less so.

If addressing Christian readers I usually just cite book-chapter-verse; if a wider readership, I will probably also mention author and date.