Summary: The Bible is a masterpiece that reveals God. Like everything made with human hands, it has flaws. Rather than obsessing about this, we should tune our ear to what the Bible wants us to hear: the living Voice

The Magic Book?

I Love the Bible

The first time I heard God speak to me personally, it was through the Bible. I don’t remember the details of my teenage angst but I do remember the moment I heard the Voice. I had plopped down in a black bean bag chair. I was so depressed that I had resorted to desperate measures: reading the Bible. It fell open to a Psalm. Like me, the writer was feeling the absurdity of life and wondering if God had flown the coop. I felt a strange closeness with the writer. Suddenly, I heard God speak. It was comfort. It was hope. It was love. I nearly fell out of my chair, which is pretty tough to do when you’re in beanbag chair! 

That encounter created a lifelong hunger. I longed to hear that Voice again and again. It was more alluring than girls, more exciting than basketball, more rewarding than straight A’s. There was nothing like it. Peter’s words to Jesus were exactly how I felt: “You alone have the words of eternal life!”

This hunger drove me to get up early each morning. I put on classical music, opened my Bible, and listened for the Voice. Most mornings, I heard it. I never lost this love. It led me to get a Ph.D. in New Testament and to learn to read the New Testament in Greek. 

Over the years, my love for the Bible has grown. It is great literature that addresses life’s greatest issues: Job struggling with evil; David finding God in the desert; Isaiah foreseeing universal reconciliation; Jesus proclaiming the Kingdom; Paul explaining the New Creation. 

I love the Bible the way I love a good set of binoculars, because of what I see through it. But like all human creations, it is not perfect. In my evangelical tradition it’s against the rules to say this, but it is obviously true.

The Bible Is Not a Perfect Book

A few years ago I attended a scholarly conference on Biblical inerrancy. Speaker after speaker stood up and made the case for the perfection of the Bible. In scandalous tones, they referred to the heretics who had left the group because they dared to questioned this. As the talks droned on, I couldn’t help but feel kinship with the heretics. As wonderful as the Bible is, it is not a perfect book. Here are four reasons why. 

1. The Bible Is Not a Book

The first reason why the Bible is not a perfect book is that it isn’t a book at all. It is a collection of writings that spans centuries, some of which are collections themselves. 

In our day, it is hard to imagine anything other than the book form. But the book format (called a codex) didn’t emerge until about 200 A.D. Prior to this, writings were preserved on scrolls. The book of Luke is about as much text as you could get on a single scroll which is probably why Luke’s writing is divided into two parts, Luke-Acts. 

In the first century there was no question about which books belonged in “the Bible” since there was no such thing as “the Bible.” Instead there was a basket of scrolls. There was debate about which writings belonged in the basket, but by its nature, this was flexible. Not all writings in the basket were of the same value. Some were obviously inspired and were in everyone’s basket. Others barely made it in at all. Different Christian gatherings put different scrolls in their basket.

The first record we have of the 27 books we call our “New Testament” being defined as the accepted scrolls was in 367 A.D. in a letter written by Athanasius, the bishop of Alexandria. This was still not the final definition of the Bible. The unification of the church under the power of Rome led to the unification the accepted books but controversy lingered. In fact, to this very day,