+ A Fundamentalist Response

We read the Bible because it is the Word of God

Fundamentalism as a Christian movement that particularly emerged in North America in the late 1800s to early 1900s in response to scientific ideas that challenged religious tradition. As a movement, it sought to direct people to the core, undeniable assumptions of faith, "The Fundamentals". One of the early ideas here was Biblical inerrancy, and it built upon an earlier protestant idea of "Scripture Alone".

The fundamentalist conception of the Bible is that it is the very Word of God, meaning that the Bible’s exact words (or at least the translated English versions of the Greek or Hebrew that most of us use) are exactly what God intended for us. For this reason, it is to be revered, respected and defended above all else as true and without error. However, understanding the Bible in this way—reading it in a literal sense—raises some questions.

Did Adam and Eve have bellybuttons? Were there dinosaurs on the Ark? How did animals cross continents from the Ark's final resting place? Who did Adam and Eve’s children marry? Why do people from different parts of the world all look so different if they all share the same two common ancestors?

We can be captured by the stories of Biblical characters; Adam, Eve, Cain and Able; Noah; Abraham, Sarah, Hagar, Ishmael and Isaac; Jacob, Leah and Rebecca; Joseph and his brothers; Moses, Aaron and Miriam; Joshua and Caleb; Samson, Gideon and Deborah; Saul, Jonathan, David, Solomon; Jonah, Hezekiah, Josiah and countless other prophets and Kings from the Hebrew Bible; John the Baptist, Jesus and his disciples; Paul and Timothy. We may find ourselves asking: Is this how it really happened? The boy Samuel hearing God speaking in the night. Elijah and Elisha standing up to corrupt kings. Jesus sharing his message of love and forgiveness. Paul travelling to new frontiers in the Roman Empire.

Yet, questions, outlined above, continue to raise their heads in the light of science, history and movies about dinosaurs. How do the stories of the Bible fit together with what we learn in the wider world? Debates over the issue of whether the Bible is ‘true’ or not has divided Christian communities particularly over the last two centuries, becoming a contentious point of debate. The contest was famously embodied in the Scopes Monkey Trial, in which an American school teacher was prosecuted for teaching evolution in the 1920s. Even today, the topic sparks emotive responses in many Christian schools and churches, with the push to have “Intelligent Design” included as science curricula a feature of recent discussion.

+ A Religious Response

We read the Bible in obedience to our tradition

Go back in history a touch over five hundred years, and most Christians in medieval Europe would not have read the Bible at all. They may have heard about it, had it preached at them, seen it from a distance (probably with it chained to the alter in the local church) or seen stories depicted in artwork or stained glass windows, but it would not have been read. In that time, it wasn't so much about the particular words in the Bible, but what those words represented as moral lessons for society. It was widely believed that common people couldn't understand the Bible, and so actual reading of it was reserved for priests and officers of the church.

Fast-forward through the Reformation, which translated the Bible from Latin and Greek to the more commonly used languages of German and English, and everyone had a copy of the Bible. It was much more widely accessed, and more widely owned, than ever before.

The question of understanding, however, remains disputed.

+ A Scholarly Response

We read the the Bible as one of the great ethical and literary texts

+ A "Spiritual Response"

We read the Bible to find a deeper truth

As Christians, the ultimate goal is to understand Jesus. The Bible can help to understand Jesus, but it can also be confusing, scary, horrifying and bewildering. Not all bits of the Bible are useful to all of us all of the time. So in the following pages, we will begin exploring the content of the Bible by trying to summarise the breadth of the Biblical story or ‘narrative’. We will begin with an overview of the Hebrew Bible and then discuss the ‘inter-testamental’ period… the bit that links the Hebrew Bible and New Testament stories together. We can then look at the arrival of Jesus and the church in the New Testament. It’s hard to learn about someone without actually meeting them, which is why the Bible is so important. The life, personality and mission of Jesus are all contained within the pages of the Bible—the best account we have of God as ‘one of us’.