Faith&Friends
BETWEEN THE LINES
Good Book Turned Bad? Correcting misconceptions about the Bible. by Andrew Stone
A
uthor Nick Page has a surprising opinion on what is arguably the best known book in the world. “We’ve been told wrong things about the Bible,” he says. “We’ve been misinformed. “For example,” he continues, “sometimes we’re given the impression that God wrote every word in it, but the Bible is the writing of many people across thousands of years. “Some other Christians treat the Bible like it is God and end up worshipping it. But the Bible isn’t God—it was written and created by men.” Bible by Committee Another problem Nick identifies is that people do not always realize that
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the Bible is a collection of writings. “Because it is bound together, some people think the Bible is one book,” he explains. “The fact is, it wasn’t bound together until about 350 AD. Before then, some of it would have been on scrolls and some on codices, early forms of books. “In a sense, we need to unbind it. Then we would have more awareness that these are different books written by different authors. “As well as being bound together, it is also translated by committees, which flattens all the voices so that it sounds like it has one author. “For example, the final book of the Bible, Revelation, was written in extremely bad Greek, by someone for whom Greek was their second language. It’s a very important piece of
