Quotes about the Bible

This is a partial list of quotes and information I have gathered about the Bible. Some of the quotes have the sources listed and some don't. I was remiss when I first started to gather information on the Bible to list all my sources.

The Bible is a book of theology in Jewish worldview first and foremost.

We don't actually have the original writings of the (old or) new testaments. We have copies of these writings, made years later... none of these copies is completely accurate... scribes... inadvertently and/or intentionally changed them in place.

This (is) a human book from beginning to end. It was written by different human authors at different times and in different places to address different needs. ...they had their own perspectives, their own beliefs, their own views, their own needs, their own desires, their own understandings, their own theologies; and these... informed everything they said. Misquoting Jesus

The bible was written by at least 150 different people in dozens of different places at different times, many centuries apart, for many different reasons.

The Bible is the interpretation of historical events by ancient nomads.

All context is left in the background or left outside the narrative. This compels the reader to add their own interpretation to the text.

As language develops, the meanings of words change or the meaning is lost all together.

To dissect the bible in search of accurate, verifiable history is to demand of it something that it is not. The bible is narrative expression of shared community life. It emerged in the late 7th century BCE as the response of a small kingdom to the unique pressures it faced, and was later refined as the response of the even smaller Temple community in Jerusalem to the challenges of the post-Exilic period. It demands to be read, not as history in the modern sense, but as the literary and spiritual creation of its own age.

Since the bible developed over a period of many centuries, it makes assumptions that were shared by people at the time a particular passage was written, but not necessarily at an earlier time or later time - Great People of the Bible and How They Lived

The bible is an accumulation of material, much of it repetitive, that was molded over many centuries - from both oral and written traditions - by many generations of storytellers who revised the stories endlessly in the telling, and by religious leaders who periodically brought the accounts up to date according to the biases of their times. - The Israelites
Over time gods took on human qualities such as love and hate, jealous and generosity, anger and pleasure, grief and joy, gratitude and vengeance, and annoyance. - The Israelites

The bible is the record of a people's spiritual progress rather than an infallible document of divine origin - A History of the Jews

It is the greatest human document, with all the loves and hates, the feelings sublime and sordid, that animate human beings. - A History of the Jews

The bible can serve as a very useful historical document if it is kept in mind that its editors have recast tribal traditions and reinterpreted them from a national standpoint, that the story is the idealized product of prophetic and priestly imagination, written down many centuries after the events supposedly occurred. - A History of the Jews

All religious systems, beliefs, creeds, doctrines, gods, and sacred texts, whether Christian, Muslim, Jewish, Hindu etc., are human creations by which people in different times and different places seek to journey into that which is ultimately holy and wholly other. Until that simple lesson is heard, human beings will continue to destroy each other in the name of the 'one true god.' - John Shelby Spong

Religion for most people is not a search for truth but a search for security. People want security more than truth - John Shelby Spong

The truths in the bible are not historical truths but social, political, ethical, and existential truth

The writers were concerned with showing what they believed to be the finger of god in the events and experiences of the Israelite people.

The past is refracted through a theological lens.

The bible is an attempt to describe the indescribable.

1200 BCE - Hebrew culture unique enough to appear in the archaeological record. - The Jews can rank neither as a nation nor even an ethnic unit, but rather as a socio-religious group carrying large Mediterranean, Armenoid, and other elements, and varying greatly in physical characteristics." - Hurley and Haddon

The ceaseless - often violent - interaction between those who have crossed or are forced to dwell in the yellow lands and those who possess the green land is the recurring theme of the history of the Holy Land. - Silent Cities, Sacred Stone

Repetition is a feature of bible literature - words that repeat 7 to 10 times in a story become a theme - ex. Gen. 1 repeats "It was good" 7 times.

A biblical archaeologist's job is not to prove that the bible is true, but to identify those specific elements in it whose historical relevance can be established: not whether Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob did exist, but whether they could have existed within the cultural, geographical, and historical framework of Genesis. - Silent Cities, Sacred Stone

The Bible is a library of books from diverse times and places rather than a single, unified book; biblical narratives contain complex themes and realistic characters and are not "pious parables" about saintly persons; the Bible is a sophisticated narrative not for children; the Bible is an account of the odyssey of a people rather than a book of theology; and finally, the Bible was written by many human contributors with diverse perspectives and viewpoints.

The Torah is 5 centuries of religious and literary activity .

The biblical authors were what we would call collectors, compilers, revisers, editors, and interpreters of ancient tradition. Ancient texts were generally the product of many hands over the stretch of many long centuries, and during that time modifications and reconceptualization occurred
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The stories were written inside a world view that was open ended, filled with magic and miracles – Spong

The Bible is not a book but a library - is an anthology, written and edited over an extended period of time for different situations - political, historical, philosophical, religious, moral -with many different genres - narratives, law, cultic and ritual, messages of prophets, poetry, proverbs, psalms of thanksgiving and lament

Bible gaps - bible is meant to teach lessons not as a history - only those events that teach are included in the bible

A stories' truth is of less value than its cautionary tale
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The myths in the bible were not intended to be taken literally, but were metaphorical attempts by ancient people to describe a reality that was too complex and elusive to express in any other way.

Religion starts with a perception that something is wrong

Religion is politics made sacred.

The first 5 - 7 books (or more) of the bible are compilations - these sources therefore do not tell us about the times or situations they purport to describe, so much as they tell us about the beliefs and practices of Israelites in the period in which they were composed - Yale Open Course