The Bible - Wikiquote

The Bible - Wikiquote
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Thou shalt
love
the
Lord
thy
God
with all thy
heart
, and with all thy
soul
, and with all thy
mind
. This is the first and
great
commandment
. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as
thyself
. On these two commandments hang "all the
law
and the
prophets
." ~
Jesus Christ
Let no
debt
remain outstanding, except the continuing debt to love one another, for whoever loves others has fulfilled the law. The commandments, “You shall not commit
adultery
,” “You shall not
murder
,” “You shall not
steal
,” “You shall not
covet
,” and whatever other command there may be, are summed up in this one
command
: “Love your neighbor as
yourself
.” Love does no
harm
to a neighbor. Therefore
love
is the fulfillment of the
law
. ~
Paul of Tarsus
The Bible
may refer to:
The
Hebrew Bible
or
Tanakh
, is the primary religious text of
Judaism
, or
The
Christian Bible
, consisting of the
Old Testament
, the
Apocrypha
and the
New Testament
, is the primary religious text of
Christianity
Old Testament
edit
Defend
the
weak
and the fatherless; uphold the cause of the
poor
and the
oppressed
. ~
Psalm
82:3
Learn
to
do
good
; Seek
justice
, Reprove the ruthless, Defend the orphan, Plead for the widow. ~
Isaiah
1:17
Obey
these
instructions
as a lasting ordinance for you and your descendants. ~ Exodus 12:24
To the increase of his
rulership
and to
peace
, there will be no
end
. ~
Isaiah
9:7
The
fear of the LORD
is to hate
evil
pride
, and
arrogancy
, and the evil way, and the froward
mouth
, do I hate. ~ Proverbs 8:13
Main article:
Tanakh
Defend the weak and the fatherless;
uphold the cause of the poor and the oppressed.
David
Psalm
82:3
NIV
Then
Jehovah
’s angel said: “I will greatly multiply your offspring, so that they will be too numerous to count.” Jehovah’s angel added: “Here you are pregnant, and you will give birth to a son, and you must name him Ish′ma·el.
Genesis
16:10-11,
NWT
How shall I curse, whom God hath not cursed? or how shall I defy, whom the LORD hath not defied?
Balaam
Numbers
23:8 (KJV)
Learn to do
good
; Seek
justice
, Reprove the ruthless, Defend the
orphan
, Plead for the
widow
Isaiah
1:17
NASB
Come, now, and let us set matters straight between us,” says
Jehovah
. “Though your
sins
are like scarlet, They will be made as
white
as
snow
; Though they are as red as crimson cloth, They will become like
wool
Isaiah
1:18
NWT
To the increase of his rulership
And to
peace
, there will be no end.
Isaiah
9:7
NWT
Jehovah
of armies has sworn: “Just as I have intended, so it will occur, and just as I have decided, that is what will come true.”
Isaiah
14:24
NWT
Jehovah, the Creator of the extremities of the
earth
, is a God to time indefinite. He does not tire out or grow weary. There is no searching out of his
understanding
Isaiah
40:28
NWT
Remember this, and take courage. Take it to heart, you transgressors. Remember the former things of long ago, That I am
God
, and there is no other. I am God, and there is no one like me. From the beginning I foretell the outcome, And from long ago the things that have not yet been done. I say, ‘My decision will stand, And I will do whatever I please.’ I am calling a bird of prey from the sunrise, From a distant land the man to carry out my decision. I have spoken, and I will bring it about. I have purposed it, and I will also carry it out.
Isaiah
46:6-11
NWT
But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed.
All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the LORD hath laid on him the iniquity of us all....
And he made his grave with the wicked, and with the rich in his death; because he had done no violence, neither was any deceit in his mouth.
Book of Isaiah
53:5,6,9
KJV
. There are also quotes at
Isaiah
For just as the rain and the snow pour down from heaven
And do not return there until they saturate the earth, making it produce and sprout,
Giving seed to the sower and
bread
to the eater,
So my word that goes out of my mouth will be.
It will not return to me without results,
But it will certainly accomplish whatever is my delight,
And it will have sure success in what I send it to do.
Isaiah
55:10-11
NWT
But your iniquities have separated between you and your God, and your sins have hid his face from you, that he will not hear.
Book of Isaiah
59:2
KJV
. There are also quotes at
Isaiah
Receive my instruction, and not
silver
; and
knowledge
rather than choice
gold
For wisdom is better than rubies; and all the things that may be desired are not to be compared to it.
I,
Wisdom
, dwell with prudence, and find out knowledge of witty inventions.
The fear of the LORD is to hate evil: pride, and arrogancy, and the evil way, and the froward mouth, do I hate.
Counsel is mine, and sound wisdom: I am understanding; I have strength.
By me kings reign, and princes decree justice.
By me princes rule, and nobles, even all the judges of the earth.
Book of Proverbs
8:10-16
KJV
This is what
Jehovah
of armies has said, ‘It will be in those days that ten men out of all the languages of the nations will take hold, yes, they will actually take hold of the skirt of a man who is a Jew, saying: “We will go with YOU people, for we have heard [that] God is with YOU people.
Zechariah 8:23
NWT
The head of that image was of fine gold, its chest and its arms were of silver, its abdomen and its thighs were of copper, its legs were of
iron
, and its feet were partly of iron and partly of
clay
. You looked on until a
stone
was cut out, not by hands, and it struck the image on its feet of iron and of clay and crushed them. At that time the iron, the clay, the
copper
, the silver, and the gold were, all together, crushed and became like the chaff from the summer threshing floor, and the wind carried them away so that not a trace of them could be found. But the stone that struck the image became a large mountain, and it filled the whole earth.
Daniel
32-35
NWT
I kept watching until thrones were set in place and the Ancient of Days sat down. His clothing was white like snow, and the hair of his head was like clean wool. His throne was flames of fire; its wheels were a burning fire. A stream of fire was flowing and going out from before him. A thousand thousands kept ministering to him, and ten thousand times ten thousand stood before him. The Court took its seat, and books were opened.
Daniel
7:9-10
New World Translation
Apocrypha
edit
Do not turn your
face
away from anyone who is poor, and the face of God will not be turned away from you. ~
Tobit
Your
strength
does not depend on numbers, nor your might on the
powerful
. But you are the God of the lowly, helper of the
oppressed
, upholder of the weak,
protector
of the forsaken, savior of those without
hope
. ~
Judith
Truth
is great, and stronger than all things. The whole
earth
calls upon truth, and
heaven
blesses it. All God’s works quake and tremble, and with him there is nothing unrighteous. Wine is unrighteous, the king is unrighteous, women are unrighteous, all human beings are unrighteous, all their works are unrighteous, and all such things. There is no truth in them and in their unrighteousness they will perish. But truth endures and is strong forever, and lives and prevails forever and ever. With it there is no partiality or preference, but it does what is righteous instead of anything that is unrighteous or wicked. Everyone approves its deeds, and there is nothing unrighteous in its judgment. To it belongs the strength and the kingship and the power and the majesty of all the ages. Blessed be the God of truth!
1 Esdras
4:35-40
NRSV
Give alms from your possessions, and do not let your eye begrudge the gift when you make it. Do not turn your face away from anyone who is poor, and the face of God will not be turned away from you.
Tobit
4:7
NRSV
Your strength does not depend on numbers, nor your might on the powerful. But you are the God of the lowly, helper of the oppressed, upholder of the weak, protector of the forsaken, savior of those without hope.
Judith
9:11
NRSV
Wisdom
is radiant and unfading,
and she is easily discerned by those who love her,
and is found by those who seek her.
She hastens to make herself known to those who desire her.
One who rises early to seek her will have no difficulty,
for she will be found sitting at the gate.
To fix one’s thought on her is perfect understanding.
Wisdom of Solomon
6:12-15
NRSV
New Testament
edit
Be not conformed to this
world
: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your
mind
. ~
Paul of Tarsus
You have stripped off the
old
self
with its
practices
and have
clothed
yourselves with the new self, which is being renewed in
knowledge
according to the
image
of its
creator
. ~
Paul of Tarsus
Main article:
New Testament
Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy
heart
, and with all thy
soul
, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.
Matthew
22:37-40
KJV
Jesus answered and said unto them, Verily I say unto you, if ye have faith, and doubt not, ye shall not only do this which is done to the fig tree, but also if ye shall say unto this mountain, be thou removed, and be thou cast into the sea; it shall be done.
Mark
21:21
KJV
And when ye shall see
Jerusalem
compassed with
armies
, then know that the desolation thereof is nigh. Then let them which are in Judaea flee to the
mountains
; and let them which are in the midst of it depart out; and let not them that are in the countries enter thereinto. For these be the days of vengeance, that all things which are written may be fulfilled. But woe unto them that are with child, and to them that give suck, in those days! for there shall be great distress in the land, and wrath upon this people. And they shall fall by the edge of the sword, and shall be led away captive into all nations: and Jerusalem shall be trodden down of the
Gentiles
, until the times of the Gentiles be fulfilled.
Luke
21:20-24
KJV
Ye are of your father the
devil
, and the lusts of your father ye will do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no
truth
in him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own: for he is a liar, and the father of it.
John
8:44
KJV
Pay attention to yourselves and to all the flock, among which the
holy spirit
has appointed you overseers, to shepherd the congregation of God, which he purchased with the
blood
of
his own Son
. I know that after my going away oppressive
wolves
will enter in among you and will not treat the flock with tenderness, and from among you yourselves men will rise and speak twisted things to draw away the disciples after themselves.
Acts
20:28-30
NWT
μὴ συνσχηματίζεσθε τῷ αἰῶνι τούτῳ, ἀλλὰ μεταμορφοῦσθε τῇ ἀνακαινώσει τοῦ νοός.
Be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind.
Romans
12:2
KJV
Let no
debt
remain outstanding, except the continuing debt to love one another, for whoever loves others has fulfilled the law. The commandments, “You shall not commit
adultery
,” “You shall not
murder
,” “You shall not
steal
,” “You shall not covet,” and whatever other command there may be, are summed up in this one command: “Love your neighbor as yourself.”
Love
does no harm to a neighbor. Therefore love is the fulfillment of the law.
Romans
13:8-10
ἀπεκδυσάμενοι τὸν παλαιὸν ἄνθρωπον σὺν ταῖς πράξεσιν αὐτοῦ, καὶ ἐνδυσάμενοι τὸν νέον τὸν ἀνακαινούμενον εἰς ἐπίγνωσιν κατ’ εἰκόνα τοῦ κτίσαντος αὐτόν.
You have stripped off the old self with its practices and have clothed yourselves with the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge according to the image of its creator.
Colossians
3:9-10
NRSV
I know thy works, and tribulation, and
poverty
, (but thou art rich) and I know the blasphemy of them which say they are
Jews
, and are not, but are the synagogue of Satan.
Revelation 2:9
KJV
The seventh angel blew his trumpet. And there were loud
voices
in heaven, saying: “The kingdom of the world has become the Kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ, and he will rule as king forever and ever.”
Revelation 11:15
NWT
We thank you,
Jehovah
God, the Almighty, the one who is and who was, because you have taken your great
power
and begun ruling as king.
Revelation 11:17
NWT
Quotes about the Bible
edit
I believe that the biblical teaching is clear. It always contests political power. ~
Jacques Ellul
Alphabetized by author or source
I have for many years made it a practice to read through the Bible once every year.
John Quincy Adams
The Watchtower
magazine, 1992, 5/15.
It is of all books in the world, that which contributes most to make men
good
wise
, and
happy
Letters of
John Quincy Adams
to His Son, 1849, p. 9.
No other book in the western tradition has been subject to such extensive interpretation, or to interpretation based on such incompatible principles as, for example, on the one hand, the principles of higher criticism which treat the Bible as a secular document, and, on the other hand, the principles of exegesis peculiar to a text considered to be the sacred and revealed word of God... No matter what the topic under which the Bible is cited [in the Syntopicon], the reader is always left quite free to decide that issue for himself. He can always read a biblical passage
either
as a portion of divine revelation,
or
as human writing no different from other human literature.
Mortimer J. Adler
Great Books of the Western World,
vol. 3, p. 1283.
If you suspect that my interest in the Bible is going to inspire me with sudden enthusiasm for
Judaism
and make me a convert of mountain‐moving fervor and that I shall suddenly grow long earlocks and learn
Hebrew
and go about denouncing the heathen — you little know the effect of the Bible on me. Properly read, it is the most potent force for
atheism
ever conceived.
Isaac Asimov
, quoted in
Asimov, Janet Jeppson (2006-06-06).
Notes for a Memoir: On Isaac Asimov, Life, and Writing
(1st ed.). Amherst: Prometheus. p. 58.
LCC
PS3551.S5 Z519 2006
ISBN 978-1591024057
In the Old Testament stories, … the sublime influence of God here reaches so deeply into the everyday that the two realms of the sublime and the everyday are not only actually unseparated but basically inseparable.
Erich Auerbach
Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature
, Willard R. Trask, trans. (Princeton: 1953), chapter 1
I resolved, therefore, to direct my mind to the Holy Scriptures, that I might see what they were. And behold, I saw something not comprehended by the
proud
, not disclosed to
children
, something lowly in the hearing, but sublime in the doing
Saint Augustine
Confessions
, Book 3, Chapter 5
Now, those four evangelists whose names have gained the most remarkable circulation over the whole world, and whose number has been fixed as four, ...are believed to have written in the order which follows: first
Matthew
, then
Mark
, thirdly
Luke
, lastly
John
Of these four, it is true, only Matthew is reckoned to have written in the Hebrew language; the others in
Greek
. And however they may appear to have kept each of them a certain order of narration proper to himself, this certainly is not to be taken as if each individual writer chose to write in ignorance of what his predecessor had done.
Saint Augustine
The Harmony of the Gospels
, Book 1 chapter 2 paragraph 4. from hypothesis.com
"Thou shalt not get found out" is not one of God's commandments, and no man can be saved by trying to keep it.
Leonard Bacon
, reported in
Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers
(1895), p. 511.
Without the Bible, we would not know of His Church then, nor would we have the fulness of His
gospel
now. I love the Bible, its teachings, its lessons, and its spirit. I love the
Old Testament
’s compelling, profound stories and its great
prophets
testifying of the coming of
Christ
. I love the New Testament’s apostolic travels and miracles and the letters of
Paul
. Most of all, I love its eyewitness accounts of the words and the example and the Atonement of our Savior
Jesus Christ
. I love the perspective and peace that come from reading the Bible.
M. Russell Ballard
The Miracle of the Holy Bible
",
General Conference
, April 2007
If the Bible is only
human
lore
, and not
divine
truth
, then we have no
real
answer
to those who say, "Let's pick the best out of all
religions
and blend it all into
Pan-Deism
- one
world
religion with one god made out of many".
J. Sidlow Baxter
The Most Critical Issue
, (1991).
The Bible is like a
telescope
. If a man looks through his telescope, then he sees worlds beyond; but, if he looks at his telescope, then he does not see anything but that.
Henry Ward Beecher
, In Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit (1887), 136.
To accept the Bible as a “revelation” and nail belief to a literal translation, is worse than absurdity — it is a blasphemy against the Divine majesty of the “Unseen.” If we had to judge of the Deity, and the world of spirits, by its human interpreters, now that philology proceeds with giant-strides on the fields of comparative religions, belief in God and the soul’s immortality could not withstand the attacks of reason for One century more. That which supports the faith of man in God and a spiritual life to come is intuition; that divine outcome of our inner-self, which defies the mummeries of the Roman Catholic priest, and his ridiculous idols; the thousand and one ceremonies of the Brahman and his idols; and the Jeremiads of the Protestant preacher, and his desolate and arid creed, with no idols, but a boundless hell and damnation hooked on at the end. p. 435, Book I
H.P. Blavatsky
Isis Unveiled: A Master-Key to the Mysteries of Ancient and Modern Science and Theology
(1877)
The Bible is no mere
book
, but a Living Creature, with a
power
that conquers all that oppose it.
Napoleon Bonaparte
The Watchtower
magazine, 1992, 5/15.
The Bible may be an antiquated book to many, but for the believer it is actually God speaking. God says there are some things that are evil and some things that are good. That's simple enough for even a child to understand. Certain things are right; other things are wrong. But they are right or wrong because God says so. We are right when we do God's will; we are wrong when we do not.
Anita Bryant
The Anita Bryant Story: The Survival of Our Nation's Families and the Threat of Militant Homosexuality
(1977), p. 37-38
An
eye for an eye
is not a call for
revenge
, it is an argument for fairness. In the time of the Bible, it was standard to take a life in exchange for an eye. But the Bible said, No, the
punishment
should fit the
crime
. Only an
eye
for an eye, nothing more. It is not vindictive, it is mitigatory.
George Carlin
Brain Droppings
(1998), p. 120
Too many of our best scholars, themselves indoctrinated from infancy in a religion of one kind or another based upon the Bible, are so locked into the idea of their own god as a supernatural fact — something final, not symbolic of transcendence, but a personage with a character and will of his own — that they are unable to grasp the idea of a worship that is not of the symbol but of its reference, which is of a mystery of much greater age and of more immediate inward reality than the name-and-form of any historical ethnic idea of a deity, whatsoever … and is of a sophistication that makes the sentimentalism of our popular Bible-story
theology
seem undeveloped.
Joseph Campbell
Historical Atlas of World Mythology
, part 3, p. 381
Why did
Christian
teaching not bear any obvious information relating to
esoteric
knowledge, including
reincarnation
?... the Bible is full of esoteric
wisdom
. But it may take some
insight
to discover it. It seems to be the case, especially in the past, that esoteric information, when embodied in
literature
made available to the public, was veiled beneath exoteric or more obvious interpretations. For if the deep symbolic meanings in biblical literature had been made obvious, on the surface, it is questionable whether the Bible could have survived, especially through the
dark ages
. It probably would have been discarded as irrelevant. It seems to be an indication of
genius
on the part of many writers, whose works later were gathered together to make up the Bible, that they produced material which could be interpreted on at least three different levels. The first level is of course a quite literal one. The second is a bit more sophisticated but still subject to interpretation by the concrete mind of the
orthodox
religionist
. The third carries an esoteric meaning.
Howard Ray Carey
in
The Joy of Christ's Coming: From Traditional Religion To Ageless Wisdom
, Chapter 4. Hidden esotericism in the Bible, (1988)
If we read the 13th chapter of
Matthew
with open eyes we find that Jesus' disciples were deeply puzzled as to why he spoke to the curious crowds in these word pictures, with such deeply hidden meanings. So they put the question to
Jesus
. He replied:
This is why I speak to them in
parables
, because seeing they do not see, and hearing they do not hear, nor do they understand.
But He was planting the good seed deep in their lives to ponder upon, so that hopefully some time it would sprout, grow, and as He suggested
bring forth grain, some a hundred fold, some sixty, some thirty.
... But to His disciples Jesus said:
Blessed are your eyes, for they see, and your ears, for they hear.
As you and I read the Bible let us ask ourselves: How acute is our esoteric vision and hearing?
Geoffrey Hodson
, a theosophical writer, in his book
The Hidden Wisdom in the Holy Bible
, Vol. I, gives us excellent clues to the
symbolic
meanings of the Bible. One of his suggestions is that we look at many biblical passages not for
historical
information, but that we consider them as happenings within our lives...
Howard Ray Carey
in
The Joy of Christ's Coming: From Traditional Religion To Ageless Wisdom
, Chapter 4. Hidden esotericism in the Bible, (1988)
The initiate
Paul
gives a number of clues about this hidden
wisdom
In writing to the church at Corinth
he says:
I fed you with
milk
, not solid
food
, for you were not ready for it, and even yet you are not ready.
(1 Cor. 3:2)... So as we read the Bible let us perceive it with seeing eyes and inner understanding. The
Christ
indicates that when we do that we will discover the pearl of great price. Can we sense the inner meaning of this? When we make that discovery we will be ready to give up all our accumulated treasures for this One Great Jewel! Are we ready?
Howard Ray Carey
in [
The Joy of Christ's Coming: From Traditional Religion To Ageless Wisdom
, Chapter 4. Hidden esotericism in the Bible,
] (1988)
Thou shalt have one God only; who
Would be at the expense of two?
No graven images may be,
except the
currency
not at all; for for thy curse
Thine enemy is none the worse:
church on Sunday to attend
serve to keep the world thy friend:
thy parents; that is, all
whom advancement may befall:
Thou shalt not kill; but needst not strive
Officiously to keep alive:
Do not adultery commit;
Advantage rarely comes of it:
Thou shalt not steal; an empty feat,
When it's so lucrative to cheat:
Bear not false witness: let the lie
Have time on its own wings to fly:
Thou shalt not covet; but tradition
Approves all forms of competition.
The sum of all is, thou shalt love,
If any body, God above:
At any rate shall never labour
More than thyself to love thy neighbour.
Arthur Hugh Clough
, "The Latest Decalogue", in A. L. P. Norrington, ed.,
The Poems of Arthur Hugh Clough
(1968), p. 60–61, on the Ten Commandments.
I believe that the biblical teaching is clear. It always contests political power. It incites to "counterpower," to "positive" criticism, to an irreducible dialogue (like that between king and prophet in Israel), to antistatism, to a decentralizing of the relation, to an extreme relativizing of everything political, to an anti-ideology, to a questioning of all that claims either power or dominion (in other words, of all things political), and finally, if we may use a modern term, to a kind of "
anarchism
" (so long as we do not relate the term to the anarchist teaching of the nineteenth century).
Jacques Ellul
The Subversion of Christianity
(1984), p. 116
In giving his Torah to
Israel
, God is like a king who gives his only daughter in marriage, and makes it a condition with her husband that there shall always be a room kept for him in their house. If we wish to have the Torah, we must have God also. This is the meaning of the words 'Make Me a sanctuary that I may dwell therein.'
Exodus Rabbah
33
Tales and Maxims from the Midrash
by Rev. Samuel Rapaport, (1907), p. 105.
My light, the Torah, says God to man, is in thy hand; but thy light, the soul, is in my hand. Take care of my light, so that I may take care of thy light.
Exodus Rabbah
37
Tales and Maxims from the Midrash
by Rev. Samuel Rapaport, (1907), p. 105.
There is a most amazing perspicuity in the sacred writings, beyond any to be found in human composures; according to a common observation, though there are in them such depths that an elephant may swim, yet such shallows that a lamb may wade in them; that is, though there is enough to exercise the talents of men of the greatest capacities to search into, and find out the things contained therein, yet what are essential to salvation, or nevessary to be known by men with respect to their faith and practice, are clear, and plain, and easy to be understood by an enlightened mind, though otherwise of the meanest capacity. This divine book contains in it interesting things to persons of every rank and class, of every different capacity, of every age and sex: it is written for the use of all sorts, men, women, and children, and therefore the main and essential things in it are written in such a manner as to be understood by them all: thus Timothy from a child knew the holy Scriptures, 2 Tim. iii. 15. and herein the wisdom of God is wonderfully displayed...
John Gill
Exposition of the Old Testament
vol. 1, "Preface", p. 5
The Bible is stamped with a Specialty of Origin, and an immeasurable distance separates it from all competitors.
William E. Gladstone
The Watchtower
magazine, 1992, 5/15.
As a matter of fact, however, it may be clearly stated categorically that no archaeological discovery has ever controverted a single biblical reference. Scores of archaeological findings have been made which confirm in clear outline or exact details historical statements in the Bible.
Nelson Glueck
Rivers in the Desert
(New York: Farrar, Strausee and Cudahy, 1959), p. 136
Those humble but indomitable workers, to whom later generations referred by the collective name of Baale Masorah, Masters of Tradition, performed in obscurity their Herculean task of guarding the Biblical Text against loss or variation.
Robert Gordis
"The Biblical Text in the Making", p. 1
That it has pleased God to make Holy Scripture obscure in certain places lest, if it were perfectly clear to all, it might be vulgarized and subjected to disrespect or be so misunderstood by people of limited intelligence as to lead them into error.
Pope Gregory VII
, in response to the request made in 1079 by Vratislaus, duke of Bohemia, seeking permission to use
Slavonic
in local church services.
Awake!
magazine December 2011, page 7; "They Tried to Keep God’s Word From the Masses."
To keep us occupied, he therefore set us to read a chapter of the Bible each day and write a piece on it. The idea was to teach us the beauty of the English language. We got through all of Genesis and part of Exodus before I left. One of the main things I learned from this exercise was not to begin a sentence with “And.” When I pointed out that most sentences in the Bible began with “And,” I was told that English had changed since the time of King James. In that case, I argued, why make us read the Bible?"
Stephen Hawking
"My Brief History"
. Bantam, (September 10, 2013), pp. 20/22.
The Bible is worth all other books which have ever been printed.
Patrick Henry
The Watchtower
magazine, 1992, 5/15.
Billions of people, including many scientists, continue to use religious scriptures as a source of authority, but these texts are no longer a source of creativity. Think, for example, about the acceptance of gay marriage or female clergy by the more progressive branches of
Christianity
. Where did this acceptance originate? Not from reading the Bible, St Augustine or Martin Luther. Rather, it came from reading texts like
Michel Foucault
’s
The History of Sexuality
or
Donna Haraway
’s ‘A Cyborg Manifesto’. Yet Christian true-believers – however
progressive
– cannot admit to drawing their
ethics
from Foucault and Haraway. So they go back to the Bible, to
St Augustine
and to
Martin Luther
, and make a very thorough search. They read page after page and story after story with the utmost attention, until they find what they need: some maxim, parable or ruling that if interpreted creatively enough means that God blesses gay marriages and that women can be ordained to the priesthood. They then pretend the idea originated in the Bible, when in fact it originated with Foucault. The Bible is kept as a source of authority, even though it is no longer a true source of inspiration.
Yuval Noah Harari
Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow
(2016), Chap. 7 : The Humanist Revolution
The Bible may, indeed does, contain a warrant for trafficking in humans, for ethnic cleansing, for slavery, for bride-price, and for indiscriminate massacre, but we are not bound by any of it because it was put together by crude, uncultured human mammals.
Christopher Hitchens
God is Not Great
. 2007.
LCC
BL2775.3.H58 2007
ISBN 9780446579803
OCLC
70630426
The mission of the
Jews
and the purpose of the erudite and initiated authors of the Bible was, I submit, to preserve, to enunciate and to deliver to humanity this wisdom of the Chaldeo-Hebrew Sanctuaries. It is for this and not for lordship over the Earth, I suggest, that the Jews were a chosen people, a nation or “kingdom of priests” in very truth. May not their tribulations have partly arisen from their neglect of this mission, and may not their earthly wanderings and centuries of physical
homelessness
have followed upon and resulted from their departure from their true Sanctuary and the real purpose for which they were “chosen”? Happily the light still shines, however deeply veiled, in and through this marvellous record of the Scriptures of the Hebrew Race.
Geoffrey Hodson
in
The Hidden Wisdom In The Holy Bible
(1963)
The task of unveiling the hidden truth demands some knowledge of
Cosmogenesis
, of the emanation of the
Universe
from the Absolute, the finite from the Infinite, and of the successive cycles, major and minor, of involution and evolution. In addition, both knowledge of the Symbolical Language, its purposes, methods and classical symbols, and the faculty of analysing and interpreting historical metaphors, are necessary to open the casket containing the treasures of concealed wisdom—the Holy Bible itself.
Geoffrey Hodson
in
The Hidden Wisdom In The Holy Bible
(1963)
The Bible contains one creation story in
Genesis
and it is very similar to some indigenous
creation stories
, except that in many of ours, we had the assistance of
animals
or other elements to help us in our first being.
Linda Hogan
Interview
(2013)
Their own Bible their
Revelation
destroys all the moral perceptions they heap upon him [God] unless indeed they call those qualities perfections that every other man's reason and common sense call imperfections, odious
vices
and brutal
wickedness
. Nay more he who reads our
Buddhist
scriptures written for the superstitious masses will fail to find in them a demon so vindictive, unjust, so cruel and so stupid as the celestial
tyrant
upon whom the
Christians
prodigally lavish their servile worship and on whom their
theologians
heap those perfections that are contradicted on every page of their Bible. Truly and veritably your theology has created her God but to destroy him piecemeal. Your church is the fabulous
Saturn
, who begets
children
but to devour them.
Koot Hoomi
, in
The Mahatma Letters to A. P. Sinnett
, (1923), Letter No. X, p. 54, 1881
The Bible is the best of all books, for it is the word of God and teaches us the way to be happy in this world and in the next. Continue therefore to read it and to regulate your life by its precepts.
John Jay
, letter to Peter Augustus Jay, April 9, 1784.
It's fair to say that the Bible contains equal amounts of fact, history, and pizza.
Take some time and put the Bible on your summer
reading
list. Try and stick with it cover to cover. Not because it
teaches
history
; we've shown you it doesn't. Read it because you'll see for
yourself
what the Bible is all about. It
sure
isn't great
literature
. If it were published as
fiction
, no
reviewer
would give it a passing grade. There are some vivid scenes and some quotable phrases, but there's no
plot
, no structure, there's a tremendous amount of filler, and the characters are painfully one-dimensional. Whatever you do,
don't
read the Bible for a
moral
code: it advocates
prejudice
cruelty
superstition
and
murder
. Read it because: we need more
atheists
— and
nothin'
will get you there faster, than readin' the damn Bible.
Penn Jillette
in
"The Bible: Fact or Fiction?",
Penn & Teller: Bullshit!
, season 2 episode 6, Showtime, 6 May 2004
Reading the Bible is the fast track to
atheism
. Reading the Bible means starting at "In the beginning..." and throwing it down with disgust at "...the grace of the lord Jesus be with all. Amen." I'm sure there are lots of religious people who've read the Bible from start to finish and kept their faith, but in my self-selected sample, all the people I know who have done that are atheists.
Penn Jillette
(2011-08-16).
God, No!: Signs You May Already Be an Atheist and Other Magical Tales
. New York: Simon & Schuster. p. 42.
LCC
PN6231.R4 J55 2011
ISBN 9781451610383
When
19th-century
British
missionaries arrived in the
Caribbean
to convert
enslaved
Africans
, they came armed with a heavily edited version of the
Bible
. Any passage that might incite rebellion was removed; gone, for instance, were references to the
exodus
of enslaved
Israelites
from
Egypt
. Today, just three copies of the so-called “Slave Bible” are known to exist.
“This can be seen as an attempt to appease the planter class saying, ‘Look, we're coming here. We want to help uplift materially these Africans here but we’re not going to be teaching them anything that could incite rebellion,’” Anthony Schmidt, the Museum of the Bible’s associate curator of Bible and Religion, tells Martin.
That meant the missionaries needed a radically pared down version of the Bible. “A typical
Protestant
edition of the Bible contains 66 books, a
Roman Catholic
version has 73 books and an
Eastern Orthodox
translation contains 78 books,” the museum says in a statement. “By comparison, the astoundingly reduced Slave Bible contains only parts of 14 books.”
Brigit Katz,
"Heavily Abridged ‘Slave Bible’ Removed Passages That Might Encourage Uprisings"
Smithsonian.com
, (January 4, 2019).
I began to read the Bible long before I could understand it. Now it seems strange to me that there should have been a time when my spirit was deaf to its wondrous harmonies ... But how shall I speak of the glories I have since discovered in the Bible? For years I have read it with an ever-broadening sense of joy and inspiration; and I love it as I love no other book.
Keller, Helen
The Story of My Life
. AmazonClassics Edition. pp. 106-107.
It is
impossible
to
understand
the
significance
of
Christ
without understanding the whole
history
of Biblical
religion
Martin Luther King, Jr.
, undated manuscript,
"The Eternal Significance of Christ", an outline of a sermon on 2 Corinthians, at the King Center
I don't need a Bible to tell me I'm doing wrong a hundred million times in my life. Everything I did wrong in my life I am suffering a long time. It's coming back and back and back and back to me for years. I am not ashamed to tell myself what I am doing wrong, but there must always be a way to understand that's all I can do.
Klaus Kinski
, as quoted by Denise Worrell (1989),
Icons: Intimate Portraits
As a historical document, as a cultural document, it absolutely should be taught in schools. As a religious document, that’s up to parents and to faith leaders off-campus.
Sen.
James Lankford
during
CNN’s
Dana Bash
on
State of the Union
, according to
Lankford: Bible should during an interv'absolutely' be taught in schools as a 'historical' and 'cultural document
(November 24, 2024)
[The Bible] is the best gift God has given to men. All the good the Savior gave to the world was communicated through this book. But for it, we could not know right from wrong.
Abraham Lincoln
, Complete Works Comprising his Speeches, Letters, State Papers, and Miscellaneous Writings, John Nicolay and John Hay, editors (New York: The Century Co., 1894), Vol. Two, p. 574,
No
sciences
are better attested than the religion of the Bible.
Isaac Newton
The New Dictionary of Thoughts, 1954, originally compiled by
Tryon Edwards
. Revised by C. N. Catrevas and Jonathan Edwards, p. 534.
All religious expression is symbolism; since we can describe only what we see, and the true objects of
religion
are
The Seen
. The earliest instruments of
education
were symbols; and they and all other religious forms differed and still differ according to external circumstances and imagery, and according to differences of knowledge and mental cultivation. All
language
is symbolic, so far as it is applied to mental and spiritual phenomena and action. All [[words]' have, primarily, a
material
sense, howsoever they may afterward get, for the ignorant, a spiritual
non
-sense.
Albert Pike
Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry
(1871), Ch. III : The Master, p. 62.
The Bible depicts a world that, seen through modern eyes, is staggering in its savagery. People
enslave
rape
, and
murder
members of their immediate
families
. Warlords
slaughter civilians
indiscriminately, including the
children
. Women are
bought, sold, and plundered like sex toys
. And
Yahweh
tortures
and
massacres
people by the hundreds of thousands for trivial disobedience or for no reason at all. These atrocities are neither isolated nor obscure. They implicate all the major characters of the
Old Testament
, the ones that Sunday-school children draw with crayons. And they fall into a continuous plotline that stretches for millennia, from
Adam and Eve
through
Noah
, the patriarchs,
Moses
Joshua
, the judges,
Saul
David
Solomon
, and beyond. According to the biblical scholar
Raymund Schwager
, the Hebrew Bible “contains over six hundred passages that explicitly talk about nations, kings, or individuals attacking, destroying, and killing others. . . . Aside from the approximately one thousand verses in which Yahweh himself appears as the direct executioner of violent
punishments
, and the many texts in which the Lord delivers the criminal to the punisher’s sword, in over one hundred other passages Yahweh expressly gives the command to kill people.”
Matthew White
, a self-described atrocitologist who keeps a database with the estimated death tolls of history’s major
wars
, massacres, and
genocides
, counts about 1.2 million deaths from mass killing that are specifically enumerated in the Bible. (He excludes the half million casualties in the war between Judah and Israel described in
2 Chronicles 13
because he considers the body count historically implausible.) The victims of the Noachian flood would add another 20 million or so to the total. The good news, of course, is that most of it never happened. Not only is there no evidence that Yahweh inundated
the planet
and incinerated its
cities
, but the patriarchs, exodus, conquest, and Jewish empire are almost certainly fictions.
Historians
have found no mention in
Egyptian
writings of the departure of a million
slaves
(which could hardly have escaped the Egyptians’ notice); nor have
archaeologists
found evidence in the ruins of
Jericho
or neighboring cities of a sacking around 1200 BCE. And if there was a Davidic empire stretching from the
Euphrates
to the
Red Sea
around the turn of the 1st millennium BCE, no one else at the time seemed to have noticed it.
Steven Pinker
The Better Angels of Our Nature
(2012)
Most wondrous book! bright candle of the Lord!
Star of Eternity! The only star
By which the bark of man could navigate
The sea of life, and gain the coast of bliss
Securely.
Robert Pollok
The Course of Time
(1827), Book II, line 270
The Bible was very definitely written by men, and not superior men either; far from it! This is why so much of it can be shown to be historically and scientifically dead wrong about damned-near everything back-to-front. We’re talking about people who believe
snakes
and
donkeys
can talk, who believe in incantations, blood sacrifice, ritual spells, enchanted artifacts, pyrotechnic potions,
astrology
, and the five elements of
witchcraft
. They thought that if you use a
magic
wand to sprinkle blood all over someone, it will cure them of
leprosy
. We’re talking about people who think that rabbits chew cud, and that bats are
birds
, and
whales
are
fish
, and that
is a
round number
. These folks believed that if you display striped patterns to a pregnant cow, it would bare striped calves. How could anyone say that who knows anything about
genetics
? Obviously the authors of this book didn’t.
Aron Ra
"2nd Foundational Falsehood of Creationism"
(November 24, 2007)
There is, after all, no beatitude that reads: "Blessed are the editors, for they shall make stuff shorter to read."
Mark Rice-Oxley, [
"Christianity in a nutshell: Britain's '100-Minute Bible'"
The Christian Science Monitor
, (27 September 2005)
on objections to the new
100-Minute Bible
There are lost portions of the Bible having to do with sexuality, and with Christ’s beliefs concerning it, that were considered blasphemous and did not come down to you through history.
Jane Roberts
, in
The Nature of the Psyche: Its Human Expression
, Session 771, p. 75.
So far as I can remember, there's not one word in the Gospels in praise of intelligence.
Bertrand Russell
, cited in
Jonathan Miller
. (2004).
A Brief History of Disbelief
[TV-Series].
BBC Four
But
no public man in these islands ever believes that the Bible means what it says: he is always convinced that it says what he means
; and I have no reason to hope that Mr Coote may be an exception to the rule.
George Bernard Shaw
, "
The Living Pictures
",
The Saturday Review
, LXXIX (April 6, 1895), 443, reprinted in
Our Theatres in the Nineties
(1932). Vol. 1. London: Constable & Co. 79-86.
I have heard many times that atheists know more about religion than religious people. Atheism is an effect of that knowledge, not a lack of knowledge. I gave a Bible to my daughter. That's how you make atheists.
David Silverman
, quoted in
Laurie Goodstein (28 September 2010), "
Basic Religion Test Stumps Many Americans
",
New York Times
if any person needed wisdom from God, I did; for how to act I did not know, and unless I could get more wisdom than I then had, I would never know. ~
Joseph Smith
While I was laboring under the extreme difficulties caused by the contests of these parties of religionists, I was one day reading the
Epistle of James
, first chapter and fifth verse, which reads:
If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God, that giveth to all men liberally, and upbraideth not; and it shall be given him.
Never did any passage of scripture come with more power to the heart of man than this did at this time to mine. It seemed to enter with great force into every feeling of my heart. I reflected on it again and again, knowing that if any person needed wisdom from God, I did; for how to act I did not know, and unless I could get more wisdom than I then had, I would never know; for the teachers of religion of the different sects understood the same passages of scripture so differently as to destroy all confidence in settling the question by an appeal to the Bible.
Vers 11 to 12 from
Joseph Smith—History
from the
Pearl of Great Price
, also called the
First Vision
Bethany
: You're saying
God
's a
woman
Serendipity
: Was there ever a
doubt
in your
mind
? He's always referred to as "Him." That's not how I
wrote
it. But one of the draw backs to being intangible...is that you have no say in the editorial process. The people that held the pens added their own perspective...and all the pen holders were men. So She became a He. Doesn't stop with God either. The whole book's gender-biased. A woman's responsible for
original sin
. A woman cuts
Samson
coif of
power
. A woman asks for the head of
John the Baptist
. Read that book again. Women are painted as bigger
antagonists
than the
Egyptians
and
Romans
combined. It stinks.
Kevin Smith
Dogma
, (November 12, 1999).
All the events narrated in Scripture came to pass naturally, and are referred directly to God because Scripture, as we have shown, does not aim at explaining things by their natural causes, but only at narrating what appeals to the popular imagination, and doing so in the manner best calculated to excite wonder, and consequently to impress the minds of the masses with devotion.
Benedict de Spinoza
Theologico-Political Treatise
(1677), 6:73
Scripture does not explain things by their secondary causes, but only narrates them in the order and the style which has most power to move men, and especially uneducated men, to devotion; and therefore it speaks inaccurately of God and of events, seeing that its object is not to convince the reason, but to attract and lay hold of the imagination. If the Bible were to describe the destruction of an empire in the style of political historians, the masses would remain unstirred.
Benedict de Spinoza
Theologico-Political Treatise
(1677), 6:85
[What book has had the greatest impact on you?] Probably the Bible. My father was a minister, and I heard verses every day. I memorized big whacks of passages to earn
progressive
levels of pins. The repetitive rhythms of the Bible were inscribed in my writing brain from childhood. (And it may account for my tendency to start sentences with “and.”) Many of my stories also relate to undoing handed-down beliefs, whether they come from religion, society or mothers.
Amy Tan
interview
(2013)
The inspiration for the title of this book came from a Bible prophecy that seems more applicable now than at any other time in human history. It occurs in both the Old and the New Testament and speaks of the collapse of the existing world order and the arising of “a new heaven and a new earth.” (
Matthew
5:48, New Revised Standard Version) We need to understand here that
heaven
is not a location but refers to the inner realm of
consciousness
. This is the
esoteric
meaning of the word, and this is also its meaning in the teachings of
Jesus
. Earth, on the other hand, is the outer manifestation in form, which is always a reflection of the inner. Collective human
consciousness
and
life
on our planet are intrinsically connected. “A new heaven” is the emergence of a transformed state of human consciousness, and “a new earth” is its reflection in the physical realm. Since human life and human consciousness are intrinsically one with the life of the planet, as the old consciousness dissolves, there are bound to be synchronistic geographic and climatic natural upheavals in many parts of the planet, some of which we are already witnessing now.
Eckhart Tolle
in
A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose
(2005)
It is full of interest. It has noble poetry in it; and some clever fables; and some blood-drenched history; and some good morals; and a wealth of obscenity; and upwards of a thousand lies.
Mark Twain
Letters from the Earth
, Letter III
In extraordinary ways, modern archaeology has affirmed the historical core of the Old and New Testaments—corroborating key portions of the stories of Israel’s patriarchs, the Exodus, the Davidic monarchy, and the life and times of Jesus.
U.S. News & World Report
, (October 25, 1999)
The Scripture is to be its own interpreter, or rather the Spirit speaking in it; nothing can cut the diamond but the diamond; nothing can interpret Scripture but Scripture.
Richard Watson
Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers
(1895) p. 36.
The Bible is a book of faith, and a book of doctrine, and a book of morals, and a book of religion, of especial revelation from God.
Daniel Webster
Completion of Bunker Hill Monument
(June 17, 1843)
The Bible abounds in plain truth, expressed in plain language; in this it surpasses all other books.
Samuel Whelpley
, reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert,
Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers
(1895), p. 29.
We
the
world
for
truth
; we cull
The
good
, the
pure
, the
beautiful
From all
old
flower
fields of the
soul
And, weary seekers of the best,
We come back laden from our
quest
To find that all the
sages
said
Is in the
Book
our
mothers
read
John Greenleaf Whittier
Miriam
(1871).
There are more
stories
in the Bible than in
One Thousand and One Nights
. The entire
knowledge
of
humankind
about itself is collected in this
book
Andrei Zvyagintsev
, in Carmen Gray,
"Breaking the Waves: Andrey Zvyagintsev on his award-winning film
Leviathan
The Calvert Journal
(3 November 2014)
The Hidden Wisdom In The Holy Bible
, by
Geoffrey Hodson
(1963)
edit
full text several formats
In common, I believe, with the majority of fellow Christians, in my early years I accepted the
Bible
as the inspired word of God, a direct message from Deity to man. Later, however, a more critical approach to the Scriptures revealed incredibilities, impossibilities, and even obscenities, which both shocked and repelled me. Finding myself unable either to ignore these barriers to belief or to adopt a tolerant, uncritical acceptance of Holy Writ, two alternatives presented themselves to me. One was to discard entirely the orthodox concept of the Bible as an error-free and infallible source of spiritual wisdom and moral counsel, and the other to undertake a detailed study of the whole text. This latter course was chosen, and in this decision I was largely influenced by the discovery that many of the difficulties arising from a literal reading disappeared if much of the Bible was regarded as allegorical. (Author's Preface)
Thus studying the
Bible
, I have found that many of the difficulties and discrepancies which had hitherto proved so perplexing no longer exist. May those who are similarly perplexed and similarly seeking find in these Volumes solutions of their problems and the restoration of their faith. (Author's Preface)
Volume I
The decision taken by orthodox
Christianity
to concentrate upon the Bible as history rather than as a blend of history and allegory has, it is submitted, been responsible for disastrous results. When, furthermore, despite affronts to the
intellect
and a sense of propriety, it is insisted that the Bible is divinely inspired from beginning to end, then the adverse results become far-reaching indeed. Many moral evils may not unjustly be regarded as consequences of this choice. Indeed, such continued affronts cause some people to turn away from the Bible, from the religion founded upon it and, unfortunately, from the morality which Christianity inculcates.
When faced with the piling of the incredible upon the impossible in the Old Testament, and its portrayal of the Supreme Deity as an arrogant, ruthless and cruel despot, many people fall into
atheism
agnosticism
cynicism
and
indulgence
in vice. When, in addition, the Bible is found to contain accounts of frequent indulgence in illicit, and even
incestuous
sexual relationships
, the Christian Faith can come to be regarded as encouraging such practices, gross immorality being the unfortunate result.
The existence of the above evils, amongst many others, points to the urgent necessity for a greatly revised reading of the Bible. If, however, many of the anomalies in the Old Testament can be shown to be revelations, under the veil of symbology, of profound spiritual, metaphysical and psychological truths, then the importance of the study of the Scriptures from this point of view at once emerges.
Ignoring impossibilities and accounts of moral delinquencies, blind faith in the Bible, together with the fear of damnation and the hope of salvation after death, bring large numbers of people to religion. Nevertheless, truly thoughtful minds cannot fail to be repelled by scriptural affronts to reason and propriety. These considerations accentuate the great need for an interpretation of the Bible as a repository of profound wisdom symbolically portrayed. Such an interpretation would meet the objections inevitably aroused by a literal reading with all its consequences, so obviously harmful to mankind.
Certain portions of the text of the Bible, if taken literally, cannot possibly be regarded as in any way conducive to a high moral standard. In
Genesis
XII: 10- 20, for example,
Abraham
passes
his wife
off as his sister that
Pharaoh
may possess her. His motive in doing so was that his life might be spared and he be greatly rewarded.
Isaac
transgresses similarly and for the same reason, as stated in Genesis XXVI: 6-11. In this latter case the Lord God blessed Isaac and he becomes rich and prospers. Genesis XXVII: 1-45, recounts a most deplorable example of deliberate deceit by
Jacob
, who later becomes a favoured patriarch under the inspiration of the Lord.
Volume II
The Old Testament is a collection of thirty-nine books containing poetry and philosophy, ritual law and social legislation, history, symbolism and
metaphysics
. Its oldest passages are thought to have been written in the days of
Moses
(about 1200 B.C.), and its latest parts belong to 200 B.C. Though now translated into over 1,000 different dialects and languages its original was written in Hebrew, once again the language of a living people dwelling in the
State of Israel
. More than a hundred authors wrote it, including priests, prophets and social revolutionaries. Whilst the Bible tells the early history of the
Jewish
people, then still known as Israelites, it differs from all other historical records. First in importance are the Five Books of Moses, known as the
Pentateuch
(Gr. “five books”) or by the Hebrew term Torah (Heb. “law”).
The Torah describes the beginning of the world and the formative history of the Jewish people from Abraham—the first Jew and the creator of the monotheistic Hebrew religion—up to the death of Moses, and contains the Ten Commandments.
The Bible as a whole is not written systematically, however, but is a collection of books of
history
, historical
metaphor
biography
law
and
poetry
, all leading into one another without an apparent plan. The Books of the Prophets include both historical narrative and an anthology of Divine revelations. Those of
Joshua
Judges
Samuel
and
Kings
tell the history of the Jewish people from Joshua’s conquest of the Holy Land to the destruction of the first temple by
Nebuchadnezzar
of
Babylon
in 586 B.C.
These Hebrew prophets were the conscience of the people; for in the face of powerful priests and raving multitudes they spoke up with one chief purpose in mind—to teach man “to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God.” (Micah 6: 8). Isaiah writes with dignity and power, condemning social systems which forget the needs of the poor. Amos, a “herdman and a gatherer of sycamore fruit” (Amos, 7: 14), declared God’s judgment upon the nations and upon Israel, also foretelling Israel’s restoration. Jeremiah dedicated himself to God, but was despised and persecuted by the people. He called for peace when nations prepared for war, and demanded an inward religion of sincerity at a time when priests were enforcing their orthodox codes.
Volume III
The Hidden Wisdom and Why It is Concealed
The seeker for wisdom must... be prepared to delve deeply, to discover, and to interpret according to the classical keys, the numberless treasures of spiritual and occult wisdom and law which lie beneath the surface of all allegorical writings, littered with debris though that surface may appear to be.
...the great
Book of Genesis
—a marvellous cup filled with the “wine” of the
esoteric
knowledge of the Sanctuaries of ancient days. Temples of the
Ageless Wisdom
exist to-day, even if less easily discoverable, and in them are to be found the selfsame teachings, laws, successions, Initiations and radiations of the light of Truth. World changes are not reflected in the Mysteries, which are repositories and conveyors of eternal and unchanging Ideas. A sack of corn containing a silver cup awaits every Benjamin who finds himself called by a Hierophant (Joseph) from the “famine-stricken” outer world to the “storehouse” from which an elder brother (a
Master
) Who has already attained will, in prodigal abundance, supply a gift of the golden grain of eternal verities.
“The Oxford Handbook of Evangelical Theology” (2010)
edit
McDermott, Gerald R., ed. (2010).
“The Oxford Handbook of Evangelical Theology”
Oxford University Press
The Bible is God’s word, the supreme rule for faith, thought, and practice, the revealed source of the evangelical understanding of
grace
faith
, and Jesus Christ as well as their respective
Reformation
solas
sola gratia
solus Christus
sola fide
. Undergirding it all is
sola scriptura
or the “Scripture principle,” namely, the confession that “what the Bible says, God says.” Indeed, the consensus that Scripture is the final and authoritative source for Christian life and theology” represent a basic unifying factor through the whole of contemporary evangelicalism” While the future of evangelicalism may well lie in its ability to preserve the principle of
sola scriptura
, the particular character of evangelicalism will lie in its ability to specify the meaning of
sola scriptura
pp.35-36
What sets the sixty-six books apart from and over all other human texts and makes them suitable to “rule” (“canon”=rule) is their being uniquely “of God.” Evangelicals concur with the Bible’s own claim to be “breathed out” (
theopneustos
) from God (2. Tim 3:16). Typically translated as “inspiration,” this notion speaks directly to the nature of the Bible and its divine origin. Evangelicals concur with the Great Tradition in viewing the Bible to be the product of God’s own authorship through the words of human witnesses who nevertheless used their own wits to compose under the Spirit’s supernatural supervision.
Evangelicals
put great emphasis on the Bible’s self-attestation (e.g., Ps. 119; Rom. 3:2; 2 Pet. 1:20-21) and especially on Jesus’ attitude toward the Old Testament Scriptures (e.g., Mt. 5:17-19; M. 7:6-8; 12:36; Jn. 10:35). If Jesus recognized the Scriptures as God’s own word, surely his followers should do no less. That God spoke “by the prophets” (Heb. 1:1) meant by their writings as well, and hence, by extension, the New Testament documents, too. Indeed, most evangelicals came to associate inspiration with the words rather than the authors of Scripture (or their ideas). Inspiration is thus “verbal” and “plenary” because each and every words pulls its weight in communicating God’s word.
The inspiration of Scripture is the means whereby God preserves in writing his revelation in the history of Israel and Jesus Christ. The primary emphasis is on god’s providential guiding of the process of the texts’ composition. BB. Warfield defined inspiration as “that extraordinary, supernatural influence…exerted by the Holy Ghost on the writers of our Sacred Books, by which their words were rendered also the words of God.” Though it is common for outsiders to associate verbal plenary inspiration with the so-called “dictation” theory, such a view fails to do justice to what evangelical theologians actually have said and believe. What matters to evangelicals in the inspired result, not a detailed knowledge or uniform understanding of the process.
Ch.2, The Nature of the Bible: Inspiration, pp.36-37
It is one thing to say elevated things about Scripture, quite another to let scripture have its say. Evangelicals are not content to admire Scripture. To acknowledge the supreme authority of the Bible is to let it have the final word in matters concerning Christian faith and practice-indeed, in all areas of life to which it speaks. The Bible’s authority is the medium by which God exercises his own authority, that is, his rightful power to determine belief or command action and to expect obedient assent.
The Reformers
took a decisive step in proclaiming the final authority of Scripture over tradition. ‘’Sola scripture’’ means that neither oral traditions, nor the magisterial teaching authority of the
Roman Catholic church
, nor new Spirit-given revelations can supplement the Bible (“it is written”). On the contrary, Scripture, as the product of God’s authorship, is sufficient, authoritative, and infallible-the later concept signaling its utter trustworthiness in guiding the church to knowledge of God and salvation in Christ.
Since the Reformation, evangelicals have tried to balance the supremacy of Scripture alongside other authoritative sources of theology with varying success, with some favoring church tradition, others personal experience, and still others the leading of the
Holy Spirit
. In modern times, the most precarious balancing act involved revelation and reason, especially when the Bible became a document of the university and began to be read “like any other book.”
Confronted with an academic tide of historical criticism, some evangelicals modified their position on biblical authority, arguing that the Bible speaks reliably only on matters off faith and salvation. As to history, geography and cosmology, the Bible is as weak as any other human text. Others, such as the
Princetonian
theologians
Charles Hodge
and B.B. Warfield, responded by attacking head-on this skeptical attitude towards the Bible’s historical reliability. They developed the doctrine of infallibility further, making the Bible’s utter truthfulness in matters salvific and scientific alike more explicit by speaking of
inerrancy
and claiming that thought “the word [inerrancy] sis 19th century... the belief it expresses is as old as Christianity.” Contemporary inerranists typically acknowledge ancient literary conventions (e.g., nonchronological narration) and phenomenological language (e.g., the sun “rising”), recognizing the assertion of the Bible’s utter truthfulness presupposes right interpretation.
The Authority of the Bible: Infallability (and Eventually Inerrancy), pp.37-38
If the Bible is God’s word, then there is no more important mandate for the people of the book than to understand and respond to what God is saying. The authority of the Bible must be not only professed but lived out. All the treasures of divine wisdom count for nought unless the church knows how to make withdrawals from the deposit of truth in order to formulate its doctrine and apply its life-giving light to new issues and contexts.
Evangelicals have tended to follow the Reformer’s principles that, first, the authoritative sense is the literal sense, and second, Scripture interprets Scripture. Debate has centered on the meaning of the literal sense: is the most relevant factor the human author’s communicative intention, determined by grammatico-historical exegesis that recovers linguistic meaning by reconstructing the author’s historical context-of the divine author’s intention, which is best determined in light of the canonical context? The second principle is handy for resolving any ambiguities: read unclear passages in light of those that are more clear. The overall aim is to recover what the authors, as commissioned mouthpieces for God, are saying rather than to read one’s own ideas and interests into the text.
Because
evangelicals
believe that God’s message for the church is applicable to every age, there has been a tendency to apply apparently time-bound passages by isolating the universally valid principle behind the text in order to find its equivalent present-day cultural clothing. The same principles thus get applied to new particular cases. Here, too, the main impulse is conservative or, better, ‘preservative’’: namely, preserving divinely revealed truth. Yet evangelicals also want to bring biblical authority to bear on new problems, and some are looking for ways of interpreting the Bible with creative fidelity that go beyond “principlizing.”
Hermeneutics: The Interpretation of the Bible, p.38
Does being a people of the book preclude being a people of a tradition? The Reformers set their principle of the priesthood of all believers in contrast to the older Roman Catholic notion that only official church officers could authoritatively interpret the Scriptures. Some evangelicals, perhaps under the influence of the modern notion of individual autonomy, misappropriated this principle, claiming “No creed but the Bible,” thereby confusing one’s personal responsibility to read Scripture with one’s right as an individual to say what one thinks it means. In response, some so-called “postconservative” evangelicals gave gone post-modern, emphasizing the rationality of community traditions rather than of autonomous knowers, and pointing out that the Bible itself represent “the self-understanding of the community in which it developed.” Others, too, in order to avoid collapsing the voice of the Spirit into that of the Bible, acknowledge that the Spirit guides individuals into the truth precisely by guiding the whole church. The open question, then, is whether, and how, evangelicals should affirm the priesthood of all believers, the authority of the Great Tradition or, somehow, both. Stated differently: Is “the Holy Spirit speaking in the Scriptures” functionally equivalent to “the Holy Spirit speaking to the church as she ‘’reads’’ the Scriptures”? The Spirit’s illumination is related to the clarity of Scripture as well: Is the perspicuity of the Bible an objective property of the text or the result of the Spirit’s work in readers? At any rate, there is renewed interest in recovering ancient traditions of interpreting Scripture, at least in part because of a recognition that, first, reader’s interpretive practices are formed by traditions and, second. Such traditions may be the Spirit’s work.
Infallibility/Inerrancy: The Economy of Truth, ch.2, p.42-43
The evangelical intuition is correct: the Bible is what it says it is, namely, God’s word. The God of Scripture speaks, and Scripture is a result of that divine speaking. The grounding theological insight of an evangelical doctrine of Scripture is that God himself is doing things in and through the human discourse of the Bible in order personally to relate to his people. Indeed, God so invests and identifies himself in his words that to fail to respond to the word of God is to disobey God himself.
The Bible, then, is itself one of God’s mighty acts, a form of God’s own communicative presence. Without these scriptural acts we would have no reliable means of interpreting god’s acts in history. According to the Scriptures, however, God’s revelatory words always accompany God’s redemptive deeds. We can go further: according to the Scriptures, God often acts in the world by speaking. When God speaks, he is also
doing
thing with words (e.g., commanding promising, warning etc.). It follows that Scripture is a medium of God’s communicative activity and thus an extension, as it were, of his personal presence.
To view the Bible as composed of diverse divine speech acts is to overcome the long-standing dichotomy in evangelicalism between propositionalists, for whom the Bible is a book of divinely revealed information, and pietists, for whom the Bible is primarily a means of personal address and spiritual sustenance. The way out of this head vs. heart cul-de-sac is to recognize that God relates personally to his people precisely by doing various things with propositions beyond merely informing.
The Bible is the God-ordained means of communicating the terms, and the reality of the covenant whose content is the God-ordained means of communicating the terms, and the reality, of the covenant whose content is Jesus Christ. What is God saying/doing in Scripture? He is administering his covenant: promising, commanding, exhorting comforting, and in general presenting himself (and his Son) while simultaneously soliciting our response. God is relating to his people as Savior and Lord via the medium of written words. God is as agree to do this as he was free to relate to the apostles via the medium of the living Word, the humanity of Jesus.
As to the Bible’s humanity,” it is fully buy not
merely
a human product. Like the church, Scripture is a fully human phenomenon subject to the contingencies of language, culture and society. There is therefore a place for reason to examine what the authors likely meant given their historical context. Yet the discourse of the discourse of the Bible is also god’s communicative work: God-voices, God-worded, God-breathed.
The Old Testament prophets were “moved by the
Holy Spirit
” and “spoke from God” (2 Pet. 1:21). Those who deny verbal inspiration typically have diluted view of divine providence. But is it harder to move an apostle to write an epistle than to raise a man from the dead? Evangelicals believe that this “moving” is not oppressive but organic, an instance of god’s providential ordering and preparation of both author and situation. The human discourse has integrity, but is ultimately commissioned, enabled, and authorized by the divine playwright who coordinates diverse voice into a rich harmonic canonical whole.”
Infallibility/Inerrancy: The Economy of Truth, ch.2, pp.44-45
The Bible is the dramatic discourse: something someone (prophets and apostles; ultimately the Holy Spirit) says (Scripture) about something (the drama of redemption) to someone (the church) at some time (past; present) in some way (a variety of literary forms) for some purpose (faith, hope, and love). The infallibility of the Bible follows from the fact that God is the ultimate authorial agent who is doing things with the words of Scripture. “god has something to say and he is very good at saying it.” Specifically, God is speaking truth in many ways: presenting Jesus Christ, the fulfillment of the law and promises the one through whom all things were related and are being recreated. The words of the covenanting god are trustworthy-utterly reliable-for God cannot deny himself (Heb 6:18; titus 1:2). Indeed, god’s truth is liked to his covenant faithfulness: his words can be relied on absolutely to accomplish the purpose for which they were sent/used (Isa. 55:11). The authority of Scripture derives from the authority of god as he speaks in and through the Scripture.
To emphasize Scripture as the speech action of God, then, is not to forget the question of truth. It is, however, to situate truth among the other “perfections” of Scripture in the economy of communication. Everything that God does in Scripture with words is infallible in the sense that it will not fail to achieve its intended purpose. When God makes assertions, those assertions, when properly interpreted, are true and trustworthy, wholly reliable: they accomplish the authorial purpose for which they were sent. The inerrancy of Scripture is that quality of the biblical text that, as God’s communicative act, ensures that what is stated, when interpreted rightly and read in faith, corresponds to the way things in creation and history are. It is important to remember, however, that the Bible is an ingredient in the economy of divine communicative action, not a textual talisman with its own mystical power. It follows that the Bible’s truth serves specific communicative purposes, especially bearing witness to the reality of God, human beings, and the great redemptive work accomplished in Jesus Christ. The truth that the Spirit communicated in Scripture is not merely theoretical and historical, then, but practical, transformative, and relational: a truth that sets free, gives life, and promoted wisdom.
It is one thing to say that a statement is true, another to say what it means. Inerrancy offers few interpretive guidelines other than affirming the overall consistency of the Bible’s claims.
Infallibility/Inerrancy: The Economy of Truth, ch.2, p.45
Hoyt's New Cyclopedia of Practical Quotations
edit
Quotes reported in
Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations
(1922), p. 693.
His studie was but litel on the Bible.
Geoffrey Chaucer
Canterbury Tales
Prologue
, line 4.
A glory gilds the sacred page,
Majestic like the sun,
It gives a light to every age,
It gives, but borrows none.
William Cowper
Olney Hymns
, No. 30.
One day at least in every week,
The sects of every kind
Their doctrines here are sure to seek,
And just as sure to find.
Augustus De Morgan
, in preface to
From Matter to Spirit
, by C. D.
And that the Scriptures, though not everywhere
Free from corruption, or entire, or clear,
Are uncorrupt, sufficient, clear, entire
In all things which our needful faith require.
John Dryden
Religio Laici
, line 297.
Out from the heart of nature rolled
The burdens of the Bible old.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
The Problem
The word unto the prophet spoken
Was writ on tablets yet unbroken:
The word by seers or sibyls told,
In groves of oak or fanes of gold,
Still floats upon the morning wind,
Still whispers to the willing mind.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
The Problem
It was a common saying among the Puritans, "Brown bread and the Gospel is good fare."
Matthew Henry
Commentaries
, Isaiah XXX.
Shallows where a lamb could wade and depths where an elephant would drown.
Matthew Henry
Of Solomon's Song
Bibles laid open, millions of surprises.
George Herbert
The Church
Sin
Starres are poore books, and oftentimes do misse;
This book of starres lights to eternal blisse.
George Herbert
The Church
The Holy Scriptures
, Part II.
So we're all right, an' I, for one,
Don't think our cause'll lose in vally
By rammin' Scriptur' in our gun,
An' gittin' Natur' for an ally.
James Russell Lowell
The Biglow Papers
, Second Series. No. 7, Stanza 17.
The history of every individual man should be a Bible.
Novalis
Christianity or Europe
, Carlyle's translation.
I have more understanding than all my teachers: for thy testimonies are my meditations.
Psalms. CXIX. 99.
Thy word is a lamp unto my feet and a light unto my path.
Psalms. CXIX. 105.
The sweet psalmist of Israel.
II Samuel, XXIII. 1.
Within that awful volume lies
The mystery of mysteries!
Happiest they of human race,
To whom God has granted grace
To read, to fear, to hope, to pray,
To lift the latch, and force the way:
And better had they ne'er been born,
Who read to doubt, or read to scorn.
Walter Scott
Monastery
, Chapter XII.
But Thy good word informs my soul
How I may climb to heaven.
Isaac Watts
Excellency of the Bible
How glad the heathens would have been,
That worship idols, wood and stone,
If they the book of God had seen.
Isaac Watts
Praise for the Gospel
The Dictionary of Legal Quotations
(1904)
edit
Quotes reported in James William Norton-Kyshe,
The Dictionary of Legal Quotations
(1904), p. 18-19.
I do not know how far I ought to sit here and suffer a gentleman at the bar to bring forward parts of the Bible in this way. It is for you, gentlemen of the jury, to say whether you wish to hear them read.
Lord Kenyon
Williams' Case
(1797), 26 How. St. Tr. 683.
If the purity of the Bible is to be maintained, it must be by the King, who is the head both of our civil and religious establishments. It is not only his right, but it is his duty, to preserve the purity of the scriptures.
Lord Hermand,
Manners and others v. The King's Printers
(1826), 2 St. Tr. (N. S.) 225.
Kissing the Book.
Morris
: My lords, I except against this Brooke.
Court
: Sir, he is sworn, and you speak too late.
Morris
: My lord, I appeal to him whether he be sworn or no.
Brooke
: Sir, I am not to answer you, but the Court. My lord, I did not kiss the book.
Court
: Sir, that is no matter, it's but a ceremony.
Morris' Case
(1649), 4 How. St. Tr. 1255.
Misattributed
edit
It is impossible to rightfully govern the world without God and the Bible.
Wrongly attributed to
George Washington
; while he is known to have made some official statements of public piety, this was not one of them; it is sometimes wrongly cited as having been in various official statements, but the earliest attribution of the remark yet located is one which cites no sources in
Upper Room Bulletin
, Vol. 7, No. 3 (23 October 1920)
God helps those who help themselves
This phrase is often mistaken to be a scriptual quote, despite not appearing in the Bible.
See also
edit
Allegorical interpretation of the Bible
Apocrypha
Bible quotes about love
Book of Mormon
God
King James Version
Jehovah
Jesus
New International Version
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Qur'an
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Religion
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