Is the Bible Relevant Today?

Short answer: yes, but…

Longer Answer

As a form of communication, the points that follow must be considered:

• When communicating face-to-face, a lot is communicated through body language and tone of voice, but there is always room for misinterpretation¹. Written communication lacks these factors, increasing the possibility of miscommunication.
• The Bible’s writings were compiled over the course of several thousand years. They were composed in the context of extinct cultures and languages.
• The translations we have today were created with minimal awareness of the society of the time, as well as with political and religious biases that have emerged since the original writings².

Attitudes to the Bible typically fall between two extremes, such as these:

• It’s simply another book; we know better now. People in the past were uninformed, whereas we are enlightened, so we may dismiss anything that seems to contradict our current ways of thinking.
• The Bible is completely true in every way (at least in its original languages)³, and anyone who disagrees with what we say is simply incorrect, because what we say comes directly from it.

The problem with the first way of thinking is that it is rather arrogant, and it often stems from the concept that we have science, so that makes us clever. Archaeologists are frequently astonished by what they discover, revealing that ancient peoples were not as ignorant as previously supposed⁴.

The second is demonstrably incorrect, as evidenced by the existence of various groups that hold this belief whilst directly contradicting one another. It’s not that parts of the Bible are incorrect; it’s all due to the points I made at the start of this article, namely that different people have different ideas about what the authors were originally thinking.

It is important to understand the origins of the Bible. Some believe that everything was made up at specific times to create a religion that people could follow, yet the evidence to the contrary is overwhelming⁵. Some believe it was assembled by small, isolated groups with a specific intent. Again, evidence suggests that the texts comprising it were generally acknowledged as an authoritative foundation even before the formal canon was established. It should be noted that there was always consensus regarding the authors that they wrote what God was saying to them. One condition for the New Testament in particular was that the authors must have encountered Jesus⁶.

It stands to reason that if the Bible’s writers were communicating what God was speaking to them, we should feel the same way when we read it, and this phenomenon is extensively acknowledged. However, believing that this is the only method God can communicate with us is essentially narrow-minded. After all, the Bible’s authors did not limit God’s communication to a book because such did not exist. However, in the endeavour to establish truth, the Bible serves as an important spiritual precedent; otherwise, we have no other agreed reference point.

Then there’s the problem of how to interpret what it says, which is fraught with disagreement. It is important to remember that the Bible is a history book, not an instruction manual for living. Even the instructional letters in the New Testament must be read as being written to people living at the time, rather than to us. The major issue with Bible translation and interpretation is that it has been interpreted in a contemporary context rather than the original one. Nonetheless, there is a revolution underway to teach people about ancient cultures, which is proving transformative for those who embrace it⁷.

Where Misunderstandings Arise

The books of the New Testament are thought to have been composed in the 40s and 60s CE. Following the first century, individuals known as the Church Fathers⁸ produced further teachings, but they were not all in accord, and distinct schools of thought emerged at different times. In the 300s CE, the pagan Roman Empire became Christianized. However, there was a trade-off: Christianity became paganized⁹. The Roman church then organised many councils¹⁰ to reach an agreement on what was true. However, this does not imply that whatever was agreed upon was always correct.

By the Middle Ages, the Roman church had strayed significantly from what the original Bible authors taught, and it could be claimed that they taught the complete opposite in the most crucial areas. Since the Protestant Reformation¹¹ (in the 1400s), various groups have attempted to re-establish Bible concepts, but there has always been conflict between evolved traditions and rediscovered understandings, which is the source of the Bible’s current elevation to a God-like status in some circles.

Key Take-Aways

• Both under- and over-emphasis of its truthfulness and relevance is counter-productive.
• Its various parts need to be understood in the context in which they were written.
• Treating it as God’s only means of communicating with us is naïve at best.