What You Need to Know About the Bible Stephen Bedard, August 3, 2014September 23, 2019 If you can understand this one thing, you will avoid many of the problems that Christians encounter. Are your ready? This is very important. The Bible was not inspired as a western twenty-first century document and should not be read as such. If you get only this statement from all of the things I have written on this blog, I will be very happy. Much of the problems that Christians face is over this confusion. Skeptics attack the Bible as if it was a western twenty-first century document and Christians try to defend the Bible as if it was a western twenty-first century document. Let us just focus on the New Testament as it was written over a much shorter period of time. It was written as a collection of first century Jewish texts and no piety or a lack of piety should make us move it from that context. If we hold up the New Testament to the standards of its original context all of the supposed contradictions would simply evaporate. I have compared the New Testament to other texts of the same period and the New Testament holds up extremely well. My advice to Christians is when skeptics attack the Bible as if it was a modern work with modern standards, do not take the bait. Bring them back to what the Bible really is: inspired but inspired as a first century Jewish text. Liked it? Take a second to support Stephen Bedard on Patreon! Related Posts Apologetics Study Bible for StudentsI usually don't get too excited when I get messages on Twitter. Normally, they are… Apologetics Study Bible for StudentsI usually don't get too excited when I get messages on Twitter. Normally, they are… Why I Believe the BibleNew Testament scholar Darrel Bock shares why he believes the Bible. Apologetics and Theology Blog BibleBible InterpretationContextHermeneuticsNew TestamentOld Testament
Stephen, I’d be interested to read an expanded version of this article. Can you give an example of where you might explain a supposed contradiction to someone, or indeed an example of how to tell them the differences in expectation between a first century Jewish document and a current western one? Thanks Reply