A Few Points About the Bible That May Make People Hate Me

1. The Bible is not a book. It is a collection of books. There is a difference between a book (a single piece of literature) and a codex (a means of publishing literary works where edges of paper are bound by cord or glue to a single binding). You can have a book that takes up more than one codex (usually each codex being called a volume) or you can have several books contained in a single codex. The Bible is 66 books in one codex, and as such each book needs to be treated differently, and as a whole


2. The Biblical Books Are Independent. Though it is true that any good theologian is going to be taking the Bible as a whole when forming his/her theology, it is also true that each book is a self-contained unit. They need to be treated as distinct


3. The Bible has multiple genres. You cannot treat the whole bible as if it is a collection of aphorisms (sentences that can stand alone). One needs to be sensitive in regards to what genre you are dealing with.


4. The Bible has multiple authors. As cute as it is to say that God is the author of the Bible, in truth God inspired many different authors to write the Bible, and each author used his own perspective and manner of phrasing into the text. This doesn't undermind that there is a divine origin as to what is being written, but it does mean that when it comes to "interpreting Scripture with Scripture" we cannot pretend the Paul and James must mean the same thing with a certain term or phrase.


5. The Bible is translated. This means that the infallibility of the Bible is tied to the original text, not to the translation. You cannot fully grasp what the Bible means from English, no matter how many times you read it,though you can understand everything that really matters. But when it comes to contraversial topics, you should be familiar with the original text.