In my last post, I talked about valuing the whole Bible. That’s not about putting equal weight on every statement in Scripture; it is about seeing every statement in Scripture as being an essential part of the whole.

Part of our problem with properly respecting Scripture is the difficulty we have in knowing what to do with the biblical writers. That is, there was a time when many saw the biblical writers as irrelevant, merely stenographers who faithfully recorded every word the Holy Spirit whispered in their ears. Later, the biblical writers came to be seen as fallible humans, who crafted the biblical texts to fit their agendas.

Then there’s the whole question of canon. Who decided what went into the Bible and what didn’t? Was it God? Believers inspired and directed by God? Or humans who capriciously chose texts according to their own outlooks and purposes?

To a lesser degree, we face the questions of preservation and translation. How faithful is the text we’ve received? And how well are we able to read that text in another language? How much gets lost in translation? How much has been unintentionally or intentionally distorted by translators?

Lots of questions. I’ll try and lay out where I see myself in the posts that follow, though that can be a moving target at times. I’d love for you to weigh in with your own observations on these and other questions about how we deal with the Bible.