Serious Bible study

I was touched by David Malcolm Rose’s letter of March 4. He’s chafed by church overreach in Arkansas. That overreach is fed by widespread misinterpretation and abuse of the Bible. Luckily, Mr. Rose happened upon a church that wasn’t using the Bible as a club with which to hit people. Good for him!

The Bible is the most read but least understood and most abused collection of books ever assembled.

Academic study of the biblical languages and of the biblical scholarship of the last 150 years bring us whole new levels of understanding that are badly needed.

One thing that modern biblical scholarship gets us to see is that the Bible says many different things on given subjects. Some of these things are not in harmony with each other. Can this be surprising about a collection of books that were written by very diverse authors over many hundreds of years? This sets for us the task of weighing all of these texts and making judgments.

Too often Bible readers grab a few proof texts and think they know “what the Bible says.” Maybe yes, maybe no. Some churches today deny certain leadership roles to women in the church. As justification they cite passages in books like I Timothy, which is one of the six letters attributed to Paul that he almost certainly did not write. These six are sometimes at odds with the seven letters that most scholars agree are Paul’s. Thus we have to read all 13 letters very carefully and weigh everything. We must also assess them in the context of the culture of the late first century, which is not our century. In our weighing we should always consult the gold standard: the life and teaching of Jesus.

Nothing would improve our society more than a lot more serious Bible study.

SANDY WYLIE Bella Vista