Reading the Bible without Fundamentalism
A Discussion of the Talmud, Carl Schleicher (1825-1903), Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Print version: PDF
Website user Emmanouil Kalomiris (Greece) asks:
I was a fundamentalist for thirty years. Now in these last months, I have discovered that the Bible is not inerrant. What is your advice for this discovery of an ex-fundamentalist? How can we read the Bible? How can we know what to believe or what not to believe? If the Bible is a fully human work with myths and errors in history and science, how can we trust it for spiritual things?
This question is at the heart of the purpose for this website. People who have read the Bible with literalist interpretations often come to the realization that the Bible is not free from error. Sometimes this happens when readers note the Bible’s many contradictions. Sometimes people find their internal sense of self-worth is at odds with what fundamentalist teaching tells them the Bible says. Sometimes people find scientific understandings more credible than fundamentalist interpretations that contradict science. Each person has a story of discovery.
When people think for themselves and question long-held beliefs about the Bible, wondering what to believe and how to read the Bible is hardly unusual. When we stop seeing the Bible as a source of doctrine and no longer require that the Bible provide factual information, however, we are able to access a much wider and deeper range of meanings and connections in studying it.
People who have been engaging with the Bible in non-fundamentalist ways for a long time have resources to share. A few are mentioned here.
Considering What We Seek in the Bible
We should always consider what we are seeking when we read the Bible. The Bible includes many resources, but it is hardly the repository of all human knowledge. Most of us would not turn to the Bible for medical advice about cancer treatments. We would instead seek advice from medical experts trained with knowledge and methods that did not exist when the Bible was written. The facts we need are not in the Bible. We might, however, seek words of comfort in times of suffering from the ancient biblical writers, words that have comforted people for hundreds of years.
Reclaiming the Power of Story and Poetry
Without having to accept what the Bible says as literal fact, we can reclaim the power of the literature it contains. We can appreciate poetry that has sustained people in dark times for centuries. We can receive stories that biblical writers told as stories, not as scientific reports. Without being compelled to accept that Jonah was actually swallowed by a whale, for example, we can listen to his story as a story. We can let it come alive with its power to appeal to listeners’ imaginations. Recognizing that it was always a story opens our imaginations to reflection on the experiences of the characters and more. To deepen understanding, academic scholarship can explain references in the story and envision historical settings where it was told. Informed discussions can consider the meanings the story may have had for ancient hearers.
Exploring the Bible with Scholars
Academic scholarship provides many resources. Biblical scholarship offers a wealth of resources about the biblical writings and the contexts from which they come. The quantity of resources available is staggering, however, and can be overwhelming. This website is intended as a place to help non-specialists sort through some of that material. Resources to assist in that sorting will be added regularly.
Some initial tips can be helpful for understanding academic scholarship:
Academic scholarship explores writings by human authors in their own times and places.
Biblical scholarship, known as “historical criticism,” explores the contexts in which the human authors of biblical texts wrote. Such scholarship opens windows into the lives and challenges faced by real human beings who produced the writings in the Bible. While biblical scholars hold a variety of perspectives about the presence or absence of a divine influence in how the Bible came to be, they study the texts as the writings of human authors.
Academic scholarship offers an ongoing exploration, not a set of clear answers.
As scholars engage in research, their discussions offer answers that often raise new questions. Using the best current methods with the evidence available, scholarship constructs a picture of how the Bible developed and who the communities were who produced it. The picture is never permanent, however. Biblical scholarship is a continuing exploration.
Academic scholarship is moving beyond a search for “the” meaning of biblical texts.
In the 1800s and 1900s, historical-critical scholarship made scientific claims about what biblical texts originally meant. Scholars claimed to find the “original” meaning of a biblical text and asserted it as the “real” meaning. Sometimes that meant that the meaning was left in the past. While this type of scholarship continues, more recently the limitations of such claims are recognized. Scholars increasingly assume that biblical texts can have multiple meanings based on rigorous methods and investigations of ancient languages and worlds. As scholars representing a wider variety of human experience enter the field, more perspectives are multiplying the possibilities. More consideration is being given to how historical meanings relate to the present day, too.
The rich and complex discussion taking place in current biblical scholarship may appear daunting to those hoping for uncomplicated answers about what to believe. While scholarship does not easily answer the question of what to believe, it offers ways to think about, evaluate, and discuss various potential meanings.
Reading the Bible to Connect with Those Who Have Gone before Us
By opening insights into the communities who wrote and compiled biblical writings, academic biblical scholarship offers avenues for learning from people of the past. People of various faiths that identify the Bible as scripture find connections to their faiths’ ancestors. For them, scholarship enhances a relationship with an ancient and living community of faith.
People who do not profess a faith commitment or whose faith does not identify the Bible as scripture also find human connections in these ancient writings. The Bible is a foundational text for understanding the origins of Western culture. The Bible also includes writings that represent people who were not the elites of their day. Many people find these writings worth studying for insight into the human story.
Discussing the Bible in Communities
Discussing the Bible and passages in it can be a way to connect by thinking and exploring together. Joint exploration can be a way to connect with others in finding deeper meanings without necessarily finding agreement. Jewish interpreters, for example, have a long-standing tradition of such discussions. Discussions recorded in the Talmud, for example, note rabbis’ divergent opinions and interpretations. Similarly, since the invention of the printing press made copies of the Bible widely available, people have formed discussion groups for studying it without necessarily coming to agreement.
Returning to Emmanouil Kalomiris’s questions, then, the advice we would offer is first to recognize that you are not alone. Others have found meaning and truth without fundamentalist doctrines. Many people find that the Bible still offers rich resources for many dimensions of human life, including spirituality, without believing that it must be read literally. People have been engaged in searching for truth since biblical times, and their writings can be an invitation to join a search that spans millennia.
Watch for new podcasts on this site for interviews with people who have found their views and faith changing as they learn more about biblical scholarship and non-dogmatic ways of reading the Bible. Others who have embarked on this journey of discovery are finding wisdom to share.
