When I was growing up, I fell into the understanding that everything in the Bible was literal in it’s reality. That Creation was seven days long and that Noah’s journey on the ark explained why there weren’t any dinosaurs. I found myself frustrated at times with the pieces of the canon that didn’t seem to fit and tried to mash things together in order for my small picture of God to work. Instead of being mature and truly wrestling through the issues – I simply stubbornly mashed the pieces together like a child who wanted a square puzzle piece to fit into a round hole.

However, one of the things that I’m learning in seminary is that reading the Bible – especially the Hebrew Scriptures – as a textbook of facts is doing it a disservice. The Truth that is behind the facts – the Truth that those facts serve to tell – is FAR more important than the facts themselves. To spend all of our time trying to disect the discrepencies is missing the forrest for the trees – literally.

When the authors of the Old Testament collected the stories that they wanted to tell – they were not concerned with how we would read it 2,000 years later through the mindset of the Enlightenment. They were concerned with what those stories would say about the God that they worship.

For instance: Take the story of Noah and the Ark.

It is not important that “two of each kind” were taken – it is important that to note that God’s covenant for regeneration is with all creation and not just mankind. Every culture at the time had a flood epic and so the Isrealites needed one as well. They needed to say that their God was in control and that he was concerned with humanity instead of indifferent to them. Those Truths are more important (to them) than specific details.

I have not begun to study the New Testament yet – but I know that little of these comments apply to that section of Scripture. Two different centuries, cultures, languages… The New Testament is concerned with verifiable facts and theology. The Old Testament is not.

It’s a giant narrative. It’s a grand, glorious story. If I read it like that… understanding that there are deep and real and wonderful things to learn about God in each story I come across – the Bible becomes more real. It becomes more messy and more uneven and more wonderful.

Never fear – I still firmly believe that it is the inspired word of God. I still believe that it is “God breathed”, as 2 Timothy 3:16 tells us. I am just beginning to understand more and more that it was “God breathed” through human authors with their own agendas and personalities. They have things to tell me about the God we serve and I should listen to them with the same heed I give Julie Pennington-Rusell, Hewlit Gloer or CS Lewis. And the indiosyncries prove the majesty of God through his people more than anything.

None of this may have been revelatory to you. Most of it wasn’t to me either – but I definitely had a moment in Scriptures 1 class a few weeks ago when Dr. Ngan flippantly said that Adam and Eve probably weren’t real people. She then continued to say how that didn’t matter at all and that it shouldn’t mess with our theology becuase the important Truth is what their narrative says about God. And their narrative says many, many amazing things.