Jesus came and gave us a new and radically different interpretation of the ancient scriptures. We now know them as the Old Testament or the Hebrew Bible. He did not change anything, not a single word.
He noticed that some people were misinterpreting them; some by honest mistake, but many deliberately to serve their own purposes. He began to talk about what they were actually saying. First, only a few listened to him, but soon the power elite began to see that he and his increasing number of followers could be a threat to them, so they had him killed. Later, many decades later, some smart people realized that something extraordinary had happened and began to piece together the events from their perspective. We now know those accounts as the New Testament. Together, these two collections of writings make up the Bible, the basis for our Christian faith.
You have probably heard people say that the Bible is literally the Word of God. God is within you, me and everyone else. God does not write anything. We do and so did our ancient ancestors. Writing is actually a pretty recent invention, just a few thousand years old originating independently in China, Mesopotamia and Central America. Much of the earliest writings were notes, lists, business records and the like. Then early scientists such as medicine men, priests, religious and learned leaders began to use this new technology to share what they discovered. The modern scientific methods had not yet been invented so at the beginning it was mostly just their opinions. Even today, theoretical scientists still get to make up stuff.
Religion originated around the same time as speech became popular. Some animals communicate using sound as well, but nothing like the way humans do now or did in the early days. Early manifestations of religious activity can be found in ancient graves and dwellings of prehistoric peoples. Unlike most animals, humans began to see time not only as the past and the present, but also as a future. They started to have questions about the universe such as where and when did it all come from? What happens after death? What causes natural phenomena, etc., etc.?
Religion is universal. It appears in some form or another in every tribe or civilization on the planet, but takes different forms from place to place and from time to time. God may be eternal, innate, we would say today. Religion is not.
God did not create the universe 6,000 years ago. Moses may not even have believed that when he wrote Genesis. Moses’ reasons for writing the Torah may not have been to create a historically accurate account of the origin of the Hebrew people. His purpose was more likely to have been to establish who and what God is. Moses may not even have existed. He may really be a composite of multiple religious leaders of the time. We just do not really know for sure. Even modern day scientists make new discoveries all the time and frequently disagree on things.
While it is important to preserve the ancient manuscripts, they are not a manual for living in modern societies and they are certainly not historic accounts. Certain things are unique to humans and do not apply to any other species. Certain things apply to human life for a really long time, but most change over time, some slowly, others more quickly. Some things require new evaluation from time to time. Every Bible writer had a reason for writing as they did and we need to keep that in mind when we read it. If it is so riddled with errors and outright deceit why then keep it? We need to keep it because buried in all the debris is a picture of God, the God Jesus revealed to us, the God of compassion and love, the God the power elite wanted hidden and forgotten. That is the reason why we still need the Bible.
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