Quotes about Bible

The Bible tells a story. A story that isn't over. A story that is still being told. A story that we have a part to play in.

The Bible is not an argument. It is a record of human experience. The point is not to prove that it's the word of God or it's inspired or it's whatever the current word is that people are using. The point is to enter into its stories with such intention and vitality that you find what it is that inspired people to write these books.

I can't find one place in the teachings of Jesus, or the Bible for that matter, where we are to identity ourselves first and foremost as sinners.

When people stepped forward and said, "You have heard it interpreted this way, but I tell you it really means this," it was progressive for their day. They were making new claims about what it means to be true to the Bible. What is accepted today as tradition was at one point in time a break from tradition.

I saw how the Bible isn't a book about how to get into heaven, it's a library of poems and letters and stories about bringing heaven to earth now, about this world becoming more and more the place it should be. There is very, very little in the Bible about what happens when you die. That's not what the writers were focused on. Their interest, again and again, is on how this world is arranged.

There's a line in the Bible about the God who is above all and through all and in all. Just one line, but so massive. Above all and through all and in all.

What you find in the Bible are stories accurately reflecting the dominant consciousness of the day, and yet right in among and sometimes even within those very same violent stories, you find radically new ideas about freedom, equality, justice, compassion, and love. New ideas sit side by side with old ideas. Vicious violence is right there next to new understandings of peace and justice. (Kind of like now.)

The Bible was written by Jewish people who belonged to a Jewish minority living under the oppression of a succession of massive military superpowers who had conquered them: The Egyptians, the Persians, the Babylonians, the Assyrians, the Greeks, the Romans. These

What's the Best Question to Ask When You're Reading the Bible? Why did people find this important to write down?...Why did people write this down? What was going on in their world that this was important to them? Why did they feel the need to put words to this? Start with that question. Start with those questions. And see what happens.

But reading the Bible, you learn that it's not about trying to be something you're not—it's about learning to see the movement and motion and possibilities right in the midst of whatever world you find yourself in. We're not living in the first century or the ancient Near East—we're here, now. At this time. In this world.

right isn't even the best way to think about the Bible. How about dancing? You dance with it. And to dance, you have to hear its music. And then you move in response to it.

I saw that there's no word for spiritual in the Hebrew scriptures (also called the Old Testament). So basic, and yet so revolutionary. There's no word for spiritual, because to call something spiritual would be to imply that other things aren't. In the Bible, everything is spiritual. All of life.