Thank you, Beau — as a scientist, I ran away from the Bible for decades. But the mystery brought me back. When I stopped fact-checking, the mystical nourishment of the Word opened up to me.
Now a daily reader of the Bible, curiosity and imagination help me approach God’s sacred story with a soft, attentive heart. I love it. 💜🙏🏽
A lot of people, especially in Gen Z, aren’t leaving Christianity because of science; they’re leaving because we taught them faith requires ignoring it. What you show so well here is that science actually turns out to be an ally.
Loved the article. I plan to discuss it with a few very science savvy teenagers I work with at church. We’ve already had discussions about taking the Bible literally, They get it. It’s like the old adage, “Don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater!” I think being able to let go of literalism has helped them find Jesus teachings even more relevant to their lives.
Well written. I find the challenge comes when evangelicals conflate literal/true. Brad Jersak’s book A More Christlike Word is a great deep dive on this subject.
I participate in Torah Study with our local Jewish Community. I’m learning a LOT about biblical history and biblical narrative. It’s somewhat different than how Christians generally have Bible Study. Even Mainline Christians tend to jump right to how a passage applies to their personal lives, skipping a lot along the way.
Your article is helping me balance the two approaches— just in time for Ezekiel 37, the chapter of “dry bones” and “two sticks” — I’m to lead the discussion!
“The writers weren’t inventing characters in imaginary kingdoms or anything, they were describing real people in real places while using the literary conventions of their time to communicate theological truth.”
We can go too far either way to frame a study. Thank you for reminding me that Scripture’s “theme” is always GOD.
This is actually the subject of an essay series I’m working on. Ancient writers didn’t view history as a science. In Joshua God stops the sun in the sky. But the sun is always stopped and only appears to move because of the rotation of the earth. So did God stop the earths rotation on its axis… or is this book (which is in the history category) not describing astrophysics but describing how God protects his people. If you read Jonah, and get caught debating whether or not a man can live on a fish, your are missing out on the larger spiritual truth. Jonah was attempting to flee Gods reach. Down to tarshish, down to a belly of a fish at the bottom of the ocean. As far away from God as you can physically be. And yet, God found him there. Showing us how God is lord of all places. But now I’m rethinking it as yours covers the subject matter better than I can. Anyway, it’s a very well written essay and I enjoyed reading it.
This is fantastic, and explains how I come to the scriptures now too. I was unaware of the burial box for “Joseph, son of Caiaphus”. What a significant find!
I’m a writer working on some memoir stuff. Recently I had difficulty connecting some circumstances of my life to the circumstances of my grandparents and great-grandparents. But I wanted to A) introduce my readers to the lives that led to mine, and B) find a way to include facts from their lives that are meaningful to my story. So, for the first time ever, I wrote fiction. Some of the details of the story are fact, but the meaning of the stories I’ve told is real. At least, I hope this is what readers take away.
I do not, however, think anyone will mistake my writing for scripture. 🙃😊😆
When I teach biblical literature, I actually start by showing a montage of scenes from Robin Hood movies -- from Errol Flynn to the Disney to Kevin Costner to Men in Tights to Russell Crowe to a ridiculous SyFy thing with dragons, and then talk about what we know about the historicity of Robin Hood, and how we interact with that text, and then we talk about scripture, archaeology, and historical literary criticism.
Jesus spoke in parables for many of his most important teachings — he never claimed that they were factual, only that they were true. He spoke about a good Samaritan to make a point, not to create a news article.
How have we not learned that lesson, when it began with Jesus himself?
Beau, I hope you will take this as irreverence from an old lady (I first responded to an altar call in summer camp after third grade). I know you are teaching what many, many people need to hear. But when I read the title of this post, my first response was, “Duh.”
Beau, you provided examples of how archeological evidence validates people, events, etc. but not examples of what part of various story details are not to be taken literally.
That’s a great question, and honestly, working through specific examples of what to read literally vs. literarily would be an entire series in itself (probably several months worth of content tbh)!
The point of this class (and this essay) isn’t to dissect every biblical text or provide a comprehensive hermeneutic for each genre. It’s simply to establish that archaeological evidence gives us permission to ask those questions without abandoning faith in Scripture’s reliability.
For folks coming out of fundamentalism, the real struggle isn’t “which verses should I read literally?”, it’s “am I allowed to ask that question at all without losing my faith?” And archaeology says yes, you can ask. The historical grounding is solid enough that you don’t have to defend strict literalism to take the Bible seriously.
The actual work of figuring out how to interpret specific passages, that’s the ongoing journey each of us takes with Scripture, and it’s far more nuanced than any single essay could address.
Sorry if that’s disappointing, but I plan to chip away at those passages over time.
Oh, I understand. I guess the only people who this would be news to are going to be fundamentalists or strict literalists because without examples I’m not sure where anything you’re saying would be surprising or news to most Christians - generally speaking. I guess it wasn’t clear at least to me who you were actually addressing these statements to or contrasting them with.
Examples would certainly be helpful. As someone who has read and studied these things for 35 years, I am very comfortable with recognizing a biblical and theological understanding of scripture, from how we understand the first chapters of Genesis to why John places the cleansing of the temple earlier in his gospel for theological reasons. And along the same lines, recognizing that the pericope adulterae probably isn’t inspired shouldn’t remotely shake one’s faith.
Anyway, Blessings on your upcoming classes. I look forward to reading more.
Thank you, Beau — as a scientist, I ran away from the Bible for decades. But the mystery brought me back. When I stopped fact-checking, the mystical nourishment of the Word opened up to me.
Now a daily reader of the Bible, curiosity and imagination help me approach God’s sacred story with a soft, attentive heart. I love it. 💜🙏🏽
A lot of people, especially in Gen Z, aren’t leaving Christianity because of science; they’re leaving because we taught them faith requires ignoring it. What you show so well here is that science actually turns out to be an ally.
Loved the article. I plan to discuss it with a few very science savvy teenagers I work with at church. We’ve already had discussions about taking the Bible literally, They get it. It’s like the old adage, “Don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater!” I think being able to let go of literalism has helped them find Jesus teachings even more relevant to their lives.
Well written. I find the challenge comes when evangelicals conflate literal/true. Brad Jersak’s book A More Christlike Word is a great deep dive on this subject.
Thanks for sharing this book John. I’m going to check it out.
Another GREAT article! Thank you.
I participate in Torah Study with our local Jewish Community. I’m learning a LOT about biblical history and biblical narrative. It’s somewhat different than how Christians generally have Bible Study. Even Mainline Christians tend to jump right to how a passage applies to their personal lives, skipping a lot along the way.
Your article is helping me balance the two approaches— just in time for Ezekiel 37, the chapter of “dry bones” and “two sticks” — I’m to lead the discussion!
“The writers weren’t inventing characters in imaginary kingdoms or anything, they were describing real people in real places while using the literary conventions of their time to communicate theological truth.”
We can go too far either way to frame a study. Thank you for reminding me that Scripture’s “theme” is always GOD.
We can go too far either way to frame a study. Spoken like a true seeker.
This is actually the subject of an essay series I’m working on. Ancient writers didn’t view history as a science. In Joshua God stops the sun in the sky. But the sun is always stopped and only appears to move because of the rotation of the earth. So did God stop the earths rotation on its axis… or is this book (which is in the history category) not describing astrophysics but describing how God protects his people. If you read Jonah, and get caught debating whether or not a man can live on a fish, your are missing out on the larger spiritual truth. Jonah was attempting to flee Gods reach. Down to tarshish, down to a belly of a fish at the bottom of the ocean. As far away from God as you can physically be. And yet, God found him there. Showing us how God is lord of all places. But now I’m rethinking it as yours covers the subject matter better than I can. Anyway, it’s a very well written essay and I enjoyed reading it.
Thank you
This is fantastic, and explains how I come to the scriptures now too. I was unaware of the burial box for “Joseph, son of Caiaphus”. What a significant find!
I’m a writer working on some memoir stuff. Recently I had difficulty connecting some circumstances of my life to the circumstances of my grandparents and great-grandparents. But I wanted to A) introduce my readers to the lives that led to mine, and B) find a way to include facts from their lives that are meaningful to my story. So, for the first time ever, I wrote fiction. Some of the details of the story are fact, but the meaning of the stories I’ve told is real. At least, I hope this is what readers take away.
I do not, however, think anyone will mistake my writing for scripture. 🙃😊😆
When I teach biblical literature, I actually start by showing a montage of scenes from Robin Hood movies -- from Errol Flynn to the Disney to Kevin Costner to Men in Tights to Russell Crowe to a ridiculous SyFy thing with dragons, and then talk about what we know about the historicity of Robin Hood, and how we interact with that text, and then we talk about scripture, archaeology, and historical literary criticism.
Jesus spoke in parables for many of his most important teachings — he never claimed that they were factual, only that they were true. He spoke about a good Samaritan to make a point, not to create a news article.
How have we not learned that lesson, when it began with Jesus himself?
Beau, I hope you will take this as irreverence from an old lady (I first responded to an altar call in summer camp after third grade). I know you are teaching what many, many people need to hear. But when I read the title of this post, my first response was, “Duh.”
Ha! I totally get that! This comment made me chuckle. So grateful for you and your wisdom!! 😊
Well, I appreciate the overall perspective, without specific examples it’s hard to determine whether what you’re saying is actually true.
I apologize, but I am not tracking. I provided several examples of archaeological evidence.
Beau, you provided examples of how archeological evidence validates people, events, etc. but not examples of what part of various story details are not to be taken literally.
That’s a great question, and honestly, working through specific examples of what to read literally vs. literarily would be an entire series in itself (probably several months worth of content tbh)!
The point of this class (and this essay) isn’t to dissect every biblical text or provide a comprehensive hermeneutic for each genre. It’s simply to establish that archaeological evidence gives us permission to ask those questions without abandoning faith in Scripture’s reliability.
For folks coming out of fundamentalism, the real struggle isn’t “which verses should I read literally?”, it’s “am I allowed to ask that question at all without losing my faith?” And archaeology says yes, you can ask. The historical grounding is solid enough that you don’t have to defend strict literalism to take the Bible seriously.
The actual work of figuring out how to interpret specific passages, that’s the ongoing journey each of us takes with Scripture, and it’s far more nuanced than any single essay could address.
Sorry if that’s disappointing, but I plan to chip away at those passages over time.
Oh, I understand. I guess the only people who this would be news to are going to be fundamentalists or strict literalists because without examples I’m not sure where anything you’re saying would be surprising or news to most Christians - generally speaking. I guess it wasn’t clear at least to me who you were actually addressing these statements to or contrasting them with.
Examples would certainly be helpful. As someone who has read and studied these things for 35 years, I am very comfortable with recognizing a biblical and theological understanding of scripture, from how we understand the first chapters of Genesis to why John places the cleansing of the temple earlier in his gospel for theological reasons. And along the same lines, recognizing that the pericope adulterae probably isn’t inspired shouldn’t remotely shake one’s faith.
Anyway, Blessings on your upcoming classes. I look forward to reading more.