This one is for Wolfgang
“Should the Bible be read as a historical text or even a text for psychologists to analyze(like Jordan Peterson has) more so than a religious text? As secularism grows, I feel we still need to be teaching important lessons from the bible and not cast it off as a work of complete fiction. Rather than teaching biblical literalism, that the bible is the word of God and you have to believe in him to go to a literal heaven, we should just teach the important messages that pertain to human psychology, history, geography, etc within the bible.”
As with many things, this all depends on the context. The Bible is not a textbook. There are large chunks of the bible that tell a historical narrative, and they can be studied as such. There are healthy debates as to the accuracy of the history portrayed in the bible. The bible is the only source of information on some historical events. This makes these events hard to prove or disprove on that basis alone. There are other historical events attested to by single sources that are not questioned as rigorously. This is due to the immense weight of discussion surrounding the bible itself.
We do not have the original manuscripts of any work in the bible. We know for a fact that sections have been compiled and edited. The bible itself tells us this often with comments such as “and it is there to this day” or by referencing people and cities that are current in the area to give readers a sense of the place being spoken of. While bible literalists are confident that we can accurately recreate the doctrine and teaching present in the bible, there are cases where a historical fact might be muddied, hard to decipher, or simply impossible to prove/disprove. The bible still remains a valuable source for historical research. Over the years the stories in the bible have been ‘proven’ disproven’ ‘proven’ again, and heavily debated.
As for psychology, the bible is a treasure trove. It portrays the thoughts of a large portion of humanity. Whether or not you agree with those beliefs, it is useful to analyze them.
The bible is a religious text and should be taught as such, in religious settings. In nonreligious settings there are still many things that the bible can teach us, as can most of the great literary works of antiquity.
About the Author:
Stephen Mayo lives in Montana with his wife, daughter, corgi, and three cats.
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