CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE

The Bible (from the Greek βιβλία, plural of βιβλίον, transl. bíblion, “scroll” or “book”, diminutive of “byblos”, “Egyptian papyrus”, probably from the name of the city from which this material was exported to Greece, Byblos, now Jbeil, in Lebanon) is a collection of religious texts of sacred value to Christianity, in which religious interpretations of the reason for human existence on Earth are presented. It is considered by Christians to be divinely inspired, being an important doctrinal document.

According to the tradition accepted by most Christians, the Bible was written by 40 authors, between 1500 B.C. and 450 B.C. (books of the Old Testament) and between 45 A.D. and 90 A.D. (books of the New Testament), totaling a period of nearly 1,600 years. Most historians consider that the date of the earliest writings regarded as sacred is much more recent: for example, while Christian tradition places Moses as the author of the first five books of the Bible (Pentateuch), many scholars accept that they were first compiled only after the Babylonian exile, based on other texts dated between the tenth and fourth centuries before Christ. Many scholars also state that it was written by dozens of people from different regions and nations.

According to a literal interpretation of Genesis (the first book of the Bible), man was created by God from dust, after the heavens and the earth, between six and eight thousand years ago, and received life after God breathed the breath of life into his nostrils. It is the best-selling book of all time with more than six billion copies worldwide, a number seven times greater than the number of copies of the second place on the list of best-selling books, the Little Red Book. In the United States, the only president who did not take the oath of office with his hand on a Bible was Theodore Roosevelt (1901-1909), according to official records of the Architect of the Capitol. John Quincy Adams (1825-1829), at his inauguration, according to letters written by himself, placed his hand on a volume of constitutional law instead of the Bible to indicate where his loyalty belonged. There are no records for presidents prior to John Tyler (1841-1845).

Divine Inspiration

The Bible claims to have been written by people under the influence of divine inspiration. The apostle Paul states that “all Scripture is inspired by God”, literally, “breathed by God” [which is the translation of the Greek word θεοπνευστος, theopneustos] (2 Timothy 3:16). The apostle Peter says that “no prophecy was ever produced by the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.” (2 Peter 1:21). The apostle Peter attributes to Paul’s writings the same authority as the Old Testament: “And count the patience of our Lord as salvation, just as our beloved brother Paul also wrote to you according to the wisdom given him, speaking of this as he does in all his letters. There are some things in them that are hard to understand, which the ignorant and unstable twist to their own destruction, as they do the other Scriptures” (2 Peter 3:15-16).

Interpretation

According to journalist David Plotz, from the online magazine Slate, up until a century ago, most well-educated Americans were deeply familiar with the Bible. Still according to Plotz, even among believers, Bible reading is irregular: the Catholic Church includes only a small portion of the Old Testament in official readings; Jews study the first five books of the Bible extensively but pay less attention to the rest; Orthodox Jews read more of the Talmud, while Protestants usually place greater emphasis on the New Testament.

The inaccessibility of the Bible between Antiquity and the Middle Ages led to the creation of various narratives about biblical characters, producing additions and distortions. The Catholic Church could not distribute many copies of the Bible due to the difficulties of the time when printing did not exist, and also argued that not everyone would have the necessary ability to interpret it due to its complexity, even justifying this difficulty by showing believers major heresies that destabilized society, such as Catharism.

Conflicts between science and religion were, in part, fueled by the literal interpretation of the Bible. It should not be interpreted as a precise account of human history or a perfect description of nature. Galileo Galilei believed that the Bible should be interpreted through the study of nature.

Slaveholders based themselves on the part of the Bible that tells how Noah condemned his son Ham and his descendants to slavery to religiously justify slavery. Martin Luther believed that the love of Christ was freely accessible through the Bible. He was one of the first theologians to suggest that people should read and interpret the Bible for themselves. Most people interpret the Bible through their religious leader.

Internal Structure

The Bible is divided into two parts: the Old and the New Testaments. The first, in the version generally accepted by Protestants and Jews, presents the history of the world from its creation to events after the return of the Jews from the Babylonian exile, in the 4th century B.C. Catholics and Orthodox, on the other hand, have a more extensive canon, covering up to the Hasmoneans of the 2nd century B.C. The New Testament presents the story of Jesus Christ and the preaching of his teachings, during his life and after his death and resurrection, in the 1st century. The Bible was not divided into chapters until 1227, when Cardinal Sthepen Langton created them, and it did not have verses until it was divided that way in 1551 by Robert Stephanus.