Quotes by Bible

“We might like to think of ourselves as autonomous beings who get to decide who we are going to be, but we are likely much more malleable than we think. We are often defined by the structure that ke...”

“There you are. A simple commandment. Not ten of them, just one: 'Thou shalt not eat.' (Personally, I wish the very first edict from God hadn't involved dieting, don't you?)”

“We can only bear the fruit of patience when we have something to be patient about.”

“When he heard his father call out for Abel and he saw his borther go forth, it made him feel like he was nothing. He couldnt even say that he felt like Cain anymore. One could not feel like Cain be...”

“t's [King James Bible] subject is majesty, not tyranny, and it's political purpose was unifying and enfolding, to elide the kingliness of God with the godliness of kings, to make royal power and di...”

“Not everyone that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven Matthew 7:21(KJV)But as it is written, Eye hath not s...”

“The concern of the scholar is primarily with what the text meant; the concern of the layperson is usually with what it means. The believing scholar insists that we must have both. Reading the Bible...”

“Whether one likes it or not, every reader is at the same time an interpreter. That is, most of us assume as we read that we also understand what we read. We also tend to think that our understandin...”

“Because the Bible is Gods Word, it has eternal relevance; it speaks to all humankind, in every age and in every culture.”

“The problem with a free translation, on the other hand, especially for study purposes, is that the translator updates the original author too muchOn the one hand, these renditions often have especi...”

“One crucial thing to keep in mind as you read any Hebrew narrative is the presence of God in the narrative. In any biblical narrative, God is the ultimate character, the supreme hero of the story.”

“The first hands he heard banging at the outside walls felt like nails pushing into his temples. Then there were more hands. Pounding. Punching. Scratching. Then kicks and shrieking that even drowne...”

“The Bible is not a book of answers but a library of questions.”

“In many ways, those dedicated to removing all potential biblical contradictions, to making the Bible entirely consistent with itself, are no different from irreligious debunkers of the Bible, Chris...”

“For many potential Bible readers, this expectation that the Bible is univocal is paralyzing. You notice what seem to be contradictions or tensions between different voices in the text. You can't fi...”

“The history of the Bible is one of perpetual revolution. In that light, we might begin to think about the Bible not so much as a fixed thing but as a dynamic, vital tradition. In light of its histo...”

“We're used to picturing the genealogy of a text like a family tree: one original at the base ascending like a single trunk, with copies branching off it, and copies of copies branching off them. An...”

“The idea of the Bible as a divine guidebook, a map for getting through the terra incognita of life, is our golden calf. It's a substitute for the wilderness wandering that the life of faith necessa...”

“To be sure, all translation is interpretation. ... Be that as it may, functional-equivalence translations, which presume that ambiguity, multivalence, and contradiction are by definition not part o...”

“Bible publishers are not selling Bibles. What they're selling is that iconic idea of the Bible. Their value-added biblical content promises to provide answers to questions, solutions to problems, a...”