When I first came to University I started going to quite a conservative church. Even though I only went to this church for a year it influenced my opinion of the Bible quite a lot.
If you’d asked me back then I would have said that I thought the Bible was the literal word of God transcribed by human hands, and that everything in it was handed down from him. I would have said that it employed different literary techniques and approximations so that not every single word was literally true, but that every metaphor, poem or prophetic vision was placed in the writer’s mind by God.
Perhaps I would have had this opinion even without going to that particular church, it’s probably the default attitude of any Christian approaching the Bible. It’s not really the attitude I have now though, and over the next few posts I’m going to outline a few reasons why.
