The Bible as a multi-religious text

About the Christian Bible

For the Christian faith, the Bible is a fixed collection of sacred writings – nothing can now be added or removed. It was completed as a collection of books towards the end of the fourth century AD or, as some non-Christians prefer, Common Era. In other words, for nearly 400 years, Christianity did not have a Bible – nor, incidentally, did it have a Christmas Day!

The New Testament is seen by Christians as the more important part, as it is the record about Christ, even though the debate about its accuracy goes on among Christians as well as non-Christians. Words like inspired, holy, sacred, have been used by Christians to describe its meaning. A spectrum of interpretations, including literalism, fundamentalism, various allegorical or esoteric explorations, liberal and radical alternatives, has arisen in the course of Christian history and creates vigorous and ongoing debate within the Christian communities.

Why did the gospel writers write?

Read any book, even if it doesn’t have a title, and its main theme or purpose is usually easy to spot. A gardening book, a cookery book, and a car repair book all without covers and title pages, would be most unlikely to be mistaken for each other. This is the case with the New Testament. There are four Gospels, but they are not the same. It isn’t just that they haven’t got the same writer or style. Their subject or theme is different. If they had titles they might be:

• The Mystery and Power of Jesus, by John Mark;
• Jesus, the Giver of the New Religious Law, by Matthew;
• Jesus, the Man for Others, by Luke;
• The Cosmic Christ, by John.

The purpose of the writer was to present the good news of Jesus as he saw it, to say who Jesus was rather than to list what he did. In fact the fourth Gospel refers to the impossibility of doing that.

Now, there are many other things that Jesus did. If they were all written down one by one, I suppose that the whole world could not hold the books that would be written. (John 21.25)

What the Gospel writers did was to select material to fit their theme.

Luke and Acts are both by Luke. His theme is really to trace the good news from the birth of the forerunner, John the Baptist, which is where the Gospel of Luke begins, to how the good news reached the centre of the civilized world, Rome, which is where Acts ends.