Daniel: What if the most 'un-biblical' thing you can do is read the Bible literally? Today, we're exploring a book that argues the Bible's contradictions and 'weird' parts aren't flaws to be fixed, but clues to its real meaning. Sophia: Whoa, that's a bold claim. I think most people I know, especially those who grew up in church, were taught that reading it literally is the only way to respect it. Anything else is just picking and choosing what you like. Daniel: That's the exact tension we're jumping into. We're diving into What Is the Bible? by Rob Bell. Sophia: Ah, Rob Bell. The guy who was once a megachurch superstar and then became one of the most controversial figures in modern Christianity for questioning... well, pretty much everything. I remember when his book Love Wins came out, it caused a massive firestorm. Daniel: It certainly did. He was even featured in Time Magazine as one of the world's most influential people, partly because of that controversy. And this book, What Is the Bible?, is his attempt to re-introduce people to this ancient library, not as a flat, perfect rulebook, but as something far more dynamic, human, and alive. Sophia: Okay, "human and alive" sounds a lot more approachable than "inerrant and intimidating." Where does he even start with an idea that big? Daniel: He starts by completely reframing what the Bible is. He argues we’ve been asking the wrong questions because we’ve been holding the wrong object.

Daniel: Bell begins with a personal story. He was a young pastor, fresh out of seminary, thinking he knew his stuff. He’d studied Greek and Hebrew, he knew the interpretive methods. After one sermon, a man named Richard came up to him and just said, "You missed it." Sophia: Ouch. That’s got to sting. What did he miss? Daniel: Richard started listing all this context—the politics, the economics, the common stories of the first-century Jewish world. Then he said something that sounds obvious but changed everything for Bell: "You know, Jesus was Jewish." Sophia: I mean, yes, of course. But what’s the deeper point there? Daniel: The point is that we often read the Bible as if it dropped out of the sky, a perfect, timeless book from God. Bell argues we should see it as a library, written by real people, in real places, with real problems. It's a collection of poems, letters, historical accounts, and even angry rants, all bound together. It’s a human document. Sophia: Okay, I can see that. It’s a library, not a single book. But if it's just a human library, where's the 'God' part? Isn't that the whole point? If it's just a collection of human ideas, why is it so important? Daniel: That’s the perfect question. Bell’s answer is that you find the divine through the human. The book isn't a flat line of God's dictation. It has a trajectory. It’s a record of humanity's evolving, growing, and maturing understanding of God. Sophia: A trajectory? What does that look like in practice? Daniel: He gives a fantastic example. In the book of 2 Samuel, there's a story where King David decides to take a census, which is portrayed as a great sin. The text says, "the anger of the LORD burned against Israel, and he incited David" to do it. God made him do it. Sophia: Right, which is a really difficult idea. A good God who tricks his own king into sinning? Daniel: Exactly. But then, hundreds of years later, after the Israelites have been through exile and immense suffering, another writer retells this exact same story in the book of 1 Chronicles. This time, the text says, "Satan rose up against Israel and incited David to take a census." Sophia: Wait, so in the later version, it's Satan, not God? Daniel: Precisely. In those intervening centuries, their understanding of God had evolved. They started to believe that God is purely good, and so they couldn't imagine God inciting evil. They developed a new character, "the accuser" or ha-satan, to explain it. The Bible itself records this shift in thinking. It’s not a contradiction to be fixed; it’s a fossil record of their growing consciousness. Sophia: Huh. So the Bible isn't hiding its own evolution. It's showing its work, so to speak. That’s a completely different way of looking at contradictions. Daniel: It changes everything. You stop trying to defend the Bible as perfect and start reading it as an honest, unfolding story of people trying to figure out God, life, and everything in between.

Sophia: That trajectory idea is really helpful for the contradictions. But what about the parts that aren't just contradictory, but morally horrifying? I’m thinking of the story of Abraham and Isaac. God tells a man to kill his own son. How does this new lens help with that? Daniel: This is where Bell's idea of reading "literately, not literally" comes in. He asks us to consider the audience. The story of Abraham was told in a world where child sacrifice was common. The surrounding cultures believed the gods were angry and demanding, and the ultimate way to appease them was to sacrifice your most precious possession—your firstborn son. Sophia: So for the original audience, the command from God wouldn't have been as shocking to them as it is to us. Daniel: Exactly. For them, that was just what powerful gods did. The truly shocking, revolutionary, jaw-on-the-floor part of the story for them wasn't the command. It was that at the last second, this God stops it. Sophia: Oh, I see. The twist isn't the test, it's the outcome. Daniel: Yes! The story is a brilliant piece of subversive literature. It's as if the author is saying, "You think you know how this story goes? You think our God is like your gods, demanding blood? Watch this." And then God provides a ram. The message is: this God is different. This God provides. This God doesn't want your child; this God wants to bless you. It’s a story that’s fundamentally against child sacrifice, but it makes its point by entering the world of its audience. Sophia: That completely flips the meaning. It’s not a story about blind obedience to a terrifying command. It’s a story about the revelation of a new kind of God. Daniel: A God of grace. And you can apply that same literary lens to other difficult parts. Think about the book of Judges. It’s full of gruesome violence, like the story of Ehud, the left-handed assassin who stabs the obese King Eglon so deeply that "the fat closed in over the sword." Sophia: It’s so graphic. It’s hard to read that and not think the Bible is just endorsing brutality. Daniel: But Bell asks, what if the writer included that graphic, almost cartoonish violence for a reason? The book of Judges is a repeating cycle: the people sin, they get oppressed, they cry out, a "judge" or liberator rises up and commits some spectacular act of violence, and there's peace... for a little while. Then the cycle starts again. Sophia: So the violence never actually solves the root problem. Daniel: Never. Bell suggests the writer is showing us the absolute futility of violence. It’s a critique. The writer is saying, "Look at this! Look at how awful and pointless this cycle is! This is what happens when we lose our connection to the divine and just try to solve our problems by hitting them harder." The gore isn't an instruction manual; it's a warning label. Sophia: Wow. Okay, so reading "literately" means asking what the story is doing for its original audience, not just what it's literally saying. Daniel: You got it. It’s about understanding the art, the subversion, and the human context behind the words.

Daniel: And this whole trajectory, this evolving understanding of God, culminates in the figure of Jesus. Bell argues that Jesus was the ultimate re-interpreter of this library. Sophia: How so? He was constantly quoting the Hebrew scriptures. Daniel: Yes, but look at how he did it. He’d say, "You have heard that it was said... but I say to you..." He wasn't treating the text as a dead, closed book. He was engaging with it, wrestling with it, and pushing its trajectory forward. He was continuing the conversation. Sophia: Like he was taking the baton and running the next leg of the race. Daniel: A perfect analogy. And he invited his followers to do the same. Think of the parable of the Good Samaritan. It starts with a religious lawyer trying to trap him. The lawyer asks, "Who is my neighbor?" which was a code word for, "Who is 'in' and who is 'out'?" Sophia: He wanted Jesus to give a list of who he had to love, and by implication, who he was allowed to hate. Daniel: Exactly. And Jesus responds with a story that completely shatters the lawyer's categories. He makes the hero a Samaritan—the group most despised by the Jews of his day. The religious figures, the priest and the Levite, are the ones who fail. And the punchline is when Jesus asks the lawyer, "Who was the neighbor?" The lawyer is so filled with prejudice he can't even bring himself to say the word "Samaritan." He just mutters, "The one who had mercy on him." Sophia: He can't even name the hero of the story. That’s powerful. Jesus is forcing him to see humanity where he had only seen an enemy. Daniel: He’s blowing up the whole system of 'in' and 'out'. And that leads to the biggest question of all, the one that always comes up with this way of reading. Sophia: Let me guess. If the Bible is this open-ended, human, evolving thing, then what about its authority? Is it authoritative? Is it inspired? Are we just allowed to make it mean whatever we want? Daniel: That is the million-dollar question. And Bell's answer is, once again, a reframing.

Daniel: He argues that "authority" isn't a quality the book possesses on its own. It's a relational reality. We give it authority when we choose to engage with it, to wrestle with it, to let it shape us. Just like you give a doctor authority over your health because you trust them. You give the Bible authority when you decide its story is a trustworthy guide for what it means to be human. Sophia: So authority isn't about blind submission to a set of rules. It's an active choice to enter into the conversation the book is having. Daniel: Precisely. And the same goes for "inspiration." The New Testament word is theopneustos, which literally means "God-breathed." Bell points out that breath is spirit, it's life. The Bible isn't just inspired in the sense that God dictated it. It’s inspired in the same way a breathtaking piece of music or a profound work of art is inspired. It has a life, a spirit, breathed into it. Sophia: And it’s meant to breathe that life into us. Daniel: Yes. It’s inspired because it inspires. It shows us what it looks like for messy, flawed, all-too-human people to connect with the divine, to push for justice, to grow in compassion, and to move history forward. It’s a record of their inspiration, and an invitation into our own. Sophia: So, the goal isn't to come to the Bible to find all the right answers, but to learn how to ask better questions. Like Bell’s two best questions: "Why did they find this important enough to write down?" and "Why did this story endure?" Daniel: Exactly. Those questions shift the focus from proving or disproving the text to understanding its deep human power. And maybe the most transformative question the book leaves us with is this: What story are we writing now? What are we adding to this ongoing, human-divine conversation? Sophia: That’s a much more exciting, and maybe a little more terrifying, way to think about it. It gives us a role to play. Daniel: It gives us everything to play for. Sophia: This is Aibrary, signing off.