{"id":27026,"date":"2014-11-22T07:38:23","date_gmt":"2014-11-22T12:38:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/exploringourmatrix\/?p=27026"},"modified":"2014-11-22T07:38:23","modified_gmt":"2014-11-22T12:38:23","slug":"how-to-treat-the-bible","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/religionprof\/2014\/11\/how-to-treat-the-bible.html","title":{"rendered":"How to Treat the Bible"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\"Neither<\/p>\n

The quote from Gregory C. Jenks comes from an article on the Progressive Christianity website, written back in 2011, \u201cTaking the Bible Seriously but Not Literally.\u201d Click through<\/a> to read it.<\/p>\n

Neither the Bible nor God is well served by any tactics that seek to protect the Bible from scrutiny.<\/p>\n

We must, therefore, resist any temptation to treat our sacred texts differently than the way we treat other people\u2019s sacred texts. Legend and self-serving fiction are to be found in the Bible just as surely as they are in the sacred traditions of other communities. Ancient texts, and indeed all written texts, are ambiguous preparations for an act of communication that will necessarily be driven and controlled by the reader (rather than the author). This dynamic needs to be embraced, not ignored. It cannot be obscured by an appeal to divine inspiration.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The quote from Gregory C. Jenks comes from an article on the Progressive Christianity website, written back in 2011, \u201cTaking the Bible Seriously but Not Literally.\u201d Click through to read it. Neither the Bible nor God is well served by any tactics that seek to protect the Bible from scrutiny. We must, therefore, resist any […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":136,"featured_media":27027,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,43,163],"tags":[1140,4214,9597],"class_list":["post-27026","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bible","category-inerrancy","category-progressive-christianity-religion","tag-bible","tag-gregory-c-jenks","tag-progressive-christianity"],"yoast_head":"\nHow to Treat the Bible<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"The quote from Gregory C. 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