{"id":8673,"date":"2012-08-01T09:42:15","date_gmt":"2012-08-01T13:42:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/religionprof\/?p=8673"},"modified":"2012-08-01T09:42:15","modified_gmt":"2012-08-01T13:42:15","slug":"before-the-bible-was-written","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/religionprof\/2012\/08\/before-the-bible-was-written.html","title":{"rendered":"Before The Bible Was Written"},"content":{"rendered":"<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC \"-\/\/W3C\/\/DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional\/\/EN\" \"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/TR\/REC-html40\/loose.dtd\">\n<html><head><meta http-equiv=\"content-type\" content=\"text\/html; charset=utf-8\"><meta http-equiv=\"content-type\" content=\"text\/html; charset=utf-8\"><\/head><body><p>On Facebook I came across this funny depiction of what the first Christians had to resort to holding up at sporting events, before they had written texts they could reference:<\/p>\n<div class=\"separator\" style=\"clear: both;text-align: none\"><a href=\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/exploringourmatrix\/files\/2012\/08\/wpid-Photo-Aug-1-2012-930-AM1.jpg\" target=\"_blank\" class=\" decorated-link\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/exploringourmatrix\/files\/2012\/08\/wpid-Photo-Aug-1-2012-930-AM1.jpg\" class=\"alignnone\" alt=\"\" width=\"400\" height=\"300\"><\/a><\/div>\n<p>\u201cMe 3:16\u201d \u2013 Nice one, John!  \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n<p>But as someone involved in teaching Biblical studies, I also thought this was a nice reminder of a serious point, namely the fact that Christianity does not depend on, nor is it founded on, the New Testament, but vice versa: The New Testament is an expression of the phenomenon of Christianity. <\/p>\n<p>To get this backwards results in many problems, not least of which, but perhaps most ironic, is <a href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/religionprof\/2012\/02\/ken-ham-finally-confesses-his-heresy.html\" target=\"_blank\" title=\"\" class=\" decorated-link\">the substitution in many contemporary streams of Christianity of the Bible in the place of what one famous Biblical text says the only foundation is supposed to be for Christians<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>On Facebook I came across this funny depiction of what the first Christians had to resort to holding up at sporting events, before they had written texts they could reference: \u201cMe 3:16\u201d \u2013 Nice one, John! \ud83d\ude42 But as someone involved in teaching Biblical studies, I also thought this was a nice reminder of a [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":136,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,131,139,30,42],"tags":[1154,1163,1828,1846,1848,2253,3675,3678,3686,3970,4871,5677,5788,7185,8064],"class_list":["post-8673","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bible","category-christianity-religion","category-fundamentalism-religion","category-gospel-of-john","category-humor","tag-biblicism","tag-bibliolatry","tag-christ","tag-christianity-religion","tag-christians","tag-cracked","tag-fundamentalism-religion","tag-fundamentalists","tag-funny","tag-gladiators","tag-humor","tag-jesus","tag-john-316","tag-me-316","tag-new-testament"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v21.1 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Before The Bible Was Written<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"On Facebook I came across this funny depiction of what the first Christians had to resort to holding up at sporting events, before they had written texts\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/religionprof\/2012\/08\/before-the-bible-was-written.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Before The Bible Was Written\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"On Facebook I came across this funny depiction of what the first Christians had to resort to holding up at sporting events, before they had written texts\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/religionprof\/2012\/08\/before-the-bible-was-written.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Religion Prof: The Blog of James F. 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