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3 Misconceptions About The Bible
Misconceptions abound about the world’s most common book
The Bible is one of the most important books in human history, and has shaped the lives and religious beliefs of billions of people around the world, for better or for worse. But for all it’s ubiquity, the Bible is still not very understood by a lot of people, even if they attend worship regularly. A lot of people, believers and non-believers alike, receive a lot of information about the Bible which may or may not be accurate. A lot of this has to do with what we know or can know about the Bible. Here are three common misconceptions that I’ve encountered from a lot of people.
The Bible is a Book
This one is a bit of trick, but I think it’s an important way to illustrate the extent to which our idea of the Bible has been constructed over time. The Bible is not a book, and that statement can be expanded in a couple of different ways.
For one thing, different people mean different things when they say the word “Bible.” I am a Lutheran, so when I talk about the Bible, I’m referencing a collection of 66 books split into two testaments. My Catholic friend’s Bible is a bit bigger, containing 73 books, as well as some additional material for some other books. Our Orthodox neighbors have different canons between them, making theirs Bible much more fluid in size. Finally, our Jewish friends also have a Bible, called the Tanakh, which contains the books of the Protestant Old Testament but not, obviously, anything from the New Testament. The Bible isn’t really a book, but a collection of books, organized into what’s called a “canon” or acceptably Scriptural material for a certain tradition. It’s a small library more than anything else.
When we think of a book, we tend to think of a thing with a pair of covers, bound on one end, with leaves of pages in between. This form of a book is called a Codex, and it became common in Europe in the Early Middle Ages. The Bible was originally written and distributed on scrolls, which we should also think of as kinds of books. Codices are convenient because they can bind…