Faith Works 3-21-2025
Jeff Gill
Taking a look at The Book for Lent
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Jeff Gill
Taking a look at The Book for Lent
___
"Why bother reading the Bible?"
As someone who is a Christian minister in a public role, forms of that question come up often. They're both highly variable, and all orbiting around the common axis of "it's an old book, so…"
In the modern world, there's a sort of built in assumption, a prevailing headwind, that any old book is generally superseded by new books.
In fact one of the reasons for my interest in the Bible as a durable, useful library of ancient texts is the intense and ongoing effort of sifting and sorting that has resulted in the collection of books that is what we call "the Holy Bible." Under that term, we talk about a library of texts, roughly three fourths (by verses) out of the Hebrew language and a quarter from Greek with fragments of Aramaic, a cousin of Hebrew, scattered within.
The book count in the Protestant Bible is 39 Old Testament books, 27 New Testament writings. Catholic Bibles include seven intertestamental books, plus modest additional sections for Esther and Daniel; the Eastern Orthodox Bible includes a few more deuterocanonical books, plus one more psalm. These are often referred to as "apocrypha," and generally the reason they are not in Protestant Bibles is because Luther in German Bibles and later Calvin in Geneva demoted them in terms of their sacred status.
All of which goes to my basic point: there's been a process of sifting a wide range of writings presented as sacred or inspired across religious history for over four thousand years. We still have hundreds, even thousands of ancient texts, many of which fall into the category of "pseudepigrapha," sometimes called "the lost books of the Bible."
Every year close to Easter, even before the cable era, media of all sorts would run stories about "what they haven't told you" or "books hidden from the general public" which people would latch onto and then ask me about as a parish minister. I get it, this was clickbait before we had clicks, and now it's all over the internet.
My usual response then, when we had three channels on broadcast TV, or now with the torrent of online misinformation, is "if these books are so hidden, why does some schlub in Ohio have paperback copies of most of them on his shelves?" And I'd pull a volume off, hand it over, and say "read it, and tell me if that deserves to be in the Bible along with Job and Luke's Gospel." For those who actually took the book and read a bit, the answer was always "that's a hot mess." Exactly.
For readers who are already believers, I can hear an objection to the tack I'm taking here. "Hey, Jeff, the Bible is the word of God, revealed to us for our salvation: say that!" Gotcha. But this column is, I like to keep mentioning, aimed not just at those already in a church: it's intended to speak to those who have some interest in faith, but may not find themselves drawn to organized religion. They don't start with even an acceptance that there is someone called "God" just to start with.
Inspiration is part of the final mix, I guarantee you. What I'd like to do for a few weeks leading to Easter, though, is invite even those not church affiliated to take a look at the 66 books collected over millennia, and edited by both saints and sinners, to give us a library of spiritual reflection, and yes, inspiration, called The Bible.
So keep reading, and let me know how the Spirit moves you…
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's got a few things to say about the Bible as it is. Tell him what you're curious about at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack77 on Threads or Bluesky.
As someone who is a Christian minister in a public role, forms of that question come up often. They're both highly variable, and all orbiting around the common axis of "it's an old book, so…"
In the modern world, there's a sort of built in assumption, a prevailing headwind, that any old book is generally superseded by new books.
In fact one of the reasons for my interest in the Bible as a durable, useful library of ancient texts is the intense and ongoing effort of sifting and sorting that has resulted in the collection of books that is what we call "the Holy Bible." Under that term, we talk about a library of texts, roughly three fourths (by verses) out of the Hebrew language and a quarter from Greek with fragments of Aramaic, a cousin of Hebrew, scattered within.
The book count in the Protestant Bible is 39 Old Testament books, 27 New Testament writings. Catholic Bibles include seven intertestamental books, plus modest additional sections for Esther and Daniel; the Eastern Orthodox Bible includes a few more deuterocanonical books, plus one more psalm. These are often referred to as "apocrypha," and generally the reason they are not in Protestant Bibles is because Luther in German Bibles and later Calvin in Geneva demoted them in terms of their sacred status.
All of which goes to my basic point: there's been a process of sifting a wide range of writings presented as sacred or inspired across religious history for over four thousand years. We still have hundreds, even thousands of ancient texts, many of which fall into the category of "pseudepigrapha," sometimes called "the lost books of the Bible."
Every year close to Easter, even before the cable era, media of all sorts would run stories about "what they haven't told you" or "books hidden from the general public" which people would latch onto and then ask me about as a parish minister. I get it, this was clickbait before we had clicks, and now it's all over the internet.
My usual response then, when we had three channels on broadcast TV, or now with the torrent of online misinformation, is "if these books are so hidden, why does some schlub in Ohio have paperback copies of most of them on his shelves?" And I'd pull a volume off, hand it over, and say "read it, and tell me if that deserves to be in the Bible along with Job and Luke's Gospel." For those who actually took the book and read a bit, the answer was always "that's a hot mess." Exactly.
For readers who are already believers, I can hear an objection to the tack I'm taking here. "Hey, Jeff, the Bible is the word of God, revealed to us for our salvation: say that!" Gotcha. But this column is, I like to keep mentioning, aimed not just at those already in a church: it's intended to speak to those who have some interest in faith, but may not find themselves drawn to organized religion. They don't start with even an acceptance that there is someone called "God" just to start with.
Inspiration is part of the final mix, I guarantee you. What I'd like to do for a few weeks leading to Easter, though, is invite even those not church affiliated to take a look at the 66 books collected over millennia, and edited by both saints and sinners, to give us a library of spiritual reflection, and yes, inspiration, called The Bible.
So keep reading, and let me know how the Spirit moves you…
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's got a few things to say about the Bible as it is. Tell him what you're curious about at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack77 on Threads or Bluesky.
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