Rob Bell Quotes

Let us read the Bible without the ill-fitting colored spectacles of theology, just as we read other books, using our judgment and reason. . . .

Theologians always try to turn the Bible into a book without common sense.

Learning to read the Bible in the light of the times in which it was written is critical.

Extremists often derive their inspiration from literal interpretations of texts that should rightly be read not as Associated Press reports from the ancient world, but as theological and literary enterprises requiring independent intellectual assessment.

We must allow the Bible to say what is says, not what we think it ought to say.

I studied scriptural interpretation, which is more about how people get meaning out of texts, looking at stuff in the Old Testament - Muslims, Christians, Jews, different interpretations of the same texts.

Every interpretation is but an introduction to another interpretation, and that is how Talmud pages are printed.

I remember when I heard the words "Biblical criticism" in my town, it was with disdain: "Biblical criticism? How dare you?".

Reading and understanding the Bible involves lots and lots of interpretation. Not just in light of the world and culture around us, but in reference to other parts of the Bible.

The reality is that each movie has got to be seen in its own light.

I've often taken important classical, biblical or literary stories and interrogated them. I have tried to reinvigorate Lot by interpreting it differently.

There are two methods for the literary study of any book - the first being the study of its thought and emotion; the second only that of its workmanship. A student of literature should study some of the Bible from both points of view.

My claim is simply that the literary approach is one necessary way to read and interpret the Bible, an approach that has been unjustifiably neglected. Despite that neglect, the literary approach builds at every turn on what biblical scholars have done to recover the original, intended meaning of the biblical text.

Every generation looks at literature through the lens of their own experience, but with the Bible, everyone gets apprehensive and thinks it'll be too stuffy.

I believe the fast track to atheism is reading the Bible. I've read it three times all the way through. It's a big part of our culture, a big part of our history. I don't just read things I agree with.

No work of history can ever escape its own time...we are all influenced by what we read and what we experience.

Random forays into the history of political language with undue regard for the detail of historical context all too often end up as exercises in self confirmation.

We read the whole Bible, cover to cover, over and over again... It wasn't that we read selective parts of the Bible. It was that we interpreted it in this very selective way.

If you actually read the Bible, you can see there's a whole lot more information in there than the way we interpret the Bible. Because there are single lines in the Bible where if you just take them at face-value, they don't make any sense whatsoever in the world we see, we know, and we understand.

To understand history,' Chacko said, 'we have to go inside and listen to what they're saying. And look at the books and the pictures on the wall. And smell the smells.

Coming to the Bible through commentaries is much like looking at a landscape through garret windows, over which generations of unmolested spiders have spun their webs.

History teaches us that a given view has been abandoned in favor of another by all men, or by all competent men, or perhaps by only the most vocal men; it does not teach us whether the change was sound or whether the rejected view deserved to be rejected. Only an impartial analysis of the view in question, an analysis that is not dazzled by the victory or stunned by the defeat of the adherents of the view concerned - could teach us anything regarding the worth of the view and hence regarding the meaning of the historical change.

There is no rigorous and effective deconstruction without the faithful memory of philosophies and literatures, without the respectful and competent reading of texts of the past, as well as singular works of our own time. Deconstruction is also a certain thinking about tradition and context. Mark Taylor evokes this with great clarity in the course of a remarkable introduction. He reconstitutes a set of premises without which no deconstruction could have seen the light of day.

I was raised pretty much a fundamentalist, but the one thing that fundamentalism gave to me was the love for that book and a commitment to read and study it. The difficulty is that I've read it all, I didn't skip around, I read it all, and when you read it all, you can't take it literally because you don't want to blame God for a lot of stuff that occurs in that book. There are some pretty violent scenes.

Exegesis, exegesis, and yet more exegesis!