Scriptural Context Quotes

The Bible is a wonderful book; you can prove anything you want with it.

The principle rule of interpreting Scripture is that Scripture interprets Scripture.

The best description of the Old Testament that I heard was that it starts out as mythology, then it becomes legend, then it becomes history. In the mythological period - there is a distinct mythological period in the Old Testament, where the time spans are impossible and really just imagined.

We do need to be born again, since Jesus said that to a guy named Nicodemus. But if you tell me I have to be born again to enter the Kingdom of God, I can tell you that you have to sell everything you have and give it to the poor, because Jesus said that to one guy, too. But I guess that's why God invented highlighers, so we can highlight the parts we like and ignore the rest.

It appears a bold thing to say so when one sees how much many a modern author who knows how to make a skilful use of the Book of Chronicles has to tell about the tabernacle.

Beginning in the late 18th century, some German scholars began to regard Holy Scripture not as a single revelation but a sequence of inspired texts that occurred in specific times and places and were subject to varied and multiple meanings.

Believe what you want But don't dumb down what Jesus said.

You have to understand that the Bible is really a library of books and it has different categories of material. There are certain parts which you have to say no to. The Bible accepted slavery. St Paul said women should not speak in church at all and there are people who have used that to say women should not be ordained. There are many things that you shouldn't accept.

The spirit of God has the habit of taking the words of Jesus out of their scriptural setting and putting them into the setting of our personal lives.

Yes, I think that when the Bible refers to a horse or a horseman, that's exactly what it means.

But to read all Scripture narratives as if they were eye-witness reports in a modern newspaper, and to ignore the poetic and imaginative form in which they are sometimes couched, would be no less a violation of the canons of evangelical literalism than the allegorizing of the Scholastics was.

I can quote you lots of chapters in verse from the bible that are terrible for women. But you can use the bible to either liberate or subjugate women. And it's the same with the Koran.

What Jerry has done, in a masterful way, is go through and select portions of the Scripture and put words in Jesus' mouth that are legitimate because they already appear in the Bible.

You will find that the Bible, if you want it to, will justify many things. St. Paul had a very male chauvinistic view of women. He would say things like women must not talk in church, must cover their heads, they mustn't talk and must remember that it was a woman who first tempted and this whole mess started because women messed us up. So you can read it in such a way that it justifies polygamy.

Writing 'Judas: The Troubling History of the Renegade Apostle' must have been a difficult task because there are no facts. Judas may quite possibly never have existed at all, and if he did, the Judas kiss may not have happened.

What the Gospels actually said was: don't kill anyone until you are absolutely sure they aren't well connected.

Paul's words are not the Words of God. They are the words of Paul- a vast difference.