How (Not) to Read the Bible: Making Sense of the Anti-women, Anti-science, Pro-violence, Pro-slavery and Other Crazy-Sounding Parts of Scripture

by Dan Kimball

Verse 2 also has an oft-missed message in it. “And the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.” The word we translate in English as “hovering” is the Hebrew word rachaph, which can also be found in Deuteronomy 32:11. It is used in Deuteronomy to refer to an eagle hovering with care over its nest of young birds.

God is saying how he is unlike the other gods. He cares about his people and feeds and protects them like a mother bird hovering over its nest.

Remember, the Israelites were not asking how photosynthesis works or details about the physics of light and darkness. They weren’t wondering how you can have “night” and “day” if these are dependent on the earth’s rotation around the sun.

A surface-level reading of Genesis 1 and the six days often misses the literary-artistic design of the Hebrew text. A closer look reveals a parallel structure in which the first three days of creation parallel the last three days. We catch hints of this framework in Genesis 1:2 when it states, “The earth was formless and empty.” This sets up our expectations for what comes next.

Moses used the word yom to represent twelve hours, twenty-four hours, the creative week, forty days, several months, a lifetime, and eternity. Yom can refer to the way we think of a day, as the twenty-four-hour time period it takes for the earth to rotate on its axis. But then in the next chapter (Genesis 2:2), after we go through the seven days, Moses summarizes all seven days together as a “day.” Clearly, the

word can be used to mean different things, from a twenty-four-hour time period to a much longer period of time.

I’ve talked to several people who were from churches that teach the position that if you don’t hold this view, you are not taking God’s Word seriously. I couldn’t disagree more. It is because we take God’s Word seriously that we put effort into trying to understand the original context, culture, and to whom and why Genesis was originally written. It would be easier to just read these passages as if there is no difference between the time they were written and today, that God was addressing our need for scientific precision, but that would be poor application of the Bible study methods we have learned. We always need to consider the time it was written, to whom, and why. Deeper Bible study is not an excuse to doubt God’s Word. It is simply obeying what the Bible says when it tells each of us to be a worker “who correctly handles the word of truth.”* This means putting some effort into our study and going beyond a surface reading when needed.

I once heard someone object to evolutionary creationism

by saying, “God didn’t create us from a primordial soup!” I’ve thought about that objection, and I find a similar objection could be made to a literal reading of Genesis where it says God created us from dirt (Genesis 2:7). Does it matter whether we came from hard-packed earth or a muddy soup?

What matters is that God is the one who made us. And evolutionary creationism believes God was behind the entire process of creating human beings. This view also holds that God created human beings distinct from other creatures—in his image—so they are different than every...

to them, as we read in Genesis 2:7. But in reading and interpreting this verse, we can accept what it teaches us while still asking if the actual sc...

Even the late evangelist Billy Graham held a similar view when he said, Oh, I don’t think that there’s any conflict at all between science today and the Scriptures. I think that we have misinterpreted the Scriptures many times and we’ve tried to make the Scriptures say things that they weren’t meant to say, and I think we have made a mistake by thinking that the Bible is a scientific book.

The Hebrew word we translate into the English word “rib” is the word tsela. In other passages where tsela or its variants are used it usually is translated into the English word “side.” In the book of Exodus, also written by Moses, the words tselo (a variant) and tselot (plural) are used to refer to the equal “sides” of the ark of the covenant. The word is also used for the “sides” of the altar—in both cases meaning the equal and opposite sides of the object.

it is clear that God was creating Eve here and it is indicating she was half of Adam, an equal half. It is an act imbued with symbolism to communicate that God made Eve to be an equal with Adam—like two parallel sides of the ark of the covenant. Eve is not less than Adam or subordinate to Adam. She is his missing half, a beautiful and equal partner to Adam.

We should read this passage as if through the interpretive lens of the ancient Israelites, considering what they would understand and needed to know at that time.

When God tells the Israelites about creating Adam from the dust of the ground, he is saying he is the creator and all human beings are mortal. They will one day return to nothing but dust. This same language is used hundreds of years later in Psalm 103:13–14, “As a father has compassion on his children, so the LORD has compassion on those who fear him; for he knows how we are formed, he remembers that we are dust.”

This is God’s way of communicating truth to the ancient Israelites, with poetry and symbolism, and not an attempt to explain the creation of human beings through a scientific medical lens.

Eve was created by God in a way that isn’t explained in the scientific detail we might want today. Instead, we are told that Eve was an equal partner to Adam, created in God’s image, and that’s the point God wants us to understand.

The word translated into English as “serpent” is the Hebrew word nachash. Hebrew scholars point out that this word is a triple entendre that just doesn’t translate well into English.

Although we often hear that when Genesis 1:26–27 says, “Let us make humans in our image,” the “us” refers to the Trinity, it’s likely that the “us” is the heavenly council. They are divine beings that God created like a supernatural family before he created his human family. You see these sons of God mentioned in Psalm 82, and they comprise what we see called “the heavenly host” or “heavenly council” in Scripture.

one of these sons of God from the heavenly council in Eden rebelled against God and in the form of a serpent (nachash). Looking at the wordplay of the word “serpent,” we can see that a member of the angelic divine council, in the form of shining serpentine figure, rebelled against God and went to Adam and Eve to convince them also to rebel.

God is using figures of speech to tell us that the serpent, this divine being from God’s council who appeared to Adam and Eve and successfully convinced them to turn away from God, would now be humiliated and disgraced. This being of power was being removed from the position he had once had on God’s council.

Remember, the Bible is easily mocked, but that’s only because we need to learn how (not) to read the Bible. When we pull out verses and fail to put in the time and effort to understand what a verse is trying to say to us, we can come up with some great anti-science Bible memes, but they aren’t what the Bible is actually saying in those verses.

I knew that Christianity was common in the United States, but I had never considered the Bible’s claim that Christianity was the only true religion that could lead you to God. Isn’t this why wars had been fought?

I have a friend who isn’t a Christian and is more agnostic in her beliefs who recently summarized her experience of Christians—with a touch of human sadness. She told me that most Christians have a “my God is the biggest God on the block who can beat up your God” attitude. Is that what we want to be communicating to others?

Are these Bible verses about Jesus being the only way to God about winning a schoolyard battle? When you are face-to-face with someone who is an atheist, Buddhist, Hindu, Muslim, or any non-Christian faith, it’s difficult to defend these verses. I can see why they sound crazy to them.

Here is my point. If you are a Christian, you’ve probably been living like a Yankee in New York City. Christians may engage in internal debates and arguments about minor belief differences or styles of worship in churches. But for the most part, we are still together, on the same side. We believe in one God and know that Jesus is the way to God. But today, all of that is changing. Picture yourself (if you are a Christian) being transported into the middle of India visiting a beautiful family of devout and loving Hindus. You sit down at their dinner table, look them in the eyes, and then tell them that the Bible teaches “Jesus is the only way to God.” It would not be easy. Yet the Bible teaches us that their beliefs are incorrect. It doesn’t matter how you say it, it feels like you are insulting what is sacred and important to them.

“I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”* This is all not very PC. So how do we handle this verse and others that make similar claims? First, we’ll want to “Never Read a Bible Verse” and look at how these verses fit in the broader Bible story. That’s the goal of this chapter.

It’s important to ask why the Bible begins with the idea of one God who created all things. Israel (the original recipients of the book of Genesis) had been living in Egypt for four hundred years, where the cultural norm was to worship all types of gods, including the sun, the Pharaohs, and animal deities.

After humans were expelled from the garden of Eden, the people that God created spread across the globe. We see people who continue to reject God or not seek him and end up believing in other gods, and so we see many of the world religions develop over time. I am including only a selection of the major world faiths to highlight this idea, but the sequence helps to show the progression from the beginning, when human beings believed in the one God who created them. The map in image 14.3 shows the rough area where the story of Adam and Eve was said to take place.

We don’t know exactly where the garden of Eden was in comparison to today’s geography. But somewhere in this area is where we find the earliest human beings who began spreading over the earth.

After Adam and Eve went against God’s guidance and sin entered the world, we see evidence of their distorted thinking (14.4). It happens quickly. There is the first murder, the beginning of a power struggle between men and woman, and we see a world filled with violence. Practices like polygamy and slavery begin. Human beings were not satisfied with knowing the one true God, so they began worshiping other gods they had created in the likeness of the moon or the sun or various animals, and even other human beings. The members of the divine council who rebelled against God were behind these other gods being worshiped.

During this time period, recorded in the early chapters of the Bible in the book of Genesis, we read an account of the tower of Babel (which would be in modern-day Iraq). In this story we see God responding to human pride and rebellion by causing human beings to speak in different languages. Along with this, we read, “So the LORD scattered them from there over all the earth.”* (See image 14.5.) A fascinating thing we learn in Deuteronomy 32:8–9 is that at this incident, God divided the humans by giving them different languages and caused them spread to them out geographically.

While there is no settled understanding of the origin of various languages or how so many diverse languages developed, we do see a pattern of human beings spreading out across the globe and new “religions” developing as they migrate across the land. Some of these belief systems became major world religions and are still practiced today, such as Hinduism which began in India around 1500 BC

Yet even as Hinduism was beginning in India, the one true God had not forgotten his promise to Adam and Eve.

So what else was happening during this time? Well, people were spreading out over the planet, and new religions and faiths were developing. Buddhism, Shintoism, and Taoism in the 500s and 600s BC, for example (14.8 and 14.9).

My goal in this chapter is not to conclusively prove that Jesus is the one true way to know God. My point is simply to show that in our world today there are many different faiths, and they all developed at different times and in different places. One of those faiths is the Christian faith, which developed from Judaism. Christianity has consistently held to the idea, first embraced by the Jewish people, that there is one true God.

Christianity teaches that the world is broken, and this brokenness is our fault. And the only way it can be fixed is through God’s work. It’s a work that only God can do and there are no other options. The biblical teaching is consistent on this point. This is not about the Bible being intolerant or sounding crazy. It’s simply

an ancient story stemming back to the creation, a story of one God who sent one Savior, Jesus, to be the way to relate to him and be in relationship with him.

If there is one key to my home, a place where I am cared for and loved by my family, it isn’t intolerant for me to say there is only one key. There are not many different keys—there is just the one. God made Jesus to be the one key we need to know him, and that has been his consistent position for thousands of years. That’s not being intolerant. It is simply letting the ...

John 14:6 is probably the most common verse that comes up in these discussions. Jesus is speaking, and he says, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” But this is not an arrogant “I am right and you are wrong!” statement. In context, Jesus is speaking to his followers and comforting them.

The heart of Jesus is one of serving others, a heart of humility and not separation or hatred. Jesus isn’t out to hammer people who have other beliefs; he is offering comfort and truth.

N. T. Wright

“Isn’t this the height of arrogance to imagine that Jesus or anyone else was the only way? . . . [But] if you dethrone Jesus, you enthrone something, or someone, else instead.

Jesus is vastly different from anyone else; he is unlike every other religious leader. Yes, he is making it clear there are no other paths to God. But this is done in love and is consistent with God’s purposes from the beginning to restore human beings back to himself through Jesus.

Although human beings may seek other ways to God, Peter is firm in his conviction that Jesus is the only way. The early Christians believed it was so important for people to know Jesus they were willing to be jailed for this belief. They didn’t want to stop telling people the good news that there is a way to God through Jesus.

Some of the visuals try to make the point that if God is “love,” we shouldn’t be seeing so much conflict. This sounds nice, doesn’t it? Who doesn’t want to see “love” as their religion? But what does that really mean?

Christianity often gets a bad rap for being intolerant and believing that Christian beliefs are the only true path to God. But if you look further into most other world faiths, you will find the same thing.

Even if the belief is that “all paths lead to God,” you are suggesting that those who don’t hold that belief are wrong.

Let’s consider the three mountaintops of three different faiths—Hinduism, Christianity, and Islam. As I’ve argued, the different mountaintops, representing the “end” or goal of the path, are quite different. However, at the base level, they may show some similarities. When I teach this, I typically draw out several different mountains and then add a dotted line circling the common areas they share at their base (15.8). These are the concepts, teachings, and ideas that represent the things the different faiths may have in common.