What is the Bible and Where did it come from?

Who wrote the Bible?

As a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, I may look at the Bible differently than you. While I consider it to be the greatest literary treasure of Western Civilization and the driving force in the shaping of the English-speaking world, I have studied the path that what would eventually become the King James Version, commissioned in 1604 and published in 1611, traveled, before its official designation and acceptance. Historical data has influenced my thinking.

To begin, we know very little about the authorship of the Old Testament with the exception that it arose over time and in phases. No doubt, its different prophets had different agendas and concerns while working in different cultural frameworks. While it conveys many wonderful and consistent themes, it is also complex and can be the subject of controversy.

Likewise, in the New Testament, which has a much less complicated history, we find discordance between the apostles. For example, the challenge James faced with what he was hearing about the teachings of Paul began when he realized that Paul’s teachings about salvation through faith alone in Jesus Christ, absent performance according to the law, were being interpreted in an oversimplified way that Paul never intended. In his book, James clarified this by writing that true faith always leads to righteous works, meaning our actions and efforts.

In the ensuing centuries however, beginning with Martin Luther, who was attempting to unwind some of the elaborate theology that had overtaken the Roman Church through the doctrines of pilgrimages to holy sites, confession to a priest, penance, indulgences, limbo, purgatory, and transubstantiation, we see that Paul’s teachings were continuing to be distorted through Luther’s development of the doctrine of justification by faith alone.

As their frustrations grew with these works that were purported to save, “The Reformers overcompensated and invented a new doctrine of salvation by grace alone, a doctrine that disavowed all works, even godly works, as a necessary ingredient of salvation. The pendulum merely swung from one heresy to another. As a result of the Reformation, many Christians teach that through the Atonement of Jesus Christ we can be saved by grace alone, regardless of any works on our part” (Callister).

In his misinterpretation of Paul’s teachings, Luther contended that the redemptive work of Christ was finished, that the sinner’s condition does not depend on what he can do today, but on his relationship to what Christ has done. Justified by faith alone, he taught that all that is needed for salvation is to either accept Jesus in your heart or confess him with your lips.

When one looks at the hold this doctrine of justification by faith alone has on the Christian world as well as its mistaken linkage to the doctrine of grace, it is as if a central theme of the Book of James, “Faith without works is dead,” has never been a factor. It is as if Luther was saying, “Well, let’s just throw out the book of James!” Moreover, it undermines the Savior’s continual emphasis of doing and becoming as He constantly emphasized in His sermons. A half-brother to Jesus, and one who was by His side for His entire earthly ministry, there can be no doubt that James understood the Savior’s teachings.

When our Church states, as a matter of doctrine, that “We believe in the Bible, as far as it is translated correctly,” what we mean is that we are not on board with the liberal Protestant tradition of biblical inerrancy. There are too many things that have been lost, too many definitions that have been incorrectly formulated through the interpolations of men, and too many erroneous descriptions of God and His interactions with His children.

Furthermore, as Joseph Smith labored to better understand the Bible, there were the frustrations of working within the limits of language. Thus constrained, he struggled to transmit his feelings into words and wrote, “The little narrow prison almost as it were total darkness of paper, pen, and ink, and a crooked, broken, scattered, and imperfect language.”

Willing to acknowledge the challenge of writing with concise, accurate grammar and diction, and anticipating a future day when all of us will read and understand to the fullness and satisfaction of our immortal souls, the Prophet of the Restoration seemed to say, “I don’t have the full picture. I’m struggling with an imperfect language.”

There are far too many unanswered questions to make everything fit together perfectly. This suggests that the Bible is the repository of numerous accounts, versions, and a library of stories rather than one coherent narrative. Because there is so much to learn about the life before, the Creation, Adam and Eve, the Fall, the Atonement, the true nature of God and man, and the teachings of Jesus, rather than take the position that the Bible is complete and has all the answers, it seems reasonable to be open to further revelation or even scholarship to fill in the gaps.

In accordance with this line of thinking, there is another basic belief to share. Introduced by Joseph Smith in 1842, as one of 13 Articles of Faith of the newly restored Church, it is the doctrine of ongoing revelation: “We believe all that God has revealed, all that He does now reveal, and we believe that He will yet reveal many great and important things pertaining to the Kingdom of God.”

In conclusion, the Bible is a book of inspired discourse. It unites us in our pursuit of understanding ethics and the divine will. The foundation of our Judeo-Christian heritage, it provides a basis for common conversation and community. In its morality lies the safety of society.

Explained by a Jewish writer, “Somewhere on the Temple Mount was the actual temple, but we don’t know exactly where. And so, we take off our shoes and treat the whole Mount with the reverence it deserves. And that’s how I try to approach the scriptures. I know that God’s fingerprints are there.”