The Good Book

Perspectives on the historical accuracy of the Bible seem to run from those who don’t buy any of it, to those who find it useful, to those who believe it is the honest-to-goodness, inerrant word of God (but only to be followed in specific instances). There was even that wacky guy who spent a year living by all the rules in the Bible, including not touching anything touched by a woman during “that time,” but whose wife promptly paid him back by touching all the chairs in the house so he had to spend the rest of the year sitting on the floor. With me having grown up in a religious tradition that allows for translation errors and Nick spending his childhood as a “gypsy Christian” never settling anywhere, we are still deciding whether we think all the events of the Bible could have literally occurred or not. We like the book, especially the New Testament with its messages of “be kind to others” and “care more about your own mistakes than those of others.” But the Old Testament is not as warm and fuzzy, is it? When you got in trouble back then, it was serious. Just ask a Babelite or anyone who wasn’t part of Noah’s crew. And don’t even get me started on that whole pillar of salt thing. In the Bendon Press version of Jonah, one guy in particular had some time to think about bad choices. Now that was a time out of biblical proportion.

http://www.amazon.com/Jonah-Bible-Board-Book-4/dp/B001L59SII

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