There are a few more aspects to the Bible as a very human book that I want to explore.

 The Church decided what to include in the Bible

Once again, this is a simple but crucial point. Human beings decided what to put in the Bible.

• The early Church circulated and used the writings of the Bible (both Old and New Testament writings) for many years before they were formally accepted by the Church at Councils in the late 4^th century. Most were undisputed though questions persisted (and still persist) about a few. The Bible, therefore, is not set against Tradition or the Church as a separate source of authority in the Christian life, but instead is dependent on the Church and on Tradition.
• The decision about what’s in the Bible is human at every level, from original stories and source documents right through to the collection we now know as ‘The Bible’. Parallel to this, we trust that the Spirit of God has mysteriously inspired and guided this process at every level also.

Thinking about the recorded words of Jesus

When I first came to a lively faith in Jesus, I was a student spending a summer vacation driving an ice cream van in Pennsylvania. (More about that another time!) When I was heading back home to Dublin, the small Bible church I had joined presented me with a red-letter edition of the King James Bible. Meaning that the words of Jesus are in red.

Most Christians probably value Jesus’ teaching more than anything else in the Bible. It was many years later before I began to think about how those words of Jesus made it onto the page.

• Who recorded the encounter between Jesus and the devil in the wilderness? Presumably Jesus told his followers about it, and they told the story to others and eventually someone wrote it down. There are quite a few stories about Jesus where there are no other witnesses.
• Jesus’ long speeches in John’s Gospel are not likely to be verbatim recording of Jesus’ actual words, as if someone was taking shorthand. They are surely a summary of his teaching as understood and prioritised by the authors of that Gospel from personal memory, stories, and source documents.
• It’s obvious that stories about Jesus were told and re-told repeatedly among his early followers. Some may have been written down soon after his death, some much later. I am sure that sometimes we are very close to the actual words of Jesus, and sometimes we are reading a summary very much influenced by the authors of the Gospels. Luke’s Gospel begins by making it clear he has carefully gathered information from stories handed down over the years.
• Writing down and recording the many stories about Jesus was not a concern immediately after his death, but it became vital because a) The people who knew Jesus first-hand were dying out, so their memories had to be gathered and written down and b) the early Christians expected Jesus to return soon and when this didn’t happen it became clear that future generations would need his life and teaching recording.
• What is indisputable is that the four Gospels only contain a small portion of the things done and the words spoken by Jesus in public or to his disciples. The last verse of John’s Gospel says that the world couldn’t contain all the books needed to record everything Jesus did (John 21:25).
• I find this human process immensely freeing when I come to understanding and interpreting the Gospel accounts, and the whole thing is much more credible because the accounts vary a bit, and the details are sometimes hard to reconcile. I’ve never been troubled by such variations. If there were none, I’d be very suspicious of the veracity of the version I had. If a detective hears exactly the same story from every witness, he or she would conclude it was made up!
• The Gospels would be a great deal duller to read if we didn’t have the drama of Jesus’ words. A good story told in an engaging way is important to people wanting to share Jesus.
• This recognition of the human process of reproducing spoken words applies to many other characters and writings, both OT and NT.  

A Vital Accommodation

Accommodation is an everyday word with a very important (theological) meaning for Christians (and other believers in God). God cannot be known unless he reveals himself to us. He is (of course) beyond our understanding. He is divine and we are human, and we can never hope to bridge the gap of understanding. So, God ‘accommodates’ himself to us, and communicates in ways that we can, at least at some level, understand. Not unlike an adult might ‘explain’ complex issues to a young questioning child.

• The Bible uses language to describe God as if he were a human being – awake or asleep, hiding himself from us, becoming angry or being gentle, remembering or forgetting, changing his mind or repenting what he has done. Broken-hearted in his love for his people.
• When we use a word such as ‘Father’ to indicate God, we do not use it in precisely the same way as a human father. The Bible also speaks of God being like a mother. They are important words to help us relate to God, but they have their limitations. God is not male or female. Jesus is recorded (in John chapter 4) as saying that God is Spirit. By scriptural and human tradition, I find myself using ‘he’ to describe God but I mean nothing as regards his ‘gender’.
• The greatest ‘accommodation’ which God makes for us, to make himself known, is taking human flesh in Jesus of Nazareth. This great truth, the Incarnation, is at the heart of Christian faith, transcending the historical incarnation of Christ and including all the ways God communicates meaningfully with us and allows us to talk to him.

The Majesty of God

It’s not just that God is beyond knowing, holy and different to us (despite being “made in his image”). His majesty, his greatness beyond all comprehension, must surely have us kneeling at his feet in humility. Anything we think we understand has this context.

• Psalm 8: When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and stars which you have set in place, what are human beings that you are mindful of them?”
• As Job struggles to understand his suffering, his only answer is the vast and complex magnificence of creation and the impossibility of understanding God’s actions, leading to his acknowledgement: “I spoke of things I did not understand, things too wonderful for me to know.”
• Isaiah (Chapter 55) advises: ‘Seek the Lord while he may be found; call on him while he is near….’ “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,” declares the Lord. “As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts.     … my word … will not return to me empty but will accomplish what I desire and achieve the purpose for which I sent it.”’
• Science today has vastly increased our understanding of this universe which can only add to our sense of wonder. We live on a tiny speck in a mind-blowingly vast universe which might even be one universe in a multiverse. This demands humility from us all. We are so small. So limited on this small, beautiful and fragile planet which seems so big to us. What are human beings that he cares for us?
• Our attempts to understand God and big questions like ‘Why are we here?’, ‘What does it mean?’, ‘What is our destiny?’ and ‘How shall we then live?’ cannot retreat into a glib quoting of chapter and verse in the Bible. But if the Bible is a dynamic record of God-centred historical experience, we set up an encounter which can be lively and honest. But we must never forget that the God who invites us into an intimate relationship to ‘know’ him is magnificent beyond any words.
• Our understanding may be akin to a child learning the physics about, say, light. There is so much to know, and the path towards knowledge will involve learning an unlearning. At ‘A’ level, the student will be told to abandon much of what they learnt for GCSEs. And at university the young physician will again be told that many assumptions in ‘A’ level physics are unreliable, and postgraduate study will see further assumptions questioned or rejected in the pursuit of understanding that is constantly evolving and perhaps ultimately out of reach.
• Again, I think we have a spectrum of truth holding apparent opposites together, as articulated in Graham Kendrick’s wonderful song: ‘Meekness and Majesty’.
• One the one hand, all we can do is bow in awe before the majesty of God, in humility.
• On the other hand, he invites us to know him, to trust him, to join with him and use every gift he has given us to live life to the full.