Continuing with the exploration and reflection through a series of articles written in a conversational language about Catholicism, about God, about Jesus, about the Church and many other faith related topics. Here we present:

Question 42 – Is the Bible dictated by God? 

Christians like to call the contents of the Bible* the ‘Word of God’. They believe that God speaks as it were in the many books that make up the Bible. So Christians believe that the Bible is inspired by God in a unique way. If you want to know the God of Christians better, there is no more reliable scripture imaginable. Yet the Bible is not literally dictated by God, as you can record a message on your smartphone.

Scholars have shown that it took more than a thousand years to write the complete Bible. Numerous people in all sorts of places were involved. What’s special is that only a small part of the texts that have been written by the faithful during all those centuries eventually ended up in the Bible. For example, there were dozens of different gospel books in circulation among the first Christians. Only four of them have been selected: those of which the Christian community gradually began to see that they told the story of Jesus* in the purest and most correct way.

Conversely, you have a book like the Song of Songs that did end up in the Bible. The Song of Songs was originally written as a wedding song. In that short booklet there is no explicit mention of God, just because it is not about him. The Song of Songs poetically describes the experience of the loving desire between man and woman, but in such a way that the believers gradually read it as an image of God’s love for people and of people for God. This is how a non-believing book ended up in the Bible.

– Is the Bible for you a book like any other or does it have something special?
– Are there characters or stories from the Bible that you love especially?

Watch this space! Coming up:   Question 43 – Did everything in the Bible really happen?

Follow these links to go back to previous questions

If you wish to learn more about this resource follow this link  “52 Questions and Answers about faith”

About the author:

Nikolaas Sintobin, SJ, joined the Society of Jesus in 1989, following a short career as a lawyer. He was trained as a Jesuit in Brussels, Paris, and Santiago de Chile. Today he is a spiritual director who is keenly interested in online ministry and discovering new ways to help people find God.

This text is republished with the permission of Messenger Publications, Ireland. To buy a hard copy of the book click here.