I truly appreciate you 
I’m talking to you who take the time to read my posts and to consider them. I know you don’t have to. And I know you may disagree. And this makes me appreciate you even more!
In this post below, I’d like to give some strong evidence showing how Evangelical Christianity’s definition and understanding of “biblical inspiration” has some holes in it, and then, what would be a more accurate understanding and definition of biblical inspiration
First, have you ever walked into the room in the middle of a conversation and realized you missed something significant?
Well, when you and I read the 4 gospels, along with the rest of the New Testament, and more than anything, the book of Revelation, and then take what we’ve read and “piece it together” like a puzzle by trying to interpret what it says, we’re actually walking in the room in the middle of a conversation.
This is because there is a history “behind” the things Jesus taught in the gospels, in Paul’s letters, and so on.
And the problem you and I have is that we were taught that the missing pieces of the conversation must be in the Old Testament. So then if we thoroughly study our Old Testament, we’ll understand the background to the New Testament. But this is not the case. Yet, we will discover the “foundation” to the conversation but not the “developments” that occurred over time and that are NOT IN our Old Testament.
You see, Evangelical Christianity’s understanding of biblical inspiration is that God spoke in the Old Testament, went silent, then opened His mouth again beginning in the gospel of Matthew.
That understanding of inspiration is 100% inaccurate.
And because we were only given an Old Testament and a New Testament with a giant gap in between, we are not understanding our New Testament (at times and in places).
As Dr Michael Heiser pointed out, inspiration is not an “event” in time but instead it’s a “process.” And what he meant is that there is a whole lot we’re missing and a whole history we’re ignorant of that occurred in order for our New Testament to become the New Testament.
The biggest misunderstanding about the Bible is that for centuries Christian’s have been trained to think of it like a book that floated down from Heaven.
But the moment you carefully analyze the Bible, you quickly discover holes. You begin to recognize you’re walking in the room in the middle of a conversation. And I’m saying the only way to fill in those holes is to study the intertestamental period, or as some call it, Second Temple Judaism.
All our unanswered questions about difficult passages are found there.
Next, our misunderstanding about the Bible is that we believe the authors knew more than they really did.
Put bluntly, and bear with me, but it’s “impossible” for salvation to be based on hearing and believing the Gospel UNLESS the world is really no larger than the kingdom of first century Roman rule.
Meaning that if Paul was correct when he said in his last letter before his death (2 Timothy) that all Gentiles have heard the gospel, then the Great Commission was fulfilled in the first century, and Jesus returned as promised, and everything is finished, and you and I are figments of our imagination.
However, if the world was larger than was known in the first century, and if there were other cultures around the world, then the belief that salvation was based on believing the gospel, but people were living and dying every day around the world before the gospel ever arrived to them, then we have a serious misunderstanding about salvation. Or, God is cruel and unjust and doesn’t give equal opportunity to those who could not have heard the gospel by the time Paul died.
In other words, our New Testament was “limited to” human knowledge about the world. Meaning biblical inspiration does not require a divine mind behind the words.
Everything in our Bible was written by humans who used their minds and who wrote based on their historical context. Meaning “our” definition of biblical inspiration doesn’t match the realities of what we find within the Bible.
I’d like to use the book of Revelation as the greatest example of this.
You and I lack the background to the book of Revelation. Meaning that the book of Revelation uses pictures and ideas that came out of Jewish developments and new interpretations of Old Testament passages that “grew” during those years not included in our Bible.
Yet, John says Jesus’ angel is showing him these things. But again, this fits perfectly with Second Temple Judaism and how divine beings revealed hidden mysteries of heaven. First Enoch is a perfect example. But supposedly there were a lot of these writings of “mystery trips” to heaven prior to our New Testament.
So, the book of Revelation and it’s Heavenly judgments and 1000 yr reign, and Messiah “Son of Man” imagery was a big part of the Quran community known as the Essenes, where the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered.
And here is my point to all of this: God never stopped people from writing things in the Bible. God never “intervened” to correct an authors lack of knowledge. God never stopped the authors from writing from their heart and experience. God never supernaturally imposed His will upon the writing of the Bible.
Instead, God “used” humans to communicate based on limited knowledge and within a specific worldview and cultural context in history.
Meaning, the Bible is “given by God” but not “written by God.”
Lastly, this means that our New Testament is limited to time and culture, and does not apply universally. Meaning, the gospel message is irrelevant unless you’re in a culture that has received it. Therefore, please reconsider the concepts of Hell, the idea of universal sin making someone guilty or judged for not knowing the gospel, and the reality of a God who was aware that there have always been people living on the other side of the world.
I hope you’ll reconsider the Evangelical version of biblical inspiration.
Aletheia: Truth in the Darkness 