Preface

Was the world really created in seven days—or did the writer of Genesis use a literary technique to explain God's order over chaos? Did Moses really write the first five books of the Old Testament, including the lines that speak of his own death? Must a devout reader accept every last word in the Bible as if it were completely without error, even though some parts are obviously literally inaccurate?

These questions and more are analyzed in detail within this book. Every side of each controversy is explained, and answers are developed that can satisfy questioning readers without hazarding their faith.

The book shows how to treat the Bible as literature without degrading its religious message. It unlocks the door to literary techniques used by the authors of the Bible. It shows who those authors were—and who they weren't. It depicts the Bible as timeless literature in spite of dated language, cultural references from another age, and scientific inaccuracies. Above all, it offers a new, old Bible with intellectual depth for all and sacred profundity for believers.

To reach these ends, the book ploughs through the deepest furrows of today's controversies. It shows by example that the Bible is not totally without error, and counsels by analysis that it simply shouldn't matter that it is not. It advises that the Bible's authors may have been inspired by God to create their works. However, it suggests that it would be logically and theologically impossible to believe that works containing obvious error were directly created by a God who used the authors' hands to write.

For the faithful this book offers a rock-solid foundation for 21st century use of the Bible. Imagine a Bible, the most sacred book in a person's library, that can be studied and re-studied as literature from a modern perspective. That is what this book is about—reading the Bible as literature.

The authors combine two powerful tools to re-energize the Bible and strengthen interest in it: literary analysis and moderation. Using this combination, they take the reader step by step through issues of unity, inspiration, inerrancy, creationism, fall and redemption, and similar subjects that bother today's insightful reader. Time after time they conclude that reading the Bible as literature is as instructive and rewarding as reading any other great literary piece. And time after time they show that believers can accept the Bible's scientific anachronisms, inconsistencies of time, unclear authorship, and other warts, with no threat to their faith.

And who are "they"? Dr. Horace Sams is a former pastor, missionary, teacher, and Army chaplain. Colonel Sams holds a Doctor of Ministry Degree, an M.A. in English, and a Ph.D. in English. He has written an unpublished D.Min. dissertation on church state relations, and a Ph.D. dissertation on studies in Milton and Bunyan.

Fred Edwards, Jr. is a retired Marine Corps officer. His credits include three non-fiction books and articles in more than two dozen periodicals. He holds a B.A. in sociology and literature, has completed the Industrial College of the Armed Forces extension program (equivalent to a masters in management), and has taken graduate studies in English.

Both authors have faced realities of life and death on the battlefield. They have seen believers, agnostics, and atheists face imminent death in combat by finding something larger than themselves to sustain them. They have viewed their children and grandchildren daunted by questions of traditional faith that often seem to be unanswerable in today's world. Through all of this they have watched the Bible fade as a resource for strength because it seems by many to be outdated and outclassed by information overload and post-modern principles.

The authors of this book recognize that each of us moving into the 21st century is finding life so technologically different and morality so much more complex than in biblical times that older solutions don't seem to fit. With these problems in mind, they therefore analyzed the Bible in the same way they would analyze any piece of good literature. They discovered that the so-called "outdated" portions of the Bible were not fatally flawed any more than parts of any literary work written in other times or for other peoples. They also discovered that the controversial issues melted and the Bible became as understandable as works by Homer, Shakespeare, Chaucer, Milton, Bunyan, T. S. Eliot, or any other writer of great literature. Of most importance, they discovered that literary analysis restores the Bible as an invaluable source of inspiration. This book contains the core of their findings.