Comments on: Tract #38: Should Christians Read the Bible? http://www.iamanatheist.com/blog/2009/10/18/tract-38-should-christians-read-the-bible/ Discussions of religion and ethics from an atheist perspective Mon, 06 May 2013 16:01:50 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.5.1 By: Zach http://www.iamanatheist.com/blog/2009/10/18/tract-38-should-christians-read-the-bible/comment-page-1/#comment-583 Zach Wed, 21 Oct 2009 19:32:22 +0000 http://www.iamanatheist.com/blog/?p=1338#comment-583 There are many Christians who would say that belief in a divinely-written/inspired Bible is not a requirement for Christianity. There are also many who would doubt the validity of the Old Testament, at least when it is taken in the literal sense. And although you could still mention passages in the New Testament that jar with the traditional view of God/Jesus/Christianity, — like Jesus killing a fig tree because it didn’t have any figs for him, or like how many of the early Christians believed Jesus would come back in their lifetime — compared to the Old Testament, the New Testament is much easier to understand in today’s context.

That’s not to say that Christians shouldn’t read the Bible, but if you take out the validity of the Old Testament and believe that the Bible was written by men and not by God, both of which many Christians do, reading the Bible becomes much less of a priority. That being said, those Christians who do believe that the Bible is the literal Word of God have no excuse to read the Bible — in fact, I would go so far as to say that if you believe the Bible is the literal Word of God, you should learn enough Hebrew and Greek (and Latin?) to read them in the original.

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