Hello everybody! My name is Noah Brandt and I am a junior here at Butler. I’m a Music Industry Studies and Statistics dual major. I’m taking this class to fulfill the TI requirement of Butler’s Core Curriculum, but the Bible does have relevancy to some of my family. I was hoping that this class would be mainly about applying biblical texts to the modern world.
To me, the Bible is a compilation of stories and anecdotes from Jesus and his disciples. These stories outline a moral and spiritual code for people to live by in order to create a peaceful and accountable society.
I don’t know much about the Bible. I was mainly told what was in the Bible when I was little (in a church preschool) rather than reading the passages myself. Outside of the few times I went to a Christian after-school program, the Bible never had a personal connection with me. I believe that most of what is written in the Bible are compilations of writings from different authors who followed Jesus. The Bible that we know today is assembled from different translations and interpretations of these authors.
When I Googled, “What is in the Bible,” I got a lot of Wikipedia articles, YouTube videos, blog posts, and religiously affiliated websites. With all of these different sources about one book, I can understand how it can be difficult to find reliable sources about a given topic in the Bible.