Hi, I’m Madeline Teal and I’m a freshman here at Butler. I’m a Multilingual major, with emphasis on Spanish, French, and Chinese. I also have an International Business minor. I’m from Atlanta, Indiana, which is a teeny tiny town about forty minutes north of campus. I’m taking this class mostly out of curiosity and cultural context for my Christian faith.
In a general sense, the Bible is a collection of holy writings that create and fuel the Christian faith. They contain the Christian narrative on life, all the way from the creation of the world to the early church, and a way of life to keep the faith going beyond that.
To me, the Bible is a really great source of guidance on a lot of questions I have about life. “Who made me this way?” and “What the heck do I do when I feel (fill in the blank)?” are all questions that the Bible can answer for me. I have a clear-cut path that has built-in brothers and sisters to help me along the way.
I have always been taught that the Bible was written by God through his chosen disciples. Much like David, Mary, and other famous “chosen people” of the Bible, it’s unclear why or how he chose them, but I believe that he used them to accurately portray his wishes to man from fellow men. Since then, it has been translated many times and tweaked to fit several cultures or belief systems, but still has largely the same goal.
When you search up “What is a Bible?” on Google, lots of websites, both historically-focused and faith-focused, offer their own explanation. Different denominations are also giving their own truth as to what the Bible means to them. What is considered reliable to one group of people may be different to another, but there are certainly many experts with different types of degrees (secular/religious, historical/modern languages, etc.) ready to help you out. Checking for some sort of consensus is going to be key, with all of the different ideas buzzing around.