The Bible Tells Me So

Why Defending Scripture Has Made Us Unable To Read It

by PETER ENNS
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My Two-Minute Take
How people understand and relate to the Bible is perhaps ​the
fundamental distinction among Christian communities today.
This is why I believe T
​ he Bible Tells Me So​ is such an important
book.

Peter Enns takes what is a huge, and often confusing, topic–the

Bible–and makes it palitible, pertinent, and enjoyable to explore.

The basic idea Enns wants his reader to know is that the Bible is What’s Inside
the product of an ancient world, written by an ancient people, and
The Bible Doesn’t Behave Like
as such, it doesn’t behave like many might expect it to. A Typical Holy Book
Taking the Bible seriously means
Enns explains that the Bible is not an instruction manual or a
reading it as an ancient text.
cookbook; it doesn’t aim to be that straightforward. No, the Bible
is an ancient library of stories, laws, myths, songs, and letters The Bible Isn’t The Problem
meant to illustrate what a life of faith looks like. Our expectations of the Bible cause
most of our problems with it.
And to best understand these ancient stories, laws, myths, songs,
and letters, we have to take time to understand the people who God Lets His Children Tell
wrote them. Their Stories
Israel’s stories aren’t necessarily a
What was their world like? What questions were they asking? How historical account of something God
did or an event that took place.
did they relate to their God?

Whether you’re a fan of the Bible, you used to be a fan of it, or you
The Bible Is Edited...A Lot
The biblical writers rewrote the past
don’t see what the big deal is, T
​ he Bible Tells Me So​ is a book worth to serve the present.
reading.
The Bible Doesn’t Want To
It was among the first books I read a few years ago when I started
Tell Us What To Do
to explore my own Christian inheritance. In my view, it is The Bible wants to show us what a life
courageous, liberating, and helpful. of faith looks like.

I thoroughly enjoyed reading T

​ he Bible Tells Me So,​ and I Jesus Is Bigger Than The Bible
wholeheartedly recommend it. Jesus was flexible and creative with
the text.

The Bible, As Is, Still Works

An imperfect Bible is perfectly
capable of helping us meet God.

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A Closer Look ​|​ T
​ he Bible Tells Me So
The Bible Tells Me So​ ​| by Peter Enns | © 2014 | HarperOne | 267 Pages
(Summary by Kevin Knox)

The Bible Doesn’t Behave Like A Typical Holy

Book
“Many Christians have been taught that the Bible is Truth downloaded from
heaven, God’s rulebook, a heavenly instructional manual—follow the directions
and out pops a true believer; deviate from the script and God will come crashing
down on you with full force. If anyone challenges this view, the faithful are The Bible doesn’t
taught to “defend the Bible” against these anti-God attacks. Problem solved.
claim to be a ‘perfect’
That is, until you actually read the Bible. Then you see that this rulebook view of collection of
the Bible is like a knockoff Chanel handbag—fine as long as it’s kept at a writings. It never
distance, away from curious and probing eyes. uses words like
What I discovered, and what I want to pass along to you in this book, is that this inerrant, infallible, or
view of the Bible does not come from the Bible but from an anxiety over perfect to describe
protecting the Bible and so regulating the faith of those who read it.” itself.
- Peter Enns (pgs 3-4)

The Bible is an ancient collection of writings written by an obscure tribe of

people living some two-to-four thousand years ago along the eastern
Mediterranean on a plot of land roughly the size of New Jersey.

Often, if not always, the ideas contained within it come from people. As
others have said, “the Bible offers us the words of God through the words of
men.”

In this way, unlike the Koran or the Book of Mormon, the Bible never claims
to be a word-for-word account of something God said.

And if we hope to read the Bible with any integrity, we must remember who
wrote it, when they wrote it, and why writing it like they did may have served
their interests at the time.

Understanding the Bible in this light will solve all sorts of problems people
often have with the text.

Problems like...

If the history of Bible proves historically inauthentic or downright false, it’s

likely the story being told wasn’t meant as history, but was perhaps used like
a myth, to serve its original audience (ancient Israel/Judah) in a particular

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way.

Or when the science of the Bible doesn’t add up, it’s beneficial to remember
that the science of the biblical writers was ancient, lacking the knowledge and
tools we have available to us today.

Reading the Bible demands we understand the people who wrote it–when
they lived, where they lived, what their intentions and desires were at the
time, and how people in general understood God (or gods) at that point in
human history.

The Bible Isn’t The Problem

“I don’t believe God wants us to live our lives wringing our hands over how to
make the Bible behave itself, expending energy 24/7 to make the Bible into
something it’s not, and calling that ‘serving God.’

The problem isn’t the Bible. The problem is coming to the Bible with “The problem is
expectations it’s not set up to bear.
coming to the Bible
If we come to the Bible expecting something like a spiritual owner’s manual with ​expectations​ it’s
complete with handy index, a step-by-step field guide to the life of faith, an not set up to bear.”
absolutely sure answer-book to unlock the mystery of God and the meaning of
life, then conflict and stress follow right behind and, like a leech, find a place in
your heart and soul to latch on.”

- Peter Enns (pg 8)

It can be exhausting trying to get the Bible to work like we want it to. A
step-by-step cookbook it is not.

Instead of throwing the Bible out, though, why not read it for what it is?

Why not shift ​our​ e

​ xpectations​ of the Bible and read it like any other ancient
collection of writings?

We have to ask ancient questions of the text, especially when the stories and
history within it encourage us to do so.

If God does a lot of killing and plaguing, ask why the writer may have placed
God–instead of human beings–behind such actions.

If the story being told doesn’t match up with actual history, ask if the author
had any compelling reason to change the narrative.

And on the occasion that two biblical writers disagree, of which there are
plenty to choose from, ask why a specific writer may have had his own
version of things.

In general when reading the Bible, don’t be afraid to be honest about your
questions, confusions, and even (especially) your doubts.

The Bible can take it.

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God Lets His Children Tell Their Stories
“God killing people, both Israelites and others, isn’t a last-ditch measure of an
otherwise patient deity. It’s the go-to punishment for disobedience. To put a fine
point on it, this God is flat-out terrifying: he comes across as a perennially
hacked-off warrior-god, more Megatron than heavenly Father.

We’re not the first ones to be puzzled and bothered about God’s violence in the
Bible; both Christians and Jews have worked on this issue ever since there’s been
a Bible.
“God ​never​ told the
And hands down, God’s command to slaughter the population of Canaan so the
Israelites to kill the
Israelites can take over the neighborhood strikes most readers as over the top.”
Canaanites. The
- Peter Enns (pg 31)
Israelites believed
“To move forward, we need to look at the Canaanite issue from a different, and
that God told them
perhaps very new, angle. And here it is: God never told the Israelites to kill the
Canaanites. The Israelites believed that God told them to kill the Canaanites.” to kill the

- Peter Enns (pg 54)

Canaanites.”

Most people would agree that genocide is evil and exterminating a nation in
God’s name probably isn’t something God really wanted to happen.

So why does Deuteronomy 20 say God told Israel to do just that–to kill every
Canaanite that breathes–every woman, child, and farm animal?

It’s passages like this one that some Christians use today to justify all sorts of
violence and war. Reading the Bible like a how-to book, some suggest, ‘​If ‘God
did it back then, how could it be so wrong for us to do it today​?’

How do we reconcile this?

When the God of the Bible comes across as an ancient, tribal warlord, it’s
important to remember the nations of Israel and Judah had an ancient, tribal
view of the world.

For them, God ​was​ like an ancient, tribal warlord. It’s, in part, how they
understood the world and how they understood God.

Why is this okay to be included in the Bible, then?

Because God lets his children tell their stories.

God seems okay to operate within the ancient, limited perspectives of the
people who worshiped him.

In this way, Biblical history is less concerned with communicating what

actually happened–getting all the facts straight–and more concerned with
telling the story as people understood it in their time.

Back to God and genocide: at one point, Enns says bluntly, “

​ God never told the
Israelites to kill the Canaanites. The Israelites believed that God told them to kill

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the Canaanites.” (pg 54)

(​In every good book, there are at least a few lines that stand out from the rest. This
sentence from page 54 was it for me. I was on plane when I first read it. I calmly
shut the book. I said out loud, ‘Wow!’ I opened the book again and reread the
sentence​.)

“God never told the Israelites to kill the Canaanites. The Israelites believed that
God told them to kill the Canaanites.” (pg 54)

In the Bible, we see a God who is okay with letting his children tell their
stories.

The Bible Is Edited...A Lot

“To do their thing, storytellers ‘shape’ the past. They decide what to include,
what order to put things in, how to compress or combine scenes to save time and
get the money shot, and so on. They also invent dialogue and scenes to knit the
narrative together. They have to, since much of the past is inaccessible to
storytellers–they themselves weren’t there to see and hear what happened…
“Recalling the past is
Recalling the past is actually never simply a process of remembering but of
creating a narrative out of discrete, imperfect memories (our own or those of actually never simply
others), woven together into a narrative thread that is deeply influenced by how a process of
we see ourselves and our world here and now. remembering but of
All attempts to put the past into words are interpretations of the past, not creating​.”
‘straight history.’ There is no such thing. Anywhere. Including the Bible.”

- Peter Enns (pg 75)

“The Bible contains four Gospels, four stories of Jesus, four very different stories.
So different, in fact, that if you think that they merely report historical facts, get
ready for one massive headache.”

- Peter Enns (pg 78)

The Bible seems to be much more storytelling than it is history writing. See
the gospels as an example.

Matthew and Luke are the only two Gospel writers who take the time to
mention anything about Jesus’ birth. And the stories are different.

In Matthew, King Herod orders the death of all boys around Jesus’ age. This
plotpoint seems to be included to remind us of Pharaoh’s edict to throw male
infants into the Nile in the book of Exodus. Matthew also writes about a star
guiding the Magi to Jesus; this is an obvious allusion to the pillar of fire that
led the Israelites across the Red Sea (a la Moses).

Matthew’s stories of Jesus’ birth are crafted in such a way as to point to

Moses and the exodus story. Matthew wants us to see Jesus as the new Moses.

In Luke’s version of the Christmas story, there’s an angelic announcement of

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Jesus’ birth, which is ‘good news’ and brings ‘peace.’ This echos how the
Romans talked about the birth of Caesar Augustus, the Caesar at Jesus’ birth.

Luke hopes, upon reading his story, Jesus is seen as the rightful king of the
world, not Caesar.

The Old Testament writers are even more creative in their storytelling, often
blatantly editing previous accounts of Israel’s monarchy to get a particular
point across.

For example, 1 & 2 Samuel and 1 & 2 Kings tell one version of Israel’s
monarchy, while 1 & 2 Chronicles cast the same stories in a different light.

In Samuel/Kings, David is a flawed character–an adulterous, murdering, The Bible was

at-times-full-of-himself King–who God says must have nothing to do with originally written
building the temple. in three languages:
In 1 & 2 Chronicles, however, David’s sinful exploits are omitted altogether,
Classical Hebrew,
and not only is there no prohibition from building the temple, David has a
Aramaic, and Greek.
major role in overseeing its construction. It contains 66 books,
from 40 different
Why are these stories so different? Because the different writers were asking
authors, written
and answering different questions.
across a 1500 year
Samuel/Kings was written two hundred years before Chronicles, during the timespan. It includes
period when Israel was in exile in Babylon. The Samuel/Kings writers wanted poetry, prophecy,
to answer questions like, “What did we do to deserve this?” biography, history,
When Chronicles was written, though, the people were no longer in exile and law, myth, parable,
had been back home for some time. The Chronicles writers wanted to answer, and correspondence.
“Are we still the people of God?”

In Samuel/Kings and Chronicles, the Bible showcases two distinctly different

versions of Israel’s history.

This kind of creative storytelling is used throughout the Bible to get across a
multitude of points.

In the Genesis creation accounts, in the telling of the exodus story, in the
common theme of the younger brother receiving favor over the elder, as well
as many other examples, these stories are always linked to Israel’s social,
political, and geographical concerns at the time of their writing.

The Bible, it seems, isn’t afraid to showcase its creative editorial efforts.

The Bible Doesn’t Want To Tell Us What To Do

“Spiritual maturity won’t happen by looking to the Bible as a
one-size-fits-all-how-to-grow-up-Christian instructional manual. We can’t
‘go to the Bible’ for ironed-out answers, or even principles, to many–or most–of
the specific and important decisions we make every second of the day, on the fly.

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 Waiting for the Bible to ‘tell me what to do’ means we’ll either be waiting
forever, in silence, paralyzed about making any decisions, or we’ll wind up
baptizing our bad decisions with a Bible verse that, let’s face it, has about as
much to do with what we’re dealing with at the moment as a Shakespearean
sonnet has for guiding roof repair.”

- Peter Enns (pgs 134-135)

“The Bible, as we’ve already seen, is a story–a story of God’s people on their
long, diverse, up-and-down, spiritual journey; a story written by different
people, under different circumstances, for different reasons, spanning more than
a thousand years.

It was written during times of peace and war, in safety and exile, in Israel’s
youth and chastened adulthood. It’s writers were priests, scribes, and kings,
separated by time, and geography, not to mention Myers-Briggs personality “The Bible, as we’ve
types. already seen, is a
A book like this isn’t going to be a consistent one-size fits-all instructional story​–a story of
manual that tells us–in all our varied circumstances–how to grow into a life of God’s people on
faith. A book like this shows us what a life of faith looks like.” their long, diverse,
- Peter Enns (pg 136) up-and-down,
The God of the Bible seems inconsistent. spiritual journey”
Sometimes he’s all-knowing, other times he’s still figuring things out.

Sometimes he’s un-moveable and decided, other times he changes his mind
after being persuaded.

He gives one command in one place and the exact opposite in another.

No matter how much we want it to, the Bible doesn’t work like an owner’s
manual. See Proverbs 26:4 and Proverbs 26:5 as examples.

Proverbs 26:4: ​“Do not answer fools according to their folly, or you will be a fool
yourself.”

Proverbs 26:5: ​“Answer fools according to their folly, or they will be wise in their
own eyes.”

Here, the Bible isn’t meaning to contradict itself. Although, that would be the
case if the Bible simply wanted to tell us what to do.

No, the Bible is offering us wisdom.

In some circumstances, it’s the right thing n

​ ot​ ​to​ answer a fool in his folly. In
other circumstances, it’s the right thing ​to​ answer the fool.

Wisdom is about thinking on our feet. And thinking on our feet is less
rule-following than it is circumstance navigating.

The Bible wants to show us what a life of faith looks like, not prescribe every

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step we take along the way.

Jesus Is Bigger Than The Bible

“In the Gospels, Jesus quotes and interprets the Bible in ways that might make
some Bible readers today very uncomfortable...He didn’t read the BIble the way
we today might expect him to. He wasn’t bound by the words on the page of his
Bible and what they meant...however strange it might look to us, (this kind of
reading of the Bible) fits right in to the creative approach to handling the Bible
that Jesus shared with his fellow Jews.

And so to understand how Jesus read his Bible we must, once again, leave our
expectations at the door and see Jesus–yes, even Jesus–as a man who was a
full-fledged member of the ancient Jewish world.”

- Peter Enns (pgs 168, 169)

“Jesus often read his Bible in fresh ways that challenged old ways of thinking
about God and what it means to be the people of God. Specifically he often
focused attention on himself, as in he was someone not simply interpreting the
Bible but that he was the Bible’s focus. Jesus did that enough to attract a lot of
negative attention from Jewish teachers and other authorities of Judaism…

Jesus, of all people did not feel bound to follow strictly what the Bible said. Jesus “Jesus, of all people
was no rulebook reader of the Bible. Jesus was bigger than the Bible.” did not feel bound to
- Peter Enns (pgs 170) follow strictly what
The ancient stories recorded in the Old Testament b
​ ecame​ Scripture over the Bible said.”
time, eventually achieving an authoritative status (the Bible).

Jesus was Jewish, and like all Jews of his day, he loved his Bible. That said, like
many Jews of his day, he handled his Bible creatively.

Jesus’ creative handling of the Bible aimed to make sense of this paradox: the
stories and writings within the Bible were static, but the world in which the
Jews found themselves was ever-changing.

Christians today who expect Jesus to read the Bible like they do are conflicted.

Although they enjoy Jesus’ habit of interpreting the text on himself

personally, they can’t get on board with the actual practice that affords him
the ability to do so.

Enns writes, ​“For Jesus, interpreting and respecting Torah meant–when

necessary–not following the script, but being creative and adapting the past to
speak to changing circumstances in the present. And in some cases, like divorce
and oaths, Jesus finds (the Bible) to be inadequate and in need of correction.”​ (pg
182-183)

For Christians, the Bible is God’s nonnegotiable, authoritative word, but it’s

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not God’s final word. Jesus is.

The earliest Christians writers (Paul) arrived at this idea by utilizing this kind
of creative interpretive practice.

Paul helped turn the Bible from a story of Israel centered on Torah into a
story of humanity centered on Jesus.

In the end, the question the Bible wants to answer isn’t ‘How do I get the
Bible right?’ but, ‘How do I get Jesus right?’

The Bible, As Is, Still Works

“The Bible is not, never has been, and never will be the center of the Christian
faith. Even though the Bible (at least in some form) has been ever present since
the beginning of Christianity, it’s not the central focus of the Christian faith. That
position belongs to God, specifically, what God has done in and through Jesus. “The Bible is not,
The Bible is the church’s nonnegotiable partner, but it is not God’s final word: never​ has been, and
Jesus is.
never will be the
Of course, the Bible is what tells us about this Jesus, but that doesn’t put the Bible center of the
in the center. As theologians tell us, the Bible, in various and complex ways,
Christian faith.”
‘bears witness’ to Christ. That is the Bible’s role, to encourage the faithful to live
in its pages in order to look up from the pages and, by the power and love of the
Spirit of God, see Jesus.

The Bible doesn’t say, ‘Look at me!’ It says, ‘Look through me.’ The Bible, if we
are paying attention, decenters itself.”

- Peter Enns (pgs 237)

When read intelligibly, we gain wisdom, courage, encouragement, and hope

from the Bible.

The uneven, strange, and challenging nature of the Bible is the perfect match
for the unevenness, strangeness, and challenging nature of life itself.

Don’t be afraid of the Bible’s complexity; rather, understand what it is and

what it isn’t.

The Bible is a collection of writings meant to help us meet God.

About the Author

Peter Enns is an biblical scholar, theologian, and writer. His books include
Inspiration and Incarnation​, T
​ he Evolution of Adam​, ​The Bible Tells Me So​, and
The Sin of Certainty​. He’s taught at a variety of distinguished institutions
(Westminster, Princeton, Harvard, and Fuller, to name a few). At this writing,

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he serves on the faculty of Eastern University.

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