"The Bible Tells Me So?"

One of the choruses imprinted in my brain from my Sunday School years in a small church in Pennsylvania is "Jesus loves me this I know, for the bible tells me so."  I belted it out with my friends singing as off key as the lady playing the piano.  We sang with conviction for our parents on a tiny stage beneath such a low ceiling adults could bang their heads on the water and heating pipes.  I learned, when questioned about my beliefs, to reply "the bible tells me so."

I suspect I am not the only adult wandering around with such imprints.  At the same time I have seen time and time again how this mantra is often based on a blind belief that each word and phrase in our bibles is exactly the words first recorded-possibly directly from the lips of God.  For some, the bible is without error.  As a pastor and a lifelong student of the bible I have come to see how mistranslations have occurred and how they impacted questions of belief.

Since 1958 a group of scholars have been engaged in the Hebrew University Bible Project in Jerusalem.  Their goal is to publish as accurately as possible an authoritative text of the Hebrew Bible (what we Christians call the Old Testament).  Discovering just how fluid the texts were and that the transmission was messy and more human than we may like to believe, progress has been slow.  They have produced 3 of the Hebrew Bible's 24 books in 50 years!

My point?  Maybe we should be more cautious in discussions and proclamations of saying what we know to be true because "the bible tells me so."  While it may be comforting in times of confusion and uncertainty I may well be wrong based on the translation I quote.  Perhaps the faith community and our interaction with the larger society could be better served by a dose of humility and a reluctance to issue Mount Sinai like proclamations-"THE BIBLE TELLS ME SO!"  Maybe it doesn't it!