Chapter 15
ANCESTRAL MESSAGES
Scripture may be human documents that point toward something real.
15.1 The Dilemma
How should we read sacred texts?
For centuries, the dominant answer was simple: scripture is the Word of God, dictated or directly inspired, true in every detail. The Bible records history accurately. Its laws come from divine command. Its prophecies predict the future. To doubt scripture is to doubt God.
This view—call it literalism—faces serious problems.
The problems are well known. Genesis describes creation in six days; geology and biology show Earth is billions of years old and life evolved over eons. The flood narrative describes a global deluge; there’s no geological evidence for it. The conquest of Canaan describes cities destroyed that archaeology shows were uninhabited at the time. Internal contradictions appear throughout—different numbers, different sequences, different theologies side by side.
Literalism responds in various ways: the days of creation were “ages,” not literal days; the flood was regional, not global; archaeology is incomplete or wrong; apparent contradictions dissolve under careful reading. These responses have varying plausibility, but they share a defensive posture—constantly explaining away difficulties rather than engaging them honestly.
The alternative seems equally problematic.
If scripture is merely human—just ancient literature, no more authoritative than Homer or the Epic of Gilgamesh—then what’s left? Why read it differently than any other old book? Why build communities around it, organize life by its rhythms, treat it as sacred?
This is the dilemma: literal divine dictation seems untenable, but mere human literature seems to lose what makes scripture matter.
But the dilemma is false. There’s a third option.
15.2 The Third Way
What if scripture is fully human and genuinely revelatory?
Here’s the idea. Human beings, across cultures and centuries, have encountered… something. Call it the sacred, the transcendent, the ground of being, the divine. These encounters were real—not hallucinations or inventions, but genuine contact with a dimension of reality that exceeds ordinary experience.
But the encounters were also filtered. The humans who had them were products of their time and place. They described what they experienced using the concepts, categories, and language available to them. A Mesopotamian described encountering the divine in Mesopotamian terms. An ancient Israelite used Israelite terms. A medieval mystic used medieval terms.
The encounters were real. The descriptions were human.
This means scripture is exactly what we’d expect if finite humans encountered an infinite reality: partial, culturally conditioned, sometimes contradictory, but pointing at something genuine. The pointing matters even if the pointer is imperfect.
Consider an analogy. Imagine people from different cultures seeing the ocean for the first time. One describes it as a great serpent. Another calls it the tears of the gods. A third says it’s infinite water stretching to the world’s edge. Their descriptions differ—and all are inadequate to the reality—but all are responding to something real. The ocean exists. The descriptions are human attempts to articulate the encounter.
Scripture, on this reading, is the accumulated record of humanity’s encounters with the divine. Genesis isn’t a science textbook; it’s an ancient people’s attempt to articulate why existence exists and what humans are. The Psalms aren’t factual claims; they’re human cries toward the transcendent—praise, lament, longing, gratitude. The prophets aren’t fortune-tellers; they’re voices articulating what faithfulness requires in times of crisis.
The texts are human all the way down. But what they’re responding to isn’t merely human.
15.3 Reading Wisely
How do we read scripture if we take this approach?
Expect human limitations. The authors lived in pre-scientific cultures. They believed the sky was a solid dome, the earth was flat, diseases were caused by spirits. When they describe the world, they describe it as they understood it. We don’t need to share their cosmology to learn from their wisdom.
Look for the encounter, not just the description. Behind the cultural clothing, ask: what experience is being articulated? What was the author trying to convey about the relationship between humans and the sacred? The description may be dated; the encounter may be timeless.
Allow for development. Scripture spans centuries. Ideas evolve. The God of early Israelite texts is a tribal deity among others; by Isaiah, there’s only one God who governs all nations. This development isn’t embarrassing—it’s what we’d expect as understanding deepens over generations.
Read with tradition. Scripture doesn’t interpret itself. Every community reads through a tradition—assumptions, practices, accumulated wisdom about what texts mean. Reading with tradition means taking seriously how communities have understood texts over centuries while remaining open to fresh insight.
Read critically. Tradition isn’t infallible. Communities have used scripture to justify slavery, oppression, violence. Critical reading asks: does this interpretation reflect the deepest values of the tradition, or does it betray them? Scripture can be read against itself—prophetic ideals used to critique institutional failures.
Read charitably. Ancient texts deserve the same charity we’d give to any human communication. Assume the authors were doing their best to articulate something real. When a text seems crude or offensive, ask whether we’re missing context, missing nuance, missing the point.
Let difficulty remain. Some texts are genuinely troubling—commands to genocide, celebrations of violence, laws that seem unjust. The honest reader doesn’t explain these away but sits with them. Perhaps they reflect the limitations of their authors. Perhaps they preserve something we no longer understand. Perhaps they’re simply wrong. Scripture can contain errors and still contain wisdom.
This approach isn’t easy. It requires judgment—distinguishing the timeless from the dated, the essential from the cultural, the pointing from the pointer. It doesn’t give simple answers. But it takes the texts seriously without pretending they’re something they’re not.
15.4 What Remains True
Strip away the cosmology. Set aside the factual errors. Acknowledge the cultural limitations. What’s left?
More than you might expect.
The diagnosis of the human condition. Scripture describes humans as creatures who are finite but reach for the infinite, who are prone to self-deception, who build systems of meaning that can become idolatrous. This diagnosis doesn’t depend on ancient cosmology. It’s visible in any newspaper, any therapy session, any honest self-examination.
The encounter with transcendence. The Psalms articulate experiences of awe, dependence, gratitude, and longing that remain recognizable across millennia. “The heavens declare the glory of God”—the cosmology is dated, but the experience of standing under stars and feeling something vast and sacred isn’t.
The prophetic tradition. Isaiah, Amos, Micah—the prophets insisted that ritual without justice is worthless, that God cares more about how we treat the poor than how precisely we perform sacrifices. This critique of empty religion remains as urgent as ever.
The wisdom tradition. Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Job—these texts grapple with how to live, what matters, how to face mortality. Ecclesiastes’s “vanity of vanities, all is vanity” speaks to anyone who has watched achievements turn to dust. Job’s confrontation with suffering remains unsurpassed as an honest engagement with the problem of evil.
The narrative of liberation. Exodus tells of slaves who were freed, who received a new identity and a new law. Whether the events happened as described, the narrative has shaped moral consciousness for millennia. Every liberation movement has drawn on it.
The intimation of resurrection. The New Testament’s central claim—that death is not final, that life triumphs over death—can be read literally or metaphorically. Either way, it articulates a hope that has sustained millions through suffering and loss.
These aren’t scientific claims that can be tested in laboratories. They’re not historical facts that can be verified by archaeology. They’re something else: accumulated wisdom about what it means to be human in relationship to the sacred.
The wisdom survives the death of literalism. Scripture remains worth reading—not because every word is factually true, but because the whole, read rightly, points toward truths that exceed facts.
The ancestors were trying to tell us something. They used the language they had. Our job is to hear what they were pointing at, not to mistake the pointer for the moon.