Recently, a prominent member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints reached out to me to complain about an article I wrote about the Mormon prophet Joseph Smith, and in particular my quoting Mark Twain’s famous quip that the Book of Mormon is “chloroform in print.” To cite such a quotation, the LDS complainant argued, was insulting to the Book of Mormon, and LDS more broadly.
This got me thinking: would it be insulting to describe the Bible as boring?
Granted, as Catholics, we believe that “God is the author of Sacred Scripture.” Holy Scripture is the inspired word of God, “without error” in teaching the truths of salvation (CCC 105-106). The Old and New Testaments are to be revered and obeyed, their truths so fully integrated into our minds and hearts that, even subconsciously, they guide and direct our daily life. Every experience, every conversation, every prayer, we are exhorted to contemplate in light of Holy Scripture and its unfathomable wisdom.
Of course, many parts of the Bible offer some of the greatest and moving stories ever penned by a human hand. One can read an entire Gospel in a single sitting and find the narrative compelling, inspiring, and even life-changing. Much the same can be said for the Book of Acts and many narrative portions of the Old Testament. 1 Samuel through 2 Chronicles is as fascinating as it is often scandalizing, given the embarrassingly sinful behavior of the people of Israel, including even its greatest hero, David. Moreover, other parts of Scripture—such as Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and the teachings of Christ—present wisdom of unparalleled value, seemingly just as relevant today as it was when first recorded.
Yet as anyone knows who has gone beyond the readings from Mass, not all books and passages of Scripture are equally interesting and engaging. The Pentateuch, also called the Torah (the first five books our Old Testament) is filled with exciting stories and timeless wisdom until you get to Leviticus, where instructions on cereal offerings, burnt offerings, peace offerings, and sin offerings present a challenge to even the most inspired and creative Bible study leader. Even with the best Study Bible and concordance, the prophets can be a bit of a slog. Isaiah comes in at a seemingly interminable sixty-six chapters; Jeremiah hits fifty-two and Ezekiel forty-eight. Undoubtedly, these chapters had an immediate, provocative relevance to their readers. More than 2,500 years removed from those events, it takes real work to ascertain how the cubits allotted to the tribes of Israel teach us something relevant to the twenty-first century.
That doesn’t necessarily mean that certain parts of Scripture are less God-breathed or truthful than others. But because we believe they are also authored by humans, they are also conditioned by their own historical and literary context. And as human persons living within the context of our own historical moment, and separated from the Bible not only by thousands of years, but also language, it’s not surprising that we might feel a certain distance from some parts of Scripture. The intricacies of the ceremonial laws of the Old Testament, for example, seem comparatively less applicable to our decision-making than Jesus’ teachings in the Gospels, or even the words of a popular modern theologian or preacher.
The Westminster Confession of Faith, a confessional document revered by many Protestants (including my own former Presbyterian tradition), declares,
We may be moved and induced by the testimony of the Church to an high and reverend esteem of the Holy Scripture . . . [because of the] heavenliness of the matter, the efficacy of the doctrine the majesty of the style, the consent of all the parts, the scope of the whole (which is, to give all glory to God), the full discovery it makes of the only way of man’s salvation, the many other incomparable excellencies, and the entire perfection thereof, are arguments whereby it doth abundantly evidence itself to be the Word of God.
Although I very much appreciate the default Reformation reverence for the Bible, I confess a certain ambivalence regarding whether we can call these descriptions of Scripture a motive of credibility for its veracity in the same way we define others motives of credibility defined by the Church (CCC 156). Indeed, Protestants certainly don’t view the Catholic deuterocanonical books as satisfying criteria of majesty, coherence, and excellence!
Moreover, any Christian who has engaged in apologetics knows that the descriptions of the Israelites wiping out various peoples in the Levant In Numbers 31; Deuteronomy 7, 20, and 31; and Joshua 6 and 10, among other places, represents a legitimate (but not insurmountable) challenge to Christian teachings about love and mercy, let alone Just War Theory. There’s a reason 1 Samuel 15:3—“Now go and strike Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have; do not spare them, but kill both man and woman, infant and suckling”—is not on anyone’s aspirational wedding-day Mass readings. Such a verse may be true, and it may be inspired by God, but I doubt many would at first blush describe it as “heavenly.”
My point is not to litigate such verses. Rather, the Bible can be boring and morally challenging and still be everything the Church claims it to be. Indeed, we should expect as much, given that the Church understands Scripture as something that is both divinely inspired and human. The human context of Scripture means that as much as God, in his divine providence, is capable of preserving those words from error, there is also an allowance for the very human qualities of the literature. If that’s the case, it means that the Bible can be boring or morally complex from book to book and chapter to chapter. That’s not a criticism of Scripture as much as it is an acknowledgment that it is indeed a historical text describing a chosen if sinful people, and which contains within it many genres of literature written over more than a one-thousand-year period.
I wouldn’t be offended if someone accused Scripture of being boring. Frankly, some of it is! Nor would I be outraged if he accused it of being incoherent or even immoral—unless someone is steeped in the very best biblical apologetics, I can very much appreciate why he might describe it as such!
Yes, I would hope few people could read the opening chapters of Genesis, the Psalms, or the teachings of Christ and not be struck with at least a hint of “high and reverend esteem,” to borrow the language of the Westminster Confession of Faith. Whether all of Scripture easily elicits that same pious wonder . . . well, that’s another matter.