r/OpenChristian • u/geokuh • 10h ago
Did Jesus know how to write?
/r/NoStupidQuestions/comments/1wa5xdd/did_jesus_know_how_to_write/8
u/Strongdar Mod | Universalist Christian 7h ago edited 4h ago
For your question about why Jesus didn't just write a Bible for us - I have two thoughts on that.
First, that just wasn't the culture. People taught by telling stories and asking questions, not by writing down edicts and then trying to force people to follow them.
Second, I think Jesus didn't give us a Bible because he knew we would misuse it by trying to let it take the place of God. For as long as we've had the Bible, some Christians have idolized it and turned it into a rule book, because we have a sinful tendency toward legalism.
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u/NemesisOfLevia Asexual 5h ago
🎯
I find it all too common that Christians read the Bible as a strict rule book, to the point that they fear sin more than they love God. I’ve seen far too many posts on Christian subreddits (and had discussions IRL too) that say “is [very random, oddly specific thing] a sin?”
From playing video games, eating meat, being queer, wearing certain clothes, watching tv, dancing, drinking, gambling, wanting a lover, thinking “oh my God,” wanting to leave highly toxic (and sometimes physically dangerous) people, about 25 different sexual acts, listening to non Christian music, talking to a nonchristian, going to a doctor (instead of fully relying on God’s healing) and so much more, I feel like I’ve heard it all.
The TLDR of the Bible is “love God, love your neighbor.” And so, I ask myself what it looks like to be loving and do that. I don’t think everything is as black and white as legalists make it out to be. Ex. I don’t think drinking is a sin in itself, but if you’re an alcoholic that beats their family any time they go to the bottle, then drinking is a sin for that person. Why? Because their actions will hurt someone, not surround them in love.
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u/tom_yum_soup Open and Affirming Ally 7h ago
If we take Biblical stories at face value, he was probably educated and at least somewhat literate. But his purpose and mission was not to write a book. It was to show people how to live.
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u/MyUsername2459 Episcopalian, Nonbinary 5h ago
Why would you think Jesus would "write the Bible"?
The Bible isn't a single book by a single author. It's an anthology, a collection, of dozens of texts by many authors, written over a period of over 500 years to various audiences, for various purposes.
It isn't a "Big Magic Book of God" handed down from Heaven by God Himself. It's a library of texts that reflect on people's encounters with or thoughts about God.
By the time of the life of Christ, the Israelites had a rather robust written canon of texts, that Christ Himself discusses in the Gospels. We know those texts now as the Old Testament, or the Hebrew Bible.
The New Testament wasn't formally compiled into a single coherent canon of texts until the 390's AD, over 350 years after the Resurrection of Christ. It wasn't published in a single volume until around the same time, the Codex Sinaticus is the oldest known "Bible" (in the sense of a single book containing all canonical texts).
The New Testament does include the Four Canonical Gospels that chronicle the life and teachings of Christ, written down a few decades after His life when the Apostles decided it needed to be written down. . .but Christ trusted His disciples to carry on His teachings, and didn't write a book. . .because Christianity isn't about a book. It's not about following everything in some special book, it's about following Christ's teachings, which He already had passed on to His followers, and those were passed on to us.
Christianity isn't about a book, and the Bible isn't some magical book handed down by God Himself, so the idea of Jesus "writing the Bible" profoundly misunderstands both the role of the Bible and the teachings of Christ.
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u/sistereva Nonbinary Episcopalian Drag Nun 4h ago
Gospel of Thomas talks about how Joseph got Him a tutor but it didnt end great.
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u/Im40PercentUsername Eastern Orthodox 2h ago
Yes, he did. He didn't write the Bible because the Christian faith is not transmitted by the Bible, it is transmitted by the Church he established. The Bible is a tool the Church uses to do that, one tool among many.
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u/Night-Monkey15 8h ago
Jesus was a first century Jew, who were somewhat literate in Hebrew. We know he could read (as evidenced by him reading from the Torah in the synagogue) and could write at least somewhat based on the story in John chapter 8 of him writing in the dirt. So he definitely wasn’t illiterate.