“Most of us hear the word ‘scripture’ without stumbling over it. Using it, we give the impression, even to ourselves . . . that we know what scripture is. On reflection, it turns out that it is hardly the case.”

This quote, from Wilfred Cantwell Smith’s book What is Scripture?, is extremely relevant to conversations about scripture taking place right now.

As of this week, Bart Erhman’s book, Misquoting Jesus, is #7 on the New York Times Best Sellers list for fiction. Erhman challenges the belief that the Bible is a divinely inspired book. In scripture he sees evidence of human fallibility and church politics. Erhman began his career as an evangelical scholar, but he has come to regard his earlier faith in the inspiration of the Bible as misguided. In his best selling book, Erhman discounts both the authenticity of existing manuscripts and the inspiration of the original writers.

On a more popular note, Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code is #1 for fiction on the New York Times Best Sellers list. I am convinced that too many of my students and your friends are actually having their views of the Bible formed more by this exciting and fun novel than anything else right now. The novel revises history and claims that since Constantine upgraded Jesus’ status to deity (in 325 AD at the Council of Nicea), he needed to rewrite the history books. So, he financed a new Bible, which omitted the gospels that spoke of Jesus as just a man and played up the gospel that make him appear divine. According to the novel, there is clear evidence that the modern Bible we read today was compiled and edited by men who possessed a political agenda—to promote the divinity of the man Jesus Christ and use His influence to solidify their own power base.

Both Erhman’s Misquoting Jesus and Brown’s The Da Vinci Code are examples of the academic and popular conversations taking place regarding the nature, reliability, and authority of scripture. But they are not the final word in the conversation. There are other voices.

Christian Theologies of Scripture, my new edited volume, is one of the other voices along with many others. This book trace what major theologians in the Christian tradition have said about scripture and describes their unique contributions to the lingering and overarching question: What is scripture? It reminds us that we do not need to start over with our thoughts on scripture because we have so much in the past 2000 years on which to lean. The theologians of the tradition have given us categories and a vocabulary to use, concepts to ponder, and conversations and thoughts about scripture that we should continue. We can stand on the shoulders of these giants in our contemporary conversations about scripture, but we need to know what they said.

While Bart Erhman and Dan Brown have suspicious and critical theories about how Jesus and the Bible relate, the Christian tradition has been negotiating this relationship from its very beginning. The designation of Christianity as a “religion of the book” is certainly congruent with the fact that Christians believe the Bible to be an indispensable, reliable, and authoritative means of knowing about Jesus. But Jesus is not just the main person in one of many events in the story of God’s people. Jesus is the final revelation of the fact that God has a story, a drama of redemption. According to the Christian tradition, Jesus is God’s ultimate word about human life and the Bible is God’s word about God’s self-revelation through human life.

There is a good chance you will be engaging in conversations about the reliability, authority, and nature of scripture…so be ready for it. Misquoting Jesus and The Da Vinci Code probably shouldn’t have the final word in these conversations.