session.
Questions 1-3 draw upon some of the basic questions that historical criticism asks. Questions 4-6
begin to move beyond the text to the increasingly digitally-savvy target audience, especially
questions 5 and 6. I realize that these last two questions are but a start in the complicated process
of trying to bring the truths of the Bible to the byte generation. But a start must be made
somewhere!
So what is the Bible? Is it the 66 books of Old and New Testaments sandwiched between a black
leather cover? Is it the words that we read in the English text? Is it the original Hebrew and
Greek words in the text? Is it the remembering of the oral sayings that lay behind many of the
texts and passing them down from generation to generation? Is it the original words as spoken by
Jesus, or by Abraham, Moses, or the prophets? Is the Bible the active Word of God that the
people of God have held in their hearts for generations? Or is it all of these things and more? The
fact is this: the Bible is the Word of God, and remains the Word of God, whether it is
communicated in oral, written or digital form. This, indeed, is the mystery of the divine
inspiration and authority of the Bible.
Furthermore, reviewing the history of Bible interpretation, even briefly, clearly shows us that the
Word of God prevails over the technological changes of history. This fact should give us great
hope that the Church will be able to meet the new challenges of the byte generations of the
twenty-first century. For whether it was Moses writing down the Torah for the first time for a
newly freed Hebrew people now wandering in the wilderness, or the new generations of Diaspora
Jews after the Captivity who needed interpretations to help them reconnect with the faith of their
fathers, or the Christians of Luthers day who desperately needed to read the text for themselves
in order to throw off the tyranny of the Roman church--in like manner the Church in the future
will rise to this latest technological challenge. Guided, as always, by the Holy Spirit, the people
of the byte will also discover culturally appropriate ways of "rightly dividing the Word of Truth"
that will make sense of the Bible for them and for their generations.
In the final analysis the new Bible as byte paradigm will force Bible interpreters to rethink the
entire purpose of the Bible down through the centuries: a form--both oral and written--that
God used to communicate His truth to each new generation. Seen in that light, technology is but
a means to an end; God uses technology for the continuing communication of His truth. As a
result, the storytellers of the past were replaced by the writers and readers of the scrolls because
that is where technology had taken the next generations. The content of the message was still
Gods truth, but now in scroll form. In turn, scroll writers and readers were replaced by printers
as the mass-produced book technology gained popularity. But, once again, the uniformly printed
document was still Gods truth. Likewise today the Bible will still continue to be Gods truth
whether in digitized written form on a computer screen or in new digitized video translations.
Whether by the spoken words of the storyteller who had committed Gods truth to memory, or