I heard a preacher once who started his sermon by saying: “Take out your Bible and if you don’t have one with you, you can sit next to a Christian.” And even though I thought this comment to be funny at first it became ridiculous the next time I heard it. For me it was the type of joke that works exactly once. That was years ago. But recently I witnessed a Sunday school teacher reminding the children to always bring their Bible using a witty comment about how vital it is that Christians have their Bible always at hand. And that made me thinking.

Before Gutenberg invented the printing press with movable types around 1439 A. D. every copy of every book had to be made by hand. And the Bible was no exception. So in order to have a new Bible someone had to sit down and copy every single word of the Vulgate, the Latin Bible widely used at that time.

My handwriting cannot be considered to be very beautiful. And the constant use of computers and other electronic devices did not work in its favor. And in order to prevent me from losing points in high school I usually re-wrote every test after I was done with it. I was afraid that my teacher couldn’t read my handwriting. So I took time at the end to create a readable version. That is of course time consuming but for some neurological reason I cannot think and write readable simultaneously. Or at least it feels like it. So when I’m thinking and writing, it becomes close to impossible to read it afterwards. I therefore spent quite some time on copying my own stuff. It felt like a necessary waste of time.

For the monks who often spend years of their lives just to reproduce a Bible it was not a waste of time. It was time well spend. Because, I guess, it’s a great way to memorize entire parts of scripture. (I often heard teachers saying that writing and re-writing your notes is a great way to learn for an exam.) And it was the only way to make sure that the Word of God survived. But handwritten books are rare. Handwritten books are expensive. Handwritten books are big. Therefore handwritten books are not for personal use. The only place to find the Bible (or the Torah) was in churches (synagogues, or the temple in Jerusalem). So from the time of Moses, when the people of Israel started to write down their history, all the way to the 15^thcentury (including Jesus’ time) no one had a personal copy of the Bible. Even the kings of Israel let the priests bring the scriptures from the temple. So how did they manage?

1^stdegree knowledge is to know something. 2^nddegree knowledge is to know where it’s written. 3^rddegree knowledge it to know someone who knows where it’s written. And even though I am eternally grateful that Gutenberg invented the printing press and made it possible to have personal Bibles, I am afraid we paid a very high price. Around the time of Jesus it was usual for young boys to learn and memorize big chunks of the Torah. Then the Bible found its way into people’s homes and now you only have to know book, chapter, and verse to look up what you want to know. But if we are honest our knowledge became “It’s somewhere in the Bible. I guess New Testament.” And “I will ask my pastor where I can find it.” That let to wrongfully dangerous convictions like that “god helps those who help themselves” might be a quote from the Bible. (It is in fact ancient Greek philosophy and even contrary to the Bible that teaches that God helps those who cannot help themselves anymore, like widows and orphans.) Or to the conviction that the Old Testament teaches retaliation by saying “an eye for an eye”, when it is actually about the maximum sentence that a court of law can and shall give in a dispute, settling the matter once and for all. “An eye for an eye” is the end of all retaliation not its beginning. The list goes on. And all that happens because we moved from 1^stdegree knowledge about the Bible to 3^rd, 4^th, or even higher degrees. We lost our access to the Word of God because it became too accessible. Having a Bible in your book shelf might make you look educated. But the layer of dust on it makes you look foolish. So be thankful that you can have your own Bible and read it.

But there is another important point. Almost ¾ of church history the Kingdom of God advanced without the help of personal Bibles. And that is simply because it is not about your Bible. Having or not having a Bible does not make you a Christian. Your relationship to God does.

I come from a big family. And when I only count the direct descendants of my grandparents I would come up with over 50 people. Some of which I see on a regular basis. Some almost daily, some every couple of weeks, some once a year. And some I haven’t seen for a decade or more (if ever). But in a way I have a relationship with all of them. That is not the type of relationship God wants and yet too often gets.

God invites us to become his adopted children. His heirs. The Bible in the original Greek New Testament uses the term “sons of God” not “children of God” as modern translations often put it. And I like the original better. For two quite powerful reasons. New translations turn “sons” into “children” because women were offended by the masculine term. Wrongfully though. For the New Testament was written in a patriarchal society. Daughters were next to nothing. Even women from the richest families had no direct political influence. They couldn’t vote or anything. And they could not inherit. And this is where God steps in saying: “I don’t turn men into my rightful sons while women are a mere addition to the workforce. No, I turn men and women alike into my rightful heirs. I stop the awful discrimination of women by making them equal in right and rank to men.” (That teaching made Christianity so popular among women in the Roman Empire.) The other reason I like “sons of God” is, that the term “Son of God” comes with it. Because we are not only becoming part of God’s household making men and women equal. No, we are even made equal with the one true Son of God. That is what He offers us. To be adopted into his family as an heir side by side to His own beloved Son. End even though the Bible can help us in the process it is not vital, for the new life comes from God alone.