The Bible in a Spiritual Perspective

Konrad Dietzfelbinger

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The Bible

in a Spiritual Perspective

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Published by Herbert Horn, 2020.

Translated and edited by Herbert Horn from the second expanded edition of Die Bibel in spiritueller Sicht

© 2016 Königsdorfer Verlag, 82549 Königsdorf, Germany

www.koenigsdorfer-verlag.de

koenigsdorfer-verlag@web.de

English translation © 2020 Herbert Horn, Chatham, NY 12037 USA. All rights reserved.

Scripture quotations marked (NRSV) are from New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright © 1989 National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

Scripture quotations marked (LEB) are from the Lexham English Bible. Copyright 2012 Logos Bible Software. Lexham is a registered trademark of Logos Bible Software.

Scripture quotations marked (KJV) are from the King James Version Bible.

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Cover Picture: Alo Altripp, Work-Nr. A73/81 V Easter Sunday

I. Introduction

A. A First Look at the Bible

If modern readers of novels for the first time open a Bible, such as the King James Version – and in our Christian, but largely secularized culture, there are countless people who have never opened a Bible – they would find that the Bible is a book in two parts, the Old Testament and the New Testament, the first with about 700–1000 pages, the latter about 200–300 pages. Both parts are divided into larger sections, so-called books. The New American Bible further subdivides the Old Testament into Pentateuch, The Historical Books, The Wisdom Books, and The Prophetic Books. The Old Testament contains thirty-nine such books and an additional fourteen so-called apocryphal books (their number varies according to denomination; in Orthodox and Catholic Bibles, some actually belong to the normal canon); the New Testament contains twenty-seven books.

Further research would teach the readers that the texts of the Old Testament were written down approximately between 950 BC and 150 BC and the texts of the New Testament between AD 35 and 130. They would at first assume that the texts were written by the authors whose names are in the titles of the books. But they would learn that in the Old Testament, at most some passages in the prophets come from the prophets themselves. In the New Testament, only some of the Pauline letters were definitely authored by Paul himself, and the texts listed under the name of Luke were really written by Paul’s companion Luke. The authors of all the other writings are not or not clearly identifiable.

Even more helpless, the readers would be faced with the much-discussed question of the so-called canon, that is, why just these texts are included in the Old or New Testament. Innumerable other religious texts were written in the same period alongside the Old and New Testament scriptures – and they are not included in the Bible. In addition, the readers hopelessly gets entangled in the problem of the extent to which the texts are authentic and to what extent they are fake, whereby the concept of authenticity or falsification is also unclear.

Finally beginning with their reading, the readers would discover that the Old Testament first describes the creation of the world and of human beings by God, who is first called Elohim in the Hebrew, later Yahweh, and then describes the fate of the first humans. But these reports are in no way compatible with the readers’ scientific worldview. Then, the Old Testament deals with the story of a people called Israel, its origins in Chaldea, its stay in Egypt, its forty years of migration through the wilderness, its entry into Canaan, today’s Palestine, its confrontation with the peoples living there, its life in a single kingdom, then in the two kingdoms of Judah and Israel, its exile in Babylon, and its return. But this story is often interspersed with fairy-tale-like, miraculous events, and always in the background is the influence of a god, Yahweh, who communicates to certain persons, gives laws, punishes and rewards, and who is the actual point of reference of the events.

Our readers would superficially take the New Testament as the story of a certain Jesus and his disciples, evidently a kind of mystery school. Jesus is portrayed there as a personage who has a special relationship with God, yet is executed as a blasphemer, miraculously revives, and appears to his disciples. Since then, they proclaim him as God’s Son upon whom the well-being and woe of the world depends. The stories of the New Testament also play in a dimension of the miraculous, with the greatest miracle being the resurrection of Jesus.

Interesting stories, remarkable miracles – this Bible is a beautiful historical novel, it seems to them. In further investigations, meanwhile, they learn from theologians and priests that these stories and miracles are supposed to be of vital significance for them, two to three thousand years later. They should believe that Jesus is God’s Son, had died for them, the reader, and their sins, had overcome death, and had risen. Jesus will raise them from the dead on the last day – to blessedness, if they believe in Jesus and obey his commandments, to damnation if they do not believe. God’s plan of salvation with humanity is hidden behind the story of Jesus. The Old Testament is the report about the initiation of this plan of salvation.

Inquisitive readers wonder: They are supposed to be redeemed by events, some of which were miraculous, that occurred in Palestine two to three thousand years ago? And only if they consider them as true and recognize their meaning? They look around: In fact, hundreds of millions of Christians apparently believe them to be true in a literal sense. The Bible is for them a document of these events and statements of faith. It is distributed by the hundreds of millionfold, among Catholic laity, priests, and members of religious orders, among the members of hundreds of Protestant churches, denominations, and sects, among the many Orthodox churches, yes, also among Mormons, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and spiritualists. It is a world bestseller, translated into hundreds of languages, repeatedly commented on, discussed, and depicted in works of art – but still controversial.

Many reject the Bible precisely because of its miraculous dimension and precisely because the churches demand a belief in dogmas that are incomprehensible to the mind. For many, the God of the Bible is unacceptable because of the seeming inhumanity (already in the early days of Christianity, it was debated whether the Old Testament of the Jews should even be adopted as scripture by Christianity).

For many theologians too – whether they express it or not – Jesus is by no means the bodily Son of God, in no way arose bodily from the dead, and salvation does not remotely follow the acceptance of these dogmas as true. In their view, the Bible must be purged of such myths, which are only inventions of people bound to an archaic world view. It is only possible to accept the ethical example of Jesus, possibly even a supernatural reality, God, and the guidance of the human being and humanity by them.

But if our readers abandon the attitude of reading a novel and deal more intensively with the biblical texts, they could discover that the texts themselves demand to be read neither as only historical reports nor as novel-like events of salvific significance. Rather, they are the representation of timelessly valid laws of development for the human being and humanity. They are spiritual texts. Their stories and miracles express soul-spiritual realities. In this view, the history of the people of Israel becomes exemplary for the story of every single person who attains a responsible ego in face of the passions and desires, which are symbolized by foreign peoples and idols. The story of Jesus becomes an exemplary development that can become actual for every human being: After the construction of a responsible ego comes the development of the true, spiritual self, which is present in germinal form in human beings and which is embodied by Jesus. The true self arises when the ego dissolves or dies in it. This is salvation, that is, redemption of the true self of the human being, and the New Testament describes the laws of this path of salvation, which is exemplary, timelessly valid, and replicable by every human being.

This spiritual view of the Bible has existed through the centuries alongside the official ecclesiastical doctrine, if only in a kind of shadowy existence. The Church Father Origen, who was first branded as heretic and today is slowly being rehabilitated, Meister Eckhart, Jakob Böhme, and the Kabbalists were familiar with this view. Spirituality, however, is the essence of the Bible. Its texts are documents of spiritual experiences. Its miracles are expressions of spiritual processes, which would be difficult to portray differently than pictorially. The Bible does not need to be demythologized; its myths need only to be read and understood on the spiritual level. Then, it reveals its true nature. Then, numerous objections of its opponents become obsolete since they are directed only against a dogmatic interpretation and do not recognize the actual character of the Bible at all. Then, many adherents of the Bible who sense its true value but harbored secret doubts because of incomprehensible dogmas will gain firm spiritual ground under their feet.

In today’s situation of the most diverse attitudes to the Bible, it is in the first place necessary to reveal its spiritual character and its actual value. From there, the issues of the canon, the genesis of the texts, their authenticity or falsification, which are hotly debated again and again in present times, can be dealt with appropriately. Therefore, in the following, a spiritual interpretation of the Bible will be given first, which, of course, can only be done in outline and with some examples. But this forms the key with which a Bible reader studying independently could gain further insights. Once this foundation has been laid, the questions of text formation, forgeries, canon, and the relation between the Bible, theology, and the church through the centuries can be dealt with in a meaningful way.

B. The Bible as Scripture

The Bible, from the Greek word biblion, meaning book, is the holy book or holy scripture of Christianity. Almost all of its texts themselves require a spiritual interpretation that establishes a direct relation to the reader’s life and world experience. An overarching context connects all the separate writings into a unity. It is the context of the soul-spiritual development of humanity, exemplified and represented by and in a people, and at the same time the soul-spiritual development of each individual. This context makes the Bible a holy scripture, for a spiritual view of the world and spiritual experiences that are perceived as holy are expressed in it.

1. Spiritual Worldview

According to these experiences, the world was not created accidentally from a big bang. Rather, the world and all beings in it have emerged from the spirit, are maintained by the spirit, and are urged by the spirit towards their developmental goal. This spirit is intelligent order, energy, and consciousness. It is Word, life, and light as expressed in the Gospel