Timothy Beal Quotes

#1. Indeed, like so many encounters with Jesus in the Gospel stories, we might go to the Bible looking for answers, but we usually come away with more questions.

Timothy Beal

#2. The idea of the Bible as a divine guidebook, a map for getting through the terra incognita of life, is our golden calf. It's a substitute for the wilderness wandering that the life of faith necessarily entails.

Timothy Beal

#3. The Bible appears to be the most revered book never read.

Timothy Beal

#4. Mercy, how we do so often love to immortalize those despised and forgotten in life.

Timothy Beal

#5. Most students don't trust their own insights and questions when they are reading a biblical assignment. They expect that there must be a point, a right reading that they're missing, and that they don't have the authority to suggest any other interpretation.

Timothy Beal

#6. The Bible is not a book of answers but a library of questions.

Timothy Beal

#7. Most scrolls in the ancient world were between twenty and thirty feet long. Much longer and they were hard to handle. In fact, texts were written to accommodate this general standard of length, once again illustrating the inseparability of medium and message.

Timothy Beal

#8. About two-thirds of Americans believe that the Bible "answers all or most of the basic questions of life" - and 28 percent of them admit that they rarely or never read it!

Timothy Beal