Skip to main content Skip to search Skip to header Skip to footer

Your Questions & Answers

Following the example set by the question-and-answer columns in the early Journals, when Mary Baker Eddy was Editor, this column will respond to general queries from Journal readers with responses from Journal readers. You’ll find information at the end of the column about how to submit questions. Readers are also encouraged to go to Charpter III of Miscellaneous Writings 1883–1896, by Mary Baker Eddy — “Questions and Answers.”

Isn’t the Bible just a collection of stories that have been embellished over the years so the original stories are lost?

From the November 2011 issue of The Christian Science Journal


Isn’t the Bible just a collection of stories that have been embellished over the course of hundreds of years so the original stories are lost? Why do we not also hold Kiplings’s Just So Stories in as high regard? The stories are just as fantasized as the Bible stories.
 — A participant at the 2010 Portland, Oregon, Youth Summit

A. This is a great historical question, one that every sincere Bible student asks. I think I would say that the answer to your first question is yes. 

I don’t think the original intent of the stories is at all lost, however. While they have been redacted, edited, and perhaps, as you say, “embellished” over the centuries, this in no way diminishes their primary purpose. These stories continue to be great instruments of teaching, building a moral foundation for humankind and providing wise insights on how we can all live together in peace.

Sign up for unlimited access

You've accessed 1 piece of free Journal content

Subscribe

Subscription aid available

 Try free

No card required

More In This Issue / November 2011

concord-web-promo-graphic

Explore Concord—see where it takes you.

Search the Bible and Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures