Exploring the Bible with David Winter

Read this extract from the new book by David Winter, the former BBC head of religious affairs and Door columnist who lives near Oxford. If you enjoy it, you can enter our competition to win a free copy. See below for details.

A man and a woman fell into a muddy pit, from which there was no escape. They hollered and hollered for help, but no one came, until at last they heard footsteps. A bearded man looked over the edge. 'Dear me,' he said, 'You've fallen into the pit. Wait a minute, I've got something here that may help you.' He rummaged in a capacious pocket for a while, and then threw a slim book down to them. 'Here, read that.' And then he walked away, leaving them to pick the book out of the mud. Wiping it clean, they read the title: Ten Ways to Avoid Falling Down Pits. Not much help there, then. So they hollered some more.

Eventually, more footsteps approached. The man and woman shouted loudly, 'Help!' Another bearded man looked over the edge of the pit. 'Ah,' he said wisely. 'You've fallen into the pit, I see. Well, I've got news for you. Someone's coming to get you out.' With that he disappeared, but at least he had given them some hope. They sat and waited for this promised rescuer.

And waited, and waited. After what seemed an eternity, there were more footsteps. Again a face appeared at the top of the pit, but a younger one. A ladder was let down and the young man climbed down to stand in the mud alongside them. 'Right,' he said, 'I've come to get you out. Trust me, I know what I'm doing.' With that he grabbed the woman, slung her over his shoulder and carried her up the ladder, coming down to repeat the task with the man. They were profuse in their thanks, but then made to resume their original journey.

'Wait a minute,' said the young man. 'Can't have you falling down any more pits, can we? I'm coming with you for the rest of the journey.' So they set off, the three of them, leaving behind the darkness and slime and heading into what looked attractively like the rising sun.

At this point you may well be asking whether the publishers have got two different manuscripts muddled. On the contrary, that story – which could come from a child's Fireman Sam book, rather than one on reading the Bible – introduces the main argument of this chapter, because, in a kind of cartoon form, it offers a summary of the Bible's 'plot'. And one of the chief reasons people find the Bible a confusing, obscure and even irrelevant book is that they haven't realized that there is a plot, but read it as a disjointed thesaurus of wise sayings, sound advice and preposterous stories. Once you begin to fit the parts into the whole, it emerges as a coherent entity, a book, or collection of books, with something to say, with an argument to put across or a story to tell.

You've only got to open a Bible, or at least riffle through its pages, to see that it's not like most of the books we read. It doesn't have an author, but many authors. It's not one book but sixty-six. And it's almost impossible to put it into any recognizable literary category. Some of it is a chronicle of events. Some of it is poetry. Some of it offers the reader wise sayings, or visions, or prophecies of the future. Some of the books are letters to various people, or groups of people. And four books describe themselves as 'Gospels' or 'Good News'. You may well find yourself asking what sort of a 'book' this one is.

I suspect that many people, knowing the Bible's reputation and influence on world thought, have picked it up and been put off to find that it isn't like other great and influential books, which have an author, a beginning, middle and end, and pursue one consistent line of argument all through. At first – and even second – glance the Bible looks like a hotchpotch, with no plot, no author, and no consistent argument running through its pages. For instance, those embarking on Genesis, its first book, will find a massive change of gear between the first eleven chapters and the twelfth. They might well then pursue a fairly clear chronicle of events until they get to Leviticus and find themselves in what reads like a directory of ritual practices. At this point, many would-be readers of the Bible give up in despair. How do you make sense of a book without argument or plot?

Voices
In fact, as I have tried to show, the Bible does have both an argument and a plot. It tells the story of the human race and its relationship with its creator, but it tells it in many different 'voices': poetry, allegory, narrative, vision and teaching. Because it doesn't have one human author, but many, there is no coherent style; in fact, there is no distinctive language either. To readers of the Bible there may seem to be a common biblical style of language, but that has been created by the translators rather than the original writers. In fact, when people say that they love the 'language' of the Bible, they usually mean that they like the Tudor English of the Authorized Version.

In truth, most of the original authors weren't much bothered about literary polish. They had a story to tell, or an experience to recount, or a vision to describe. As they were setting it down, it would never have occurred to them that one day their words would be incorporated in a large collection of books and published as 'The Bible'.

To win a free copy of Exploring the Bible, answer this question: How many books are there in the Bible?
Send your answers to David Winter competition, The Door, Church House, North Hinksey Lane, Oxford OX2 0NB by 15 September.

Lion is offering readers of The Door the opportunity to buy a copy of 'Making Sense of the Bible' at a special price of £5.99 – £1 saving off the usual price –plus free postage and packing when they order before 31 October 2004. Simply call Marston Book Services on 01235 465511 and quote the special reference code DR01 to be eligible for this reader offer. (N.B. You MUST quote this code in order to be eligible for the special offer price.)