Bible Stories Quotes & Sayings

Many people don't realize the extent to which stories influence our behavior and even shape our culture. Think about how Bible stories teach the fundamentals of religion and rules of conduct. Think of the fables and parables that molded your values. Think of how stories about your national, cultural or family history have shaped your attitudes about yourself and others. — Lawrence Shapiro

The Biblical stories are sacred inspiration. — Lailah Gifty Akita

But the fact is that the Bible itself is the grandest of grand stories, yet it prizes truth and reason without being modernist, and it prizes countless stories within its overall story without being postmodern either. In short, the Bible is both rational and experiential, propositional as well as relational, so that genuinely biblical arguments work in any age and with any person. — Os Guinness

I'm a storyteller and the Bible is a bunch of stories about life and things that took place here on planet earth. It's a great example to use and a great reason to be happy about being a storyteller because the lessons of the land are always in stories. — Nas

Just think of what would have happened to poor old Naaman if he had decided to dunk himself only once? — Lawana Blackwell

All the stories of the Bible that I know came to me first from my grandfather's lips. He would see stories in everything. He told stories very easily and very generously, so I loved him for that. He was a simple man, a Victorian; he was born in 1890-something. He saw no reason and had never seen any reason to question his Christian faith. His faith was strong and simple and that's it. And I, like his other grandchildren and the children in his parish, sheltered underneath it. — Philip Pullman

VeggieTales is something that, on paper, makes no sense at all. It is a series of children's videos where limbless, talking vegetables act out Bible stories. Try raising money with that pitch. — Phil Vischer

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

But for my money, and for my understanding of Jung and depth psychology, the stories of the Bible (and all sacred texts and oral traditions) emerged out of the collective unconscious. Paradoxically, this doesn't make them any less valuable. It makes them much more valuable to us, because they reveal to us the nature of being human, which is the purpose of religion.
If religion is about the business of helping us to become human, then these sacred stories are about how to be human. That is what religion is. To me, the idea that these myths welled up out of the collective unconscious is a liberating and empowering realization. I get it now! What a relief! — J. Pittman McGehee

Storytelling? God started that. Discovery. Lust. Murder. Revenge. Power. Sin. Redemption. Forgiveness. Miracles. We simply retell the stories in the language of our generation. — Dennis R. Miller

Want to get your kids to read more? Try making books easily accessible. Put them where kids can easily reach and don't make them off limits. (within reason) — Melanie Kirk

I loved fairy tales when I was a kid. Grimm. The grimmer the better. I loved gruesome gothic tales and, in that respect, I liked Bible stories, because to me they were very gothic. — Amy Tan

They were submerged in wild strawberry hunts, swimming and water skiing, horse rides, sing alongs, and nature walks on miles of trails disappearing into the saintly aspens. Awards hung from cabins' flag poles, and each day ended with camp fire vespers at sunset with Logan's Bible stories and more singing. The exhausted, happy youngsters were packed, day after day, and long into the night, with sugar-coated cereals, candy, soft drinks, and God. — Dianne Kozdrey Bunnell

We have noted thatthe two creation stories contained no pointers toward male "headship" in the sense that men or husbands are supposed to exercise authority or leadership over women or wives. But the audience of Genesis knew that patriarchy was a reality of life. Genesis here tells them how this came to be. Male authority or domination was not God's design but a consequence of a breakdown in relationship between humanity and God, between humanity and the animal world, and between human beings and one another. From now on, the Bible will assume the reality of patriarchy and of male headship, but it begins by noting that this came about only as a result of those various breakdowns of relationship. — John E. Goldingay

Our generation may be able to listen to sermons in a Joseph Campbellish way, treating Bible stories as instructional myths pointing to a deeper communal reality - that is, if we haven't replaced them with Star Wars myths or their equivalent - but don't ask us to believe with our heart and soul. — Gudjon Bergmann

Halloo down there," the voice said. Ziba saw a burly soldier in armor standing at the edge of the cliff. "Are you Israelites?"
"We are," Jonathan said.
"We thought all of the Israelites were still hiding in the caves." Ziba heard others laughing and could tell that they had been drinking. "We have plenty of wine here if you want to come join us. We even have some of your countrymen who are now in our army."
"If we come up there, it will be only to fight and kill you," Jonathan said.
The Philistine laughed. "Well, then, come on up. It's plenty boring up here. Maybe you can liven things up, small as you are."
Jonathan looked at Ziba, who then nodded.
"We'll be right up," Jonathan shouted back. — Glen Robinson

I noticed that some of my deadness was being replaced by an intense feeling about the Greek stories and the Bible stories. They were similar. There was something naked about these stories. Terrible things happened, and then some more terrible things. — Susanna Kaysen

While some dismiss the Bible as a dusty old book, I view its pages as portals to adventure. Not only is the book chock-full of clever plots and compelling stories, but it's laced with historical insights and literary beauty. When I open the Scripture, I imagine myself exploring an ancient kingdom ... With every encounter, I learn something new about their life journeys and am reminded that the Bible is more than a record of the human quest for God: it's the revelation of God's quest for us. - Scouting the Divine — Margaret Feinberg

Intellectual questions and doubts naturally arise when we read Bible stories because to our rational minds they often seem so utterly unbelievable. Perhaps we need a new frame of reference. When we open the Bible we should enter its pages with an attitude of Bring it on! Only then will we see the power of this incredible book. — Ruth A. Tucker

The Bible is not just one book, but an entire library, with stories, songs, poetry, letters and history, as well as literature that might more obviously qualify as 'religious.' — John Drane

I don't know which Bible stories ought to be treated as historically accurate, scientifically provable accounts of facts and which stories are meant to be metaphorical. I don't know if it really matters so long as those stories transform my life. — Rachel Held Evans

The teachings of Jesus begin in story and end in symbol - they begin in parable and end in us. These are not Bible stories that we learn; these are our stories. — Leonard Sweet

The concept of marketing is almost as old as humanity itself ... suffice it to say here that it took almost no time for a wily serpent to sell Adam and Eve on a shiny apple from the Tree of Knowledge, at which point they became not only the first humans but also the first marketing demographic, and God expelled them from the Garden of Eden for being total consumerist dupes. (p. 40) — BikeSnobNYC

When those myths were created, when the Bible was written, man didn't know what an atom or a germ was, or where the sun went at night, or why the women got pregnant. [Laughs.] They needed stories to answer the questions. — Bill Maher

I have come to know a God who has a soft spot for rebels, who recruits people like the adulterer David, the whiner Jeremiah, the traitor Peter, and the human-rights abuser Saul of Tarsus. I have come to know a God whose Son made prodigals the heroes of his stories and the trophies of his ministry. — Philip Yancey

God must love art because most of the Bible is expressed in the form of story or poetry. — Philip Yancey

To me God's voice and inspiration is stronger, of greater importance and authority than that of any fairy or any other spirit like creature from above or below earth. My Spirit Tales are stories based on truth and inspired by His writings.
Stories about YHWH and His great wonderful acts are definitely not fairytales but Spirit Tales. — Sipporah Joseph

Perhaps if I knew I would be stranded on an island with but one book, I would choose the Bible. For no religious reason whatsoever, but because of the varieties of stories, which might be useful as the days pass. — Edward P. Jones

The first syndicating I tried was when two partners and I created a production company in 1952. We wanted to syndicate famous Bible stories and sell them for $25 a show. — Casey Kasem

There's a lot of great stories and a lot of great values in the Holy Bible, and I actually relate to a lot of them. The character, the idea, or the part of my personality that I describe as Antichrist Superstar, is a lot like Lucifer in the Bible. Someone who was kicked out of heaven because he wanted to be God — Marilyn Manson

I've always said there are four words that every child in the world knows, and those are, "Tell me a story,." Even the people who wrote the Bible knew that. They told stories, like the story of Noah. — Don Hewitt

The Rough Beast snorted. "You don't get it at all, buddy. It's not about wrestling. It's about stories. We're storytellers."
Caperton studied him. "Somebody at my job just said that."
"It's true! You have to be able to tell the story to get people on board for anything. A soft drink, a suck sesh, elective surgery, gardening, even your thing
public space? I prefer private space, but that's cool. Anyway, nobody cares about anything if there isn't a story attached. Ask the team that wrote the Bible. Ask Vincent Allan Poe."
"But doesn't it seem kind of creepy?" Caperton said. "All of us just going around calling ourselves storytellers?"
The Rough Beast shrugged. "Well, you can be negative. That's the easy way out. — Sam Lipsyte

The Bible just said 'Thou shalt not kill', then told hundreds of stories of people killing each other and becoming heroes, like David with Goliath. — John Marsden

Your body is the ground and metaphor of your life, the expression of your existence. It is your Bible, your encyclopedia, your life story. Everything that happens to you is stored and reflected in your body. In the marriage of flesh and spirit divorce is impossible. — Gabrielle Roth

Back when the Bible was written, then edited, then rewritten, then rewritten, then re-edited, then translated from dead languages, then re-translated, then edited, then rewritten, then given to kings for them to take their favorite parts, then rewritten, then re-rewritten, then translated again, then given to the pope for him to approve, then rewritten, then edited again, the re-re-re-re-rewritten again ... all based on stories that were told orally 30 to 90 years AFTER they happened.. to people who didnt know how to write ... so ... — David Cross

I think my books give people a language to have a conversation about God that's not religious. There isn't enough new literature that brings the conversation of God into a modern context. I love the Bible, but in the West we've analyzed it until it fits into a structure of control. We need more new stories. We need different ways of looking at things, and I think it's coming. — William P. Young

I think the Bible is largely an amazing and beautiful book of fictional stories from which we can glean the most wholesome lessons about how to treat one another decently. — Nick Offerman

Many Christians say that they get their morality from the Bible, but this cannot be true because as holy books go the Bible is possibly the most unhelpful guide ever written for determining right from wrong. It's chock-full of bizarre stories about dysfunctional families, advice about how to beat your slaves, how to kill your headstrong kids, how to sell your virgin daughters, and other clearly outdated practices that most cultures gave up centuries ago. — Michael Shermer

Perhaps the most remarkable thing I found about the Bible was how flexible it is. Here we have a book written 3,000 years ago, with bizarre stories, peculiar laws, erratic deity, and yet we are able - through argument, selective reading, and desire - to find a powerful framework of laws and moral reasoning that have built a very successful society. So this Bible, for all its oddities and flaws, serves us beautifully after all these years. — David Plotz

The story line of the Bible is the story line of God taking the initiative in seeking out a people who are His very own. — Alistair Begg

What makes the Bible God's Word isn't its uncanny historical accuracy, as some insist, but the sacred experiences these stories point to, beyond the words themselves. Watching these ancient pilgrims work through their faith, even wrestling with how they did that, models for us our own journeys of seeking to know God better and commune with him more deeply. — Peter Enns

God created philosophy for all the intellects that got bored of hearing the same bible stories every Sunday. — Shannon L. Alder

The Book of Revelation is the strangest book in the Bible, and the most controversial. Instead of stories and moral teaching, it offers only visions - dreams and nightmares, the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, earthquakes, plagues and war. — Elaine Pagels

The Bible is filled with intriguing stories about complex and flawed human beings who ponder immense moral questions and engage in colossal clashes with evil. — David Harsanyi

There were no oceans on Oasis, no large bodies of water, and presumably no fish.
He wondered whether this would cause comprehension problems when it came to certain crucial fish-related Bible stories. There were so many of those: Jonah and the whale, the miracle of the loaves and the fishes, the Galilean disciples being fishermen, the whole 'fishers of men' analogy . . . the bit in Matthew 13 about the kingdom of heaven being like a net cast into the sea, gathering fish of every kind . . . Even in the opening chapter of Genesis, the first animals God made were sea creatures. How much of the Bible would he have to give up as untranslatable? — Michel Faber

I sang the hymns, and I read the Bible stories, but I was always perplexed, like, 'Really? Jesus wants you for a sunbeam? For a what?' — Neil Peart

I'm not sure if the Bible is a real book written by God or just a collection of stories for people who need help putting their hearts back together, but it's comforting, and I try not to think about it. — Shaun David Hutchinson

I really think the Bible is a baseline where all stories come from. All of the zillion stories in the Bible provide inspiration for everything. — Emmanuelle Chriqui

There is no way that you can read the entire Bible seriously and take every word literally. Contradictions start in the first chapter of Genesis. There are two Creation stories, two stories of the making of Adam and Eve. And that is all right. The Bible is still true. — Madeleine L'Engle

All the stories and poems and letters and oracles and wisdom verses of God's Word, like individual instruments in a great orchestra, serve THE WHOLE story. — James MacDonald

I did my holy communion, and it was amazing how quickly the stories of the Bible and God and Jesus got under my skin. — Joel Edgerton

The reason for our confusion is that we usually read the Bible as a series of disconnected stories, each with a "moral" for how we should live our lives. It is not. Rather, it comprises a single story, telling us how the human race got into its present condition, and how God through Jesus Christ has come and will come to put things right. — Timothy Keller

I've often taken important classical, biblical or literary stories and interrogated them. I have tried to reinvigorate Lot by interpreting it differently. — Howard Barker

Think about how much of your Bible, Old and New Testaments, is in the form not of doctrinal statements but of stories. Statements declare doctrinal truth; stories illustrate doctrinal truth. Doctrinal statements are like skeletons - bare bones, but absolutely essential to give form and order and interconnection to the body of revealed truth. Stories flesh out that skeleton, incarnate that truth, demonstrate how the doctrine looks and moves and acts in the real world of flesh and blood. — Layton Talbert

Cramming the stories of Israel into a modern mold of history writing not only makes the Bible look like utter nonsense; it also obscures what the Bible models for us about our own spiritual journey. On that journey, what matters most is not simply where we've been - the triumphs or the tragedies - but where we are with God now in the moment. All great spiritual leaders will tell us that living in the moment is key to vibrant communion with God. The now is where God's presence is found, where neither past memories nor the future with its idle speculations dominates. — Peter Enns

It's no longer enough to teach our children Bible stories; they need doctrine and apologetics. — William Lane Craig

We can no longer assume that our preaching takes place within a more or less 'Christian culture,' " Craig Loscalzo says. "The great narratives of Judeo-Christian belief, the pivotal stories of the Bible's characters, the epoch of the life and ministry of Jesus Christ, either are not known or do not carry the meaning-making significance they did to previous generations. — Graham M. Johnston

I grew up in the church, and I always kind of knew Bible stories and knew the Sunday school answers, but when I was a freshman in high school I joined youth group, and that's when I started to see radical love; that's when I started to see what Christian community is supposed to look like and what fellowship is supposed to look like. — Jeremy Lin

God sent His Prince, Jesus, into rebel territory to conquer evil and free us to be true citizens of the Kingdom again ... That's the essential story we find in the Bible, and it's the essential story at the heart of each of our lives. And that's what all good fantasy stories have at their core, whether or not it's a conscious theme. — Sarah Arthur

I believe we find imaginative satisfaction in stories that end with weddings because we live in a world that will end with a wedding. The Bible tells the story of history, a story that is mysteriously 'built into' the structure of our minds and practices, so that even writers who resist this story cannot help but leave traces of it - faint and distorted as they may be - on every page. — Peter J. Leithart

I know about lots of things that have nothing to do with being Asian, that you would never guess from looking at me. I know all about musical theater. I could go on 'Jeopardy!' and knock off the whole Broadway show tunes category. Also the whole Bible stories category. — B. D. Wong

The fact that our traditional method of extracting doctrine from Scripture does not work well on narrative does not mean that Bible stories do not send clear messages. Instead, it suggests that the way we apply our traditional method of interpretation is inadequate because we are ignoring too much of God's Word. — Craig S. Keener

Reading stories forces us to exercise our empathy and imagination muscles, and that helps us conceive what the Bible depicts or demands, helps us connect with others, helps us illustrate what the text teaches, and helps us apply the text's truths. — James M. Hamilton

One of the core ideas of the Bible is that meaning can be found in history. The sheer act of telling and retelling stories helps us to understand God's role in the world as well as our own position in a long line of ancestors who have wrestled with similar issues to the ones we wrestle with every day. — Bruce Feiler

I was reading The Bible a lot through my 20s, mostly the Old Testament, just because I was knocked out by the language and the stories. I felt that the God being talked about there, who was this insane, vindictive patriarch - it was kind of thrilling, and titillated something in me at the time. — Nick Cave

It is true to say that I was nurtured on Bible stories but mostly concerned with sacrifice. If by some mischance I did, or said, anything which my father regarded as improper, he would say: 'Do not grieve the Lord by behaving so.' And if I suggested that I wanted to go somewhere, or meet somebody, he would say: 'It will not please the Lord.' — John George Haigh

The Bible is endlessly interesting because it is God's story, and God by nature is himself endlessly interesting. The Bible is an ever-flowing fountain. The more you read it, the more you find its truth and beauty to be inexhaustible. — D. A. Carson

The Scriptures contain many stories of people who waited years or even decades before the Lord's promises came to pass. What modern believers can learn from the patience of biblical saints like Abraham, Joseph, David, and Paul is that waiting upon the Lord has eternal rewards. — Charles Stanley

Teacher: "If your daughter knew her spelling words as well as her Bible stories she'd get into Harvard." Me: "I'll settle for Heaven." — Mark Hart

You believe in a book that has talking animals, wizards, witches, demons, sticks turning into snakes, food falling from the sky, people walking on water, and all sorts of magical, absurd and primitive stories, and you say that we are the ones that need help? — Dan Barker

I was raised in the church by my grandmother who made sure we went to Sunday School, read the Bible and went to church every Sunday. Every night we read Bible stories before we went to bed. — Torii Hunter

One of the main reasons is that most Sunday school curricula only teaches disconnected Bible stories. They don't teach how we know the Bible is true, how to defend the faith, and how to answer the skeptical questions of today. — Ken Ham

The Bible is man in a nutshell. Good and evil live side by side in the same book. That's why it's cherished. The good find in it encouragement, the weak solace, the evil, justification. — Bangambiki Habyarimana

In telling these stories of our Nation's past, however, let's not be so zealous in correcting liberal historians that we create our own historical revisionism. If the Founding Fathers were alive today, some of them would not want to go to the typical Evangelical church. Some were influenced by the pagan Enlightenment, as well as the Protestant Reformation. one historical figure (not a Founding Father) who's been misrepresented in our quest to find Christian heroes is Johnny Appleseed. He's routinely pictured as a nice man who went around scattering apple seeds everywhere and toting a Bible under his arm. The fact is, Johnny Appleseed was a missionary for Swedenbogrism, a spiritist cult. This cult taught many false doctrines and claimed that the writings of the Apostle Paul had no place in the Bible. When a child hears that Johnny Appleseed is a 'godly hero' and then discovers that he was in fact a cult member, what will he logically conclude about everything he's been taught? — Gregg Harris

The Bible is not a script for a funeral service, but it is the record of God always bringing life where we expected to find death. Everywhere it is the story of resurrection. — Eugene H. Peterson

What I love about the Bible is that it's a group of stories but it's all telling one main story. It's about Jesus Christ. The story is not about me. That takes a lot of the pressure off me, but it also puts the responsibility on me to point people to who the true story is about. — Matt Diaz

The ark was like a portable computer hard drive and Noah was a one-man Geek Squad, and he dumped God's most important files onto it before he zorched the virus-ridden computer that was the world. — BikeSnobNYC

The bible must be seen in a cultural context. It didn't just happen. These stories are retreads. But, tell a Christian that
No, No! What makes it doubly sad is that they hardly know the book, much less its origins. — Isaac Asimov

Using only nonnarrative portions of the Bible to interpret narrative is not only disrespectful to the narrative portions but also suggests a misguided approach to nonnarrative parts of the Bible. — Craig S. Keener

It is properly said that the Devil can "quote Scripture to his purpose." The Bible is full of so many stories of contradictory moral purpose that every generation can find scriptural justification for nearly any action it proposes - from incest, slavery, and mass murder to the most refined love, courage, and self-sacrifice. And this moral multiple personality disorder is hardly restricted to Judaism and Christianity. You can find it deep within Islam, the Hindu tradition, indeed nearly all the world's religions. Perhaps then it is not so much scientists as people who are morally ambiguous. It — Carl Sagan

Life is a mixture of experiences - some sweet and some bitter. The Bible abounds in examples and stories of people, and it tells us that without faith we can never please God. We must learn how to trust Him, and trust is developed in private, but it's always shown up in difficult experiences we have in life. So difficulties are an opportunity for us to grow because they reveal our heart condition. — Mike Connell

The Bible is to me the most precious thing in the world just because it tells me the story of Jesus. — George MacDonald

For in that perfect garden when one day entered sin,
An animal was murdered for garments made of skin.
When figs of human effort produced religious strife,
The Father tailored clothing for Adam and his wife. — Joyce Rachelle

You don't know me from the wind
you never will, you never did
I'm the little jew who wrote the Bible.
I've seen the nations rise and fall
I've heard their stories, heard them all
but love's the only engine of survival. — Leonard Cohen

I am truly amazed that after all this time, religious groups still need to attack entertainment and use these tragedies as a pitiful excuse for their own self-serving publicity. In response to their protests, I will provide a show where I balance my songs with a wholesome Bible reading. This way, fans will not only hear my so-called, violent point of view, but we can also examine the virtues of wonderful 'Christian' stories of disease, murder, adultery, suicide and child sacrifice. Now that seems like 'entertainment' to me. — Marilyn Manson

Thus I came ... to a deep religiosity, which, however, reached an abrupt end at the age of 12. Through the reading of popular scientific books I soon reached a conviction that much in the stories of the Bible could not be true ... Suspicion against every kind of authority grew out of this experience ... an attitude which has never left me. — Albert Einstein

...it occurred to me that maybe Samson's hair wasn't the source of his strength; maybe it was the symbol of his strength. And maybe when Delilah cut off his hair, he didn't lose his power because he lost his hair; he just woke up the next morning and looked in the mirror, and suddenly for the life of him couldn't remember who he was. — Sarah Thebarge

Why do the greatest miracle stories seem to come from mission fields, either overseas or among the destitute here at home (the Teen Challenge outreach to drug addicts, for example)? Because the need is there. Christians are taking their sound doctrine and extending it to lives in chaos, which is what God has called us all to do. Without this extension of compassion it is all too easy for Bible teachers and authors to grow haughty. We become proud of what we know. We are so impressed with our doctrinal orderliness that we become intellectually arrogant. We have the rules and theories all figured out while the rest of the world is befuddled and confused about God's truth ... poor souls. — Jim Cymbala

I do think students in public school (and private) should be required to study the Bible. As a matter of pure education, it's shocking that we [the americans] are not compelled to learn the book, which is the source of our language, our common stories, our political structure, our conflicts. — David Plotz

How many bible stories start out with Watcha? Huh? I guarantee not many.-Chapter 1 of A Harbinger's Tale — Dale W. Reierson

Meanwhile, I continued my academic work in religious studies, delving back into the Bible not as an unquestioning believer but as an inquisitive scholar. No longer chained to the assumption that the stories I read were literally true, I became aware of a more meaningful truth in the text, a truth intentionally detached from the exigencies of history. Ironically, the more I learned about the life of the historical Jesus, the turbulent world in which he lived, and the brutality of the Roman occupation that he defied, the more I was drawn to him. Indeed, the Jewish peasant and revolutionary who challenged the rule of the most powerful empire the world had ever known and lost became so much more real to me than the detached, unearthly being I had been introduced to in church. Today, I can confidently say — Reza Aslan

You can point to the alleged miracles of the Bible, or any other religious text, but they are nothing but old stories fabricated by man and then exaggerated over time. — Dan Brown

Life is a daring adventure or nothing. — Helen Keller

No story is more beautiful than the Gospel, even though it is a story full of pain and nails and hate and blood and sin and murder and betrayal and forsakenness and unimaginable agony and death. It is the story of what happens to the most beautiful thing, Perfect Love, when it enters our world: it comes to a Cross, to the crossroad between good and evil. All our most beautiful stories are like the Gospel: they are tragedies first, and then comedies; they are crosses and then crowns. They are crosses because they are conflicts between good and evil. That is the fundamental plot of every great story. To say "that story is beautiful" means "that story resembles the Gospel." If you are bored by the Gospel, that puts no black eye on the Gospel, but on you. Most likely, it means you have never listened to it. You must have heard it, but hearing is far from the same thing as listening ... — Peter Kreeft

Whenever we read the obscene stories, the voluptuous debaucheries, the cruel and torturous executions, the unrelenting vindictiveness, with which more than half the Bible is filled, it would be more consistent that we called it the word of a demon, than the word of God. It is a history of wickedness, that has served to corrupt and brutalize mankind; and, for my part, I sincerely detest it, as I detest everything that is cruel. — Thomas Paine

it is worth asking what standards we can reasonably expect of the Bible, seeing that it is an ancient Near Eastern document and not a modern one. Are the early stories in the Old Testament to be judged on the basis of standards of modern historical inquiry and scientific precision, things that ancient peoples were not at all aware of? Is it not likely that God would have allowed his word to come to the ancient Israelites according to standards they understood, or are modern standards of truth and error so universal that we should expect premodern cultures to have made use of them? — Peter Enns

If you just read Joseph Campbell, who has written amazing books on mythology and religion, they all do come together at some point. There are some of the greatest stories that there have ever been in the Bible. All you have to do is read the book of Maccabi, it's like a film script. — Mel Gibson

And for Christians, the gospel has always been the lens through which Israel's stories are read - which means, for Christians, Jesus, not the Bible, has the final word. The story of God's people has moved on, and so must we. — Peter Enns

Kindness is not something you are born with; it's a way in which you choose to be. — Lisa Kaye Presley

After Jesus showed up, the Old Testament basically became a way for Bible publishers to keep their word count up.
Of course, just because Jesus replaces the Old Testament doesn't mean that you should necessarily skip it. That would be like skipping Batman and Robin just because the story starts over in Batman Begins. The important thing to realize is that both the old and new stories are about an all-powerful being trying to rid the world of evildoers, only in the new one The Batman can eat pork. — Stephen Colbert