Bible. Big indeed.

[The] four Gospels, even with all the gaps, and after all the influence of transmission, are utterly unique creations, touched everywhere with divine inspiration, and they give us, to be sure, not a biography, but in very truth they give us a person, living, acting, teaching, healing, loving, suffering, dying and living gain, great enough in person and life to guide the world through he ages and to be the revealer of God and man.

I have a profound faith that this literature of the ages, which has been passing through an eclipse in this scientific period, will me back into full sunlight splendor, as readers with highly trained minds come to see it for what it really is rather than viewing it in terms of a traditional theory.
Rufus M. Jones: A call to what is vital, 1948

I've been doing a lot of Bible reading lately - not a specific plan, just looking up the references cited in other books, choosing a few verses at a time. I can see why it's so easily used in so many ways across so many traditions. I was surprised when I became a New England Quaker not to have the Bible be such a strong focus in our meeting. Not disappointing, just surprising. I have attended other meetings where Scripture is oft quoted and I am sure referenced throughout the group weekly.

I'm not sure how I feel about that yet. It was a great relief to find that Rufus Jones was such a supporter of Bible study - as were so many of the founding Quakers. Perhaps some of that was the historical context of the time, and how Scripture played a role in the lives of those they were reaching to and encountering. And yet, it seems that even those first Quakers saw the Bible as a friendly record of the direct experiences of Presence that had gone before. Thus, for an old book with much controversy, for Friends it does seem pretty relevant, even today.

I'm currently reading Who On Earth Was Jesus?: The Modern Quest for the Jesus of History with great interest. It's quite slow going, as I seem to have forgotten all my Bible history form college days. I'm not so concerned right now with the spiritual revelations - it's all about finding a historical context. This book will be used in January for a Quaker studies course that I hope to take. Interesting discussions will hopefully come from that!

The Light Within ... is, of course, not a substitute for history the slow verification of truth by historical process; nor is it a substitute for Scripture, the loftiest literary expression of religious experience. There is no "substitute" for either of those ways of divine revelation. No one who neglects the unfolding of the will and purpose of God in history and in Scripture can ever make up for this neglect by stressing his claim to be the recipient of private revelation. No one can break the organic connection with the spiritual movements of the past, and confine himself to his thin channel of supplies, without suffering loss. But at the same time, it is clear, on the basis of the Quaker faith, that Scripture cannot be thought of as the one source of truth and revelation, the one and only word of God. It takes its place rather as a pattern of spiritual literature, rich with the experience of saintly human lives and raised by unmistakable inspiration to an incomparable religious value.
Rufus M. Jones: An interpretation of Quakerism