1. A Secular Bible?

2. A Paradox
People don’t read the Bible anymore; it is an antiquated ancient set of texts that have little to do with modern life.
The Bible is ubiquitous; its narratives, characters and idioms continue to figure in art, politics, advertising, philosophy, film, literature, and social media.

3. Biblical Illiteracy
Narrative of decline in biblical knowledge; characters, books, facts, stories
“People don’t know the Bible anymore”

4. Biblical Ubiquity Art Music Popular culture Film Advertising
Social media
Politics

5. Secularisation theories
In 1900 most people presumed Britain was a Christian nation
In 2000 most people presumed that Britain was secular and had lost its Christian faith, practice and culture. (Brown, 2006)
20th century as the secularising century for Britain
First century in which weekly churchgoers fell below 10% of the British population
The century in which Christianity lost its dominance of public culture, private morality and the media of the day
Non-Christian religions becoming numerous, challenging dominance of Christianity; Britain as a multi-faith society

6. What is Religion?
Is it a set of beliefs or propositions that people simply “have” or “don’t have”?
Can religion simply disappear or go extinct?
Are religions less indistinguishable than is sometimes assumed from other aspects of public and private life such as culture, tradition, ethics, politics, affect, habit, behaviour, temperament, etc.?
In what ways might (conscious and unconscious) religious biases be embedded in our institutions, histories, attitudes and cultures?

7. What is the Bible? Sacred Scripture, the Word of God
Moral Instruction/Inspiration
Collection of ancient literature
Stories and myths that have become classics
Documents of ancient history

8. Sacred Scripture, the Word of God – free of error, divinely given

9. The Cultural Bible
The Enlightenment

10. Philology
Pedagogy
Literature
History

11. Bible as a Work of Culture
Concept of culture took over all the aspects of the Bible— its literary quality, its pedagogical virtues, its philological exemplarity, and its historical depth, unified these aspects into a “cultural Bible”
Not a transformation that took place against the Biblical tradition, but within it, as scholars, pedagogues, and poets preserved that text that we know as the Bible for a modern age
Influence of this: the familiar sense that the Bible is part of “our” Western culture, a cornerstone of the literary, poetic, moral, and pedagogical values of Western civilization

12. Not a neat tale from sacred text to secular realm?
The Bible has always been adapted and re- adapted?
The Bible not as “pious” and “sacred” as people often think?
How do we designate something as secular and something else as sacred?

13. Ezekiel’s cooking instructions: baking the bread over excrement
‘… you shall eat it as a barley cake, baking it in their sight on human shit. The Lord said, ‘Thus shall the people of Israel eat their bread, unclean, among the nations to which I will drive them.’

14. Challenging the idea of Bible as lofty high culture
Something for Sunday afternoons
An innocuous activity
God not as a Father Christmas type

15. The Bible as Multiple As an Archive of Different Genres, Stories, Ideas
Hooker-heroine: Story of Rahab (Joshua 2:1, 3; 6:17-25; Matthew 1:5; Hebrews 11:31; James 2:25)
Comedy? Paul and Barnabas are mistaken for Greek Gods (Zeus and Hermes) in Acts 14:1-18
Sublime erotic poetry of Song of Songs
Philosophical musings of Ecclesiastes
Apocalyptic and political visions of the book of Daniel and the book of Revelation
The complicated family drama of (threesome) Sarah, Abraham, Hagar (Genesis 16-21)

16. What I hope to have shown is…
… the Bible as a multiple, varied, and ever-adapting archive, rather than a clunky, solid and ancient artefact.