The Bible is an amazing work of fiction. I mean that in the nicest possible way. It is an amazing collection of myths and chronologies and moral codes. But it is not historical.

It is a work of fiction. I repeat: it is fiction.

Whether of not particular points of the text (or texts) can be substantiated in some way does not change this. War and Peace relates to real events, no? It is fiction. Johann Faustus was a (or several) real person(s); Goethe's Faust is a work of fiction, however.

I could say the Bible is a pack of lies (which is true), but for the sake of argument, I won't. It is merely fiction. Does that make it un-real? No. A real Bible still sit on my bookshelf collecting dust. A real Bible can still incite people to rape, murder and pillage. Yet, its content(s) can still be fiction.

Certain folks are of the opinion that the Bible is the "inspired word of God" (Grant Jeffrey, for example), and yet others are convinced (including Jeffrey) that the Bible includes so-call "Bible-codes".

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Of course, one problem here is whether or not you are foolish/stupid enough (pardon my clear bias here. Okay, don't pardon it - it was intentional on my part) to believe that the Bible is the inspired word of god, for if you do, you cannot accept it as fiction. Then you have to take it as a historical document and literally true. This, of course, despite the fact that it has undergone numberous translations, but we'll leave it at that. You can take the Bible as the literal word of god, but in so doing, you have to distort the world in a bizarre fashion, and turn numerous other things into fictions just to save your faith.

I'll take the world, thank you. You can have your Bible.