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Articles

Philosophical Reviews of The Bible

Michael Langford responds to Les Reid’s review of the Bible in Issue 99.

It might seem odd to include a book review of the Bible within a magazine devoted to philosophy, but one appears in Philosophy Now Issue 99. On reflection, I hold that there is a case for such a review, and not only on the grounds that that edition centred on God. Both the nature and the status of sacred texts raise a number of issues in philosophy concerning for example, the relation of philosophy to literature (to which at least one major journal is devoted), the relation of philosophy to mythology and poetry (a discussion that goes back at least to Plato), and the nature and justification of various forms of ‘authority’, to name just three. However, I found the particular review by Les Reid very deficient, and in what follows I propose to provide a more adequate one.

A Library, Not A Treatise

Reid says that his critical comments are directed not against those who “reject the literal approach entirely” but against those who “say that the Bible is true, whether literally and entirely, or only partially.

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