Throughout 30 years of ministry, I have seen little change in the gap between the beliefs of seminary-educated clergy and our parishioners. While a very small minority of people make it through a Masters degree program at an accredited mainline seminary still clinging to the fundamentalist approach of numbers 1-4 below, and fewer than half number 5, I continue to hear many parishioners in mainline churches assume that all 5 are orthodoxy.
- Moses wrote the first five books of the Bible.
Leningrad Codex, thought to be the oldest existing Hebrew text of the Bible. - Paul wrote all the books with his name on them.
- Revelation was written to predict the future.
- The Gospels quote Jesus accurately.
- The Bible condemns homosexuality.
- Clergy who paid attention during their Old Testament class know that the expression the “Book of Moses” refers to 5 books written about Moses, not by Moses. They arose over generations of oral composers who were edited during and shortly after the Babylonian exile, many centuries after Moses died.