If you ever wonder about the meaning of life, why it’s so good and so bad, and what your place in this universe is, it’s a great idea to hear what God’s side of the story is. That’s where the Bible comes in. And that’s why it’s important to discover what the Bible really says as opposed to what you might think it says or what you hear other people say it says.

Bible Gateway interviewed Katie Hoyt McNabb (@AuthorMcNabb) about her book, Does It Really Say That in the Bible? (WestBow Press, 2014). Following the interview is a brief quiz by the author, to help you gauge your awareness of Bible events.

[See our Bible quizzes: Stark, Slytherin, Sauron, or Scripture? Identify These Quotes and 100 Bible Knowledge Questions]

Why did you major in religious studies at Yale?

Katie Hoyt McNabb: As a freshman I had a list of a half dozen things I wanted to major in—and religion wasn’t one of them. However, I did take a course in New Testament that year and was shocked to find my professor asserting that one had to put aside faith in order to approach the Scriptures academically. At the time, I considered myself a Christian, having been raised going to church, but realized I didn’t actually understand much about the Bible or my faith—certainly not enough to articulate what was wrong with the New Testament study. But the course got me asking good questions and reaching out to the Christian Fellowship on campus. When people there recommended I read CS Lewis, I started finding real answers in his writings. That summer, after reading The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, I “got” Christianity and wanted to learn everything I could about the faith.

Having begun classical Greek in high school, I was able my sophomore year to take courses in Greek exegesis of Galatians and Luke at the Divinity School. While these were great studies, taught by believing Christians, it was the course I took in Old Testament that truly sealed my decision to major in Religion. My professor, Brevard Childs, a leading scholar in the field having worked for years with theologian Karl Barth, demonstrated that one could be academically rigorous with the Scriptures and a devout believer simultaneously. He typically gave lectures with his hand on the Bible at the lectern. As he taught, his passion and delight in the Word of God truly made my heart burn. And it also made me want to share the Word with others.

Did the Bible play a role in your early career of teaching high school English? Or did teaching high school English play a role in your study of the Bible?

Katie Hoyt McNabb: I chose to teach high school after college because I remembered very fondly all the teachers who had gotten me thinking critically about the world and its circumstances while I was an adolescent. I chose English for two reasons. First, I saw writing as an important skill for young people to acquire, but recalled composition getting too little emphasis in my own high school education. Secondly, I loved literature and relished the idea of leading teenagers to reflect on their own lives by sharing with them the world’s great stories and characters.

Though I retained my interest in the Bible from my college studies and experience, it was more the conviction of my Christian faith that propelled me into teaching. Frederick Buechner describes vocation as “the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.” I taught because I felt called to it. Still, it was one of the hardest jobs there is and I never would have survived it without God teaching me so much about myself along the way.

You say that while raising your children and volunteering in many school programs, you maintained your “secret identity” as a student of the Bible and adult Christian educator. What do you mean? Why did you feel you had to keep it secret?

Katie Hoyt McNabb: Because I’ve never had any trouble talking about my faith, it seems funny to me now that when I first starting teaching at church, I never spoke to people outside of church about this work. I was volunteering in my kids’ schools and teaching parenting classes and enjoying all of it! Then, as my own children were getting into the teen years and I was teaching both parenting classes and Bible studies, I remember a point where I realized that teaching parenting was draining me emotionally. In contrast, I was really loving the teaching at church.

So I decided to concentrate on Christian education. That’s when I found myself talking about my Bible studies outside of church. The best thing I discovered was that the more up front and matter-of-fact I was about my interests, the more I found people who were interested in the Bible. When I began writing my book, I was even more amazed to hear people tell me: “That’s a really good idea because I really don’t know what’s in the Bible.”

To give proper credit, however, I have to say that my comfort in “going public” as a student of the Bible really came as a gift from God. When you believe that God is calling you to a particular job, and then you live through His sustaining you through the whole process, it makes you very aware that you really don’t do anything worthwhile completely on your own.

What need do you see in the world that you’re trying to satisfy with your book?

Katie Hoyt McNabb: Even though I went to church and Sunday School growing up, I didn’t really learn the Bible or understand the rudiments of the Christian faith until I actively sought the knowledge as a young adult. My experience with my own age group and those younger is that this gap in our religious education has grown even wider with time. My first hope for my book is to give readers a chance to see the whole scope of the Bible by highlighting the most important sights in the biblical text. In presenting an overview of the Bible, I’m offering the reader the perspective to see the many stories of the Old and New Testaments as essentially one story of God’s love for the people He created. My further wish is that the book will raise the reader’s confidence about reading the Bible for him/herself. The Bible has so much to give us if we can get over feeling intimidated by it. It’s imperative for Christians to know that even though the Bible was written thousands of years ago, we can come to it today and hear God’s voice for us.

How does “fate” and “destiny” factor into your study of the Bible?

Katie Hoyt McNabb: I open my book with an essay I call “Fate, Destiny, and the Meaning of Life.” People expect the Bible to deal with the “meaning of life” but they don’t always know what they mean by that. I introduce the ideas of fate and destiny because they get us thinking about two important facets of the meaning of life: 1) How much choice do we have in the outcome of our lives? and 2) Is there a purpose—an end point—to our existence? It seems to me that if the Bible is worth reading, it ought to deal with these ideas. I want my readers to see the book through that lens.

Bio: Katie Hoyt McNabb graduated from Yale with a BA in Religious Studies. From college she went into teaching high school English and received a Master’s in Secondary Education from Temple. While raising four children she returned to teaching part time mostly in church. She has written Does It Say Really That in the Bible? as an outgrowth of many years of teaching Bible studies for adults.

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A QUICK BIBLE QUIZ
by Katie Hoyt McNabb, author of Does It Really Say That in the Bible? (WestBow Press, 2014).

QUESTIONS

1. Genesis tells us that God created the world in six days. So what day were Adam and Eve created on?

2. According to Genesis 3 who is responsible for Adam and Eve eating the forbidden fruit?
A) Adam
B) Eve
C) The serpent
D) The devil

3. For what crime was Jesus crucified?
A) Disturbing the peace
B) Claiming to be God
C) Claiming to be King of the Jews
D) The Bible doesn’t say

4. True/False: In the early years of the Church, the gospel was only spread to Jews.

5. Who established the church in Rome?
A) Peter
B) Paul
C) Mark
D) The Bible doesn’t say

6. True/False: When the Christians made up their canon, they changed some things in the Hebrew Scriptures in order to make it into the Old Testament.

Where do the following concepts or teachings come from: the Old Testament, the New Testament, both, or neither?

7. The devil
8. God helps him who helps himself.
9. The best you can do with your life is have a good time and get by the best you can.
10. God is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and abounding in love.

 

ANSWERS

1. Genesis tells us that God created the world in six days. So what day were Adam and Eve created on?

Perhaps you answered “the sixth day” because you remember that according to Genesis 1:27, on the sixth day, God made humans—male and female—in the image of the Deity as the finishing touch on creation. But this is actually a “trick” question because the story telling the days of God’s creation is not the same story as the one featuring Adam and Eve. Rather, the Adam and Eve account follows in Genesis 2.

Some of the details describing the order of God’s creation differ in this second version, and the perspective has changed from God’s point of view to that of the humans. Still it is compatible with the first story in that it emphasizes that God created the world to be good. In addition, it complements the first rendition where God focuses on making humans male and female for the purpose of reproduction. In the Adam and Eve version, God has designed the man and woman to be companions to each other.

The most important takeaway from this confusion over the two creation accounts is that the Bible often tells a story more than once. Why, you might ask? The Bible is not a textbook; primarily it is a collection of stories. By giving us, the readers, more than one version to chew on the Bible forces us to evaluate and contemplate the meaning and implications of what it is telling us. In the case of creation, it’s up to the reader to draw conclusions from both stories about why God created the world and humans.

2. According to Genesis 3 who is responsible for Adam and Eve eating the forbidden fruit?

A) Adam
B) Eve
C) The serpent
D) The devil

This answer requires some interpretation of the text. When God confronts the man and the woman (note that they’re not called by name throughout the discussion of the taking of the forbidden fruit in Gen. 3:1-16), He begins with the man who immediately passes the blame to the woman—and back to God. “The woman you put here with me…” (Gen. 3:12). In turn, the woman insists that it’s the serpent’s fault (Genesis 3:13). Notice that neither the man nor woman denies that wrongdoing has been done—they just want to reject any responsibility for the disobedience of God’s command. Instead of engaging in their protests, the Lord doles out consequences to each party (including the serpent) in the reverse order of His interrogation. The devil is never mentioned here. In the New Testament, however, Revelation 12:9 seems to imply the serpent was actually the devil.

Historically, western culture has given Eve more blame as the first taker of the fruit—forming the basis for a certain amount of prejudice against women. On the other hand, in the New Testament, when Paul references the garden of Eden and the first sin, he says, “sin entered the world through one man [Adam]” (Rom. 5:12). If we go back to the text, however, God doesn’t single out any participant as guiltier than another. For instance, when we analyze the “curses” God levies against the man and the woman, both involve “labor”—the same Hebrew word serves for the woman’s trouble in birthing children and the man’s toil in making a living from the earth.

So where does the devil fit? The opinion of the New Testament is that Satan was present in the serpent and therefore owns a piece of the blame. All this leads me to answer the question—all of the above.

3. For what crime was Jesus crucified?

A) Disturbing the peace
B) Claiming to be God
C) Claiming to be King of the Jews
D) The Bible doesn’t say

C: Although the Jewish High Council convicted Jesus of blasphemy—the sin of profaning God’s name by claiming to be God (Matt. 26:63-66; Mark 14:61-64; Luke 22:66-71)—it had no power to execute prisoners. Because Roman leaders routinely declared themselves gods, Jesus’ profession of divinity, while laughable in Roman eyes, wasn’t for them a crime. Therefore, the Jewish leaders had to present Jesus to governor Pilate as an enemy of the state in order to procure a death sentence. Rome took seriously people who would disturb the peace and disrupt commerce, but anyone claiming to be a king would definitely demand attention from the authorities. Matt. 27:37, Mark 15:26, Luke 23:38, and John 19:19 all testify that a sign posted on Jesus’ cross declared that he claimed to be the King of the Jews.

4. True/False: In the early years of the Church, the gospel was only spread to Jews.

True: Matthew ends his gospel with a clear statement that Jesus’ followers should go out and “make disciples of all nations” (Matt. 28:19), and Acts begins with Jesus making a similar command, “You will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth” (Acts 1:8). But when the first disciples hear this, they assume that they’ll be preaching to the many Jews scattered among the Gentile nations all through the Mediterranean. Only after Peter has a vision and ends up witnessing the Spirit come upon the household of the centurion Cornelius, a God-fearing Gentile (Acts 10), do the original disciples believe that the gospel should be preached among Gentiles. “When they heard this, they had no further objections and praised God, saying, ‘So then, God has granted even the Gentiles repentance unto life’” (Acts 11:18).

5. Who established the church in Rome?

A) Peter
B) Paul
C) Mark
D) The Bible doesn’t say

D: When Paul writes his letter to the Romans—one the few letters he writes to churches he did not plant—there are already a great number of Christians in the city, but no mention is made of the person who first evangelized there.

6. True/False: When the Christians made up their canon, they changed some things in the Hebrew Scriptures in order to make it into the Old Testament.

False: The only difference between the Hebrew Scriptures and the Christian Old Testament is the order of the books. The Christians took the arrangement of the books from the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Hebrew Scriptures dating from the third century BCE.

Where do the following concepts or teachings come from: the Old Testament, the New Testament, both, or neither?

7. The devil

New Testament: The figure of Satan appears only a smattering of times in the Old Testament and in those few instances the devil plays the role we now call the “devil’s advocate.” For instance, in Job, Satan alleges that a human will only love God when God blesses him/her, but will curse God when his/her life turns tragic. By the time we get to the New Testament, however, Satan shows up actively attempting to thwart God’s purposes. He tempts Jesus in the desert to betray God’s purposes for Him (Matt. 4:1-11, Mark 1:12-13, and Luke 4:1-13) and even enters Judas to cause him to betray Jesus (Luke 22:3 and John 13:27).

8. God helps him who helps himself.

Neither: The Bible offers an excellent refutation of this concept in the story of Abraham and Hagar (Gen. 16-17; 21:1-21). With his wife’s permission, Abraham beds his wife’s handmaiden in order to produce the child that God had promised. As it turns out, God was not counting on Abraham to solve this problem himself, but rather had a plan to give this couple a child of their own bodies in their old age as a proof of God’s ability to do what humans consider impossible. What Abraham does on his own steam only serves to complicate and strain the lives of all involved.

In the New Testament, notice how many times the people Jesus heals ask for His help.

9. The best you can do with your life is have a good time and get by the best you can.

Old Testament: Here, in Ecclesiastes 2:24, the author is wrestling with the meaning of life. The Wisdom Literature gives us plenty of examples of humans questioning the precepts they’ve been taught about God.

10. God is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and abounding in love.

Old Testament: Exodus 34:6, Numbers 14:18, and Joel 2:13 all use this description of God. Too often people assume that the God of the Old Testament is somehow harsher and more vengeful than in the New Testament. It’s important to realize that while Israel’s perception of God grows and matures through her history, God is the same throughout the Bible.