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The most distorting assumption that's imposed on the Bible is inspiration. Hey everybody, I'm Dan McClellan, I'm a scholar of the Bible and religion. The classic biblical proof text for the doctrine of inspiration is 2 Timothy 3 16, which says, "All scripture is the open of stokes, which literally means God breathed." Now there are three issues with the use of this passage as a proof text for inspiration. The first issue is that it was not written by Paul. It wasn't written until decades after his death by someone merely pretending to be Paul, so already the text is lying to you. Second problem is that when it says, "All scripture," it's not referring to the Bible. The Bible would not exist for generations after this text had been written. What they understood to be scripture included things we no longer consider scripture, and what we consider scripture includes things that were not a part of what the author of 2 Timothy considered to be scripture. Third thing is that this word, say, "Alknastos," God breathed was not used in this time period to mean God breathed in the sense of breathed out by God. That word in this time period was used to refer to things like rivers and sandals in the desert and food because it meant God breathed in the sense of God breathed the breath of life into the first human. It is life giving, things like water and sandals in the desert and food give life. So when this text was written, it was intended to mean, "All scripture is life giving and useful for instruction and for reproof," and so on. It didn't come to mean God breathed in the sense of breathed out by God until origin of Alexandria in a third century CE came up with that reinterpretation. So the doctrine of inspiration, as we know it, does not come from the Bible. It comes from someone imposing that reading upon the Bible. Now, why is this the most distorting assumption that is imposed on the Bible? Two main reasons. First is that it is the root of the other assumptions that are imposed upon the Bible. The notion that all scripture is breathed out by God gives rise to the notion of univocality because it has a single source, a single divine source, and therefore must be a single unified perspective. The notion that it is inherent arises from the notion that it is breathed out by a single divine source. Second reason has to do with the fact that texts don't have inherent meaning. Texts are just collections of signs, and readers make meaning with those signs based on their understanding of the relationships between the signs and semantic content that have been agreed upon. Now, those relationships change from time to time, from place to place, from person to person, and people have different and different degrees of understanding of those relationships. But one of the things that this means is that our reading of a text is a process of negotiation, is a process of constructing reading. We are never just extracting pure and unadulterated meaning. We are engaged in a process of creating meaning. And with we believe that the text of the Bible is breathed out by God, that means that we're going to make meaning that is most meaningful and useful to us, and then we're going to assign a divine origin to that meaning. The Bible contains a lot of harmful ideologies in it. Based on the best scholarship, the best thinking that is available, we know that the Bible promotes things like slavery, promotes things like genocide, promotes homophobia, promotes misogyny, promotes other harmful ideologies. Now, many of these have been left by the wayside because our negotiating with the text has not found meaning and utility. In perpetuating those harmful ideologies, unfortunately, many people do still find meaning and utility in perpetuating a lot of those harmful ideologies. And it is distorting to present things like misogyny and homophobia and even genocide as the very mind will and word of God. And this results in absolutely incalculable suffering and loss of agency and even life down to today. And I think that's what makes inspiration the most distorting assumption that's imposed on the Bible.