The Bible is a book written by human beings, like all books. By people who were something other than us, because they lived in somewhat different times, simpler in some respects than we are, but for that also far more ignorant. So a book in which there is both truth and falsehood, both good and bad.

— Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (1742–1799), Physiker und Schriftsteller

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (1742–1799) war ein deutscher Physiker, Astronom und Schriftsteller der Aufklärung, der als Professor für Experimentalphysik in Göttingen wirkte. Er gilt als Begründer des deutschsprachigen Aphorismus und wurde insbesondere durch seine in den „Sudelbüchern“ festgehaltenen scharfgeistigen Beobachtungen sowie seine Kritik an Aberglauben und religiösem Dogmatismus bekannt. Für Bibelleser regt sein methodischer Skeptizismus dazu an, überlieferte Denkmuster kritisch zu hinterfragen und den eigenen Glauben frei von Dogmatismus und blinder Gelehrsamkeit zu prüfen.

All quotes by Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (29)

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I read the Bible the way I harvest my apple tree: I shake it, and what falls down and is ripe, I take. The rest I leave hanging for now.
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The Bible is the cradle wherein Christ is laid.
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The law is divine and holy. Let the law have its glory, but yet no law, be it never so divine and holy, ought to teach me that I am justified, and shall live through it. I grant it may teach me that I ought to love God and my neighbor; also to live in love, soberness, patience, etc., but it ought not to show me how I should be delivered from sin, the devil, death, and hell. Here I must take counsel of the gospel. I must hearken to the gospel, which teaches me, not what I ought to do but what Jesus Christ the Son of God hath done for me: that He suffered and died to deliver me from sin and death. The gospel wills me to receive this, and to believe it. And this is the truth of the gospel. Most necessary it is, therefore, that we should know this article well, teach it unto others, and beat it into their heads continually.
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Jesus was not a theologian. He was God who told stories.
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