‘An atheist with a huge respect for religion’ has been employed by the BBC to present a new series on the Bible. Those of you with high blood pressure may want to stop reading this post now, lie down for a bit, and come back to it later. The series’ title is The Bible’s Buried Secrets and it’s obvious from the write-up in yesterday’s Telegraph that it will contain much to stir up screaming headlines in the conservative media (both Christian and secular).

And the subjects covered by Dr Francesca Stavrakopoulou (according to the Telegraph) are bound to stretch the faith of many – has Eve been unfairly portrayed in the Bible; was she the first woman anyway; was God ‘married’; was the Bible written by men who thought women were no better than property? Have another lie-down if you need one.

What she’ll be doing in this series is to present current scholarship on the Bible – a field of academia that has been influential for many generations. From the published comments in the paper she would appear to be taking a feminist reading of the Scriptures – but there are other fields, from race to post-colonial. Such studies take historical and cultural context into account when interpreting the Bible – as well as delving into how the biblical languages were used by non-biblical authors at the time to see whether we have translated Scripture accurately.

I realise that many struggle with such an approach and that some will condemn it as a way of undermining faith. But it needn’t do so and for many it has opened up the Bible in a totally fresh way giving us insight that we would not otherwise have. Maybe we should give the series a chance before dismissing it?

Of course, Dr Francesca has said some totally outrageous things for which she should be utterly condemned. In commenting about sexism within her academic field she said, ‘Most biblical scholars are middle-aged, bearded men’. How dare she!

Image via the Telegraph.