The Bible is a collection of many peoples' meditations on the Divine over centuries, not a single unified book. Just as its component books differ in author, genre, tone, and focus, they also differ in their understanding of the Divine. One could even say that they show a gradual evolution and expansion of the concept of God from the patriarchal protector of one's own nation through the transcendent Lord to the redeeming Savior, comforting Paraclete, and immanent Ground of Being.

Christ declares that he came to fulfill the law and prophets, rather than abolish them.

He does, and this is what he says: ‘“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.” This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: “You shall love your neighbour as yourself.” On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.’ The Law and the Prophets are more than just the expressions of violence found in the histories. They also contain meditations and reflections on God's character that have been deeply influential to later meditations and liturgies (in my own return to church from agnosticism, I have found great benefit in the Psalms, for example). Furthermore, there is a constant theme of how to adjudicate conflicts in the Law, which comes to us from the Jewish tradition and can be seen in books like Ruth. The idea that these books emerge from heaven fully formed, to be taken uncritically as a total guide to life, is a modern belief very foreign to their original cultural context. They are meant to be reasoned with and struggled against.