What
the Bible means to me*perhaps not this line it was made for all time and we have to accept it as it is.
The Bible is a wonderful treasure house, a unique treasure, certainly a gift from God, but I am reluctant to call it the Word of God because that phrase is associated with those who use it as an unguided (misguided?) weapon. The Bible says this, the Bible says that. All flung out without much thought or even knowledge.
No: Jesus is the Word of God and I do not accept, as the evangelicals in the Christian Fellowship at work believed that Jesus delegated His authority to the Bible when He left. Texts to support these sorts of ideas tend to come from the Pastoral Epistles which I do not regard as pre-eminent. In any case when St Paul refers to Scripture, he cannot mean the New Testament, since most of it especially the Gospels had not been written. I have yet to hear a reasoned sermon on that issue, I realise that there may have been "Sayings of Jesus" available in some form, which became one of the bases of the Synoptic Gospels, especially Mark.
To me the Gospels are pre-eminent and it is right that we continue to stand for the Gospel in the Anglican church. (In my Methodist Church we frequently do not have a Gospel reading!). Anything I read in the rest of the Bible and especially the gory bits of the Old Testament, where God appears to demand, what we now call, Ethnic Cleansing, has to be held up to a test against the teaching of Jesus.
Reading the Bible is best done in chunks, at least a chapter. I know people who have religiously followed Bible Reading Notes every day for decades and yet do not know where to find St Paul's homily on Agape or that the there are "giants" in the Bible. Likewise whenever someone quotes a passage at me to prove their point I usually find that by reading on a few verses, I can find support for mine.
I confess to some prejudice against St Paul, even though he is responsible for my favourite passages: 1 Corinthians 13 and Romans 8 of course (why did he take 12 and seven chapters respectively to get to Love?) but also 2 Corinthians 4. Many modern evangelicals claim that he didn't really say the things that are held against him. But if so, why didn't the Holy Spirit correct our understanding much much sooner?
Second confession: I tend to judge people on whether I think I would dare to ask them a favour, I reckon St Paul would scare the life out of me, if we were to meet.
Third confession is that I do not read the Bible nearly enough. When I do, I always want to ask questions that commentators, especially in Bible reading notes, either gloss over or regard as unimportant. However one of my recent joys is to find, on the Internet, a site to which I can link from my pages which almost instantly brings up a quote that I refer to in my text, as I have done in the paragraph above. Unfortunately it is NIV instead of my favourite the Good News Bible, but one cannot have everything. I am suspicious of NIV because it is the preferred version of the sectarian evangelicals who I have slated above. One even called it the Nearly Inerrant Version. My advice to Bible readers is: If you want to know what the Bible says to Evangelicals read NIV. For serious word by word study you need the RSV. If you want an understanding of what it means, in simple English, go to the Good News.