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THE BIBLE: From God to Us Spring 2017 Syllabus April 23 …………………………………. Inspiration and Uniqueness April 30 ………………….………………. How the Bible Came to Us May 7 …………………………….. Reliability of the Old Testament May 14 ………………………….. Reliability of the New Testament May 21 ……………………….. The Canon Formation, Apocrypha, and Pseudepigrapha May 28 ………………..………. No Class; Memorial Day Weekend JoLynn Gower 493-6151 [email protected] 1 INSPIRATION AND UNIQUENESS The Bible continues to be the best selling book in the World. But between 1997 and 2007, some speculate that Harry Potter might have surpassed the Bible in sales if it were not for the Gideons. This speaks to the world in which we now find ourselves. There is tremendous interest in things that are “spiritual” but much less interest in the true God revealed in the Bible. The Bible never tries to prove that God exists. He is everywhere assumed to be. Read Exodus 3:14 and write what you learn: ____________________________ _________________________________________________________________ The God who calls Himself “I AM” inspired a divinely authorized book. The process by which the book resulted is “God-breathed.” The Spirit moved men who wrote God-breathed words. Read the following verses and record your thoughts: 2 Timothy 3:16-17__________________________________________________ _________________________________________________________________ Do a word study on “scripture” from the above passage, and write the results here: ____________________________________________________________ _________________________________________________________________ What would have been included in scripture at the time that Paul was writing this letter to his disciple, Timothy? What was the purpose of this inspiration? ______ _________________________________________________________________ _________________________________________________________________ 2 Peter 1:21-21 gives more information. Read this section of scripture and write its content here: ___________________________________________________ _________________________________________________________________ Clearly, the Bible claims a verbal inspiration process. God spoke, men wrote. 2 Read the following verses for more information: Exodus 24:4 _______________________________________________________ _________________________________________________________________ Isaiah 30:8 ________________________________________________________ _________________________________________________________________ _________________________________________________________________ In Jeremiah 26:2, the prophet was admonished not to omit a word! Jesus and the apostles stressed the truth of inspiration when they said, “it is written.” It is appropriate, then, to see what has been written and to what extent inspiration extends. Our Bible consists of two Testaments, probably better translated “covenants.” The nature of the Old Testament, or Old Covenant, is represented by the Hebrew word “beriyth” which means a contract. It might be made between two persons or between groups of people; it might be conditional (if-then) or unconditional; it might have a time limit or it might be timeless. The nature of the New Testament, or New Covenant, is a “diatheke” which is more along the lines of a Last Will and Testament. Read Hebrews 9:15-17 and write what you learn here: _____________________ _________________________________________________________________ Continue your thinking by reading Romans 8:16-17 _______________________ _________________________________________________________________ The Old Testament in our Bible consists of 39 books. The Catholic Bible consists of 46 Old Testament books because they include 7 books that the Protestant church considers to be apocryphal. The Protestant Old Testament is exactly like the Jewish scriptures, but arranged in different order; consequently the Jewish scriptures contain only 24 books. Jewish scripture is known as the TANAKH, where T stands for the Torah (Law), N stands for the Nevi’im (prophets), and K stands for the Ketuvim (writings). 3 1,2 Chronicles become just Chronicles 1,2 Samuel become just Samuel 1,2 Kings become just Kings Ezra and Nehemiah are combined into one book The twelve books beginning Hosea and ending with Malachi become known as one book, The Minor Prophets In addition, the Jewish people study from a Talmud which includes the Mishnah (the writing down of the Oral Law) and the Gemara (rabinnical interpretation). The Jewish scriptures, of course, lack a New Testament, even though the New Testament is studied as a historical book in the schools of Israel. The Protestant and Catholic New Testament both contain 27 books. The earliest scriptures have no chapter or verse divisions; these were added for convenience. The Archbishop of Canterbury, Stephen Langton, is believed to have first divided the Bible into chapters is 1227. Robert Stephanus, a printer, first added verse numbers in 1551-1555. The inspiration, and therefore the authority, of the Bible doesn’t extend to every copy and every translation in every language. Only the original autographs themselves, or perfect copies, are considered to be inerrant. The original text has been copied more accurately than any other known book from the ancient world, as we will see in future classes. This makes it very important to consider the translation, since we are not reading in the original languages and from original manuscripts. It is important to note that the same translation might be contained within many different Bible formats. Therefore, it is important not only to consider the translation but also the editor. Remember, the editor adds the footnotes, not God! We generally think of translations as Literal (word for word), Dynamic Equivalent (thought for thought), and Free (paraphrase). This chart, from Zondervan, will aid your understanding of the more popular versions available: 4 NASB New American Standard NIV New International Version Bible (1971; update (1984) 1995) TNIV Today’s New International AMP Amplified Bible (1965) Version (NT 2001, OT ESV English Standard Version 2005) (2001) NCV New Century Version RSV Revised Standard Version NLT1 New Living Translation (1952) (1st ed. 1996; 2nd ed. 2004) KJV King James Version NIrV New International reader’s (1611; significantly Version revised 1769) GNT Good News Translation NKJV New King James Version (also Good News Bible) (1982) CEV Contemporary English HCSB Holman Christian Version Standard Version (2004) Living Living Bible (1950). NRSV New Revised Standard Paraphrase by Ken Taylor. Version (1989) Liberal treatment of ‘blood.’ NAB New American Bible Message The Message by Eugene (Catholic, 1970, 1986 Peterson (1991-2000s) (NT), 1991 (Psalms) NJB New Jerusalem Bible (Catholic, 1986; revision of 1966 Jerusalem Bible) In the process of considering inspiration, it is important to note four points: 1. Inspiration is not “mechanical” or “automatic” writing in the sense of a process suspending the action of the human writer’s mind. 2. The inspiration of God doesn’t obliterate the personality, outlook, style, or cultural understanding of the writer. This does not, however, mean that His control of them was somehow imperfect. 3. We by no means believe that all translations, or paraphrases, are inerrant. This makes the job of textual criticism very important. 5 4. The inspiration of the Bible can’t be equated with the inspiration of classical literature The Bible is believed to have been originally written in three languages. The Old Testament is primarily Hebrew with some Aramaic, notably in the book of Daniel. The New Testament is primarily Greek. The dates of writing range from 1800 BC until about 100 AD. The Bible was written over a period of nearly 2,000 years by approximately 40 different authors from three continents, who wrote in three different languages. These authors were shepherds, kings, scholars, fishermen, prophets, military leaders, a cupbearer, and priests. They composed their works from palaces, prisons, the wilderness, and places of exile while writing history, laws, poetry, prophecy, and proverbs. They express anger, frustration, joy, and love. Yet despite this marvelous array of topics and goals, the Bible displays a flawless internal consistency. It never contradicts itself or its common theme. Summary We can summarize this lesson as follows: 1. The Bible is infallible in its original autographs 2. God gave information to people, who in turn wrote it down at His direction 3. New testament apostles and others believed that Old Testament Scripture was entirely trustworthy; the church has accepted this position on the New Testament as well 4. Not all Bible translations are equal; serious Bible students who cannot study from the original languages carefully choose their translation 6 1. Collecting manuscripts, translations, etc. 2. Developing methods that enable the gathered information to be formulated into an accurate whole HOW THE BIBLE CAME TO US 3. Reconstructing the history of the textual transmission to identifyIn various this lesson, influences we will affecting be considering the text the texts and manuscripts that compose the Old and New Testaments. Under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, it is important 4. Evaluating the results and various readings in light of known to try to determine the original text with as high a degree of accuracy as evidence, theology and history possible. This process is called lower textual criticism. Higher criticism analyzes the dates, unity,