MJM FOREWORD Bible Reflections Is a Result of Following God?S Christ
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
BIBLE REFLECTIOS CHRISTIA: MJM FOREWORD Bible Reflections is a result of following God?s Christ for some forty-five years, from my seventeenth to my sixty-first year, desiring to record those things I have been given and learnt of God?s Word the Holy Bible. It was the instrument in my conversion and my growth in God?s grace by a measure of His Holy Spirit. As with other seekers of God and His kingdom, of Christ and His body, I have treasured the Scriptures as a scribe amidst a life of family and work. Biblical things and the Scriptures themselves have occupied my heart and eyes and ears for countless hours through these many years. It was not given to me to be a scholar though I have become scholarly in my own small way. The Lord would have me follow Him and live by God?s Word in an evil and dark and confused world. I followed often without knowing the end He designed, not seeing the path clearly, at times falling into pits, and sometimes, at every turn, finding failure, disappointment, with rejection, along the path. My share in the established public ministry was briefly in the Missionary Baptist church or denomination; my zeal was to know Christ as my All, and to follow His word and will and His Spirit to whatever end God determined. The Bible was always the Holy Book of God, giving life and wisdom, grace and instruction, faith and salvation, leading to God?s love and truth. I did not shun learning from God, by Christ?s Spirit, I did not reject the good things given by men as helpful and useful, but instead was diligent to acquire and acquaint myself at whatever cost. The countless books passing in and out of my hands, from print to digital, have taken me in many directions along my journey. I found and collected many books; some had attained classic status, standard works, and unique merits, authoritative in certain fields to the Church of God in the Christian world. These works satisfies the desire for truth and understanding, light and wisdom, in such a way that I needed not attempt to add to the rich treasury, believing the old is better when the new is not original. In what God has given to me, in whatever measure, I am thankful and obliged to render to Him by sharing them to others in the form of these final reflections in my older years, being still fond of the Scriptures of truth. This is my hope and prayer to Him Who hears and answers. Bible: God's Book The Holy Bible is named from the Latin singular biblia, from the Greek plural biblion and singular biblos. The Greeks and other ancient peoples used the inner bark of the papyrus as paper for writing, whence is derived our English word, which in turn was called a book written, thus the writings or scriptures were bound together to form a book, or rolled together to form a scroll or roll. The church has passed on and transmitted to us this Library of Divine or Holy Writings, uniquely inspired, as one complete whole Book. I read the Bible in my mother or native tongue, English, from its standard old version of 1611, the Authorized King James Version titled ?The HOLY BIBLE, Conteyning the Old Testament, AD THE EW: ewly Translated out of the Originall tongues & with the former Translations diligently compared and revised; by his Maiesties speciall Commandiment.? ?Appointed to be read in Churches.? ?Imprinted at London by Robert Barker, Printer to the Kings, most Excellent Maiestie. AO DOM, 1611.? The form of this edition has changed in many small details: the fonts, the spellings, the Introductions, the helps, the Apocryphal Books, the marginal notes, the Chapter summary, and other such things, including certain words which have changed meaning or disuse. There are many things still instructive in this and other old versions, in particular the language in words and sentences that have changed meaning, and the grammar of English. The Old Version compared to the ew Versions shows other distinctions and peculiarities of varied importance. The older versions , before 1611, such as the Geneva Bible, 1602-1607, with annotations and comments, especially against the Papal system, is also instructive of different influences and motives of Bible Versions. There are Bibles for Jews and Christians, for Muslims and Mormons, called by various names. The Bible is today in several hundred tongues or languages, in part or whole. Some translations are very bad and inaccurate, others are very good and exact, the translators themselves will alone attest to their work. The scholarly versions, such as the Revised Version, or the American Standard Version of 1910, offer very reliable renderings of many passages. The old standard amidst all the new is still safe and healthy but requires more diligence in reflections to gain understanding and not toward misinterpretation. Thus the Authorized King James Version, AKJV or KJV, has a Dedicatory addressed to Prince and King James by the Translators. They next give a very long and detail description to the reader of their work, how it came about and what methods followed. These things teach us not to be presumptive in handling the Holy Bible. The Chronology was later added from Archbishop Ussher, starting at 4004 B.C. The Church Year Calendar and Lectionary is that of the Church of England. In other Bible editions we have the Jewish Targums or Paraphrases filled with interpretative glosses and renderings, in like manner follow the modern paraphrased versions, and with them the popular Amplified Bible. Study Bibles or Reference Bibles and such like use the various translations and annotate and edit them such as Schofield?s, Bullinger?s, Rotherham?s, and Dake?s. All these are in their own way useful and helpful, but at times harmful and distracting from the actual reading of the Scriptures and dependence on the Holy Spirit for understanding. Tools like concordances, dictionaries, encyclopedias, and other reference works also have their place in a managed and circumspect usage. For me, it became trial by error in that which touched conscience in this or that instance. We often learn by testing the good and truth of books and helps. ` The texts of the Originals in Hebrew are the Massoretic or Traditional in one edition or another in manuscript or print; the Greek was the Textus Receptus or Received Text, followed by all the Reformers with minor differences. The modern texts are edited from many manuscripts and versions in varied degrees, seeking to restore the Originals that existed before the traditional texts. The textual critics and biblical criticism on the whole have collated and analyzed thousands of manuscripts and versions to arrive at a slow but steady consensus either towards or backwards to the Traditional or away from it. I cannot find that anyone can resolve the difficulty and bring peace between two extremes. An example of the textual problem in the ew Testament criticism, fought since the days of Tischendorf and those to follow as Westcott and Hort, Tregellus, estle, and Aland, Metzger, and others on the left, editors advocating a ew Critical Text as a majority consensus against those on the right as Burgon and Scrivener and most of the past. One to try to solve this was Knoch with his Concordant Greek ew Testament in which he took the three great Uncial Manuscripts or Codices of the 3rd and 4rth centuries combined all their readings of text and copyist edits. He created the uncial fonts as exact copies of the three great manuscripts, he placed 20 letters to a line without breaks or indentations; and under the Greek Text he gave a lexical literal translation of each word for which he assigned one rendering or meaning for each Greek word exclusively and consistently, even when it made no sense. I use several versions and hold to a more literal and consistent translation as seen in the ASV and its like. It?s always instructive and curious to examine carefully the different alterations and renderings in the various texts and versions. My own use of Hebrew, Greek, Latin, Spanish, and a few other languages is primarily lexical, having no claim to sufficiency or proficiency to pass judgment on those far more competent in the grammar and idiom of the texts and foreign versions. I enjoy listening to the Bible in many languages many times and find myself at peace with their commonness rather than their differences. In another time and life I would have chosen to be a scholar but I see that others are better equipped and in that I rejoice in the fruit of their labors. I tried to show my gratitude for those works in collecting and editing the digital copies and storing them on the Internet, especially Internet Archives, to form a Digital Library of Public Domain books and works, and thus far completed several thousand volumes. When we come to the Bible as an English Book, Holy and Divine, Eternal and Inspired, we must still read it in human terms and sense. We learn from our English language, and this applies to any tongue more or less, that our written language is derived from both our English tongue and from other tongues. Our words and the Alphabet come from many generations by many means, some known and many things not known. The Alphabet is named from two letters Alpha and Beth derived from Latin from Greek from Hebrew-Phoenician letters Aleph-Beth. Aleph, the first Hebrew letter, as seen in Psalms 119, means ox-head; Beth, the second letter, means house; these letters as well as the rest of the Alphabet, were written originally or primitively as symbols or pictures as signs or representations of words or syllables of words.