How do you Read the Bible? A Lenten Vocabulary of Faith Bible Study Sunday Mornings 9:30-10:15am Session 1: What is the Bible? When and how was it written? Who decided what was in the Bible and not? How has history impacted it? Beginning with scripture : Luke 24:13-35 13 Now on th[e] same day [that the women claimed to have seen Jesus alive again] two of them were going to a village called Emmaus, about seven miles from Jerusalem, 14 and talking with each other about all these things that had happened. 15 While they were talking and discussing, Jesus himself came near and went with them, 16 but their eyes were kept from recognizing him. 17 And he said to them, “What are you discussing with each other while you walk along?” They stood still, looking sad. 18 Then one of them, whose name was Cleopas, answered him, “Are you the only stranger in Jerusalem who does not know the things that have taken place there in these days?” 19 He asked them, “What things?” They replied, “The things about Jesus of Nazareth, who was a prophet mighty in deed and word before God and all the people, 20 and how our chief priests and leaders handed him over to be condemned to death and crucified him. 21 But we had hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel. Yes, and besides all this, it is now the third day since these things took place. 22 Moreover, some women of our group astounded us. They were at the tomb early this morning, 23 and when they did not find his body there, they came back and told us that they had indeed seen a vision of angels who said that he was alive. 24 Some of those who were with us went to the tomb and found it just as the women had said; but they did not see him.” 25 Then he said to them, “Oh, how foolish you are, and how slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have declared! 26 Was it not necessary that the Messiah should suffer these things and then enter into his glory?” 27 Then beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he interpreted to them the things about himself in all the scriptures. 28 As they came near the village to which they were going, he walked ahead as if he were going on. 29 But they urged him strongly, saying, “Stay with us, because it is almost evening and the day is now nearly over.” So he went in to stay with them. 30 When he was at the table with them, he took bread, blessed and broke it, and gave it to them. 31 Then their eyes were opened, and they recognized him; and he vanished from their sight. 32 They said to each other, “Were not our hearts burning within us while he was talking to us on the road, while he was opening the scriptures to us?” 33 That same hour they got up and returned to Jerusalem; and they found the eleven and their companions gathered together. 34 They were saying, “The Lord has risen indeed, and he has appeared to Simon!” 35 Then they told what had happened on the road, and how he had been made known to them in the breaking of the bread. The Reader as an Interpreter The authors of How to Read the Bible for What It’s Worth write: “whether one likes it or not, every reader is at the same time an interpreter. That is, most of us assume that we read that we also understand what we read. We also tend to think that our understanding is the same thing as the Holy Spirit’s or human author’s intent. However, we invariably bring to the text all that we are, with all of our experiences, culture, and prior understands of words and ideas. Sometimes what we bring to the text, unintentionally to be sure, lead us astray, or else causes us to read all kinds of foreign ideas into the text. …[T]he reader of an English Bible is already involved in interpretation. For translation is in itself a (necessary) form of interpretation. Your Bible, whatever translation you use, which is your beginning point, is in fact the end result of much scholarly work. Translators are regularly called upon to make choices regarding meanings and their choices are going to affect how you understand. Good translators, therefore, take the problem of our language differences into consideration. But it is not an easy task. pp. 14-15 Questions for reflecting on Luke 24:13-35 • What did the travelers bring with them to their interpretation of what they’d seen and lived? • How did traveling with Jesus change their interpretation? • How does the Road to Emmaus story inform us about how we both read and interpret scripture? What is the Bible for you? Scientific manual History book Newspaper reporting Testimonies Sacred writing Systematic course on religion Book of Memories Written in real time Written after the fact Allegory or Metaphor Literal Recounting Propaganda Spiritual Encouragement Easy to Understand Understood only in community Tool for learning to Recognize the Divine Presence Tool for teaching faith Anything else not in this list? The Bible where does the one we have come from? The Bible comes from the Koine Greek word τὰ βιβλία [tà biblía] meaning "the books" (plural) By the 2nd century BCE, Jewish groups began calling the books of the Bible the "scriptures" and .[hakkodesh Kitvei] הַקֹּדֶשׁ כִּתְבֵי Hebrew in or "holy," as them to referred they While we may call the Hebrew Scriptures the Old Testament, they most often use the name Torah Scriptures, Hebrew the of division threefold the reflecting (ך"תנ :(Hebrew Tanakh ("Teaching"), Nevi'im ("Prophets") and Ketuvim ("Writings"). The Torah (or Pentatuech) are the first five books of the Bible, traditionally understood to be written by Moses. The oldest extant copy of a complete Bible is an early 4th-century parchment book preserved in the Vatican Library, and it is known as the Codex Vaticanus. The oldest copy of the Tanakh in Hebrew and Aramaic dates from the 10th century CE. The oldest copy of a complete Latin (Vulgate) Bible is the Codex Amiatinus, dating from the 8th century. The Masoretic Text is the authoritative Hebrew text of the Hebrew Bible, or Tanakh. It defines the books of the Jewish canon, and also the precise letter-text of these biblical books, with their vocalization and accentuation. The oldest extant manuscripts of the Masoretic Text date from approximately the 9th century CE. The Diaspora of the Jewish People & the Emergence of the Roman Empire – the world in which the New Testament emerged Following the exile of the Jews to Assyria and Babylon, the Jewish nation was scattered or dispersed. By Jesus’ day it’s believed that 1 of 10 inhabitants of Rome were Jewish. The thing we often don’t realize that the primary language then was Greek, not Latin; much like English is the predominantly used language in our world today. The Septuagint, or the LXX, is a translation of the Hebrew Scriptures and some related texts into Koine Greek, begun in the late 3rd century BCE and completed by 132 BCE, initially in Alexandria (Egypt), supposedly by 70 scribes in 70 days. This was the “Bible” that most of the first Christians read, as the New Testament was not yet written and most read Greek instead of Hebrew. As the work of translation progressed, the canon of the Greek Bible expanded. The Torah always maintained its pre-eminence as the basis of the canon but the collection of prophetic writings, based on the Nevi'im, had various hagiographical works incorporated into it. In addition, some newer books were included in the Septuagint, among these are the Maccabees and the Wisdom of Sirach. However, the book of Sirach, is now known to have existed in a Hebrew version, since ancient Hebrew manuscripts of it were rediscovered in modern times. The Septuagint version of some Biblical books, like Daniel and Esther, are longer than those in the Jewish canon. Some of these deuterocanonical books (e.g. the Wisdom of Solomon, and the second book of Maccabees) were not translated, but composed directly in Greek. Since Late Antiquity, once attributed to a hypothetical late 1st-century Council of Jamnia, mainstream Rabbinic Judaism rejected the Septuagint as valid Jewish scriptural texts. Several reasons have been given for this. 1. Some mistranslations were claimed. 2. The Hebrew source texts used for the Septuagint differed from the Masoretic tradition of Hebrew texts, which was chosen as canonical by the Jewish rabbis. 3. The rabbis wanted to distinguish their tradition from the newly emerging tradition of Christianity. 4. The rabbis claimed a divine authority for the Hebrew language, in contrast to Aramaic or Greek – even though these languages were the lingua franca of Jews during this period (and Aramaic would eventually be given a holy language status comparable to Hebrew). The Septuagint is the basis for the Old Latin, Slavonic, Syriac, Old Armenian, Old Georgian and Coptic versions of the Christian Old Testament. The Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Churches use most of the books of the Septuagint, while Protestant churches usually do not. (this dates to the choice of the Reformers - Luther and Calvin – to prioritize the original language of composition whenever possible, hence Hebrew). After the Protestant Reformation, many Protestant Bibles began to follow the Jewish canon and exclude the additional texts, which came to be called Biblical apocrypha.