"All Scripture is given by God and is useful for teaching, for showing
people what is wrong in their lives, for correcting faults, and for teaching how to live right."
2 Timothy 3:16 (NCV)
2 Timothy 3:16 (NCV)
“How
were the writings that became our Bible chosen?
Is everything is based on the King James Version? And what’s the
significance of the Old Testament anyway.”
Furthermore
a 6th grader asked this great question.
If the Bible was written so long ago why is it typed?
Here’s
a bullet point response.
·
The
OT written between 1400 BC and right after the Jewish People were set free
from Babylon around 400 BC
· Moses is thought to have written or had a hand in writing the first five books called
variously the Law or the Torah.
· Editors were involved in editing what he wrote, a process which Christians believe
was directed by God.
· The first 11 chapters of Genesis tell us where we came from, what we were made
to do wand what's wrong in the world.
· Then from Gen 12 all the way to Malachi it tells us how God builds a people, Israel,
will rescue the world from sin, death, evil, and satanic powers
· About 50 years after the birth of Jesus the New Testament writings were begun.
These writings were composed between about 50 and 90 AD. They include four
gospels (narratives of Jesus life death and resurrection, a history of the early
church (Acts) many letters from various writers and a final writing full of “code”
language from the Old Testament which was intended to encourage believers who
were being persecuted for their faith (Revelation)
· It is not true that what books got into the Bible and what books didn’t was a huge
debate settled only by Constantine in the 300’s.
· From the end of the first century the collection of writings (what became our Bible)
being circulated among the churches throughout the Roman Empire were pretty
much what we have now.
· Most of what you may have read about other gospels having been discovered, as
well as other archeological “discoveries” turns out to be either sensationalism or
even fraudulent. None of the other gospels were considered authentic by the early
church.
· Until recently it was true that the earliest copies of the biblical writings were
sometimes copied more than a thousand years after they were first written down.
· How then, can we trust that the copies we have are what the authors actually
wrote?
· Listen to this!!!!
· One day in 1947 a shepherd boy threw a stone down a hole in the desert near the
Dead Sea.
· He heard a clang, and climbed down to see what it was.
· In the cave below the surface he discovered clay pots containing what turned out
to be scrolls of the Old Testament and other writing preserved by a Jewish Sect
called the Essenes who lived at the time of Jesus and whose settlement was called
Qumran
· One of the scrolls was a mostly complete copy of the book of Isaiah.
· Previously the earliest copy Isaiah that anyone had of Isaiah was from around 900
AD
· Here’s what’s amazing: when the copy from Qumran and the copy from 900 AD are
compared they are almost identical and whatever discrepancies exist are
inconsequential!!!
· That’s as much as a one thousand years period over which copying was done
almost perfectly!
· Another person asked what LXX is. It is the Old Testament copied into Greek in
about 200 BC. It is called the Septuagint (70) because seventy translators worked
on the project. That translation was necessary because the Conquest of the known
world by Greece in the prior century meant that the official language of the empire
had become Greek. Sometimes New Testament authors quote the Septuagint
rather than the Hebrew Old Testament.
· What about typing. The printing press was not invented until the end of the 15th
century and it was in 611 that the King James Version of the Bible was published.
It was a translation from the Latin translation of the Bible in 400 AD by Saint
Jerome.
· The newest translations are completed for earlier manuscripts in the Greek and
Hebrew and Aramaic languages
from Babylon around 400 BC
· Moses is thought to have written or had a hand in writing the first five books called
variously the Law or the Torah.
· Editors were involved in editing what he wrote, a process which Christians believe
was directed by God.
· The first 11 chapters of Genesis tell us where we came from, what we were made
to do wand what's wrong in the world.
· Then from Gen 12 all the way to Malachi it tells us how God builds a people, Israel,
will rescue the world from sin, death, evil, and satanic powers
· About 50 years after the birth of Jesus the New Testament writings were begun.
These writings were composed between about 50 and 90 AD. They include four
gospels (narratives of Jesus life death and resurrection, a history of the early
church (Acts) many letters from various writers and a final writing full of “code”
language from the Old Testament which was intended to encourage believers who
were being persecuted for their faith (Revelation)
· It is not true that what books got into the Bible and what books didn’t was a huge
debate settled only by Constantine in the 300’s.
· From the end of the first century the collection of writings (what became our Bible)
being circulated among the churches throughout the Roman Empire were pretty
much what we have now.
· Most of what you may have read about other gospels having been discovered, as
well as other archeological “discoveries” turns out to be either sensationalism or
even fraudulent. None of the other gospels were considered authentic by the early
church.
· Until recently it was true that the earliest copies of the biblical writings were
sometimes copied more than a thousand years after they were first written down.
· How then, can we trust that the copies we have are what the authors actually
wrote?
· Listen to this!!!!
· One day in 1947 a shepherd boy threw a stone down a hole in the desert near the
Dead Sea.
· He heard a clang, and climbed down to see what it was.
· In the cave below the surface he discovered clay pots containing what turned out
to be scrolls of the Old Testament and other writing preserved by a Jewish Sect
called the Essenes who lived at the time of Jesus and whose settlement was called
Qumran
· One of the scrolls was a mostly complete copy of the book of Isaiah.
· Previously the earliest copy Isaiah that anyone had of Isaiah was from around 900
AD
· Here’s what’s amazing: when the copy from Qumran and the copy from 900 AD are
compared they are almost identical and whatever discrepancies exist are
inconsequential!!!
· That’s as much as a one thousand years period over which copying was done
almost perfectly!
· Another person asked what LXX is. It is the Old Testament copied into Greek in
about 200 BC. It is called the Septuagint (70) because seventy translators worked
on the project. That translation was necessary because the Conquest of the known
world by Greece in the prior century meant that the official language of the empire
had become Greek. Sometimes New Testament authors quote the Septuagint
rather than the Hebrew Old Testament.
· What about typing. The printing press was not invented until the end of the 15th
century and it was in 611 that the King James Version of the Bible was published.
It was a translation from the Latin translation of the Bible in 400 AD by Saint
Jerome.
· The newest translations are completed for earlier manuscripts in the Greek and
Hebrew and Aramaic languages
For
more:
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