Bible

The Good Book

Holy Scriptures

God’s Word

Old Testament Survey Before looking at the Bible itself, we need to

discuss how it came to be– How did these 39 books come to be the OT?

Why discuss this at the outset?– To strengthen faith– To prepare you to deal with the Dan Brown’s of

the world (The Davinci Code)

What Christianity & Judaism Believe about the Old Testament

The Bible was NOT…– Delivered by angels (or fall from Heaven)– Dictated by God to a human being (Islam)– A purely human production

The Bible IS…– Inspired by God– Correct in what it says about God, humanity, and the

world– A complex and diverse collection of books

How Did We Get Our Bible? The OT alone may well have taken over 1,000

years! The Process was complex There are big gaps in our knowledge of the

process This means, to be honest, there is a lot of

speculation and guesswork Be wary of the scholars who think they have

it all figured out!

Let’s take an example: David & Goliath (1 Samuel 17)

Event Oral Retelling Written Account

Updating/Adding/Editing Copying Canon

Let’s Take a Closer Look Event Takes Place (or God acts or speaks) Passed on by story telling (oral tradition) Written down (perhaps by scribes in king

Solomon’s court?) As time goes by documents are added to,

updated, edited, rearranged, etc.• Ancient Israelites did not have same concept we

do about books, author and copy-rights!• Written on scrolls (new stuff could be stitched on)

Aleppo CodexMasoretic Text

10th century CE

The Dead Sea Scrolls - Discovered in 1947

The oldest copies of portions of the OT ever found (date from around 100 BCE)

Cave at Qumran in southern Israel where some of the Dead sea scrolls were found

Let’s Take a Closer Look Scrolls are lost!! (and found)• King Josiah (620 BCE) 2 Kings 22• Some are lost to us forever (Annals of the Book of Kings)

2 Chronicles 24:27 Exile! 587 BCE (got a little more careful with

their documents) Post-exile – got really serious about keeping,

reading and explaining the sacred scrolls (see Nehemiah 8:1-2)

Let’s Take a Closer Look Copying • Sometime between 400 – 200 BCE adding to and

changing the scrolls stopped • Scribes began to very carefully make copies

Canonization• “Canon” - a standard to measure by• Also about 400 – 200 BCE began to recognize

certain books a authoritative

Role of Inspiration?

• This information caused a crisis of faith for me in college

• Before college I had the simple belief that God inspired certain authors to write and that’s exactly what we have today (except for a few copying errors)

Role of Inspiration?

• The making of the Bible was a very messy process involving messy human beings

• Where was God in this messy production?• What if some scribe just

made it all up?

• Wouldn’t God take better care of His Word?

What if God was not intimidated by our messy

processes?

?What if God was not only able to overcome but also

to use our messes to bring about the Bible?

Which requires a bigger God?

A God who inspired a few authors?

OR

A God Who inspired and superintended…

• Events & Oral Re-tellings• Authors & Writings• Various ways of transmission• Changes, additions to texts• Communities who developed and safe- guarded documents (or lost them!)

A God Who inspired and superintended…

• Folks involved in the process who did not always agree

• Copying (mistakes were made)

• Canonization

• People of faith who use the Bible in public and private settings

A God who is not afraid to enter our mess as a man

(Jesus)

will not be in the least incapable of seeing to it

that the Book for His people emerges from a

long, often messy process

This ought to make us more in awe of God (and

the Bible) not less!