There are many opinions about how unified the Bible really is in light of its many authors; however, those opinions fall flat when the reality of God as its Author comes to Light. The Bible presents a unified picture on many levels and speaks the presence of God on each page. The Bible was written by chosen men of God; however, it was not their words that were written but God's ("How Do We Know That The Bible Is Complete And Unified" 2008). He inspired the words He wanted to be written to these men who were believers in Jehovah God in the Old Testament and in the New Testament, in the person of the LORD Jesus Christ. All men had experiences that were totally different from the other, but the focus always pointed to God. As you read through …show more content…
It is an historical account of God's involvement from the beginning of time, as written in Genesis and finishes with the end of time in the book of Revelation. Man can dream many things but unified thoughts about God and the written organized thoughts that flow through His Word would be filled with contradiction and error. Unifying the Bible from men's perspective would be chaotic. If God did not give the inspiration, which He did, the Old Testament; and the New Testament would lose the demonstrative power of showing how God is weaved throughout. The Bible shows unification in the Old Testament through the men God chose to be His prophets, who were instructed to write specific things to His people, even speaking those commands, warning or judgements to draw His chosen people back to Himself. In the New Testament, God speaks physically speaks through the person of Jesus Christ. There are occasions where apostles in the New Testament articulated what was spoken to them by Jesus Christ, (the chosen disciples who walked with Him) and they, in turn, spoke that Truth to others. The truth is, the Bible does has many human authors, but God is the one and only divine Author who never can or will contradict …show more content…
There are many religious groups and various denominations who believe the Bible to be true; but, there can be differences in doctrine, or the interpretation of it, for example, the doctrine of baptism: sprinkling or total immersion. The thread of the Christian faith, God being that thread, and the connection of Biblical doctrines flow from the beginning of time: Creation. “The whole of what now exists was begun by God’s act of bringing it into existence—he did not fashion and adapt something that already existed independently of him” (Erickson 2015). Those who uphold this doctrine believe God is the Creator of everything that exists as it states in Genesis 1:1, 'in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth,' and further echoed by Isaiah in chapter Isaiah 44:24. Isaiah is in agreement with the words Moses penned by expressing the fact that not only did God create all things, He calls Himself our Redeemer and declares He formed man from womb. God is the beginning of all things, which includes man. Though the verse states from the womb, the earth, in a sense was that womb. God scooped the clay of the earth and formed man giving him the breath of life. There is no other power, imagined or created, man, beast or any other thing that can do or declare what the Bible says about God. His power and His presence are weaved throughout Scripture. There is never any
Christian Beliefs in the Origins of the World “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters. ” A Description of Christian Beliefs About the Origins of The World Christians believe that God created the universe. In Chapters 1 and 2 of Genesis, we are told that God creates both the universe and everything that is in it.
In the book “The Art of Biblical Narrative” by Robert Alter, there is one chapter (Chapter 3) titled “Biblical Type-Scenes and the Uses of Convention” (Alter 47). Alter describes several different stories (but similar in some ways) in the Old Testament that can be difficult to interpret in today’s culture. Alter describes how reading any book (more specifically the Bible), requires use of conventions, which he describes as “… an elaborate set of tacit agreements between artist and audience about the ordering of the art work is at all times the enabling context in which the complex communication of art occurs” (Alter 47). In other words, an agreement of how the writing is done; it can be pretty complex as well. He states that there are stories in the Bible that have the same stories of narrative, but there are different characters, they often are told several times in the Bible. Alter uses several of examples, like how patriarch is driven by famine; or where someone is found and is invited to eat with them, or a betrothal (engagement) near a well/body
The Bible for many has several interpretations, and meanings. There is not one interpretation or meaning in which Christians all believe identically. Each part of the Bible has its own symbolic meaning to each faith, and their ways to interpret those meanings may differ from other Christians. In Having Words with God: The Bible as Conversation by Karl Allen Kuhn, Kuhn describes the Bible as a conversation between several and God. In this essay there will be a different approach to the same metaphor effect describing the Bible but, as a Pizza. The Bible is like a Pizza in the ways of having many toppings (topics) and layers (depths within the text), not to mention the types or styles just like there are many styles of scripture
“In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth” (Genesis 1:1). This section of a verse from the NRSV started the grand story of the bible. In the beginning the Bible brings two things to focus. The two things that are focused on is the setting and the main characters of the Bible (Professor Smallbones). The Bible opens in Genesis 1 with God creating. God creates light, the earth, the sun, living creatures, and many other things, but most importantly God creates humans. As God is the main character in the grand story he immediately forms a personal relationship with man and woman. God created Adam the first man and Eve the first woman. In the book, The Unfolding Drama of The Bible, Anderson says, “The
The Old Testament and the Bible itself has been studied extensively for centuries. Archeologists and Scholars have labored and pondered over texts trying to decipher its clues. It does not matter how many times the Old Testament has been studied there will always be something new to learn about it or the history surrounding it. In the book Reading the Old Testament: an Introduction, the author Lawrence Boadt presents us with a few different authors of the Old Testament that used different names for God and had a unique insight into the texts. These four sources are titled P for priests, E for Elohim, J for Jehovah, and Y for Yahweh (95). These four unique sources help us realize that there is more than one author of the Pentateuch. These authors took the text and adapted for their culture. This independent source is used by scholars to help gain insight into what was behind the texts of the bible so we are not left with an incomplete picture of what went into the creation of the bible. Julius Wellhausen used these four sources to publish a book to able us to better understand the sources and to give it credibility with the Protestant scholars at the time (Boadt 94). These sources that is independent of the bible as in the DVD Who Wrote the Bible? and the Nova website aide in shedding light on the history that surrounded the writers who wrote the text and what inspired them to write it in the first place. The DVD shows the discovery of The Dead Sea Scrolls and the extensive history of the texts and all its sources in an effort to try to find exactly who wrote the bible (Who Wrote). These scrolls have aided scholars immensely by giving us some of the oldest known manuscripts of the bible in the world today. It shows that the bible w...
The Bible holds first God’s identity and who he is, labeled as the creator. By understanding
There are many different forms of covenants in the Old testament that the people of God agree to. The first one being looked at is between God and Abraham. God promised Abraham a great nation and God said he would bless Abraham (Gen 2:2). God also promised him the Promise Land (Gen 15:18) and said he would be the father of many nations (Gen 17:4). All God asked of him was devotion from him and his people and to have circumcision be the sign from the people (Gen 17:11). The promises of the covenant directly impact Abraham, but they also impacted the people who would follow. God would also use these vows in other covenants because they had historic meaning. The Mosaic covenant has several similarities to the Abrahamic covenant. God told Moses that he would make the people of Israel his treasured possessions (Exo 19:5), which corresponds with the promise of blessings in the first covenant. God also promises to bring the people into the land promised to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob (Exo 6:8). God still expected the people to follow and adhere to his words and the sign he required was following the ten commandments. These covenants were made when the people were forced to be a nomadic due to persecution. The promise of blessings and nations and land was something the people needed. The next covenant God made was with King David, this covenant also resembles the Abrahamic covenant. After the people had settled into their land God talks to King David, through the prophet Nathan. God tells David he will have a child who will establish a kingdom forever (2 Sam 7:13) and the kingdom, as well as the house, will be forever and his child will not lose the throne (2 Sam 7:16). These promises are like the ones made to Abraham, both are promised nat...
loved us so much that he did that for us so that is the least that we could
To a person with Christian worldview God is the creator the universe, he a trinity, and he is love. The universe is a divine creation of God. Chapter 1 of Genesis in the Old Testament takes us back to the beginning of time. It explains how God had the capability to create all that exist in the period of 6 days. He holds the power to create anything that he desires. Genesis gives us a look in how God create a human in his own image (English Standard Version, Genesis 1:26-27). God is capable of all doing what we cannot. As
Traveling back in time to change the future for better, but instead creating a world that is being destroyed. In the movie The Butterfly Effect, a group of people travel back in time to change the future. While in the past, a man was knocked outside of the marked path smashing a butterfly changing the future for the worse. Even though killing a butterfly does not seem to have a major impact on the future, it changes it entirely. This concept is the general idea of cause and effect, otherwise known as causality. These slight movements can change utopian societies into dystopian societies. A utopian society is known as the perfect world, where absolutely nothing goes wrong. Dystopian societies can be identified as worlds that are in ruins from the previous society. Utopian Societies can be a world without preservatives, but without those preservatives food begins to deteriorate rapidly, leaving the nation without farms starving, thus turning into a dystopian society. Pieces of the present can be examined to determine the future, this process is
Around 1400 B.C. Exodus was written in Hebrew. The Exodus, which is one of the books in the Old Testament, are rules, similar to Hammurabi Code placed by God for the descendants of Abram. This literature gives insight into the structure of the Jewish community, which includes the hierarchy of their community as well as the roles important in this community. Scholars can further understand the Hebrew community by reading Genesis. Genesis consists of religious stories that talks about how farming, slavery, and the world came into being. But overall, scholars can see a society very much center on religion.
Spanning fifteen hundred years with over 30,700 manuscripts, extensive archaeological evidence and 2000 prophecies that have been fulfilled, the Bible is God 's word to us. (Yohn, 2013). In the Bible, the Father is essentially giving us a picture of the history of the world and is also leading us to a place where we must make a decision that involves whether we choose to accept his son or reject him and remain guilty. Additionally, the Word of God tells us what happened that caused this breach between us and God, the result of this and how God has rectified it through the blood of his son. In fact, from the beginning of the Bible (written 1400 B.C.) to the last book (A.D. 96), God is showing us why we need Jesus and how to find him. Just as a plant’s root system propagates and occupies the pot that encloses it, Jesus permeates the entire Bible. Therefore, the motif of the Bible is the story of the redemption of mankind and it all points to Jesus as the messiah and savior who secures this for all.
Answering these questions is the purpose of this essay. I begin by arguing that the Bible cannot be adequately understood independent of its historical context. I concede later that historical context alone however is insufficient, for the Bible is a living-breathing document as relevant to us today as it was the day it was scribed. I conclude we need both testimonies of God at work to fully appreciate how the Bible speaks to us.
The Bible points out that God is the origin of life, is the creator of all life forms. The first story of the Bible is called “Six Days of Creation and the Sabbath”. The Bible story of creation made man actually have two completely different versions. First, from the opening to Genesis 2:3 is the first version, talking about the "six days" of creation, the authors used the Jews known to God (called Elohim) said to God, and mention that God made the plants first, then animals, and finally made the man and ...
A response to the interpretation of Acts 4:32–36 as an endorsement of a type of communal living as being normative for the Christian church.