As children it is our family members that make us aware of our religious beliefs. We then continue our religious education when we attend Sunday school and morning church service along with our family. Many families also attend Sunday evening service as well as the middle of the week church meetings as well as adult bible study and choir practice. Some parents in order to insure their children receive a better education and to reinforce their religious beliefs enroll their children into parochial schools. Often these families continue their worship at home with prayer before meals and a family weeknight bible study. When questioning a verse or subject matter from the Old Testament or the Holy Bible a reply most frequently given by religious leaders is that the authors of the Old Testament were inspired by God, subsequently, we should not question its divine origin or validity and any dispute concerning the Old Testament threatens the authenticity of the Old Testament as well as the influence of their religious faith. …show more content…
With the Old Testament’s authorship inspired by a divine presence in mind it would be an assumption that the scriptures would not plagiarized, free of contradictions, without errors and historically accurate. It is now obvious how little most of us really know about the who, what, where, why and how of the contents written in the Old Testament. Around 150 years ago biblical archaeology began as a method of science used to confirm the accuracy of the historical people, places and events as written in the Old Testament. So far, the evidence discovered by these archaeologists now raise more questions about the originality and authenticity of the people and history of the Old
Anson Rainey and R. Steven Notley are the authors of The Sacred Land Bridge, which is an Atlas of the biblical world and includes maps, pictures, and historical cementation as to the significance of this region. The biblical world that this atlas focuses on is defined as the eastern Mediterranean littoral, or more commonly called the Levant in modern archeological discussions. In my critique of this book I will be focusing on pages 30-34 which will define the boundaries and explain the importance of the Levant.
The Bible is read and interpreted by many people all over the world. Regardless, no one knows the absolute truth behind scripture. Walter Brueggemann, professor of Old Testament, wrote “Biblical Authority” to help people understand what he describes as six different parts that make up the foundation to ones understanding of scripture. He defines these six features as being: inherency, interpretation, imagination, ideology, inspiration, and importance. As Brueggemann explains each individual part, it is easy to see that they are all interconnected because no one can practice one facet without involuntarily practicing at least one other part.
The Exodus of the Israelites is the equivalent to our present day Fourth of July or Bastille Day to the French. Israelite writers discuss the Exodus the most out of any other event in history. The story of the Exodus is one of the most famous stories of the Old Testament. Three of the most significant aspects of the story of Exodus are the call of Moses, the use of plagues as miracles, and the Passover.
Now I am going to put the Old Testament to the test to see if it has credibility to be the trustworthy document that it claims. "Religion, if it is worth believing, must be based on facts. Yes, there is room for faith, but unless it is faith in facts, faith is not only useless but destructive .The Bible cannot afford to have historical errors.
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 Hebrew Bible, better known as the Old Testament, is a collection of tomes that form part of the Biblical canon. Many scholars around the world do not think that a single author wrote the books contained in the Hebrew Bible, but rather that it represents centuries of stories frequently compiled after the events they describe . The stories were created with visions for the future, in order to allow audiences insight into communities and beliefs that were common thought during their era. The stories responded to the issues and problems of their time, but also addressed contemporary climates. While the stories themselves may not be true, they convey truth without needing literal readings. For example, the creation stories in Genesis, portray God as creating the universe, and while this is considered as not ‘literally true’; the stories communicate theological truths about mankind’s relationship with God through the eyes of Hebrew writers .
Davis refuted this theory based on several factors. First, no other Ancient Near Eastern religious document is known to have compiled in this way. Isolating sources based on divine names is an extremely insubstantial practice. Davis points out that the author of Genesis might well have chosen certain divine names over others at certain points because of theological emphasis, rather than due to source documents. Second, it is irrational to argue the Document Theory based on differences on style. As Davis notes...
The discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls has been hailed by people of many religious and cultural backgrounds as the greatest discovery of manuscripts to be made available to modern scholars in our time and has dramatically altered our understanding of the origins of Christianity. Perhaps the most fundamental reexamination brought about by the Scrolls is that of the Gospel of John. The Fourth Gospel originally accepted as a product of second century Hellenistic composition is now widely accepted as a later first century Jewish writing that may even contain some of the oldest traditions of the Gospels . The discovery of the scrolls has led to the discussion of undeniable and distinct parallels between the ideas of the society at Qumran and those present in the Gospel of John.
Millard, Allen. "How Reliable Is Exodus." Editorial. Biblical Archaeology Review July-Aug. 2000: n. pag. How Reliable Is Exodus. Biblical Archaeology Review. Web. 25 Nov. 2013.
People for years have been debating against each other to prove the Bible to be inherent or to be errant. Errancy is a deviation from the truth or what is right. There are many different types of errors expressed throughout the Bible such as transational errors, doctrinal errors and contradictions. How could any book be without error? That would be practically impossible, so in this paper I will prove the Bible to be very errant because of many facts shown.
For centuries now Christians have claimed to possess the special revelation of an omnipotent, loving Deity who is sovereign over all of His creation. This special revelation is in written form and is what has come to be known as The Bible which consists of two books. The first book is the Hebrew Scriptures, written by prophets in a time that was before Christ, and the second book is the New Testament, which was written by Apostles and disciples of the risen Lord after His ascension. It is well documented that Christians in the context of the early first century were used to viewing a set of writings as being not only authoritative, but divinely inspired. The fact that there were certain books out in the public that were written by followers of Jesus and recognized as being just as authoritative as the Hebrew Scriptures was never under debate. The disagreement between some groups of Christians and Gnostics centered on which exact group of books were divinely inspired and which were not. The debate also took place over the way we can know for sure what God would have us include in a book of divinely inspired writings. This ultimately led to the formation of the Biblical canon in the next centuries. Some may ask, “Isn’t Jesus really the only thing that we can and should call God’s Word?” and “Isn’t the Bible just a man made collection of writings all centered on the same thing, Jesus Christ?” This paper summarizes some of the evidences for the Old and New Testament canon’s accuracy in choosing God breathed, authoritative writings and then reflects on the wide ranging
The historical reliability of the Bible is the first matter that needs to be discussed. There are three criteria that the military historian C. Sanders lists as principles for documentary historical proof: the bibliographical test, internal evidence test, and the external evidence test (McDowell 43). The bibliographical test is the examination of text from the documents that have reached us. The reliability of the copies of the New Testament is tested by the number of manuscripts (MSS) and the time intervals between the time in which the piece of literature was written and our earliest copy. There are more than 5,300 Greek manuscripts of the New Testament and 10,000 Latin vulgate manuscripts, not to mention the other various translations.
It was deemed that the books of the New Testament that are authentically apostolic in nature were included in the Bible. This strict appraisal process used by the church fathers to determine the legitimacy of certain books in the bible is the reason why scripture, once it becomes part of church canon it is incorruptible. Furthermore, because tradition stems from scriptural interpretation that it can be corruptible as it relies on the judgment of human beings, whose interpretations may be driven by internal
LaSor, W., Hubbard, D., Bush, F., & Allen, L. (1996). Old Testament survey: The message, form, and background of the Old Testament (2nd ed.). Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans
While the Hebrews and Egyptians creation theories bear resemblances and differences, the study and comparison of both the Egyptian myths and the biblical account allow us to comprehend the religious views of ancient civilizations in a better light. One may come to the conclusion that the Hebrews were influenced by the cultures of Egyptians by creating similarities in their own beliefs, or by drawing a line of defense of what is in their terms true, by separating from the mass ideals of the Egyptians and establishing distinct