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Essay on biblical authority
Biblical authority and its importance
Biblical authority and its importance
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With the changing culture of today's world, one is often presented with questions concerning religion. Often this is an uncomfortable conversation if one is not familiar or is unable to provide supporting evidence for their religious views and beliefs. It is very important to be an informed Christian. Yes the Bible speaks for itself yet many do not believe in the Bible. They question the author and the authenticity of its contents. Who wrote the Bible, a commonly misunderstood topic. Some may say that it is difficult to explain who wrote the Bible, but it is a simple answer, God. However, when this discussion is brought to the table, the one and only answer becomes an extremely complex explanation, nevertheless more questions are to come. God did not physically write the Bible. However, he did inspire men through the Holy Spirit …show more content…
"All Scripture is inspired by God and is profitable for teaching, for rebuking, for correcting, for training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work” (2 Tim 3:16–17). We as believers know that the Scripture is inspired by God, we also understand that His word is the truth and free from error. With that being said, the Bible is inerrant. Through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit various authors composed a collection of 66 books that today we call the Bible. Written around 300 BC the earliest Bible translation was of the Old Testament. The Hebrew scripture was translate into the Greek language. This translation was known as the Septuagint. Today the Bible has been translated into over 550 different languages and over 2,900 languages have at least
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.
First, Achtemeier highlights the difficulties that lie in these topics by asking popular questions that have led to debates that have lasted centuries or even millennia. Is it the case that inspiration lies in the authors who were chosen by God to record his word? Or is it only the content of Scripture that is inspired? All Christians agree that God is the ultimate author of the Bible, but what is not agreed on is the methods or system in which Scripture was recorded in the past. Achtemeier uses these questions and debates to lead into a discussion about the opposing stances on the views of inspiration.
The most highly referenced and revered as sacred are The King James Version, considered a masterpiece of English literature, The Tanakh, or Hebrew Bible, The Aprocrypha, the books believed left out of some bibles, The Vulgate, the Latin Bible used for centuries by the Roman Catholic religion, and The Septuagint, the first ancient Greek translation of the Tanakh (Geisler and Nix 15, McCallum 4). The Bible is considered a sacred text by three major world religions, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Many believers consider it to be the literal truth. Others treat it with great respect, but believe that it was written by human beings and, thus is often contradictory in its tenets.
The first of these was the KJV, initially created in 1611. Since the KJV is the earliest translation, it is commonly known as the most accurat...
Even though humans wrote the text, translating it and passing it down from generations to generations, God’s truth is unchanging. Debates of the inerrancy of the bible cannot usurp God as the King of grace. Instead of focusing on the inerrancy of the Bible, individuals who wish to seek a life of faith should focus on the inspiration God is showing them in his word. These revelations should move them into applicable, daily life changing implications from what they have learned. God shows revelations of himself through the Bible, and his character is revealed time and time again throughout scripture. Any faulty facts or discrepancies in grammar or data, should not take away from the value that scripture holds. When we read scripture we bring new meaning of interpretations of the truths God shows us, since new eras and environmental factors will be influential on how we process information. The bible is not just a fact book, telling humans stories of the past, but instead the bible is inspired instructions for how we can deal with spiritual and ethical encounters we
To begin, before a person can debate the validity of anything, they must first understand the topic they are debating. So is the case here. A person must first understand the Bible and its origins before they can try and prove or disprove it. The Bible itself is composed of 66 books divided int...
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
“It is a compilation of 66 books written by 40 separate authors” from 3 different continents (Is The Bible True, 2002). These books are divided into the Old Testament, which has 39 books and the New Testament, which has 27 books. “Some books only have one writer receiving his revelation over a period of time” (Yohn, 2013). The links which connected these circumstances together can only come from one place, God. These links are, “inspiration, canonization and transmission” (Bickel, 2003, pp.22-23). Inspiration means to “breathe or blow into” (Bickel, 2003, p.23). God brought together all 40 writers and inspired each of them what to write. Canonization is the “process by which church leaders recognized individual books of the Bible as being inspired by God” (Bickel, 2003, p.24). This process helped to determine which books in the Bible were not inspired by God’s Word and which ones were. The final link is the transmission of God’s Word. Transmission is the method which took place to bring the Bible from its beginnings to what we have now. These three links connected together as one chain delivered the Bible from God to us. “All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness” (BibleGateway,
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.
The Holy Bible: giant print ; containing the Old and New Testaments translated out of the original tongues ; and with the former translations diligently compared and revised, by His Majesty's special command, authorized King James version ; words of Chri. Giant print reference ed. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan Pub. House, 1994.
The book How to Read the Bible for all its Worth by Gordon D. Fee and Douglas Stuart made me see the bible in a different way. It went into detail on how we interpret the bible in different ways. In chapter one it wants he reader to see the bible and how it was meant to be written and get its core values from it. The bible was written for everyone but it was not written to everyone. Meaning the bible is accessible to everyone who wants to read it. But whether you retain this info or not is up to you. At times the bible may seem difficult but it is only like this because in the different languages it has been passed through and changed. Scripture in the bible is the word of god given in human words in history. The Bible was written
Anyone, reading this chapter I just want to stop you right here so you don’t miss out on the rest of the class. You may be a senior at Liberty and still doubt if the Bible is inerrant and infallible. One look around the United States and you will see all kinds of false teachers telling us God does not speak today, the Early Church mistranslated the Bible and so on. Do not leave this class without God teaching you the Bible is true. Simply stop right now and pray. Ask God if this is His Words or something made up by man. Lets just get that part out of the way so we can really start learning something awesome from God.
Have you ever been reading your Bible and thought to yourself, “Where did the inspiration of the Bible come from?” I believe that this is a very common question that many Christians ask. I believe that when you are talking about the inspiration of the Bible you have to start with God. I think if you want to find out about biblical inspiration you need to first look at the Bible itself. 2 Timothy 3:16 says, “All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.”
All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness: One of the ways we know that the Old Testament and the New Testament are related is the both contain the infallible written word of God. (2 Timothy 3:16) (Myers)
the Bible were “God - breathed” making each a Word from God and not the words of the