A note from the writer: Hello readers! Before you continue reading, I want to make sure that I tell you my thoughts in writing this and maybe help you to read this on the same page that I wrote it (no pun intended there). In this particular series entitled "What is..." I wanted to take us all on a trip back to the basics of the Christian faith. For some, this may be a first-time tutorial through what Christianity is all about including some of the hard questions people ask (and maybe even you yourself may be asking now). For others, this may be a well-acquainted conversation, however, I believe examining the foundation of what we believe from time to time can be helpful for a believer at any stage in his or her life! With that being said, I have attempted to take some complex topics and condense the information in a way that will be helpful to the aspiring theologians as well as those of you who are brand new to everything! There is a place for everyone here, and my desire is to help those of you who are new to the faith learn, grow, and flourish in the truth and knowledge that God has given us. Because I recognize that many of you may be new to this information, I have been extremely thorough in my explanations so that no one has to worry much about getting lost! Having said this, the articles may be longer than what I typically write. No need to worry! Take your time! I have broken up the topic of "The Bible" in different sections and included questions that I attempt to answer to the best of my ability as well. I am so excited to study these topics and answer a variety of questions that may be lingering in your mind! May the Lord use these articles to strengthen your faith in what God has said and who He is. All glory be to God! What is the Bible? Defining the Bible is as easy as saying "Okay Google, what is the Bible?" and you would probably receive something along these lines: According to the Merriam-Webster definition, the Bible is “the sacred scriptures of Christians comprising the Old Testament and the New Testament." However, that can be an insufficient answer for many pondering the basic as well as the hard questions about Christianity. My hope in this post is to be able to explain some of the simple as well as the tough questions people have about the Bible, including why we can trust it. Before we can talk about the formation of the Bible, it is important to explain a huge part of the Bible that is often misunderstood: Israel. First of all, I am not going to go into detail about the significance of Israel or the Jewish faith to Christianity in this post, however, I would be doing a major disservice to you if I did not give a simple (maybe overly-simplified) answer to the following question: "Why is there so much talk about Jewish people and Israel in the Bible if Christianity is a separate religion?" To be clear, there are major differences between the Jewish religion and Christianity. But allow me to explain their relationship (because there is one)! I fear that because we live in the time after Jesus Christ’s time on this earth, many Christians—or those who follow the teachings of Jesus, do not know what God was doing between Adam and Eve (Gen. 3) and Jesus Christ (Matt. 1:1). We might know about Adam and Eve’s big mistake that led to what Christians often call “the Fall.” Sin, pain, and separation from God came as a punishment to humanity for the sin of Adam and Eve. And we might, hopefully, know that because of this, God sent his Son, Jesus, to give humanity another chance to be with God. But many years and generations of people have passed through history before Jesus Christ came, so the following question may come to mind: "What in the world was God doing during that time between the first humans’ mistake that doomed us all and God’s gift that gave us a second chance?" Before Jesus Christ was physically on the earth, took the punishment for sin upon himself, and was raised from the dead on the third day, God had a plan in the works to redeem the earth. After sin entered the world, and along with it every bad experience we have in this world like cancer, heartbreak, and even death, God, in his amazing compassion, set in motion a plan of redemption for the very humans that broke his heart and rejected him. This plan was sending Jesus Christ to quite literally save the world. But before this could happen, Jesus needed parents, and they needed parents, and they needed parents, who needed grandparents—you get the point. Before Jesus could be born into this world, God needed to raise up the perfect people in the perfect situation to accomplish his perfect (and often perfectly misunderstood) will. All of time has been meticulously crafted by God to accomplish exactly what he wanted—bringing Jesus into this world. So between the time of Adam and Eve and Jesus’s coming, God had been predestining everything to set the stage for him to come. This means that all throughout history, God has been using mere people to set everything up for Jesus to come and do what he needed to. The fact alone that the New Testament begins with a genealogy leading up to the birth of Christ shows us the bridge God made between the fall of man and the birth of Christ (Matt. 1:1-18). Before the era of “The Church”, or in other words, those who believe with their hearts and confess with their mouths that Jesus is Lord (Rom. 10:9), God had a unique, intimate relationship with a specific group of people on earth. This was not because he found them to be powerful, particularly moral, wealthy, or large in number (Deut. 7:6-8; 9:4-6). It was simply because of the mystery of the will of God. He does what he wants, because he knows what he’s doing. This “people” were loved by God intensely, though disobedient, hard-hearted, and rebellious (sounds familiar). This “people” are the nation of Israel, also known as the Jews. The Jewish people are recorded in the Old Testament in the Bible Christians read because they explain another chapter in the redemption story that came before us, the Church. God chose Israel simply because he loved them and wanted to use them to accomplish his purposes (which are many, but more on that in another post). One of the purposes of Israel was to bring about Jesus Christ. God needed to preserve the Jewish people to preserve the bloodline of Christ (as well as other things, but again, not in this post). The book of Matthew in the New Testament begins by telling us that Jesus Christ was a direct descendent of King David, a king of Israel (Matt. 1:17-18). This was prophesied to be the case in the Old Testament (2 Sam. 7:13-16). In other words, the Jewish people were promised things by God in the Old Testament that are fulfilled through Jesus Christ. One of the things promised and prophesied was the coming of Jesus. While they most likely did not know the earthly name or physical make-up of Jesus or know all of the details afforded to us about his ministry on earth, the Jewish people were given prophecies about the coming of Jesus. Many Jewish people died believing this prophecy to be true, having faith that God would make good on his promise to bring redemption. The faith of these people is extraordinary and because of this faith, they too are saved from the wrathful judgment of God that is to come on those who do not believe in Jesus Christ (Gen. 15:6; Rom. 4:22). The faithful Jewish people of the Old Testament were looking forward to the redemption that came through Jesus Christ, however, this still does not answer the question of why there were still religiously Jewish people after Jesus, the messiah they have been looking for all these years, came in the New Testament. In other words: "If the Jewish people were waiting for Jesus to come, when he came, why wouldn't they all just be Christians?" To answer this simply, they were blind. What had been prophesied of old was right before them, teaching in their synagogues and temples, and even blatantly telling them the truth, however, many Jews were still unable to see the truth. Some of this was due to the fact that over time, the Jewish beliefs and customs of the Old Testament changed. The Jewish religion described in the New Testament often only resembled that of the Old Testament. On top of the guidelines and commandments God had given Israel to follow in the Old Testament, many Jewish leaders added extra restrictions to the Jewish Law through extra books like “halaklah”.[i] In fact, they had become so attached to the Law, that many believed, falsely, that their salvation came from obeying the Law. In reality, salvation never came from the Law, it was always the faith that prompted them to commit to obeying the Law (Gen. 15:6; Rom. 4:22). In a nutshell, the Old Testament is an account of the creation of the world, the fall of humanity through Adam and Eve, God’s unique relationship to a people he chose to use for his glory, and a story of anticipation of the coming of the savior of the world—Jesus Christ. The Jewish faith today is deeply connected to our faith because we have a tied history. Our savior came as a result of the promise given to the Jewish people (Gen. 22:18). Christians today, otherwise known as the Church, can look back at the Old Testament and see the story of our faithful God who provided a way for us to be saved. Religious Jews today look back at the Old Testament and see a history of their people as well as the promises of God. However, they also see a set of commands from God to obey, blind to the truth that Jesus Christ has already come, rejecting the truth we have available for us in the New Testament. For them, there is one Testament—the Old Testament. So, as we continue this conversation about what the Bible is and how the Bible was formed, we will see that much of the Bible was not only written by Jews, but was also preserved out of their own religious obligations. It is truly amazing how many ways that God has used the Jewish people to bless the Church today, not excluding the preservation of a significant portion of the Bible. [i] The Journey from Texts to Translations p. 34 Just months ago, Star Wars: The Last Jedi came out, the eighth episode in a long series directed over three decades. With that much time and that many movies, there have been a variety of directors and writers. For anyone familiar with the series, The Last Jedi was arguably one of the worst Star Wars movies to be made. The main contributor to this blemish of a movie in a beloved series is the creative decisions of the latest director, Rian Johnson, who managed to ruin the storyline set up in the preceding movie, The Force Awakens by J.J. Abrams. With so many people involved, each with their own creative ideas and directions they would like to take the franchise, a mistake was bound to be made. Even a multi-million dollar effort is bound to make a wrong move when left in the hands of humans. And if you thought that three decades was a long time, imagine having to maintain a creative vision over around, say, fifteen hundred years and forty different writers! This is one of the things that makes the Bible so amazing--it's history. Just as Star Wars started out in the 1970's and technology was not as cutting-edge back then as it is now, the Bible was not always in the most user-friendly condition. "How was it made?" While I could explain how writing has changed over time and how the alphabet was created and the history of books, I will not put you to sleep with all of that extra information. (However if that interests you, check out the additional resources listed at the end of this post!) But I will explain, simply, how the Bible came to be the book that it is today. Physically-speaking, the Bible did not begin as a “book” at all. In fact, to be more precise, the first books of the Bible were written on scrolls of papyrus. There weren’t several copies of these scrolls kept in each believer’s home, either. These scrolls of papyrus could only be so long without being unusable, so the texts were split into different scrolls or portions. This is where we get the idea of many “books” of the bible. In the beginning, many of what we would call separate “books” of the Bible today were actually viewed as one whole book—simply broken up into different parts. For example, when Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy were written (the first five books of the Bible), they were all referred to as one book—the Torah, or the Pentateuch, meaning five “scrolls.” Over time, the papyrus was bound down the middle and used much more in a book-like format we see today with turning pages. However, the books were still unimaginatively large because they could only write on one side of papyrus. Eventually, the use of parchment was implemented because parchment, unlike papyrus, had the ability to use both sides for writing. This made the biblia or books much smaller and easier to circulate, particularly around the time of the New Testament when the Gospel was being taken to the ends of the earth![i] [i] The Journey from Texts to Translations ch. 2 There are many different methods for how the Bible is to be ordered. Because the Jewish people also hold the Old Testament as the authoritative word of God, they also have their methods. The order in which the books are placed in the Old Testament as well as the names of each book are more logical preference than anything mandated by God. With that being said, there are a few valid questions to ask about this. "How are the books divided in the Old Testament?" Depending on who you ask (although English-speaking Christians tend to be on the same page), the Old Testament books are divided in many different ways. For example, it may seem like a red flag that the Modern Hebrew Bible (The Jewish Old Testament) claims the Old Testament has 36 books while the English Old Testament translations have 39 books. Upon closer inspection, however, we see that the Modern Hebrew Bible (The Jewish Old Testament) combines 1 & 2 Samuel, 1 & 2 Kings, as well as 1 & 2 Chronicles. This is because they view them as one book, unseparated. The content is the same, the division is different. In addition to dividing the books in this way, the books are often divided into different categories. The commonly accepted divisions of the books in the English translation is the Pentateuch, which is the Greek word used to reference the Hebrew Torah (Gen.-Deut.), the Historical books (Joshua-Esther), the Poetic/Wisdom Literature (Job-Song of Songs), and the Prophets (Isaiah-Malachi). The divisions here are made based on the style of writing and purpose of each book. This is a bit different from the Jewish Old Testament that divides them up into the “TaNaK”, which is an acrostic in Hebrew translated to mean Torah (Torah), Prophets (nebiim), and Writings (katab). MORE IN-DEPTH LOOK: The Pentateuch is a historical account of the beginnings and establishment of the nation of Israel. The historical books are those books that give a historic account of the development of this nation of Israel. The poetic and wisdom literature books are books characterized by figurative language as well as basic principles and precepts to follow, and the prophets are the books describing the historical account of the nation of Israel from the time they enter the promised land until the Babylonian exile. They also contain the accounts of the prophets sent forth by God to warn or encourage Israel during this time period. "How were the books named?" Originally, it is believed that the scrolls containing the works of the Old Testament were not labeled with names as there was no need to name them. However, as we have historically tried to organize the collected books of the Bible, to form what is known as the canon, names have been given to each division or “book”. Sometimes these names would come from the content of the book, some the main characters, and some the writers. In the English translation, our titles come from the Septuagint, which is a fancy word for the first Greek Old Testament.[i] These titles primarily focused on content as well as names of main characters (i.e. 1 Kings speaks of the kings of Israel, Esther is the main character of the book of Esther). [i] https://www.gotquestions.org/septuagint.html “What is the Septuagint?” "How are the books of the New Testament divided?" The books of the New Testament were divided much differently than the Old Testament. The first four books of the New Testament are what we would call the Gospels. This is because all four of these books give a historical account of the life and ministry of Jesus Christ. "Why do the Gospels differ from one another if they are about the same thing?" Aside from the Gospels being written by different people, each Gospel, while outlining the same events (or most of the same events) historically, has a different purpose and audience, which makes each unique. It is as though four people followed me around my whole life and wrote down what they found important to note. Each person may find different things important, emphasizing different points from the same events in the same person’s life. This does not make their accounts inaccurate, but rather written to accomplish different purposes. The book of Acts, which follows the Gospel of John does not fit into a specific division like the Gospels because it is a “part-two” of Luke. Originally, the book of Acts was written as a second part to the Gospel of Luke, but has a different purpose in it’s writing. For this reason, it is not considered a Gospel, but does not quite fit into another category. "If the book of Acts is a second part to the book of Luke, then why is it listed after John?" The reason this is could have something to do with the fact that it is not considered a “Gospel.” The book of John was written long after the book of Luke and therefore was placed after Luke chronologically. It is possible that Acts was not put between Luke and John because it disrupts the pattern of keeping the Gospels together. The rest of the books of the New Testament (aside from the very last one) are grouped together in a category called the Epistles. Some of these epistles were written by early church leaders like James, Peter, Jude, and John, however most of these epistles were written by the apostle Paul during his extensive ministry after Jesus had already left the earth. Some were even written while he was in prison for preaching the Gospel. These epistles are appropriately named the Prison Epistles. One epistle, however, has yet to be attributed to an author. This is the book of Hebrews. While the author has yet to be determined, we do know a bit about the author based on the style of writing as well as the content and character of what the author is writing about. The Epistles have been put in different orders depending on the time periods, but do not worry; there is nothing mystical about how they are presently ordered! The Epistles are ordered by length, starting with Romans being the longest and ending with the shortest. The final book of the entirety of Scripture is the book of Revelation. This book is uniquely considered apocalyptic literature. The book was written by the famous John who recorded a vision he received from the Lord and was commanded to write down (Rev. 1:9). Due to the nature of this book, it is the most difficult book of the Bible to interpret—not impossible, but will take an understanding of Scripture that most people do not desire or attempt to reach! "How were the books of the New Testament named?" This is a simple question—much simpler than that of the Old Testament. The books were named based on either the author or who the book or letter was written to. Revelation has had many names, but “Revelation” seems to be the one used presently simply due to content. As usual, I am indebted to the resources out there from those who have done far more work on this topic than I could ever wish to! If you would like to check them out, please look at the list below! 1. Paul D. Wegner. The Journey From Texts to Translations: The Origin and Development of the Bible. Baker Academic, Grand Rapids, 1999.
2. Merriam Webster Dictionary: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/bible For more resources about the Bible that I did not necessarily use for this post, check out the links below! 1. Easy to understand video about the differences between our Bible and the bibles used by other religions: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nFEBwfYZBJY 2. Have you ever read some of the Bible and thought to yourself, “what did I just read?!” No need to fear! Many of us have been there before and thankfully there are resources out there to help explain the narratives for us in an easy way! (Especially if auditory or visual learning is more your style): https://thebibleproject.com/ (OFFICIAL WEBSITE); https://www.youtube.com/user/jointhebibleproject (OFFICIAL YOUTUBE CHANNEL) |