Thoughts on My Bible Study-What is the Old Testament?

   Yay! My first full week of school is done! I just have my first duel meet to go to. ERHS vs. SAHS...South is pretty good. Anyway, I'm not here to talk about that right now. Let's get into what I studied this week for Bible!

   My curriculum, Bible Road Trip, is a wonderful curriculum so far. I am using grades 10-12 level of the program. They are basically having you read this first semester Bible class book on the Old Testament(Encountering the Old Testament by Bill T. Arnold and Bryan E. Beyer). It's a fun read so far, and I'm here to tell you all about it.

   Let's start off with my memory verse for this week. Hebrews 4:12-"For the Word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and spirit, of joints and marrow, discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart." Very common verse that I know we hear a lot, but it has a TON of meaning packed into it.  If you do an inductive Bible study on it, I assure you that you will gain a lot of insight from it. 

   My first section that I studied was on the canon of Scripture.  The Old Testament was already "canonized," so people didn't really need to figure out what books belonged, and which ones didn't.  This was mostly because the Jews had a pretty good method of determining these things, plus, God gave them a little more insight than He gave the people who decided the canon of the New Testament.  There are three tests for canonicity:

• Test #1: Is it written by a prophet or other Spirit-led person?
• Test #2: Is it written to all generations?
• Test #3: Is it written in accord with previous revelation(revelation in this case means other books of the Bible)?

   These tests determine what books of the Bible are in our present day Bible.  To follow the string of thought, the next section I studied was on inspiration.  There are four different popular theories that are heard today:

• Neo-Orthodox Theory- This theory states that the Bible is a witness to the Word of God, or it contains the Word of God. It holds that God is utterly transcendent; that is, he is absolutely different from us and far beyond our comprehension.  A full evaluation on this theory would show us that this theory is wonderful on its view on God; however, the Bible claims that it more than just a witness to God's Word.  It specifically says that it is. John 1:1-4
• Dictation Theory- This is an interesting theory.  It suggests that God just dictated the Bible to scribes.  While God did communicate a precise sometimes, he may have allowed the authors of the books to express their personalities, as far as writing style.
• Limited Inspiration Theory- This theory expresses that God inspired the thoughts of the biblical writers, but not necessarily the words they chose.  The Bible puts a lot of emphasis on historical detail.  Thus, this theory tries to compensate for the details that are harder to explain, but there has been a lot of things discovered that account for some passages that prove difficult to interpret.
• Plenary Verbal Inspiration Theory- This theory is the most widely accepted theory.  It asserts that the Holy Spirit interacted with human writers to produce the Bible.  Plenary means "full" or "complete," while verbal refers to the words of Scripture.  God's word received inspiration from God, but He did allow the writers to express their writing styles so long as they conveyed the point correctly.  God did inspire the WHOLE Bible, and that is one of the most important aspects of this theory.

   Our next "stop" is the transmission of the Bible, in other words...how the Bible was passed down from generation to generation.  This is a key factor for people who translate the Bible, since their source is crucial to how the text is interpreted.  The Masoretes are the authors of the Masoretic text, which is known by all scholars to be the "gold standard" for a correct manuscript.  They counted everything, from the middle of books, to the middle of the Old Testament, to the 14th word of Ruth!  They knew everything there was to know about the Bible physically.  There were three things they did to ensure a correct manuscript:

• They developed a system for writing vowels.
• They developed a system of accents for the Hebrew text.
• They developed a system of detailed notes on the text, such as their counts of certain facts to produce an accurate manuscript.

   A couple of other side texts that some translators use are the Samaritan Pentateuch, the Dead Sea Scrolls, the Septuagint (LXX), and the Aramaic Targums.  The Samaritan Pentateuch is the least used because of its slant toward the Samaritan view of the beginning, which is slightly different than the Jewish belief.  The Dead Sea Scrolls and the Septuagint are the most commonly used because of their accuracy with either historical events, or the mass of manuscripts made that are exactly the same. 

   Lastly, the topic of Hermeneutics was introduced.  Hermeneutics are basically how someone would interpret the Bible.  The Grammatical-Historical Method is the main method that people use to interpret the Bible.  Here are some steps that are vital to the interpretation of the Bible:

• Understand the Context
• Determine the Type of Literature
• Interpret Figurative Language
• Let Scripture Interpret Scripture
• Discover the Application to Modern Life

   Hope you all learned as much as I did!

   I did copy some of the text as I was summarizing, so if there is language that seems far above my comprehension...then that's what it is. : )