Bible The Good Book Holy Scriptures God’s Word

Old Testament Survey  Before looking at the Bible itself, we need to discuss how it came to be – How did these 39 books come to be the OT?  Why discuss this at the outset? – To strengthen faith – To prepare you to deal with the Dan Brown’s of the world (The Davinci Code)

What Christianity & Judaism Believe about the Old Testament  The Bible was NOT… – Delivered by angels (or fall from Heaven) – Dictated by God to a human being (Islam) – A purely human production  The Bible IS… – Inspired by God – Correct in what it says about God, humanity, and the world – A complex and diverse collection of books

How Did We Get Our Bible?  The OT alone may well have taken over 1,000 years!  The Process was complex  There are big gaps in our knowledge of the process  This means, to be honest, there is a lot of speculation and guesswork  Be wary of the scholars who think they have it all figured out!

Let’s take an example: David & Goliath (1 Samuel 17) Event  Oral Retelling  Written Account Updating/Adding/Editing  Copying  Canon

Let’s Take a Closer Look Event Takes Place (or God acts or speaks) Passed on by story telling (oral tradition) Written down (perhaps by scribes in king Solomon’s court?) As time goes by documents are added to, updated, edited, rearranged, etc. Ancient Israelites did not have same concept we do about books, author and copy-rights! Written on scrolls (new stuff could be stitched on)

Aleppo Codex Masoretic Text 10th century CE

The Dead Sea Scrolls - Discovered in 1947 The oldest copies of portions of the OT ever found (date from around 100 BCE)

Cave at Qumran in southern Israel where some of the Dead sea scrolls were found

Let’s Take a Closer Look Scrolls are lost!! (and found) King Josiah (620 BCE) 2 Kings 22 Some are lost to us forever (Annals of the Book of Kings) 2 Chronicles 24:27 Exile! 587 BCE (got a little more careful with their documents) Post-exile – got really serious about keeping, reading and explaining the sacred scrolls (see Nehemiah 8:1-2)

Let’s Take a Closer Look Copying Sometime between 400 – 200 BCE adding to and changing the scrolls stopped Scribes began to very carefully make copies Canonization “Canon” - a standard to measure by Also about 400 – 200 BCE began to recognize certain books a authoritative

Role of Inspiration? This information caused a crisis of faith for me in college Before college I had the simple belief that God inspired certain authors to write and that’s exactly what we have today (except for a few copying errors)

Role of Inspiration? The making of the Bible was a very messy process involving messy human beings Where was God in this messy production? What if some scribe just made it all up? Wouldn’t God take better care of His Word?

What if God was not intimidated by our messy processes? ? What if God was not only able to overcome but also to use our messes to bring about the Bible?

Which requires a bigger God? A God who inspired a few authors? OR

A God Who inspired and superintended… Events & Oral Re-tellings Authors & Writings Various ways of transmission Changes, additions to texts Communities who developed and safe- guarded documents (or lost them!)

A God Who inspired and superintended… Folks involved in the process who did not always agree Copying (mistakes were made) Canonization People of faith who use the Bible in public and private settings

A God who is not afraid to enter our mess as a man (Jesus) will not be in the least incapable of seeing to it that the Book for His people emerges from a long, often messy process This ought to make us more in awe of God (and the Bible) not less!