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Where Did The Bible Come From

Why Your Kids Misbehave And What To Do About It

Where Did the Bible Come From?

Tantrums. Talking back. Throwing toys or food. Meltdowns. Slamming doors. Kids know just how to push your buttons. Youve tried all sorts of methods, but nothing seems to work. In this book, Dr. Kevin Leman reveals exactly why kids misbehave and how you can turn that behavior around with practical, no-nonsense strategies that really work . . . and are a long-term win for both of you.

How Did We Get The Bible

The Bible sits on the desk, nightstands, and bookshelves of millions of people. Passed down from generation to generation, the Bible is the bestselling book of all-time, and generally respected even by people of other religions. In our modern society, the accessibility of the Bible has increased all the more, being fully available online and through digital apps on our smartphones and tablets.

Considering the prominence and accessibility of the Bible today, one would be right to ask where this book came from. Unlike just about any other book, we can’t simply call up the publisher’s public relations department or send an email to the author. But like other books, the Bible we hold in our hands today had an origin and development. Although we would be fully accurate in saying that the Bible came from God, it’s also accurate to say that the Bible was written by human authors. The formation of the Bible is an amazing process.

The Integrity Of The Manuscript Evidence

As with any ancient book transmitted through a number of handwrittenmanuscripts, the question naturally arises as to how confident can we be that wehave anything resembling the autograph. Let us nowlook at what evidences we have for the integrity of the New Testamentmanuscripts. Let us look at the number of manuscripts and how close they date to the autographs of the Bible as compared with other ancient writings of similar age.

  • Tacitus, the Roman historian, wrote his Annals of Imperial Rome in about A.D. 116. Only one manuscript of his work remains. It was copied about 850 A.D.
  • Josephus, a Jewish historian, wrote The Jewish War shortly after 70 A.D. There are nine manuscripts in Greek which date from 1000-1200 A.D. and one Latin translation from around 400 A.D.
  • Homer’s Iliad was written around 800 B.C. It was as important to ancient Greeks as the Bible was to the Hebrews. There are over 650 manuscripts remaining but they date from 200 to 300 A.D. which is over a thousand years after the Iliad was written.
  • The Old Testament autographs were written 1450 – 400 B. C.
  • The Dead Sea Scrolls date between 200 B.C. to 70 A. D and date within 300 years from when the last book of the Old Testament was written.
  • Two almost complete Greek LXX translations of the Old Testament date about 350 A. D.
  • The oldest complete Hebrew Old Testament dates about 950 A. D.
  • The New Testament autographs were written between 45-95 A. D.
  • 8,000 to 10,000 Latin Vulgate manuscripts.
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    What Is The Bible

    Before we discuss how the Bible was assembled, we should understand what the Bible itself actually is. Because of the way Bibles are published, it is often seen as a singular book. However, the Bible itself is a collection of writings. With many different styles of writing and genres, the Bible is better understood as an anthology of writings that tell a singular and grand overarching story .

    Specifically, the Bible contains 66 distinct books under two major divisions. The first 39 books of the Bible were mostly written in the Hebrew language and are commonly referred to as the “Old Testament.” The second set of 27 books was originally written in the Greek language and is called the “New Testament.” These 66 books span stories that occurred over at least 4,000 years of human history, with as many as 40 different human authors. Diverse cultures, backgrounds, writing styles, and genres were used to write the Bible.

    So how did this all come together? How were the writings of 40 different authors over thousands of years gathered into one book?

    Sharing Your Faith With Grace And Purpose

    Where Did the Bible Come From?

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    The Bible Has An Amazing History Surviving Wars Disasters Language Changes And Culture Shifts

    In ancient times, the stories of God were passed down through generations by word of mouth. Its not known who first recorded these stories, but it could have been as early as 1,400 BC. The recording of all the books in the Old Testament took hundreds of years. Once they were all written down, the process of collecting them all together probably began around 400 BC.

    Different Christian communities have, through history, come to different decisions about which books belong in the Old Testament. They have all accepted the 39 books in the Old Testament that form the Hebrew Bible of the Jewish people. Catholic Christians also use an additional seven books, plus some extra material in the books of Daniel and Esther. Orthodox Christians accept ten or more additional books as well as the additional material in Daniel and Esther.

    The printing press eventually made the Bible more accessible to all. This is a copy of the Guttenberg Bible, one of the first books ever printed.

    The first translation of the whole Bible into English was done by John Wycliffe in about 1380. In 1526 William Tyndale produced the first printed New Testament in English. Since then, the Bible has been translated into English many times.

    The Bible was first translated into Mori by Christian missionaries who began arriving in New Zealand in 1814. The first Mori New Testament was printed at Paihia in 1837 and the first full Mori Bible was printed in 1868.

    Identifying Triggers In Your Marriage

    They were both convinced they had married the wrong person. From almost the very beginning of their marriage, Amber and Guy Lia experienced various tensions and personality clashes related to house cleaning, backseat driving, workaholism, and intimacy. In this two-day Focus on the Family broadcast, Amber and Guy discuss how they bravely faced the triggers head-on, and committed to working on their own relationships with Jesus. As you listen to the Lias story, youll feel hope that you, too, can see real marriage transformation!

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    Mr And Mrs Guy And Amber Lia And Mrs Jean Daly

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    Formation Of The New Testament

    Where Did the Bible Come From?

    Various writers wrote down in the years following Jesus death the many stories circulating about the Messiah. These writers were either apostles, or friends of apostles who knew Jesus very well. They witnessed the events or interviewed people who had, and sought to preserve the life and teachings of Jesus Christ in written form.

    As time passed by, copies of these works were spread and various Christian communities gathered them to be read during the Sunday celebration of the Mass. Copies of St. Pauls letters were also disseminated and were regarded by the communities as inspired by the Holy Spirit.

    A document from the Second Vatican Council, Dei Verbum, confirms this process of how the New Testament was formed, specifically the Gospels:

    The sacred authors wrote the four Gospels, selecting some things from the many which had been handed on by word of mouth or in writing, reducing some of them to a synthesis, explaining some things in view of the situation of their churches and preserving the form of proclamation but always in such fashion that they told us the honest truth about Jesus. For their intention in writing was that either from their own memory and recollections, or from the witness of those who themselves from the beginning were eyewitnesses and ministers of the Word we might know the truth concerning those matters about which we have been instructed.

    Read more:Read more:

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    The Canon We Have Today Was Finalized In The Fourth Century Ad

    In A.D. 367 the Thirty-ninth Paschal Letter of Athanasius contained an exact list of the twenty-seven New Testament books we have today. This was the list of books accepted by the churches in the eastern part of the Mediterranean world.

    Thirty years later, in A.D. 397, the Council of Carthage, representing the churches in the western part of the Mediterranean world, agreed with the eastern churches on the same list. These are the earliest final lists of our present-day canon.

    At the end of the last chapter in the final book in the biblical canon, John writes:

    I warn everyone who hears the words of the prophecy of this book: if anyone adds to them, God will add to him the plagues described in this book, and if anyone takes away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God will take away his share in the tree of life and in the holy city, which are described in this book.Revelation 22:18-19

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    Brief Synopsis & Commentary

    The book of Genesis, the first book of the Old Testament, tells the story of the creation of the universe, the world, and humanity, the fall of man in the Garden of Eden, and the great flood which God sent on the world because of the evil of mankind. Following the flood, Noah‘s children repopulate the earth and the narrative then follows the stories of his descendents who are the Hebrew ancestors of the men who wrote the stories. The tale of Joseph and his coat of many colors brings the Hebrews from their land of Canaan to Egypt where, the Book of Exodus explains, they became slaves.

    They were led from Egypt to freedom by the great lawgiver Moses who then passed his leadership to his second-in-command Joshua son of Nun whose army lay waste to the region of Canaan so the Hebrews could claim it as the land promised to them by their God . Following the establishment of the people who called themselves Israelites in the land, famous kings such as David and his son Solomon ruled and great prophets such as Jeremiah and Isaiah, Ezekial and Jonah preached the will of their God.

    Why Is The Bible Important

    Where Did the Bible Come From? Pt 2

    Inside your Bible is a collection of sixty-six unique and separate books writings from different times, different nations, different authors, different situations and different languages. Yet, these writings compiled over the period of 1600 years all weave together in unparalleled unity, pointing us towards the truth of God and the salvation that is ours in Christ.

    The Bible undergirds much of our classic literature. As a former high school English teacher, I found authors such as Shakespeare, Hemingway, Mehlville, Twain, Dickens, Orwell, Steinbeck, Shelley, and others difficult to fully grasp without at least a rudimentary knowledge of the Bible. They frequently alluded to the Bible, and the language of the Bible is deeply embedded in the thoughts and writings of our history and culture.

    Speaking of books and authors, it is important to note that the first book printed on Gutenbergs printing press was a Bible. That was in the 1400s before Columbus sailed the ocean blue and a couple hundred years before the American colonies were established. The Bible continues to be the most printed book today. Although it was written long before the English language had come into existence, the life and language of English speakers have been forever impacted by the phrasings of the Bible.

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    The Spiritual Battle For Your Marriage

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    The Formation Of The Bible Began With The 10 Commandments

    The earliest collection of written words from God was the Ten Commandments. The Ten Commandments form the beginning of the biblical canon. God himself wrote on two tablets of stone the words which he commanded his people:

    And he gave to Moses, when he had made an end of speaking with him upon Mount Sinai, the two tables of the testimony, tables of stone, . Again we read, And the tables were the work of God, and the writing was the writing of God, graven upon the tables . The tablets were deposited in the ark of the covenant and constituted the terms of the covenant between God and his people.

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    Who Was King David

    The first wave of scribes may, its been suggested, have started work during the reign of King David . Whether thats true or not, David is a monumental figure in the biblical story the slayer of Goliath, the conqueror of Jerusalem. David is also a hugely important figure in the quest to establish links between the Bible and historical fact, for he appears to be the earliest biblical figure to be confirmed by archaeology.

    I killed king of the house of David. So boasts the Tel Dan Stele, an inscribed stone dating from 870750 BC and discovered in northern Israel in the 1990s. Like the Merneptah Stele before it, it documents a warlords victory over the Israelites . But it at least indicates that David was a historical figure.

    The Tel Dan Stele also suggests that,no matter how capable their rulers, the people of Israel continued to be menaced by powerful, belligerent neighbours. And, in 586 BC, one of those neighbours, the Babylonians, would inflict on the Jews one of the most devastating defeats in their history: ransacking the sacred city of Jerusalem, butchering its residents, and dragging many more back to Babylonia.

    Where Did The Bible Come From

    Where Did The Bible Come From and Why Should We Care?: Tim Mackie (The Bible Project)
    • Wayne Grudem

    The Bible is a collection of 66 books believed to have been written by more than 40 divinely-inspired authors. Its thousands of years old, and Christians still place their trust in it today. So where did the Bible come from? How did we end up with these 66 books?

    In his online systematic theology course, Dr. Wayne Grudem explores the origins of the biblical canon to answer questions like these. The following post is adapted from his course.

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    The Apostles Claimed To Have Divine Authority

    The apostles claimed to have an authority equal to the Old Testament prophetsan authority to speak and write words that came directly from God.

    Peter encourages his readers to remember the commandment of the Lord and Savior through your apostles . And to lie to the apostles was equivalent to lying to the Holy Spirit and lying to God .

    Paul especially claimed to speak the words of God. He claimed not only that the Holy Spirit revealed to him what no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man conceived , but also that when he declared this revelation, he spoke it in words not taught by human wisdom but taught by the Spirit, interpreting Spiritual things in Spiritual words .

    Similarly, Paul tells the Corinthians, If anyone thinks that he is a prophet, or spiritual, he should acknowledge that what I am writing to you is a command of the Lord . The word translated what in this verse is a plural relative pronoun in Greek and more literally could be translated the things that I am writing to you. Thus, Paul claims that his directives to the church at Corinth are not merely his own but a command of the Lord.

    Later, in defending his apostolic office, Paul says that he will give the Corinthians proof that Christ is speaking in me . He makes similar claims elsewhere .

    How The New Testament Was Created

    byRevd Professor John Barton FBA

    3 Feb 2020

    It is easy to forget that the earliest Christians did not yet have the New Testament. They had the Scriptures of Judaism what is now called the Old Testament but they had no writings of their own until Paul started to write to the churches he had founded, some time in the 50s AD, a couple of decades after the crucifixion of Jesus. The gospels were not written till later still, probably in the 70s-90s AD. Until then, the stories about Jesus and his sayings must have circulated orally. A generation or two of Christians thus managed without a written record of Jesus. In New Testament times, there was no New Testament.

    Agreeing on the gospels

    How did the individual letters and gospels come to be regarded as holy scripture, alongside the older corpus of the Old Testament or Hebrew Bible? In The Da Vinci Code, Dan Brown popularised the theory that it was not until the fourth century that the Church decided what was to be in the New Testament, selecting from a vast body of gospels and other books that had been written by Christians of various persuasions.

    Between significance and scripture

    Acceptance into The Bible

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