Why Was The Bible Written

Why Was The Bible Originally Written In Greek

The reason why the New Testament was originally written in Greek is because Greek was the lingua franca of the eastern Mediterranean at the time whereas Latin was only widely spoken in the west. The Bible was translated into Latin in late antiquity because, at that time, Latin was the common tongue of the western Roman Empire.

What Does The Bible Say

The Bible centres on the one and only God, the Creator of all that exists. Gods will and purpose are viewed as just, loving, and ultimately prevailing. The Hebrew Bible starts with an account of Gods creation of the world, and it tells the story of the Israelites and the Promised Land. The New Testament deals with the life, the person, and the teachings of Jesus and the formation of the Christian church.

Bible, the sacred scriptures of Judaism and Christianity. The Christian Bible consists of the Old Testament and the New Testament, with the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox versions of the Old Testament being slightly larger because of their acceptance of certain books and parts of books considered apocryphal by Protestants. The Hebrew Bible includes only books known to Christians as the Old Testament. The arrangements of the Jewish and Christian canons differ considerably. The Protestant and Roman Catholic arrangements more nearly match one another.

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In the Apocrypha of the Old Testament, various types of literature are represented the purpose of the Apocrypha seems to have been to fill in some of the gaps left by the indisputably canonical books and to carry the history of Israel to the 2nd century bce.

Who Was Jesus Did He Really Exist

Most scholars agree that Jesus, a first-century religious leader and preacher, existed historically. He was born in c4 BC and died reportedly crucified on the orders of the Roman prefect Pontius Pilate in cAD 3033. Then, for around 40 years, news of his teachings was spread by word of mouth until, from around AD 70, four written accounts of his life emerged that changed everything.

The gospels, or good news, of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John are critically important to the Christian faith. It is their descriptions of the life of Jesus Christ that have made him arguably the most influential figure in human history.

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We cant be sure when the gospels were written, says Barton, and we know little about the authors. But the guess is that Mark came first, in the 70s, followed by Matthew and Luke in the 80s and 90s, and John in the 90s or early in the second century.

In general, Matthew, Mark and Luke tell the same story with variations, and hence are called the synoptic gospels, whereas John has a very different style, as well as telling a markedly different version of the story of Jesus. Matthew and Luke seem to be attempts to improve on Mark, by adding more stories and sayings from sources now lost. John is a different conceptualisation of the story of Jesus, portraying a more obviously divine figure.

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Reason #: People Are Willing To Die For This Book

People have died torturous deaths simply to gain access to this book. You may, even now, be in a country where this book is discouraged or even banned outright. In many countries it is a crime to distribute or even possess this book.

• This book has been praised, cursed, restricted, banned, desecrated, burned and fought over. People swear on it and at it.
• Some have tried to eliminate it. All who have tried have failed. People have suffered exquisite tortures and loss of freedom and even their lives for printing it. This has occurred recently and over many centuries past, as well. It is, in fact, a regular occurrence in this world.
• This book is simultaneously hated and loved. Once read it would be impossible to be indifferent to it for its claims are monumental and beyond exaggerating. It provokes a strong response in either a positive or negative direction you will either love it or hate it. It was meant to be so by design. It is so controversial that wars have been fought over its interpretation. Governments have toppled on account of it and kings have been deposed because of it. Most importantly, lives have been dramatically changed for good because of this book.

Why The King James Bible Endures

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By Charles McGrath

The King James Bible, which was first published 400 years ago next month, may be the single best thing ever accomplished by a committee. The Bible was the work of 54 scholars and clergymen who met over seven years in six nine-man subcommittees, called companies. In a preface to the new Bible, Miles Smith, one of the translators and a man so impatient that he once walked out of a boring sermon and went to the pub, wrote that anything new inevitably endured many a storm of gainsaying, or opposition. So there must have been disputes shouting table pounding high-ruffed, black-gowned clergymen folding their arms and stomping out of the room but there is no record of them. And the finished text shows none of the PowerPoint insipidness we associate with committee-speak or with later group translations like the 1961 New English Bible, which T.S. Eliot said did not even rise to dignified mediocrity. Far from bland, the King James Bible is one of the great masterpieces of English prose.

This is the opposite, of course, of the procedure followed by most new translations, starting with Good News for Modern Man, a paperback Bible published by the American Bible Society in 1966, whose goal was to reflect not the language of the Bible but its ideas, rendering them into current terms, so that Ezekiel 23:20, for example becomes She was filled with lust for oversexed men who had all the lustfulness of donkeys or stallions.

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Disputed Spurious And Downright Heretical

Luther had issues with the book of James, which emphasized the role of “works” alongside faith, so he stuck James and Hebrews in the back of the Bible alongside Jude and Revelation, which he also thought were questionable. Combs says that in Luther’s original Bible, those four books don’t even appear in the table of contents.

Eusebius was a Christian historian writing in the early 300s who provided one of the early lists of which books were considered legit and which were borderline bogus.

Eusebius broke his list down into different categories: recognized, disputed, spurious and heretical. Among the “recognized” were the four gospels , Acts and Paul’s epistles. Under “disputed,” Eusebius included James and Jude the same books Luther didn’t like plus a few others that are now considered canon, like 2 Peter, 2 John and 3 John.

When Eusebius turns to the “spurious” and “heretical” categories, we get a glimpse into just how many other texts were in circulation in the second and third century C.E. Have you ever heard of the Apocalypse of Peter, the Epistle of Barnabas or the Gospel of Thomas? Combs says that there were hundreds of texts similar to those found in the New Testament and Old Testament that didn’t make it into the canon.

When Was The Old Testament Written

The Old Testament scriptures were composed and compiled across time. By this, we mean to say that there were not certain dates to locate. Rather, the ancient Church, believers in the Old Testament era, recognized the impression of the Holy Spirit on the text. The believers, like in the New Testament, gathered those documents either because of the author or because the text demonstrated unity, historicity, reliability, and impression was in concert with the other parts of the Word of God. Bodie Hodge and Dr. Terry Mortenson state this about the Pentateuch in their Answers in Genesis article Did Moses Write Genesis?:

“There is abundant biblical and extra-biblical evidence that Moses wrote the Pentateuch during the wilderness wanderings after the Jews left their slavery in Egypt and before they entered the Promised Land .”

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Who Wrote The Bible

The Bible was written over a period of two thousand years by multiple authors from different cultures, writing in three different languages . Despite such variety among the Bibles human authors, there is complete internal consistency among the different books of the Bible. This is testimony to the fact that God Himself oversaw the writing of Bible so that the Bible can trusted as the perfect and infallible Word of God, even while it is also a product of human authorship

Animals In The Second Dream Vision

The second dream vision in this section of the Book of Enoch is an allegorical account of the history of Israel, that uses animals to represent human beings and human beings to represent angels.

One of several hypothetical reconstructions of the meanings in the dream is as follows based on the works of R. H. Charles and G. H. Schodde:

• White color for moral purity Black color for sin and contamination of the fallen angels Red color for blood in reference to martyrdom
• White bull is Adam Female heifer is Eve Red calf is Abel Black calf is Cain White calf is Seth
• White bull / man is Noah White bull is Shem Red bull is Ham, son of Noah Black bull is Japheth Lord of the sheep is God Fallen star is either Samyaza or Azazel Elephants are Giants Camels are Nephilim Asses are Elioud
• Sheep are the faithful Rams are leaders Herds are the tribes of Israel Wild Asses are Ishmael, and his descendants including the Midianites Wild Boars are Esau and his descendants, Edom and Amalek Bears are the Egyptians Dogs are Philistines Tigers are Arimathea Hyenas are Assyrians Ravens are Seleucids Kites are Ptolemies Eagles are possibly Macedonians Foxes are Ammonites and Moabites

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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.

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The Problem Of People Wanting To Take Books Out Of The Bible

One of the earliest challenges to the commonly recognized collection of books that the churches were using as Scripture came from a man named Marcion. He was a wealthy and prominent church leader who lived in the early second century AD in a coastal city of northern Asia Minor . He was passionate about the writings of the apostle Paul but had a very skewed idea of what they taught. Ultimately, he advocated that only ten letters of the apostle Paul should be accepted as Scripture as well as the Gospel of Luke all others should be rejected . Because of his wealth and influence, the churches of the Mediterranean world had to respond. This challenge became a huge motivation for the churches to declare formally and publicly what books they had already been using as Scripture.

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The Example Of Daniel

Some of the prophets had visions. This was a means by which the Spirit moved men to write. Daniel was one of those prophets. He received several revelations from God. For instance, “In the third year of Cyrus king of Persia, a message was revealed to Daniel… The message was true… and he understood the message”.

Daniel then records how he came by that message. An angel spoke to him and told him things written in the Book of Truth . What Daniel wrote came from Heaven.

The apostles and prophets of Jesus also wrote down Gods word in letters which have been collected as the New Testament Scriptures. These Christian prophets were, like those of Israel, moved by the Holy Spirit.

King James Bible Vs Geneva Bible

The difference between the King James Bible and the Geneva Bible is that the King James Bible, also called the Authorized Bible, was published in 1611 under King James after he declared the Geneva Bible seditious and incorrect while the Geneva Bible, also known as the Breeches Bible, was published by a group of protestant scholars in exile from England in 1560. Both these Bibles are two different English translations of the Bible for the Church of England.

The King James Version is considered one of the most important religious scriptures of all time, not only for its most widely accepted portrayal of Christianity but also for its ability to spread the English language worldwide. This Bible was commissioned and published in 1604 and 1611 respectively for the Church of England after its predecessor, the Breeches Bible, was considered unorthodox.

The Geneva Bible is also an English translation of the Holy Bible published in Geneva in 1560 by a group of protestants in exile. They worked under the directions of scholars and priests. This Bible is also one of the most historic translations into English. It portrays Protestantism. It was used by great scholars and thinkers and was one of the Bibles taken to America on the famous ship, the Mayflower.

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Was The Bible Written

Library On the other hand, this ancient Hebrew Bible was written between the 1260th and 165th century blicized versions have the original Hebrew Bible, the sacred scriptures of the Jewish faith, written at different times between about 1200 and 165 BC First written by Christians, in the first century AD, New Testaments formed a timeless tradition.

How The Church Recognized What Was Scripture

The influence of the Holy Spirit in the hearts and minds of the early Christians was the primary factor influencing what particular documents the individual churches began to use as inspired and authoritative Scripture. But there were also some objective and rational standards:

Apostolic origin . From the very beginning, Christians devoted themselves to the apostles teaching . Originally, their teaching was spread orally, but once this teaching was written down, churches obtained copies of these documents as soon as they could and used them as the very Word of God for their beliefs and practice. Orthodoxy. The churches rejected out of hand any document that did not conform to the collection of essential teachings that all of the churches accepted. Usage. In the third and fourth centuries, no book was regarded as Scripture unless it had been widely used by the churches from the beginning. Of course, this latter standard rules out the possibility that any document can or should be added to the Bible now.

So, when it comes to considering whether a newly discovered document like the Gospel of Judas should be made part of the Bible, it fails on every ground. Although it claims to be from Judas , there are good historical reasons for concluding that it did not . Furthermore, the teaching of this book is gnostic and contradicts most essential Christian doctrines. And, finally, it was never used by the church and was actually condemned.

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Why Is The Kjv Still Popular Today

For a book that was published in 1611, its amazing how influential and widely read the KJV still is today. Though there are hundreds of versions and translations of the Bible, the KJV is the most popular. According to market research firm Statistica, as of 2017, more than 31% of Americans read the KJV, with the New International Version coming in second place, at 13%. Five large denominations of Christianity Baptist, Episcopalian, Presbyterian, Latter-day Saints and Pentecostal use the KJV today.

The KJV works as both a word-for-word and sense-for-sense translation, meaning it acts as both a literal translation of many of the words believed to have been used by Jesus Christ and his Apostles and accurately conveys the meaning behind those words and events, Gordon said. One line of manuscripts used in the KJV the Textus Receptus of Erasmus, translated from Greek to Latin by the 16th-century Dutch scholar and philosopher Desiderius Erasmus is thought by some to be a particularly important inclusion in the KJV, especially for those who see it as the purest line of the New Testament going back to the Apostolic Age , Gordon said.

Despite the KJVs popularity throughout the centuries, Gordon said some scholars now view parts of it as outdated. He cautioned that there have been other ancient manuscripts discovered since the KJV was commissioned that enhance scholars understanding of some biblical events and possibly even change the meaning of certain words.