Step by Step through the Old Testament

Carlton L. Arnold, Teacher

Week 3

8/25/02 : Introduction to and Background of the Bible

This is one of the more critical lessons on where we got our Bible. I'm going to cover a lot of information, but it's not necessary that you remember all of the information. My objective is that you gain an appreciation for what you're holding when you hold the Bible - especially the Old Testament since that's what we'll be studying. The objective is to introduce the Bible and talk about the background of it. If you did Unit 1 of the workbook, it went into the Hebrew Bible, as well as our Protestant Bible and I'm going to talk about the Catholic Bible also. I'm hoping to give you enough background such that when you're reading the Bible, you're going to have more confidence that what you're reading is what God intended to be read. At various times in the history of the Bible, we've heard criticisms about contradictions and about errors. How do we know what we're reading is what was actually written? I hope to dispel all of that by giving you the background. If you've spent some time yourself reading, you find out how much studying and how many historical documents there are that allow us to know that we're reading the Bible as God's Word.

I beg and plead with you to hold on. You will find it richly rewarding in terms of learning about the Bible. In preparation this week, there were so many things that I wanted to tell you. I wish you were there. There are so many things such that if you can get through this, it dispels, gets rid of, all of the things that you might have thought of or somebody told you about the Bible. I've already told you how open I think you should be with your thinking about the Bible. Gods intends for you to study it and read about it. It's not complicated. It's not a complex book. It's not something that's going to tie you into knots. The names are tough at times. I'll agree with that. Some of the concepts are tough but I'm going to explain those. All questions are fair and honest and can be asked.

God desires a relationship with man

The key thing that you're going to hear me say over and over, especially during the Old Testament study, is that it's God's desire to have a relationship with man. I always question the use of the word "man." I mean humanity. When I say "man," I mean men, women, and children - everyone. It's God's relationship with man (humanity). It's God's revealing Himself to us. I grew up in a Methodist church. If you're like me, how you developed your concept of God was based on what your parents said, what your Sunday School teachers said, or what you may have seen on TV or in movies about God. You formed your own concept of God. I want to challenge every one of you. Even if you're sure and confident, I still want to challenge your concept of God. In some ways the Old Testament is more exciting than the New Testament. We will see people seeking God and trying to find out who He is. They don't come with a pre-thought-out idea of who God is. They say, "I'm used to all of these pagans, idols, and other gods, but what is this one God, this Creator?" They approach God with an open mind to learn about Him and that's what I challenge you to do the same way. So when I say, "God's relationship with man and God's revealing," everything you read in the Bible should be related to that relationship. Read it not as a story in history, but as God saying, "I want a relationship with you, and this is what I want to tell you about myself. This is how I want to describe who I am."

When we talk about His mercy and His justice, it's not how we define mercy and justice; it's how God defines it. We want to see God's point of view, not our own. If you really search yourself with respect to your ideas and concepts, you will find that yours' are limited. They are lacking. There is something missing from them. If you're counting on your own definition, you almost have yourself as an idol or god, not God, Himself. So I will be challenging you on this relationship and His revealing. The relationship comes in because God says, "I created you to have a relationship with me, but you failed. All of you have failed completely and I need to make you 'right.' I'm going to do that through my Son, Jesus Christ." The preparation of that salvation, redemption, and being made "right," is in the Old Testament. That's what we'll be reading about. God's going to prepare the world to get ready to understand who Christ is - that's what's in the New Testament. It's a story of salvation. It's a story of redemption. It's a story of God saying, "I want every, single person to have a relationship with me, and I've got to make them 'right.' They can't do it themselves. They've tried and they've failed. I'm going to make it right by them." That's what we'll be reading. When we talk about Abraham, and about Abraham having a relationship with God, the one thing that Abraham had with God was faith. That's what he had. We'll read in the Bible very clearly, that it was counted as righteousness because he had faith. We're going to study what that means-what it means for Abraham and what it means for you.

The content of the Old Testament

The Bible consists of 66 books. In the Old Testament, there are 39. In the New Testament, there are 27. The books that we see in the Protestant Bible (as opposed to the Catholic Bible) are in a different order than the Hebrew Bible. If you did Unit 1, you studied that. But I want you to hear, it is the same words in each book. They just have a different order. So if you went to a Jewish person and asked to see their Torah, or their Pentateuch, or their Tanakh, (those are words for their Bible), those would be the same as your Bible-no different than the Hebrew Bible. Now, of course, they don't have the New Testament, because they don't accept the Messiah, Jesus Christ.

There are also some books called Apocrypha. I will look at the Apocrypha when we look at the period between the testaments. There are 14 books in the Apocrypha that were written between the Old and New Testaments. It's a fascinating history on how we got the Apocrypha. The Catholic Bible has them interspersed throughout the Bible. If you take the 14 books of the Apocrypha and add them to our Protestant Bible, you'd have the Catholic Bible. All of the other books are the same. The Book of John is the same in both bibles. The Apocrypha books make it different. There are other books that were written that are not canonized. The word "canon" is very important. You need to understand what a canon is. Canon is a measuring device or measuring standard. It's like, if you had a three-foot ruler, everyone would know what a three-foot ruler is and you measure everything by it. A canon establishes a certain criteria and everything is going to be thrown against that criterion to determine whether or not it's true and accurate. That's how we have the Old Testament books. The Old Testament books and the New Testament books were thrown against a canon-a standard device. By looking at, say, does it show the mercy of God? Is it accepted by everyone that's looking at it? When we get to the New Testament, that's what we'll find in the New Testament. If it meets those certain criteria, it becomes part of the canon.

So when you look at the Apocrypha, for example, the reason the Protestants didn't accept them is that they didn't pass by the canon. One of the pieces of the canon is, did Jesus reference it? Was it referenced in the New Testament? None of the Apocrypha books were referenced in the New Testament, so the Protestants decided to eliminate them. Take them out of the Catholic Bible. So they took them out because they did not meet the canon. It doesn't meet the standard with which we're accepting the books of the Bible. Men developed the canon. They asked, "What's reasonable and what's right?" There have been hundreds of groups or councils that have gathered together. In Unit 1, you read about the Council at Jamnia in 90 AD. They got together to look at the canon again. In other words, it wasn't just one group of people that said, "OK. This is it." It has been mankind throughout history looking at this over and over trying to prove or disprove something. Even today, there is a group in California called The Jesus Seminar. They have gone through and taken out most of the books of the Bible because they say they are not authoritative-according to their criteria. But they are a special group, they are heretical. That's what I mean. The Church, itself, coming out of the Middle Ages, had seven major, principle councils. Each one of those councils was convened to say, "Is this right? Is that right?" This was the break of the Protestant Reformation (around the 1500s).

Getting started with the Old Testament

When we look at the Bible, and you try to say, "Well, I want to know for sure. I want to be absolutely sure that when the Bible says, 'In the beginning, God created...' in Genesis 1, that God wrote that or inspired that. 2 Timothy 3:16 says that all scripture is God-breathed. Everything that you read in there, God promoted, inspired, and led. The Holy Spirit led a person to write what was in there. I want to show you where this verse is in the Bible, first of all. If you go to the Table of Contents of your Bible, you can begin to find any scripture verse. I know many of you know how to do this, but I want to explain it. In the Table of Contents, find the book called Jeremiah. If you don't know where Jeremiah is or where Zephaniah or Zechariah or Haggai or Nahum is-all of those weird names, you go to the Table of Contents in your Bible and find that book. Then you will find the page number for that book. Since all of the Bibles are different, we can't go by page numbers. It's not like a hymnbook. Find Jeremiah and go to the page. You will see that one of the things that happens to you this year is that you will get so familiar with the books that you won't have to go to the Table of Contents. As soon as I say Jeremiah, you'll know that it's an Old Testament book and about where it is. Trust me. If you stay in here, if you keep coming, you're going to get so familiar that you won't have to worry about going to the Table of Contents. So you go to Jeremiah. That's in the Old Testament. Next go to the chapter, 36. There are chapters in most every book of the Bible (except some that don't have chapters because they're so small). Go to Jeremiah, chapter 36. Every sentence, phrase, or thought has a number beside it-a verse. So you have 36:1, 36:2, 36:3, etc. until the end of the chapter. So there are 32 verses in Jeremiah chapter 36. So when I say "36:1-8", we're going to read verses one through eight. So when I say, "2 Timothy 3:16", you could go to the Table of Contents, find Second Timothy, go to chapter 3, go to verse 16, and read it. That's the nomenclature we understand. Now, to give you an idea about the chapters and verses, they did not exist until the 1500s. Before that there were no chapters or verses. If you were going to read the Bible, it was a continuous book. Jeremiah was one book. You'd go all the way through and not see any chapters or verses. Do you understand how much easier it is? Now you ask yourself, "Were the chapters and verses inspired by God?" It doesn't matter! The content is the same. The words are the same. It just helps us find where things are. So, reading in chapter 36, verse 1:

Jeremiah 36:1-8: (NIV)

How many originals were written? One (for each book). From that, we made copies, but there was one original. We just read about that original. Hold onto that. We're going to see that original in just a moment.

We're going to be going through the Bible sequentially, so it'll be pretty easy-unless I tell you to jump somewhere. But we're going to be going through it sequentially, so you will get used to it.

Faith

The other thing that I want you to think about is this word, faith. Even though I will tell you about all of this history, there's one thing it's going to come down to. Everything that you're going to learn that means anything to your life and your relationship to the Lord comes down to faith. I am going to draw a line up here. Spirit/spiritual is on top. World/worldly is on bottom. You're going to get used to this line. We're going to look at things from your perspective (world; how you grew up, your concept of God, and what you believe about the Bible) versus what God intended. I will tell you this, and you've heard it over and over. I will tell you all of these things, but they will not mean a thing unless the Holy Spirit tells you. The Holy Spirit has to tell you, individually, what is going on in here. Because anything I say (if you're typical and normal) you're going to say, "Well, I don't know if I believe him or not. Well, I don't know if I can agree with that or not. Well, I agree with this, but I don't think that's right." You're going to do that to me. You can do that to me all day long. You can say, "Wait a minute, Carlton. What about this and that?" What I'm looking for is where you get with God (between you and God) and come to an understanding of your faith, your concept of God, and what's in the Bible. You understand to the point that there's a spiritual change in your life. Only the Holy Spirit can lead, guide, and teach you in all truths. That's what the Bible says. We're going to talk about these things and how many councils there were and so forth. From a worldly perspective, we want to make it (and this is just typical of us) very finite, in a box, proven, rational, analytical, logical, nobody else can argue with it, it's settled, that's it. If we could do that, we don't need God. We really don't. We've got it all figured out ourselves. That's what a lot of people are doing. There's a religion for it called Scienticism. It's just like a religion. They believe everything has got to be figured out here (in the world). I will challenge you to say, "Nope. This is the way it works. There is a Spirit-way of looking at things in this world." The more that we do this (view worldly things from a spiritual perspective), the more you see God at work in this world. Otherwise you're going to be down in the world trying to logically rationalize everything. All it takes is faith. That means you-not your spouse, not your children, not your parents, not anyone else. It is you that has to exercise that faith. So, when we come up to something in the Old Testament and ask, "How did people live 798 years? I mean that's beyond all reason." Do you hear me? I mean we can talk about some of the rational, logical reasons why they lived 798 years or 993 years. We can talk about that and we will. But what will it come down to eventually? Faith. It will come down to you accepting it on faith. Because God said, "Unless you have faith, I cannot have a relationship with you." Without faith, it is impossible to please God. It's going to come to faith. I'm going to do everything I can to make it so. Faith. You've got to get to the point where you must step out on faith. It can't be what I've said, what you read, what you think, or what your concept is. It's going to be: I've got to step out on faith-I've got to step into something that I don't know everything about and trust Him.

Originals, Manuscripts, and Translations of the Bible

This is God's Word. Let's talk about the originals and copies. A copy of the original is referred to as a manuscript. There are over 4,000 manuscripts of the Bible-Old Testament and New Testament. Over 4,000 dated somewhere between 150 AD and 1500 AD (second century and sixteenth century). We have some old material. We have some very old material. The Dead Sea Scrolls were found in 1947. It is a remarkable, remarkable story. If you ever get a chance to see a special about the Dead Sea Scrolls, watch it. It's unbelievable. Before the Dead Sea Scrolls in 1947, in my lifetime, the oldest manuscripts were around 1100 AD. The oldest of our manuscripts went from 1100 AD to around 100 AD. In other words, 1,000 years would elapse and they found a manuscript 1,000 years older than the oldest before then. That's remarkable. That's amazing. In my lifetime. That's what I also wanted to do: the Old Testament is not "old." As a matter of fact, if you look in the Hebrew Bible, the word "old" is not used for Old Testament. It's called the Testament. It's called the Covenant. We called it "old" because we have got a new one. We just refer to it as "old." "Old" is not sacred. It is not something where God said, "Well, we're going to call it "old" now because we've got a new one." But He did say that He was going to establish a new covenant with you. You will not find another secular book, any book in the world, that has this much history behind it. If you go read Homer, the Iliad and the Odyssey, it's 1,300 years from the time it was written to the oldest manuscript. They have 100 or 150 copies of it. We have 4,000 copies of the Bible! Do you understand the significance of that? There are 4,000 copies that people can read which were written during this time and they can validate what you're reading right there. That's what they do. When we talk about councils and people getting together and evaluating, "Are we reading this right? Is the right version? Is the right translation?"

There were those that were translated. So we have the original. The original Old Testament was written in Hebrew with a little smattering of a language called Aramaic. Aramaic was an offshoot of Hebrew. It was used during the time of Babylon. During the time of the World Empire of Babylon, Aramaic was the language they accepted. So there's a little bit of Aramaic. You'll find that in the book of Daniel. Daniel was in Babylon. He wrote it in Babylon. So if you read the original Hebrew Bible, you'll find a little bit of Aramaic. The New Testament was in Greek. So if we wanted to read the original Bible, we'd have to learn Hebrew and Greek. But people have translated the Bible. We have over 20,000 copies of translated Bibles that date from the first century AD. In other words, you have 4,000 manuscripts (copied in Hebrew or Greek) and 20,000 that have been translated from the Hebrew and Greek.

I'm going to start with the Septuagint. I want you to remember the Septuagint. We'll be referring to it because it is a key in the translations. When Greece became a World Empire, it was more the culture of Greece that really influenced the world. Greek became the universal language. A lot of people couldn't read the Hebrew Bible because they were Greek, so it was translated from Hebrew to Greek. It was called the Septuagint. It was the first translation of the Old Testament. The Old Testament was translated in 250 BC. This was the first translation. In other words, somebody took the original Hebrew and translated it into Greek. It is called the Septuagint. The reason it was called the Septuagint is that there were 70-72 people who got together in Alexandria, Egypt and translated it. That's the first translation. The next translation-and I'm just going to mention some of these because there are 20,000 copies-is one called Old Coptic. Coptic was an Egyptian language. Another was called Old Latin. This was written around 100-150 AD. Each one of these was made from the Septuagint. Understand what I just said. These were translations of a translation. Do you understand what the problem may be with that? You've got to be careful because these people translated what they thought the word would be in their language. Words have different meanings in different languages. Even English has different meanings for the same words. For example, "rap." Rap used to mean knocking on a door and now it's music.

A guy by the name of Jerome considered the Old Latin translation. He said, "You know, there is a better way of translating. I'm going to go back to the original Hebrew and translate it." So he took the Septuagint and went back to the original Hebrew and wrote what is called the Vulgate version. The Vulgate version is very important. The Vulgate Bible was the bible of the Church for over 1,000 years and had tremendous impact on the growth of the Church or lack thereof. That's what I want you to see about the Vulgate version. When the Vulgate becomes the English version, we have the Protestant Reformation. The Vulgate was a copy of an attempt to go back to the original Hebrew with the Septuagint as the basis of it. Jerome did it. The Roman Catholic Church adopted it and that was the bible for 1,000 years until about 1500 AD. In 1500, we get the Protestant Bible. Next week, I want to start with the Vulgate and go into the English translations. I hope you're gaining an appreciation for what you're holding. That was the point of this lecture. Gaining an appreciation that you're not just holding something that someone threw together. There have been countless numbers of thousands of scholars and people who have looked at this bible compared to the 4,000 original manuscripts. They have looked at the wording to see if the wording is correct and that the author is correct. I'll get to the King James and New International versions next week. Also next week, we're going to get into Genesis 1. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. We'll get into His Creation.

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Teacher's Email: carltonlcv@gmail.com

Web page / Transcriptioning email: agapeeric@aim.com

Scripture taken from the HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®. NIV®.
Copyright©1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society.
Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved.