Importance of Studying Old Testament
Discuss about the Introduction to Old Testament 2 for Personal Interpretation.
Planning a timetable will be helpful and also will assist me in making a proper routine. Old Testament is vital for studying the Bible. The Old Testament has 46 different chapters and thus careful routine planning is important to study the old testament. In order to become successful, it is necessary to gain the knowledge of bible in a proper and a structured way and for that reason, a timetable is a must.
In the course 45111 assignment 1 there are 5 tasks that are subdivided into several parts. The tasks present in task 1 contains the creation of the timetable that will include the commitments and it will include the commitments towards the church, work and family. Planning and working on this task will require an assessment of the entire tasks that will be taken up for the whole assignment. All the tasks that are being assigned to me can be done at home due to the theoretical and the factual base of the work. Thus, the extra time if any will be required go through the scripture and find out the answers related to it.
It is important for us to think deeply about the way we approach we approach and interpret scripture because the scriptures are written as a revelation of God to humanity. Thus, we now know about the god and about ourselves, our salvation and also our destiny. It is important to mention that believing each and every word of the scripture does not provide us with the authority of interpreting the scripture a person wants. It is thus necessary to have an infallible guide (led by the holy spirit) otherwise the person who is interpreting the scripture cannot be certain about the truth (Aggie Catholic 2018).
2.2) Jesus, for us as Christians, is the place where we believe that God is most fully and clearly divine (Restorationministry 2018).
2.3) Bible is the “word of God” and this means that whatever is written in the Bible either came directly from God or the holy spirit has guided the writers to reflect the God’s own views (GotQuestions.org 2018).
2.4) The 4 major debates in the old testament are as follows:
- The account of creation that is mentioned in Genesis kept the Christians in doubt. The 2 Peter 3:8 states that one day is equivalent to thousand years. so this means that 6 days for the creation could have taken 6 thousand years (Beliefnet 2018).
- Are the fallen angles the son of God? Chapter 6 of Genesis speaks about the “Sons of God”. Some thus believe that the sons were the angels that were on the Earth. However, another school of thought says that the fallen angels also followed the leadership of Satan (Beliefnet 2018).
- The prophet of Ezekiel had a vision that described the “wheel within the wheel”. Some people confuse the same with a UFO or a flying saucer. However, it has been interpreted by others as the god’s omnipotent, omniscience and omnipresence nature.
- The final debatable view is the curse that the Ham received for viewing the Nakedness of Noah seems harsh. It has been argued that the Ham did not only see his father but also may have behaved in an indecent manner with his father (Beliefnet 2018).
Myth can be described as the story of gods that has relations with the beginning of the world, the significant deeds of the god, a creation of the fundamental events, along with the culture and nature (Dictionary.cambridge.org 2018).
Creating a Timetable for Old Testament Study
The eight important events in the history of Israel are: Abram, Egyptian bondage, the exodus from Egypt, wilderness wanderings, conquest of Palestine, Period of the judges, division of the kingdom, 70 years of captivity in the land of Babylon (valleybible.net 2018).
The JEDP theory and the JEDP stand for: the authors that use the Jehovah for God’s name, the authors that use the Elohim for the god’s name, the author of Deuteronomy, the priestly author of Leviticus (GotQuestions.org 2018b).
- a) The write of the Hebrews explicitly mentioned that the Bible is an unfolding revelation. The writer seemed to indicate that the God gave his revelation over a period of time. It is best to say that the revelation of God is unfolded from resting upon the idea that God’s revelation ultimately unfolded for the Old Testament to the New Testament and this was finally unfolded by his son. The Bible is considered to be an unfolding revelation due to the fact that God is depicted as a creator, God is a lawgiver, God is judge, God is Saviour. Thus, it can be said that bible is not a book on the religious ides but it is a book that is totally devoted to God and his dealings with the humanity’s home, and humanity itself (Coetsee 2016).
- b) One of the biggest change that can be seen in the present world regarding God is that the increased towards him. People now come to God whenever they encounter an issue or a problem which is beyond their capacity. If a person is suffering from a severe ailment where doctors have already said no hope remains in the recovery of the patient. In such cases the faith and belief that only the God can save such a person is seen to a large extent. God when answers such prayers leads to an increased faith among the believers. Such incidences increase the faith and belief of the believers.
The various stages of the development of the bible are:
- Verbal transmission- initially from the time of the Adam the communication was done to the mankind verbally. This is not the written information that the God has spoken.
- Written transmission- From the time of the Moses, the kings, the prophets and later on the apostles inspired to write the word of God (Ogden 2014).
- Manuscript transmission- Copies of the parchments and the papyrus were costly and it took a quite a long time to preserve them. Thus, only a few copies were made. People, later on, made hundreds of the copies and made them available to the people and tried to preserve them (Ogden 2014).
- Interpretation transmission- before the translation of the New Testament from the manuscripts were considered to be necessary the history of the Bible has long been started to be recorded here. The Hebrew scriptures were the only Bible that were known to the Christians and it was later translated and interpreted through the other languages like Aramaic and Greek (Ogden 2014).
Scripture is inspired means that the God has influenced the human authors is such a way that they wrote the word of God. With respect to the context of the scripture, the word inspiration typically means that God breathed. The true meaning of inspiration means that the Bible is actually the word of God and is this makes the Bible unique among the all other books (Crossway.org 2018).
Jesus is the word of God means that the Jesus is the personification of the spoken and the written word. It is a testimony that the through the prophets God revealed that the period of old testament was made human by the coming of the Christ and thus the word became the flesh (Blue Letter Bible 2018).
3.5) the reason for the different types of the views in the Bible is due to the presence of the different approaches of interpreting the scriptures. The historical approach reveals that it is a good starting point for a new person who is coming to bible for the first time. Thus assuming bible in a naturalistic way will not be helpful. It is not possible to tell the story of Jesus without considering the supernatural elements and also that he is a revelation of God (Lamont 2013). Evangelical view says that the bible is actually the word of God and it is authoritative, inspired and inerrant. This view speaks that the Bible reveals the God’s character and something which is close to the manual living and faith. This view also depicts that there is no errors with respect to any consequence in the Bible. This requires a faith and ingenuity in some of the cases (Stott 2012). The middle way reveals that bible is a legend rather than considering it as a history. The teachings in the early part (Old Testament) changes in the New Testament. While it is important to note that the in various books of the Bible, it has been found that the bible is considered to be a vehicle of God’s truth and it takes into account of the God’s dealings with people (Miller 2016).
- The tools that are required for making good interpretations of the scripture are as follows:
- Reading a passage in accordance with the context of a book and that it is in.
- Reading a passage that is in accordance with the context of an overarching meaning of the whole bible.
- Reading a passage that is in accordance with the context of the original culture and the history in which it was written (Bible.org 2018).
- Understanding the major difference that exists between the culture of the time at which the book is written and the culture, time that we are living today.
- Understanding the verse also takes into account also helps to gain an insight into either the passage is a prophecy, parable, history, poetry.
- Remembering the fact that Jesus remains the clearest picture of going (Bible.org 2018).
- Before interpreting a passage from scripture, the vital questions that needed to be ask is what is the proper interpretation of a specific passage and how many references that we need to attach to a particular passage to increase its appropriateness. The next three questions that are also needed to be asked are: what is the subject of a specific passage? What does the passage speak about the subject? What are the main points mentioned in the passage? (BioLogos 2018)
Different Approaches to Interpreting Scripture
the 8 major events in the Old Testament are as follows:
- God creates Adam and Eve. (3969 B.C) [Genesis 2-3]
- God causes the Great Flood (1885 B.C) [Genesis 6-8]
- Moses leads the people of Israel out of the slavery of Egypt (1450 B.C) [Exodus 1-15]
- King David begins ruling as a the King of Israel (1000 B.C) [2 Samuel] (Biblestudy.org 2018)
- Israel splits into 2 different Kingdom (925 B.C) [1 Kings 12]
- The Assyrians conquered and exiled the Northern Kingdom of Israel (721 B.C) [2 Kings 17]
- King Josiah enacts several religious reforms (622 B.C) [2 Kings 22-23]
- The walls of Jerusalem was repaired by Nehemiah and Ezra. Nehemiah enacts the religious reforms (425 B.C) [Nehemiah] (Biblestudy.org 2018)
- a) Myth- Myth can be described as a set of stories or an ancient story that explains the early history of a group of people about the natural facts and events (Dictionary.cambridge.org 2018).
Legend- A very old story or a set of stories that are not always true but the same is not true and the stories are either related to a person or an event.
History- a branch of knowledge that deals with the past events (Dictionary.cambridge.org 2018).
- b) The different types of truth that are found in the Bible is hidden beneath the symbols. For example, in Genesis chapter 3 the devil was represented in the form of a devil and the fruit (apple) was used to tempt Eve. The garden was a gift of God which was given by himself to his people. This can be summarized as the struggle between the good and the bad in the minds of the people and the way sin let into the hearts of the people. There are other truths like the moral truths that teach the people to make the right decisions. For example, the 10 commandments that are found in the Exodus provides a clear pathway of how should people lead their daily lives (ESV Bible 2018).
The Bible should be considered as true due to the fact that the Bible is not a book that has arrived in one complete form at a certain point in history, whereas it took 1500 years and it was a contribution of several authors. Even though Bible is a single book but it is a collection of several books. The Bible is a word of God although he did not physically write it. It was through his blessing and inspiration that had helped in recording the information. There is evidence that suggests that the Bible is true and is due to the coherence and internal consistency. Even though it was written several centuries back, the messages are still consistent and coherent. The archaeological findings suggest that there are many articles and notes that prove Bible does correspond to the historical reality (GotQuestions.org 2018).
5.1) the 4 major traditions of the Pentateuch are as follows:
- The sacred Judean History- Yahwist tradition (J) – the designation of J was used for the proper naming of God. The German developed the method and had emphasized the usage of the letter J due to the German equivalent of Y in Hebrew. It was said that the material was written and then preserved in the Southern kingdom of Judah after the division of the kingdom (Crivoice.org 2018).
- The Sacred History of the North- Elohist tradition (E) – it is a similar material and was used for the generic term of Deity, which refers to God (Elohim). This originated in the Northern Kingdom of Israel
- The Deuteronomy stand of Tradition (D) – this is the designation that was given to the Deuteronomic material. This laid emphasis in the preaching which had theological perspectives, concepts and language which was very similar to that found in the book of Deuteronomy.
- The priestly strand of tradition (P) – this was understood as the priestly material that focuses on the priests that were serving the Jerusalem temple. This includes the legal traditions, technical record keeping that is related to the proper functioning of the temple and its associated activities (Crivoice.org 2018).
The JEPD theory is the only theory that provides the way through which the four traditions of Pentateuch were combined together (Smp.org 2018).
Number contains many moral and the spiritual lessons and it is a book on faith and testing. After studying number one can discover many spiritual lessons and principles. The number can also be called as a book of history that has recorded the miracles of God when the Israelites were wandering in the wilderness (Insight.org 2018).
one should study the book of Joshua due to the geography of the Bible’s stories. This book is a one-stop map for heaven. The important value that can be learnt from the book of Joshua is that it makes great promises and whenever the God makes great promises, he is always there to keep them. Here, the God kept his promises to Joshua through his promises and by saving the Gentiles he showed his kindness (Crossway.org 2018).
There are however several difficulties in reading the book of Joshua is the concept of Herem. In the bible, this is the only book that has devoted entirely to destruction. When the armies of Israel attacked the city and the village, they killed each and every living being and even the animals. It is, however, important to note that all the living beings were destroyed. This is somewhat unimaginable due to the violence and destruction (Cariboobethel 2018).
Major Events and Theories in the Old Testament
Reference
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