Friday, June 24, 2005

Bible Studies: 1 The Bible

On Fridays I have a lot of office work to do so I'm going to be posting some Bible Studies I've made for a class on the Fundamental Beliefs of the Seventh-day Adventist Church. I'm doing this to encourage you in Bible study, and so that you can give me some feedback on them. They're basically doctrinal/topical, look-up-the-text, fill-in-the-blank format.

This first study begins with some general information about the Bible and then a short fill in the blank section with answers at the bottom. You can look up scripture references here. Enjoy.

Study 1: The Bible

The Old Testament (OT):

  • Our Old Testament is taken from the first three books of the Hebrew Holy Scriptures, the Mikra (Reading).
  • The Jewish scriptures are arranged in order of ‘importance’:
    1. The Torah (The Law) or Pentateuch contains the earliest writings of Hebrew history and law. We call these books Geneses, Exodus Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuterononmy.
    2. The Prophets contain the histories of Israel before the Babylonian exile (the Former Prophets) and the messages of God’s prophets to Israel (the Later Prophets). The Former Prophets are the books of Joshua, Judges, Samuel, Kings; and the Later Prophets are the books of Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel and the last twelve books of the OT.
    3. The Writings are the books of wisdom and post-exilic histories. These are the books of Psalms, Proverbs, Job, Song of Songs, Ruth, Lamentations, Ecclesiastes, Esther, Daniel, Ezra, Nehemiah, and Chronicles.
  • The OT was written in Ancient Hebrew except for parts of Daniel which are in Aramaic.
  • The original Hebrew of the Bible did not have vowels, spaces, or punctuation.
  • The Septuagint (LXX) is the Hebrew Bible translated into Greek and was widely used at the time of the early Christian church.

The New Testament (NT):

  • The New Testament is the distinctly Christian part of the Bible and consists of:
    1. The Gospels are the accounts of Jesus Christ’s life and death written “according to” Mathew, Mark, Luke, and John, four authors who had contact with Jesus or drew on those who did. The Synoptic Gospels— Matthew, Mark, and Luke—share much of their content and are often studied in relation to each other.
    2. Acts is a history of the early church and the ministry of Paul. It is a Part II to Luke’s gospel.
    3. The Pauline Epistles are Paul’s letters to various churches and are arranged in order of length with Hebrews at the end as it is uncertain if Paul wrote it.
    4. The General Epistles are the letters of Peter, James, Jude, John and Revelation.
  • The NT was written in Koine (common) Greek without punctuation or spaces between words.
  • Our earliest NT manuscripts (papyri) date to ca. 200 A.D.
1. The B______ was God’s idea, not the product of human imagination (2 Peter 1:20,21).

2. The first purpose of Bible is to show us the plan of s_________ (2 Timothy 3:15).

3.
The Bible is God-b________, His inspired Written Word (2 Timothy 3:16).

4. The second purpose of the Bible is to give us the t____ we need to do good works (2 Timothy 3:17).

5. The Living Word of God is not the Bible but J_____ C_____ as revealed in the Bible (Heb. 4:12-14, John 1:1, 14).

6. It is possible to read the Bible and never experience the living, life giving W___ o__ G___ (John 5:39, 40).

The ultimate goal of the Bible is to reveal God through Jesus. The Bible can be read or studied, but the Word of God is not something that can be read or studied. He must be experienced. Our reading and studying of the Bible is meant to lead us to an encounter with (coming to) Jesus. If it does not, we will receive not benefit (life) from it.

1. Bible 2. Salvation 3. Breathed 4. Tools 5. Jesus 6. Word of God

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