The Bible in English, Part 1: Recovering the Original Text

This is the first of a four-part series I’m teaching at Farmville Baptist Church.

The Bible was originally written in three languages: Hebrew (most of the Old Testament), Aramaic (parts of Daniel and Ezra), and Greek (all of the New Testament, and parts of the Old Testament accepted in the Catholic and Orthodox churches). To translate the Bible into English, we need the original text. But we don’t possess the original documents, the autographs. They’re probably lost forever. For the New Testament, the focal point of this series, we possess approximately 5,500 hand-written copies in Greek, and approximately 10,000 hand-written translations into Latin. We also have ancient manuscripts in other languages such as Syriac and Coptic, and quotations of the New Testament written by early Christian scholars. All of these sources provide an opportunity to recover the original text of the New Testament.

The Bible in English, Introduction

This is the introduction of a four-part series, based on an Adult Bible-study series that I’m teaching at my church.

This series is about the Bible in English. The Bible holds a central place in our worship and our daily lives. We use it for doctrine and ethics. Baptists have always believed that each individual has the right and responsibility to read and understand the Bible to best of his or her ability. It’s my goal that this series will encourage you to read the Bible more often, and more intelligently.

How Real Men Go to the Bathroom

The Internet never ceases to amaze me. Neither do fundamentalist Christians. Follow this link for what might be the single worst example of biblical scholarship ever committed to video.  It’s also the funniest thing you’ve ever seen in church.

HT: Ben Witherington

Things No One Ever Told You About Women in the Bible

Check out Mona Loewen’s guest-post at Wade Burelson’s blog, Grace and Truth to You. Mona surveys the role of key women in the biblical texts.

Biblical Theology and Systematic Theology

Ben Myers’ Faith and Theology is a treasure trove of modern theological analysis. His latest post criticizes Millard Erickson’s model of systematic theology:

1. Exegesis: analysis of the biblical texts in their historical and literary contexts.
2. Biblical Theology: situating exegesis in the wider context of each body of literature (e.g. theology of the Pentateuch or Pauline corpus, and then OT or NT theologies respectively).
3. Systematic Theology: the act of synthesising key motifs and ideas as they relate to the mosaic of Christian belief.

Follow this link for Erickson’s article. Follow this link for Myers’ response.

The Christian Infancy Narratives

This Sunday at Farmville Baptist Church, I’m pinch-hitting in Sunday School. Appropriately enough, the lesson text is Luke 2:1-14. It’s interesting to compare the birth narratives in Matthew and Luke. They have important elements in common, but many differences, especially in tone. Matthew’s account is cloak-and-dagger. He gives us the star, the Magi*, the Massacre of the Innocents, and a clandestine flight to Egypt. Luke’s account inspires O Holy Night, with angelic hymns, shepherds, and the manger.

*A Christmas trivia question: Magi is plural. What is the singular? (The answer is at the end of the article.)

What is the Bible?

Sitting in church before the service today, I was reading the preface to the Revised Standard Version of the Bible. For me, the last paragraph raises two interesting questions about the nature of the Bible and the meaning of the phrase “Word of God.” It reads:

Eight Propositions on the Bible

Note: This post is inspired in part by Kim Fabricius’ excellent “Ten propositions” series at Faith and Theology.

1. The original text is probably lost forever. The NT, for example, exists in about 5700 Greek manuscripts (hand-written), exhibiting hundreds of thousands of variations. These variations are created by accidental copying errors and intentional scribal changes. But textual critics can reconstruct a very close approximation to the original text using careful methods developed over the last few hundred years. Ehrman discusses the textual history of the Bible in Misquoting Jesus, The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why.