The Holy Bible

It’s development

Facts surrounding the Bible• The Bible has a long history.• It was part of an oral tradition in both

Judaism and Christianity.– Many parts of the Hebrew Bible were

written well after the events. Many of the events were transmitted orally through many years.

– Much of the New Testament was also written long after the events occurred.

More Facts

• It was written over a period of many years by various scribes, prophets, apostles, and disciples.

• There are well over 5,300 extant writings of the Greek New Testament.

• The Bible is written in Hebrew, Greek and Aramaic.

• None of the original writings exist today.

Realities

• There are dozens of translations of the Bible in many different languages.

• There are many ways of interpreting the Bible and events in the Bible.

• The interpretation of the Bible has changed over the years and is dependent on the culture.

Its Makeup

• The Christian Bible is made up of 66 books.

• 39 in the Old Testament• 27 in the New Testament

The Christian Bible

• Old Testament– The Law

• Genesis• Exodus• Leviticus• Numbers• Deuteronomy

– History– Prophecy– Poetry– Wisdom

• New Testament– Gospels

• Matthew• Mark• Luke• John

– History– Epistles

• Pauline• General

– Prophecy

Theology and Critical Study of the Bible• Scholars, in their attempt to

understand the development of the Bible, employed various techniques in their work. These critical methods are still used today.

Biblical Criticism

• Textual Criticism is the attempt to determine the original text of the biblical books.

• Literary-source criticism is the effort to determine various literary sources upon which books of the Bible are based or from which they derive.

Biblical Criticism

• Form criticism is the endeavor to get behind the written of the Bible to the period of the oral tradition, and to isolate the oral forms that went into the written sources.

• Redaction criticism is a study of the activity of the biblical authors in shaping, modifying, or even creating material for the final product which they wrote.

Biblical Criticism

• Historical criticism employs all of the above and, in addition, draws upon the data and archeology and of secular historical sources. It tries to determine the authorship and date of the biblical books, and the establishment and interpretation of what actually occurred historically.

Biblical Criticism• Comparative-religions criticism assumes

that all religions follow certain common patterns of development. It explains the history of the Judeo-Christian faith in terms of these patterns.

• Structural criticism attempts to investigate the relationship between the surface structure of the writing and the deeper implicit structures that belong to literature as such.