5 Bible
The Bible consists of two parts, which Christians refer to as the “Old Testament” and “New Testament” The Old Testament is much longer – nearly a thousand pages against the New Testament’s three hundred. The Old Testament came into existence over a period of more than a millennium; the New, within less than a century.
The word “testament” is a translation of the word which also means “covenant” It’s a central Christian claim that the events concerning Jesus were the means by which, in fulfillment of ancient Israelite prophecy, the creator
The books with Jews call the Bible and Christians call the Old Testament were grouped in three sections. The first five books (Genesis创世纪, Exodus出埃及记, Leviticus利未记, Numbers民数计 and Deuteronomy申命记) were always regarded as foundational and special. They are known as the “Torah”(Law), and are traditionally ascribed to Moses (摩西) himself. The next collection, know as the “Prophets预言”, includes what we often think of as some of the historical books（1 and 2 Samuel撒母耳记上下, 1 and 2 Kings列王纪上下）as well as the books of the great prophet (Isaiah以赛亚书, Jeremiah耶利米书，Ezekiel以西结书) and the so-called “minor” prophets (Hosea何西阿书 and the rest). The third division, headed by the Psalms, is known simply as the “Writings,” and includes some very ancient material and some parts – such as the book of Daniel 但以理书 – which were edited and accepted only within the last two hundred years BC.
Torah, Prophets, and Writings: thirty nine books in all. It may well be that the Law and the Prophets became fixed collections considerably earlier than the Writings. The three sections became the official list of the sacred books of the Jewish people. The Greek word for such an official list is “canon” which means “ruler” or “measuring stick”.
…Old Testament has been enormously enriched by the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls, documents thought to have been written in the last two centuries BC. They include copies of most of the Old Testament books, and show that the much later manuscripts upon which mainstream Judaism 犹太教 and Christianity 基督教 have depended are very close, despite small variations, to the texts that would have been known in Jesus’s day.
Over the two hundred years or so before the time of Jesus, all these books were translated into Greek, probably in
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The twenty-seven books of the New Testament were all written within two generations of the time of Jesus – ie by the end of the first century at least – though most scholars would put most of them earlier than that. The letters of Paul are from the late forties and the fifties, and though disputes continue as to whether he wrote all the letters that bear his name, they are the first written testimony见证 to the explosive events of Jesus himself and the very early church.
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For much of church history, the churches of the East read the Bible in Greek, and the churches of the West, Latin. One of the great slogans of the sixteenth century Reformation was that the Bible should be available to all people in their own language, a principle which is now more or less universally acknowledged across the whole Christian world…Things then settled down by the seventeenth century, with the English speaking work adopting the Authorized (King James) Version in 1611, and the remaining content with it for nearly three hundred years thereafter. As more and better new manuscripts were discovered, revealing all kinds of mostly small but interesting adjustments that needed to be made, scholars and church leaders in the late nineteenth century were persuaded that further revision was advisable… Organizations such as the Bible Society and the Wycliffe Bible Translators have worked tirelessly to render scripture into more and more of the world’s native languages.
Why is the Bible important? Most Christians down the years have said something at this point about it being INSPIRED.
…Sometimes they have really meant not inspired but inspiring: this book, they find, breathes new life into them…In that sense the word isn’t talking about the effect something has on us．It’s talking about something that’s true of the things in itself.
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Supposing scripture, like the sacraments, is one of the points where the heaven and earth overlap and interlock? Like all other such places, this is mysterious. It doesn’t mean we can see at once what is going on. Indeed, it guarantees that we can’t. But it does enable us to say some things that need to be said and that are otherwise difficult.
In particular, it enables us to say that the writers, compilers, editors and even collectors of scripture were people who, with different personalities, styles, methods, and intentions were nonetheless caught up in the strange purposes of the covenant God – purposes which included the communication, by writing, of his word. It enables us to speak about God the creator (the one we know supremely through the living Word, Jesus) being himself (so to speak) a wordsmith. Option Three enables us to insist that, though words are not the only thing God specializes in, they are a central part of his repertoire. It also helps us to see that when this God is going to work within his world, he wants to work through his image-bearing human creatures, and that, since he wants to do so far as possible with their intelligent cooperation, he wants to communicate with and through them verbally – in addition to, but also as a central point within, his many other ways of getting things said and done.
The Bible is far more, in other words, than what some people used to say a generation or so ago: that it was simply the “record of the revelation,” as though God revealed himself by some quite other means and the Bible was simply what people wrote down to remind themselves of what had happened. The Bible offers itself, and has normally been treated in the church, as part of God’s revelation, not simply a witness or echo of it. Part of the problem is the assumption that what’s required is after all simply “revelation”, the communication of some kind of true information. The Bible does indeed offer plenty of information, but what it offers in a more primary way is energy for the task to which God is calling his people. Talking about the inspiration of the Bible is one way to saying that that energy comes from the work of God’s Spirit.
In other words, the Bible isn’t there simply to be an accurate reference point for people who want to look things up and be sure they’ve got them right. It is there to equip God’s people to carry forward his purpose of the new covenant and new creation. It is there to enable people to work for justice, to sustain their spirituality as they do so, to create and enhance relationships at every level, and to produce that new creation which will have about it something of the beauty of God himself. The Bible is not like an accurate description of how a car is made. It’s more like the mechanic who helps you fix it, the garage attendant who refuels it and the guide who tells you how to get where you are going. And where you are going is to make God’s new creation happen in his world, not simply to find your own way unscathed没有受损伤的 through the old creation.
That’s why, though I am not unhappy with what people are trying to affirm when they use words like “infallible” (the idea that the Bible won’t deceive us) and “inerrant” (the strong idea, that the Bible can’t get things wrong), I normally resist using those words myself. Ironically, in my experience, debates about words like these have often led people away from the Bible itself and into all kinds of theories which do no justice to scripture as a whole – its great story, its larger purpose, its sustained climax, its haunting sense of an unfinished novel beckoning us to become, in our own right, characters in is closing episodes.
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Squabbling over particular definitions of the qualities of the Bible is like a married couple squabbling over which of them loves the children more, when they should be getting on with bringing them up and setting them a good example. The Bible is there to enable God’s people to be equipped to do God’s work in God’s world, not to give them an excuse to sit back smugly, knowing they possess all God’s truth.
to be continued
