Thursday, May 24, 2012

The Bible as a Reliable Source for the Workings of the Supernatural - Part 2



By Lisa Grace


In my last article in the comments section some readers mentioned they feel there are other earlier writings and questioned the authority of the modern Bible, as we know it. Even older than the Bible (Circa 1500’s) are the original works, which would be better described as the Holy Scriptures. The Bible (which simply means book) has some modern additions not found in the older Holy Scriptures, like the words Old and New Testament, punctuation, chapters and verses. Those are recent developments and not necessarily good ones either.

This is actually a faulty man-made way of dividing the four sections and often leads to the interpretation of being two different contracts with man.

The following (in italics) is a quote from the website: http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Judaism/Tanakh.html Quote:
Torah: The Books of Genesis (Bereshit), Exodus (Shemot), Leviticus (Vayikrah), Numbers (Bamidbar) and Deuteronomy (Devarim).
Nevi'im (Prophets): The Books of Joshua, Judges, I Samuel, II Samuel, I Kings, II Kings, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Hosea, Joel, Amos, Obadiah, Jonah, Micah, Nahum, Habukkuk, Zephaniah, Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi. (The last twelve are sometimes grouped together as "Trei Asar" ["Twelve"].)
Ketuvim (Writings): The Books of Psalms, Proverbs, Job, Song of Songs, Ruth, Lamentations, Ecclesiastes, Esther, Daniel (although not all that is included in the Christian Canon), Ezra and Nehemiah, I Chronicles, and II Chronicles.

Then, of course, we have the Good News portion which some call the New Testament.
Before the written word, there was a strict oral tradition of memorization. Most Rabbis (which means teachers) would memorize the whole thing.

The New Testament, which is referred to in the Scriptures themselves as the “Good News”, is mainly repeated parts of the older Torah, Nevi’im, or Ketuvim.

Here is a quote (in italics) from Roger Nicole’s article at:
If clear allusions are taken into consideration, the figures are much higher: C. H. Toy lists 613 such instances, Wilhelm Dittmar goes as high as 1640, while Eugen Huehn indicates 4105 passages reminiscent of Old Testament Scripture. It can therefore be asserted, without exaggeration, that more than 10 per cent of the New Testament text is made up of citations or direct allusions to the Old Testament. The recorded words of Jesus disclose a similar percentage. Certain books like Revelation, Hebrews, Romans are well nigh saturated with Old Testament forms of language, allusions and quotations. Perusal of Nestle’s edition of the Greek New Testament, in which the Old Testament material is printed in bold face type, will reveal at a glance the extent of this practice. These facts appear even more impressive when one remembers that in New Testament times the Old Testament was not as today duplicated by the million but could be obtained only in expensive handwritten copies.

The oral traditions of memorizing before there was printed word, takes the reader/listener back to the times of Adam and Eve. Obviously, Adam started verbally passing on the account of creation and so it spread through different cultures through out the world. This is why so many cultures have flood based stories and creation stories similar to the Holy Scripture accounts.

The Holy Scriptures are the earliest verifiable form (found in abundance) even more so than the Iliad by Homer, which no one questions the validity of. The Holy Scriptures from the Dead Sea scrolls on has thousands of copies to back up its authority.

This is why you can be assured of its authority as the inspired (God breathed) last word on dealing with the supernatural world since you can trace its beginnings to the creation of man.

3 comments:

Aanica said...

Aren't the scriptures from the dead sea scrolls different from today's bible? Today's bible is nothing like it was from the oldest of scriptures, today's bible is twisted, paraphrased, punctuated in ways that were not meant to be said in the original transcription, how can we know for sure what God breathed version to go by when dealing with supernatural phenomena?

mark hunnemann said...

Nice article Lisa..interesting how you traced it back to Adam and Eve--which is certainly true. To answer the comment made--the science of textual analysis is so rigorous, that we can be confident that the English bible we have today is virtually identical with the original. I have next to me both the Old Testament (Hebrew) and the New Testament (Greek)...and on the bottom is the apparatus for showing the manuscript data--very exacting and impressive evidence that goes back very early. The point is--we have sufficient evidence to KNOW what the original said. Plus, do we think God would go to such lengths to communicate with us and not ensure that it was preserved accurately? The Dead Sea scrolls help to authenticate what we have.

Aanica said...

Mark, thank you for your reply, but aren’t the Dead Sea scrolls incomplete fragments? How could one actually link them to Adam and Eve or anything in today’s bible?