THE BIBLE: INTRODUCTION
WHAT
IS THE BIBLE
The
word Bible means “book”. The Bible was given this name because it is the book
of God’s words to us. The Bible tells us about God, shows us God’s mighty acts
in the lives of his people, and describes how people responded to God. From the
Bible we learn what God is like and what he expects of us.
HOW
THE BIBLE WAS WRITTEN
It
took about 1500 years for the whole Bible to be written – from Genesis, written
at the time of Moses, to Revelation, written by the apostle John about 65 years
after Jesus’ death. The books of the Bible had many different authors, living
at different times and in different places. Yet not one of these writers
contradicts another. God guided them so that they wrote in their own words what
he wanted them to say. This means that the Bible is a completely dependable and
trustworthy book. We can believe everything it says because it comes from God.
THE
OLD TESTAMENT
The
Bible has two major parts – the Old Testament and the New Testament. The Old
Testament is a collection of 39 books. Both Jews and Christians accept these
books as Scripture. The Old Testament starts with the creation of the universe
and of the human race. Then it continues with the history of God’s chosen
people – Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and their descendants, whom God formed into the
nation of Israel. In the Old Testament God begins to show his plan for saving
people from sin. Through his prophets he promised many times to send the
Messiah, the savior of sinners.
THE
NEW TESTAMENT
The
New Testament is made up of 27 books accepted by Christians as Scripture. It
tells about the coming of the Messiah, Jesus Christ, and about the beginning of
the Christian church. It describes the life, death and resurrection of Jesus.
It explains why he died, and it teaches us how we can be saved from sin.
ONE
INTEGRATED DESIGN (AUGUSTINE)
·
The New Testament – in the Old Testament
concealed
·
The Old Testament – in the New Testament
revealed
ORGANISATION OF THE
BIBLE
·
Old Testament
o
The story of a Nation
o
Incomplete
§
John 5:39;
o
Unexplained ceremonies (sacrificial
rituals)
o
Unachieved purposes (the covenants)
o
Unappeased longings (poetical books)
o
Unfulfilled prophecies
o
The Torah – The Books of Moses 5
§
Genesis (the Book of Beginnings)
·
1, 2 (Creation)
·
3 (Fall of Man)
·
4 (Cain & Abel)
·
5 (Genealogy of Noah)
·
6-9 (Flood of Noah)
·
10-11 (Tower of Babel)
·
12-20 (Abraham)
·
21-26 (Isaac)
·
27-36 (Jacob)
·
37-50 (Joseph)
§
Exodus (the Birth of the Nation)
§
Leviticus (the Law of the Nation)
§
Numbers (the Wilderness Wanderings)
§
Deuteronomy (the Laws Reviewed)
o
The Historical Books 12
o
The Poetical Books 5
o
The Prophets 17
§
Major
5
§
Minor
12
·
New Testament
o
The story of a man
o
The Old Testament
HOW THE BIBLE CAME
TO US
The
Old Testament was first written in the Hebrew and Aramaic languages. About 250
years before Jesus’ birth, it was translated into Greek (this text was called
the Septuagint). All of the New Testament was written in Greek. About 350 years
after Jesus’ death, Jerome, who was a leader in the early church, translated
the Bible into Latin, the language commonly spoken by many people at that time.
Several hundred years later, most people no longer spoke Latin. But even so,
Jerome’s translation, called the Vulgate, was the official Bible in Western
Europe for more than 1000 years.
In the
late 1300s, John Wycliffe came to believe that it was important for all
Christians to read the Bible in their own language. He and his followers were
the first to translate the whole Bible in to English. But because the printing
press had not yet been invented, copies were made by hand and very few were
available. About 140 years later, William Tyndale translated the New Testament
from Greek to English. At the time the printing press was available, so
Tyndale’s Bible was the first English Bible printed on a press.
In 1611
the best-known English Bible, the King James Version, was published. That is
the Bible you are reading today.
THE BIBLE IN A SCIENTIFIC VIEW
·
Foundational
Topics
o The Nature of Reality
§ Nature
of Time (Nature of Software)
·
Einstein’s
Revolution
o
Special Relativity (1905)
§ Length,
mass, velocity and time are relative to velocity of the observers
o
General Relativity (1915)
§ No
distinction between time & space = a 4-dimensional continuum (Confirmed 14
ways to 19 decimals)
·
Gravitational
Time Dilation
o
Identical Atomic clocks are located at
§ The
National Institute of Standards and Technology in Boulder, Colorado
·
54000ft
§ The
Royal Observatory in Greenwich, England
·
80ft
§ Both
are accurate to better than 1 second per million years
§ The
NIST ticks 5 µseconds/year faster than an identical clock at Greenwich
§ Are
faster by 10 by (-16th power) meter elevation
·
Other
Demonstrations
o
Aircraft experiment (1971)
§ Eastward:
lost 0.059 microseconds
§ Westward:
gained 0.273 microseconds
o
Twin astronauts (hypothetical)
§ Alpha
Centauri trip…
§ If
v= 50% of c
·
Te = 18 years
·
·
Ts = 15 years, 7 months
·
2 years, 5 months younger than his twin
brother
§ If
v= 99.99% of c
·
Te = 9 years
·
·
Ts = 33 days
o
Time is not uniform
§ Time
is a physical property
§ Time
varies with
·
Mass
·
Acceleration
·
Gravity
§ We
exist in more than 3 dimensions, maybe 10
·
People
like us, who believe in physics, know that the distinction between the past,
the present, and the future, is only a stubbornly persistent illusion”. Albert Einstein
·
Beyond
Euclid (>3 Dimensions)
o
1854: Georg Riemann’s Metric Tensors
o
1915: Einstein, 4-Dimensional Spacetime
o
1953: Kaluza-Klein: 4+n Dimensions
§ Light,
& Supergravity
o
1963: Yang-Mills Fields
§ Electromagnetic
& Both Nuclear Forces
o
1984: Superstrings, 10-Dimensions
§ Dimensions
of “Reality” {commentary on Genesis, 1263}
·
Nachmonides,
(12th Century)
o
10 dimensions (only 4 are “knowable”)
·
Particle
Physicists, (20th Century)
o
10 dimensions
§ 4
are directly measurable: (3 spatial + time)
§ 6
are “curled” into less than ?cm, and thus inferable
only by indirect means
§ Hyperspaces
(Spaces of more than 3 dimensions)
·
Only
two kinds of people seem able to deal with hyperspaces
o
Mathematicians with special training
o
Small children
·
Ephesians
3: 17-19
o Hidden Codes
§ Are they hidden messages in the bible?
·
Proverbs
25:2
·
“The
secrets of the Torah are revealed in the skipping of the letters.” Rabbi Moses Cordevaro, 16th century
·
“Equidistant
Letter Sequence?”
o
Rips
explained that each code is a case of adding every
fourth letter to form a word.
o Read the code
·
Torah
Codes (the Torah always points to YHWH)
o
49 (7 squared) letter sequences:
§ Genesis TORH
§ Exodus TORH
§ Leviticus YHWH (intervals of 7)
§ Numbers HROT
§ Deuteronomy HROT
§ Authentication
o Holographic Properties (Fourier Transform)
§ Requires
proper illumination
·
Useless in natural light
§ Information
spread over entire bandwidth
·
No loss from drop outs
·
Resilient to specific interference
·
Anticipates hostile jamming
o Communications Engineering
§ The
Bible as a Hologram
·
Fourier Transform Properties
·
Transcendent of Parallax
·
Matthew
5: 17,18
·
Attributes
o Light
§ No Parallax
§ Velocity constant
§ Photons lack locality
§ Fundamental
·
Revelatory
·
Mechanism
o GOD
§ Located at Infinity
§ Infinite Power
§ Omnipresence
§ Omniscience
o
James
1:17 (variableness: from which we get the term parallax)
·
Isaiah
28:13
CITATION
King James Version Bible. The Zondervan Corporation, 1984.
Chuck
Missler Learn The Bible in 24 Hours 01 Introduction
Comments
Post a Comment