Sorry I did not get a Wed. update out last week. As most of you know by now my brother Bernie Wallick passed away last Wed. He will be greatly missed by us. We were quickly informed that he would be missed by our community also. Social media, the local radio, the sheriffs office, fire department, Ohio County dispatch and the legion all took part in honoring him in some way. So many people and our church made it very clear to us all he was very loved. Thanks everyone of you for all you did for our family during this time. It really did make it easier! Thanks Ginger
Prayer needs: Family of Bernie Wallick Family of Jerry Wickey Family of Howard Burgess Family of Betty Cook ( Angie Wilson’s grandma) Family of Candy Gilb Ellen Snelling Don Snelling Yvonne Walton Bible Study : Mike Stahl Lesson 4 – How We Got the Bible – Part 2 Theme / Memory Verse: Mark 13:31 Mark 13:31 – Heaven and earth will pass away, but My words will not pass away. Lesson: In the last lesson, we examined the 4 steps in God’s Revelation to us. These include: revelation, inspiration, manuscripts, and translations. The focus of Part 1 was on Revelation and Inspiration. · Revelation (not only, but including the New Testament book of Revelation) is God’s self- disclosure. Two forms of God’s revelation are General Revelation and Special Revelation. · Inspiration is the process that God used to guide the writers of the books of the Bible and at the same time to ensure its accuracy. The words in our Bible were written by men, but the message was from God. In Part 2, we will focus on manuscripts. Manuscripts are (1) ____________ of the original documents that make up the Scriptures. The copies were made on (2) _________________ or (3) ______________. They were made so that the Word could be spread to other Christians. Old Testament Manuscripts: Both Christians and Jews believe that the original Old Testament writings were made in the (4) ____________ to (5) __________ timeframe. Following the original writings, a special group of priests called (6) ______________ was formed. It was their responsibility to make new copies of Scripture as the old copies (7) ________ ______. Because of the painstaking care that the scribes took in making the copies, they believed the new copies were (8) ________ ________________ than the old copies. The following is an excerpt from the article How Did We Get the Bible in English? By Herb Samworth, 2011. The entire article can be foun on the Answers in Genesis website at https://answersingenesis.org/bible-questions/how-did-we-get-the-bible-in-english/ “During the following years, a special group of priests, called the scribes, was founded. Their responsibility was to make new copies of the Scriptures as the older copies wore out. The majority of these texts were copied on animal skins that had been tanned to produce leather, although they later would be copied on other materials including papyrus. The writing was in the form of a scroll. Special rules directed the scribes in their work of copying the Scriptures. For example, before they could write the covenant name of God, translated into English as “Jehovah,” they were required to wash their hands, use a special brush or pen dedicated only to writing that name, and then wash their hands after finishing writing the word. They were extremely careful to copy the words exactly because the Scripture was the Word of God. They even devised a special means to count the number of words on a single panel to determine if the text had been copied accurately. Jewish scribes had an interesting view of the copies of the Scriptures. Because they would use such care in copying them, they believed that a newer copy would be more accurate than an older copy. Most people tend to believe that the older copy would be more accurate because of the errors that could have crept into the text as it had been copied over the years. This view, that the newer copy was more accurate, led to a further question: what was to be done with the older manuscript, called the exemplar, from which the text had been copied? No one had the authority to destroy it because it was the Word of God. The solution was to have the scribes place the manuscript in a clay jar and then bury it. Thus, the processes of nature that God Himself had instituted would cause the copy to disintegrate. As a result of this practice, we do not have extremely old copies of the Hebrew Scriptures. Before the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls in AD 1947, the oldest extant manuscript copies of the Hebrew text were about one thousand years old. In comparison we possess manuscripts of the Greek New Testament that are dated as early as AD 200.” In the Process of copying the Old Testament by Jewish Scribes article by Scott Manning, 2007, details of the scribes’ painstaking process are described further. (Link to entire article: https://scottmanning.com/content/process-of-copying-the-old-testament-by-jewish-scribes/ ) “In 586 B.C., Jerusalem was captured by the Babylonians. The Temple was looted and then destroyed by fire. The Jews were exiled. About 70 years later, the Jewish captives returned to Jerusalem from Babylon. According to the Bible, Ezra recovered a copy of the Torah (Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy) and read it aloud to the whole nation. From then on, the Jewish scribes solidified the following process for creating copies of the Torah and eventually other books in the Old Testament. 1. They could only use clean animal skins, both to write on, and even to bind manuscripts. 2. Each column of writing could have no less than forty-eight, and no more than sixty lines. 3. The ink must be black, and of a special recipe. 4. They must verbalize each word aloud while they were writing. 5. They must wipe the pen and wash their entire bodies before writing the word "Jehovah," every time they wrote it. 6. There must be a review within thirty days, and if as many as three pages required corrections, the entire manuscript had to be redone. 7. The letters, words, and paragraphs had to be counted, and the document became invalid if two letters touched each other. The middle paragraph, word and letter must correspond to those of the original document. 8. The documents could be stored only in sacred places (synagogues, etc). 9. As no document containing God's Word could be destroyed, they were stored, or buried, in a genizah - a Hebrew term meaning "hiding place." These were usually kept in a synagogue or sometimes in a Jewish cemetery.” Until the discovery of the (9) ________ ______ ______________ in the 1940’s and 1950’s, the oldest Old Testament manuscripts available were dated from around (10) __________. The Dead Sea Scrolls have been dated to (11) __________ to (12) ________ (hundreds of years earlier). The Dead Sea Scrolls contain portions of (13) __________ ________ of the Old Testament except (14) ____________. They (15) ______________ __________ the text that today’s Hebrew and English Old Testaments are based on. Further reading on the Dead Sea Scrolls can be found in Dead Sea Scrolls – Timeless Treasures from Qumran by Dr. Jeremy D. Lyon, 2012 (Answers in Genesis website: https://answersingenesis.org/archaeology/dead-sea-scrolls-timeless-treasures/ ) We can be sure that the Old Testament that we have today, is what God gave the (16) ________________ ______________ and the (17) ____________________! New Testament Manuscripts: The original New Testament writings were completed in the (18) ________ to (19) ________ timeframe. There are more than (20) ________ Greek manuscripts of the New Testament – some are (21) __________ of the New Testament and others are (22) ____________ ____________ of the New Testament. The earliest manuscripts of parts of the New Testament date to the (23) __________ ________ of the (24) ____________ ______________ AD – or less than (25) ____ years from the writing of Revelation. The earliest manuscripts of the entire New Testament date from the (26) ____________ ______________ AD – in other words back to the 300’s AD. We have far more New Testament manuscripts than any other “ancient” writing we have today. Additionally, the dates of the earliest manuscripts are closer to the dates of the original writings than other documents. Following is an excerpt from Trusting the Text by Brian H. Edwards, 2018, that provides additional insight into the quantity and accuracy of the New Testament manuscripts we have today. (Refer to https://answersingenesis.org/the-word-of-god/trusting-text/ for the full article.) “The books of the New Testament were all written before the end of the first century. That was the conclusion even of the theologically liberal scholar John A. T. Robinson in his standard, Redating the New Testament (SCM Press, 1976). The young churches were eager to get copies of the Gospels, Paul’s letters, and the rest. For example, Clement of Rome, who was martyred around AD 95, wrote to the church at Corinth to commend Paul’s letter to Rome, which he assumed they possessed (1 Clement 47). To date there are over 5,800 Greek texts of all or part of the New Testament. The earliest copies of the complete New Testament go back to the fourth century AD. However, separate books and fragments are much earlier than this. Some date as early as the first half of the second century. In addition, the New Testament books were translated very early into other languages (known as Versions); and we can compare our Bible with the extensive writing of the early Christian leaders, including some who quoted frequently from the Epistles and Gospels. All of this is source material to confirm the accuracy of our New Testament text. Some estimate that altogether we have around 20,000 of these sources to check our text against. Daniel Wallace, director of the Center for the Study of New Testament Manuscripts, concludes, “Meaningful and viable variants . . . comprise less than 1% of all textual variants. Yet, even here, no cardinal belief is at stake.” “ We can be sure that the New Testament that we have today, is what God gave the (27) ________________ ______________ and the early (28) __________________ ____________! But even more important to our faith as Christians than manuscripts and archeological evidence is what God’s Word has to say about itself. We can also be confident that the Scriptures we have today are what God wants us to have because (29) ____ ________ ____ ____! · Psalms 119:89 – Your word, O LORD, is (30) ______________; it stands (31) ________ in the heavens. (New International Version) · Isaiah 40:8 – The grass withers, the flower fades, But the word of our God (32) ____________ ______________. (New American Standard Bible) · Mark 13:31 – Heaven and earth will pass away, but My words will (33) ______ ________ ________. (New American Standard Bible) Answers: (1) copies 2) parchment 3) papyrus 4) 1400 BC 5) 400 BC 6) scribes 7) wore out 8) more accurate 9) Dead Sea Scrolls 10) 900 AD 11) 250 BC 12) 68 AD 13) every book 14) Esther 15) closely match 16) original authors (19) 95 AD 17) Israelites 18) 40x AD 19) 95 AD 20) 5,800 21) parts 22) entire copies (25) 50 23) first half 24) second century 25) 50 26) fourth century 27) original authors 28) Christian Church (31) firm 29) He told us so 30) eternal 31) firm 32) stands forever 33) not pass away
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