When we finished the Torah, the people of Israel were standing at the edge of the promised land, ready to enter, with Moses gone and the story moving ahead. Now we join them as they cross into what Christian tradition calls the historical books of the Old Testament. In the Protestant Bible, these books go…
Now we have reached the books themselves, starting where the Bible does: with Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. These five books are known by two main names. In Jewish tradition, they are called the Torah, a Hebrew word often translated as law, but it more accurately means teaching or instruction, which better captures what…
We have come a long way with the biblical text. In Unit 3, we saw that it was written in Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek. In Unit 6, we learned how scholars piece together the earliest wording from thousands of handwritten copies. Now we arrive at the final step, the one most of us cross every…
Let me begin with a fact that surprises most people when they first hear it. We do not have the original manuscript of any book of the Bible. Not a single one. The actual page that Paul dictated, the original scroll of Isaiah, the first copy of the Gospel of Mark; all are lost to…
We have been coming back to this question since the first unit, and now we are finally going to address it head-on. Our library contains sixty-six books. Someone had to decide which writings belonged and which did not. How did that happen? Who made those decisions? And what gave them the authority? This is what…
We now come to one of the most fascinating and delicate questions in the entire course. Who actually wrote the Bible? And I want to warn you gently at the start. This is a unit where the answer many of us grew up with, and the answer most scholars give, have drifted a long way…
As most of us know, none of the Bible was first written in English. Every Bible any of us has ever read is a translation, the product of scholars working to carry an ancient text across a gap of language, culture, and time. And on the far side of that gap sit not one language…
In Unit 1, we learned that the Bible is a library rather than a single book. Now let me take you inside that library and walk you down its aisles, because a library is only useful if you know how it is organized. Imagine walking into a building full of thousands of books with no…
The Bible may look like a single book, but it is really a library of writings produced across centuries. Understanding that diversity is one of the first steps toward learning how to read it well.
Some readers may find this question offensive. Others may think it is long overdue. Both reactions are understandable. Still, we should not avoid the question. To many traditional Christians, the question may sound blasphemous. To some critics, it may seem obvious. We should not respond with a reflex in either direction. Instead, we should take…