THEOLOGY OF THE BIBLE
Bibliology is the Theology of the Bible. The Bible, as we have it today, is a unique and God given collection of writings spanning centuries. Together, the books of the Bible tell one cohesive story about God making a way back to his people and why it matters. Due to the importance that we place on God's word and the size of this collection of writings, the Bible can be intimidating to talk about or even begin to read for some people. What we want to do in this section of our study is to look at a few important topics related to our Theology of the Bible here at Cornerstone and then see how this ancient and timeless collection applies to our lives today.
To do this we will be looking at four topics. First, a discussion on what the Bible is and how it came to us in our current form. Second, we want to look at modes of how God has revealed himself, specifically, special revelation. Third, we will take a look at the Authority of God's word and how we view scripture. Finally, we will look at how we can understand or approach the Bible with some understandings about how you can trust the Bible and how you can apply it today in your own life and leadership.
WHAT IS THE BIBLE AND HOW DID WE GET IT?
While we are familiar with the overarching story of scripture, we do not often talk about the story of how that scripture came to be. The English word Bible comes from the Greek Biblia meaning 'the books' as it is a collection of 66 connected and related works that all tell one cohesive story. The collection and writing of each book within the Bible have their own histories and timeline. For the sake of brevity and to make sense of such a large history, we will look at major sections of our Bible, rather than individual books, with the goal of better understanding how this collection came together over time.
Our Bible as we have it today can be divided into two Testaments. The Old and the New. The Old being the story of God's creation, the fall, and the foundation God laid to bring us Jesus primarily through the lens of history focusing on the Israelite people. The New being the story of Jesus and the Church on to Revelation.
The Old Testament is comprised of 39 books further divided into four major sections. The Old Testament is not assembled in chronological order and largely preserves how the Hebrew people organized their scripture. Whereas the Hebrew people divided their scripture into three sections, the Law, the Prophets, and the Writings, we separate the History books from the Wisdom literature. Here are the Four major divisions of the Old Testament.
- The Law: consisting of Genesis, Exodus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. Called the Torah by the Israelites. It is often called the Pentateuch, from the Greek Penta meaning five, and Teuchos meaning scroll or vessel, by the modern Biblical scholars.
- The History Books: consisting of Joshua through Esther.
- The Wisdom Literature: of Job, Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and Song of Solomon.
- The Prophets: Further divided into Major and Minor, based not on their importance but the size of the book, includes everything else from Isaiah to Malachi.
What we call books were originally written on scrolls. We preserve these writings as they had already been gathered and viewed as God-inspired scripture by the time of Jesus. These writings tell the story of how God laid the foundation for Jesus and were quoted by or used in some way by his first followers. Remember that these would have been familiar to the early Christians because the majority of early followers of Jesus were Jewish people.
The New Testament is largely divided into five sections by genre of literature.
- Gospels: Specific writings about the life of Christ that tell his story with a specific purpose in mind
- History: The book of Acts is the sole history book that tells the history of the early Church and immediate events after Jesus.
- Epistles: Epistle comes from the Greek for letter. Further divided into the Pauline Epistles, or letters written by the Apostle Paul, and the General Epistles including James, First and Second Peter, The Three letters of John, and Jude
- Apocalyptic: While there are sections of Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Joel, Zechariah, and Daniel that have apocalyptic elements in the Old Testament. Revelation is the only example in the New Testament.
Historically, the process of recognizing these books and letters as God-inspired scripture seems complicated but in reality, this collection has a very clear and reliable history of already being utilized and recognized by the early church. By the first century the books of the New Testament are written to address general and specific purposes in the early church. By the second century these were exchanged between churches and used to define Christian belief and practice. Some were even circulated much earlier as Paul encouraged the Colossians to trade their letter to Laodicea in Colossians 4:16. By the third century the books were gathered into "lists" of Gospels and Epistles and transitioned from scrolls to the increasingly popular Codex, the precursor to our bound books of today. Then in the four century a number of Early Church Councils came together, as they occasionally did, to guard against heretical teaching. Over time, the cannon, or Greek for 'rule' or 'measuring stick' was set by the early Church. This was not a group of early Church leaders who got together to pick the Books of the Bible over other writings as pop culture will tell you. The writings they recognized as authoritative had the following qualities
- They were written by apostles of Jesus or by the apostles’ immediate associates. Thus, these writings were covered by the authority that Jesus gave to his early followers to teach in his name.
- The content of the writings was in accord with all the other books when taken together. There was consistency in teaching.
- Finally, they have been used by the churches since their writing and proven their value as God's word.
To say that these writings were not well known or had some kind of hidden process for selection is modern fiction. These books had been in circulation with the early church for centuries at this point. Even an early recommended set of what should be included in this New Testament about Jesus Christ was established by much earlier by Historical Church Fathers.
From there the texts of the Bible were duplicated and passed down by scribes. In comparison to other historical and ancient writings, the text of the Bible is astonishingly accurate, and no major doctrine of the Church has even been affected by any textual discrepancy. The Old Testament that was written in Hebrew and Abrahamic and the New that was written in Kione Greek were eventually translated into Latin and used in that form for over one thousand years until the 1500's when it was translated to German and other languages of the People.
So why does the History of the Bible matter to us and to our Leadership?
First, understanding how we arrived at the collection of books that we use to inform and guide our faith is important. It is not just for textual critics and scholars. Understanding the history and collection of our scripture should be an immense comfort to all believers and leaders. God has worked in history not just to bring about this scripture that we have to reveal his son but to preserve it for us today.
Second, if you understand the history of the Bible you can better defend it to those who may be skeptical or see it as just some book or modern fiction that says we cannot reliably know what the original authors wrote because it is so old. Knowing the history and development of scripture shows us that for two thousand years the Bible has been reliable, and an accurate text has been handed down that can be trusted for all matters of faith and Christian living.
Finally, understanding the makeup and genre of the Bible will deepen and enrich your understanding of scripture and help inform you in how to apply it to your life and your leadership.