I received this today:
I notice you are the chaplain of a Bible study group right now. Too funny!
Yes indeed, far far from our normal fair...
I studied the Bible as lit. and as an ancient document about 20 years ago and I was curious as to what you folks would come up with this weekend (I'm too lazy to go dig out my references , etc -- sorry). I've listed a few of my thoughs at the end of this memo.
Let's take this topic to PM or another thread now and get back to the business of running the world... :o)
Regards,
--fl
Incidentally , there are 5,000 early fragments of the Greek text of the New Testament which have mostly been worked into a family tree, No two are identical.
The NT Canon selections that were made, I think it was around 330-360AD, were culled from about 300 popular writings making the rounds of the congregations dotting the shores of the Mediterranean at that time. The selection group basically said, our selection will be guided by God. Remember, these documents all in Greek, many of which were about 200 hundred years old, had passed through many many hands and recopyings.There are a number of very interesting writings from that era which were not selected for the Canon.
There were also a couple of important factions with serious differences over the Canon -- and not a few followers -- for many years. One obvious example of this instability is the book of Revelation, which hgas been in and out of the Canon several times. The large, very old, King James Bible on display at our local Baptist church has no Book of Revelation and the last dozen of so verses of James are missing. I mayself have 14 interestingly unique translations of the Bible.
I've found the Moffat translation, a rendering by a famous Scottish Bibilical scholar, to be vigorous and poetic. It was very popular during WWII -- I surprised to find that my very conservative (Church of Christ) grandfather's Bible was a dog-eared Moffat (which I now possess).
My other favorites are: The New English Bible (NEB), The New Jerusalem Bible (NJB), The Oxford Annotated New Standard Revised Version -- all of they containing the Apocrypha. I got started on these studies when I read the poetry and argumentation of The Book of Job in the NEB. Lamentations in the NEB is a chilling piece of poetry -- it puts you there.
My experience has been that many Christians are very distressed to hear these historical matters -- they would much rather the entire book simply magically appeared , all bound, and ready to read. |
