Teaching, Following Jesus, and Taking a Break

For the last few months I have probably written more than I have at any other point since I started this blog 10 years ago. At the place I was in my life, it was a much needed outlet for my thoughts. You see, I’m the type of person who needs to talk about what I have learned throughout my studies. It’s not that I need to show how smart I am or demonstrate how dedicated I am when it comes to reading and studying the Bible. Rather, it is becoming more and more clear to me that God has made me a teacher. As such, when I’m not sharing what I’m learning with others, I feel like I’m withering away. This brings me to the point of this post.

I am thankfully involved with a church that I love! Not only that, the pastor has allowed me to take on some teaching opportunities within my congregation. These are opportunities that I am honored and excited to take on. I get to spend time helping (hopefully) a group of young adults gain a deeper understanding of the Bible and a deeper relationship with Jesus. This isn’t something I take lightly, but it is something that I am really looking forward to! 

Because of this, however, my focus is going to be on preparing for a weekly Bible study, as well as other aspects of a good young adult ministry. I’m in no way complaining, but it is going to take me away from writing. Throughout my Christian life, I have had a desire, I would even say burden, to minister to those within the local church. More than that, over the last few months, I have realized that I am deeply concerned with the amount of biblical illiteracy in the church today. I don’t mean that people don’t know anything about the Bible, but that a lot of people don’t really know what is in the Bible.

I don’t mean this as an insult or to demean the people in the church, and I definitely am not throwing the blame at the pastors and leaders of the church. I just see that it is a truth that I think needs addressing. No, I’m not perfect. No, I don’t know everything (far from it, actually!). However, God has given me a mind that LOVES learning and is good at it, and he has given me a heart that directs that love toward the him and his word. For some reason, he has also made me a person who feels lost when I don’t get to bring others into the joy I feel from what I’m learning.

So, with all that being said. I am going to be drastically reducing the amount of writing that I do. I probably won’t stop completely. I’m sure I’ll still find things that I want to write about from time to time. To be honest, I don’t really have anything else that I want to say right now. As I’ve said before, I don’t know who reads this. I do know that it’s not a lot of people, and I’m ok with that. I don’t do it because I want to be famous. Mostly I just needed an outlet, and I wanted to share a little bit with my friends and family. This seemed like a decent way to do that. 

Now, though, I need to switch my focus to the people God has put in front of me in my church family. I guess if I’m trying to say anything in this post, it is this: When God points you in a direction, go that way! That is what I think I’m doing by becoming more involved in my church. I hope that you will listen to God, pay attention to what or who he is putting in your life, and follow where ever he directs you. After all, we are supposed to follow him! We can’t do that if we walk in the opposite direction.

I have really enjoyed writing all of this over the past few months, but I am really excited to move on to what I feel like God has always been pointing me toward. Thank you for reading these, and I hope that it has helped you to grow in your love of Christ and your knowledge of the Bible. Talk to you later!

Which Translation is the Best?

I know that I have spent a lot of time talking about the fact that the Bible is ancient literature, written in ancient languages. The fact remains, however, that most people don’t read those languages and probably won’t ever learn to. That’s ok! As I’ve said, there are tons of tools out there that can help you to get some insight into them, but what we are primarily using to read the Bible is an English translation. So, which translation should you read?

It may disappoint you, but I’m not going answer that question. At least, I’m not going to give you one translation that is the best for you. I can’t do that, because I don’t know you. What I am going to do is tell you about the most popular English translations and what their strengths and weaknesses are. I do want to address the fact that I’m only talking about English translations. This is for two reasons. First, that is what I know about. I read English, and I don’t really know anything about other language’s translations. A second reason is that, from my limited knowledge, a lot of the other languages that the Bible has been translated into don’t have multiple versions. I could be wrong about that, but I just don’t know.

Anyway, as far as English translations go, here are the primary ones used today. The oldest is the King James Version (KJV). There are older ones, like the Geneva Bible, but they aren’t widely used. Then you have the more modern translations, such as the New King James Version (NKJV), New Revised Standard Version (NRSV), the New American Standard Bible (NASB), the English Standard Version (ESV), the New International Version (NIV), and the New Living Translation (NLT).

Before I get into which translations are good for which purpose, there is one other issue I’d like to address. When we use the word “translation,” it’s important to realize that these are translated directly from the existing manuscripts that we have in the original languages. There is a misconception that what we have today is a translation of a translation of a translation, etc. That’s not the case. Each different translation into English goes back to the original language manuscripts, not just to an earlier translation. This is important because it means that the Bible isn’t being changed over time due to an endless line of translations. Another important note on translations is that they are never done by just one person (or at least they shouldn’t be). It is always a team of Bible and language scholars who work together and check each other’s work to ensure a proper translation.

When we talk about our English Bibles, they fall into different categories of translation. You have what people call “word-for-word” translation, dynamic equivalence or “meaning-for-meaning” translation, and “thought-for-thought” translation. Each of these are useful in their own way, although you will find people who are very critical of one or more of the categories. In reality, they are all faithful translations of the existing manuscripts, and they serve different purposes when reading or studying the Bible.

So, which translation should you use? Well, if you are going to be actually studying the Bible, I would suggest that you use a more “word-for-word” translation. These would be the KJV, NKJV, NRSV, NASB, and ESV. With these, the translators tried to stay as close to the actual manuscripts as possible while using English words. With these, the translators try to make each English word correspond to the Greek/Hebrew/Aramaic word in the manuscript. This is why it is good for studying, but there is a downside as well. It can make the English seem clunky or unnatural to your average reader. This is more true of the KJV, NRSV, and NASB. The ESV has tried to smooth out some of that.

Now, if you want one translation that you are going to use for both study and devotional reading, dynamic equivalence, or “meaning-for-meaning,” is a decent choice. This is primarily the NIV, but the ESV also borders on this as well. In this version, the translators tried to use words that convey the same meaning as the words in the original languages. For example, the Greek word douleia literally means “slavery,” but the ESV and NIV translate it as “bondage,” because they felt that it was a more clear meaning to an English reader. These versions also tend to order the words in a way that is more natural for an English reader, rather than trying to maintain any of the original word order.

Finally, if you are just looking for a Bible that you can read and understand, the “thought-for-thought” translations are good for that. The most popular version today is the NLT. In this version, the translators take the entire sentence or phrase in the original language and put it in words that make sense to an English reader. While they maintain the original meaning of the Greek or Hebrew, they are less faithful to the actual wording from the manuscripts. For example, John 3:16 in the ESV says, “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.” In the NLT, however, it reads, “For this is how God loved the world: He gave his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life.” It doesn’t mean anything different, but it is definitely worded differently.

The last type of “translation” I want to talk about is a paraphrase. This would be like The Message. Paraphrases are not translations. They often don’t use manuscripts written in the original languages. Rather, they reword the English Bible in a way that is more of an interpretation of the text than a translation. Sometimes they can be helpful for understanding, but often they are quite unfaithful to the original text. An example would be Matthew 6:9, the beginning of the Lord’s Prayer. The ESV says, “Pray then like this: ‘Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name.'” However, The Message says, “With a God like this loving you, you can pray very simply. Like this: Our Father in heaven, Reveal who you are.” This is a complete reinterpretation of the text that adds a lot of extra stuff. In this particular verse, it doesn’t even mean the same thing. It takes the idea of God’s name being hallowed, or holy, and instead says, “Reveal who you are.”

So, you should choose the translation that best fits your purposes. For me, personally, I usually use the ESV. It is one that I can both read and study from, but that might not be what is best for you. More importantly, if you have access to them, you should always use multiple translations if you are studying a particular verse or passage. This will help you to see how different translators have thought about what it is saying. Whichever translation you choose to use, make sure it is one that you understand. It doesn’t do you any good to read the Bible if you are constantly being distracted by language that is difficult for you to understand or wording that is confusing to read.

There is one more thing I would like to talk about, and it might upset some people, but I think it needs to be said. There are a lot of people that believe that the King James Version is the only version that is the “real” word of God. First of all, this is ridiculous. If that was the case, the Church went through 1600 years of history without a correct Bible. I think this is an insult to the men who died or were imprisoned trying to translate the Bible into English before the KJV like William Tyndale or John Wycliffe.

The other reason I think that this is a wrong view is that when the KJV was translated in 1611, the manuscript evidence that existed was far less than what exists today. What we have today are earlier, more reliable manuscripts (not to mention thousands more) from which to translate. I think it is a mistake to claim that the KJV is a superior translation based on this. Now, if that is the version you like or want to use, then it is a good translation. The differences are not major, but there are differences. I don’t use it because of this reason, but that is my personal choice. I also don’t like the old English. However, there is absolutely no reason to think that it is the only Bible that is the word of God!

Ok, now that I’m off my soapbox, I hope that this helped if you weren’t sure about the different translations. In all honesty, they are all good, faithful translations. People will always have their preferences, but you should choose the one that is best for you. I heard someone say once that the best translation is the one that you’ll read. I think that is ultimately what matters. If you’re not going to read the NASB, then don’t use it. The most important thing is that you are reading your Bible and growing closer to Christ everyday through it.

When was the Bible written?

Following my post on who wrote the Bible, I want to talk about when it was written. I will admit up front that I am not using any specific resources for this. I have studied it in some detail, but some of my dates and facts may be off a little. My point isn’t to give you exact dates for the writing of specific books. My point is to show that the Bible was crafted over time to tell a very specific story. 

The question of when the Bible came to be in the form we have it today has a lot to do with the story being told . . . at least in regard to the Old Testament. When we look at the Old Testament, we see the story of the beginnings of Israel as a nation, how they lived as a nation, and what eventually happened to exile them from their national homeland. This is the primary story of the Old Testament, and it culminates in an unsatisfying return to the land, still waiting for their promised new king.

In this collection of books, you have the Torah, the Prophets, and the Writings. This is the way the Hebrew Bible is arranged (called the Tanakh). Much of what would be considered the “original” forms of these books would have taken place during the time that Israel existed as a nation, between about 1000 B.C. to about 586 B.C. The Torah, at least the parts written by Moses, would obviously have been written prior to this period (probably somewhere from 1400-1200 B.C., depending on the date of the Exodus). This group of books would be the Torah (Genesis-Deuteronomy) and the historical books (Joshua-2 Kings). It would also include most of the Prophets.

The writings are a little harder to nail down. These books would include Job, the Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Solomon, 1 and 2 Chronicles, Lamentations, and Daniel (which was considered part of the writings in the Hebrew Bible). It’s hard to say for sure when any of these books were written. We know that David wrote some of the Psalms during his time as king and earlier. We also know (or at least believe) that Daniel wrote some of his book during the Babylonian exile. Proverbs, at least in part, seems to be sayings of Solomon that were preserved. Lamentations was written by Jeremiah during his life as a prophet during the conquest by Babylon.

So, at least in my study, that’s about what we can know about the original forms of any of these books. However, as I said, these aren’t the forms we have today. Here is where the importance of the story comes into play. During the exile, it was recognized that the Jews needed a cohesive set of Scriptures to remind them of where they came from and how they ended up where they were. This took place most likely between about 586 B.C. and 400 B.C. It was during this time that scribes set out to edit and compile these writings into books that together told the story of the Israelites.

It was also during this time that we got the last few books written. These were Esther, Ezra, Nehemiah, and some of the minor prophets (Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi). These books are the story of the Jewish people after their return to the land (Esther is actually still in Persia, but after the Jews were allowed to return home). The point is, the Old Testament didn’t really reach its final form until at least 400 B.C., although there are some reasons to think that there was still some editorial process taking place after that time as well.  This also only applies to the 39 books that all Christian traditions agree upon. If you include other books, such as 1 and 2 Maccabees, you don’t get the full canon of the Old Testament until somewhat later.

What we see with the Old Testament then, is about 1,000 years of writing, editing, and compiling (let’s say 1200-200 B.C.). The New Testament is much different. Depending on the view of John’s writings, the New Testament was probably written over 20-50 years. The earliest books are thought to have been written in the late 40s A.D., and the latest are believed to have been in the late 60s A.D. (John’s books may have been written in the 90s, which is why there is debate).

Unlike with the Old Testament, we don’t see a clear editorial process, but there is evidence of some editing as I mentioned in my last post. Overall, though, the books of the New Testament are thought to have been in their final forms by the end of the 1st century, although they weren’t combined into a single collection yet. The synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark, and Luke) all seem to have been written before the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 A.D. The same is true of Acts and the Pauline Epistles. Some of the general epistles are less clear, and the canonicity of a few of them still debated even today. Finally, John’s writings are often dated into the 90s, but some people put them prior to 70 A.D. as well.

I do want to say that if you go search this stuff on the internet, you will find a lot of information that contradicts what I’ve said here. Many scholars will place the writing of the New Testament documents much later . . . far too late for the actual Apostles to have written them. Having looked into some of this, I feel like they are wrong, but check it out for yourself. I am definitely not the expert on dating of ancient manuscripts!

Anyway, let me summarize and wrap this up. The Old Testament books were written in their original forms over a period of about 1,000 years, but were edited and compiled into books during and after the Babylonian exile (about 586-400 B.C.). The New Testament documents were written from about 48 A.D. to the late 90s. 

Just as with my post about the biblical authors, I wanted to write this so that we have a realistic view of the Bible. The truth is, there is evidence within the Bible, especially the Old Testament, that some things were written or added at a much later date than when the original author lived (ex., the Torah or Daniel). Again, this is something that people love to use against Christians to try to show that our faith is based on falsehoods and fairy tales. In the same way that the unanswered questions of authorship shouldn’t dissuade us from believing that the Bible is God’s word, neither should questions of dates. Again, the formation of the Bible we have today came through a long process, but a process that was guided by God the entire way. We can trust that what we have today is exactly what He wanted us to have.

Who Wrote the Bible?

Having just finished talking about how to study the Bible, I wanted to take a few posts to talk about how we got our Bible. I know that there are the types of literature still to cover, but I just wanted to write about something a little different in between. When it comes to the way that the Bible came to be in the form that we have it today, I feel like a majority of Christians don’t really know how it happened. 

In this first post, I want to talk about the biblical authors. I will say that some of this might go against what you believe or what you’ve heard in the past. I’m not trying to destroy your faith in the Bible as the word of God. It absolutely is! However, as I have said before, we need to acknowledge the human influence that contributed to the writing of Scripture as well.

With that said, let’s just get into it. When we open our English Bibles, we see a lot of books. Some of them are named after people, but a lot of them aren’t. A lot of the books, especially in the Old Testament, are anonymous. We don’t, for example, know who wrote the books of Ruth, 1 and 2 Kings, or Job. The author, or authors, didn’t feel the need to name themselves. In the New Testament, it’s a little more clear. The Gospel authors are named in the title of the book, but not in the text. Paul identifies himself as the author of his letters, as do other Apostles like James, Peter, and John.

Here is where I’m going to rub some people the wrong way. In the Old Testament, the truth is that we don’t really know who actually wrote any of the books. Let’s look at the Torah, or the first five books. They are often attributed to Moses, but he isn’t named as the author in any of them. Furthermore, there is evidence within them that he didn’t write all of them. For example, Deuteronomy 34:5-6 says, “So Moses the servant of the Lord died there in the land of Moab, according to the word of the Lord, 6 and he buried him in the valley in the land of Moab opposite Beth-peor; but no one knows the place of his burial to this day.” It’s pretty obvious that Moses didn’t write about his own death and burial. Also, the phrase “to this day” suggests that this is written quite a bit later than the events of the Torah.

Now, I do think that Moses wrote some of the Torah. In Exodus 17:14, it reads, “Then the Lord said to Moses, ‘Write this as a memorial in a book and recite it in the ears of Joshua, that I will utterly blot out the memory of Amalek from under heaven.’” It’s clear that Moses was instructed by God to write at least some of what happened in the wilderness, but passages like the one above point to the fact that the books of Moses were edited, added to, and compiled at a later date.

Other books that we often think of as being written by the person who it’s named after are the prophets. However, even in these books, there is evidence that they were edited and compiled by others at a later date. Let’s look at Ezekiel 1:1-3. It says, “In the thirtieth year, in the fourth month, on the fifth day of the month, as I was among the exiles by the Chebar canal, the heavens were opened, and I saw visions of God. 2 On the fifth day of the month (it was the fifth year of the exile of King Jehoiachin), 3 the word of the Lord came to Ezekiel the priest, the son of Buzi, in the land of the Chaldeans by the Chebar canal, and the hand of the Lord was upon him there.”

What do you notice here? The passage begins with Ezekiel telling when and where his visions occurred, but then it switches to the third person. Now, I don’t think Ezekiel got confused here, or just started referring to himself in the third person for some kind of dramatic effect. No, I think that this was a later editor giving us a little more information. The same thing happens in the other prophetic books as well. In Isaiah chapters 1 and 2, Isaiah is mentioned in the third person, but in chapter 6, it switches to first person. Again, it seems that someone took the original writings of Isaiah and edited and compiled them into the form we have now.

Honestly, I could go on and on here. Basically, what we see is that, at the very least, the writings of Moses, the prophets, and others were edited and compiled into the books we see today at a later date. Now, when we get to the New Testament, it’s a little different. Most conservative scholars would say that we know who wrote each book of the New Testament, other than Hebrews, although there is debate about some of them. For example, some disagree on which James wrote the book of James, and which John wrote Revelation. There is also debate about some of the letters of Paul, specifically the books of 1 and 2 Timothy.

Even in the New Testament, however, we see two things. First, there are things that were likely added over time. See my post titled Has the Bible Been Changed? for some examples of this. Second, particularly in Paul’s letters, we see that he didn’t actually write the letter, or he wrote it with others. What I mean by the first part of that is that Paul dictated the letter to someone who was a professional writer, called an amanuensis. In these cases, the amanuensis may have reworded things or added his own thoughts from time to time. As for the second part of that statement, we see in 2 Corinthians that it was Paul and Timothy that were writing to the church in Corinth. In 1 Corinthians, he wrote with Sosthenes, who may have been just another disciple of Jesus, or he may have actually been the amanuensis. Either way, others were involved in the writing of several of Paul’s letters.

Now, why do I say all of this? First of all, I want us to have a realistic view of the Bible. As I’ve said before, it isn’t a book that fell from Heaven. It is the product of many people writing in a very particular context. If you hold to the view that each book of the Bible was written only by the one person associated with it, it is easy for someone to pull that rug out from under your feet. If you aren’t prepared and familiar with this truth, it could very will destroy your faith. When someone confronts you with the evidence that the writing of the Bible was a process that involved authors, editors, and compilers, it could cause you to question the divine nature of our Scriptures. I don’t want that to happen.

Second, I think that it is important for us to realize that God doesn’t have to work through only one person. If He can inspire someone to write on His behalf, He can also inspire someone to edit and compile that writing in a way that preserves His authority in the words of the Bible. The fact that someone took the writings of Ezekiel, most likely after the exile in Babylon, and crafted them into a coherent book that faithfully represented the prophecies that he preached, should not call into question whether the book still carried the divine authority of God’s word. Neither should it bother us that this editor may have added some things to make theological connections with the rest of Scripture. God still had His hand in the process.

The important thing when talking about the authorship of the Bible is that we let the Bible be what it is. The fantastic thing about our Scriptures is that they weren’t dictated to one person from a divine being. Instead, the Bible is the product of the people of God writing the truth of God in and through the context of their history, culture, and daily lives. To me, this helps me to see it even more as the word of God. It would be easy for one person to say that God gave them an entire book of writings to create a new religion (Islam or Mormonism), but it’s a lot more difficult for a collection of writings to be built over centuries, by many different authors, that tells a single story with coherence and unity . . . which is what we have in the Bible. God had to be involved in that.

The thing that I want us to take away from this is that we don’t have to be afraid of what we might find if we dig into this stuff. We don’t need to be protected from our Bible or the history of its creation. God chose to do it this way for a reason, and the Bible is what it is. I believe with all my heart that the Bible is God’s word for His people. Yes, it was written by men, but those men were specially selected and prepared by God to write in a way that bore His authority. The fact that there is a clear(ish) process to how it came to be doesn’t take away from that, and it shouldn’t be something that non-believers can use against our faith.

Don’t be afraid to look into this more. Be wise in selecting scholars and books to read, but also be willing to look at things that are critical of the view that you hold. Come to an informed decision, and know that I realize that I could be wrong about this stuff too. Most importantly, let the Bible be what it is. It is the word of God, and regardless of criticism and disbelief, it will still be around long after we’re all with Jesus. There is no doubt in my mind about that!

How To Study the Bible – Random Study Tools I Use

To finish out my series on how to study the Bible, I thought it would be cool to show you some of the resources that I use that I didn’t list in the other post. Some of these don’t really fit into one of the categories that I went over at that time, or they are more specialized in what they cover. Let’s just get into it. There’s no reason to make this longer than it needs to be.

The first resource I want to tell you about is The Dictionary of Deities and Demons in the Bible (DDD). This link is to Amazon, but this book costs about $800 in hardback. If you have an account with logos.com, you can get it for $64, and that is the link to that product. Now, the DDD is an amazing resource. It is, just as the title says, a collection of articles on any deities, gods, angels, demons, etc. that are found in the Bible. It’s one of those that is a great reference book, but also one to just read. The reason is that there are a lot of names in the Bible that we don’t even realize are actually deities or demons. It’s worth the money if you have it to spend (maybe not the hard copy).

Another resource that I use all the time is the Theological Dictionary of the New Testament (TDNT). This one is also insanely expensive, but it’s awesome! This is a great resource for word studies. It gives you the ways in which a specific word was used in different settings. For example, it will tell you how it was used in classical Greek, Koine Greek outside the New Testament, Koine Greek within the New Testament, how the Hebrew equivalent word is used in the the Old Testament, and so on. I use this more than any other resource I have. Even on Logos, however, it is still several hundred dollars for the unabridged version. You can get the abridged, one volume version for $121 on Amazon or for $40 on Logos (this one is a 2 volume bundle that comes with the Concise Dictionary of Classical Hebrew as well). I’ve never used the CDCH, but this seems like a really good deal.

Something that I use more often that I thought I would is the Pseudepigrapha of the Old Testament (POT). Now, I have two different versions of this. On Logos, I use a translation by R.H. Charles, which you can get for $14.99. I also have a hard copy called The Complete 54-Book Apocrypha, which includes even more of the apocryphal books (The Book of the Giants, The Book of Jasher, The Testament of Solomon, etc.), and it costs $24.95 on Amazon. These books are awesome because they give you an insight into the minds and beliefs of Jews during the 2nd Temple Period, and there are a lot of references to these books in the Bible . . . a lot more than you’d think. Along with these resources, I would suggest any translated version of the Dead Sea Scrolls. I have one on Logos ($90), but you can get them on Amazon ($300) as well.

Finally, another one of my favorite resources is the Commentary on the New Testament use of the Old Testament, edited by G.K. Beale and D.A. Carson, available for $61 on Amazon and $65 on Logos. This commentary covers all the books of the New Testament and shows places where the New Testament authors quote or allude to the Old Testament. This is extremely useful in understanding how the followers of Jesus saw Him as the fulfillment of the promises of God. It also really helps you to see how the entire Bible is a unified story and is all connected. I used this book quite a bit in a recent study on Revelation, and I highly recommend it. If you don’t want to buy this one, you can make a free Logos.com account and two similar books are included: Old Testament Quotations and Allusions in the New Testament by David A. Jones and Old Testament Quotes in the New Testament by H. David Philipps. I haven’t used them, but I would assume they are pretty similar.

There are a lot more resources that I use, but I don’t really have the space to talk about them all here. If you want to find good commentaries, go to bestcommentaries.com. They will show which commentaries are the best for whatever purpose you’re looking for. Finally, I just want to say that I hope this series was helpful. If you’re a Christian, know how to study the Bible is extremely important. We should always be striving to learn more and more about God and His word to us. If nothing else, I hope I inspired you to get into the Scriptures on a deeper level.