Examining the doctrine of Scripture—its inspiration, inerrancy, authority, canon, and interpretation.
Reading Time: 4 minutesQuestion 1062 Following on from source criticism, another method you’ll encounter in academic biblical studies is “redaction criticism.” If source criticism asks “what sources did the author use?”, redaction criticism asks “how did the author edit and arrange those sources?” It’s a question that sounds innocent enough, but as we’ll see, it can be used…
Reading Time: 5 minutesQuestion 1063 If you’ve studied the Old Testament at any academic level, you’ve almost certainly encountered something called the “JEDP theory” or the “Documentary Hypothesis.” This theory claims that the Pentateuch—the first five books of the Bible—was not written by Moses at all, but was compiled from four different source documents centuries after Moses lived….
Reading Time: 5 minutesQuestion 1064 When studying the Synoptic Gospels—Matthew, Mark, and Luke—you’ll quickly encounter discussions about how these three Gospels relate to each other. They share so much material, often in nearly identical wording, that scholars have long debated how to explain the similarities and differences. One popular explanation involves a hypothetical document called “Q.” But what…
Reading Time: 5 minutesQuestion 1065 In the 1980s and 1990s, a group of scholars calling themselves the “Jesus Seminar” made headlines by voting on which sayings of Jesus in the Gospels were authentic. They used coloured beads—red, pink, grey, and black—to rate each saying, and concluded that only about 18% of the words attributed to Jesus in the…
Reading Time: 4 minutesQuestion 1110 When we pick up our English Bibles, we trust that the words we read faithfully represent what the apostles and prophets originally wrote. But behind every translation lies a fundamental question: which Greek manuscripts should translators rely upon? The Majority Text theory offers one answer to this question, and it has shaped how…
Reading Time: 4 minutesQuestion 1111 When people learn that we possess over 5,800 Greek manuscripts of the New Testament, they often wonder why so many of these early witnesses survive only as fragments. Why do we have pieces of papyrus with just a few verses rather than complete books? The answer takes us into the ancient world of…
Reading Time: 4 minutesQuestion 1114 Anyone who has read the Bible seriously has encountered passages that puzzle, trouble, or even disturb. Genealogies that seem pointless, prophecies that remain obscure, apparent contradictions between accounts, commands that seem harsh to modern ears, and theological statements that the greatest minds have debated for centuries. If God wanted to communicate clearly with…
Reading Time: 4 minutesQuestion 1115 Every honest reader of Scripture encounters passages that make us uncomfortable. Commands that seem severe, judgements that appear disproportionate, language that strikes modern ears as offensive. Whether it is the destruction of the Canaanites, the curses of the imprecatory psalms, or Paul’s instructions about slavery, these “harsh” texts challenge our sensibilities and raise…
Reading Time: 4 minutesQuestion 1112 If you could visit a first-century synagogue or a wealthy Roman’s library, you would see something quite different from our modern books. Scrolls dominated the ancient world, rolled up and stored in jars or on shelves. Yet remarkably, Christians adopted a different format almost from the beginning: the codex, the ancestor of our…
Reading Time: 4 minutesQuestion 1113 The eternal Word of God came to us through very earthly materials. When prophets recorded divine revelation and apostles penned their letters, they used whatever writing surfaces were available in their day. Understanding these materials helps us appreciate both the humanity of Scripture’s transmission and the remarkable preservation of texts across millennia. Papyrus:…