Reading Time: 5 minutesQuestion 1118 When we turn from Malachi to Matthew, we cross a gap of some 400 years without a single word of inspired Scripture. After Malachi’s final prophecy, no prophet spoke, no Scripture was written, and God seemed strangely silent. These centuries between the testaments are often called the “silent years” or the “intertestamental period.”…
Reading Time: 5 minutesQuestion 1067 Claiming that the Bible is God’s Word is one thing; demonstrating that it speaks truth is another. In an age of scepticism, many ask: “How can you trust a book written thousands of years ago? How do you know it hasn’t been corrupted? What evidence supports its claims?” These are fair questions, and…
Reading Time: 5 minutesQuestion 1046 When we open our Old Testament, we are reading a translation of ancient Hebrew manuscripts. But which Hebrew manuscripts? And what about the Greek translation that Jesus and the apostles so often quoted? This question sits at the heart of how we received our Bible and which text we should trust as authoritative….
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:…
Reading Time: 4 minutesQuestion 01163 The Documentary Hypothesis, also known as the JEDP theory, was the dominant critical framework for understanding the origin of the Pentateuch throughout the nineteenth and much of the twentieth century. In its classic form, articulated by Julius Wellhausen in 1878, it proposed that the first five books of the Bible were not written…