To kick off the second quarter, our main guiding question has been "can we trust the Bible?" Since the Christian faith highly values the Bible as it's main source for faith and practice, we want to examine it critically to see if we can trust what it says about God, humanity's relationship to God, and history. We do this by examining several crucial pieces of evidence.
This week, we focused on biblical manuscripts, the Gospels' claims that they are based on eyewitness accounts of the life of Jesus, and archaeological evidence. With regards to manuscripts, we learned that, as far as ancient documents are concerned, the manuscripts that we have for the New Testament are actually very reliable. We have many manuscripts to draw on, the earliest copies were made within living memory of the eyewitnesses, and the textual variants among the manuscripts don't affect major doctrines of the faith. Regarding the Gospels' claims to be based on eyewitness accounts, we heard from a former detective who explained that eyewitness accounts almost never match perfectly, so some of the differences in detail in the Gospels actually bolsters their reliability. Last but not least, we examined several pieces of archaeological evidence that coincides with narratives from the Old and New Testaments (i.e. Hezekiah's Tunnel, the Cyrus Cylinder, the Pilate Inscription, etc.).
Also, students began working on a new project where they get to play scribes! In the interest of talking about biblical development and manuscripts, students are hand-copying one verse in Hebrew (Genesis 1:1) in a neat/creative way.
Daily scripture reading and response (in class)- Continuing in Ruth
Hebrew Calligraphy- Due Tuesday, November 4th IN CLASS (details on Canvas)
Next week, we'll examine more evidence related to the Bible's reliability including prophecy, and the death and resurrection of Christ. Did Christ really die on the cross, or could he have just passed out and woken up later? Did the twelve steal his body away and make up the whole thing in a grand conspiricy? All this and more next week!