There is no such thing as “The Bible” because the bible is not just a single book. The bible is made up of a plethora of different books by different authors. It would be correct to say “the several books that make up the bible” because there are many manuscripts that make up what we call “the bible.” We refer to our book as “the bible” to make it sound more divine.
Vorlage is German for the original text of the bible. There are three main textual witnesses to the Vorlage. The LXX (Roman numeral for 70), Masoretic Text (MT), and the Dead Sea Scrolls.
The LXX is a translation from the Hebrew bible into the Greek bible. Ptolemy II ordered 72 elderly men to work exclusively for 72 days and at the end it was said that all of the men had the exact same translation. The people of the time we sort of skeptical about the accuracy of these men’s work so they decided to adopt the Masoretic Text. The MT changed the Hebrew Bible by adding vowels and accents were they previously weren’t any. The third textual witness is the Dead Sea Scrolls is one of the most important findings of theological history. Explorers found the caves and said discovered the scrolls dated back to as early as 200 BCE. What makes it so significant is that is one of the oldest writings recovered; therefore it probably gives a more accurate description of what was really reason. Bible scholars examined distinct differences in all three documents but they also found similarities between the Dead Sea Scrolls and LXX. Additional texts like the Vulgate, Targumim, Peshitta, and Samaritan Pentateuch. It is interesting to know that The Vulgate was translated Hebrew to Latin..
The King James Version of the Bible was written in 1611. The King James Bible was considered to be pretty accurate for its time. The translation of the King James Version is somewhat easier to see the vividness of the text. Other translations such as the RSV (Revised Standard Version) and the NSRV (New Revised Standard Version) are easier to read and don’t really capture the essence of the stories and the people.
There are pro and cons for modern university students reading the King James Version. The positive aspect is that students get to read the more accurate version because it is more similar to the original text. One thing that people say they don’t like about the KJV is the difficulty of reading. The RSV and NRSV are different from the KJV in that they are translated into modern English, which makes it easier for college students to read
Biblical scholars try to find things like the authors of the bible, how the bible relates to other literary works, when the bible was written, how life was for the people during those times, why the bible was written, and who the audience of the bible was intended to be. Bible scholars use many methods in their investigation of the bible: historical criticism, archaeological criticism, literary criticism, textual criticism, source criticism, redaction criticism, form criticism, feminist criticism, and African American criticism. Bible scholars investigate many of the bibles historical mysterious. Biblical studies has everything to do with Theology. Biblical studies are a main source of information about God and religion. Everything we know about God and religion comes from the Bible and theology classes like ours. Without biblical studies, we have nothing to base our beliefs on.
I had never realized how much work it took for bible scholars to find out information about the Bible. Unfortunately, I don’t really see myself in that field at all. It seems a little too boring for my liking. Even though traveling the world, digging and finding stuff sounds fun, I just don’t think that its my thing.
Writing is said to date back to 3200 BCE. Everything was represented in pictures. The first writing forms were pictographs and then they changed to logographs were similar to pictographs except the pictures now represented the item and the sound. When writing switch to phonetics is when I got more technical. In 1400 BCE the alphabet was invented by Cadmus . The alphabet was acrophonic meaning that a picture of a word represented the first sound of the word. The word “alphabet” comes from the letter “a” for “alpha” and “b” for “beta”. People don’t think that much of writing but we do it every day. Writing help democratize our world. Writing has come along way to from when it was first invented. Unlike in historic times writing is available to everyone not just the rich. Now stories can be preserved in their original form and told with accuracy.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 31st, 2006 at 11:58 pm and is filed under Week 03: Your Project. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.