WHAT IS THE BIBLE?
At first glance, we see the Bible as a record of the history of man (mankind) spanning a period of somewhere between 6,000 and 10,000 years, starting with Adam in the Garden of Eden.
We are even given the genealogy of Jesus Christ, from the first days of Adam, through the Old Testament, until His birth. So, we can definitively talk about this Bible as being a historical record of man over all those past centuries.
Genesis Chapter 1, (the Story of Creation) has been hailed by many, as the most controversial part of the entire Bible and has been used over and over to discredit this Book. It has even caused many to walk away from every Truth that the Bible portrays, due to the difficulty of trying to make any logical sense (in their own eyes) of the words of this chapter. And because of this one factor, much of the Bible is discredited.
The Story of Creation will be examined in great depth as we proceed on our journey of enlightenment, so let us put our personal views one side and discover what this Book is actually all about.
in my opinion, the Old Testament is ‘God’s Love Affair with His Creation’. It is a love story, depicting the unending love and patience that God has for man and His continual attempts to keep man on the righteous path of salvation. This Book records His continuous attempts throughout all the ages to achieve this goal.
God’s biggest mistake, in my view, was to give man choices, way back in chapter 3 of Genesis, when God gave man the choice of an everlasting and abundant life, against one that led to death in the flesh and living a life exposed to sin, under the influence of Satan and that demonic world. (see article “Who is Satan?)
And we also see that this Book is full of ‘rules and regulations’ under which the people living throughout these early times, must (or should not) live and behave.
We are given evidence that many of these people did not obey these rules and were eventually destroyed through various catastrophes that came upon them. In the days of Noah, one of God’s earlier prophets, a great flood was brought upon the whole world and everything on earth was destroyed. Other catastrophic events took place in latter times, again destroying great multitudes of the population.
The Bible very clearly emphasises that these catastrophes fell upon man through their own behaviour and living in total disobedience to God’s will.
So, we now see that the Bible has a very strict code of ethics and morality.
We now ask ourselves the two big questions, ‘Who is the author of this Bible?’ and ‘Who are the writers of the Bible?’ Are they the same people?
The Bible was written over a period of about 1500 years, in three languages and on three continents.
The writing of the first five Books of the Old Testament have been credited to Moses, dictated by God. These five Books form the foundation of the Jewish Torah. There is, however, some debate about the authorship of Genesis, and it appears that there is no absolute consensus of opinion to this premise.
There are a total of 39 Books in the Old Testament and the other 34, are all credited to various Prophets, who were ‘commissioned’ by God to teach His Word to the people, and seek their repentance from sinful ways. Many of these Books are named after these Prophets.
In my mind, this is one of the two infallible reasons why we should believe that the Bible is correctly referred to as “The Word of God”. The consistency of God’s instructions and promises throughout these Books and the continual revelations of the redemption from God, motivates this thought.
Many of the words of the Prophets, particularly the teachings in Genesis in those earlier days, if passed on by word of mouth from one generation to another, could have created an element of distortion. This could be the reason for a certain level of disbelief about the Truth of these writings.
The second reason will be dealt with in an article on “Bible Prophecy”.
EDITORS NOTE:
The opinions that have been expressed and the conclusions that have been made in this article come from my personal interpretation of the information that I have gained from my research. The primary purpose of these articles is to encourage readers to start their own research into Biblical beliefs and learn the Truth.