The Bible as HistoryIn this lesson we examine two major challenges to biblical authority, the Documentary Hypothesis and the Quests for the Historical Jesus. Why is confidence in the Pentateuch so crucial to the Christian faith? What is the Documentary Hypothesis and where did it originate? What are the underlying presuppositions of the HP? Why do documentarians see multiple documents behind the Pentateuch? What are the inherent flaws in the hypothesis? What evidence do we have that Moses authored the Pentateuch? What did the first Quest for the Historical Jesus seek to accomplish? Why did it fail? Who are some of the well known proponents of the second Quest? What does it seek to discover? What is the so-called third Quest seeking to accomplish? What is significant about some of the chief voices of the third Quest? What are some key differences between ancient myth and the bible? What have many of current New Testament scholars concluded about the bible and myth? (66 min)
Lesson 34: Review Questions
Lesson 34: Lesson Notes
Handout: The Documentary Hypothesis

Tags: Bible, History, Documentary Hypothesis, Quest for the Historical Jesus, Pentateuch, Gospels

On Biblical Criticism The field of biblical criticism is a vast subject over which we can only attempt a bird’s eye view of some of the most important terrain. What is biblical criticism and what is it not? How do one’s presuppositions influence the results of biblical criticism? What are lower and higher criticism? What is classical criticism? Why is textual criticism helpful and important? What is source criticism? How do we know that biblical writers relied on prior sources? What are the foundational tenets of form criticism? What are the problems with form criticism? How does form criticism deal with the existence of eyewitnesses? What is redaction criticism? What are criteria of authenticity, and how can they be used and in what ways shouldn’t they be used? (61 min)
Lesson 33: Review Questions
Lesson 33: Lesson Notes

Tags: Bible, Biblical Criticism, Source Criticism, Form Criticism, Redaction Criticism, Textual Criticism

Can We Trust the Text? In this lesson we explore how we can have confidence in the text of the Bible. How do we know the text we possess accurately represents what was originally written? What major discovery lended strong support to our confidence in the text of the Old Testament? How did the Temple Library contribute to the preservation of the Old Testament text? What do we know about the oral and textual aspects of the early church? How do oral communities preserve their important information, such as their histories? What are some important things about the early church’s scribal structure that indicate a strong preservation of the text of the New Testament? Why was it virtually impossible for someone to intentionally corrupt the New Testament text? How many ancient manuscripts of the Old and New Testaments exist today? What is meant by the phrase “the tenacity of the text?” Why do the variations between our many manuscripts not prevent us from discovering what the original writings said? (64 min)
Lesson 32: Review Questions
Lesson 32: Lesson Notes
Handout: Lesson Charts

Tags: Bible, Old Testament, New Testament, Text, Textual Criticism, Manuscripts

Those Other Religious Texts In our last lesson we considered the concept of the biblical canon. But there are other books that some claim are authoritative religious texts, and some that ought to be in our Bible. What are we to think about all those other books? How can we know that the Bible we hold in our hands contains the right books? What are the three tests for reliability of any ancient text? Why do Protestant Christians not consider the Old Testament apocryphal books to be part of the canon? What are the two categories of New Testament apocryphal literature? What are the three “Cs” for determining the apostolic origin of a text? What are the Nag Hammadi texts, and why were they not included in the New Testament canon?
Lesson 31: Review Questions
Lesson 31: Lesson Notes
Handout: The Old Testament Apocrypha

Tags: Bible, Canon, Old Testament, New Testament, Apocrypha

Meet the Bible: Authorship, Inspiration, Canon In this lesson we begin our module in which we consider the Bible as the authority for the Christian faith. Because the Bible is the source and foundation of Christianity, it is also a key point at which our faith is challenged and questioned. Many object to the claim that the Bible is God’s word, inspired by Him. Why do we believe the Bible is divinely inspired? What is the Bible’s self-attestation? What are the two different kinds of its self-attestation? What are other evidences of the Bible’s inspiration? How is inspiration often misunderstood? What is inspiration? What is canon, and what is its connection to the idea of covenant? What makes a book of the Bible canonical? Why is it important to distinguish between recognizing and making a book canonical? (75 min)
Lesson 30: Review Questions
Lesson 30: Lesson Notes

Tags: Bible, Inspiration, Canon