Old Testament Reflection

With the bible being the key to studies, the Christian faith holds a strong worldview in today’s society. Therefore,

Introduction to the Hebrew Bible has provided me with a critical analysis of the Hebrew Bible and introduced a wide variety of interpretive strategies, including African American, anthropological, feminist, historical-critical, Jewish, and literary perspectives. These approaches were presented by our author’s, L. Juliana M. Claassens, Peter Enns, Walter Brueggemann, and John L. Collins. Each author provides a unique interpretation to help us comprehend how the text is an expression of one’s interpretive understanding. Having said that, the biggest influence has been how I will seek to present Old Testament scriptures more effectively while remembering the context and the audience in which I am presenting. For example, I believe the greatest lessons that I have been reminded of are, the Old Testaments Scriptures from my childhood, which have become a big part of my relationship with God and are based on a childlike faith, which must now grow in the richness of the different interpretations, it is this message that I can apply to life.

The Old Testament is the largest part of the bible nestled behind the leather binding in the front of the book. Unlike most books, told from one-person or even two this is comprised of multiple, some stories even having two different versions in another point of view; over time it has become a large collection of ancient texts written and re-written by different authors and editors over the many years. The stories show the ancient Israelites, they show the laws, and rituals, which make up their religion and the small embers, which will one day, turn to a flame that is Christianity. The Jewish people view these stories as collected in what they call the Torah, is the collection for what makes up their history and the promise that God gave to them, as well as their laws and what they worship today. For the Christians the Old Testament is still seen as sacred, but most place a stronger importance to the New Testament.

The Heart of the Old Testament written by Ronald Youngblood is an informative and insightful book. Youngblood identifies the nine themes that form the foundation of the Old Testament. These themes show that the Old Testament is not any different from the New Testament and should not be consider irrelevant when compared to the New Testament. The nine themes include monotheism, sovereignty, election, covenant, theocracy, law, sacrifice, faith and redemption.

One of the major differences that A.J. Jacobs illuminates as major differences between the world of the Old Testament and our recent society is that the hundreds of laws listed on the 5 first books of the Old Testament might no longer apply to our contemporary society. Some of the reasons these laws are irrational is because they were harsh and basically impossible to achieve. However, I disagree with him in picking and choosing the right parts of the Bible. This is a dangerous statement because it opens the door to pick and choose what fits our model; therefore justification to sin might occur as a consequence. Nevertheless, these laws were given to one group of people, the Jews.

Although this is my second semester at Liberty University I have already completed the APOL and BIBL course which are required for my degree. As this would conclude the required Bible courses, I just hope to gain knowledge of a different aspect of the Bible. From my experience from the classes I have taken with Liberty University this far I realize that knowledge of the Bible is expected and I hope this course sets me up with more tools to complete various assignments. Through my prior courses this past summer I gained a refresher on things which I learned throughout high school and this course is something that I have actually never taken before. With it being new I just hope it brings insight into topics that are current and hopefully I

The Mosaic “Law has a most important place in the religion of the Old Testament. The first five books of the Bible, called by Christians the PENTATEUCH, are called the Torah (tôrâ, law) by the Jews.” “The Mosaic Law begins with the Ten Commandments and includes the many rules of religious observance given in the first five books of the Old Testament.” The Mosaic Law in the Old Testament was a law given by God to Moses (Mosaic) as a covenant to Israel. This covenant is very important to the Jews of the Old Testament as well as to the Jews today. These laws set the standard to living a holy life according to God. However, the Old Testament must be looked at as an historical background to the New Testament and the ultimate theme

The Centrality of Continuity: In summary all the descriptive definitions and approaches to define a myth lead to one

Interestingly enough, the times of laughter and awkward silences or all the Sunday afternoons I spent sitting under a tree are not what I remember the most. It is all of the cultural windows we spent so much time looking through. After a year of Mrs. Stanford’s Old Testament class without any insight to the culture, my expectations for cultural insight were very low. Nevertheless, I was appalled the first time we read in Luke after looking through a window. Everything I read made so much more sense, as I now understood the “why” behind everything that was happening.

Ever since I was young I was always drawn to the book of genesis curious about the handy work of God how he formed everything together. Now grown I wanted to seek and see the original people who wrote down the Old Testament and in doing that having to see and study their religion and understand their interpretation of the creation account. But through my research I found through the ages things had change interpretation shifted, and new ideas had formed through the rise of rabbinic Judaism. To the point today there are multiple ideas that float about out in the main stream about the creation and depending on the person and their belief in what the scripture says you might get a different interpretation. So that is what I had set out to find

Biblical and Historical Perspectives was a very insightful course that I took this semester. At first, I believed that the sole purpose of this course was to comprehend the Bible’s literacy, but eventually I learned that this class went beyond just understanding text(s). According to the syllabus one of the goals for this course was to “bridge the gap between the symbolic world of biblical texts and our current experience of ourselves and the world, thus enabling students to consciously and intelligently adopt, adapt, or reject the patterns of thought and life proposed by the Bible.” Dr. Bucur went a step further doing more than just deciphering old text, but he applied the underlying meaning of the text to each of his students for us to

The Truth is that I have learned quite a lot from this study. Although it is quite heavy for some of us but now I know some new things. Some of this books I read some time but does come on light like we discuss together in class I appreciate it. Therefore, from Genesis I read about the creation. Some people denied the event that was told. Some say it is not possible that God could create everything in six days. Sadly, I see in Genesis the human race was infected with sin and innocent blood was shed to provide a covering for them. Some would deny that sin exists. I believe that since human kind is a sinner because of human being rebellion in the garden, I have started on a journey with Abraham.

There were at least 3 views of how the Old Testament was composed which include the critical view, the compositional view, and the common view. Each view was somewhat similar and different in the aspects that gave it it's own characteristics. The main point of this discussion is to focus on the similarities and differences of each view which are but not limited to how the bible was created, the process, and design.

The first 39 books of the larger work called the Bible, is called the Old Testament. The Bible itself is arguably the best selling and most read book of all time, yet it’s well known to be quite challenging to read through and understand. The Old Testament portion of the Bible, notably the most difficult portion of the Bible for most to study and follow, yields 39 books from multiple authors, and spans over 4000 years of crucial world and church history. If that were not enough to take on, the Old Testament comes our way through multiple styles of authorship and formats, including but not limited to, books of history, law, proverbs, ethics,

Throughout the bible, and reading it once more by Marcus Borg, a common idea as it relates to a religious experience, is that the Bible is a human product. Throughout chapter two, Borg continuously describes the Bible as being a product of humans. He explains on page 22 that he sees scripture through the lens of the Bible being a human product, meaning that it is the “product of two ancient communities” (22). He believed that what the Bible explains things to be are words from the communities of ancient Israel and the early Christian movement. “We cannot talk about God (or anything else) except with the words, symbols, stories, concepts, and categories known to us, for they are the only language we have”, made me think about the idea that