Reflection Paper - Virgin Birth, Jesus Claim God, Bible Authority

After reading “Everyday Bible Study, chapters 6-9” I found that God wrote the Bible. The Bible is made up of 66 books and was written over a large time span and has many different Authors like Peter, Matthew, and Timothy to name a few, and all were from various parts of the world. Given that technology was nowhere near what it is today, communicating with each other or to conspire was not possible during their time; they all corroborate the same thing, that God wrote the Bible through Man. Man was inspired to create the Scriptures from God through the influence of the Holy Spirit; Scripture was not created by any human being, rather it was translated by God through the Holy Spirit to Man (2 Pet. 1:20-21 New International Version). “If Men Are Involved, How Are There No Errors?”

Unlike Mythology, narratives of the Bible are actual events that took place dating back to the beginning of time. The conception of The Holy Bible’s compilation started thousands of years ago in the land of Egypt. Initially, the Old Testament Scriptures were written in the Hebrew language, however, they were later translated to the Greek. At the onset of the New Testament writings, they were originally recorded in the Greek language. Forty men transcribed the voice of God, which resulted in sixty-six books of the Holy Bible. The Holy Scriptures explained the creations, formation of the world, God, God’s chosen people, sin, and the plan of salvation as well.

The foundation of the Christian faith is cradled within truth of the virgin birth, life, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. As diverse as the world-wide Christian culture is, the truth in the birth and life of Jesus stands without border and language limitations. Just as each individual life story can be adapted to be relevant for a variety of audiences, the birth story of the Messiah was also. The Gospels of Matthew and Luke are an example of the well-rounded and diverse narration of the birth story of Jesus—Matthew’s narration spoke to the history of the Jewish people and Luke presented to the citizen of Rome.

Over the centuries, Christianity has organised its beliefs into a systematic theology that draws from its sacred writing and tradition. While the main beliefs of Christianity are shared by all Christian variants, there are degrees of different in the interpretation of these beliefs and how they are lived out in everyday life. This can be seen in the important of sacred text, principle belief of the concept of salvation in John 3:16, principle belief of divine and humanity in ‘John 1:14’, principle belief of resurrection in ‘Mark 16:1-8’, principle belief of revelation in ‘1 corinthians14:6’, and beliefs through the Trinity in ‘2 Corinthians 13:14’. This essay will explain the important of the sacred text and the principal beliefs of Christianity.

In the Bible there are 4 different so called eye witness accounts of the life of Jesus Christ which are supposedly written by Matthew and John, two of Jesus’ disciples, Luke, a journalist and historian while Jesus was alive and Mark was a teenage Jew during the time that Jesus visited Jerusalem. Although many scholars do not agree with some of the specific episodes described in these texts, it is still believed that these documents present a fairly accurate portrayal of the life of Jesus Christ. One of the reasons that have to believe this was the time when these texts were written and how close this was to the death of Jesus Christ. It is generally believed that the gospel of Luke was written in the year 60 AD, the gospel of Mark in the year 70 AD and the gospels of Matthew and John within the years 70-100 AD. This is so significant because these books were all written within one generation of the life and death of Jesus Christ and it shows that the people writing these texts were really around to witness the events that they quoted in their texts. Another reason that historians have to believe that these texts are accurate accounts of the life of Jesus is the amount of copies of original manuscripts that still exist today. These images on the screen are just some of the ancient original texts of the bible, all of which were written before 300 AD and all of which still exist today. Although there are no original documents of any of the books of the Bible, there are several original copies by monks whose profession was to accurately copy texts so that they copies of these texts could be distributed amongst many

1.) There are many non-believers who question and try to disprove the validity of the word of God its authors who he spoke to. Many will argue that the number of authors prove that the bible is a collection of stories and go out of their way to deny divine inspiration of its authors. Divine authorship, “recognizes that every word of the Bible originated and came about through the work of God.” (Cartwright and Hulshof, 2016). God used men to put his words to the text of the Bible. Many people fail to realize that words of the scripture are directly his own.

The way in which both Matthew and Luke treat Mary in their birth narratives affects our understanding of the historicity of these accounts. It could be argued that both of the birth narratives present the male ideology of that time. This is clear when in Luke, Mary is first introduced as “a virgin betrothed to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David” This description reveals the two most important features of a woman of her time: her virginity and, the man who she belonged to. This male ideology is also presented through Matthew’s writing as he also associates the female population with the aspect of birth and nurture. However, despite both of

As we move further into the research of this paper, defining some terms under the viewpoints of the selected authors is necessary. Millard Erickson defines inspiration as “that supernatural influence of the Holy Spirit upon the Scripture writers which rendered their writings an accurate record of the revelation or which resulted in what they wrote actually being the Word of God.” While inspiration primarily concerns the quality of the finished product rather than the process of that period of time in which the entirety of the Scriptures came into being, the divine-human authorship raises the tension as to how those Scriptures came into being. The Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy states: “We affirm that inspiration, strictly speaking applies only to the autographic text of Scripture.” The leads to the question “What constitutes an autograph or the autographs?” In general, scholars use the term autographs to refer to the first or original copies of the biblical documents which is the material the author actually wrote himself. One customary definition of the term “autographa” in a theological discussion refers to the unchanging form of text whereby the original document is identical to the final canonical form of a given OT biblical book. Since canon involves the list of all books that belong in a bible or those reckoned as Holy Scriptures which

Bible as the Inspired Word of God The Bible is the work of various authors, who lived in different continents and wrote in different eras. Furthermore, much of the text does not claim to have been 'dictated' by God and is not always God speaking to people. In parts it consists of people speaking to God, as in the Psalms, and people speaking to people, as in the New Testament letters written by Paul. In light of this, some maintain that it is not possible to treat the Bible as a book of divine oracles, delivered once by God and recorded by its authors through divine inspiration, since biblical authors were products of their time and subsequently their understanding of divine truth was culturally

When we compare the Bible to other manuscripts from antiquity, we learn that the copies of the Bible were written close to the date of the original copy. New Testament writings were composed within a few decades of the events they describe. The earliest complete copy of the entire New Testament goes back to the 5th century. Partial copies of the New Testament go back even further to 71-100 AD. In addition, there are abundant amounts of little details in the New Testament that are hard to write about unless the writer was present in the time the event took place. For example, in Acts 28 Luke mentions a Roman official named Paul Publus, the chief official of the island. We know from the

The purpose of the paper is to differentiate between Christ of faith and Jesus of history. New Testament biblical scholars from the 19th Century have been preoccupied by the notion of Christ of faith versus Jesus of History. Jesus of history can be described as the quest for historical Jesus, while the Christ of Faith is the Christ of Christian belief either through the Church or historically. Some traditions even went ahead to argue that the Jesus of History could never be found and therefore the Christ of faith is the only way forward for Christians. On the other hand, those who have been promoting the Jesus of History have often assumed that the historical Jesus is much superior as compared to the Christ of Faith. Despite the key differences between Christ of faith and the historical Jesus, both these aspect have an implication for Western Christianity.

The Bible is not a book of religions or rituals. Rather, the Bible is a library of 66 books—39 of which are known as the Old Testament and 27 books referred to as the New Testament—that reveals God’s divine plan of redemption, reconciliation, salvation, restoration and renewal of the whole world. The Bible can be read as a great literature, or as a history of Israel, or as a source of theological information. Though it is all of these things, none of them does full justice to Scripture as being authoritative. God has all authority, and we accept the Bible as the primary authority by which God communicates to us what He wants us to believe and to do. N.T. Wright’s book theorizes that Scripture is authoritative in that “the authority of

“Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign. Look, the young woman is with child and shall bear a son, and shall name him Immanuel.” Isaiah 7:14 This was Isaiah’s response to King Ahaz, who refused to ask the Lord for a sign, but this was also a prophecy of how the Savior would come. God gave King Ahaz as well as the world a sign of hope which a virgin will conceive. “God with us,” is the meaning of Immanuel which the son shall be named. This gives hope that God will always be with us even through His son. This prophecy of Jesus’ being born of a virgin was fulfilled in the New Testament in the book of Matthew 1:20-23 which states, “But just when he had resolved to do this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, “Joseph, son of David, do not be

In this term paper we know this study is an important topic, as it remains a great controversy to the world for many thousands of years – is the bible reliable, more importantly, is the spiritual author of the bible reliable to the world? We will convince them that indeed the Bible is reliable. This paper plays an important role in convincing many people, including the researchers themselves to the truth.

The bible was written as an account of what many viewed that God had accomplished so his actions and words could be passed on for generations. Some believe it is a literary account and some believe it is a historical account. The word of God in the bible comes in many forms and is left up to interpretation by the reader. Some believe that the word of God should be the only word and should be strictly followed. Some believe that the words are meant as a guideline to help us through life. Whatever your belief is you can always seem to find the meaning behind your belief through the word of God in the Bible.