Taking a Look at the Old Testament

In the Beginning: At the beginning of the universe. God created heaven and earth in six days and rested on the seventh. During those six days God spoke to the darkness and created the world, brought forth light, created the sky, land and animals and plants to inhabit them. However, even during this creation he was contemplating the creation of a being made in his own image.

Therefore, according to the author Mathewson, one struggle with the Old Testament narratives considering there is no patience, also are tempted to press for an enumeration of facts or set of clear and sharply formulated the idea (fluff); to be honest, it is mostly ignorance. Second, one finds the Old Testament challenging considering its role is minimized in the canon as faulty. The importance of the Old Testament stories gives instruction to things not repeated in the New Testament, Creation, law, also covenant. Intimidated by the language and literature of the Old Testament is another challenge in preaching the narratives, as well as, one being enslaved to a particular style of exposition (Mathewson 12-25).

Prophecy, poetry, songs, and genealogy lists are just a few of the many genres found in the Pentateuch. However, the two dominant genres include biblical law and biblical narrative. In fact, 40 percent of the Old Testament is narrative (“Lecture 1,” 2015). Key to interpreting different texts within the Bible, it is critical to understand the genres themselves. Each genre possesses unique features that, when understood, assist in the interpretation of the text. Understanding the key features of biblical law and biblical narrative genres will affect how an individual interprets Scripture in the Old Testament.

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.

13) The Creation of the World; the Garden of Eden; Adam and Eve; Original Sin; the Fall

Looking back, we can see glimpses of the lives of those who lived in the Ancient Near East, known as the ANE, through their stories and myths that have survived over centuries of time. Many of these stories contain unique elements that make each one personal to the civilization that they belong to, but there are common themes and ideas that are virtually shared between the traditional stories stemming from this region of the world. In fact, these parallels even extend into Old Testament literature; laced within the stories that we’ve come to know and love. It is not surprising that the Old Testament contains similarities found within ANE tradition, seeing that

The history of how the Bible came into existence has been explored for centuries and is an active area of study today. There are many facets to the Bible and each has its own set of unique characteristics and teachings. The Old Testament is considered a contemporary guide for daily living, even though it was composed hundreds of years ago. Where did the Old Testament come from? What are some of the influences that shaped the Old Testament? What are the significant events of the Old Testament? In order to gain a better understanding of the Old Testament and its message to Christians, special consideration is given to its historical and cultural context, and to the major milestones in its development. Personal application of the teachings offered in this section of the Bible should be the aspiration of all Christians today.

John H. Walton’s Ancient Near Eastern Thought and the Old Testament: Introducing the Conceptual World of the Hebrew Bible is broken up into fourteen chapters. Those fourteen chapters are each part of one of five sections. This book also contains over twenty historical images. Before the introduction, the author gives readers a full appendix of all images used in this published work. The author then gives his acknowledgements followed by a list of abbreviations.

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.

There are many central themes that are in the Old Testament, and many may say that there is only one theme of the Old Testament, which is Jesus, and even though that is true in a lot of ways due to the fact that a lot of the minor prophets actually talk about the coming of Jesus, His death and His resurrection. However, I have discovered five main themes of the Old Testament that I found quite interesting. And in this paper I will discuss two of them. I believe one of the most important themes of the Old Testament is Covenant.

The names “Old Testament” and “New Testament” are inherently theological in nature. Because there is a difference distinctly built into giving them different notations, it implies that there are differences between each the Old Testament and the New Testament, whether it is subtle in nature or obvious in nature. To Christians, the difference means that the Old Testament contains dealings between God and the world and even some of the rules made are made irrelevant by the interactions of Christ Jesus with the world. One of the differences between the New Testament and the Old Testament is the way each of the Testaments describe God and God’s nature. The Old Testament describes an angry God, one who only created the world and was obsessed with laws and rules. The New Testament describes a loving God who redeemed the world. The different ways the Old Testament and New Testament describe God and his nature are very much influenced by their perspective of God. By the rules, actions, and laws God made, the early writers of the Old Testament made their judgements about God and wrote those perspectives into the books of the Old Testament. The writers of the Old Testament did the best they could with the information they had and got some things about God right, but also got things wrong. The writers of the New Testament and therefore, Christian believers understand God better.

The Old Testament consisted of a set of documentations of religious scriptures, which were written by different people at various times for a different audience. Most of the Old Testament contains short stories of traditional stories and those stories of distinguished ways God established mankind. These stories are often told to the people in narrative form, which are guidelines often referred to as laws, songs, genealogies, and a list from these authors that composed the Old Testaments. The pressing of set documentation is essential because it is the framework for the lives of God 's followers. The term “Old Testament” originated as a means to express spoken traditions and God 's creation of that particular era. It is an method of philosophical investigation was designed to answer the why questions within these spiritual text documentations. These religious documentations consisted of four parts. These four sections retrieved from the Old Testaments are the laws, history, wisdom and prophecy. The laws are a rule of behavior enforced within the community. The rules are sometimes called “Torah.” When analyzing this Torah, these rules viewed within the first five spiritual books of the Bible. For example, in the first Torah in Genesis, it explains the creation, Noah’s Flood, Abraham and Isaac, and Joseph’s coats of many colors. However, the laws in Exodus were in regards to the going out. The going out took about 40 plus years, until the people led to

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,

To speak of the Hebrew Scripture is to speak of story, a story stretching from the very beginning of time to only a few centuries before the beginning of the Common Era. It is to speak of richness of content, of purpose and of reality and to engross oneself in an overarching narrative that, depending on your personal convictions, continues to the present day. Within this richness is found a wide variety of different events and experience, told through a series of genre ranging from foundational myth to apocalypse, law giving to poetry, genealogy to wisdom and many more. Within this diversity however, three broad sections can be discerned that speak to a shared purpose and content, these are the sections of Law, Prophecy and Writings. It

Deuteronomy 32:8 and Genesis 49:10 are two examples of textual critical problems in the Old Testament. The phrase “sons of God” will be examined in Deuteronomy 32:8, and the word “Shiloh” in Genesis 49:10. These issues have caused much debate as to how one should interpret these verses in light of the textual critical problems. This paper will examine both passages and provide solutions to each of the textual critical issues.