The Works Of The Dunham Bible Museum

The process by which Scripture has been preserved and compiled is one whose history is worth noting. The early church had many opportunities to share the Good News of Christ via word of mouth, but from the time of Christ’s resurrection until the mid-second century, there had not been a single culmination of writings considered to be essential for the purposes of

In his recent article for the October 7th issue of Commonweal magazine, David Bentley Hart highlighted how different the Christians of the New Testament are from modern day Christians. Hart’s article, titled “Christ’s Rabble; The first Christians were not like us”, argues that the first Christians were so different than present day Christians that we would have a very hard time getting along with one another if we meet today. Hart, a fellow at the Notre Dame Institute for Advanced Studies, came to this conclusion after in-depth study of the text of the New Testament in its original koine Greek. His work translating the New Testament for Yale University painted a clear picture of the character of the first Christians and underscored how far from the original meanings of the text we have come.

Bruce W. Longenecker emerges as a contemporary innovator of Christian literature through his historical fiction work The Lost Letters of Pergamum. Throughout this work, Longenecker analyzes the fundamental features of first-century Christianity, which were primarily affiliated with the New Testament. The Lost Letters of Pergamum is composed of the combination of letters. These letters primarily document the communication between two citizens: Antipas, “citizen of the blessed empire of Rome, and worshiper of Jupiter, Zeus Olympios the Savior” and Luke, "Doctor, historian, and servant of God” (19, 36). After examining the reoccurring letters between the two citizens and in regards to Luke’s “historical monograph,” it becomes evident that Longenecker’s work focuses on the distinct theme of understanding (29).

The great American scholar, William Foxwell Albright was an American Biblical archaeologist, and is considered to by many to be the “father of Biblical archaeology,” because of his contributions to the archaeological historicity of the Bible. “More than any other scholar Albright’s astounding corpus of books, articles, and public lectures defined a new relationship between archaeology and Biblical studies.”

Throughout the course of the semester, we have constantly talked about and expressed the idea of reading the Bible in a historical context. Picking out the pieces that coincide with evidence that has been found with archeological findings, the accuracy of dates, and important people. The critical study of the Bible is to look at the book as a piece of historical text. The use of our “historical lens” allows us to pick out to various pieces that appear to be factual. Using this analysis of looking at the Bible through our “historical glasses”, we can understand the true meaning of the Bible in its original historical setting.

Longenecker, Bruce W. The New Testament. The Lost Letters of Pergamum. Orlinda, TN: PhD and Lecturer at the University of St. Andrews. 2002.

For as long as records have been maintained, the Bible remains the bestselling book worldwide, year after year (Jeynes, 2012). One might be curious about the reasons it is popular, or more importantly, how did it come about. Called the canon of Scriptures, or a ‘list’, it is the compilation of biblical books regarded by Christians as “uniquely authoritative” (Klein, Blomberg, & Hubbard, Jr., 1993, p. 103). It includes 66 books encompassing thousands of years of history, written in multiple genres, and authored by many individuals. Inclusion into the canon required the necessity of scripture to meet specific criteria. Careful study dictated what became standard for believers (Klein, Blomberg, & Hubbard, Jr., 1993). A person’s understanding of the canonization of the Bible will affect how they will view the validity and authoritativeness of God’s Word.

Machen stated that the New Testament books “are regarded by all serious historians as genuine products of the first Christian generation.” (PAGE 18) The statement merely could be false without Machen’s willingness to terminate as un-serious all historians who ignore the validity and authority of the New Testament. The argument of the New Testament authenticity is still conflicted between in liberalism and typical denominations. A weakness in Machen’s argument on Doctrine was while Machen indicates that the New testament could be understood through the perspective of the “primitive Jerusalem church” (PAGE 22), no supportive agreement was found what the primitive church looked

Everyone has a set of values and something that represents their values. One could call that representation of values their own personal tabernacle. My personal tabernacle is the woods. Ever since I was a child I would spend large quantities of time in the woods, eventually I came to view the woods as my personal tabernacle.

Picturing the Bible, by Spier J. Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth, 2007. 288 pages. Reviewed by June Cuffner.

Illuminated manuscripts , a manuscript defined by decorative decal, complex and captivating appearances, was saved for books of high importance due to the costly and intricate makings. (Gardner’s Art Through the Ages) Manuscripts impacted the way books were portrayed and gave the less educated a chance to comprehend the text, hence for my paper I will be comparing and contrasting two manuscripts from Early Medieval and Gothic. The ‘Chi-Rho-Iota’ folio 34 recto ,from the ‘Book of Kells’, and ‘God as the Creator of the World’ folio 1 verso, from a moralized Bible. These manuscripts surpassed other manuscripts of their time and chose to rely on illustration rather than text making it comprehendible for all of society.

Recalling Barth’s comments in the preface to Romans II on interpreters’ tendency to render the Bible harmless, Jennings retrieval of Acts’ “erotic God” (12) removes the complacency of the “historian’s optic” (2) by giving discrete attention to the materiality of creation. An immediate hermeneutical upshot of this spatial attention is that history itself must be understood as a kind of creature. This means that, like other creatures, history must witness to its Creator, but never attempt to capture her. Acts is then not a history box that contains architectural materials for the foundation of a tradition on which the church stands. Such thinking reproduces historicist “monument thinking,” which returns Acts to a colonial process of “knowledge acquisition and accumulation” (3). Rather, it is through the “creature that is Luke-Acts [that] our seeing and sensing align with the presence of the Spirit here and now” (4). To see and sense Acts as a creature entails yielding to the touch of the Spirit’s movements and disruptions it discloses, the divine presence with which this story intertwines and bears witness.

Before the gospels and Pauline epistles, early church Christians related to the Old Testament as Scripture and viewed their Christian walk as the fulfillment of the promises made to Israel from the Old Testament, which foretold of the coming age of the Messiah. The first New Testament Christians understood the importance of the Old Testament; it was their “Bible” they preached from. Just as in the early church, Christians today need the Old Testament for preaching and in which to reference and understand Christ’s purpose for why he came.

The Saint John’s Bible is unique because it has sixty-eight pages from all volumes of the Saint John’s Bible along with specific tools, sketches and multiple materials presented. These tools help tell the story of monumental creation. The use of color really enhanced the creation stories. The book has an unique undertaking and combines centuries of old tradition of craftsmanship with the latest capabilities of technology. The words were handwritten on skin paper, using hand-cut quills. The work includes 1,127 handwritten pages and over one hundred and sixty major artworks. In total the book costs around $165,000. The Saint John's Bible has been able to shape and evidently further enhance the Christian message. The Benedictines’ use of painstaking

One of the most important books in the history of design is The Gutenberg Bible, also known as the Mazarin Bible and the 42-Line Bible. It is often considered one of the first notable books to have been printed because unlike early books, this book was printed with movable type. Invented by Johann Gutenberg, his invention changed the course of technology and the way people gained knowledge forever.