Back to Basics - January 12
Welcome to the Back to Basics class info link. We will be posting information or helpful articles each week that will prepare you for the BB class and its discussions. We hope to have most of the information posted before Wednesday evening,so please visit this site and read or download anything that you might find useful to you in preparing for our time together on Saturday morning.
If you happen to miss a class, we will try and post a follow-up note from the week before. This will keep you current and up-to-date with the progression of the material that is presented each week. As you might expect, each week builds on the information given the week before, so stay in touch with this area of the church’s website.
This week’s discussion is our first and we would like to welcome those of you who have made it a point to meet with us for this series of classes. The first is a preliminary class to help us get acquainted with the Bible, which will be our text book for the entire time. As you know, the bible is not only the oldest book in the world, it is the most read and most printed as well. There is a reason for that, of course, and that is the context of our discussion. Where did it come from, and how do we know this is the real word of God?
View a helpful chart that lists the histories of various “codex”, copies, and translations of the Bible. However, before we continue, let me give you a short glossary of terms that will help us in our discussion both here and in class.
Apocrypha- Literally this means “hidden”; however, in our discussion it will be referred to as those historic books written during the same time period as “canonized” books but not recognized as such. They were usually histories written by an unknown author of paralleled time periods to those of the Bible, but not generally considered to be authentic or inspired
BC and AD- ‘BC’ refers to the time period before Christ, and counts backwards. ‘AD’, which is derived from a Latin phrase Anno Domini (which means, “year of our Lord”), refers to that time after the birth of Christ to the present. This dating system, though presented as early as 525 AD, was not truly adopted by most of the western world until the 8th and 9th century.
Canon- This term ,usually meaning “Law,” is used for the list or set of Biblical books which establishes them to be authoritative as scripture by a particular religious community, generally in Judaism or Christianity. See Council of Jamnia on the web.
Codex – This is the term used for the replacement of the scroll. We today, might call it a “book” because it looks like our modern versions of bound pages. However, in the context of Biblical history, it usually refers to the early bindings of skins, primitive parchment, or papyrus to hand-write the copies of the bible.
The Gospels- The first four books written in the New Testament that speak directly about the life and ministry of Jesus Christ.
Epistles- The direct meaning is “letters”, and the letters of Paul, Peter and John make up most of the New Testament.
Reformation- The time period that began in 1517 when Martin Luther nailed a document to the door of the church in Wittenberg listing 95 “differences” to what the church of the day believed. This started a protest of the recognized “state church” of Europe and became known as the Protestant Reformation. It continued on for over 100 years and spread throughout Europe and even into the American Colonies.
