Weekly Blog

The Dead Sea Scrolls (DSS) are generally considered one of the most important archaeological finds of the 20th Century.

Over the next few posts, we will look at the most important manuscripts of the Old Testament. We begin with what is generally considered the most important Old Testament text – the Masoretic Text.

Today we will look at how scholars try to determine which “reading” is correct (closer to words in the original writing). This is known as textual criticism.

Today we will wrap this up with two final common errors those copying ancient manuscripts (again, not just the biblical texts – any ancient manuscript).

In these blog posts, we are looking at the transmission of the Biblical texts, and specifically at common errors that were made during the process of copying texts. Last time we looked at the first two common errors – mistaking similar letters, and a wrong division of words. Today we will look at a few more common errors those copying ancient manuscripts (not just the biblical texts – any ancient manuscript).

n these blog posts, we are looking at the transmission of the Biblical texts. Last time we saw that to get copies of the texts, highly skilled individuals had to laboriously make individual copies by hand. The people doing this prior to and during the time of the New Testament were known as scribes. During the history of the Church, this task was eventually taken over by monks. Today we will begin to look at common errors that those copying the texts made.

n these blog posts, we have been looking at how the Bible came about. We have seen this initially happened through the process known as inspiration.

We are have been looking at the idea of the ‘canon of Scripture.‘  This week I am giving the text of a short article by Michael Kruger, who is President of Reformed Theological Seminary at Charlotte. (I graduated from Reformed Theological Seminary’s Washington DC Campus). Dr. Kruger gives a good, brief answer to the false claim that the early church had other books in their canon which were suppressed by a few leaders later on. There is also a link to a video at the end which gives a bit more information.

This week I am giving a copy of an article written by two seminary professors. It covers many of the points we have looked at before, and corrects a number of distortions that can arise by overstating the process involved in how we got our Bible. I hope this is helpful.

Last week I discussed the Paschal Letter of Athanasius in 367AD. Here is that letter in full. I hope it encourages you in your walk!