Lutheranism 101 - Part 2 - Old Testament

For those of you who really want to go in-depth in this area I would highly recommend the book, "Reading the Bible with Understanding" by Dr. Lane Burgland. He was a professor at Concordia Theological Seminary in Fort Wayne Indiana. I think this is the most comprehensive book for lay theologians on the subject of the Bible. As a student I preached at a church where he was doing some vacancy work at the time. Since I was still a student he needed to approve my sermon. So a few days after I gave it to him to read he called me into his office. I thought I was there to talk about my sermon. Burgland had other ideas. He loved guns and always packed one where ever he went, even in the classroom. Which was interesting because he was big enough he probably could have played in the front line for the Green Bay Packers. I mean no one in their right mind would have ever messed with this guy. Well somehow he found out I was from Idaho and Montana and that my parents had at one time owned a sporting goods store in Missoula and that I had been in the Marine Corps in artillery. I walked into his office expecting to have my sermon critiqued and instead all he wanted to talk about was guns and ammo. So we must have talked for over an hour about shooting and blowing things up. Finally as I was getting ready to leave he said, "Oh wait a minute here's your sermon back, looks good." He instantly became one of my favorite professors of all time. Anyway if you want to get the book talk to me. A lot of the stuff I am going to be talking about here comes directly from his book.

The Bible has been under attack for some time now. People talk about oral tradition and how it wasn't written till long after its supposed authors were dead. Its accuracy and what books were accepted into the cannon have also been questioned. The problem with many of these accusations is that they do not stand up to historical research. Burgland points out for instance that we have writing samples from 3100 B.C. from what is modern Iraq and Egypt. So writing goes way back. The Old Testament itself was written over a period of about 1100 years. Moses wrote the first five books of the Bible in the 15th century and then the last books of the Old Testament were probably finished about 400 B.C. Some have questioned how Moses could have known all the history that happened before him including the whole history of creation. Some of the information could have come down in oral form and some could have come from other writings. We also have to realize that we believe God inspired Moses as he wrote. So God told him the history. Again if you want to get more into this we can but I don't really have space here. This could be its own study later on maybe.

As far as original manuscripts well we don't have any. Until 1947 the oldest copy of the Old Testament that we possessed was dated about 1000 A.D. When the Dead Sea Scrolls were found they matched 95 percent of the manuscripts we had. They were dated about 95 A.D. which means that for close to a thousand years they had not changed except for minor things. For instance there was no book of Esther in the Dead Sea Scrolls. This shows the care that was taken to preserve the original writings through the years. So much for a bunch of copy mistakes.

Jesus also held the Old Testament in high regard quoting from it continually. The authors of the New Testament also quote from it time and time again. They consider it an accurate document.

So how did we get the Old Testament put together in the form that we have it now? The Canon, which is a list of books accepted as Holy Scripture, was in its current form about the time the New Testament was being written. The last time its make up seems to be discussed is the Council of Jamnia or Yavneh in 90 A.D.

The Old Testament is made up of 39 books divided into certain groups. There is the Law or Torah which is the first five books of Moses. Then there are the prophets, some of which are history, Joshua through 2 Kings and then prophecy, which is Isaiah through Malachi. The Writings are thinks like the Psalms and Proverbs, Song of Songs and the like.

Here are some Bible verses for you to read: 1 Thessalonians 2:13; 2 Peter 1:21; 2 Timothy 3:16; 1 Corinthians 2:13; Luke 16:29; 2 Timothy 3:15

Here are some questions for you:

Why are the first eleven chapters of Genesis so important?
Who wrote the book of Psalms?
Why is it when the New Testament quotes the Old Testament that the wording is many times different from what you read in your Old Testament?

If you take some time to read the comments section from last week's lesson you will see some good feed back. As for the answers:

To the first question from Acts 17, Paul says it is so people will seek Him.
In Psalms it says that an atheist is a fool
The answer to the last question is no. The natural knowledge of God in not enough for salvation. We cannot know through natural knowledge that there is a Savior.

I liked the feed back, it showed that you were thinking through things. I imagine that what I wrote above is going to generate a lot of questions. Please feel free to send them. Like I said we could get very in depth in this issue. Our next lesson will be on the New Testament and Inspiration.

Pastor Fred