January 7, 2011 by Tom Brunson
While we see the Pharisees as the main target of Jesus, we also encounter the Sadducees in the Gospels. While there were around 6,000 Pharisees at that time, there were perhaps half that many Sadducees. The Pharisee doctrines became the basis for today's Judaism, but the Sadducees disappeared, and we have no record of their writings, only what the Pharisees had to say about them. Edersheim believes what the Pharisees said was distorted, because they were adversaries of the Sadducees. (It would be like asking a Democrat what the Republicans believe...)
Basically, the Sadducees seemed to oppose...
Categories: Understanding the Bible |
January 6, 2011 by Tom Brunson
As we jump into the NT we encounter the Romans, King Herod, the Sanhedrin, the Pharisees, the Sadducees, "sinners" and others that were not mentioned in the Old Testament. Surprise! Time has passed, and new things have come...
Categories: Understanding the Bible |
January 6, 2011 by Tom Brunson
By New Testament times the Pharisees had completely flipped the understanding of the Mosaic Law from its original focus. Their distortions were so severe that they were the primary target of Jesus in the Gospels. We often don't recognize that, because we don't know enough about their teachings, and because we often miss the original focus of the Law...
Categories: Understanding the Bible |
January 5, 2011 by Tom Brunson
When reading the Bible through we jump into the New Testament without realizing there has been a 400-year gap between the Hebrew and Greek Testaments. As a result we run into groups and concepts that seem to have appeared suddenly, and we have no context for understanding the conflicts presented in Matthew and the other books. As you should see by now, knowing the context is essential to correctly understanding the text. Because modern readers don't know this context there are many divergent understandings of the New Testament...
Categories: Understanding the Bible |
October 28, 2010 by Tom Brunson
Now that we have started reading of the Prophets it's time to consider what factors affect our understanding. Many of the Prophetic books contain a lot of poetic material, and as we have read the poetry books just before the Prophets, we should know how to handle poetic material. (strong emotional content, figures of speech to be understood as such, Parallel thoughts that repeat an idea differently to give deeper understanding, etc.) So we know to look for expressions that give strong images and understand them as illustrations.
However, what about the prophetic content - how literal do we take it? As usual, we say the correct understanding is what the original reader would understand in his culture - the normal clear...
Categories: Understanding the Bible |
October 6, 2010 by Tom Brunson
The oldest tradition has been that Solomon wrote Ecclesiastes. However, there is no author's name in the text, so naturally some modern scholars have proposed other authors. Some have based this suggestion on the title used "Qoheleth" which is usually translated as "Preacher" or "Teacher." This word is used seven times in Ecclesiastes to identify the author, but is not used anywhere else in the Old Testament. Some scholars identify it as having non-Hebrew origins, proposing it suggest a later king of occupied Israel rather than a Hebrew king.
The normal translation of 1:1 identifies this person as "the son of David, king in Jerusalem." While we see that as Solomon, the skeptics point out...
Categories: Understanding the Bible |
September 4, 2010 by Tom Brunson
Now that we reading Psalms and will soon start Proverbs, let's look a little deeper at how we should consider and understand Biblical Wisdom literature. As you have noticed in Psalms, the poetic form uses strong, figurative language to express emotional content and evoke strong responses in the reader. We come away feeling a very personal contact with the author, seeing deeply into his/their heart.
So we tend to examine the Psalms in a very personal way, as if the author was writing directly to me, and we feel particularly attracted to the individual psalms that resonate most with us. Generally we view Psalms and Proverbs as being collections or compilations of individual works that we study individually...
Categories: Understanding the Bible |
March 24, 2010 by Tom Brunson
The Bible, and each book within it, develop specific themes, and in developing a theme include those specific details needed to explain that theme. Thus at times the same events may be explained in different places while developing different themes, so different details may be given. This does not mean one account is in error, but rather that different details were important to the different themes.
Categories: Understanding the Bible |
