The Meaning of the Word of God as Treated in the Old and New Testaments - Essay Example

The meaning of the word of God as treated in the Old and New Testaments Before starting the investigation of the meaning of the Word of God it necessary to give a definition of this notion. According to the dictionary, the notion has three meanings – 1) a manifestation of the mind and will of God; 2)the sacred writings of the Christian religions; "he went to carry the Word to the heathen"; 3) the message of the gospel of Christ (7)The question about the date of the origin of New and Old Testament are still discussed, yet plenty of questions still remain. The specialists try to find out how the testaments emerged as a set of writings, who were the persons that compiled the collection and what were the basic principles that the collection based on. According to the traditional principles of Christian religion, the writings and the principles of their selection were controlled and inspired by the Holy Spirit, performing the words of the Lord to lead His followers to the truth. The Christian Church needed to know what books of the collection were divinely inspired. The Gospels, containing the information about Jesus, his doings and lessons, couldn’t be jugged as having less importance than the Old Testament. The Acts and Epistles comprising the teaching of the apostles are also regarded as created under His control. Thus, the teachings of the apostles were treated with the same respect as the ancient prophetic writings. The Church then broke with Judaism and rejected the authority if the Old Testament, but regarded it as the Word of God, taking Jesus and His disciples as example. The New Testament consists of twenty-seven writings, referred to eight authors. Six of them are believed to be apostles – Jude, James, Peter, Paul, John and Matthew, and the other two are their direct followers, Luke and Mark. If these books are regarded from the point of view of the literature and from the historical point of view, they would be observed as didactic books including Epistles, prophetical book, that is Apocalypse, and the books on the historical topic – Gospels and Acts.(2) The date of the origin of the Old Testament is referred to 2500-3500 years ago. It is assumed that it was made by the people with a culture and traditions quite different from the nowadays society. Inspite of the strong traditional links, which the Christian Church keeps within the ages, the Word of God, being read by a modern reader is judged differently compared to perception of the readers of the Medieval, and of course, of the authors, created the writing. Our interpretation and understanding of an ancient text are influenced by the tendencies of the lifestyle and culture inherent to our society. Thus, while reading and studying the sacred texts, it is necessary to remember about possible influence of the present reality. (5) It is known that there were no text in the time before the printing was invented came to us without alterations. The reasons for the alterations are evident – it went through the hands of the copyists, translators, who very often didn’t care to keep the original text. That is why we often have several variants of the same text now. As far as the Scriptures are concerned, the alterations are accompanied with controversies in dogmatical meaning of the text. The text of the New Testament, for instance, revealed more than 1500,000 readings.(5) The facts mentioned above make evident that the words, that are presented by the church as the Word of God, belong to humans. However, careful studying numerous variants of the text allows finding the original meaning, restoring the original text. One of the researches tries to link the word of God to the notion about the world and Universe existing at present. For instance, he observes the seeming contradictions between the notion of evolution and the creation of the Earth as it is described in the Bible. He refers to the words of God spoken from the mountain Sinai: "For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day; therefore God blessed the Sabbath day, and made it holy" (Exodus 20:11), with the man and woman created shortly after the creation of the earth. Then he observes the key points of the evolutional theory, which describes the evolution of the life on the earth as the shift from one form of life to another. However, the author states, there are some facts that challenge the customary notion of the evolution. He refers to the footprint of a man found within the track of a dinosaur. This proofs the fact that all the forms of life on the earth were created at the same time.(4) The second fact he describes is the consistency of the Bible text with the Second Law of Thermodynamics. According to the Second Law of Thermodynamics, everything in the Universe is tending to disorder. The Bible contains a statement that directly refers to this Law: "For the creation was subjected to futility, not of its personal will, but because of Him who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself also will be set free from its slavery to corruption..." (Romans 8:20,21) Many researches address Bible as the source of predictions that than came true: They observe Daniel’s prediction, concerning the four kingdoms that were to appear, his narrative about the Medo-Persian Empire, and the story about Alexander the Great and his triumph as extremely precise and vivid picture of the facts that then become true historical events. (5) There were some predictions in the Old Testament that spoke about a coming of Jesus. The nature of these predictions goes far beyond human skills: “There are at least 150 specific prophecies concerning a man who was to come, all of which were clearly fulfilled by the Jesus of the New Testament. The number and scope of such predictions are far away from the range of human arrangement. There is really only one possible explanation - Divine planning and action. Such Messianic prophecy is some of the strongest proof that the Bible is indeed the word of God and the story of Jesus.”(5) Old Testament prophecies prove that the Creator of the prophecies is also the Author of history. Prophecies of history prove that the Old Testament is the word of God. The Old Testament prophecies also prove that Jesus is the Christ the Messiah, and that Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John are the word of God. Since most of the New Testament - the book of Acts, the epistles, and Revelation - relates to the church, and indirectly to Jesus, the question is: Is all of the New Testament the word of God.(5) There is a significant number of prophecies that appeared to be true. Many researches speak about the Plan that was explained in the Old Testament and then fulfilled. The key points of this plan are as follows: “traced from Adam’s fall in the Garden, through patriarchal sacrifices, through the Mosaic covenant, through the offering of Christ’s blood and His resurrection, and His church and second coming for judgment”(5)This plan that had been then fulfilled is, according to the point of view of the researches, is the evidence of the divine nature of the author of the sacred writings. There are the authors that investigate the lessons we may get from the text of the Old and New Testament. Walter C. Kaiser in his Preaching and Teaching from the Old Testament observes the text from several angles of vision. The author regards the Old Testament as the "powerful word of God". (6)He also indicates that the Bible appeared to be the first Christian text, discussing the problems of living. He also studies the connection between the sacred texts and finds out the links that unite the Old Testament with the present reality, regarding the text as a "part of a unified plan of God for all times and all peoples" (6). The author also insists that there are many problems discussed in the Old Testament that are relevant for today. He adds that the book is extremely relevant today, as it gives us a balanced view of God.(2) Kaiser carefully studies the biblical text and follows it precisely. He observes various genres that are present in the text and he suggests a scheme comprising sermons to illustrate the scheme of preaching from the text of the Old Testament. He also gives some suggestions, as for instance, the one that concerns traditional understanding the Song of Solomon like the story of two characters. He suggests observing it as the text of tree characters. Some of the researchers insist on the unreliability of the Bible as the source of original Word of God. For instance, Richard Anthony in his researches states that the manuscripts of the Old Testament were corrupted while translating, so bible cannot be regarded as an original text. According to his research, the Old Testament, included into the Bible we use today, wasn’t translated form the writings in Hebrew, the original texts. He claims that the original texts on Hebrew, as the language itself, were missing by the time the bibles appeared. This language was lost fully and completely. And there is no any specialist in Hebrew today. The texts, used instead of original Hebrew texts for translation, were the Masoretic Hebrew texts. The Masorites added vowels to an original Hebrew alphabet, which hadn’t vowels in it. The texts written in this language became the basis for the bibles of today. Anthony states, that this source couldn’t be regarded as reliable, because changing the alphabet produced the changes in the meaning of the words and the meaning of the whole text: “There is not one place in the Masoretic Hebrew where they can show that God ever authorized them to change the original language by adding vowel points to it. And by adding the vowels, they changed the words, and by changing the words, they have changed the meaning of these words, and by changing the meaning of words, they have changed the Word of God. And if they have changed the Word of God within the Masoretic Hebrew text, we must take care.”(4) After the observation of Holy Scriptures, the Jewish Bible, the author came to the conclusion that the meaning of the words in the language of Masorites is missing. There were reasons that made him suppose so – he found out that the meaning of original Hebrew was lost, the grammar and syntax were uncertain, etc. It is customary to regard the Old Testament as the text that hadn’t been changed, so all Christian Bibles derive from this Masoretic text, that finally turned out to be unclear and uncertain, as the translator of the Hebrew texts were not sure as for meaning of the words in Hebrew. In his research the author reminds about the God’s promise to keep his Word for the people(1 Peter 1:23, 25, Luke 21:33, Psalms 12:6-7; 119:89, 152, 160, Isaiah 40:8; 59:21, John 10:35, Matthew 24:35). He also suggests the text, that, in his point of view nay be regarded as the original expression of the Word of God. He refers to the Septuagint as the text that had been translated form original Hebrew text into Greek. It is known that Jesus and the apostles spoke Greek, and the writings of New Testament were also written in Greek. Greek was the prime language of that time, because of Alexander the Great and his triumph in conquering the nations. Almost everybody spoke Greek in that time, so the original text was translated from Hebrew into Greek, as the Jews spoke Greek.(4) It is evident, that under these circumstances, Jesus and his disciples spoke mainly Greek, addressing to people. So they used the New Testament in Greek language, and the text, they referred to, was the Septuagint. In case one would compare the Greek of the Septuagint and the New Testament, he would find many words, which are common for both writings. But reading the Bible in English won’t lead to the same result, as the text of the Old Testament translated from the Masoretic Hebrew don’t match to the text that had been translated from the new Testament in Greek. There are various works, observing the Word of God as the essential part of the New and Old Testament. These researches study these writings from the various points of view – the history of their origin, the circumstances of their creation and their possible authors. There are also the works that penetrate into the meaning of the texts considered to be the word of God; examining the prophecies and predictions, discussing the sense of the words that are supposed to be inspired by the Holy Spirit. Works Cited 1. Alfred Durand. The New Testament, Catholic Encyclopedia 2. F. F. Bruce. The New Testament Documents 3. George Kenworthy Preaching and Teaching from the Old Testament. Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society, March 2004 4. Jay Wilson. Proof that the Bible is the Word of God 5. Richard Anthony. Old Testament Manuscripts 6. Walter C. Kaiser. Preaching and Teaching from the Old Testament. Jr. Grand Rapids: Baker, 2003 7. Word of God – article. The Free Dictionary Read More