The Gospels describe Jesus's ministry, death and resurrection, but why are there four Gospels? Why didn't one person write a comprehensive biography of Jesus's life?
Suppose that today four men should undertake to write a “life” of ex-president [Theodore] Roosevelt, and that each one designed to present him in a different character. Suppose that the first should treat of his private and domestic life, the second deal...
Christianity is based on historical events. Throughout the Bible, there were eyewitnesses to events, and those people reported what happened. The Gospels, in particular, have extra-Biblical sources which help confirm their accuracy. First century non-Christian historians who refer to events in the Gospels include Josephus, Pliny the Younger, Suetonius, Tacitus, Thallus, and Emperor Trajan.
The testimonies...
I wrote several articles about the Torah, which is comprised of the first five books of the Old Testament. Now I want to move several hundred years later and research the Gospels, the first four books of the New Testament.
The word Gospel comes from an Old English translation of the Greek word euaggelion (εὐαγγέλιον; Strong's G2098), from which we get the English words evangelize, evangelist and Evangelical. Gospel means "good...
This is part two of a series, Where did Moses get His Information?. In part one, I briefly discussed how Moses could have written Exodus 1 (ESV) since it took place before he was born. I also mentioned Deuteronomy 34 (ESV), which was written after he died. The likely answers are pretty simple, so it was a short article.
Now I want to discuss how Moses received the information he wrote in the book of Genesis, the first book of the Bible....
The first five books of the Bible are Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy, and are traditionally attributed to Moses (see the articles Did Moses Write the Torah? Part 1, Part 2). Most of the events in the last four books happened during Moses' life, and he was, in fact, the key person during those events.
Exodus chapter 2 records Moses's birth, so obviously he wasn't an eyewitness to the events in...
Last week I posted the article Did Moses Write the Torah? Part 1, and I showed other Biblical authors clearly attributed the first five books of the Bible to Moses, in both the Old and New Testaments. In this article I want to make the case that the books we have in our Bibles may not be exactly what Moses wrote, but they are accurate representations of what Moses, and God, were communicating to the Israelites, and to us.
Editors may...
Modern skeptics have
doubts that Moses wrote the first five books of the Bible: Genesis, Exodus,
Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy. These books are core teachings for three of
the worlds major religions: Judaism (Hebrew Torah),
Christianity (Greek Pentateuch) and
Islam (Arabic Tawrat). These three religions all have
traditions of the same author, despite their significant theological
differences. Could Moses have written the first five...
Here's some
information I found about Sefer Torah scrolls. There's quite a bit of
conflicting information, so its kind of hard to summarize.
Web sites pretty
consistently indicate there are 304,805 letters in a Sefer Torah. Try a Google
search for How
many letters are in a Sefer Torah?, and you'll find a huge number of pages
which show there are 304,805 letters in a Sefer Torah. Since the Torah has been
checked so...
The research I did
for the article What is a Sefer Torah? shows there are
304,805 letters in a Sefer Torah. A common question asked on the websites I
looked at is: What is the middle of a Sefer Torah? The word Sofer
is the Hebrew word for counter (not scribe, writer, author, copier, etc.), and Soferim count the letters in a Sefer Torah to
ensure it was copied accurately. Since the letters have been counted so many
times over a few...
My last two articles have been: What is a Torah? and What is a Sefer Torah?, and now I want to address who writes Sefer Torahs. The Hebrew word Sofer (or sopher) (plural: soferim/sopherim) means "one who counts", and refers to Jewish scribes who have faithfully copied the Torah for thousands of years. I find it interesting the the scribes are called "counters" and not "writers". Only a trained and certified Sofer...
