My last article was What is a Torah?, and now I want to discuss a particular type of Torah. A Sefer Torah is a handwritten copy of the Torah on a scroll, rather than in a book, and is still used for ceremonial purposes in Synagogues. On Mondays and Thursdays short sections of the Torah are read, and a longer sections are read on Saturday (Sabbath, Shabbat) and during festivals; over the course of a year, the entire scroll will be read....
The
Hebrew word Torah means "instruction",
"teaching" or "direction" and is often translated as
"law", which includes both written and oral laws of the Israelites.
The word Torah (Hebrew תּוֹרָה) most frequently refers to the first five books of
the Hebrew Bible, which are the same as the first five books of the Christian
Old Testament. These books are also called the Pentateuch
(Greek) by Christians and the Taurat
(Arabic)...
In 2015, a Christian
documentary was released named Patterns of Evidence: The Exodus. Many scholars believe the
Exodus as described in the Bible never happened, and many archaeologists agree
that opinion. The purpose of Patterns of
Evidence: The Exodus is to show that archaeologists are looking for
evidence from the wrong time period, so naturally there wouldn't be evidence of
the Exodus. A few simple calculations using dates the Bible gives leads...
I had planned on
seeing the new documentary Patterns of Evidence: The Moses Controversy
on opening night and writing a review for today's article, but the projector in
the theater wasn't working, so my plans have changed. The Moses Controversy is scheduled to be shown again on
Saturday, March 16th, and Tuesday, March 19th, so hopefully I'll be able to
write a review for next weekend, but by then it will be to late to see it in
the theater.
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This is the last article in a short series that started with the question Who were the Masoretes? and then followed up with Why is the Masoretic Text Important?. This list contains some of the oldest Masoretic Texts and copies which still exist. All of these are more than 1,000 years, and some of them have been in almost continuous use since they were written.
My last post, Who were the Masoretes?, described the
work of the Masoretes. Now I want to focus on why their work is important to
Biblical scholarship.
The great, indeed all-important, question which now meets us is this—Does this Hebrew text, which we call Masoretic, and which we have shown to descend from a text drawn up about AD 100, faithfully represent the Hebrew text...
The Masoretes were
Jewish scribes and scholars who made it their life's work to accurately copy
the Hebrew Bible. They worked approximately from the A.D. 600's to A.D. 950,
primarily in the areas of Jerusalem, Tiberius and Babylonia. The name Masoretes
comes from the Hebrew word masorah,
which means "tradition" or "to hand down".
During the first century A.D. Rome ruled over Israel. In A.D. 66, the first...
I recently finished reading the book Evidence That Demands a Verdict: Life-Changing Truth
for a Skeptical World by Josh McDowell and Sean McDowell. I've known of
the book for years, and had someone recommend it to me years ago, but kept
putting off reading it. Now that I'm writing a blog, I need to research the
questions I have. This seemed like a good time to read a classic book on
Christian Apologetics.
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The Parable of the Prodigal Son occurs in Luke 15:11-32 (ESV).
Jesus told parables to prompt thinking and stimulate response in relation to God. They demonstrate what God is like and what humans are to become. Parables often use both explicit and implicit questions, forcing listeners...
These verses aren't
easy to follow. It's easy to think "The
apostle Paul didn't know what I would be going through when he wrote
that!" No, he didn't, but God knew what you'd be going through...
