20Something 1-11-06

The Hebrew Scriptures for Progressive Christians – Lesson 1

Part 1. Quiz- The Bible says…..(True or False)

___The Lord helps those who help themselves.
___If you obey the LORD, you won't go hungry.
___Money is the root of all evil.
___I am hungry for love! Put your left hand under my head and embrace me with your right arm.
___When you give to the poor, don't let anyone know about it.
___If we do not hang together, we will all be hanged separately.
___ Am I not destroying my enemies when I make friends of them?
___ All leaders are expected to reflect high moral standards established by customs, traditional values, and religious teachings.
___Put fifty loops of blue cloth along one of the wider sides of each curtain, then fasten the two curtains at the loops with fifty gold hooks.
___ These are powerful and valuable lessons about love and courage and the ultimate victory of good over evil.
___Six of the towns you give them will be Safe Towns where a person who has accidentally killed someone can run for protection.
___We hang the petty thieves and appoint the great ones to public office.

(Answers at the bottom.)

















Large Group question: What does the Bible mean in your life?

Reading the scriptures of the Hebrews involves more than just casual reading. We look at the writings in their original contexts and criticize (examine) them using the following considerations:

Is it Historical? (A story about or based on real people and situations)

What is it’s Form? (Poetry, myth, fable, legend, saying, proverb, parable, song, etc.)

Sociological, Cultural? (What were the attitudes and social customs popular at the time of its writing?)

Psychological? (What inner factors might have motivated the writer? What does it say to us today?)

Spiritual? (What does it say about the writer’s understand of the character of God? Where is God in the passage today?)


Group Questions:

What part do you think God played in the writing of the Bible?

What are your thoughts about interpreting the Bible literally? What does that term mean to you? How about the term inerrant? Discuss what you know about these terms, including experiences with people who believe this way.

Why should Progressive Christians understand the “Old Testament,” if we are indeed people of the “New Testament?” List ways in which the Hebrew Scriptures can be relevant:

What would (did) Jesus read?

Some Facts to Ponder:

Structure of the Hebrew Scriptures: When someone states, “The Bible says…” a good response would be “Which Bible?” Consider the following:

The Bible of Jewish tradition contains 24 books, called the Tanak (Hebrew Bible or Scriptures)

TaNaK is an acronym that stands for Torah (Books of Moses) N'vi-im (Prophets) and K'tuvim (Writings).

The Protestant church usually divides the Scriptures into 39 books, subdividing the Prophets into Major and Minor Prophets, as well as other books such as Kings into 1st and 2nd Kings.

They also sometimes switch categories, moving Daniel, for example, from The Writings to The Prophets.

The Roman Catholic Bible totals 46 books, including additions to the Protestant 39, plus 7 others that the Roman Catholics call the Deuterocanon and Protestants call The Apochrypha. The Latin Vulgate on which this structure is based was itself arranged more than 200 ways before the present version was created.

The Greek Orthodox, Russian Orthodox, and other traditions further rearrange and subdivide the texts based on The Greek Septuagint, not the Latin version.

Sources/ Writers of the Hebrew Scriptures: When someone asks, “Who wrote the Bible?” remember that the whole Bible is a library of books, based on hundreds of years of oral tradition (story tellers), which were originally gathered and written on scrolls, some of which were pasted or sewn together with additions and in too many orders to count.

Even books such as Genesis had several different writers. The first five books of everyone’s Bible is called The Pentateuch (meaning: Five Scrolls) Most liberal scholars agree that these scrolls originated from at least four sources:

1. P - The Priestly Tradition, written after, but close to the time of the destruction of Jerusalem in 587 BCE.[1]

2. J – Named after the German spelling of Yahweh, or Jahweh, The primary Hebrew name for God, written in Judah around 950 BCE.

3. E – A Northern Israelite source from around 850 BCE, named for Elohim, another name for God.

4. D – The Deuteronomic tradition, dating from the religious reforms of King Josiah, beginning in 621 BCE. Deuteronomy means the “Second Law,” the repeating and reinterpreting of the covenant laws of Israel, such as the Ten Commandments, for a contemporary audience, meaning people who lived around 600 years before the birth of Christ.

Recognizing that there were several traditions out of which the Bible of the Hebrews was finally compiled helps us to understand:

· Why the same story is told more than once. (For instance there are two accounts of Creation in Genesis 1 and 2.)

· Why the perspectives of passages that often follow each other in our modern translations are sometimes so different or conflicting.

· How the points of view of different historians, then as now, can drastically influence our definition of the truth.

· Leader’s Notes:




Part 1.
F. Often quoted, but found no where in the Bible.
T. Proverbs 10.3
F. (The Love of Money is the root of all kinds of evil.- 1Timothy 6.10)
T. from Chapter 2 of Song of Solomon
T. Matthew 6.3
F. Benjamin Franklin
F. Abraham Lincoln
F. From Boy Scouts of America Code
T. Instructions for the Tabernacle curtains in Exodus
F. Review of Harry Potter books
T. Law from the Book of Numbers
F. Aesop (550 BCE)

[1] BCE – Before the Common or Current era; also called BC- Before Christ. (CE refers to the current or common era after Jesus’ birth; also called AD- Anno Domini, “in the Year of our Lord” in Latin.)