Bible Versus the Toran

1. HOSEA - Story of Hosea and his faithful wife, Gomer. Represents God's Love and faithfulness and Israel's spirtual adultery. Israel will be judged and restored. 2. JOEL - Proclaims a terrifying future using the imagery of locusts. Judgement will come but blessing will follow. 3. AMOS - He warned Israel of its coming judgement.

Israel rejects God's warning. 4. OBADIAH - A proclamation against Edom, a neighboring nation of Israel that gloated over Jerusalem's judgements. Prophecy of its utter destruction. 5. JONAH - Jonah proclaims a coming judgement upon Nineveh's people. But they repented and judgement was spared. 6. MICAH - Description of the complete moral decay in all levels of of Israel. God will judge but will forgive and restore. 7. NAHUM - Nineveh has gone into apostasy (approx. 125 years after Jonah) and will be destroyed.

8. HABAKKUK – Near the end of the Kingdom of Judah, Habakkuk asks god why he is not dealing with Judah’s sins. God says he will use the Babylonians. Habakkuk ask how God can use a nation that is even worse thatn Judah. 9. ZEPHANIAH – The theme is developed of the day of the Lord and his judgement with a coming blessing. Judah will not repent except for a remnant, which will be restored. 10. HAGGAI – The people failed to put God first, by building their houses before they finished God’s temple. Therefore, they had no prosperity. 11. ZECHARIAH – Encourages the Jews to complete the temple. Many Messianic prophecies.

12. MALACHI – God’s people are lax in their duty to God. Growing distant from God. Moral compromise. Proclamation of coming judgement.

II. In the Christian Bible their are 27 books in the New Testament. The following are a summary of them and their prophets.

A. THE GOSPELS – 4 BOOKS 1. MATTHEW – Present Jesus as the Messiah. Genealogy of Jesus. 2. MARK - Present Jesus as the servant. 1/3 of the gospel deals with the last week of his life.

3. LUKE - Presents Jesus as the son of man to seek and save the lost. Genealogy of Jesus through Mary. Largest of the gospels. 4. JOHN – Present Jesus as god in fresh, the Christ, so that you might believe. (7)

B. THE ACTS OF THE APOSTLES - 1 BOOK Historical account from Jesus ascension to travels of Paul in his missionary journeys. C. PAUL'S LETTERS - 13 BOOKS

1. TO THE ROMANS - A systematic examination of justification, sanctification, and glorification. Examines God's plan for the Jews and the Gentiles. 2. FIRST LETTER TO THE CORINTHIANS - This letter deals with fractions and corrections due to immorality, lawsuits and abuse of the Lord's supper. Also mentions idols, marriage and the resurrection.

3. SECOND LETTER TO THE CORINTHIANS - Paul's defense of his apostolic position. 4. TO THE GALATIANS - Paul refutes the errors of legalism and examines the proper place of grace in the christian's life.

5. TO THE EPHESIANS - The believer's position in Christ and information on spirtual warfare. 6. TO THE PHILIPPIANS - Paul speaks of his imprisonment and his love for the Philippians. He exhorts them to godliness and warns them of legalism. 7. TO THE COLOSSIANS - Paul focuses on the pre-eminence of Jesus in creation, redemption, and godliness.

8. FIRST LETTER TO THE THESSALONIANS - Paul's ministry to to the Thessalonians. Teachings on purity and mention of the return of Christ. 9. SECOND LETTER TO THE THESSALONIANS - Corrections on the Day of the Lord. 10. FIRST LETTER TO TIMOTHY - Instructions to Timothy on proper leadership and dealings (8)

with false teachers, the role of women, prayer and requirements of elders and deacons. 11. SECOND LETTER TO TIMOTHY - A letter of encouragement to Timothy to be strong. 12. TO TITUS - Paul left Titus in Crete to care for the churches there. Requirement for elders.

13. PHILEMON - A letter to the owner of a runaway slave. Paul appeals to Philemon to forgive ones . D. NON-PAULINE EPISTLES - 9 BOOKS 1. THE LETTER TO THE HEBREWS - A letter to the Hebrew Christians in danger of returning to Judaism. It demonstrates the superiority of Jesus over the O.T. System. Mentions the Melchizedak Priesthood. (Hebrews may be of Pauline orign. There is much debate on its authorship).

2. THE LETTER FROM JAMES - A practical exhortation of believers to live a Christian life evidencing regeneration. It urges self-examination of the evidence of the changed life. 3. THE FIRST LETTER OF PETER - Peter wrote this letter to encourage its recipients in the light of their suffering and be humble in it. Mentions baptism.

4. THE SECOND LETTER OF PETER - Deals with the person on an inward level, warnings against false teachers, and mentions the Day of the Lord. 5. THE FIRST LETTER OF JOHN - John describes true fellowship of the believers with other believers and with God. Describes God as light and love. Encourages a holy Christian walk before the Lord. Much mention of christian love. 6. THE SECOND LETTER OF JOHN - Praise for walking in Christ and a reminder to (9)

walk in God's love. 7. THE THIRD LETTER OF JOHN - John thanks Gaius for his kindness to God's people and rebukes Diotrephes. 8. THE LETTER FROM JUDE - Exposing false teachers and uses O.T. allusions to demonstate the judgement upon them. Contends for the faith.

E. THE REVELATION TO JOHN - 1 BOOK A highly symbolic vision of the future rebellion, judgement, and consummation of all things.

The Bible is the collection of the primary religious texts of Judaism and Christianity. There is no common version of the Bible, as the individual books, their contents and their order vary among denominations. Mainstream Judaism divides the Tanakh into 24 books, while a minority stream of Judaism, the Samaritans, accepts only five. The 24 texts of the Hebrew Bible aer divided into 39 books in Christian Old Testaments, and complete Christian Bibles range from the 66 books of the Protestant canon to the 81 books of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church Biblel. The Hebrew and Christian Bibles are also important to other Abrahamic religions, Including Islam and the Baha Faith, but those religions do not regard them as central religious texts.

The Jewish Bible, or Tanakh, is divided into three parts: (1) the five books of the Torah (teaching or law), comprising the origins of the Israelite nation, its laws and its covenant with the God of Israel; (2) the Nevi'm ("prophets"), containing the historic account of ancient Israel and Judah focusing on conflicts between the Israelites and other nations, and conflicts among Israelities - speciafically, struggles between believers in the "Lord God and believers in foreign gods, and the criticism of unethical and unjust behavior of Israelites elites and rulers; and (3) the Ketuvim ("writings"): poetic and philosophical works such as the Psalms and the Book Job.

The Christian Bible is divided into two parts. The first is called the Old Testament, containing the (minimum) 39 books of Hebrew Scripture, and the second portion is called the New Testament, containing a set of 27 books. The first four books of the New Testament form the Canonical gospels which recount the life of Christ and are central to the Christian faith. Christian Bibles include the books of the Hebrew Bible, but arranged in a different order: Jewish Scriptures ends with the people of Israel restored to Jerusalem and the (11)

temple, whereas the Christian arrangement ends with the book of the prophet Malachi. The oldest surviving Christian Bibles are Greek manuscripts from the 4th century; the oldest complete Jewish Bible is a Greek translation, also dating to the 4th century. The oldest complete manuscripts of the Hebrew Bible (the Masoretic text) date from the Middle Ages.

About forty different men from various backgrounds wrote the Bible. During the three centuries following the establishment of Christianity in the 1st century, Church Fathers compiled Gospel accounts and letters of apostles into a Christian Bible which became known as the New Testament. The Old and New Testament together are commonly referred to as the Holy Bible. Many Christians consider the text of the Bible to be divinely inspired, and cite passages in the Bible itself as support for this belief.

The canonical composition of the Old Testament is under dispute between Christian groups: Protestants hold only the books of the Hebrew Bible to be canonical; Roman Catholics and Eastern Orthodox additionally consider the deuterocanonical books, a group of Jewish books to be canonical. The New Testament is composed of the Gospels (good news), the Acts of the Apostles, the Epistles (letters), and the Book of Revelation.

The Bible is the best selling book in history with approximate sales estimates ranging from 2.5 billion to 6 billion. The names for the Bible are as follows: A. English word Bible (used by the Christian/Hebrew/Judaism B. Latin word biblia sacra "holy books" or biblia a feminine singular noun in medieval Latin, and so the word was loaned as a singular noun into the vernaculars of Western Europe. (Medieval Latin and Late Latin)

C. Greek word BiB^ia "the books". The word BiB^iov itself had the literal meaning

I will discuss the Christian Bible, that Martin Luther King Jr. followed and preached throughout his life in comparsion to Malcom X who followed the teachings of the Quran. The Christian Bible consists of the Hebrew scriptures of Judaism, which are known as the Old Testament; and later writings recording the lives and teachings of Jesus and his followers, known as the New Testament. Testament is a translation of the Greek, also often translated covenant. It is a legal term denoting a formal and legally binding declaration of benefits to be given by one party to another. Here it does not connote mutuality; rather, it is a unilateral covenant offered by God to individuals.

Groups within Christianity include differing books as part of one or both of these "Testaments" of their sacred writings, most prominent among which are the Biblical apocrypha or deuterocanonical books. In Judaism, the term Christian Bible is commonly used to identify only those books like the New Testament which have been added by Christians to the Masoretic Text, and excludes any reference to an Old Testament.

The Old Testament consists of a collection of writings believed to have been composed at various times from the twelfth to the 2nd century BC. The books were written in classical Hebrew, except for brief portions (Ezra 4:8 nd 7:12-26, Jeremiah 10:11, Daniel 2:47:28) which are in the Aramaic language, a sister language which became the lingua franca of the Semitic world.

Much of the material, including many genealogies, poems and narratives, is thought to have been handled down by word of mouth for many generations. Very few manuscripts are said to have survived the destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70. The Old Testament is accepted by Christians as scripture. Broadly speaking, it contains the same material as the Hebrew Bible.

However, the order of the books is not entirely the same as that found in Hebrew manuscripts and in the ancient versions and varies from Judaism in interpretation and emphasis (see for example Isaish 7:14). Christian denominations disagree about the incorporation of a small number of books into their canons (13)

of the Old Testament. A few groups consider particular translations to be divinely inspired, notably the Greek Septuagint, the Aramaic Peshitta, and the English King James Version.

The Septuagint (Greek translation, from Alexandia in Egypt under the Ptolemies) was generally abandoned in favour of the Masoretic text as the basis for translations of the Old Testament into Western languages from St. Jerome's Bible (the Vulagate) to the present day.

In Eastern Christianity, translations based on the Septuagint still prevail. Some modern Western translations make use of the Septuagint to clarify passages in the Masoretic text, where the Septuagint may preserve a variant reading of the Hebrew text. They also sometimes adopt variants that appear in other texts e.g. those discovered among the Dead Sea Scrolls.

A number of books which are part of the Peshitta or Greek Septuagint but are not found in the Hebrew (Rabbinic) Bible are often referred to as deuterocanonical books by Roman Catholics referring to a later secondary (i.e. deutero) canon. Most Protestants term these books as apocrypha. Evangelicals and those of the Modern Protestant traditions do not accept the deuterocanonical books as canonical, although Protestant Bibles included them in Apocrypha sections until around the 1920s. However, the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Churches include these books as part of their Old Testament. The Roman Catholic Church recognizes:

(1). Tobit (2). Judith (3). 1 Maccabees (4). 2 Maccabees (14)

(5). Wisdom (6). Sirach (or Ecclesiasticus) (7). Baruch (8). The Letter of Jeremiah (Baruch Chapter 6) (9). Greek Additions to Esther (10). The Prayer of Azariah and Song of the Three Holy Children (11). Susanna (12). Bel and the Dragon

Martin Luther King Jr. had great support from the Roman Catholic Church during the civil rights moverment, as well support from the Kennedy Administration. The Anglican Churches uses some of the Apocryphal books liturgically. Therefore, editions of the Bible intended for use in the Anglican Church include the Deuterocanonical books accepted by the Catholic Church, plus 1 Esdras, 2 Esdras and the Prayer of Manasseh, which were in the Vulagate appendix.