Proverbs 4:7 says, “The beginning of wisdom is this: Get wisdom, and whatever you get, get insight.” I love that. Wisdom doesn’t start with having all the answers, it starts with honestly pursuing them.
That’s exactly the idea behind a free Bible literacy assessment I just launched, and I want to tell you why I think it matters. Here’s a question worth pondering: do you actually know the Bible’s big story?
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Have you ever taken the time to locate an Old Testament passage which was quoted by a New Testament author? If so, you probably noticed that, frequently, the wording is not exactly the same. What is going on? Why did the New Testament authors not quite get the quote right? It’s not because they were being sloppy, nor was it because they quoted from memory and got it a little wrong. It was because they were quoting from the Septuagint.
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Have you ever noticed that often the letters in the word “LORD” are all capitalized? Other times the Bible only capitalizes the first letter. However, both “the LORD” and “the Lord” refer to God. Why is there a difference?
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If you’ve spent much time comparing passages from newer translations of the Bible (NIV, NASB, NKJV, etc) to the King James Version, you’ve noticed that some verses, or portions of verses, have been moved from the main text into a footnote. The footnotes usually say that the verse does not appear in the earliest and most reliable manuscripts.
Why are these verses questioned by scholars and Bible translators? Are they trying to discard portions of the Bible? Are they attempting to achieve some dark objective which results in casting doubt upon the inspiration of the Bible? The quick answer is that nothing sinister is going on. Rather than “removing” verses, the translators have valid reasons to believe that some verses should have never been in the Bible to begin with.
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The Bible isn’t a single book. Rather, it is a collection of 66 individual books and letters that have been compiled into one volume. These books and letters were written by approximately 40 different people spanning a time period of over 1500 years.
The books which are regarded as having divine authority and which comprise the Bible are referred to by scholars as “canonical” writings. The English word “canon” is derived from a Greek word which referred to a standard or rule. Thus, a writing is considered canon if it meets a certain standard.
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