"I must confess to you that the majesty of the Scriptures astonishes me...."
--Jean-Jacques Rousseau
"I know the Bible is inspired because it finds me at greater depths of my being than any other book."
--Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Sunday, February 22, 2009
Saturday, February 7, 2009
Search, and see
True or false: most people who reject the Bible outright do so because of the creation account in Genesis.
Okay, I don't really know the answer to that. But I suspect it's true, at least in the Western world.
But what if, as you read the rest of Bible, you see over and over again, by a thousand little proofs in the other 1,187 chapters, that it really is true? What then?
Here's one of those little proofs.
One time, the Pharisees were arguing about Jesus:
Nicodemus [one of the Pharisees] said to them..."Our Law does not judge a man, unless it first hears from him and knows what he is doing, does it?"
They answered and said to him, "You are not also from Galilee, are you? Search, and see that no prophet arises out of Galilee." (John 7:50-52)
Very soon afterward, Jesus stood in the temple and said this about Himself, in the presence of the Pharisees:
"I am the light of the world; he who follows Me shall not walk in the darkness, but shall have the light of life." (John 8:12)
I think Jesus was reminding everyone willing to listen that the Scriptures did have something to say about Galilee. Something very important. If the Pharisees could have looked up the word "Galilee" in the Scriptures on the spot, they would have seen that the prophet Isaiah had written about Galilee, seven centuries earlier. And in the same chapter, he wrote about the people who walked in darkness, and light of the world who appears to them. We have a copy of that chapter today, dated ~125 B.C., among the Dead Sea Scrolls. Like us, anyone in Jesus' day could have seen for themselves what Isaiah chapter nine says:
....in earlier times He treated the land of Zebulun and the land of Naphtali with contempt, but later on He shall make it glorious, by the way of the sea, on the other side of Jordan, Galilee of the Gentiles. The people who walk in darkness will see a great light; those who live in a dark land, the light will shine on them....
Four verses later it continues:
For a child will be born to us, a son will be given to us; and the government will rest on His shoulders; and His name will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Eternal Father, Prince of Peace. (Isaiah 9:1-2,6)
Those words in that Dead Sea Scrolls chapter predate Christ.
Why would Isaiah, a pre-Christian era writer, choose Galilee?
Has there been any other light that has made Galilee glorious?
Okay, I don't really know the answer to that. But I suspect it's true, at least in the Western world.
But what if, as you read the rest of Bible, you see over and over again, by a thousand little proofs in the other 1,187 chapters, that it really is true? What then?
Here's one of those little proofs.
One time, the Pharisees were arguing about Jesus:
Nicodemus [one of the Pharisees] said to them..."Our Law does not judge a man, unless it first hears from him and knows what he is doing, does it?"
They answered and said to him, "You are not also from Galilee, are you? Search, and see that no prophet arises out of Galilee." (John 7:50-52)
Very soon afterward, Jesus stood in the temple and said this about Himself, in the presence of the Pharisees:
"I am the light of the world; he who follows Me shall not walk in the darkness, but shall have the light of life." (John 8:12)
I think Jesus was reminding everyone willing to listen that the Scriptures did have something to say about Galilee. Something very important. If the Pharisees could have looked up the word "Galilee" in the Scriptures on the spot, they would have seen that the prophet Isaiah had written about Galilee, seven centuries earlier. And in the same chapter, he wrote about the people who walked in darkness, and light of the world who appears to them. We have a copy of that chapter today, dated ~125 B.C., among the Dead Sea Scrolls. Like us, anyone in Jesus' day could have seen for themselves what Isaiah chapter nine says:
....in earlier times He treated the land of Zebulun and the land of Naphtali with contempt, but later on He shall make it glorious, by the way of the sea, on the other side of Jordan, Galilee of the Gentiles. The people who walk in darkness will see a great light; those who live in a dark land, the light will shine on them....
Four verses later it continues:
For a child will be born to us, a son will be given to us; and the government will rest on His shoulders; and His name will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Eternal Father, Prince of Peace. (Isaiah 9:1-2,6)
Those words in that Dead Sea Scrolls chapter predate Christ.
Why would Isaiah, a pre-Christian era writer, choose Galilee?
Has there been any other light that has made Galilee glorious?
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