Exploring the Bible

1. Exploring the Bible Bible Difficulties

2. 1st Principle;Summery Accounts & Ellipsis When you compare Peter's famous confession of faith in the Gospels when Jesus asked his disciples "who do you say that I am” he responded; • Matthew 16:16 "you are the Christ, the Son of the living God." • Mark 8:29 "you are the Christ." • Luke 9:20 "The Christ of God.“ • Each of these accounts record for uswhatPeter said, but not necessarily everythingthat he said.

3. 1st Principle;Summery Accounts & Ellipsis How many angels were at the tomb? Matthew 28:2-62 There was a violent earthquake, for an angel of the Lord came down from heaven and, going to the tomb, rolled back the stone and sat on it. 3 His appearance was like lightning, and his clothes were white as snow. 4 The guards were so afraid of him that they shook and became like dead men. 5 The angel said to the women, “Do not be afraid, for I know that you are looking for Jesus, who was crucified. 6 He is not here; he has risen, just as he said. Come and see the place where he lay. John 20:11-13 11Now Mary stood outside the tomb crying. As she wept, she bent over to look into the tomb 12 and saw two angels in white, seated where Jesus’ body had been, one at the head and the other at the foot. 13 They asked her, “Woman, why are you crying?” “They have taken my Lord away,” she said, “and I don’t know where they have put him.”

4. 1st Principle;Summery Accounts & Ellipsis Did Mary Magdalene go to the tomb during the night or in the morning? Mark 16:1-31 When the Sabbath was over, Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome bought spices so that they might go to anoint Jesus’ body. 2 Very early on the first day of the week, just after sunrise, they were on their way to the tomb 3 and they asked each other, “Who will roll the stone away from the entrance of the tomb?” John 20:1-21 Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene went to the tomb and saw that the stone had been removed from the entrance. 2So she came running to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one Jesus loved, and said, “They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we don’t know where they have put him!”

5. 2nd Principle; Chronology and Location of Events (context)Where did Jesus first meet Andrew and Simon Peter? John 1:35-42 35 Again the next day John was standing with two of his disciples, 36and he looked at Jesus as He walked, and said, "Behold, the Lamb of God!" 39 He said to them, "Come, and you will see." So they came and saw where He was staying; and they stayed with Him that day, for it was about the tenth hour. 40 One of the two who heard John speak and followed Him, was Andrew, Simon Peter's brother. 41He found first his own brother Simon and said to him, "We have found the Messiah" (which translated means Christ). 42 He brought him to Jesus. Jesus looked at him and said, "You are Simon the son of John; you shall be called Cephas" (which is translated Peter). Matthew 4:18-20 18 Now as Jesus was walking by the Sea of Galilee, He saw two brothers, Simon who was called Peter, and Andrew his brother, casting a net into the sea; for they were fishermen. 19 And He said to them, "Follow Me, and I will make you fishers of men.“ 20 Immediately they left their nets and followed Him.

6. 2nd Principle; Chronology and Location of Events (context) Where was the Sermon on the Mount given? Matthew 5:1-21 Now when Jesus saw the crowds, he went up on a mountainside and sat down. His disciples came to him, 2 and he began to teach them. Luke 6:17 He went down with them and stood on a level place. A large crowd of his disciples was there and a great number of people from all over Judea, from Jerusalem, and from the coastal region around Tyre and Sidon,

7. 2nd Principle; Chronology and Location of Events (context) In Mark 9:40 Jesus said “for whoever is not against us is for us.” But in Matthew 12:30 it says “Whoever is not with me is against me, and whoever does not gather with me scatters.” • Mark 9 the disciples were complaining that someone outside of their group was casting out demons. • Matthew 12 the Pharisees had concluded that Jesus was casting out demons by the power of Satan.

8. 2nd Principle; Chronology and Location of Events (context) Exact Quotes Are Not Always Necessary to Communicate the Idea. • Zachariah 12:10 ”they will look on mewhom they have pierced” • John 19:37 it says “they will look on him whom they pierced”

9. 3rd Principle; To approximate something is not necessarily error. 1Kings 7:23 He made a sea of cast metal, circular in shape, measuring ten cubits from rim to rim and five cubits high. It took a line of thirty cubits to measure around it. • But PI is 3.14159265 which would have made this basin nearly 31 ½ cubits in circumference. • We round off figures all the time when an exact count is not critical to the point we're trying to make. • Also, it may not have been a perfectly round, right cylinder.

10. 3rd Principle; To approximate something is not necessarily error. 1 Corinthians 10:8 We should not commit sexual immorality, as some of them did—and in one day twenty three thousand of them died. Numbers 25:9 but those who died in the plague numbered 24,000. In both cases the numbers have been rounded off. 23,000 died in one day, and the other 1,000 may have died several days later.

11. 4th Principle; proper understanding of the original language • Acts 9:7 (NKJV) And the men who journeyed with him stood speechless, hearing a voice but seeing no one. • Acts 22:9 (NKJV) “And those who were with me indeed saw the light and were afraid, but they did not hear the voice of Him who spoke to me. • In the first instance the verb (genitive case) means a sound that reaches the ear. In the second (accusative case) it means understanding the words spoken.

12. 5th Principle; Understanding the writer’s intent. Joshua 10:12-14 12 On the day the LORD gave the Amorites over to Israel, Joshua said to the LORD in the presence of Israel: “Sun, stand still over Gibeon, and you, moon, over the Valley of Aijalon.” 13 So the sun stood still, and the moon stopped, till the nation avenged itself on its enemies, as it is written in the Book of Jashar. The sun stopped in the middle of the sky and delayed going down about a full day. 14 There has never been a day like it before or since, a day when the LORD listened to a human being. Surely the LORD was fighting for Israel! This is the language of appearance known as “phenomenological” language, when an event is described from the human perspective.

13. 6th Principle;All of the archaeological evidence is not in • Daniel 1:1 - It says that Nebuchadnezzar invaded Judah in the third year of the reign of Jehoiakim. • In Jeremiah 25:1 it says that it was in the fourth year of Jehoiakim. • The book of Daniel was written by Daniel while he was in captivity in Babylon. • The prophet Jeremiah wrote his book in Jerusalem to the Jews who lived there.

14. 6th Principle;All of the archaeological evidence is not in • Daniel 5 describes Belshazzar as the last king of Babylon. • The Greek historian Herodotus writing in 450 B.C. records that Nabonidus was the king of Babylon when it was conquered by the Medes and the Persians and he makes no mention of Belshazzar. • Archaeological excavations have recently confirmed that Nabonidus was in semi-retirement in the city of Tema in Northern Arabia when Babylon was conquered, and his son Belshazzar, was on the throne in Babylon as the co-regent of the kingdom.