EMMI-FAICL SEMINARY

The Law

Eric Michel Ministries International

The Law

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bible

The New Testament is the name given to the second and final portion of the Christian Bible. Jesus is its central figure.

The term "New Testament" came into use in the second century during a controversy among Christians over whether or not the Hebrew Bible should be included with the Christian writings as sacred scripture. The New Testament presupposes the inspiration of the Old Testament. Some other works which were widely read by early churches were excluded from the New Testament and relegated to the collections known as the Apostolic Fathers (generally considered orthodox) and the New Testament Apocrypha (including both orthodox and heretical works). Most Christians consider the New Testament to be an

infallible source of doctrine, while others go even further to affirm that it is also inerrant, or completely correct in historical and factual details as well as theologically. In recent times, however, the authority of the New Testament books has been challenged. The school of historical criticism has exposed various apparent contradictions within the texts, as well as questions of authorship and dating.

The New Testament is a collection of 27 books of 4 different genres of Christian literature (Gospels, one account of the Acts of the Apostles, Epistles and an Apocalypse). These books can be grouped into:

The Gospels

Synoptic Gospels

Gospel According to Matthew

Gospel According to Mark

Gospel According to Luke

Gospel According to John

Narrative literature, account and history of the Apostolic age

Acts of the Apostles

Pauline Epistles

Epistle to the Romans

First Epistle to the Corinthians

Second Epistle to the Corinthians

Epistle to the Galatians

Epistle to the Ephesians

Epistle to the Philippians

Epistle to the Colossians

First Epistle to the Thessalonians

Second Epistle to the Thessalonians

Pastoral epistles

First Epistle to Timothy

Second Epistle to Timothy

Epistle to Titus

Epistle to Philemon

Epistle to the Hebrews

General epistles, also called catholic epistles

Epistle of James

First Epistle of Peter

Second Epistle of Peter

First Epistle of John

Second Epistle of John

Third Epistle of John

Epistle of Jude

Apocalyptic literature, also called Prophetical

Revelation, or the Apocalypse

The New Testament books are ordered differently in the Catholic/Orthodox/Protestant tradition, the Slavonic tradition, the Syriac tradition and the Ethiopian tradition.

Original language

See also: Language of the New Testament

The mainstream consensus is that the New Testament was written in a form of Koine Greek, which was the common language of the Eastern Mediterranean from the Conquests of Alexander the Great (335–323 BCE) until the evolution of Byzantine Greek (c. 600).

A Christian Bible is a set of books that a Christian denomination regards as divinely inspired and thus constituting scripture. Although the Early Church primarily used the Septuagint or the Targums among Aramaic speakers, the apostles did not leave a defined set of new scriptures; instead the canon of the New Testament developed over time. Groups within Christianity include differing books as part of their sacred writings, most prominent among which are the biblical apocrypha or deuterocanonical books.

Significant versions of the English Christian Bible include

the Douay-Rheims Bible,
the Authorized King James Version,
the English Revised Version,
the American Standard Version,
the Revised Standard Version,
the New American Standard Version,
the New King James Version,
the New International Version, and
the English Standard Version.

Old Testament

The books which make up the Christian Old Testament differ between the Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant churches, with the Protestant movement accepting only those books contained in the Hebrew Bible, while Catholics and Orthodox have wider canons. A few groups consider particular translations to be divinely inspired, notably the Greek Septuagint and the Aramaic Peshitta

The Bible from Koine Greek tà biblía, "the books" is a collection of sacred texts or scriptures that Jews and Christians consider to be a product of divine inspiration and a record of the relationship between God and humans.

Many different authors contributed to the Bible. And what is regarded as canonical text differs depending on traditions and groups; a number of Bible canons have evolved, with overlapping and diverging contents. The Christian Old Testament overlaps with the Hebrew Bible and the Greek Septuagint; the Hebrew Bible is known in Judaism as the Tanakh. The New Testament is a collection of writings by early Christians, believed to be mostly Jewish disciples of Christ, written in first-century Koine Greek. These early Christian Greek writings consist of narratives, letters, and apocalyptic writings. Among Christian denominations, there is some disagreement about the contents of the canon, primarily the Apocrypha, a list of works that are regarded with varying levels of respect.

Attitudes towards the Bible also differ amongst Christian groups. Roman Catholics, Anglicans and Eastern Orthodox Christians stress the harmony and importance of the Bible and sacred tradition, while Protestant churches focus on the idea of sola Scriptura, or scripture alone. This concept arose during the Protestant Reformation, and many denominations today support the use of the Bible as the only source of Christian teaching.

The Hebrew names of the books are derived from the first words in the respective texts. The Torah consists of the following five books:

Genesis,
Exodus,
Leviticus,
Numbers,
Deuteronomy,

The first eleven chapters of Genesis provide accounts of the creation (or ordering) of the world and the history of God's early relationship with humanity. The remaining thirty-nine chapters of Genesis provide an account of God's covenant with the Biblical patriarchs Abraham, Isaac and Jacob (also called Israel) and Jacob's children, the "Children of Israel", especially Joseph. It tells of how God commanded Abraham to leave his family and home in the city of Ur, eventually to settle in the land of Canaan, and how the Children of Israel later moved to Egypt. The remaining four books of the Torah tell the story of Moses, who lived hundreds of years after the patriarchs. He leads the Children of Israel from slavery in Ancient Egypt to the renewal of their covenant with God at Mount Sinai and their wanderings in the desert until a new generation was ready to enter the land of Canaan. The Torah ends

with the death of Moses.

The Torah contains the commandments of God, revealed at Mount Sinai (although there is some debate among traditional scholars as to whether these were all written down at one time, or over a period of time during the 40 years of the wanderings in the desert, while several modern Jewish movements reject the idea of a literal revelation, and critical scholars believe that many of these laws developed later in Jewish history). These commandments provide the basis for Jewish religious law. Tradition states that there are 613 commandments.

Nevi'im

Nevi'im (Hebrew "Prophets") is the second main division of the Tanakh, between the Torah and Ketuvim. It contains two sub-groups, the Former Prophets (Nevi'im Rishonim, the narrative books of Joshua, Judges, Samuel and Kings) and the Latter Prophets, the books of Isaiah, Jeremiah and Ezekiel and the Twelve Minor Prophets.

The Nevi'im tells the story of the rise of the Hebrew monarchy and its division into two kingdoms, ancient Israel and Judah, focusing on conflicts between the Israelites and other nations, and conflicts among Israelites, specifically, struggles between believers in "the LORD God" and believers in foreign gods, and the criticism of unethical and unjust behaviour of Israelite elites and rulers; in which prophets played a crucial and leading role. It ends with the conquest of the Kingdom of Israel by the Assyrians followed by the conquest of the Kingdom of Judah by the Babylonians and the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem.

Former Prophets

The Former Prophets are the books Joshua, Judges, Samuel and Kings. They contain narratives that begin immediately after the death of Moses with the divine appointment of Joshua as his successor, who then leads the people of Israel into the Promised Land, and end with the release from imprisonment of the last king of Judah. Treating Samuel and Kings as single books, they cover:

Joshua's conquest of the land of Canaan (in the Book of Joshua), the struggle of the people to possess the land (in the Book of Judges), the people's request to God to give them a king so that they can occupy the land in the face of their enemies (in the Books of Samuel) the possession of the land under the divinely appointed kings of the House of David, ending in conquest and foreign exile (Books of Kings)

Latter Prophets

The Latter Prophets are divided into two groups, the "major" prophets, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Twelve Minor Prophets, collected into a single book.

The collection is broken up to form twelve individual books in the Christian Old Testament, one for each of the prophets:

Hosea,
Joel,
Amos,
Obadiah,
Jonah,
Micah,
Nahum,
Habakkuk,
Zephaniah,
Haggai,
Zechariah,
Malachi,

Ketuvim

Ketuvim or Kəṯûḇîm in Biblical Hebrew: "writings", is the third and final section of the Tanakh. The Ketuvim are believed to have been written under the Holy Spirit) but with one level less authority than that of prophecy.

The poetic books

The Hebrew text of Psalm 1:1-2

In Masoretic manuscripts, Psalms, Proverbs and Job are presented in a special two-column form emphasizing the parallel stichs in the verses, which are a function of their poetry. Collectively, these three books are known as Sifrei Emet which is the Hebrew for "truth".

These three books are also the only ones in Tanakh with a special system of cantillation notes that are designed to emphasize parallel stitches within verses. However, the beginning and end of the book of Job are in the normal prose system.

The five scrolls

The five relatively short books of Song of Songs, the Book of Ruth, the Book of Lamentations, Ecclesiastes and the Book of Esther are collectively known as the Hamesh Megillot (Five Megillot). These are the latest books collected and designated as "authoritative" in the Jewish canon even though they were not complete until the 2nd century CE.

Other books

Besides the three poetic books and the five scrolls, the remaining books in Ketuvim are Daniel, Ezra–Nehemiah and Chronicles. Although there is no formal grouping for these books in the Jewish tradition, they nevertheless share a number of distinguishing characteristics:

Their narratives all openly describe relatively late events (i.e., the Babylonian captivity and the subsequent restoration of Zion). The Talmudic tradition ascribes late authorship to all of them. Two of them (Daniel and Ezra) are the only books in the Tanakh with significant portions in Aramaic. Order of the books The following list presents the books of Ketuvim in the order they appear in most printed editions. It also divides them into three subgroups based on the distinctiveness of Sifrei Emet and Hamesh Megillot.

The Three Poetic Books