Page 62 - Doctrine and History of the Preservation of the Bible revised

Chapter 9: The History of Preservation - continued

Connect…

I took three years of German in high school. But I cannot remember much of what I learned. Have you
ever tried to learn a new language? For some, it is easy. For others, it is very difficult and sometimes
takes years to master it. When God chose to write down the Bible, He very carefully selected two main
languages mainly because they are extremely accurate languages. If He wrote them with a particular
meaning, those languages were exact. Today we are going to learn about the languages God used to
write the Bible, and how over the years He has preserved the information so that the Bible we have
today is 100% reliable.

Objectives…

1. The student should be able to describe the languages God selected to write the Bible and why He
selected them.

2. The student should be able to explain the methods that believers over the years have used to ensure
that each copy of God’s Word was totally reliable.

3. Translating the Bible from one language to another is a monumental task. We will investigate the
challenges to do so.

The Lesson ...

Biblical Languages and preserving the texts

What languages was the Bible written in?

The Old Testament was written over a period of 1,100 year in one main language: Hebrew. There are
three small sections of the OT that were written in Aramaic (the language of the Babylonians). They are:
Daniel 2:4-7:28, Ezra 4-6:18, 7:12-26, Jer. 10:11. Since they are such a small part of the OT language, we
will not consider this language. The Hebrew Bible contained 24 books.

They are Hebrew Bible (24 books)

The Law The Prophets The Writings
Genesis Joshua Psalms
Exodus Judges Proverbs
Leviticus Samuel Job
Numbers Kings Song of Solomon

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