Bible Study Resources*
"For there is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus" Timothy 2:5
The following resources will help further your contact with, and knowledge of, God. For those in recovery, we have included some scriptures to read- Note: The following: James, I Corinthians 13, and Matthew 5-7 were considered essential by the A.A. Pioneers.
If you are interested in following the pioneers, (who had an amazing documented 75%-93% success rate), and the methods they used, the actions they took, what they read then click the following link below. You can go to this page each day and receive your daily page, which will be personalized with your name throughout the content, and work the program as they did when they had great success, as compared to the 5%, (Undocumented), rates of success today- Although the current rates of today are wholly undocumented, all you need to do is stick around the 12-Step program meetings and sit back and watch for yourself, and you will see that the program is not working for most.
Go to: http://www.nicd.us/personalizedspiritualmessage.html
If you have not yet asked our heavenly Father to be saved, born again, or reborn, ("We were reborn" A.A. Big Book Page 63), please read the following Bible references below, and then answer yes to each scripture, as to whether you believe what is written. You may also want to say the prayer listed at the above link- it will have your name written within the prayer for you- this will make it very personal to you. Of note is, the fact that these scriptures were translated into English from Old Hebrew, Modern Hebrew, Syriac, Greek, Aramaic, Vulgate (Latin), and that the translations were similar, (with minor differences which did not affect the substance). If you answer yes, then you are guaranteed a place in the kingdom. If you answer yes or no, the following resources will help you to grow in your walk with our heavenly Father, or to help you to become a believer. The following resources contain much Biblical fact, (We do not state theology, or this is what it means, and definitely not, "I think this is what it means to me," we deal in the "Word", "Truth", "Fact", as the Dead Sea Scrolls, Papyrus, Manuscripts state). We deal with the translations of Old Hebrew, Modern Hebrew, Syriac, Greek, Aramaic, Vulgate, and finally English directly from the scrolls.
Answer yes or no to the following as to whether or not you believe them to be true. Remember, truth is God's Word, and God is truth, and truth is love, and love is God.
Genesis 1:1
Romans 10:9,10
John 3:16
1 Corinthians 15:3-5
Suggested reading, (In Order):
Luke 24:46 / I Timothy 2:5 / II Corinthians 5:17,18 / Matthew 17:21 / Ezekiel 18:4,5 / Ephesians 1-6 / Matthew 5-7 / I Corinthians 13 / James All / Psalm 40:1-4 / II Corinthians 5:20 / Ephesians 6:6,8,10,11,16,19 / Genesis 3:21 / James 1:5 / James 1:13 / Matthew 6:7 / Matthew 6:1-6 / Genesis 6:6 / I Corinthians 6:10 / Proverbs 23:21 / James 2:14,17,20 / Psalm 103:12 / Luke 23:34 / II Corinthians 2:10 / Proverbs 23:30-33 / I Peter 5:8 / Luke 23:34 / Psalm 5:1 / Psalm 4:1 / Colossians 3:1,2 / Acts 15:20 / Proverbs 6:24,25 / James 1:14,15 / I John 2:16 / I Corinthians 6:13 / I Thessalonians 3:1,2. This should help get you started on what you will need to pray about- ask our heavenly Father what His will is concerning your readings, and also ask Him how to do it. Do not try to do these things using the 5 senses, but rather, by using God's power- if you don't know how to do something, ask Him. If you can't live by what you have read, ask Him to teach you how to live that way.
Photograph of The Dead Sea Scrolls (Psalms) Copied ca. 30 - 50 C.E. Height 18.5 cm (7 1/4 in.), length 86 cm (33 3/4 in.) Courtesy of the Israel Antiquities Authority. Please Note: You will see designations of C.E. and B.C.E. which scientists use to designate "Current Era" and "Before Current Era", which are the same as B.C. and A.D. Also, you will see the term Septuagint, which is Latin for 70 or LXX- when the Bible was translated, (The Hebrew Old Testament into Greek), just before Christ, it was done so by 70 scholars; hence, the name applies. There are many more such terms which you will become familiar with as you research further, which is why we have included a Bible Concordance Online and a Bible Dictionary Online- see the first 2 links below. Also of importance, is the 3rd and 4th links below.
Great resources for you are at:
http://www.fellowshipwithgod.com/
Fellowship With God Director Rev. Ken Burns:
http://www.dickb.com/index.shtml
http://whyagain.com/KhaburisKhaboris/index.php
http://whyagain.com/khaburishistory.htm
http://209.157.64.200/focus/f-news/1228872/posts
http://crossandflame.com/forum/phpBBToGo/thread.php?topic_id=2282
http://www.crystalinks.com/sacred_texts.html
http://www.crystalinks.com/scrolls.html
http://www.eliyah.com/lexicon.html
http://biblical-studies.ca/dss/dss_guide.html#DSSConcordance
http://home.flash.net/~hoselton/deadsea/deadsea.htm#preamb
http://www.crystalinks.com/emerald.html
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/search-handle-form/103-5982479-2031834
http://www.eliyah.com/strongs.htm
http://www.crystalinks.com/jerusalem.html
http://www.ibiblio.org/expo/deadsea.scrolls.exhibit/overview.html
http://qumranica.blogspot.com/
http://www.st-andrews.ac.uk/~www_sd/qumran.html
http://www.st-andrews.ac.uk/~www_sd/dssintro01.html
http://www.antiquities.org.il/article_Item_eng.asp?sec_id=36&subj_id=69
http://www.crystalinks.com/dss.html
http://www.crystalinks.com/directory2.html
http://biblical-studies.ca/dss/dss_guide.html#DSSConcordance
http://www.ibiblio.org/expo/deadsea.scrolls.exhibit/Community/communit.html
http://www.ibiblio.org/expo/deadsea.scrolls.exhibit/Library/library.html#scrolls
The Scriptures on astrology, fortune tellers, etc.
Photographs courtesy of GREATSITE.COM
1535 Coverdale Bible- This is the first edition, first printing of the very first complete Bible printed in English. (3 Photographs are via http://www.greatsite.com/index.html). Please visit their site. GREATSITE.COM is the online showroom of The Bible Museum, Inc. Since 1987, we have been the world’s largest dealer of rare & antique Bibles, ancient Biblical manuscripts, and antiquarian theology books.
1410 Bible estimated at over $2.75 million dollars
Print on an old Bible.
Massorah
The textual tradition of Hebrew Bible, an official registration of its words, consonants, vowels and accents. It is doubtful whether the word should be pointed from the New Hebrew verb "to hand down," or from the verb meaning "to bind." The former pointing is seen in Ezech. xx, 37; the latter is due to the fact that in the Mishna, the word's primary meaning is "tradition". Our chief witness to Massorah is the actual text of manuscripts of the Hebrew Bible. Other witnesses are several collections of Massorah and the numerous marginal notes scattered over Hebrew manuscripts. The upper and lower margins and the end of the manuscript contain the Greater Massorah, such as lists of words; the side margins contain the lesser Massorah such as variants. The best collection of Massorah is that of Ginsburg, "The Massorah compiled from manuscripts alphabetically and lexically arranged" (3 vols. London, 1880-85).
This article will treat: (I) the history and (II) the critical value of Massorah. For the number and worth of Massoretic manuscripts, see MANUSCRIPTS OF THE BIBLE.
I. HISTORY OF MASSORAH
Their sacred books were to the Jews an inspired code and record, a God-intended means to conserve the political and religious unity; and fidelity of the nation. It was imperative upon them to keep those books intact. So far back as the first century B.C., copyists and revisers were trained and employed to fix the Hebrew text. All had one purpose, -- to copy, i.e. according to the face-value of the Massorah. To reproduce their exemplar perfectly, to hand down the Massorah -- only this and nothing more was purposed by the official copyist of the Hebrew Bible. Everything new was shunned. There is evidence that false pronunciations were fixed by Massorah centuries before the invention of points such as are seen in our present Massoretic text. At times such early translations as those of Aquila, Theodotion, the Septuagint and the Peshitto give evidence of precisely the same erroneous pronunciation as is found at the pointed Hebrew text of to-day.
(1) The Consonantal Text
Hebrew had no vowels in its alphabet. Vowel sounds were for the most part handed down by tradition. Certain consonants were used to express some long vowels, these consonants were called Matres lectionis, because they determined the pronunciation. The efforts of copyists would seem to have become more and more minute and detailed in the perpetuation of the consonantal text. These copyists (grammateis) were at first called Sopherim (from the Hebrew word meaning "to count"), because, as the Talmud says, "they counted all the letters in the Torah" (Kiddushin, 30a). It was not till later on that the name Massoretes, was given to the preservers of Massorah. In the Talmudic period (c. A.D.300-500), the rules for perpetuating Massorah were extremely detailed. Only skins of clean animals must be used for parchment rolls and fastenings thereof. Each column must be of equal length, not more than sixty nor less than forty-eight lines. Each line must contain thirty letters, written with black ink of a prescribed make-up and in the square letters which were the ancestors of our present Hebrew text letters. The copyist must have before him an authentic copy of the text; and must not write from memory a single letter, not even a yod -- every letter must be copied from the exemplar, letter for letter. The interval between consonants should be the breadth of a hair, between words, the breadth of narrow consonant; between sections, the breadth of nine consonants; between books, the breadth of three lines.
Such numerous and minute rules, though scrupulously observed, were not enough to satisfy the zeal to perpetuate the consonantal text fixed and unchanged. Letters were omitted which had surreptitiously crept in, variants and conjectural readings were indicated inside-margins -- words, "read but not written" (Qere), "written but not read" (Kethibh), "read one way but written another". These marginal critical notes went on increasing with time. Still more was done to fix the consonantal text. The words and letters of each book and of every section of the twenty-four books of the Hebrew Bible were counted. The middle words and middle letters of books and sections were noted. In the Talmud, we see how one rabbi was wont to pester the other with such trivial textual questions as the juxtaposition of certain letters in this or that section, the half-section in which this consonant or that was, etc. The rabbis counted the number of times certain words and phrases occurred in the several books and in the whole Bible; and searched for mystic meanings in that number of times. On the top and bottom margins of manuscripts, they grouped various peculiarities of the text and drew up alphabetical lists of words which occurred equally often -- for instance, of those which appeared once with and once without waw. In Cod. Babylon. Petropolitanus (A.D. 916), we have many critical marginal notes of such and of other peculiarities, v.g. a list of fourteen words written with final He which are to be read with Waw, and of eight words written with final Waw, which are to be read with He. Such were some of the painstaking means employed to preserve the consonantal text of the Massorah.
(2) The Points
Rolls that were destined for use in the synagogue were always unpointed. Rolls that were for other use came in time to receive vowel-points and accents; these latter indicated the interrelation of words and modulation of the voice in public cantillation. One scribe wrote the consonantal text; another put in vowel-points and accents of Massorah. The history of vocalization of the text is utterly unknown to us. It has been suggested that dogmatic interpretation clearly led to certain punctuations; but it is likelier that the pronunciation was part of Massorah long before the invention of punctuation. The very origin of this invention is doubtful. Bleek assigns it to the eighth century (cf. "Introd. to O.T." I, 109, London, 1894). Points were certainly unused in St. Jerome's time; he had no knowledge whatsoever of them. The punctuation of the traditional text was just as certainly complete in the ninth century; for R. Saadia Gaon (d. 942), of Fayum in Egypt, wrote treatises thereon. The work of punctuating must have gone on for years and been done by a large number of scholars who labored conjointly and authoritatively. Strack (see "Text of O.T.", in Hastings, "Dict. of Bib.") says it is practically certain that the points came into Massorah by Syriac influence. Syrians strove, by such signs, to perpetuate the correct vocalization and intonation of their Sacred text. Their efforts gave an impulse to Jewish zeal for the traditional vocalization of the Hebrew Bible. Bleek ("Introd. to 0.T.", I, 110, London, 1894) and others are equally certain that Hebrew scholars received their impulse to punctuation from the Moslem method of preserving the Arabic vocalization of the Koran. That Hebrew scholars were influenced by either Syriac or Arabic punctuation is undoubted. Both forms and names of the Massoretic points indicate either Syriac or Arabic origin. What surprises us is the absence of any vestige of opposition to this introduction into Massorah of points that were most decidedly not Jewish. The Karaite Jews surprise us still more, since, during a very brief period, they transliterated the Hebrew text in Arabic characters.
At least two systems of punctuation are Massoretic: the Western and the Eastern. The Western is called Tiberian, after the far famed school of Massorah at Tiberias. It prevailed over the Eastern system and is followed in most manuscripts as well as in all printed editions of the Massoretic text. By rather complicated and ingenious combinations of dots and dashes, placed either above or below the consonants, the Massoretes accurately represented ten vowel sounds (long and short a, e, i, o, u) together with four half-vowels or Shewas. These latter corresponded to the very much obscured English sounds of e, a, and o. The Tiberian Massoretes also introduced a great many accents to indicate the tone-syllable of a word, the logical correlation of words and the voice modulation in public reading. The Eastern or Babylonian system of punctuation shows dependence on the Western and is found in a few manuscripts -- chiefest of which is Cod. Babylon. Petropolitanus (A.D. 916). It was the punctuation of Yemen till the eighteenth century. The vowel signs are all above the consonants and are formed from the Matres lectionis. Disjunctive accents of this supralinear punctuation have signs like the first letter of their name; zaqeph; tarha. A third system of punctuation has been found in two fragments of the Bible lately brought to light in Egypt and now in the Bodleian Library (cf. Kahle in "Zeitschrift fur die Alttestam. Wissensehaft", 1901; Friedlander, "A third system of symbols for the Hebrew vowels and accents" in "Jewish Quarterly Review", 1895). The invention of points greatly increased the work of scribes; they now set themselves to list words with a view to perpetuating not only the consonants but the vowels Cod Babyl. Petropolitanus (A.D. 916), for instance, lists eighteen words beginning with Lamed and either Shewa or Hireq followed by Shewa; eighteen words beginning with Lamed and Pathah; together with an alphabetical list of words, which occur only once.
II. CRITICAL VALUE OF MASSORAH
During the seventeenth century, many Protestant theologians, such as the Buxtorfs, defended the Massoretic text as infallible; and considered that Esdras together with the men of the Great Synagogue had, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, not only determined the Hebrew canon but fixed forever the text of the Hebrew Bible, its vowel points and accents, its division into verses and paragraphs and books. Modern text critics value Massorah, just as the Itala and Peshitto, only as one witness to a text of the second century. The pointed Massoretic text is witness to a text which is not certainly earlier than the eighth century. The consonantal text is a far better witness; unfortunately the tradition of this text was almost absolutely uniform. There were different schools of Massoretes, but their differences have left us very few variants of the consonantal text (see MANUSCRIPTS OF THE BIBLE). The Massoretes were slaves to Massorah and handed down one and one only text. Even textual peculiarities clearly due to error or accident, were perpetuated by rabbis who puzzled their brains to ferret out mystical interpretations of these peculiarities. Broken and inverted letters, consonants that were too small or too large, dots that were out of place -- all such vagaries were slavishly handed down as if God-intended and full of Divine meaning.
Additional Resources
The Foundation for Biblical Archaeology http://www.tfba.org/index.php
Bible
Dictionary
http://www.bible.gen.nz/dictionary.htm
Bibleworks- Premier Original Languages Bible Software Program
http://www.bibleworks.com
Biblical Archaeologist on CD-ROM
http://www.biblicalarchaeologist.com
Dead Sea Scrolls Electronic Reference Library CD-ROM
http://www.brill.nl/
Dead Sea Scrolls CD-ROM - Israel Antiquities Authority-Shopping
http://www.israntique.org.il/eng/shop/cd_scrolls.html
From Nazareth to Jerusalem: A Disciple’s Diary
http://www.uhl.ac/ddiary.html
Israel Exploration Society-Books and Publications
http://www.hum.huji.ac.il/ies
Logos Bible Software
http://www.logos.co.nz/
Virtual Bible-Reconstructing Bible based on Archaeological Evidence
http://www.thevirtualbible.com/
Artifacts and Inscriptions
Duke Papyrus Archive - Duke University
http://scriptorium.lib.duke.edu/papyrus/texts/homepage.html
Egyptology on-Line Exhibit – Royal Ontario Museum
http://www.rom.on.ca/egypt/
Ekron Inscription
http://www.kchanson.com/ANCDOCS/westsem/ekron.html
Galilean Boat (Sea of Galilee – Roman Boat)
http://philologos.org/GUIDE/books/wachsmann.shelley.1.htm
http://www.mfa.gov.il/mfa/go.asp?MFAH00uv0
http://www.us-israel.org/jsource/Archaeology/boat.html
Ivory Pomegranate (Temple Artifact)
http://www.mfa.gov.il/mfa/go.asp?MFAH00va0
http://www.us-israel.org/jsource/Archaeology/jerpom.html
Jerusalem Shroud
http://www.tfba.org/projects.php?projectid=15
Ketef Hinnom Amulet (Silver Amulet – Priestly Benediction)
http://www.mfa.gov.il/mfa/go.asp?MFAH00uz0
http://www.us-israel.org/jsource/Archaeology/jerplaques.html
Interesting Archaeological Finds
http://www.mfa.gov.il/mfa/go.asp?MFAH0dpj0
Ram of Atlit – Ancient Battling Ram
http://www.us-israel.org/jsource/Archaeology/atlitram.html
Sepphoris Museum (Artifacts from Sepphoris)
http://www.umich.edu/~kelseydb/Excavation/Sepphoris.html
Tel Dan Inscription
http://www.kchanson.com/ANCDOCS/westsem/teldan.html
Recent Archaeological Discoveries
http://www.mfa.gov.il/mfa/go.asp?MFAH00v20
http://www.mfa.gov.il/mfa/go.asp?MFAH00uf0
http://www.mfa.gov.il/mfa/go.asp?MFAH0dos0
http://www.mfa.gov.il/mfa/go.asp?MFAH0g6s0
http://www.mfa.gov.il/mfa/go.asp?MFAH0gbv0
http://www.mfa.gov.il/mfa/go.asp?MFAH0idy0
http://www.mfa.gov.il/mfa/go.asp?MFAH0k460
Top Archaeological Finds
http://www.us-israel.org/jsource/Archaeology/toparch.html
Underwater Archaeology in Israel
http://www.us-israel.org/jsource/Archaeology/Underwater.html
*This page was constructed by NICD Director Rev. Stephen J. Murray, MCRC