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If applied to the Scripture, canon is used in two ways: first the most strictly, it is the official or authoritatively list of inspired books, second and in more general sense, it came to mean the collection of authoritative books. In a Christian context however, we might define the word as the list of the writings acknowledged by the church as documents of divine revelation. According to Bruce, the person appears to have used it first was Athanasius the Bishop of Alexandra in a letter he circulated in AD 367. 3. REVELATION: Revelation is the art of God by which he reveals or communicates his truth which otherwise cannot be known. It is often confused with illumination and inspiration. While revelation deals with the communication of truth, illumination deals with the understanding of the communicated and recorded truth. The principal interpretative formula is as follows: Revelation - Communication of the truth Inspiration - Recording of the truth Illumination - Understanding of the truth There can't be revelation without inspiration. In that case, the truth is communicated to the writer, may not have been written down truthfully. There can also be inspiration without revelation, in that case, a person might have written a story truthfully as it was told him, but the source might now be true. 4. INSPIRATION: As pointed out earlier, inspiration has something to do with recording the truth as it was revealed. To speak that the scripture is inspired is to say that the spirit of God guided the writers so that they truthfully wrote down without mistake, the truth of God as made known to them by the Spirit. A believer in the inspiration of the Scripture is one who believes in verbal, plenary, infallible, unlimited, inerrant, inspiration of the Bible. 5. INNERENCY: By this we mean that Scripture is not only inspired and authoritative but it is also innerrant and infallible. It is without error in the original manuscript, it is innerrant in all, it affirms whether in historical, scientific, moral or doctrinal matters. 6. ILLUMINATION: This has to do with understanding scripture. The one who inspired men to record the truth also illumines the mind of those who read it to understand it. This is necessary because with the darkened understanding brought about by sin no one can understand the Bible properly. Rom. 1:21v., Eph. 4:18v. But the Spirit can enlighten the mind of the believer to understand the truth of God as has been truthfully, communicated and the understanding of the recorded truth is called illumination. This is often confused with revelation and inspiration by those who have no training in basic theology 7. THE BIBLE: This is the name given to the collection of books recognized and used by the Christian church as the inspired record of God's revelation of Himself and His will to mankind. NAME: The word "Bible" is from Greek - 'biblia' the plural of 'biblion' the English equivalent of 'biblia' is "books". The word biblia and biblion are used in the old Testament Septuagint and apocrypha for the scriptures, as can be seen in Dan. 9:2v. By about the fifth century, the Greek church fathers applied the term "bibilia" to the whole Christian scriptures. Later the word passed to the Western church and although the word biblia was a plural, by common consent the "Books" become the "book". In the new testament, the old testament is usually referred to a the Scriptures Mt. 21:42v., Mt. 22:29v., Luke 24:32v. Other terms used are the scripture Acts 8:32v., Gal 3:22v. The term biblia stresses the fact that the Bible is a collection of books. But the word came to be used in singular means that behind these many books, there lies a wonderful unity. The name old and new testament is used to distinguish the Jewish and Christian scriptures. The Greek word - Diattake is translated "Testament", the Latin equivalent of it is testamentum and both means "A Will". In the sprugent and the new testament the same Greek word was used to translate the Hebrew word -'Berith' which means in itself - "a covenant" viewed from this backdrop, the old and new testament means old and the new covenant which if strictly applied, refers to the covenant God made with His elect people in the two dispensations. LANGUAGE: Most of the Old Testament was written in Hebrew, with few exceptions like Ezra 4:8v., 7:18, 7:12-26v., Jer. 10:11v., Dan 2:4v. 7:28v. which were written in Aramaic. Hebrew was the language of the Israelites in Canaan before the Babylonian captivity. But after the return Hebrew gave way to Aramaic, a related language spoken throughout southwest of Asia. Except for the few words and sentences, the New Testament was written in Greek, the Lingua Franca in the Hellenistic world. |
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