November 2, 2022 - Good Morning! It's Wednesday, November 2.
In our 9am Broadcast Sunday School Class at First Baptist, Center we're in a series called "Building Our Lives on God's Word". Last Sunday, the focus was on studying God's Word and we were in the book of 2 Timothy, with its' famous verse 2:15 - "Study to show yourself to God as one approved, a worker who doesn't need to be ashamed, correctly teaching the Word of Truth".
The Apostle Paul wrote those words to his protege, his son in the faith, Timothy, who was pastor of the church in Ephesus. I was thinking about that phrase, "Word of Truth". What was the Word, the Bible, for the early Christian Church? What did they have access to? What did they study? Well, of course, their Scripture was primarily what we now call the Old Testament. About 300 years before Bethlehem, it had been translated into Greek - the lingua franca, the common language of the world at that time. And so, Jesus and His disciples, the writers of the New Testament, and the members of the 1st Century Church, would have probably used that translation, called the Septuagint. The New Testament contains over 300 quotations from that "new" version of the Old Testament. As you might expect, the Jewish people were none too happy as they witnessed these new Christians using the Jewish Bible to win converts. Many Jews, during this time, reverted back to the original Hebrew version in reaction to this.
We have to assume that the Early Church also had access to many of the books of the present New Testament. Paul's letters, and those of Peter and John, were circulated throughout the civilized world during the latter part of the 1st Century. Early churches like Ephesus and Corinth probably also had copies of one or more of the Gospels. But these were scrolls, manuscripts that were kept by the church. Ordinary believers did not have personal access to Scripture. Aren't we blessed in the 21st Century to be able to have a personal Bible? You probably have several in your home. And every translation known to man is as close as your smart phone. We are truly blessed.
2 Timothy 3:14-15. "Continue in what you have learned and firmly believed... the sacred Scriptures, which are able to give you wisdom for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus."
Meet you back here tomorrow,
Bro. David
dmathis@fbccenter.org
