Lecture 1.docx

Well, it is a privilege and pleasure to begin this course. It is the beginning, actually, of a cycle of three classes that is going to take you through the whole of the Bible from Genesis to the book of Revelation. And since it is the first class in this cycle, it's the place where I like to spend s...

Well, it is a privilege and pleasure to begin this course. It is the beginning, actually, of a cycle of three classes that is going to take you through the whole of the Bible from Genesis to the book of Revelation. And since it is the first class in this cycle, it's the place where I like to spend some time. going over what is in now all of your course syllabi that reminds you why the Mass of Seminary exists, what we're all about, and where this course and the cycle of courses, Old Testament, New Testament studies, fits in to the seminary curriculum. We are driven by the facts that as we say in our purpose statement that we exist to equip godly men to be pastors and or the trainers of pastors but even to be a trainer a pastor means that you are in some way a shepherd and I'm always motivated by the fact of realizing that within three or four years from today the vast majority of you will be embarking on a pastoral shepherding ministry full-time. And so there are 44 in this class and if past experience is any guide somewhere between 30 to 35 of you within four years of this class are going to be in some kind of full-time vocational pastoral ministry. And that's why the seminary exists. That's what we're all about. We're all about taking men that obviously have been called by the Lord, developed in a local church, that now come to the seminary and within the confines of this local church, to be trained that they might be sent forth by their churches, either to go back to where you came from or to... to be sent to another pastoral ministry. And of course with international flavor, that we have in even the classroom this morning, we should be reminded that approximately one out of five of our graduates will actually end up ministering outside of the United States. So once again, if the numbers in the future will be Like the past, we would anticipate that at least nine of you will end up ministering outside of the confines of this country. And I think we almost have as many as that who came from other countries, so that number is probably going to continue as far as the future is concerned. And literally... Over the years the seminary has existed, God has now thrust forth from the seminary over 1200 men into different areas of ministry, all centered in some way around pastoral ministry. And so to accomplish this task, our basic degree program that you're a part of is the Master of Divinity program. The 98 units, or if you take Greek here, 102 units that we believe will in the economy of God at least give you a foundation to begin your pastoral ministry. And as you can see that the Master of Divinity has his own outcomes and particularly As we think in terms of being a pastor and in the history of the church and to today, the first great task that has been given to the pastor is the proclamation and teaching of God's Word. It goes all the way back, obviously, to what Paul told Timothy. in 1st Timothy chapter 4, that he was to pay close attention to himself and also to his teaching. And that he was to give special attention to the public reading of the scripture, and then the teaching and exhortation of the scripture, that foundational, obviously, to the Church of Jesus Christ. is an understanding and application of Scripture as the Word of God. And so literally you pick up that mantle and in many ways your effectiveness in ministry and the direction of the Holy Spirit is going to be based upon your effectiveness in understanding and applying the Word of God to your own life and then being able to explain. not only the meaning of the biblical text but also its relevance, its application, its significance not only to your own personal life but to those that you shepherd and as they take to heart the Word of God, have that illumined in their mind by the Holy Spirit and live by the Word of God then the church continues to grow and increase So as a future elder, as a pastor missionary or even educator, and even if you end up going into education, you still are involved in shepherding. And in fact, I like to challenge our men that go on for higher education, thinking in terms of only getting doctors degrees and and being involved in seminary or Bible college, Bible institute level type programs, Christian universities. In what way is your scholarship going to impact the Church of Jesus Christ? In what way even is that ministry going to tie back into the building of the local church? So no matter where God might lead you, you need to comprehend the significant areas of Bible interpretation, biblical languages, Christian theology, and pastoral ministry. And you might say, well, where does Bible exposition fit within that? Well, it really pulls together hermeneutics and exegesis and theology and brings them to focus as far as an expositional ministry and pastoral work. And I know that you've taken, all of you have taken the introductory course in Christian preaching, and you know that ultimately everything in the seminary is designed to come together to make you an expositor of God's Word. And so in this class we'll be talking about, obviously, exegesis and the interpretation of the biblical text. We'll also think in terms of a little bit of its theological implications, though at times I will say, all right, we have to drop it at this point. We've seen what the Bible says, what this passage means within the context of this book. Now as far as some of the future theological ramifications are concerned, I will leave that for theology one or theology two, theology three, theology four. And in fact it was... Very encouraging yesterday to be told by Dr. Block. He says, I love having the students who come out of your classes because they already know the passages and are always almost halfway there as far as the theology is concerned and I just feel that I'm putting the finishing touches on them. And I said, well, we'll continue to try to work in concert with one another and I can't think of any better person to put the finishing touches to you theologically than Dr. Vlach. So yes, we do talk as a faculty and we do realize how our courses overlap. So if there's places where I say, whoa, whoa, whoa, you're going to get that in the future, gentlemen, trust me, you're going to get that in the future. So we're laying a foundation as far as this course is concerned. And particularly, as you can see here, the degree program learning objective number three, outcome number three, that as a teacher of scripture you need to be able to synthesize everything you receive in your biblical language classes, Hebrew and Greek. Now I know for many of you that this week your major baptism of fire is you're being introduced to one of the biblical languages for the first time. And for many of you that language is Hebrew and and you probably have already realized that the the differences between Hebrew and English are many and in fact the differences between Hebrew and any other foreign language you've ever learned are many and Don't worry as you go through your courses. You're gonna find out there's gonna be many things that you're gonna have to learn as far as Hebrew is concerned, but You're leaning you're learning Hebrew for a purpose You're learning Hebrew you're gonna learn Greek and some of you are going to take the course in Aramaic you're learning all of that for a purpose and That purpose is to be able to understand the vernacular translation of the Bible that you are going to use in preaching better and So the biblical languages in in Bible backgrounds and we'll talk a little bit about some of those backgrounds in this course and theological constructs. All of this is going to be synthesized as you preach and teach the Bible. Notice the varied age levels and abilities within any ministry context. Gentlemen, in some ways you have one of the most challenging responsibilities that God gives to any man, because you're going to have to be able to preach in such a way that everyone in the church, from the youngest to the oldest, from the newest believer to the most mature believer, is is able to to hear and and through the Holy Spirit comprehend and apply the Word of God to their lives. When I was in seminary I had one of my professors make a tremendous statement. He said this, gentlemen, if you cannot teach four-year-olds, you can't teach. And I've always remembered that. If I can't make it simple enough for a fourth, fourth grader, a four-year-old and a fourth grader. and a forty-fourth grader and an eighty-fourth grader to be able to understand. Alright, then I've got to go back to the text and seek the Lord and say, okay, how can I take what I have learned from this passage and explain it in such a way that it can minister to to the youngest as well as the oldest person within the congregation. And think about that. I mean, whatever church you're involved in, this Sunday, just look around the congregation because you've got to start getting used to the fact that, you know, three or four years from now, you're going to be thrust into the place where you have a congregation and you're going to be preaching to them. And look around and see all the different kinds of people that are in that congregation, including nonbelievers. You have the very backgrounds that are there. And think in terms of the fact, God, this is what you've called me to do. You have called me to so immerse myself in your Word that I am able, by the Spirit's help, to be able to take that Word of God and communicate it to the vast array of people that God will bring. into your congregation. And I can tell you from personal experience that you're going to be stunned and surprised with the opportunities that God is going to give to you to preach His Word. I still remember, oh, it was about 25 years ago, I was called by a college friend and said my... my wife's dad passed away and we're living in Texas, we're just back making arrangements, we're looking for somebody to do a funeral down in Long Beach, could you come Friday at two o'clock and do the funeral? And he said no pressure, we don't expect any more than about a dozen people. And I said sure, it was a favor to an old friend, be more than happy to do that, fit into my calendar. Merry Christmas to the funeral home and when I... I got to the funeral director, I said, wow, you had a big funeral before this. He said, uh-uh, this is your funeral. Huh? I said, I got told there's only going to be about a dozen people there. He said, that's what we were told as well. So it was going to be about a delay of 15, 20 minutes because we got to set up chairs, and it ended up being a service with 500 people. Now, what I didn't know was... This man for many many years had been involved in city government in Long Beach and literally that day I preached to the mayor to the council members to every basically high official That was that was in Long Beach And I just had a 15-minute homily on John 3 16. I thought I'm just going to give a simple homily on John 3 16 And I said okay Lord, that's what you laid upon my heart. That's what I'm going to do. So 15 minutes. I gave 500 people John 3 15. That man's 92 year old mother came to Christ through that sermon. I don't know if any of the The mayor, the council people, I don't know any of the high shakers that were there that day. I know this, they heard the gospel. And gentlemen, that's what lies before you in the future. You don't know where God's going to take you. And you got to think about that every day you're doing your assignments. Lord, I got to do this under the Lord because I don't know where you're going to be taking me. in the future. I don't think that I can look back on ministry and have anybody older than 92 that has come to the Lord through my ministry. But praise the Lord for that lady. About 18 months later I did her funeral at 93 and a half and there was only a dozen people there. But we rejoice because we knew as opposed to her son, we knew that SI. was in heaven with the Lord Jesus Christ. That was just a family gathering and just was a joy because it was the funeral of a believer. But even then I thought back to 500 people and prayed Lord, you know use the gospel and the lives of the other 499 that were there as well. So you don't know who you're going to be preaching to. But you'll be prepared. If you know God's Word. Now, as we think in terms of Bible exposition, we are one of the few seminaries left that continues to put an emphasis upon English Bible. And I've got to say it at this point, I'm using English Bible because for the majority of you Your first language is English. But for numbers of you in this class, English is your second language. So what I'm going to say about the English Bible is for you applicable to whatever your vernacular translation is, be it Spanish, Chinese, Korean, etc. Norwegian. that whatever your vernacular Bible is, you just kind of substitute that as I speak about the English Bible. Now we don't realize what a gift God has given to us in the translations that we hold in our hand. This summer I spent eight weeks in Europe, and six of those weeks were... spent in the United Kingdom. And while I was there twice, I got to watch a BBC documentary. Amazing. Hopefully someone's gonna pick it up for PBS here because it's that valuable. And the title of the documentary was The Most Dangerous Man in Tudor, England. And the most dangerous man in Tudor England was William Tyndale. And so they had a documentary on Tyndale and how Tyndale unleashed a great intellectual and social change in Great Britain. And of course you remember his famous statement that when I am through... My prayer to God is that through my translation of the Bible into English, the simplest English plowboy will know more about the Bible than the Pope. And by the way, God answered his prayer. That just common English workers knew more about the Bible. than most of the Catholic hierarchy. I wish that was true to this day but it's not. The height of that was reached in Great Britain during the 19th century when biblical literacy was so high that the average evangelical church member in Great Britain knew their Bibles better than any of us in this classroom this morning. that they had read the Bible and re-read it, and that's the kind of audiences that men like Charles Haddon Spurgeon preached to. People who really knew the Bible. And Spurgeon kind of knew the Bible as well. But some people say, well, Spurgeon wasn't a true expositor. Well, he was dealing with people who knew their Bible a whole lot better than most of the people that you're going to be called to preach. in your life. But here it is. This is the means that God has used for you to communicate. This is what you have in your hand that people in the pew have in their hand as well. They don't have a Greek or Hebrew text. They bring with them a translation. Now we've got to realize that the translations that most of us have, and particularly the English translations, I'm holding my hand in New American Standard, are very very accurately translated. These are excellent reflections of what is in the Hebrew, the Aramaic, and the Greek. And gentlemen, you gotta realize that as you're being given the language and the exegetical tools based upon those languages, in our Old and New Testament disciplines, that this is for you, this is for you in the study to be able to take what you're learning so that you have a greater comprehension and greater understanding of the English Bible, or whatever vernacular translation that you will be using. It's for you, to make you better able to communicate truth that is in God's Word. In fact, another seminary professor gave me a great example of the Greek Hebrew as opposed to the vernacular translation. He says what we need to realize is, and this was back in the 60s where the transition was being made from black and white television to color television. Some of you not old enough to realize that once upon a time TV was not in color. let alone high definition, but I grew up watching television in black and white and then all of a sudden color came along and the professor made a very interesting point he said you know those of us who know the original languages we're still watching the same program the only difference is we see a little bit of the color that if you were to have you know people watch a television program and one you know saw the program in black and white and another saw it in color but it was all over you know ninety-five percent of what was conveyed in black and white is just the same as what's color. Color just adds just a little more vividness well just a little bit more color. That's what Greek and Hebrew does. Now your congregation isn't going to have the Greek and Hebrew, but they can read the English and about 90 to 95 percent of what you see in the Greek and Hebrew they can learn in their English text. And guess what your responsibility is? To add the color so that they get the full impact as far as God's Word is concerned. So. I might put it this way, you know, week by week Dr. MacArthur is a color commentator. All he basically is doing is he's adding some color for the congregation so that they might have a sharper understanding of what is in the biblical text. But so much of that can be learned through the English, and the English is the vehicle. And you heard Dr. McCarthy yesterday in chapel, and very rarely did he have to refer back to the original language as he was speaking about the sharpness of some of the definitions and some of the structure that was there in that passage from John chapter 5. You could follow very easily what he was saying from your translation of the English Bible. And so... Gentlemen, honor the English Bible. Honor the Bible the people have in their hands. Take your people to it. Preach from it and communicate to them that that God is speaking His truth through His Word into their lives. Be careful that you don't preach in such a way that gives people the idea. that if you don't know Greek and Hebrew you really can't understand the Bible. As I said when the program is over they they know who the main characters are, they know what the action is, they know what takes place, they can relate so much of that program they saw in black and white. You can just add just a few touches of color because you've been able to to see color by using the original languages. And so through the English Bible you will then expose it. You will explain and you will show the significance of the biblical passage to God's people that He places in front of you. So really, you know, some of what we teach you here in seminary is for you, is for your personal study, so that you will be more effective in your public proclamation. And of course even within the seminary you're going to move from the private to the public. You're going to move from your personal study to how you're going to present that in a public way to God's people through the preaching and teaching ministry that God gives to you. And an English Bible and the Department of Bible Exposition. really is, as we might say, on the borders between that private study and that public proclamation. And so we have determined before the Lord that when it comes to our division, our discipline, that we have designed every course to equip you for a foundational comprehension that will lead to an accurate explanation of scripture. And so you need to comprehend so that you are able to explain. All right, this is reflecting back on my seminary experience. A third professor had a very famous statement, gentlemen, a mist in the pulpit will be a fog in the pew. A mist in the pulpit will be a fog in the pew. What he meant by that is if you don't make it clear, if you don't understand clearly what you're saying, well what about the people who are hearing you? So you want to work as much as possible as being as clear as possible and as clear as possible. comprehensive as possible clarity is key as far as communicating God's word well it comes from your own comprehension and gentlemen remember this throughout the course of your seminary life you are not just studying for yourself you're always studying for the people to whom God is ultimately going to send you to minister to Think about the fact that as you are studying there are hundreds, if not thousands of people who are looking over your shoulder saying, get it right. Study hard, be diligent, because ultimately you're the one God is going to send to communicate this to me. So you just don't study for yourself. You study for all those that God has in mind for you to minister to in the future. Now we're going to talk a little bit about interpretation and the background and the context of each book of the Bible. In fact there is a sense that the major purpose of these three courses that you will have in biblical studies, Old Testament 1 and 2, Old Testament studies 1 and 2, New Testament studies. That's ultimately what we want you to be able to do is identify the background and context of each book of the Bible. Now last week some of you took a little exercise called the Bible. assessment exam that I spent some time with yesterday looking at and that's the goal that remember those those first two sections of the the outline the structure of the biblical books and then the second part which was the major themes purpose why was each book in the Bible Well, by the time this course is over, the goal is that no matter what one of the 66 books might be on that exam, you will know the structure, the basic outline, yes, and even the chapters that go along with that, as well as the purpose of every one of the 66 books about the old. chapters in the New Testament. Because guess what? You're going to have an exam similar that when you leave. And we're glad that some of you only got about six, seven, eight points. Because we want to show the accrediting agency when it's all done, that person who came in and could only get six points on that exam, graduates and gets 100 percent or at least 96 points. on that final exam. And by the way the man who scored the best on it was unfair. He'd already taken by distance learning 501, 502, 601. So I told Dr. Mucciese we've got to throw him out. He had an unfair advantage. There's not a whole lot more to teach him when it comes to Bible assessment. But nevertheless put that down. You already have the courses because that's why he scored so well as opposed to some of the rest of you. And so, that's good. We know what we're dealing with. And part of that exam view, hopefully, is now you know the reason you're here. And it's not just so that you can, you know, fill out an exam and make us look good to the accrediting agency, you know, before you end it and when you come to the end of your courses. It's that those... Two aspects of knowing the purpose of each biblical book and how that book unfolds as far as structure is concerned, gentlemen, is the very foundation of expository preaching. Why are so few preachers today expositional? Because they do not take the time, they do not spend the diligence necessary. To unpack each biblical book as far as its basic purpose and structure. And so as we get into the assignments you will realize that that's exactly what we're going to be doing as far as this class is concerned. So really it is, you know, this learning outcome number two which is... the most important priority as far as the course is concerned. Now that doesn't mean we're not going to get into interpretive practice, interpretive issues, that we're not going to go beyond because obviously once you get into Bible books and seek their purpose and their structure, you know, there are many other aspects of the biblical books that we will look at as well. But if we miss this, as I said... By the time you come to the end of seminary, and if not just that exam, but I sit on your ordination council and sometimes men invite me, and they know exactly what question is going to come. All right, go through in the next five minutes, go through five to ten minutes, the next 66 books and I'll just kind of give them to you and you just tell me what the key theme, what the purpose of that book is. And you say, I'm going to be able to do that. Well, I've been at the exams and they do it. And every once in a while I got to give them a little help. And I'm known for that. I kind of throw the softball. Okay, alright, can you remember maybe the key passage there? Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, the theme of that book is...so sometimes with a little bit of prompting, but nevertheless. And people will come afterwards and say, now our pastor is someone... who teaches us the Bible and now we know the reason why. It's because they can think from Genesis 1 all the way through Revelation. You're going to be doing a little thing called chapter titles along the way, in 501, 502, and for part of 601 as well. And people always ask me, how do you remember what is in each chapter of the Bible? Well, it wasn't even an assignment. When I was in seminary... for all the Old Testament books, I went through on my own, and as I read, made chapter titles. I never tried to memorize them, but they became the avenue, you know, for me to be able to think through the Bible. And students have found it beneficial now for 21 years, so guess what? You get to do it as well. And by the way, don't take the... the titles that are at the top of the page of, you know, of your text or, you know, right there at the beginning of each chapter, some of the paragraphs, you know, you can... I just got open... I opened here and New American State even says, you know, eat them will be humbled. Okay, you can come up with a better chapter title than that. But in the end, even if that's the one that you have, alright, if that's what reminds you what is in the chapter. And the great thing is chapter titles are not right or wrong. Well, they can be wrong if I see nothing in the chapter title that relates to the chapter. You know, don't be like the man on the Bible assessment exam that on the outline for numbers gave me the outline of Exodus. Now he got Exodus right, but he got no points because he didn't ask for Exodus, he asked for numbers. So... So if I see no relevance between your chapter title and the chapter I might say, I got to dock some points for that. But usually I find that your chapter titles, because that's what's going to stick in your mind, it's for you. And we'll talk about the prophets in 5.02, that have their own challenges when it comes to chapter titles. But this is what we're all about as far as the Bible Exposition Department here at the Seminary, this discipline and what these courses are seeking to do. So because of that you can then get to the actual course and here is the student learning outcomes of when this course is over. For Genesis to Esther you should one, be able to articulate the purpose. and major emphasis of each of those Bible books and show its relationship to other parts of Scripture, particularly that which has gone before. I'm not big, I'm not going to count you down if you don't relate what you're learning from this first part of the Old Testament with what is in the latter part of the Old Testament and the New Testament. But when you get to the point of writing your synopsis answers, and that's one of the reasons they come at the very end, because you want to start to see the links between the biblical books. As well as that, to describe the compositional strategy of each biblical book. That is, at its macro level, its major points. And to fit the unfolding drama of God's reveal plan into its canonical and historical setting. So how does this book fit both canonically with what went before and what went after in the Bible? And how does this fit in the developing historical flow of what is reflected in the Scripture? Because not only does Abraham come before Moses in the canon, Abraham also came before Moses in history. Alright, and so that's what I mean about both this canonical context, you understand how you know, Exodus fits in with Genesis and how it lays the foundation for what's going to be in the rest of the Torah and into the prophets and into the writings and into the New Testament. But also the fact that you understand that there is historical development that is taking place because the Bible is historic. It refers back to what God did in history. And I have to say this because of that historical setting some of you come with, well let me put it this way, when we think in terms of context and literary structure we're going to be dealing a lot with what you should have learned in English. Many times people ask me, if I was to go to seminary, what are the best subjects I can take? And I would say English and history. Now some of you don't like English. That's alright. You'll learn to like it. You're going to have to learn about enough English composition, how texts are composed because we're going to be interpreting composed texts, as we're going to be talking about in this course. And you're going to learn to like a little bit of history because the more you know about history the more you'll understand the biblical text. So in fact we had a previous seminary professor here and his son asked him as he went away to college, you know, what should I major in? And he majored in history and he minored in English. Now that's a seminary professor. So... If you already want to know from a seminary professor what you should major in in college, now you can't go back and redo it. So in the providence of God you did what you did. But if you could do it all over again, you know, English and history, the more you can understand those areas, the better equipped you will be, obviously, to come to the Word of God. So we're going to be... dealing with the canonical and historical setting of Scripture and in many ways, whether you know it or not, constructing what we today call a biblical theology. That on the foundation of taking apart the books, looking at their major themes, we'll start to be gaining a theological, what does this book talk about, God and his relationship to man and the world? that you will start to see a developing theology which is going to come into a biblical theology which is one of the driving studies today and the publishers are putting out biblical theologies almost a dime a dozen it seems like every, in fact Tom Shrine had just put out the latest, the beauty of the king, it's the latest biblical theology It's hot off the press, came out about two months ago. And these are just going to proliferate and proliferate and proliferate. And the reason they're going to proliferate is because the people in the pulpit and the people in the pew don't know how the Bible fits together. They have random understanding of different passages of Scripture, but they have no comprehension of how you go from Genesis 1 to Revelation 22. And the reason why publishers are putting out more and more books that are biblical theology and in orientation is because this is what people are buying. You know, publishers do not publish books that do not sell. There's something about staying in business that says, okay, we publish what people are reading. And it is significant that in the last ten years there's been multiple theologies of the Old Testament and New Testament. Now the emphasis is about having a whole Bible theology. And much of this today is, you know, tied in to a particular slant. Biblical theology for some means a particular theological perspective. But for those of us who, you know, come... you know, out of a pre-millennial background, I mean, we were seeing whole Bible theologies and we'll talk a little bit about that next week as I give you some other biblical theologies that are still in print but are forgotten today, that they are biblical theologies as well. Now, how are we going to get to that point? You're going to do a few things. Assessment indicators, or another word, assessment indicators, are the most important things in the Bible. assignments. What are you going to do? Now first and foremost what you need to do is read the Bible. In fact you're going to read the biblical books assigned twice during this course. So each biblical book from Genesis through Esther must be read in its entirety before the discussion in class according to the course schedule. Read the... the book, get your first reading done that will have chapter titles and initials that have the book's purpose and major divisions. And if you don't know, you know, after one reading, that's the first time I read Leviticus. I have no idea what its purpose and divisions are. All right, look ahead in the notes and see what I said. Now don't regurgitate it unless you've actually worked through it. Ah, okay. I can see where that's emphasized in the book and I can see where there are some key themes. If you've seen it then you can write it down. I'll even take my words but try to put it in your own words. Even if you see what I saw, put it in your own words because you'll remember what you write better than you remember what I wrote. And I give you an example of that. on the next page using Genesis and you realize that the chapter titles have nothing to do with Genesis. But it does give you some insights. Your chapter title should be about six words, use heading style capitalization, kind of like think in terms of this is a heading for a sermon, omit periods after chapter titles, remember it's just a title, use the colon occasionally. for brevity. Particularly, you want to... two major things you see here. Say you come to Genesis chapter 4 and you want to say Cain's sin and then you can use a colon or semicolon and then also put Seth calls on the Lord. So in other words, if you want to get two things within the chapter, you can at times do that and use the colon or semicolon for brevity. and continue on. And then you can take a look at the themes and those do relate to Genesis. So four basic themes that are there and a purpose statement. And note the purpose statement should be in one or two well-crafted sentences. That is again something you could use in the future in a sermon. You realize how even as you begin this first assignment you're already starting to lay the foundation for what? Preaching. Alright, so take the assignments seriously. And if you work hard on your chapter titles, you'll be amazed that later you'll be able to remember without even seeking to memorize those chapter titles. Alright, also read the MacArthur Study Bible. Read the introductions. You can. And you start to realize how much information, you'll be amazed how much is packed in to those three or four pages of introduction to the books in the Study Bible. And I can say having worked on a number of those myself, you know, really working on making every word count and taking many times what is 20, 50, 100 page introductions in other, you know, works on the book and boiling it down to the essential facts. What is valuable about a study Bible. And of course here we're partial to one study Bible. The one that we all helped to write. Dr. MacArthur wrote and edited and and you'll hear a lot of echoes in MacArthur's study Bible in the class. However, do realize that many of those echoes began in class before they were put in the study Bible. I know what came first at times with the chicken and the egg. But these are good, and read them in five to ten minutes. You can get an essential understanding of the background just by reading the study Bible introduction. And then you get to choose from the pages that I've listed for you, and for this week you're going to do week one and take an hour and do some of that supplemental reading, and next week, week two as well. and there are three books from which you're going to be doing the reading. Let me emphasize the last one I put there first, and that is The Word and the World and the Word by Merrill Rooker and some guy named Grisanti that you're going to become very aware of, that has his office just a few doors from mine. And I know Dr. Merrill. And I know Dr. Grisanti, I do know Dr. Rooker. But these are world class Old Testament scholars who have put together this introduction to the Old Testament. Now some of the things in this text you're going to deal with in Old Testament introduction. And I didn't use it last year, but the more we got into it, and particularly when you get to your synopsis questions, I found... That again again, I was I was directing The people back to the discussion in the world and the word because in every book of the Old Testament They give the contents of the book and essentially in the contents of the book write a synopsis of the book Now you're going as your final project to write a synopsis for each of the books that we study in this course and you might want to at least spend a little bit of your time after reading and after class, or actually before class doing your supplemental reading. You might want to go through the contents of the book. And this is Joshua. And so you can see now this is just a little longer. then what's your synopsis, answers to be. But at least it gives you some idea of the basic division and what you want to highlight. Alright, now what you're going to choose to do in your paper is between you and the Lord. But it still should be essentially here is the basic structure. Here are the basic themes. And then use your words to explain how they develop in the book. So when New Testament is complete, you will have a mini commentary that you yourself have written on every book of the Bible. And gentlemen, I have men 20 years after class telling me they still go back to their synopsis papers as they begin to study a book. All right, as I'm reading through, what did I say 20 years ago about this book? They go through the notes that they go through. their synopsis papers and continue to use them in their sermon preparation. Now along with that I also included reading from a book on literary genres. Okay here's where English comes in. It's called Cracking Old Testament Codes, a guide to interpreting the literary genres of the Old Testament. Alright, so here's your English book, if I can put it that way, that's related to the Old Testament, the book that deals with literary genres. And I would say, and we'll touch on some of these things in class, but by the time you get to Hebrew exegetical method, Old Testament 603-604, the professors are going to expect you to be... acquainted with this book. So you can acquaint yourself with it now or you can acquaint yourself with it when you get into Hebrew exegesis. But you will get acquainted with it. Alright, so you might want to take a little bit of that hour. You might not want to read in depth, but at least scan and kind of take a look at the outline of the pages and when we get into some of the discussions in class will be more understandable to you. Now, that's where the English comes in. This is where the history comes in. This is the best Old Testament history that's presently available. Kingdom of Priests by Dr. Merrill. Someone sent me this summer. If you have the first edition, you don't have to buy the second. Now, the pagination is different, but you can find the same general areas and you can look at his first edition. But the second edition is. It has been updated both in text and footnotes, so it is very, very well worth having. And again, you don't have to read every last word, but in that hour that you devote to reading outside of the Bible, again, you might want to skim through and take a look from those pages and get acquainted with where historical information is found and at times, again, in the course, we'll refer back to not specifically to a page, but to... some of the events obviously that are recorded in more detail for you in Dr. Merrill's book. Now I realize and why I give you an hour and once you've done the hour you've satisfied the supplemental reading. Now that doesn't include the MacArthur Study Bible introduction. Your Bible reading, MacArthur Study Bible introduction, that's outside this one hour. But when it comes to these three books I've just shown you you choose what you want to read and that should be based upon where's my lack? What, what, what, where do I need to fill in? You know, some of my understanding to, to help equip me to better understand the Bible. So I leave that to your choice. I mean, you're graduate students now, so, so you read what you need to read, you know, to help you. Beyond that... I've read an hour a week out of the block of pages that you gave me. I will ask for no further, you know, never tested, no quizzes upon any of this reading. But don't worry because you're going to be quizzed and tested upon this reading for the rest of your seminary career. And beyond that, as you get into ministry. You're never going to get away from using these resources. So get acquainted with them now. All right, it's kind of like that old ad, you can pay me now or you can pay me later. Auto mechanic. Okay, I can tune it up for you now or you can continue, then you drive the car and you can really pay me later. Well, it's the same thing. You can read it now or you can read it later, but ultimately you will read it. All right, so choose what you know where your lack is. If you know nothing about history, then take a look at Merrill. If you know history fairly well, of the Old Testament and the historical background, the history that is in the Old Testament, but don't know much about genres, cracking Old Testament codes. And if you just want some, again, fill in for what we're going to be discussing in class as far as the background and the themes and the structure and flow of each one of the biblical books and take a look at the world. and the Word. And all this is going to culminate in the final synopsis, answers that you're going to give. And a little later on what I'm going to do is I'm going to take a look through last year's, and without the name, I'm going to make available at the front desk so you can come. Don't. You can't. Take it. You can take a look at. an A paper from last year on the synopsis papers. Alright, so it's not take pictures, it's not I'm gonna regurgitate exactly what is here but you can read and you can look and see you know what an A paper look like and then you can go and do likewise and if you if you basically say what you learned in your own words you will be fine. Now along with that there are a few institutional requirements. I showed you a little bit about how a synopsis paper begins. But as you write the synopsis papers you're going to become more and more aware of writing in the proper form. So I give you some suggestions there as far as writing and style. These do not have to be followed. the Bible reading assignments week by week, but they do in your final synopsis papers. And get these down because each course will build and I'll basically state what you need to add each time. At least for, you know, for this paper get used to using Times New Roman typeface size 12 font. This is what is used in all seminary papers. There are a number of students who decided that that didn't look good and used other fonts and paid the price. Alright, I have to take off the form so some A's became A minuses because of that. A biggie my wife still refuses to do this. She was taught double space after every period. No more. It's single space after every period. So if she was in seminary, she would get no better than a B plus from me and she's my wife. So I mean emails, you know. She will always double space after a period and I go back and correct it and she says, what difference does it make? And I say, Toravian says it makes a lot of difference. And she says, who's Toravian? I said... Some of you don't know. Use one-inch margins all the way around. Indent paragraphs. Gentlemen, gentlemen, gentlemen, gentlemen. There's always someone who decides that a thousand-pace synopsis answer is all one paragraph. Don't do that. You're gonna have two or three points, which you are, basically, you know, the structure of the book. Genesis, I mean Genesis 1 to 11. It's the first division Genesis 12 to 50. You're going to have to have more than one paragraph and you indent the paragraphs. Don't use color. You don't need a table of contents. By the way, every year someone submits it with a table of contents, Genesis, Exodus, tells them what pays are going to be found. Don't do it. This does not require a table of contents. It's just a... Semester, Project, A-Term, Paper. And by the way, avoid color. I love color, but don't worry. When I upload on Jewel, it's just black and white anyway. It goes back to the illustration I used. I don't see the color, so don't use it. Which I guess, since I don't see it, I guess you can use it on your copy because I don't see it anyway. But just get used not to using color at this point. Alright, and so again, by the way, don't use long biblical quotations. Some students will, half of their paper will be just a block quote. Here's the key passage in the book and here's the block quote from the Bible. If it's the key passage, just put in parentheses the verses and you don't need to keep putting Genesis from Genesis. Just put the chapter and verses. So now there might be at times a significant verse that you do, but no long, you know, quotes and never exceed the paper length. If I say a thousand words it means between about 850 to a thousand words. 1200 words is about a thousand to 1200 words. Now I don't go through and count but one student last year, Professor Beshore decided to make sure he got an A by turning in 200 plus pages of his synopsis which had quotes from every commentator, block quotes from the book to prove that he was right. how much he knew. And he got told to rewrite it. Abridged it. Follow the requirements. Gentlemen, I have read the Bible. I have read just about everything that you're going to read during the semester and other things you have read. Don't try to snow me. In fact, don't even use footnotes. This is not a research paper. It's a response paper to what you've learned from reading the Bible and being in class, and from some of the supplemental reading. So, other than, you know, referring back to the Bible, which you can basically do, as I said, with, you know, Versa, quotation, in parentheses, the Versa's that you are referring to. I just want to see the essentials. So, just get the essentials. I want to see what you think is essential from what you've learned. And can I put it this way, gentlemen, if you interact with the Bible, formatting it in the proper way, having complete sentences with proper spelling, and by the way, do hit grammar check and spell check. Before you turn it in, it can save a grade. All right, so it will... Half of the papers come in with Word. I have Word, and gentlemen, you should send them PDFs because Word already tells me every spelling mistake you have. There's a little line under the word. I mean, it shows it right to me. Or an incomplete sentence. I got the green line going through. a compound, you know, a run-on sentence. I mean, it's all there. I don't even have to look for it. I mean, word tells me, and I go, this is a student who did not use grammar check and spell check. All right. In fact, by the time you get to your THM thesis, we require you sign saying before you even present the copy that you've run it through grammar check and spell check. So. We got advanced graduate students who still have they still you know have a hard time. I don't know what is about men. We have a hard time thinking that we've read yeah we've written something that may have some errors in it. You know it's it's the mainly thing to do. I don't need spell check. Gentlemen I need spell check. Because I'm a poor typist and you're going to find out sometimes when I've got a pen in my hand I'm not a very good speller either. So so do that and you got. If you're going to try to get away with it, at least give me a PDF that doesn't tip me off to all the mistakes that are already there. All right, so a word to the wise is sufficient. All right, so those are the requirements and we'll start to delve into some of the some of the aspects of the course as we go along and sharpen some of these things up.