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Welcome to Day 1504 of our Wisdom-Trek, and thank you for joining me.This is Guthrie Chamberlain, Your Guide to WisdomBible Study \u2013 Book Order and Hebrew Text \u2013 Meditation MondayWisdom - the final frontier to true knowledge.\xa0Welcome to Wisdom-Trek! Where our mission is to create a legacy of wisdom, to seek out discernment and insights, to boldly grow where few have chosen to grow before. Hello, my friend; I am Guthrie Chamberlain, your captain on our journey to increase Wisdom and Create a Living Legacy.\xa0Thank you for joining us today as we explore wisdom on our 2nd millennium of podcasts. This is Day 1504 of our Trek, and it is time for Meditation Monday.\xa0Taking time to relax, refocus, and reprioritize our lives is crucial in order to create a living legacy.\xa0For you, it may just be time alone for quiet reflection.\xa0You may utilize structured meditation practices. In my life, Meditation includes reading and reflecting on God\u2019s Word and in prayer.\xa0It is a time to renew my mind, refocus on what is most important, and making sure that I am nurturing my soul, mind, and body.\xa0As you come along with me on our trek each Meditation Monday, it is my hope and prayer that you, too, will experience a time for reflection and renewing of your mind.\xa0
We are continuing our series this week on Meditation Monday as we focus on Mastering Bible Study through a series of brief insights from Hebrew Scholar, Dr. Michael S. Heiser.\xa0Our current insights are focusing on what the Bible is. Today let us meditate on:
Bible Study \u2013 Book Order and Hebrew Text\xb7\xa0\xa0\xa0\xa0\xa0\xa0Insight Thirty-One: The Books in Your Bible Are Not in Chronological OrderHave you ever wondered how historians know when things in the ancient world happened? How can we say with great confidence that some event occurred 1,000 years before Christ (BC)? How- do we know with precision when the events of the life of Jesus and the early Church transpired?
Ancient chronology is a fascinating subject. It\u2019s also amazingly complex since it deals with ancient lists of the reigns of kings that have survived from antiquity and with ancient astronomical observations and their recording. You don\u2019t need to devote yourself to understanding how all these things are known to study the Bible. But it\u2019s pretty important you know the when.
The books in your Bible were not chronologically arranged. Ezekiel was not written after Jeremiah. Paul\u2019s epistles were not written in the order they\u2019re listed in the New Testament. Even books like 1-2 Samuel can be chronologically misleading. Samuel was the last of Israel\u2019s judges, right before the first king, Saul, came along.Consequently, 1-2 Samuel\u2019s content overlaps Samuel\u2019s life and a time that followed the Torah, Joshua, and Judges\u2019 events. But the content of a book doesn\u2019t tell us when a book was written. The fact that 1-2 Samuel never claims to have been written by Samuel adds to the chronological uncertainty.
Scholars have done their best to determine when the books of the Bible were written, but there\u2019s a lot of disagreement. Yet the effort is worth it because knowing when a book was written is essential for developing theological ideas.
For example, what Paul says about faith and works in Galatians (perhaps his earliest epistle) sounds a bit different than it does in Romans. Paul\u2019s comments are specific to events in Galatians, whereas Romans reflects a fuller treatment of the issue, one that benefits from years of preaching and addressing the issue in churches.
Another reason to know when a book was written is that it provides a glimpse of the writer\u2019s world. Knowing that the Egyptians wrote about the invasion of the Sea Peoples (from whom the Philistines derive) along the Canaan coast helps us put certain references to the Philistines in the Old Testament in context.
Fortunately, this sort of information is available in reference works and good commentaries. Taking time to get your...