About
The Bible: Then & Now is a five-week hybrid course on how the Bible came to us and how to read it well. Each week you watch four short highlight videos and try a few exercises on your own, then join a ninety-minute Zoom session on Monday evening. The weeks move from canon, to manuscripts, to the English Bible, to study tools, to reading a passage for teaching. At the end of this course, participants will be able to • Explain how the Old Testament and New Testament canons formed, and why that history can strengthen rather than weaken trust in Scripture. • Describe what manuscripts are, how the text was copied and handed on, and what textual criticism is trying to do. • Explain how chapter and verse divisions arrived on the page and how they can help or hinder reading. • Trace the major milestones in the history of the English Bible, including the NRSVue (2021). • Tell formal equivalence, dynamic equivalence, and paraphrase apart, and say when each is useful. • Find your way around a study Bible, a Bible handbook, and common digital tools, and name whose perspective each one brings. • Prepare a short passage for teaching by moving from observation, to interpretation, to application, and by using commentaries after the text rather than before it.