by Bonnie Calhoun

Today I want to look at how the Bible actually reads. By the time we are done with these lessons, I will hope to have answered every question someone could make to you about the Bible. There have been some good observations so far! If there are any that I've missed, please let me know and I will try to cover it!

More than three thousand versions of the entire Bible, or portions of it, exist in English.

Chapter and verse divisions in the Bible were not determined by those who wrote the words that we read. These divisions were added to the text hundreds of years after the authors died. The original writers neither planned nor anticipated these divisions.

Chapter and verse numbers in the apostles' letters, for example, would appear as strange to them as the following does to us:


Dear Aunt Sue,

Chapter One

Last week we went to town and learned that....

"Divided on horseback" was the criticism of Robert Estienne, a French publisher and convert to Protestantism who decided to number the verses in the New Testament in order to make it easier to study and memorize. While Stephen Langton had divided the text into chapters, Estienne then broke each chapter into numbered verses. According to his son, he did much of the work while on horseback—leading some critics ever since to suggest the reason some verses' divisions are short and others are long was because of the bumpy ride between his office in Paris and his home in southern France.

The Bible was designed more for the ear that the eye. In antiquity people passed history and genealogy from generation to generation by oral tradition—through storytelling or by reading aloud. Those who wrote the Bible did so knowing that their words would be read aloud. So puns, acrostics, and cryptograms are all used widely throughout the Hebrew Scriptures.

Mgn rdng ths bk wtht vwls. Myb ftr whl y cld fll n sm f th blnks nd fgr t mst f t. Ftr ll, t's smpl sglsh. Bt nw, mgn t s prt f n ncnt lngg tht hs flln nt dss vr svrl cntrs. Tht s hw th Bbl nc pprd. Imagine reading a book without vowels. Maybe after a while you could fill in some of the blanks and figure out most of it. After all, it's simple English. But now. Imagine it as part of an ancient language that has fallen into disuse over several centuries. That is how the Bible once appeared!

Hieroglyphics—derived from two Greek words that mean "sacred carvings," since the signs were at first chiseled on stone—were the basci writing system in Egypt at the time of Moses. Since young Moses was educated in the Egyptian sciences and arts, he no doubt learned to read and write Egyptian hieroglyphics. About 750 pictures were used at first in hieroglyphics. At least twenty-two signs existed for various birds, such as the curved neck of the Egyptian vulture, the flat face of an owl, and the tail feathers of the pintail duck.

We will finish up this lesson next week!

by Bonnie Calhoun



Our lesson this Saturday is looking at more of the inscriptions found in the Sinai attesting to the passing by of Moses and the Israelites. Also adding to the validity of the applicable Bible passages. These references come from A.P. Stanley, Sinai and Palestine, London: John Murray, 1905.

Explorers found two inscriptions in Wadi Sidri that refer to the murmuring of the Jewish people against Moses about their great thirst, hunger and terror they experienced during their flight from the Egyptians as they entered the great desert of the Sinai Peninsula.

The inscriptions:

Pilgrims fugitive through the sea find a place of refuge at Sidri.
Lighting upon plain ground they proceed on their pilgrimage full of terror [77]

The Hebrews pass over the sea into the wide waterless desert, famished with hunger and thirst. [17]

Moses recorded the experience in the wilderness when the Israelites complained bitterly against God and their leaders, in Exodus 17:1-3.

Another Sinai inscription describes God's miraculous provision of water to the Children of Israel through god commanding Moses to cause water to flow from a rock.

The people clamor vociferously. The people anger Moses.
Swerving from the right way, they thirst for water insatiably.
The water flows, gently gushing out of the stony rock.
Out of the rock a murmur of abundant waters.
Out of the hard stone a springing well.
Like the wild asses braying,
the Hebrews swallow down enormously and greedily.
Greedy of food like infants,
they plunge into sin against Jehovah (YHWH) [46]

The people drink, winding on their way,
drinking with prone mouth,
Jehovah (YHWH) gives them drink again and again. [39]

The people sore thirst, drink vehemently.
They quaff the water-spring without pause, ever drinking.
Reprobate beside the gushing well-spring. [58]

The Book of Exodus also record this in Exodus 17:6.

Despite God's ample and miraculous provisions for them, the Israelites remained reprobate in their attitude, refusing either to thank God or trust in His continuing provision for their daily needs!

Another inscription in the Sinai records that the Israelites' succumbed to gluttony in eating the quails which God miraculously provided at a place called Kibroth-hattaavah.

Despite God's daily provision of manna, the Israelites rebelled against the Lord and Moses by complaining about the sameness of food. This rebellion unleashed the wrath of God on their sinfulness. He sent a massive flock of quail to provide meat.

Rather than gratefully accept this as a gift from God, the Israelites greedily stuffed their mouths with the quail. Many died there in the plague of gluttony.

The inscription:

The people have drink to satiety. In crowds the swillFlesh they strip from the bone, mangling it.
Replete with food, they are obstreperous.
Surfeited, they cram themselves; clamoring, they vomit.
They people are drinking water to repletion.
They tribes, weeping for the dead, cry aloud with downcast eyes.
The dove mourns, devoured by grief.
The hungry ass kicketh: the tempted men, brought to destruction, perish.
Apostasy from the faith leads them to the tomb. [28]

Devouring flesh ravenously, drinking wine greedily
Dancing, shouting, they play.
Congregating on all sides to ensnare them,
The people voraciously devour the quails.
Binding the bow against them, bringing them down.
Eagerly and enormously eating the half raw flesh,
The pilgrims become plague-stricken. [34]

Moses gives us this account in Numbers 11:31-33. The next statement by Moses recorded in Numbers 11:34 gives the location where this event occurred: the very same place where the inscription was discovered over fifteen centuries later.

In 1761, the German explorer Barthold Niebuhr (Voyage en Arabie, tom. I, p. 191) discovered an extensive ruined cemetery with carved inscriptions and engravings of quail, standing, flying and apparently, even trussed and cooked, on the tombs and within a sepulcher on top of an inaccessible mountain in Sinai called Sarbut-el-Khadem. The

Byzantine monk Cosmas Indicopleustes had previously recorded his discovery of these graves in A.D. 535

Today in our quest to demonstrate the scientific accuracy of the Bible, we're going to explore Bible verses.

Critics of the Bible falsely suggested that the Bible stated the earth was flat because of the biblical expression, "the four corners of the earth" (Isaiah 11:12; Rev. 7:1), like writers actually believed in a flat earth. However, this phrase was simply a colloquial expression. It is still used by educated individuals to indicate either the whole earth or the four extremities of the globe from a central position.

God inspired the prophet Isaiah to reveal that our planet was a globe, knowledge that was far in advance of what the men in that day knew. "It is he that sitteth upon the circle of the earth, and the inhabitants thereof are as grasshoppers; that stretcheth out the heavens as a curtain, and spreadeth them out as a tent to dwell in" (Isaiah 40:22) This expression "the circle of the earth" clearly describes the earth as a sphere or globe!

The ancient pagans, who were contemporary with Job, believed that the earth was balanced on the back of an elephant that rested on the back of a turtle. Other Pagans believed that the mythological hero Atlas carried the earth on his shoulder.

While as recently as a century ago scientist believed that the earth and stars were supported by some kind of ether. However, four thousand years ago, Job was inspired by God to correctly declare that God "He hangs the earth on nothing"(Job 26:7).

Another astonishing discovery by astronomers recently revealed that the area to the north of the axis of our earth toward the polar star is almost empty of stars in contrast to the other directions. There are far more distant stars in every other direction from our earth than in the area to the far north of our planet. As Job reported, "He stretches out the north over empty space" (Job 26:7).

Mitchell Waldrop wrote: "The recently announced 'hole in space', a 300 million-light-year gap in the distribution of galaxies, has taken cosmologists by surprise...But three very deep core samples in the Northern Hemisphere, lying in the general direction of the constellation Bootes, showed striking gaps in the red shift distribution. [Mitchell Waldrop, "Delving the Hole in Space," Science magazine, Nov. 27, 1981].

The gospel writer Luke described the coming of Christ in the daytime as follows: "Even thus shall it be in the day when the Son of man is revealed." However, several verses later, Luke described the same event by declaring that Christ will come in the night: "I tell you, in that night there shall be two men in one bed; the one shall be taken, and the other shall be left" (Luke 17:34).

In that era it must have seemed contradictory. However, now we understand that, on whatever day Christ returns, it will be a daytime event for those on one side of the globe while the event will occur during the night for those living on the other side of the planet!

In the Book of Amos we read about the seven stars in the constellation known as Pleiades. The King James Version says: "Seek him that maketh the seven stars and Orion" (Amos 5:8 [KJV]). The King James Version translators confirmed that Amos' original Hebrew statement about "the seven stars" referred to the constellation Pleiades. However, modern translators render this verse as, "He made the Pleiades and Orion" (Amos 5:8 [NKJV]) Early translators were puzzled by this verse because there were only six stars that could be seen by the naked eye in the constellation Pleiades. Now, modern telescopes have revealed the existence of a seventh star in Pleiades; it is so dim only a telescope can detect it! Amos knew it 2500 years ago!

"In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth" (Genesis 1:1). This statement revealed that God created our earth and the universe in a single moment of time. However, Genesis also reveals God's purpose: "Then God blessed them, and God said to them, 'Be fruitful and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it; have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over every living thing that moves on the earth'" (Genesis 1:28)

Today we are going to continue our quest to explore the scientific evidence that the Bible is accurate, by looking at the creation of the universe,

The Book of Genesis begins with the words, "God created the heaven and the earth." Until 1950, most scientists believed in some variation of the "steady state theory," which suggested that the universe had always existed as we observe it today.

Today, virtually all scientists accept some variation of the "Big Bang Theory" which suggests the whole universe came into existence at a particular point of time, when an incredibly dense mass of matter exploded, forming all of the stars, galaxies and planets we witness today.

Dr. P. Dirac, a Nobel Prize winner from Cambridge University, wrote: "It seems certain that there was a definite time of creation." Until quite recently, the word creation was never written or spoken by scientists with approval. Then, a scientific article in the 1982 issue of Physics Letters, an international journal of physics, contained an article by Dr. A. Vilenkin which was titled "Creation of the Universe from Nothing."

The Lord challenged Abraham to count the stars to demonstrate the awesome number that He had created by his supernatural power. "Look toward heaven, and count the stars if you are able to number them" (Genesis 15:5). The unaided eye can see and count about 1029 stars. With a pair of binoculars or inexpensive telescope you can see over 3,300 stars. Modern telescopes allow us to view over 200 million stars in our own galaxy called the Milky Way. (As late as 1915 astronomers believed that our galaxy composed the entire universe).

The in 1925, the great astronomer Edwin Hubble created a new telescope that proved the universe contained as many galaxies outside our galaxy as there were stars inside our home galaxy!

During the last century very powerful telescopes revealed the known universe contains over ten billion...with a B...galaxies like our Milky Way. However, in the last ten years scientists using the Hubble Telescope, have focused on a tiny point in space so small that it is equal to focusing your eye on an area the size of a grain of sand held at arms length.

After intense study astronomers determined that this spot contained an additional 1,500 galaxies, each the size of our Milky Way. They were astonished to find that the universe is more than five times larger than they thought.

They now know that the known universe contains more than fifty billion...again with a B...galaxies containing more 200 million stars each...millions of trillions of miles in every direction!

In 1980, the astronomer Professor Herman Bondi declared the total failure of modern science to account for the universe. (Herman Bondi, New Scientist, Nov. 21, 1980).

Another great astronomer, Sir Harold Jeffreys, wrote, "To sum up, I think that all suggested accounts of the origin of the solar system are subject to serious objection. The conclusion in the present state of the subject would be that the system cannot exist" (Harold Jeffreys, The Earth: Its Origin, History, and Physical Constitution [Cambridge: England: University Press, 1970], p.359.

In other words, Professor Jeffreys admitted that none of the atheistic theories can account for the universe as it exists.

The Bible declares that God separated the waters below from the waters that were above (in the heavens): "And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters. And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament: and it was so" (Genesis 1:6-7)

This statement declares that God created a large amount of water which He placed in the heavens or outer space. The existence of water in space seemed improbable to scientists until quite recently. Further studies have proven that massive amounts of water do exist in space. Because of extreme temperatures, the waters in space are frozen into permanent ice. We now know that the huge comets traveling through our solar system, are composed of massive amounts of ice.

The latest scientific research has revealed that massive amounts of ice also exist at the outer edge of our solar system. The Ort Cloud at the edge of our solar system is a vast region of space that is estimated to hold as many as a trillion large comets composed of ice and rock. The oceans on earth pale in comparison to the amount of water in space!

A passage in Job also refers to the ice and frost in the heavens: "Hath the rain a father? Or who hath begotten the drops of dew? Out of whose womb came the ice? And the hoary frost of heaven, who hath gathered it? The waters are hid as with a stone, and the face of the deep is frozen. Canst thou bind the sweet influence of Pleiades, or loose the bands of Orion?" (Job 38:28-31)

by Bonnie Calhoun

Today we shall continue studying the complexity of weather patterns stated in the bible.

King Solomon described the complex climatic circular wind patterns that determine the weather throughout the globe. "The wind whirls about continually, and comes again on its circuit" (Ecclesiastes 1:6) How could Solomon have known three thousand years ago that the planetary winds followed a circular pattern from south to north and south again?

Job speaks of God controlling the weather: "For He looketh to the ends of the earth, and seeth under the whole heaven; To establish a weight for the wind, and apportion the waters by measure." (Job 28:24-25)

In this intriguing statement the Bible reveals that the winds are governed by their weight, a fact that scientists have only determined in the last century. How could Job have known that the air and the wind patterns are governed by their actual weight? Meteorologists have found that the relative weights of the wind and water greatly determine the weather patterns.

This passage also reveals a profound appreciation of the fact that there is a scientific connection between lightening, thunder, and the triggering of rainfall. Apparently, a slight change in the electrical charge within a cloud is one of the key factors that causes microscopic water droplets in the clouds to join with other droplets until they are heavy enough to fall to earth.

In addition (the technical explanation will curl your hair...LOL) but we know that an electrical charge in a cloud sends a leader stroke to the ground. A millisecond later a more powerful stroke returns to the cloud on the same path. The air in this channel is superheated, and expanding outward, it creates thunder!

Job's description, "He made a law for the rain and a path for the thunderbolt" (Job 28:26) is startling in its accuracy. No human could have known this in ancient times without divine revelation by God.

King David, the writer of Psalms, refers mysteriously to "the paths of the seas." He wrote, "The fowl of the air, and the fish of the sea, and whatsoever passeth through the paths of the seas" (Psalm 8:8). It wasn't until 1786 that Benjamin Franklin published the information he gleaned from conversations with ocean-going captains that huge currents such as the Gulf Stream ran like deep rivers far beneath the surface of the Atlantic Ocean.

The massive Gulf Stream carries more that five thousand times as much water as the great Mississippi River. Scientists have discovered that the Gulf Stream is only a small part of an enormous "gyre," a huge thirteen-thousand-mile current of water circling the Atlantic Ocean. They have recently discovered that the Pacific Ocean has its own "Black Current" gyre as well!

In another passage Job referred to deep springs of water at the bottom of the ocean. "Have you entered the springs of the sea? Or have you walked in search of the depths?" (Job 38:16) In this verse the Bible refers to the existence of springs of water flowing beneath the depths of the sea.

It is only in the last thirty years that underwater exploration of the ocean depths has revealed a phenomenon of numerous huge springs of fresh water pouring out of the ocean floor. The Book of Job also contains questions that suggest a level of knowledge that would be impossible for a human writer living in the Middle Eat during ancient times.

For example, Job refers to deep oceans whose surface waters are frozen hard like a stone: "From whose womb comes the ice? And the frost of heaven, who gives it birth? The waters harden like a stone, And the surface of the deep is frozen" (Job 38: 29-30).

A question to ponder until we meet again next week....How could someone like Job, living in the area of Saudi Arabia in ancient times, have known about the Artic ice caps?