Month: August 2020

Hi everyone, I’m Luke Barath.  I’m a freshman here at Butler and dual majoring in Vocal Performance and Music Education.  Mainly, I am taking this course because it fills my TI credit needed.  However, I also wanted to take it because my knowledge on the bible is very limited and I have always been interested in learning more.

Like I said, I have very little experience or background involving the bible.  Growing up I never really went to church and never actively practiced a religion.  I do know that it is a sacred text to many and a book including many moral stories and life lessons.  I do know the very popular tales of course, such as Noah’s Ark, Moses, etc.  One thing that fascinates me most about the bible though is how it helps bring millions of people around the world together, even if those people interpret different passages or parts of it differently.

When searching up “What is a bible”, there is plenty of information to behold, but I am not sure how much is credible and how much is not.  For example, one of the first links that is brought up is from Wikipedia, which anyone can edit.  The first thing to pop up, however, is the dictionary definition of the bible, stating “the Christian scriptures, consisting of the Old and New Testaments.”  That’s what it physically is, I suppose, but not a very deep answer.  Upon scanning the rest of the results, none of the websites seemed to be scholarly or professional, none of these first links that pop up are super reliable upon first glance

Hello, I am Drew Peters and I am a sophomore, majoring in Biochemistry. I am taking this course because of two main reasons: I am a Christian and am very interested in all the different viewpoints and angles that people see the Bible as compared to my viewpoint, and it fulfills my required TI credit for Core Curriculum.

How I would describe a Bible from my own viewpoint would be as multiple books written and influenced by God telling one big story. Many people don’t know what to think of the Bible because of all the stories in it that seem quite unrealistic, and they wonder if it is filled of fictional stories or historical documents. Although it is God’s Word to me as a Christian, I think that it is a lot more to other people, whether it be a historical document or whether it tells people good life lessons. Whatever it may be, I am looking forward to learning more about it.

I believe, like I said earlier, that God was the ultimate influencer and author of the Bible, even though God used many different people to write it out. Some main authors that God used are Moses, David, Paul, and many others. The Old Testament was written before the birth of Jesus, and the New Testament was written after the death of Jesus. There are definitely a ton of other pieces I am missing, and I hope to find those soon.

When I search, “what is a Bible?” it brings up a lot of different answers, and the main ones seemed to be that it is the holy scripture of Christianity, a collection of ideas about God, or even a guide to living life to the full and a road map for the journey of life. One would know if these sources offer reliable and credible information by first looking at the URL. Most of these sites end in “.com” or “.org,” so this shows that they are not academic or scholarly articles, which would be ideal to find reliable information. You would then find information of the author and see the type and the amount of education he or she has had.