Author: mdmeyer

I found this section of class to be particularly interesting. I knew that there were many shared parts of the Bible but never knew they were almost exact copies. I found the reading about Q to be helpful in explaining how information was shared. I really liked the science/theory behind how scholars figure out which book was written first and how Luke and Matthew “copied” information from Mark. It amazes me how much research and work is put into figuring out which gospel was written first. I wouldn’t even know where to start when trying to figure out the order of gospels.

Most of what we talked about in class I was familiar with. A few years back during a Christmas Eve service, our Pastor discussed what most people recall of the birth of Jesus Christ. It was interesting hearing what the story is in our head in comparison to the actual Scripture. He even spoke about how our nativity/manger scenes that are put up during Christmas are biblically wrong. It was interesting to go over this in class. When people ask me why I believe that Jesus Christ is the savior, I always tell them the birth of Jesus. Why would a powerful king want to kill a baby? What would cause a ruler to be feared over a two year old? He went as far as to kill any two year old. I think this really puts things into perspective when people try to tell me Jesus was just a normal person. What normal person., well a baby in this case, scares a leader that much?

In class we discussed the book of Psalms. As an individual that grew up going to church, Sunday school, etc. I never fully realized that these were actually songs. I’m not sure if I wasn’t paying attention during Sunday school (I tend to space off during church or fall asleep) or why I never picked up on it. You can easily read the passages as just passages. As mentioned in class and by a few other blog posts, it would be a very cool experience to see how these passages were sang or how they were chanted. I was also very surprised with how many Psalms are in popular music. It never occurred to me that these lyrics were actually Biblical and some of these songs I know! I never knew how much the Bible even influences music.

In class we discussed slavery within the Bible. Many people seem shocked when realizing that even the Bible speaks and shows slavery throughout history. An important part that I’m glad was brought up was the thought of how slavery was most likely more indentured servantry rather than colonized slavery. As can be seen through the past within the United States, slavery was ownership. Slaves were bought and sold. They were treated as farm animals. The Bible is most likely talking about repaying debts with servantry. I enjoyed the conversation that we had about how people would pay their debts. You can’t just kill someone so what do you? I didn’t realize that people would give their child to work as a slave/indentured servant if they needed the money to survive. This was very interesting and sad to me.

Hello Everyone! My name is Matthew Meyer. I am a sophomore studying to become a pharmacist. I’m from Greenwood Indiana, which is about thirty minutes south of campus. My primary reason for taking this course was for the Text and Ideas requirement but I was also curious about the Bible from other’s prospectives.

I would describe the Bible as a book of books used as the holy writings for Christianity. It contains a new and old testament. The books in the Bible are written from a range of people from a range of time periods. Im not sure who decided on the published contents but I have heard (this could be totally made up) that there are a lot of books that did not make it into the Bible. 

Using google to search “ What is a bible” the first response I get is a dictionary definition of the bible. Following that in order of how they appear I get Wikipedia, biblica.com, bethinking.org, billygraham.org and finally a section of recommended videos from YouTube. Regarding their credibility, in my personal opinion Wikipedia is the most credible out of all the results on the first page. Wikipedia is normally seen as very unreliable because anyone can edit pages. I find it to be reliable because almost everything is cited and I can follow where the author is getting their information. I also know that many moderators and administrators will contact an individual who edits a Wikipedia page and asks them more questions to see if their change is credible.