The Bible TI251 Fall 2020

Hi! My name is Izzi Jordan. I am a sophomore at Butler with a major in health sciences and a minor in chemistry. I am from Las Vegas, Nevada (I know very exciting). I chose to come to Butler because I have a lot of family in Indiana, so it’s kind of a home away from home. I went to private Lutheran middle and high school, where I was required to take Faith classes every year and to attend weekly chapels, so that is where my interest in the Bible began. 

I would say the Bible is a compilation of the holy word. It has many stories that are meant to teach people about God and some historical events. The Bible is full of both law and gospel through stories told by Jesus himself and parables written to teach people. 

I don’t know a lot about the history of the Bible, but I do know that the process of canonization was very long. I know that it took many years and a lot of church leaders to determine which books should be in the Bible. 

If I google, “What is the Bible?” many Wikipedia articles and youtube videos come up. I know that not all of the sources are necessarily reliable. I would choose a reliable source by researching the author’s background in religious study. I would hope that someone sharing information on the Bible or any source would have a strong background in that specific subject. I would also probably choose to look at databases or google scholar if I was looking for an academic article on the Bible. 

Hello, my name is Justin Walthers and I’m a sophomore double majoring in Actuarial Science and Statistics. I’m from Herscher, Illinois, which is a really small town about an hour and a half south of Chicago. I decided to take this class for the TI requirement, but also because I’m interested in the history of the Bible.

I would describe a Bible as a collection of writings that contains everything about a specific religion. It would mainly describe all of the beliefs of the religion, and how someone that practices this religion should live their life.

I believe that a Bible would be written by many people throughout many years who thought they were inspired to write about their experiences or ideas of a certain religion. These collection of writings then likely would have been put together by historians who have greatly researched the religion.

When I google “What is a Bible?” many websites, like Wikipedia, come up. Youtube videos also come up. In order for me to tell if the information is credible I would want to know who wrote it, and I would also like to see where all of their information came from.

Hi everyone! My name is Sabrina Pasley and I am a junior at Butler. I am double majoring in biology and religion with a chemistry minor. I have not narrowed it down on what I would like to do after I finish undergraduate school, which I should probably start working on! Decisions are not my strong suit however, especially when the rest of my life depends on it!

Some things that are important to me are my family, my friends, and my plants. I have a 1-year-old nephew who lights up my world! I’m an avid plant mom also so if you ever want to talk plants hit me up.

I am taking this course not only to fulfill my TI credit, but it also goes toward my religion major. I started my college career as only a biology major, added a religion minor in my second semester of first-year, and become a double major in my sophomore year. I chose to add my religion major due to wanting a career in healthcare. I thought if I studied different religions during my undergraduate years, it would help me better care for all of my patients in my future.

I have very limited knowledge of the Bible. I grew up Roman Catholic, but stopped attending Sunday School after third grade and don’t really practice much anymore. Most of the knowledge I have comes from my first-year seminar, Faith, Doubt, and Reason, and my previous religion course I took, Theology from the Margins. I am excited to gain more information on it though!

Hi! I’m Megan Kaster, I’m a freshman and majoring in pharmacy. I’m taking this course, first off, because I need my TI requirement, but second off, I want to keep learning about my faith. I’ve been studying the Catholic faith my whole life and I want to keep that going.
To me the Bible is almost like a text book for the Catholic faith, its what we read and study to help us become better people and live the way Jesus wants us to. However, there are many things in the Bible that people don’t agree with. I don’t agree with some things that the Catholic Church teaches, because the people in the church aren’t perfect, and they can tend to interoperate things incorrectly.
The authors of the Bible is many people. For the Old Testament, it was, for many years, verbally passed down until people started to learn how to read and write. For the New Testament, it was many of Jesus’ Apostles and disciples that wrote the books down.
If you look up on google “the Bible” the first result is Wikipedia, then the next few are sites where you can buy a copy. I don’t find these sources reliable, because the internet is full of bias, and the bible can mean a thousand of different ways to every one who reads it.

• My name is Jaylah DeGout and I am a 5^th year from New York City majoring in Computer Engineering and Computer Science. I’m taking this course mainly to fill my TI requirement so that I can graduate this Spring. I am not personally religious at all, so I could not tell you the last time I even looked at the Bible, but I find learning about different religions to be pretty interesting.
• I think that a Bible in general mainly serves simply as a religious text which contains things like creation stories and a code of Ethics specific to that religion, in the form of stories.
• I have no idea who wrote the Bible, I just always assumed it was some kind of clergy.
• Generally, it seems like everything that appeared in the search results was very surface level, about the kinds of things that are in the Bible, but not any of the explanations of the content.
• None of them seems like they are very reliable sources; Wikipedia was at the top, which is typical, but then I also saw some blog postings, nothing that appeared to be a scholarly article or journal.

Hello everybody! My name is Noah Brandt and I am a junior here at Butler. I’m a Music Industry Studies and Statistics dual major. I’m taking this class to fulfill the TI requirement of Butler’s Core Curriculum, but the Bible does have relevancy to some of my family. I was hoping that this class would be mainly about applying biblical texts to the modern world.

To me, the Bible is a compilation of stories and anecdotes from Jesus and his disciples. These stories outline a moral and spiritual code for people to live by in order to create a peaceful and accountable society.

I don’t know much about the Bible. I was mainly told what was in the Bible when I was little (in a church preschool) rather than reading the passages myself. Outside of the few times I went to a Christian after-school program, the Bible never had a personal connection with me. I believe that most of what is written in the Bible are compilations of writings from different authors who followed Jesus. The Bible that we know today is assembled from different translations and interpretations of these authors.

When I Googled, “What is in the Bible,” I got a lot of Wikipedia articles, YouTube videos, blog posts, and religiously affiliated websites. With all of these different sources about one book, I can understand how it can be difficult to find reliable sources about a given topic in the Bible.

Hello everyone! My name is Dominique Quiroz and I am a sophomore this year. I am in my second year of pre-pharmacy. I am from Berne, which is a super small town in northeast Indiana. My family moved to Indianapolis after I graduated high school and now I commute to Butler. I am taking this class mainly because of the TI requirement, but also out of curiosity. I was raised going to church, and my town was pretty religious. I wanted to see what I could learn about the Bible from a different perspective.

In my opinion, a Bible is a book of books. It is the Christian/Jewish scripture and provides a sort of book of advice on how to best live your lives in your religion. A Bible contains the beliefs, practices, and principles that followers should listen to.

My preconception is that the Bible was written by a bunch of different men. Their writings are “the word of God” because he worked through them so that their words were his words. At least that’s what I remember from when I went to church.

When I Googled “What is a Bible,” I got a lot of results that were religiously affiliated websites. I also got a lot of Wikipedia pages. Most of these search results were “.com” with a few “.org” results in the mix. I’m super glad that we’ll be learning about which sources can be trusted and how to tell which ones are too biased to be used in research because if I had to do research about the Bible at this point I would be pretty lost.

Hi, I’m Madeline Teal and I’m a freshman here at Butler. I’m a Multilingual major, with emphasis on Spanish, French, and Chinese. I also have an International Business minor. I’m from Atlanta, Indiana, which is a teeny tiny town about forty minutes north of campus. I’m taking this class mostly out of curiosity and cultural context for my Christian faith. 

In a general sense, the Bible is a collection of holy writings that create and fuel the Christian faith. They contain the Christian narrative on life, all the way from the creation of the world to the early church, and a way of life to keep the faith going beyond that. 

To me, the Bible is a really great source of guidance on a lot of questions I have about life. “Who made me this way?” and “What the heck do I do when I feel (fill in the blank)?” are all questions that the Bible can answer for me. I have a clear-cut path that has built-in brothers and sisters to help me along the way. 

I have always been taught that the Bible was written by God through his chosen disciples. Much like David, Mary, and other famous “chosen people” of the Bible, it’s unclear why or how he chose them, but I believe that he used them to accurately portray his wishes to man from fellow men. Since then, it has been translated many times and tweaked to fit several cultures or belief systems, but still has largely the same goal. 

When you search up “What is a Bible?” on Google, lots of websites, both historically-focused and faith-focused, offer their own explanation. Different denominations are also giving their own truth as to what the Bible means to them. What is considered reliable to one group of people may be different to another, but there are certainly many experts with different types of degrees (secular/religious, historical/modern languages, etc.) ready to help you out. Checking for some sort of consensus is going to be key, with all of the different ideas buzzing around. 

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. 

Hi, my name is Sophia Agostino and I am a sophomore from the South Bend, IN area.  I am an accounting major and planning to do an accelerated program to get my masters (MBA) in four years.  I am taking this course for two reasons, one being that it fulfills my TI requirement and the second being that I am Christian and want to continue to grow in my knowledge about the Bible.

To start off, what is the bible?  To me, it is a sacred set of scriptures or stories documented from the beginning of time, of and relating to God and Jesus.  These stories include lessons, rules, and personal experiences.  Often times these stories are also designed to help us during hard times.  They were written by people that God spoke through (mediators and some prophets) to teach the people that with Him, all things are possible; God is all knowing and all powerful.

I believe that God inspired the writing of the Bible, and it was written by people that God chose to share and write His word for generations to come.

When I look up, “What is the Bible,” the first thing that comes up is bibles that you can buy, and then there is a definition provided by the Oxford Dictionary, however it is very surface level.  There are then many pages and videos, however many of the sources do not seem very credible (Wikipedia, Got questions, etc.).  For me, this definitely brings up the question of how credible are the videos that I have been shown in my past religion classes, which I took throughout grade school and high school (Catholic schools).  I am interested to see how this course compares to an ecumenical course I took on both the Old and New Testament.