BI-441 Text and Transmission I

Did someone change the Old Testament? Learn the real story of how the Hebrew Bible was copied and kept, and help your church read its Bible with confidence, not fear.

Videos online claim that Jews deleted prophecies about Jesus, or that Christians added them. Following Text and Transmission I, this course tells the real story: the several forms of the Hebrew text before Christ, the Greek Septuagint that became the Bible of the apostles, the Masoretic Text of the Jewish scribes, and the Dead Sea Scrolls that let us see behind both. It ends with how the canons formed and how to answer a claim of corruption with facts.

What you will study

• The Hebrew text before there was one standard form
• The Septuagint: the Greek Bible of the apostles
• The Masoretes and their careful copying
• What the Dead Sea Scrolls show
• Four verses where the Hebrew and the Greek differ, and how the New Testament quotes the Greek
• Origen, the first textual critic, and the other ancient translations
• How the Old Testament canons took shape
• How scholars compare readings, and what the footnotes in your Bible mean

Course materials

• Text and Transmission I, a WWES textbook
• The Bible