Appendices

Appendix – A

Key Words/Phrases covered:

Tree of Life = Wisdom and Understanding
Heavens = thoughts and ways of God
Earth = thoughts and ways of man
Rain = Doctrine
Small rain = Gods speech upon tender herb
The showers = Gods speech upon the grass
Grass = the glory of man (man’s own wisdom and understanding)
Doctrine = Jesus teaching the multitude by parables
Brethren = the prophets, fellowservants
Parable = Uttering dark sayings of old

Parable of Sower of Seed:

• Sower = Son of man
• The Seed = now the parable is this, the seed is the word of God
• the seed falls = the heart receives a word from heaven; the heart hears the word of the kingdom of heaven
• By the way side = hears, does not understand the word.
• Stony places = hears the word, receives it with joy, but because of tribulation and persecution and lacks root (truth in-self), will go into offense against the truth.
• Among Thorns = hears the word and begins to bear fruit. However, due to cares of this life, the fruit does not go into perfection
• Good Ground= hears the word and understands it and bears fruit unto perfection.

Appendix – B

The History of the Timeline of Bible Translation

This English Bible History Article & Timeline is ©2002 by author & editor: John L. Jeffcoat III. Special thanks are also given to Dr. Craig H. Lampe for his valuable contributions to the text. This page may be freely reproduced or quoted, in whole or in part, in print or electronically, under the one condition that prominent credit must be given to “WWW.GREATSITE.COM” as the source.

Appendix – C

Ancient manuscripts discovered confirm that the spiritual books we are presently handing are truly from the Spirit of Truth.

The following “Origin of the Bible” was extracted from web page www.allabouttruth.org.

Origin of the Bible – The Truth about Translations

To many, the origin of the Bible can be summed-up as follows: “A mere translation of a translation of an interpretation of an oral tradition” – and therefore, a book with no credibility or connection to the original texts. Actually, the foregoing statement is a common misunderstanding. Translations such as the King James Version are derived from existing copies of ancient manuscripts such as the Hebrew Masoretic Text (Old Testament) and the Greek Textus Receptus (New Testament), and are not translations of texts translated from other interpretations. The primary differences between today’s Bible translations are merely related to how translators interpret a word or sentence from the original language of the text source (Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek).

Origin of the Bible – The Reliability of Ancient Manuscripts

Another challenge against the origin of the Bible is the reliability of the manuscripts from which today’s Bibles are translated. Remarkably, there is widespread evidence for absolute reliability. There are more than 14,000 existing Old Testament manuscripts and fragments copied throughout the Middle East, Mediterranean and European regions that agree dramatically with each other. In addition, these texts agree with the Septuagint version of the Old Testament, which was translated from Hebrew to Greek some time during the 3rd century BC. The Dead Sea Scrolls, discovered in Israel in the 1940’s and 50’s, also provide phenomenal evidence for the reliability of the ancient transmission of the Jewish Scriptures (Old Testament). The Hebrew scribes who copied the Jewish Scriptures dedicated their lives to preserving the accuracy of the holy books. These scribes went to phenomenal lengths to insure manuscript reliability. They were highly trained and meticulously observed, counting every letter, word and paragraph against master scrolls. A single error would require the immediate destruction of the entire text.

The manuscript evidence for the New Testament is also dramatic, with over 5,300 known copies and fragments in the original Greek, nearly 800 of which were copied before 1000 AD. Some manuscript texts date to the early second and third centuries, with the time between the original autographs and our earliest existing copies being a remarkably short 60 years.

Appendix – D

The oldest Greek text of the book of John

DESCRIPTION
Language: Greek
Medium: papyrus
Size: 3.5 inches long
2.5 inches wide
Length: 7 lines on each side
Approximate Date: c. 125–150 CE
Place of Discovery: Egypt
Date of Discovery/
Acquisition: 1920
Acquirer: Bernard P. Grenfell
Current Location: John Rylands Library
Manchester, England
Inventory Number: Rylands Greek Papyrus 457
Manuscript Number: P52
Manuscript Family: Alexandrian
Greek text found in 125-150 AD of the book of John 8:31-33

Appendix – E

Although the writings known as the Apocrypha are often not included in Protestant Bibles, due to the fact that these ancient texts came to us in Greek (like the New Testament) and later Latin but not in Scriptural Hebrew. Their rank in terms of authority is thus deuterocanonical, or second level. The fact is, while Anglo-American fundamentalists today reject their canonicity, they were translated and included in the original King James Bible of 1611, and is sometimes overviewed in Bible College or Seminary classes for historical background value. Having said this, we offer them here in faithfulness to the 1611 original.

Apocrypha: King James Bible

• Additions to Daniel
• Judith
• Esdras
• Additions to Esther
• Susanna
• 2 Maccabees
• 4 Ezra
• Prayer of Manassheh
• Sirach
• Wisdom of Solomon
• Baruch (included Epistle of Jeremiah)
• 1 Maccabees
• Tobitv
  Bel

Appendix – F

Directory of books as looked in the original Authorized King James Version of 1611.

{BOOKS and Quantity of Chapters}

The Books called Apocrypha.

The Books of the New Testament.