All ACT books are now available at this link below

http://www.lulu.com/spotlight/actlulu

2012 Spring schedule

Please note that the March & April session of PT 2012 have been changed from March 17 to March 24 and April 14 to April 21.


Orientation: Jan 21, 5-6pm (RSVP at pt@actministry.org)

Vol 2 Sat 10am-12pm		Old Testament	Vol 3 Sat 1-3pm	New Testament
S11: Jan 28		Job	S21: Jan 28	James, Galatians
S12: Feb 25		Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song	S22: Feb 25	1, 2 Thessalonians, 1, 2 Corinthians
S13: Mar 24		Amos, Hosea, Jonah	S23: Mar 24	Romans
S14: Apr 21		Isaiah 1-39, Micah	S24: Apr 21	Colossians, Ephesians, Philemon, Philippians
S15: May 12		Isaiah 40-66	S25: May 12	1, 2 Timothy, Titus, 1, 2 Peter

Paleoanthropology, Neuroscience and the Bible

As a ministry of the Academy for Christian Thought, Project Timothy is committed to investigating the implications of scientific investigations and the Bible in support of the scriptures' authority for the Christian life.

Among our investigations of extrabiblical sources, the current advances in the fields of human origins (paleoanthropology, molecular biology and genetics) and human consciousness (neuroscience, neurophilosophy and cognitive studies) directly impact our interpretation of what it means to be human from a biblical perspective in the context of what we now know about the world we live in.

Just as Polo, Copernicus, Magellan, Galileo, Newton and Einstein among many others have changed the way the Church have understood the message of the Bible, God's gifts of advancing knowledge to humanity through archaeology, geology, linguistics and history have already transformed our understanding if the scriptures.

By the grace of God, I have participated in many of these fields of inquiry and most recently, in a survey of paleoanthropology in Africa and the upcoming neuroscience conference next month. It is my privileged responsibility to share what I have learned with you, members of PT and friends of ACT.

I covet your prayers for clear thinking and integrity as I rebuild my own personal apologetic for the Christian faith in the Bible and share it with you. My goal is not to insist that you agree with all my conclusions, but that you permit me to assess and test your arguments in defense of your convictions within a theological safe space. I desire that you learn to develop your own apologetic and share in the glorious joy of knowing our Lord and God despite the centuries of doctrinal cobwebs that have come to obscure the beauty of the Gospel.

Next year, I will offer three 90-minute seminars in Canonization: How the Bible Came To Be at the American Bible Society. In the Fall, I plan to create a special intensive course in conjunction with a book I will write and publish.

In addition, we will also offer 3 seminars, Hinduism, Buddhism and Islam, with visits to the Metropolitan Museum to the respective galleries.

Please look out for these announcements at the PT facebook page.

Blessings,

Ron and the ACT Team

Ron's ACT Seminar Schedule for San Diego, Singapore & Malaysia, August 2011

As you may well know, Ron is off on a whirl-wind seminar tour, stopping in San Diego, Singapore and Malaysia. Here is an overview of the seminars he has been and will be teaching:


Reverend Dr. Ron Choong's Speaking Itinerary in August
Aug 1, 'Who Wrote the Bible? (Canonization)' seminar @ San Diego International Christian Church


Aug 4, 'Neurotheology of Moral Cognition: Implications for Christology, Soteriology & Eschatology' seminar @ Trinity Theologiral College, Singapore


Aug 4, 'God's 2 Books: Scripture and Science' seminar @ Graduate Christian Fellowship (GCF), Singapore


Aug 11, 7.30pm: 'Paideia-Spiritual Formation of the Mind' seminar @ Seminari Theoloji Malaysia


Aug 12, 8.30pm: 'Paideia-Spiritual Formation of the Mind' seminar @ Petaling Jaya Evangelical Free Church


Aug 13, 10am: 'The 2 Books of God' seminar @ Petaling Jaya Evangelical Free Church


Aug 13, 2pm: 'Buddhism & Hinduism' seminar @ Petaling Jaya Evangelical Free Church


Aug 14, 8.30am & 11am: Sunday Services @ Petaling Jaya Evangelical Free Church


Aug 16, 8pm: 'Paradox of Atheism: It's Unbelievable what an Unbeliever has to Believe to be an Unbeliever' seminar @ City Harvest Subang


Aug 17, 8pm: 'Is Biblical Prophecy Fortune-Telling' seminar @ City Harvest Subang


Aug 18, 8pm: 'The Question of Origins' seminar @ Petaling Jaya Evangelical Free Church


Aug 21, 2pm: Project Timothy Open Day @ City Harvest KL

http://bethel.academia.edu/AndreOng

http://bethel.academia.edu/AndreOng

In Memory of Uncle John

My friend, mentor, and inspiration to ministry is now with the Lord. Uncle John (Stott) passed away. We met 27 years ago in London at All Souls and 6 years later, he would commission me missionary envoy to the US, beginning my ministerial career to this day. Uncle John wanted me to give my mind to the Lord's service and despite all my excuses, he hounded me until I made the decision to leave the world of legal practice for a ministry of the mind. He generously gave me his personal endorsement and opened many doors of opportunity everywhere I went. He remembered me to others whom he had influenced and tried to keep us all in contact with each other...but we were all 'too busy'. We kept in touch during my annual visits to London and his visits to New York City. I was privileged to introduce him at the American Bible Society to pastors in New York. We last spoke a few months ago when it was already apparent that he would soon be in paradise. Although I am glad that John is no longer in pain, I am saddened, deeply saddened beyond words.

On the upcoming Buddhism and Hinduism Seminar on June 19th

Here are some thoughts about Hinduism and Buddhism. Both are concerned with satisfying karmic debt. The Hindu quest for the right guru and the Buddhist quest to be awakened for parinirvana, assume no relationship between creator and creation.

The Christian Gospel announces the stunning news that at a moment in geohistory, God became man to reconcile man to God. The historicity of the incarnation of Christ makes the Gospel uniquely relevant to the urgent issues of a scientific age. It is this reality that makes the Christian Gospel worthy of consideration for both Hindus and Buddhists.

My personal conviction is that the Christian faith embodies revelatory truths rooted in geohistorical events that culminated in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus, the Christ. Such a belief is neither verifiable nor falsifiable by any discipline of human inquiry.

Christianity is a faith that seeks understanding and not a faith that results from understanding. Thus, the primary impulse to believe in the metaphysical must have been hard-wired in our minds. Indeed, contemporary neuropsychology suggests that the human brain is evolved for religious cognition. Our minds are optimized to interpret metaphysical signals that machines and our natural senses are unable to measure.  Thus, belief in God finds corroborative support in our interpreted experience of the divine. This universal desire to make sense of our experience as human beings, who long to understand more than we know, marks us as the religious animal.

One of the most important questions Christians may ask of its own tradition is, “Did God reveal himself outside the Judeo-Christian cone-of-experience?” How can we account for the fate of the 99+% of humans who ever lived, and who died without having heard the Gospel because they existed outside the geohistory of the biblical faith? Does being born in the wrong time or wrong place doom one to damnation? How does the limited cone of experience generated by any religion, say Christianity, with its focus on Palestine from c.1500 BC to AD 30, count as a universal revelation of God to creation?

Another area worth observing is the effort made by many Buddhist communities to engage the maturing disciplines of the neurosciences. Both Hinduism and Buddhism have long been concerned with the nature of human consciousness  and its collateral effects on personality, emotions and memory. The sense of a unified consciousness that we all experience (unless we suffer from schizophrenia, multiple-personalities or other forms of memorial dementia) as colonies of trillions of individual cells, let alone the mitochondrial cells within our somatic ones, cannot be readily explained scientifically. Indeed, in consciousness studies, neurotheology is as much a resource as the philosophy of mind and the neurosciences. The achievement of trance in Hindu rituals and altered states of consciousness in Buddhist meditation remain little understood by modern science and beyond the scrutiny of even powerful machines such as functional MRIs. There is much debate concerning the veracity of interpretations of what these machines measure. Do they measure the cause or the effects of such meditations and mind-controls? Are there Christian analogues practiced by medieval mystics, long forgotten when the Church adopted modern philosophy in its theological doctrines? Can an interdisciplinary approach yield a more holistic understanding of what these ancient religions seek to convey?

These and other such questions are well beyond the scope of this introduction. But I hope to convey the immense amount of interesting work that remains to be labored over by investigators and practitioners of these living faiths. The Christian world ought not to fall behind in understanding how we think and what transpires when our brains are traumatized by physical or psychological stimuli. As we learn to delay our demise and live longer, the essence of what it means to be human, to be alive and to prepare for death takes on new dimensions of urgency.

What we can begin to answer is how the Gospel of Jesus Christ can be relevant to a Hindu or a Buddhist seeking alternatives or simply curious about what other faiths of the Axial Age have produced. Although the basic quest of the Hindus and Buddhists reflects those of other faiths, only the Gospel of Jesus expressly claims a divine will to reconcile us to our maker.

I hope this introduction to the great wisdom beliefs of Hinduism and Buddhism has helped you begin to think through a set of worldviews shared by a quarter of the human race.

Perhaps … if the Buddha met the Christ,
there might not have been a need for Buddhism at all.

May PT2 Reading: ISAIAH 40-66

Hey Folks! if you are in the PT2 NYC Group, there has been a mistake on the ACT website and the PT blog.

 We are NOT reading Nahum, Zephaniah, and Habakkuk, but are reading Isaiah 40-66 for May. Please note!

April Self-Diagnostic Quiz

Hey All!

The April Self-Diagnostic Quiz is now online for Leviticus-Numbers and for Micah-Isaiah 1-39. This month, we will do the quiz a bit differently. There are no answer keys below the quizzes. Instead, you must send your completed quiz to me, either in an email document or a word document, and I will send you back the answer key. You can post it to projecttimothy.online@gmail.com.


Enjoy!
Harrigan

Below is a sample Q&A Submitted by Julie Toh of Australia from PT Online and some feedback. Julie has offered to share her Q&A submission in the hopes that we all might sharpen our exegetical and hermeneutic skills! Thanks Julie! Feedback is below Julie's response in GREEN.

-----------------------------------------------------------

Exodus Question March 2011: 

Read chapters 4, 7-11, and 14. The primary function of the 10 plagues was so that the Egyptians will know who God is. What does it mean that Pharaoh hardened his heart(8:15, 32; 9:34), Pharaoh’s heart became hardened (7:13, 22; 8:19; 9:7, 35) and God hardened Pharaoh’s heart (4:21; 7:3; 9:12; 10:1, 20, 27; 11:10; 14:4, 8)? When the Lord hardened Pharaoh’s heart, does this absolve Pharaoh for his actions? Will God harden our hearts and what does it mean?(Exegesis) If God can harden our hearts, does this mean that we ought not be blamed for our unbelief? What lesson can we draw from this with respect to the nature of habits of the sinful heart?(Hermeneutics)

 

 

Context

 

Hardening of Pharaoh's heart was necessary for God's power to be displayed and shown to all.

Take a moment to consider "context"--the context is what is going on at the time. The context might be that Pharaoh refused to let Moses and his people go into the desert, or that he refused even after numerous experiences of God's plagues. What you are offering above is a kind of exegetical reading of the meaning of the text. We are all prone to jump to this. Rather, helping to identify the context, the history, the events before we offer our exegetical understanding of the text will help us to give a more responsible exegesis.  Here might be some examples of context:

• The Israelites are in Egypt, having lived there for 430 years.
• The Egyptians had a history of invading powers, such as the Hyksos, but are now ruling the land.
• Egypt is under the rulership of the son of the Pharaoh in power at the time of Moses’ youth.
• The Israelites are still under and aware of the Abrahamic covenant.  It is unclear if they are still living a life submitted to the Abrahamic covenant.
• The Israelites are under slavery, Pharaoh is fearful of their growing numbers (Exodus 1)

Exegesis

Pharaoh hardened his heart may mean that he had a chance to believe as miracles were performed in front of him and, time and time again, when the plagues became unbearable that he would believe and when the plague was removed that he would change his mind and in a sense, "talked" himself into disbelieving and caused his own heart to build a wall between God and him. This went on and on until this wall became unpenetrable that it is written that the Lord hardened Pharaoh's heart. This does not absolve Pharaoh for his actions as he was given many chances to make the right choice. 

 Can you give me salient moments from the text itself (even just referenced by verse) of how you build 

 this exegetical understanding? 

Yes God may harden our hearts if necessary and it may mean that there's something we need to learn that is happening in front of us.   

This last sentence here is more of a hermeneutic point than an exegetical one. A distinct way that we can distinguish between the act of exegesis is in the pronouns. Are we talking about "them"--those in the past who wrote and were reading and making sense of the text? This would be exegesis. Or are we talking about "us"--how we make sense today of what was written about (or orally passed down) in the past? This would be hermeneutics. Another way to think of this is from the PT Handbook, "Apply yourself totally to the text (exegesis) and apply the text totally to your self (hermeneutics).

Hermeneutics
Yes even though God may harden our hearts, we do still have a choice/freedom to obey Him. When we disobey Him, usually the consequences of our sinful nature will catch up to us. In the end, everyone does get judged. The lesson we can draw from this is to always take heed of what God is telling us and obey.

This is a good hermeneutic in that it flows from your exegesis. However, be careful not to say more in your hermeneutics that you were able to glean from your exegesis. For example, maybe based on other passages of the bible that are familiar to you, you can say, "In the end, everyone gets judged." However, are you able to build and substantiate this hermeneutic from this particular text? One of the most important rules of hermeneutics to always keep in mind as we humbly approach each passage and its interpretation is "it cannot mean to me today what it did not mean to the writer and audience in their time. As you can see, this is why it is so important to work very hard towards a responsible, thorough exegesis.

March Self-Diagnostic Quizzes Available!

Just a reminder that the March Self-Diagnostic Quizzes respectively for Exodus and Amos/Hosea/Jonah are now available!

Remember that the quiz key is at the bottom of each quiz! Be honest with yourself and work as hard as possible to not peek! These quizzes are a great way to gauge your reading, and are good to go back to in a few months to as yourself, "How much have I retained from my reading?"

Blessings!
Harrigan
harriganmb@gmail.com

February Self-Diagnostic Quizzes Available!

Just a note to remind you that the February Self-Diagnostic Quizzes for Genesis 12-50 and Proverbs/Song of Songs/Ecclesiastes are now available!

Good luck!

Harrigan
harriganmb@gmail.com

Self-Diagnostic Quizzes Available!

Hey All!

We hope you have found this month's self-diagnostic quiz on the new tabs! Each month after the PT Live Session in NYC we will be posting these self-diagnostic quizzes online, along with the key posted on a separate page. Work as hard as you can to answer before looking at the key! The questions all come from your notes. If you have any questions, feel free to email me!

Harrigan
harriganmb@gmail.com

PS--if you have already taken the quiz, please note that in the PT.1 Genesis 1-11 quiz, there was an error that is now corrected. Question 4 should be C) We don't know for sure, NOT D) 400 years apart! Thanks!

Monthly Q&A QUESTIONS (OT & NT)

Check out the Monthly Q&A Page for this month's questions!!!

Additional Notes for PT Session 12

If you are reading Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and Song of Solomon:


Please read the notes on Job again with reference to the nature of wisdom literature. Remember, they are not Israel-specific, but the style was adapted to Israel's needs as a people with God as their king. With the establishment of the kingdom (Saul, David, Solomon), this created a tension - it was not God's will to have a human king but God allowed the people their freedom of will.

Note once again the consequences of our exercise of autonomy as the signature of biblical sin. The writers of the OT sets the stage for the conflicts that arise between God's will and God's grant of human freedom.

Appreciation for Project Timothy

From Dr. Harrigan Bowman, Ed.D. (Columbia University)

A few years ago, I began Project Timothy. At the time, I had begun to feel the desire to pursue an understanding of the word in deeper ways, but was unsure how to do this, short of seminary classes. I had experienced fruitful women’s group Bible studies where fellowship, prayer, and study were cultivated and esteemed; however, often much of our study of the Bible was done on our own through study guides and our conversation around it was reflective of our sentiments towards what we were learning and how it could be applied to our lives, or hermeneutics. I felt that I wanted a deeper, even more rigorous study of the texts of the Bible, similar to the rigor of other things I had studied more in my life, and through a friend I was introduced to PT. What more could I be looking for than a three year in-depth study of the Bible? What I came to experience, through those three years of study and subsequent year of serving as a PT tutor, was that hermeneutics—how it applies to our lives now—are often the basis of our interaction with the Bible, but that a respectful, thoughtful and humble exegesis—how it was understood by readers in its time—can offer so much more, both in the way of understanding God, our world, and ourselves, as well as applying a more honest hermeneutic. If I thought, years ago, that I was entering a “class” to “learn everything there was to know about the Bible” (not that I necessarily thought this), I would have been way off course. PT offers an abundance of reading material, challenging questions for study, and a group of others seeking a deep study of the biblical texts. But what it really offers is a challenge of learning how to learn better. PT has worked to transform not only my knowledge base of the biblical texts and historic issues surrounding the writings, but has more lastingly transformed my way of approaching a discipleship of the mind. Like all good learning, PT teaches you how much more there is to know, and in the process, offers a student a model of how, in humility and with responsibility, to approach the texts exegetically before we approach them hermeneutically. I recommend PT to all those who love to learn, who love to take risks in their learning, who love to be challenged, and who want to learn more about the incredible ways that God has given us the Bible, deeply embedded in the history, culture and humanity of its writers.

The Story of Project Timothy

The Story of Project Timothy

I was a Christian for long before I realized that I had little actual knowledge of the Bible. Oh, I learned a lot from what others told me and read about what the Bible reportedly said. But I did not have an organized way to read, let alone understand this huge book with difficult words. I tried many ‘Read the Bible in a Year’ guides. All I ended up with was either pointless guilt for not keeping up or reading without understanding. This was a frustrating and embarrassing part of my Christian life.

I did not know when the books were written, to whom they addressed, why they were written in this or that style, the significance of the possible dates of their compositions, the final forms, and their intended messages. Reading technical books was too great an obstacle – and I was a full-time Christian worker!

After graduating from seminary in 1999, I read everything I could about the art and science of exegesis and hermeneutics. Three years later, on January 2002, six international students with no academic background in biblical studies began Project Timothy.

I wanted to see if I could teach lay Christians a fresh way to read the Bible, not for memorization, but for understanding, so they could teach others. In this discipleship of the mind, Christians can engage their biblical knowledge with any field of human inquiry they encountered at work or at school.

Participants had to rewrite the editorial and Op-Ed pages of the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal with a biblical worldview. I introduced them to biblical archaeology, philology, the natural sciences, historiography and the benefits of word studies and chart/map reading. Project Timothy was the result.  (2 Timothy 4:2-5)

Most of us rarely engage in conversation about the Bible because there is no common reading schedule. Now anyone from anywhere can join a disciplined reading community that encourages thinking things through in a theological safe space. This volume combines sections on how to interpret the different genres with introductory sections on the biblical texts. We hope you will grow in your understanding of God and the Bible through Project Timothy as you learn to “be transformed by the renewing of your mind.”  (Romans 12:2)

PT affirms the transformative power of the Bible as the Spirit-inspired and authoritative Word of God for our redemption in Jesus and the reconciliation of God with creation.

Visit us at www.actministry.org

The Bible of Christianity & Christianity of the Bible

As a ministry, the Academy for Christian Thought affirms the Bible as the inspired and authoritative Word of God. The Bible is Spirit-inspired as to content and infallible as to authority for the Christian Church. The challenge is not content but responsible interpretation of a book written within the context of the authors’ geohistory (space and time), literature (writing styles or genres), philosophy (prevailing worldviews) and science (explanations for observable phenomena). We begin by distinguishing the emergence of the written Bible that shaped Christianity (canonization) and the Christian faith that informed the faithful (theology). Both Bible and Christianity began in response to an already worshipping people – in essence, the Bible came to be because of believers who worshipped God.

The Bible of Christianity

The Bible of Christianity refers to how the Bible came to be (canonization); the selection, adaptation and redaction of the books that form the Bible.

Genesis: The primeval account of the origin of the universe, of life and of humanity is followed by the ancestral account of Abraham’s migration from Mesopotamia to Canaan, where his son Isaac and grandson Jacob raised their families. During a time of famine, Jacob’s family settled in Egypt.

Exodus-Deuteronomy: Pharaoh subjected the descendants of Jacob to forced labor. At around 1300 BC, under the leadership of Moses and favored by an extraordinary series of events, they and other tribes who joined them escaped to the Sinai desert. Here these various tribes became a community with a single religious allegiance. After 40 years, they managed to enter Canaan through Transjordan from the East.

Joshua-Judges: Under the leadership of Joshua, this group, now called Israelites, crossed the Jordan River. They carried out a swift military conquest and claimed the land as their own. During this period of the Judges, they waged many battles to hold on to their captive lands as the ‘Promised Land.’

Samuel, Kings and Chronicles: Under enemy pressure, this tribal confederacy formed a single monarchy and Canaan became an Israelite nation. Following Solomon’s death, it split into the kingdoms of Ephraim and Judah. The nation of God became two kingdoms of kings. Their strategic location drew them into the Near Eastern power struggle between Egypt and Mesopotamia. By 722 BC, Ephraim fell to the Assyrians while Judah became a vassal. But by 586 BC, after Babylon wrested control from Assyria, Judah itself fell to Babylon with the collapse of Jerusalem and the destruction of its temple. The First Temple Period (960-586 BC) was over.

The prophetic books: Jeremiah, Isaiah, Ezekiel, Daniel and the twelve divine messengers announced God’s word from the 8^th to the 6^th centuries BC before the emergence of the Hebrew Bible as sacred scripture.

Ezra-Nehemiah: The Babylonian Empire gave way to the Persian Empire. The exiled Israelites returned to restore the city walls and rebuild the temple. The temple was rebuilt by 516 BC.

1, 2 Maccabees: By 332 BC, Palestine came under Greek control. Alexander’s successors continued the policy of imposing Hellenistic culture on their captives. A Seleucid ruler of Syria who inherited Alexander’s empire forced this policy on the Jewish community. This resulted in an open revolt led by the family known as the Maccabees in 168 BC.

Wisdom Literature, the Psalms, Lamentations, Ruth, and Esther provide richness to the fabric of timeless, theological narrative.

Gospels, Acts, and Revelation: John and Jesus ushered in a new age of YHWH worship. The long awaited messiah has arrived and fulfilled the expectations of ancient prophecies. But His kingdom is not of this world.

Epistles: Paul, Peter, James, John, Jude and others wrote letters that became a part of the Holy Scriptures. The revelation of God that began with the patriarchs (Abram, Isaac, and Jacob), continued with the prophets, who were succeeded by rabbis and apostles. Jesus’ resurrection and the establishment of the Church ushered in the close of the apostolic age.

Christianity of the Bible

The Christianity of the Bible is a theological account of God’s relationship with creation, with special reference to humanity through the eyes of Israel.

Israel’s story in the Bible did not with the Genesis creation account but rather, the founding of Israel in Exodus. This event first defined a People of God. Five important historical markers establish what Old Testament (OT) Israel means to New Testament (NT) Christianity.

1300 BC: The Exodus event marks the first time a concept of the “People of God” arose. Around 500 BC, Babylonian Jewish leaders wrote the history of Israel centered on the Exodus event. Several Egyptian tribes joined the Egyptian Hebrews (’Apiru) or desert nomads in a daring escape led by Moses. In the Sinai desert, they became Israel. This account of Israel’s founding was told and retold down the generations to explain how they came to be God’s people. How did the Hebrews end up as Egyptians in the first place? Genesis 12-50 was written to tell of Abram the Mesopotamian who migrated to Canaan around 2000 BC. His wandering descendents settled in Egypt. But Babylon’s creation account does not speak of Jewish Israel as God’s people. So Genesis 1-11 was written as a cosmic account of why their God in fact created the Babylonian gods. Together, Exodus, Genesis 12-50 and Genesis 1-11 were forged into the national, prehistoric and primeval accounts of Israel’s epic story.

1200 BC: The Canaan event marks the formation of a “People of Israel.” The book of Judges tells of an Israelite tribal confederacy whose battles among other Canaanite tribes led to the political need for nationality. The nationalistic aspirations were justified by a divine promise of the Promised Land to Abraham. The Prophet-Judge Samuel anointed Saul as their first king.

1000 BC: The David event marks the emergence of the “nation of Israel,” a successful nation-state.[1] The division after Solomon’s death led to the two “kingdoms of Israel.”[2] Saul’s failure to establish a viable nation-state paved the way for David to emerge victorious as leader of the nation of Israel. Henceforth, all nationalistic claims hark back to the Davidic covenant. The line of David became the authority of choice for this new nation.

700 BC: The Assyrian event marks the demise of the ten “lost tribes of Israel” subsequently called the “Samaritans.” The loss of Ephraim to Assyria, the fall of Samaria, and the dispersal of the northern tribes created a crisis of faith. A generation of Seers (prophets) arose to call the people back to repentance.  They explained why God punished Ephraim.

600 BC: The Babylonian event marks the fall of Jerusalem and the remnants of Judah came to be known as “Jews.” The loss of Judah and the deportations of Jews created a crisis of faith. The Adamic and Noahic covenants, the Abrahamic promises, the Mosaic laws and the Davidic privileges seemed meaningless. Pharisees arose to reshape new expectations of God’s promises without Jerusalem or the temple. By the Persian period in the 5^th century BC, political and religious leaders adapted new conditions and responded with fresh writings, including Ezra-Nehemiah and Torah, to assure the people that YHWH of Abraham, Moses, and David is still their God. The Genesis lineage goes back to Babel, Noah, Adam and the foundation of the universe itself.

These five events of the Jewish faith was the basis for the emergence of the Christian faith during the Roman period, when most Palestinian Jews spoke Aramaic,[3] while some knew Hebrew and Latin, and many wrote in Greek. The 1^st century after the death of Jesus saw the writing of accounts remembering His life, works and teaching. Some of these writings came to be known as the NT and shaped the self-understanding of this global faith called Christianity.

The Old Testament

A Bird’s Eye View

The 39 books of the Protestant OT began as oral teaching and were later committed to writing. Their compositions have been redacted over the years. The ones that we inherit are called the final forms. In the modern arrangement, the OT begins with a theological account of this world’s biophysical beginning as intentional creation. It describes the emergence of a unique moral creature - humans, down to Abraham, whose descendants joined other clans to become Israel. Abram had moved from Mesopotamia via Syria into Canaan or Palestine[4]. His grandson settled in Egypt for generations until they escaped to Sinai, had a covenant and laws with their deity as ruler, and moved back into Canaan. A checkered phase of settlement culminated in a local monarchy of Saul. David and Solomon subdued their neighbors, holding a brief nation in the 11^th century BC, until this was lost and the realm split into two rival petty kingdoms called Israel and Judah. Assyria destroyed Israel in 722 BC and Neo-Babylonia destroyed Judah in 586 BC, with much of their population exiled into Mesopotamia (the land of Abraham’s birth). Later on, Persia replaced Babylonia. Some captive Judeans (henceforth called Jews) were allowed to go back to Canaan to renew their community in the 6^th century BC, while others stayed on in Babylonia and in Egypt. The library of writings that contains this theological narrative (not chronological history) includes versions of laws and covenants enacted at Mount Sinai, and renewed in Moab and Canaan. Writings in the names of various spokesmen or prophets were added to the scripture. They called the people back to YHWH. The Psalms or Hebrew hymns and prayers, and various forms of wisdom literature, were also added. The entire OT anticipated the arrival of the messiah. Jesus read a Greek version of the Hebrew Scripture known as the Septuagint (LXX). In Matthew 23:35, when Jesus reviewed the legacy of sin in His Bible, He began with the murder of Abel in Genesis 4:8 and ended with the murder of Zechariah in 2 Chronicles 24:21. The prophets were never fortune-tellers - not everything they announced were future predictions.[5] (356 words)

Origin of the Bible

Christians hold a high regard for the writers of the Bible, but we do not receive any of the writings from the authors themselves. Rather, we receive them as an inheritance through the Church. It is therefore important to know how the Bible we now hold in our hands came to be. This field of study is called canonization. This important and massive topic is beyond the scope of this book but let us take a brief glance at it anyway.

Name. A testament refers to a covenant – an act (not a book) and a unilateral one between non-equals, i.e., between a greater and a lesser power. The OT is therefore the first or previous covenant between God and us. While the Bible never refers to the “old covenant” a book, today, it is the shorthand for a collection of writings that bear authentic witness to the God called YHWH. This biblical covenant we call the OT binds us to God. Although God covenants with a people who came to be known as “Israel”, He did so for the sake of all peoples (see e.g., Gen. 12:3, 2 Cor. 3:5-6). “Old” does not refer to a dated or inferior covenant but rather the first covenant that was subsequently fulfilled by a second. Thus, “old” is a term that speaks to what anticipated the Christ event, which is also to come when the time is right.  Its focus, therefore, is eschatological, not chronological or temporal.

Authorship. Since various writers contributed to the OT, it can be said that the Church as a whole was its author.  The Church adopted what the synagogue selected,[6] edited, transmitted, and translated from the ancient scripture. Moreover, since the two sections of the Bible are understood together and never independently, it is the Church that has interpreted and continues to interpret the NT in tandem with the OT. Thus to the question, “Which came first, Church or Bible?” the answer is Church. The believers who formed the Church transformed a collection of documented thoughts into the scriptures.

Arrangement. The 39 writings of the OT emerged separately over a period of time and over a wide geography. The chronology of the books is unknown with certainty. Among the oldest writings in final form are some of the psalms and the very last books include Daniel, Ezra-Nehemiah and even possibly Joel.

Format. The original writings had no titles, chapters, verses or punctuation. They were added later for reference. Stephen Langdon, archbishop of Canterbury, introduced chapter divisions in 1227.[7] In 1382, the Wycliffe English Bible was the first to use these chapter patterns. In 1448, Rabbi Isaac Nathan ben Kalonymus divided the Hebrew Bible into verses for the first Hebrew Concordance. In 1555, Robert Estienne, also known as Stephanus, divided his Greek NT into standard numbered verses using Rabbi Nathan’s Hebrew Bible (OT) and Erasmus of Rotterdam’s Greek NT.[8] The first English NT to use verse divisions was William Whittingham’s 1557 NT. But it was only in 1560 that the first English Bible to use both chapter and verse divisions was published – the Geneva Bible. Finally, all punctuations in our modern Bibles represent decisions made by a series of later editors.  There is therefore, no such thing as a “red-letter edition” of the Bible since no biblical writer quoted Jesus word-for-word.

Accuracy. Until Johannes Gutenberg invented the movable[9] type printing press in 1450, most documents in the West were hand-copied. Few copies of any length could escape intentional or unintentional deviations from its original. The first Bible was printed on such a press in 1455. Biblical and archeological scholars engage in “text criticism” in order to reconstruct the original writings and create today’s printed Bibles.  Although this is accurate to a very high degree of probability, it is not absolutely certain. There are a number of places in the Bible where textual variations require an interpreter to make informed decisions about an original writer’s intentions.  Thus, each reader must take responsibility to learn how to interpret the Bible responsibly and with great care.

The Art and Science of Recovery and Reconstruction. On a substantive level, the task of reconstruction achieves a higher level of accuracy with better use of history, philosophy, science, mathematics, and the arts. History, in terms of the passage of time and our ability to reconstruct the past, helps us to avoid wrong conclusions. Philosophy and our capacity to reason with hypothetical and counterfactual possibilities provide the logical and rational rigors needed to determine coherent knowledge from what is unknown. Science and the modern basis of scientific investigation and its fruits (e.g., technology) clarify what the original writings intended to convey. In addition, the complex world of biblical analyses now uses sophisticated tools that draw from physics, chemistry, biology, statistics and mathematics. Moreover, insights from poetry, music, art and literature add important layers to an understanding of how the human mind conveys information, even if the primary source is transcendent and divine.

The Task of PT. Every time you read the Bible, you interpret the texts. This is an inescapable part of being a Christian who desires to know God’s Word. The labors of biblical interpretation are daunting but rewarding. But such a collective task is too important to leave to academic scholars. This is why the Academy for Christian Thought undertook the urgent task to teach the discipline and skills to any Christian anywhere in the world who desires to know God by His Word – this is Project Timothy.

Job 12:8 “Speak to the Earth and it will teach you”

Job’s reply to his friend is an ancient acknowledgment that understanding nature is a key to understanding creation

M2M: The Project Timothy Method

Three key concepts describe the PT method of biblical interpretation

1. CCC: Commit to the Convictional Confession of Jesus as Lord.

2. TTT in a TSS: Think Things Through in a Theological Safe Space.

3. M2M: Biblical writers use various Media to convey Messages.

The messages of God are eternal truths, but the media that convey them are  contextualized. The accounts, recollections, lessons and stories in the scriptures were written for a historically contextual readership. The imagery used[10] and the discourse employed[11] reflect the culture and times of the writings. Thus, we need to know the history, literature, philosophy, and science of their times. To interpret a texts using idiomatic and coded language of its readers, we must first understand the media used.

In the OT, many of the accounts and stories were adopted from well-known stories of the Ancient Near East (ANE), including Persia. In the NT, the writers often adopt the stories of the OT as well as contemporary Greco-Roman saga. Do not miss the divine message by the specifics of each medium. For example, the message of God’s mercy is told through the medium of Jonah and the great fish. Do not make a doctrine of determining which species of fish or how Jonah would have traveled 700 miles to Nineveh. In the same manner, the universal Flood is a common pre-Israelite account found in many creation stories, and the story of the rainbow does not refer to a different kind of optical laws or the absence of rainbows before the that particular rain. Indeed, a misunderstanding of Acts 17:26 became a biblical justification for apartheid in South Africa. Finally, in Philippians 4:13, Paul did not mean that in Christ he can perform any miracle, but that in the context of his imprisonment, he has learned to be content in whatever situation because, in Christ, he can cope with anything. Knowing the context of the media helps us find the message within the media more responsibly and thus builds our faith more sustainably.

Why Project Timothy?

Renew the foundations of your belief in God within a Theological Safe Space
Ecclesiastes 3:3 - [There is] a time to tear down and a time to build

How many times have you started the year with the intent to read the Bible from cover to cover but got bogged down in Leviticus or Numbers? Or worse, you go through the motions of reading but cannot articulate what you read? Do you feel frustrated trying to get past a surface-level understanding of the Bible to see how it ties in to world history, philosophy, archaeology and contemporary science?

Welcome to Project Timothy (PT), a program of the Academy for Christian Thought (ACT). PT consists of a devotional Christian community seeking spiritual renewal from a discipleship of the mind within a theological safe space (TSS). The goal is to understand the Bible that you read. It is a ‘discipleship of the mind’ program to study the entire Bible in conjunction with extra-biblical sources and tools for biblical research. PT provides a TSS to question assumptions about the scriptures.[12] This strengthens our beliefs and equips us to responsibly proclaim the Gospel. A deeper understanding of the Bible calls for a broad-based program of study involving history, literary criticism, philosophy, comparative religions, science, and both biblical and systematic theology. You will be introduced to key topics in all of these areas.

The early Christians had much of the OT as written scripture but not yet the NT. To share their experience of the Bible, we study the OT as the largely completed collection that they were by the first century, but arrange the prophetic books according to the dates of their final documentary forms. Similarly, in the NT, we study the books starting with James to experience how the early Christians came to know the NT, not as a complete collection, but as they came to be written. We will trace the theologies of James, Paul, Peter and the Gospel writers to better understand how certain concepts developed.

Learning. The central goal of the ACT is to equip disciples of Christ to draw nearer to God through a confessional and responsible examination of the Bible. Christianity is a biblical faith, so learning is an inescapable part of what it means to be a Christian. But the true mark of theological scholarship is the proper application of the Bible’s message for us today (hermeneutics) that bless the Church. But such application is misguided without a comprehensive biblical understanding and knowledge of the Bible’s original message set in its original circumstances (exegesis). Such an understanding recognizes that the Christian Bible consists of both the OT and the NT – neither of which on its own represents Christian belief. Therefore, one should read the OT in anticipation of its fulfillment in the NT and read the NT with reference to its OT roots.[13] How can we understand the Scriptures in the light of changing philosophies and knowledge about reality? We begin by making a commitment to our conviction that the confession of the Lordship of Christ stands at the center of our being and belief about the fabric of reality. PT is motivated to bear witness, to disciple and to seek spiritual formation (paddies).

Witness: We seek to understand postmodernity in the light of the biblical witness and not the Bible in the light of any contemporary thought. While the Scriptures are to be understood with the reinterpretation of each generation, the final authority rests with the revelation of God rather than with the prevailing plausibility structure.

Discipleship: The personal and relational elements in evangelism are inescapable. Discipleship increases the chances of passing the Gospel faithfully and develops a culture of relationships from which the church may draw strength in times of crisis. Jesus’ final instructions to His disciples were to “go and make disciples of all nations” (Matt. 28:19). Paul continued this tradition when he bade farewell to Timothy with these words “The things you have heard me say in the presence of many witnesses, entrust to reliable men who will also be qualified to teach others” (2 Tim. 2: 2).

Paideia: The formation of lifelong spiritual friendship. This was adapted from Greek philosophical teaching that any desire to develop the perishable body ought to include nurturing the imperishable soul (mind). In the NT, two words were used to describe little children. The word tekna, used in Luke 14:26 and John 13:33, refers to non-adults. However, the Gospel writers used paidon to describe what Jesus commends us to become in Matthew 19:14; Mark 10:14; and Luke 18:16. Its root word, paideia, refers to the desired spiritual, educational, and civic formation of a child. We are to be like paidon - to be shaped by Christ and not by the concerns of the world. This is Christian discipleship. Anyone who believes that we can teach ourselves the Bible with no help from others is entertaining an illusion. Indeed, that is why so much of the Bible concerns the work of observing, learning and teaching. Jesus Himself was known as the great teacher much more than as the great healer or performer of signs. God never meant for the Bible to be heard or read in solitude, but within a community of faith nurtured by a climate of faith seeking understanding!

Project Timothy’s Confessional Approach

The first premise of Project Timothy’s approach to the Bible is the confession that the Christian scriptures are divinely inspired and form a word of God to everyone, believers and skeptics alike. Our careful approach seeks a close reading, responsible interpretation and openness to correction. This form of critical study of the Bible is neither a negative nor an unbelieving method. Critical here refers to a ‘careful analytical study’ of the Bible as opposed to an uncritical or ‘naïve’ interpretation. It is an unfortunate misuse of terms that both extremes of the interpretation spectrum tend to use the word critical inaccurately in that it has come to mean ‘to criticize’ or ‘to be critical of’ God’s Word. The very nature of reading any text involves the reader making an interpretation of the meaning. One may do so either naively or with care.

The Bible as Scriptures. Is the Bible historical, literary or theological? Most of the writings possess all three elements in its composition. Do not equate historicity with truth since, in truth, there is little in history that can be truly verified, let alone deep history (beyond reliable memory) and prehistory (before written records). Literary value is no less important than historical markers to find the theological message. What about modern science? Does that trump all else? No. Although history, literature and theology use methods of science at some point in their investigation to paint a fuller picture, the scientific method is limited to measurability, so most of the scriptures are beyond scientific competence to interpret. Since the question of biblical reliability cannot be affirmed by its historicity, literary, or theological components, we pay attention to these characteristics of the Scriptures to get within hearing distance of the writers’ intent. Thus you will find lapses in historical and scientific accuracy as we increase our modern accuracy of historical and scientific knowledge. Even doctrinal articulation of theological points need to be revised in each generation to account for our greater understanding of the world we live in. The contexts of each selection of readings will be summarized in these four categories.

Geohistory. My earlier studies of astronomy and the philosophy of time taught me how geography and history shape the contexts of our experiences as well as they way we interpret them. This led me to coin the term geohistory to describe the spacetime dimensions of reality that condition the contexts of the biblical writers, described in their writings. Every event described in the Bible has a geographical as well as a historical component. Even primeval and prehistoric accounts that do not describe actual events assign geographical and historical qualities that mark their contextual significance. Thus the parables of Jesus may be fictional, but they were told using geohistorical points of reference that the common listener could identify with. Lambs, sheep and goats make immediate sense to a farming community, just as a pearl of great price to a trading community and the mustard seed to an agricultural people. The structure of the OT and the NT texts are historically very different. From the early to the final forms of the OT books span many, many years, usually starting out as oral traditions, so the idea of an original OT book makes little sense. The NT texts however, usually began as written letters and were all completed within the span of a couple of generations, so finding original texts do count.

Literature (Genre). The genre of any writing reflects a style that points to the intent of the writer. Whether the message of God is conveyed through poetry, song, drama, narrative or satire, among many other genres, the purpose is the same – to communicate eternal truths via contextual media. This means that the way God’s message is conveyed (media) will always need revising as our style of communication changes over time. Every document of the Bible is the literary composition of an author or of multiple redactors who had lived in real time. They had to decide how to begin, structure, and conclude it. This includes the selection and omission of available material as well as the development of a strategy to communicate the message effectively for the purpose intended. Features such as plot, characterization, and the omniscient narrator are important to understanding the text. So, for example, when we read about Jonah in the belly of the fish, the writer is interested in conveying the theological message about God’s concern for the Ninevites rather than identifying a special fish that can gulp down humans but refrain from swallowing for three days. Each characterization of the number of days, the reason that led to Jonah being sacrificed into the sea and his conversation with God ignores the great distance between the shores of the Mediterranean and modern Baghdad. Here, the literary element trumps the historical and scientific accuracy to get to a vivid memorable story that teaches a theological truth. It would, therefore, be unproductive to set a litmus test on the historicity of Jonah as a prophet heading to Spain when he was rerouted to Iraq. When should we read the Bible literally and when should we read it non-literally? The default position is to read a text literally unless you have good reasons not to do so. Usually, for most of us, common sense clues us in. At other times, thinking through the implications of a literal reading may hint to us that it is not what the writer meant. In fact, a strictly exclusive literal interpretation of the Bible is a 19^th century invention. Until then, few readers thought the texts were meant to be read as if God was speaking to them without symbolism or allegory, since so many everyday conversations were themselves not always literal.

Philosophy. Reason and rationality do not trump belief and faith, but whatever we believe has to be reasonable, or faith will become fanaticism. This fine line dividing faith from fanaticism is often ignored. Thus, good philosophical reflection is an important check on irresponsible interpretation of the Bible.

Science. While experimentation is the most dominant method of acquiring knowledge, this advance in making sense of the world arose largely in the Christian West because of its underlying belief that there is a uniformity of regularity and a regularity of uniformity, i.e., the language of science is truly universal. Electricity works alike anywhere in the world, as does arithmetic, geometry, and every feature of physics, chemistry, and biology. Biblical knowledge is an older source that is limited to disclosure (divine revelation) rather than discovery (human investigation). So science is an extremely helpful check on our interpretation of the Bible. By looking for the convergence between our conclusions and what our minds can discover about the creation of God, we can compose a more comprehensive image of reality. The modern study of the Bible enlists and harnesses the help of archaeology, astronomy, biochemistry, cartography, geology, linguistics, numismatics, physics, radiology, semiotics; and a host of other scientific disciplines, the most recent being the neurosciences, especially the study of consciousness and memorial perception.

Critical study of the Bible. The term “biblical criticism” has a bad reputation among conservative Christians. Yet critical interpretations of the Bible overcame the justifications for the Crusades and slavery. Jesus interpreted the Hebrew Scripture critically when He called the Pharisees to go beyond the letter of the purity laws. Christianity itself was due to Paul’s critical reading of the Scriptures to include gentiles as God’s chosen. Finally, the early Church critically interpreted long-standing Jewish practices and reversed the prohibition of women in their worship services. Brave souls had to question an interpretation that their conscience knew to be wrong despite traditional tacit acceptance.

Oh…and why call it Project Timothy?

This reflects Paul’s charge to Timothy in 2 Timothy 4:2-5:

Preach the word; be prepared in season and out of season; correct, rebuke and encourage - with great patience and careful instruction. For the time will come when people will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear. They will turn their ears away from the truth and turn aside to myths. But you, keep your head in all situations, endure hardship, do the work of an evangelist, discharge all the duties of your ministry.

Genesis 1-11

Genesis 12-50

Exodus

Leviticus & Numbers

Deuteronomy & Joshua

Judges-Ruth

Samuel-Kings

Chronicles

Ezra-Nehemiah, Esther

Psalms

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[1] One that Saul failed to establish.

[2] Modern Israel is the political “state of Israel.”

[3] Why Jesus spoke Aramaic. Aramaic was the official language of the Persian Empire since the 7^th century BC. It replaced Hebrew as the official language of the Jewish community in Babylon after the Persian Empire deposed Babylonia. The Aramaic script adapted to the Hebrew script and eventually replaced it. This is why the Jewish Jesus spoke Aramaic.

[4] The word Palestine never occurs in the Bible. It was a name officially introduce in the 2^nd century AD and borrows from the Greek historian Herodotus, who coined the term Philistine-Syria to refer to southern Syria. What we call Israel today was in fact known as southern Syria.

[5] When John the Baptist preached that the people should ‘Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand!’ in Matthew 3:2, he offered a prediction (the kingdom of heaven will happen soon), a present instruction (repent now), as well as a theology (God is bringing his kingdom to us). This sums up the prophetic ministry of the OT - revealing the Lord as Jesus, ministering to the people now and declaring the future.

[6] Despite the sensationalizing claims by some scholars describing the ‘lost books of the Bible’, these other gospels, acts and epistles were not lost at all. The early Church simply did not select them. Why they did not is another question, but it was not due to conspiracies. Another myth about the selection of today’s NT books is that some individuals or a council voted to adopt them over others. While historians tend to identify Athanasius’ Festal letter of 367 as the date for the NT canon, the bishop simply listed what had already been in use by many churches over centuries. He did not possess the sole authority to proclaim biblical orthodoxy. There was no fixed criteria list for the adoption of books into the canon. By the 2^nd century, Paul’s writings and the four Gospels were widely accepted but others, such as 2 Peter, were not generally included until the 4^th century. So rather than determining the canonized books of the NT, the councils confirmed what was already widely practiced.

[7] Cardinal Hugo de Sancto Caro developed an alternate system but it lost out to Langton’s system.

[8] An earlier attempt by the Dominican scholar Santi Pagnini (1470-1541) did not prove as popular and was not widely adopted.

[9] The Chinese had already invented the fixed type printing press hundreds of years prior to Gutenberg. The oldest surviving copy of a printed text is an intact copy of the Diamond Sutra (Vajracchedikā Prajñāpāramitā Sūtra), printed in the 9^th century (868), now displayed at the British Library in London.

[10] For example, in Shakespeare’s time, a thatched-roof house was a cozy environment for all kinds of birds and animals. When it rained heavily, many of its squatters, including cats and dogs, often fall through the wet thatches, giving rise to, “It’s raining cats and dogs.”

[11] Many ancient cultures prized the ability to remember long epics so that gifted story-tellers served as the computer backup storage for entire communities. The world’s longest known epic is Tibet’s Epic of King Gesar and measures over 1 million line- long and includes 60 million words. Individuals specially trained for such feats of memory sing these oral stories. This medium of conveying messages from generation to generation included the oral poem Manas of the Kirgiz from Kyrgystan and the Indian epics, the Mahabharata and the Ramayana. The Iliad is a distant fifth.

[12] We refer to the NT or OT as scripture and the entire Bible as the scriptures.

[13] The NT story of the woman with a 12-year issue of blood who was healed by her faith in Jesus makes more sense if you knew that every element mentioned by the writers of the Gospels made references to the Levitical laws that most first century Jews would have been familiar with. Similarly, the OT theme of miraculous male births by barren women who saw themselves as having been denied society’s approval can mislead the reader into thinking that the lesson was about the value of mothers in the Bible rather than the writers mirroring cultural norms. These stories were used to convey deeper teachings than what seems ostensibly so on the surface. Many sayings attributed to Jesus have specific references to OT accounts of God’s dealings with the Israelites. A working knowledge of the OT and NT geohistory will explain (i) the significance of the iron swords of the Philistines (c.1200 BC), (ii) that the reason Paul identified Jesus as holding all things together in Colossians has nothing to do with particle physics, (iii) the symbolic meaning of the number 666 as Emperor Nero’s number rather than some mythical creature, and (iv) the absence of the term antichrist in Revelation. A good geohistorical foundation of the biblical times will minimize hasty conclusions that may be dead wrong.