Featured How to Sound Like a Bibliology Scholar

Please stop. You're killin' me!

Simply because you looked up one course on the Internet does not mean you know anything about the course with the same title anywhere else. I guarantee you, the course at our college (I don't teach it) is quite different from the ABWE pre-field course that you referenced.

Some "Methods of Bible Study" courses are simply hermeneutics courses. Ours is not. The student would learn such methods as the DBS method, word studies, etc. The hermeneutics course is taught by my son, and is a different class altogether.

I am a "Big F" Fundamentalist, and would not recommend nor send students to a school with even one New Evangelical, much less even one modernist.

Now, I realize the situation is different in Great Britain, but students here do not have to simply read theology books and study under a pastor. We have many good schools to recommend without a single modernist or New Evangelical on the faculty.

On the other hand, I just received 3 emails from the pastor I have been mentoring and teaching for years in Japan. He is almost ready for the test on my course in Daniel. The mission fields of the world have fewer good schools, so the mentoring method you mention here is often used around the world.

Not in the circles I run in. I can name a dozen schools right now I could recommend students to, with nary a modernist on any of the faculties.

You have a wonderful gift for stating the glaringly obvious.

 

This thread is starting to wander from the OP, which is about Bibliology. So, let me be clear about what doctrines are included in Bibliology, which is a quite wide topic.

1. Revelation. This is the doctrine that God communicates His truth to us in two ways: general (or natural) revelation (nature) and special revelation (the Bible)
2. Inspiration. This is the doctrine of precisely how God reveals himself through the written revelation.
3. Preservation. This is the doctrine of how God and man keep God's written revelation from being lost. I include the difficult and specialized field of textual criticism here. I also include the doctrine of Bible translation here. (And yes, I teach it as a doctrine, not just practice.) The study of the canon would also come under this point.
4. Illumination. This is the doctrine of how the Holy Spirit guides us "into all truth" in the Bible.
5. Hermeneutics. This is the doctrine of how to interpret the Word of God.

Now, please, don't sidetrack the thread into eschatology and other fields. This thread is specifically about Bibliology "wannabes," those who look for ways to make others think they are experts in Bibliology. In particular, I have referenced the "translator" of the Eth-Cepher "Bible" (which adds much to the Word of God). If someone then wishes to apply the lessons of this thread to themselves--so be it. But please don't hijack the thread into eschatology or other doctrines.

 

Some of the most spiritual people I've ever known have been scholars. Holy Spirit reliance has nothing to do with education or ignorance. The fact that some have brought it up on this thread is completely irrelevant.

If we stray from a correct Bibliology, it's all over. If one doesn't believe in verbal inspiration, they go liberal or neo-orthodox. If one doesn't believe in the inspiration of the originals over the translation, they can go Ruckmanite. If one doesn't have the Biblical view of revelation, one can become Charismatic. Bibliology is foundational.

 

It is in the field of Bible translation that we find the most would be Bibliology experts. Joe Schmoe of Podunk Baptist Church writes an "authoritative" pamphlet or book on the KJV. George Wannabe posts all over the Internet either for or against dynamic equivalence without ever reading a book by Eugene Nida.

I am reminded of the guy down in the Kanto Plain who wanted to help with our Japanese New Testament translation. So, we had a phone conversation. "Do you know Greek?" I asked. Nope. "Do you speak Japanese?" I asked. Nope.

I tried again. "Well, you can contribute financially by sending a check to my mission board." He answered, "I don't believe in mission boards." Then he seemed insulted that there were no aspects of our translation he could help with!

He found a Japanese would be translator who he said was doing a version of John. "Great," I said, "Send me a sample." Never got that. This was as pure a translation wannabe as I've ever known personally, though Eugene Nida once had a guy write him saying he would like to do a tribal translation. "Just send me a dictionary and a grammar, and I'll get started," the dude said. As if!!