Copy and Answer the Following

during discussion
1. Who is the one who reveals himself?
2. Who were the people to whom he
revealed himself?
3. Who is the man through whom God
revealed himself?
4. What can we infer/deduce or conclude
as the nature or quality of the
Revealer Himself?

5. What do you call the book that

contains the stories and events of
Gods revelation?
6. What makes this book different from
any other book that we know?
7. What do you call the agreement or
alliance which God made with his
people?
8. What is Gods aim in revealing himself
to man through these people?

9. What are the two main parts of

the Christian Scriptures?
10. Which part is initially the
Scriptures used by Jesus
himself?
11. Whose story is written in the
gospels?
12. How long did it take for the Old
Testament to be compiled in the
present composition?

13.Whos national history is written in the

Old Testament?
14.What are the books that were included
in the Catholic Christian Scriptures but
were not included in the Hebrew
Bible?
15.It refers to the list of books of the
Bible officially accepted by the Church
for being inspired.

16.How many books are there in the

Catholic Bible?
17.What is the first and what is the last
book of the Bible?
18.Which is the original language of the
Old Testament Scripture?
19.What do you call the acceptability of
books of the bible believed to have
been inspired?
20.What do you call our response to the
Divine Revelation?

 fr. the Greek word apokalupsis

translated as revelation which
means unveiling
it is Gods personal loving communication
to us of who He is and His plan to
save us all in His love. (CFC 101)

Revelation from the word revelare

which means to unveil or take away
the cover of
It is the "taking away the veil," God
making Himself known through words
and deeds in salvation history. (Cf.
DV 2, 4, 6-11.)

God Reveals Himself through Creation

The first way God reveals Himself to us is through

creation. "The heavens declare the glory of God,

and the firmament proclaims His handiwork" (Ps
19:1).

God reveals himself to the Chosen People

God Revealed Himself through the
Scriptures
God Revealed Himself in fullness through
His Son, Jesus Christ

God Reveals Himself through Christ present

in the Church
God continues to Reveal Himself through
the Sacraments

PURPOSE: GODS PLAN

to make all of us united with Him: COVENANT

to make of humanity One FAMILY with God as
the Father and all of us brothers and sisters
To make know His love for humanity
notwithstanding its UNFAITHFULNESS
And because He loves us, he wants to save us
from self-destruction: SALVATION

COVENANT

It is a solemn agreement between

two parties. A religious covenant is a
belief shared by members of a
religious community that God has
made a formal alliance or agreement
with them or with humanity in
general. This sort of covenant is an
important concept in Judaism and
Christianity, derived in the first

Examples of a covenant
relationship

Covenant with Noah: God will not destroy

humanity again
Covenant between Abraham: God will make him
the father of a great nation
Covenant with between God and the Israelites
I will be your God and you will be my people.
Leviticus 26:12
Between Jesus and his apostles the New
Covenant in which Jesus' sacrifice on the cross
would atone for the sins of all mankind.
(Matthew 26:28)

SALVATION

In theology, salvation can mean three related

things: being saved from, or LIBERATION
from, something, such as suffering or the
punishment of sin also called
DELIVERANCE; being saved for something,
such as an afterlife or participating in the
Reign of God also called REDEMPTION; or
SOCIAL LIBERATION and healing, as in
liberation theology.

Salvation Experienced by Israel

Joseph-sold as a slave in Egypt to save his

people from famine
Moses saved by the Egyptian princes to be
able to save Israel from Slavery
Cyrus I, King of Persia-gave Israel the freedom
to return from Babylon to Judea
But in all these I, even I, am Yahweh; and
beside me there is no Savior. Isaiah 43:11

God Reveals Himself

God has made Himself known to
us through Creation but also
through the Old Testament.
Finally God made Himself known
to us by coming to live among us
as Jesus Christ.
We call this Divine Revelation.

Divine Revelation

God has chosen to reveal

Himself bit by bit to us, not
all at once.
This revelation began with
Adam and Eve who used to
walk with Him in the
Garden.
Later to the Israelites
They gave us the Old
Testament which tells of
Gods revelation to them.

Divine Revelation

All of the Revelation of the Old

Testament lead to Gods greatest
Revelation.
For God so loved the world that he
sent His only SonJesus Christ. [Jn
3,16]

Jesus chose Twelve Apostles and

taught them everything they needed
to know for salvation.
This revelation to them, the gospel,
was entrusted to those twelve and

Divine Revelation

The Apostles passed this revelation in two forms,

Scripture and Tradition (Preaching).
Together Scripture and Tradition form the deposit of
faith, the full revelation of Christ.
One without the other is lacking, though always
valuable.
Sacred Tradition includes teachings on the Trinity,
Sacraments, and our Creed.
With the death of the last Apostle (John ~100AD) there will
be no further revelation.
The Church simply looks deeper and deeper into what
we have been given by Christ and his Apostles.

The Magisterium

The teaching office of the Church is called the

Magisterium.
The Church has the sacred duty to protect the
deposit of faith, that is all the things God
revealed to us.
This is composed of the Pope and all the
bishops in union with him.
They cooperate with the Holy Spirit to teach all
we know about God without error.
There have been many explanations of the truth
over 2000 years but the truths of our faith have

1.Finally our Lord Jesus Christ,

Son of God, came to earth to
reveal Divine truths to men. After
His death, His Apostles and
disciples wrote about Him and His
teachings.
There are twenty-seven of these
books, composing the New Testament.
With the forty-six books of the Old
Testament the Church gathered them
together into one Book called
Holy Scripture, or the Bible.

3. The deposit of faith which

Jesus Christ entrusted to the
Church is made up of two
parts: a] Holy Scripture and
b] Sacred Tradition, the
latter being composed of the
truths passed down by word
of mouth, and not written
down till after the death of
Christ's Apostles and
disciples, principally by the
Fathers of the Church.

Towards a Complete
Approach to the Bible

1. Accept the Bible as the Word of God

The

Bible is a library of books. Though the Bible

contains 73 books, yet it appears to be only one
book, far from being a library of books as it claims
to be.
In the ancient world literary works are written on
rolls which were bulky and unwieldy. These rolls
were made of papyrus and skins of animals.
Papyrus is made from the papyrus plant, was
durable when kept dry but became increasingly
brittle. The book form called codex is either made
of papyrus or skin animals, emerged only about a

Sacred Scriptures

The stories, events, poems, hymns of Gods

Revelations to his people is contained in the
SACRED SCRIPTURES.
The Sacred Scriptures therefore are the
WORD OF GOD WRITTEN IN THE
LANGUAGE OF MAN.
The Scriptures are sacred because it is written
through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit.

The Bible is Inspired

The Holy Bible as the word of God written

under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit they
have God as their author In composing the
sacred books, God chose men and while
employed by Him they made use of their own
powers and abilities, so that with Him acting in
them and through them, they, as true authors,
consigned to writing everything and only those
thing which He wanted. (Vatican II,
Constitution on Divine Revelation, ch.3, no. 11)

THE FORMATION OF THE

SCRIPTURES

The Scriptures however was not formed in one

sitting. It took 1000 years and countless
authors before Gods Revelation was
committed into writing.
Beginning

with Abraham-2000 BC
Moses and the Exodus- 1300 BC
Kingship of David 1000 BC
Babylonian Exile 586 BC
Birth of Jesus 0-4 AD
Death of Jesus 27-30AD

The Development of the Bible

The Old Testament

1. First stage: Word acted out: Gods actual

revelation of Himself in the history of His
people.
2. Second stage: Oral tradition:
The

Jewish people naturally desired to

communicate and preserve their memorable
experiences with God.
They communicated these experiences orally
in prose, poetry, songs, sermons, epics and other
forms of communication common to them.
This oral tradition of divine revelation was the
longest of the stages of scriptural development.

Third stage: Writing and Editing

Gradually some Jewish writers wrote a few
accounts of some important events in their
history. Even so, oral tradition continued side
by side with the written accounts. It was
common then that one important event had
several oral accounts and a few written ones
circulating in different parts of the country. For
example, the story from Abraham to the
threshold of the Promised Land in the first five
books of the Bible (Pentateuch) was written in

Two Parts of the Scriptures

Old Testament or Hebrew Scriptures it

contains the stories from the Creation up to the
Maccabees when the corrupt Hasmonean
dynasty rules Israel
New Testament It contains the gospels, Acts
of the Apostles and the epistles and end with
the Book of Revelation
Together, the Old Testament and the new
Testament for the Christian Scriptures

Old Testament divisions

Torah or the Law-composed of the first five

books of the OT commonly called the Books
of Moses namely, Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus,
Numbers and Deuteronomy
Neviim or the Prophets = This division
includes the books which cover the time from
the entrance of the Israelites into the Land of
Israel until the Babylonian captivity of Judah
(the "period of prophecy")
Kethubim or the Writings sometimes also
known by the Greek title "Hagiographa" and

New Testament Divisions

Gospels the book that contains the words and deeds

of Jesus, the Christ
Acts the narrative that contains the life of the early
Church
Pauline epistles - letters written either by Paul or for
Paul addressed to the communities and persons of the
early Christian Churches
Catholic epistles - The name given to the Epistle of St.
James, to that of St. Jude, to two Epistles of St.
Peter and the first three of St. John
Book of Revelation the last book of the Bible also
called Apocalypse and deals with the themes of the end
times

How many are the books of the

Bible?

Catholic Version=73
Old

Testament = 46
New Testament = 27

Protestant Version = 66
Old

Testament = 39 (plus 9 Apocrypha or

Deuterocanonicals)
New Testament = 27

Hebrew Bible = 24 (Some books are

considered as one like Chronicles 1 & 2)

Canonicity

The word canon comes from the Hebrew word

kaneh meaning a reed which can be used as
a ruler. The Greek word for it kanon means a
measuring rod. Applied to the Bible, the term
canon refers to a norm of revealed truth, a rule
of faith. So CANONICITY refers to the
acceptability of certain list of books by the
Church as be inspired and to contain a rule of
faith and morals while CANON refers to the
books accepted as authoritative by the
Church.

Original Biblical Languages

Hebrew Bible- Hebrew this is the Bible of

the Jews which probably Jesus read and
studied.
Septuagint Greek this is the Hebrew Bible
as translated into Greek in about 200 BC
New Testament Greek Koine or the
common Greek of the New Testament era
Vulgate Latin the Christian Bible translated
into Latin by St. Jerome in about 400 AD
(Ignorance of the Bible is ignorance of God)

Faith as Our Response to Gods

Revelation

If God make Himself known through revelation,

therefore, our acceptance of His revelation is
acceptance of God Himself. That is our Faith,
our response to God. Because of faith we
commit our whole self to God.
Faith therefore is our acceptance and
response to what God revealed to us through
the Sacred Scriptures.

Characteristics of Faith

Faith is a free act. It is never forced upon us.

Faith brings joy and ease to love God.
Faith brings a deeper understanding of
revelation.
Faith brings people together to form a
community.

What does "faith" mean in daily

life?

Faith in general means the way we know,

accept, and relate positively to others,
especially the mutual trust, love, and fidelity
we experience in family and friendships.

What is meant by "Catholic

faith"?

Catholic Faith is "to know, love, and follow

Jesus Christ in his Body, the Church" (PCP II
36).
It is that attitude, activity, and process by which
we, empowered by God's grace:
To

freely commit our entire selves to God,

To offer our liberty, our understanding and our
whole will to God who reveals Himself and His
plan, and
To willingly assent to His Revelation (cf. DV 5).