Ministry is not monkey business.

1 Timothy 5:18
For the Scripture says, "Do not muzzle the ox while it is treading out the grain," and "The worker deserves his wages."

Come let us pray together

Heavenly Father Our God, if this Verbal Plenary Preservation is from You, let us accept it with patience, but if this Verbal Plenary Preservation is not from You, it is from Satan, the devils and its angels, I pray to God, may God oppose this Verbal Plenary Preservation and it's proponents and advocates until to the end of the world!

I pray in the Name of the Lord Jesus Christ, amen.

a truly definitive edition of the Old Testament.

a truly definitive edition of the Old Testament.

 

 

RAMAT GAN, Israel (AP) — For the past 30 years, Israeli Judaic scholarMenachem Cohen has been on a mission of biblical proportions: Correcting all known textual errors in Jewish scripture to produce a truly definitive edition of the Old Testament.

His edits, focusing primarily on grammatical blemishes and an intricate set of biblical symbols, mark the first major overhaul of the Hebrew Biblein nearly 500 years.

Poring over thousands of medieval manuscripts, the 84-year-old Cohen identified 1,500 inaccuracies in the Hebrew language texts that have been corrected in his completed 21-volume set. The final chapter is set to be published next year.

The massive project highlights how Judaism venerates each tiny biblical calligraphic notation as a way of ensuring that communities around the world use precisely the same version of the holy book.

According to Jewish law, a Torah scroll is considered void if even a single letter is incorrect or misplaced. Cohen does not call for changes in the writing of the sacred Torah scrolls used in Jewish rites, which would likely set off a firestorm of objection and criticism. Instead, he is aiming for accuracy in versions used for study by the Hebrew-reading masses.

For the people of the book, Cohen said, there was no higher calling.

"The people of Israel took upon themselves, at least in theory, one version of the Bible, down to its last letter," Cohen said, in his office at Bar-Ilan University near Tel Aviv.

The last man to undertake the challenge was Jacob Ben-Hayim, who published the Mikraot Gedolot, or Great Scriptures, in Venice in 1525. His version, which unified the religion's varying texts and commentaries under a single umbrella, has remained the standard for generations, appearing to this day on bookshelves of observant Jews the world over.

Since Ben-Hayim had to rely on inferior manuscripts and commentaries, numerous inaccuracies crept in and were magnified in subsequent editions.

The errors have no bearing on the Bible's stories and alter nothing in its meaning. Instead, for example, in some places the markers used to denote vowels in Hebrew are incorrect; or a letter in a word may be wrong, often the result of a centuries old transcription error. Some of the fixes are in the notations used for cantillation, the text's ritual chants.

Most of the errors Cohen found were in the final two thirds of the Hebrew Bible and not in the sacred Torah scrolls, since they do not include vowel markings or cantillation notations.

Cohen said unity and accuracy were of particular importance to distinguish the sacred Jewish text from that used by those sects that broke away from Judaism, namely Christians and Samaritans.

To achieve his goal, Cohen relied primarily on the Aleppo Codex, the 1,000-year-old parchment text considered to be the most accurate copy of the Bible. For centuries it was guarded in a grotto in the great synagogue of Aleppo, Syria, out of reach of most scholars like Ben-Hayim. In 1947, a Syrian mob burned the synagogue, and the Codex briefly disappeared before most of it was smuggled into Israel a decade later.

Now digitized, the Codex, also known as the Crown, provided Cohen with a template from which to work. But because about a third of the Codex — nearly 200 pages — remains missing, Cohen had to recreate the five books of Moses based on trends he observed in the Codex as well as from other sources, such as the 11th-century Leningrad Codex, considered the second-most authoritative version of the Jewish Bible.

Cohen also included the most comprehensive commentaries available, most notably that of 11th-century Rabbi Shlomo Yitzhaki, known as Rashi.

The result is the completion of Ben-Hayim's work.

"It was amazing to me that for 500 years, people didn't sense the errors," said Cohen, who wears a knitted skullcap and a gray goatee. "They just assumed that everything was fine, but in practice everything was not fine."

He's not the only scholar to devote decades to the task. In 1976, Rabbi Mordechai Breuer published a version of the Torah based mainly on the Aleppo Codex. The Hebrew University Bible Project in Jerusalem has also been working on a scientific edition of the Hebrew Bible, but theirs is directed toward scholars, while Cohen's output is aimed at wider consumption.

Rafael Zer, the project's editorial coordinator, called Cohen's work "quasi-scientific" because it presents a final product and does not provide the reader a way of seeing how it was reached. He credits Cohen for bringing an exact biblical text to the general public but said it "comes at the expense of absolute accuracy and an absolute scientific edition."

With the assistance of his son Shmuel, a computer programmer, Cohen launched a digital version he hopes will become a benchmark of the Israeli education system. He said his ultimate goal was to "correct the past and prepare for the future."

As a former teacher, Cohen said he took particular pride in a sophisticated search engine that allows even novices to explore his work with ease. He called computers a "third revolution" to affect Jewish scripture, following the shift from scrolls to bound books and the advent of the printing press.

"I want the Bible to be user-friendly," said Cohen, a grandfather of eight. "Today, we can create sources of information and searches that allow you to get an answer to everything you are wondering."

____

Follow Aron Heller at http://www.twitter.com/aronhellerap

Salary for Bible Presbyterian pastors

The Methodist Pastors said "You give peanuts you get monkeys!"

Innocent? No!

Do you think BOE, Board of Elder in Life Bible Presbyterian Church innocent in the quarrels with True Life Bible Presbyterian Church in Singapore.

Do you think Rev Charles Seet and Rev Colin Wong are both innocent in the lawsuit with Far Eastern Bible College?

No, The BOE and these two pastors Rev Charles Seet and Rev Colin Wong are proud, self centered, they are not humble enough, I say they are foolish.

They said slanders and gossiping are sinful. But they did not see that putting brothers in Christ into civil court, suing Christians in court is sinful too!

Hell Bank Notes

James 3:1-2a, "Not many of you should become teachers, my fellow believers, because you know that we who teach will be judged more strictly. 2 We all stumble in many ways." 

James 3:6,"The tongue also is a fire, a world of evil among the parts of the body. It corrupts the whole body, sets the whole course of one’s life on fire, and is itself set on fire by hell."

Sending cheques to Charles Seet

Charles Seet wanted money, I going to upload a few cheques for him, including a blank cheque, he can fill in any number he likes!

Living together with the heretics...........

There is really only one true Statement of Faith that the entire Christian Church assembled has ever agreed on – the Nicene Creed which was finalized at the Council of Constantinople in AD 381.  And, interestingly, that same group specifically prohibited other creeds from being formulated and presented as the official teaching of the Christian Church. 

The views I have expressed on these blog posts and in my book are not new.  In fact, much of what I have written has been an attempt to inform people in this generation of ideas that were held by the Christian Church in the earliest years of its existence – when it was closest to the Apostles and its influence on the surrounding culture was the greatest.  

In a tract written in about AD 1627, a little known German divine named Rupertus Meldenius penned three short and very profound statements about how Christians should treat those with whom they disagree:

In essentials unity. In nonessentials liberty. In all things charity.

I want to introduce a good website to you

http://faithatworkfellowship.org/

Faith@Work

Purpose :

Community Networking for

1. Educational (through Asia Seminary for Ministry)

2. Community Projects as Catalyst, Facilitator and Conduit.

Asia Seminary For Ministry

 

Mission

Training Nationals to Nationals for integrity and skills.

(Psalm 78:72)

 

Objectives

1. To provide theological training, rightly dividing the

Word of Truth (2 Tim. 2:15).

 

2. To equip with skills for the work of the ministry (Eph.

4:12).

 

3. To facilitate personal and ministry development by

mentorship (2 Tim. 2:2).

We who do not believe in Verbal Plenary Preservation, we are flying like birds

Those who believe in Verbal Plenary Preservation....they are rats...........

Those who believe in Verbal Plenary Preservation....they are rats...........

 

 

What the Bible says about Bible Presbyterian Church and Far Eastern Bible College

I do not want to hear what Bible Presbyterian Church and Far Eastern Bible College talk about the Bible,

what I want to hear is what the Bible says about Bible Presbyterian Church and Far Eastern Bible College!