Revelation
In Christian perspective, revelation is the communication or disclosure of spiritual truth by God to a rational creature through active or passive means which are extraordinary and not naturally easy to comprehend.
In The Quest for the Plausible Jesus, Winter Dagmar points out that “God reveals Himself to mankind through the Physical Universe and also through Human Conscience (inherent ability of humanity to judge right from wrong)”.
These two forms of revelation are universal and are thus commonly referred to as General revelation as it is available to all people and at all time. General revelation discloses to us God’s existence, power, supremacy, greatness, kindness, goodness and wisdom.
God also reveals Himself and His truth at specific times and to specific people through Special Revelation. These include personal experiences and encounters such as having dreams (like in the story of Joseph), seeing a vision (like Paul) and getting express information from an angel (like Mary).
Revelation is both past and present and, like in the story of Samuel in the Bible, God can communicate directly with human beings. This is another form of Special revelation referred to as verbal revelation.
All these forms of revelation, however, have various significant limitations. General revelation (Physical universe), for example, contains no information regarding Christ and his death and therefore does not provide concrete reasons that can result in spiritual salvation.
Human conscience, on the other hand, has no revelation through it of redemption and does not therefore provide enough truth to believe. Special revelation also does not usually seem revelatory to us today and few people can believe or even feel obliged to follow another person’s spiritual revelation.
The Bible
The Bible contains a collection of books or sacred writings and religious texts of Judaism and Christian religions. It is the world’s all time best seller and consists of the inspired Word of God, written down by humans. The textual content and order in which the books are arranged vary among the different denominations.
As a result, there is no single common version of the Bible. Protestant Christian Bibles, for example, only consider 39 books of Hebrew Scripture as Old Testament books, while Ethiopian Orthodox Church Bible has a total of 81 books. The Roman Catholic Church, on the other hand, recognizes several other books as canonical and has a Bible with 46 Old Testament books.
Critical methods by which modern biblical scholars seek to understand biblical texts
The Bible, being a library or large collection of books, contains a whole range of scripture teachings, genealogies, poems, gospels which recounts the life and teachings of Jesus Christ and epistles or letters. Therefore, to establish the presumptive purpose and meaning of the text, biblical scholars apply a number of critical methods and perspectives in their study.
In Systematic Theology, Wayne Grudem explains that “many modern biblical scholars use sociological interpretation or socio-scientific criticism, by drawing on the social sciences, to understand the sociological backgrounds to a text”.
Redaction criticism is another method employed by today’s scholars to analyze how the writers in the bible shaped their source material, to reconstruct the community and to establish the role of the writers of the text. Today, liberal biblical scholars also use Narrative criticism method to discern authorial intent, to resolve implications of multiple interpretations and to restore the sense of the story within the Bible.
The gospels are not necessarily historically factual or biographical accounts of the life of Jesus, but they contain the truth about who he was and about his message. The gospels in the New Testament also reflect the intended message on the part of the writers to the target audience.
The four gospels present different narratives that portray Jesus as the son of God, a leader of a group of disciples, a healer and a preacher of the word of God. The book of Mathew, for example, carefully records Christ’s major speeches and recollects the Savior’s miraculous work.
Though it underscores the deeds of Christ by recording only one major sermon, the gospel of Mark (written for Roman audience) depicts Jesus Christ as a heroic, servant-like figure and a charismatic man of action.
In his part, the solitary Gentile writer Luke underscores the human aspects and character of Jesus Christ, His deep concern for the sick, weak and poor and the action of the Holy Spirit. The gospel which was written by the medical physician (Colossians 4:14) also emphasizes the value of prayer and the importance of salvation offered by Christ.
The book of John, on the other hand, establishes the divinity of Jesus Christ. As one of the members that inner circle of disciples (Mark 5:37; 9:2; 14:33), John strongly argues the case for the deity of Christ.
The book is characterized by a number of word signs and work signs: “I am the light of the world” (8:12), “the bread of life” (6:35), “the way, the truth, and the life” (14:6), all which affirm that Christ is indeed the savior and son of God.
Bibliography
Dagmar, Winter. The Quest for the Plausible Jesus: The Question of Criteria. Westminster: John Knox Press, 2002.
Grudem, Wayne. Systematic Theology. Leicester. England: Inter-Varsity Press, 1994.