Word of Life

Written and Edited by Mr J Aloysius Ignatius, Fr Gerard J D’Silva and Fr Trevor D’Souza, OFM   Note  The ‘fill in the blanks’ at intervals below will help you to focus on essentials and to interact with the text more actively. For best effect, it must be filled in by memory from what you have just read in that section. If necessary you may even read the section more than once. Only when you are unable to fill in the blanks from memory should you go back to the text to fill in the blanks. It should not be used as a mere cut and paste exercise.    1.   The word  Bible  is derived from the Greek word  biblos , which means “book.” The Bible itself is a collection, or a library of various books, inspired by God and written by human beings. The Bible contains the authentic, inspired record of the revelations made to mankind by God about himself and his will for people. The Bible contains saving truths.   Q1. The word “Bible” means ………. Q2. The Bibl...

  By Emmanuel Gomes   This article concludes the introduction to the Old Testament, and discusses on how under the infallible authority of the Catholic Church the canon of the Scriptures according to Catholic faith was finalized.   There are video lectures at the end of this article. After studying this article, it is recommended to watch the four videos for a comprehensive understanding of the origins of the Bible.    From next article onwards, we will begin with the study of the Pentateuch, starting with the book of Genesis. For this Bible Study, we will be following the canonical order.   The Development of the Canon in the Early Church –   In the previous article , we saw how different sects of Judaism had divergent views on the Jewish Scripture during Jesus’s time. So when did the Jewish community reach a consensus on their canon as described in our first article?   Jewish traditions do not have a central authority like the Catholic Church an...