Introduction To The Bible: Course Analysis

For many years, I have had this ideology that all the information inscribed in the Bible was factual. It was thought provoking to see that the Bible is composed of historically accurate information and stories. The Introduction to the Bible course has given me the opportunity to explore and broaden my perspective on the Catholic bible. I am challenging myself to see the Bible from a historical and scientific view, but also with a view of my faith. The information that I have gathered from the course has caused me to question faith and facts. From the first day of the course, my attention was grabbed. The lesson from my first class dealt with the significance of biblical numbers and how they are symbolic. They are seldom used for counting.

When I read the Bible, I would simply breeze by these numbers and see no importance in them. After hearing the lecture on creation, the questioning and skepticism began. Like a majority of Catholics, we have been taught that the book of Genesis describes creation. For many years, I was the same until I enrolled in the Introduction to Bible Course. After carefully reading the text, we observed that Genesis is a story. We were able to make such a decision by the way it is being told. I learned that the book of Genesis is a mythological analogy and the myths that capture a larger truth. It is a story that had no evidence to support the claim, unlike the theory formulated by scientists known as Evolution and the Big Bang theory which occurred because the explosion of compressed matter and energy. The remains of the earliest humans have been discovered which date back to thousands of years ago known as Homo

I was taught that God had sent the plagues in order to liberate the Israelites from enslavement and were detrimental to the Egyptians. After eighteen years of been taught a certain way, it comes to a shock to me that it never happened. This changed my perspective on the Exodus and that God was not with them while they attempted to liberate from the Egyptians. Israelites did escape from captivity, but not the way it is portrayed in the Exodus. I learned that in many instances a small event is exaggerated in order to demonstrate how God steps in powerfully. In the scene where Moses divides the river, one can argue that this impossible for such action to have occurred. I learned that the Israelites did cross a river, but it was not as vague as explained in the Exodus. Growing up, I was also taught about this great flood and the Arc of Noah and now it has been revealed that a flood did occur but it was a character that was made into history. Professor Gibbons said a phrase that’s says “God acts, man responds” and I believe we should keep this in mind when reading the Bible. Another compelling fact, I learned, was the Red Sea did not get its hue from the blood but rather from the sand. Another propelling information was the Covenant of Moses, which was like a treaty where God said that since he had taken them out of captivity, he mandated them to follow certain rules such as the practice of