Note: If this is your first exposure to this series, I’d appreciate it if you’d start with the introduction to the series so that you’re able to put this post in context.
I grew up with the notion that the phrase “God inspired the Bible” was functionally equivalent to “God wrote the Bible.” In my young mind, the biblical writers were essentially stenographers, more or less taking dictation from God. In the churches that nourished my childhood faith, the phrases “the Bible says” and “God says” meant the same thing.
As it turns out, the Bible does in fact portray divine dictation as one way in which the creation of a text might be prompted and guided.
Remember the word problems that you used to solve back in your grade-school math classes? I thought that simple word problems like those would serve as good exercise to help students learn, use, and retain their Biblical Hebrew numbers, so I created two sets of four word problems each. I delivered the first set online via Pepperdine’s “learning management system,” casting them as multiple-choice questions. I delivered the second set on paper so that students would need to compose their answers, and of course I expected the students to answer in Biblical Hebrew, not using Arabic numerals. If you wish, you can