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11 11 U n i t 1 — L e s s o n 2 How We Got the Bible Timeless Truth God's Word is living and active in my life. Lesson Focus The learner will be able to summarize how we got the Bible and why we can trust the Bible is true. There are a lot of conflicting reports in the world today about how we got the Bible. In fact, it's likely that your learners have already heard from a variety of sources that the Bible is a man-made book and that people over the years have manipulated it to suit their own desires. The point of this icebreaker is to get your learners to start writing this stuff down, and for you to be able to take a look at what they've heard, read, or seen and what they believe about the Bible. Use this as a preassessment for the lesson, and make sure to highlight answers from today's lesson that may speak to their particular questions. This lesson could begin any number of ways, but we've chosen to start by talking about canonicity because it is useful in understanding how we use the Bible. We do not worship a book. Scripture is God's Word, but God's Word is also living and active in proclama- tion and the Sacraments. If we didn't have a Bible, we would still have God's Word among us. By think- ing about the canon of Scripture as a measuring tool, we can think about how we compare claims about God's Word to Scripture, and we can also use the Bible to validate truth claims against what God has revealed to us in Scripture. Don't let writing be a road block to thinking and sharing. Be sensitive to students who have great thoughts and ideas, but for whom putting them down on paper is an overwhelming task. Give students the option to share ideas verbally with you or a partner, especially in these opening activities. 9 How We Got the Bible Consider This Unit 1: Bible Basics God's Word is living and active in my life. I can summarize how we got the Bible and why we can trust that the Bible is true. Okay, so the Bible is a library of sixty-six books, written over a period of some 1,500 years by dozens of people. Have you ever asked yourself, Self, how did we get all these books together? And how do we know they're God's Word? Take a moment now to brainstorm how you think all these different books ended up in our Bibles today. Write your ideas in the space below. The Canon of Scripture Before digging into why we have the books we do in our Bible, we first need to understand the idea of the canon of Scripture. We are not talking about a kind of gun (that's spelled cannon). Instead, we are talking about canon, an old word that roughly means "a mea- suring rod," like a ruler. Now, think about what a ruler or a tape measure is used for. What would happen if you wanted to build a house and didn't have any rulers or measuring tools? What would the house look like? Write down some thoughts below. When we talk about the different books of the Bible, one important thing to keep in mind is that God's people, throughout God's entire plan of salvation, have considered these books the "mea- suring rod" of God's Word. They are God's Word, and we can measure any claim about the truth, who God is, who we are, and anything else against what these sixty-six books of the Bible say. For the rest of this lesson, we'll look at what we believe about the Bible: how it's inspired, inerrant, and authoritative; how it was collected; and how it all points us to Jesus.

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