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    The Bible's Hidden Years
    The Bible's Hidden Years
    The Bible's Hidden Years
    Ebook58 pages54 minutes

    The Bible's Hidden Years

    By Alfred D. Byrd

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    About this ebook

    When you read the Bible, it's easy for you to get lost in terms of where and when what you're reading is taking place. In particular, when you move from Malachi to Matthew, you cross a gap in which the Biblical world changes almost beyond recognition. How did Romans, Pharisees, Saduccees, Herods, and Caesars suddenly come to be? How is the time of Christ related to the times that came before it?

    Here is a resource that will help you answer your questions. In a clear, but factual narrative, this book traces God's relationship with His people from the time of Abraham to the time of the apostles. You'll learn how the accounts of the Bible fit together with each other and with the history of great nations among which God's people lived and worked.

    Particular emphasis is laid on the "gap" in Scripture -- the period of four hundred years between when the prophet Malachi ended the canon of Hebrew Scripture and when Jesus, the Anointed One, began a new age of the world. During this period, exciting events -- sometimes inspiring, sometimes tragic -- led to the birth of the Child Who would shake history. Jesus did not come into a vacuum; He came to be part of our history, which is, at its root, God's story of love for humanity.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherAlfred D. Byrd
    Release dateJun 5, 2011
    ISBN9781465865588
    The Bible's Hidden Years
    Author

    Alfred D. Byrd

    I'm a graduate of Hazel Park High School, Hazel Park MI, and I've earned a B. S. in Medical Technology at Michigan State University and an M. S. in Microbiology at the University of Kentucky.My interests are Christian theology and history, Civil War history, science fiction, and fantasy. I've published a number of works, in prose or in epic verse, on these subjects.A number of my works are available from Amazon and other major on-line book distributors. I've also sold four short stories or novellas to science fiction or fantasy anthologies.

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      Book preview

      The Bible's Hidden Years - Alfred D. Byrd

      THE BIBLE'S HIDDEN YEARS

      Alfred D. Byrd

      THE BIBLE'S HIDDEN YEARS

      Alfred D. Byrd

      Published by Alfred D. Byrd at Smashwords

      Copyright 2011 Alfred D. Byrd

      Smashwords Edition, License Notes

      This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

      Scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version, copyright 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

      Cover design by Helen E. Davis. Please look up her own works available at Smashwords.

      CHAPTER ONE: THE ORIGIN OF THE JEWS

      When God appeared to Abram (later renamed Abraham) in what is now Iraq, God gave him a Promise: a land of his own, an everlasting family to inherit that land, and a blessing in his name on all of humanity (Genesis 12:1-3). In his physical birthplace, he had worshipped idols, images of false gods. In the Holy Land, his spiritual birthplace, he would worship the one true God. Abraham, following God's guidance, entered the Promised Land, which was then called Canaan: the land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea.

      There, Abraham and his descendents lived at first as nomadic herdsmen. Through his eldest son, Ishmael, through sons of concubines, and through a grandson named Esau, Abraham became an ancestor of many Middle Eastern peoples. The promise of the land and of the blessing, however, came down from Abraham through his younger son, Isaac, to Isaac's younger son, Jacob, whom God renamed Israel. (This can mean either 'prince of God' or 'he struggles with God.') In time, prophets, divinely inspired human messengers of God's word, would personify the blessing as Messiah ('anointed one'), a deliverer sent by God.

      (It is from Judah, one of Jacob's twelve sons, that the word 'Jew' comes. Abraham's descendents through Jacob were not at first, however, called Jews. Throughout most of Hebrew Scripture, they were called Children of Israel or Israelites.)

      Joseph, one of Jacob's sons, was sold through his brothers' jealousy into slavery in Egypt. Rising from slavery because of wisdom, hard work, and a divinely bestowed ability to interpret dreams, he became second only to Pharaoh, Egypt's king. During a widespread famine, Joseph brought the rest of his family to Egypt. There, in a region set aside for the Children of Israel, they kept living as herdsmen.

      After the death both of Joseph and of the pharaoh whom he served, the Israelites lost the royal court's favor and became the Egyptians' slaves. God, hearing the Israelites' cry for relief from their bondage, sent them a deliver, Moses, a descendent of Jacob's son Levi.

      After ten miraculous judgments from God had broken Egypt's power over the Israelites, Moses led his people far into a wilderness to a mountain called Sinai. (Traditionally, this is Jebel Musa in the Sinai Peninsula; many modern scholars, however, place the mountain of God's revelation in what is now northwestern Saudi Arabia.) There, God gave the people a moral, civil, and ceremonial law summarized in the Ten Commandments (Exodus 20:2-17). To show submission to this law, the Children of Israel were to circumcise each newborn male child on the eighth day of his life.

      As part of Moses' Law, God ordained for the nation of Israel a set of offerings and sacrifices to be presented to Him daily, on a weekly day of rest, and at each of a set of annual feasts. On the day of rest, the Sabbath ('the seventh day'), which commemorated both God's finishing His work of creation and the people's being freed from slavery, God forbade all gainful work.

      The chief of the annual feasts was a spring festival called Passover, which recalled God's miraculous work in rescuing His people from slavery in Egypt. At Passover and at two other major feasts, Pentecost and Tabernacles, every Israelite man was supposed to bring gifts to God's altar, where He received offerings and sacrifices, to commune with his fellow Israelites and with God.

      The altar stood at first by a sacred tent

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