Leadership, values, and the bible Essay

The Bible is a book that refers to collections of canonical text and religious writings that has its origins in Judeo-Christian traditions. The Bible is not a mere bulk of texts, but in fact a collection of books that process within it various historical traditions and accounts of the religion of Christianity. Now, it is important for us to understand that referring to the Bible does not necessarily point towards the Bible we all know of. In fact, there is a Jewish version of the Bible which is often referred to as the Hebrew Bible, a collection of 39 books which is the foundation of the said religion. According to believers, it is God’s direct word transcribed through human hands but inspired by divine means. The Christian tradition divides the Bible into two parts, the previous consisting of 46 books of the Old Testament and 27 books of the New Testament. The Bible had been originally written in Greek and many versions exist as of today, but all claiming that it has preserved the original essence in order to hold the argument that it has been inspired by God and in fact are the transcribed words of the divinity. Now the question of having the Bible as our main and central point of reference for this paper is how authoritative it really is. Is it merely a collection of fictional works or indeed something that could be attested to by many of its authorities to be direct words and transcriptions of divinity? And the more important and pressing question is can it still be relied on after almost 2000 years of existence and could the stories and works found inside still be applicable for modern setting? First, the argument of time. Although it is also true that the Bible could be dated as long as 2000 years old for the King James version – more or less the same version that we are reading now if we are Roman Catholics – the totality of the Old Testament had been written much more before that. In fact, the Jewish religion, perhaps dating as long as 3000 years ago, claims that most of the text of the Old Testament were one of the most earlier writings second only to Zoroastrianism. The first books of the Bible had been written in Egyptian papyrus, ended its only much later that it had been translated into Greek. When it comes to academic text, time is indeed a valuable factor in considering its impacts to modern society. In order to reaffirm its importance, perhaps it would be wise for us to look back at that time and realize that most of the books that were written and created in that eon of human history had indeed profound effects and how our society and our thoughts as a collective society had been affected. Just take Plato’s book the Republic for example. It is basically one of the oldest texts of political philosophy. However, even if that holds true, the Republic still stands as one of the most basic examples of democracy and how it is applied. Just a few decades later when Aristotle wrote his first books, his collections of metaphysics and the many other contributions to science had been the building blocks of other studies even to the modern day. In many such areas like literature, physics, chemistry, and the many other disciplines of the modern world, it is through old texts that modern scholars look towards and reaffirm the believe that even the oldest of books hold much grain of truth compared to those which are new. In fact, on argument by most writers is that most of the books written today are merely copies or modifications of the old books of our society. They have merely been rephrased in order for us to understand better, but the same ideas and essence still remain. If this is not proof enough, one merely needs to look at authoritative leadership books as of the present and TrackBack their reference until one reaches the Bible. The second is the argument of content. Many scholars are in direct conflict with theologists because the latter group claims that the Bible had been written by some divine assistance. Academic scholars who values science more claim that it is only humans who had conceptualized and read the books of the Bible. if you were to discuss and reflect upon this debate, we would be biting more than we can chew, for this argument has existed as long as the Bible itself has existed. For our academic purpose, let us at the least reliant the fact that either way, it is not problematic for us on the source of the Bible as long as it is able to maintain the same basic truths that we consider essential to our review. Even if it’s true that it is not God who had written the Bible but a collection of imaginative man, since we are discussing the lessons of leadership that could be learned from the book, we are at a certain advantage because both theories could prove useful to us. If it is indeed written through divine inspiration acting through human tools, then perhaps we could authoritatively claim that the Bible’s leadership styles are indeed universal leadership styles that are not merely human but divine. On the other hand, having an argument that it is men who had written the contents, this our study could benefit from that idea because even in the early stages of our history, leadership signs had been detected in humanity in their heights of civilization, and these leadership styles and values still exist as of today. Having had qualified or major source, let us now proceed to our paper and identify the various leadership styles that could be found in the Bible.