Religion 120 Ch 1-8
Which was the first book of the New Testament to be written?
1 Thessalonians
Scholars estimate literacy in antiquity to have been
10-15 percent.
The Maccabean revolt began around the year
167 b.c.e..
Scholars think Jesus died around
30 c.e
In what year did Athanasius name the current twenty-seven books of the New Testament as authoritative?
367 c.e
The Gospel of Mark was probably written around
65-70 c.e.
Name one of the people Plutarch wrote about.
Alexander the Great.
Which of the following was not a Jewish holy man?
Apollonius of Tyana
The New Testament was written in what language?
Greek
How was the Temple in Jerusalem unlike any other Greco-Roman place of worship?
It was the only temple for the God of Israel..
The phrase "Jesus' Passion" refers to
Jesus' suffering..
Which early Christian group believed in two Gods: the just God of the Old Testament and the merciful God of Jesus?
Marcionites
Who created the verse division that we have today?
Robert Stephanus.
Identify one discrepancy in the Gospel accounts of Jesus' crucifixion.
The account in Mark has it occurring at 9:00 a.m., whereas John's takes place after noon..
How did pagan literature of the first century refer to the events surrounding Jesus?
There weren't any references made to him..
How did the ancient Jews feel about keeping the Law embodied in the Torah?
They considered it a great joy..
Which of the following was thought to be the most powerful of the gods?
Zeus
Although we cannot know for certain, many scholars believe Q probably did not contain
a Passion narrative..
In first-century apocalyptic Judaism, the term "Son of Man" referred to
a cosmic figure..
When Jesus is baptized, the spirit of God descends on him in the shape of
a dove.
What is the earliest surviving manuscript of the New Testament to date?
a fragment of the Gospel of John.
What is the term for a category of literature in which members share a range of conventions?
a genre.
By what means have early Christian truth claims been handed down from one generation to the next?
all of these.
If the literary-historical method uncovers the same points uncovered by the redactional approach, then why use the redactional approach?
as a shortcut.
In Mark, the Temple curtain rips
at Jesus' death
What ritual was necessary for new converts to Christianity to undergo?
baptism
John, the forerunner of Jesus, proclaims forgiveness of sins and performs
baptisms
Why, in the Gospel of John, did Pontius Pilate have to conduct the trial of Jesus by lengthy conversations between the prosecution and the defendant?
because the Jewish leaders refused to go into Pilate's residence, so they sent Jesus in alone, leaving Pilate to go back and forth between them.
At Jesus' trial in Mark, the Sanhedrin charged him with
blasphemy..
The word "epistle" means
letter
The Dead Sea Scrolls contain parts of every book of the Hebrew Bible except
Esther..
What genre do the Gospels most closely fit?
Greco-Roman biography
The spread of Greek culture and language is known as
Hellenization
The Gospel of Mark begins with
Jesus' baptism by John
Scholars believe that Q contains mostly
Jesus' sayings..
Which of the following groups thought it was blasphemy to call Jesus God?
Jewish-Christian adoptionists
All of the following figures recognize Jesus in Mark except
John the Baptist..
The four-source hypothesis relies on the idea that
Mark was written first..
Both Matthew and Luke used _____________ as a literary source.
Mark.
Who assembled all the miracle stories dispersed throughout Mark into one large collection?
Matthew
The sect of Judaism that wielded the most political power was the
Sadducees
The Roman Empire began as
a small farming village
Redaction criticism is
a study of how an author changes his source..
The emphasis placed on Jesus' death classifies the Gospels as
a subgenre of the genre of ancient Greco-Roman biographies..
Why are the Dead Sea Scrolls so valuable?
because they are nearly a thousand years older than the oldest copies of the Hebrew Scriptures that we previously had.
What framework were ancient biographies often crafted within?
chronological.
"Diaspora" means
dispersion
Which of the following represents an intentional scribal error?
doctrinal change
In Rome, the priestly art of reading the entrails of sacrificed animals was called
extispicy
At the end of what century did Christians begin to call Jesus' words Scripture?
first c.e.
According to one of the Dead Sea Scrolls called the War Scroll, the final war that is due to take place at the end of time will last
forty years..
"Torah" means
guidance
The Pentateuch is
he first five books of the Bible..
Who was allowed to enter the Holy of Holies?
high priest
Biographies written by Christians put an inordinate amount of emphasis on what event in Jesus' life, which is very unusual for ancient biographies?
his death.
What does the term "gnosis" mean?
knowledge
Which traditional symbol is the Gospel author Mark associated with?
lion
When Mark and Matthew tell the same story, Mark's story is
longer
Pagan religions that required initiation were
mystery cults
Did the authors of the Gospels claim to be eyewitnesses to the events that they narrated?
no
How many original books of the New Testament do we have?
none
In the story of Jesus in the last minutes before his arrest in the Garden of Gethsemane (Luke 22:43-44), the account of his "sweating blood" while contemplating his imminent suffering is most likely
not an original part of any Gospel..
The Christian mission was conducted primarily
person to person..
State priesthoods in the Roman Empire were
political appointments
Stoicism, Platonism, and Epicureanism all involved the exercise of
reason
One of the most popular pagan authors of the second century, Plutarch, wrote fifty biographies of prominent Greek and Roman men. His main aim in these accounts was to
reveal their characters..
The term "canon" means
ruler
Missionary movements in the Greco-Roman world were advanced mostly by
schools of philosophy
What is the style of writing called that leaves out punctuation, capitalization, paragraph divisions, sentence divisions, and spaces between words?
scriptuo continua
"Synoptic" means
seen together
New Testament manuscripts do not
show a lack of passion for their topics..
Why did God instruct Moses to have every Israelite family sacrifice a lamb and paint their doorframes with its blood?
so the angel of death would pass over those houses.
According to Mark, the messiah must
suffer and die..
An alternative place of worship (alternative to the Temple in Jerusalem) where Jews came together in the community to discuss the sacred traditions of the Torah was called a(n)
synagogue..
The group of texts used by the Essenes is called
the Dead Sea Scrolls
The Marcionites believed Jesus came to save people from
the Jewish God
The Jewish response to Antiochus Epiphanes' actions was
the Maccabean revolt..
Most copies of New Testament manuscripts come from what time period?
the Middle Ages
The most accepted resolution to the Synoptic Problem is
the four-source hypothesis
What does the term "heresy" mean?
to choose
Ancient biographies were usually written for what main purpose?
to give instruction on proper behavior.
Polytheism is the
worship of many gods