Christian Scriptures Test 1

Middle Bronze Age

(2100-1550 BCE) - period of the ancestors. The Bronze Age is a prehistoric period, approximately 3300 BC to 1200 BC, that was characterized by the use of bronze, in some areas proto-writing, and other early features of urban civilization. The Bronze Age is the second principal period of the three-age Stone-Bronze-Iron system, as proposed in modern times by Christian Jürgensen Thomsen, for classifying and studying ancient societies and history.

Leviticus

(Manual of Sacrifice / Manual of Purity / Holiness Code)

Numbers

(two themes) The Book of Numbers, also known as the Fourth Book of Moses, is the fourth book of the Hebrew Bible, and the fourth of five books of the Jewish Torah. The book has a long and complex history; its final form is possibly due to a Priestly redaction of a Yahwistic source made some time in the early Persian period. The name of the book comes from the two censuses taken of the Israelites.

William Tyndale

Born1494 North Nibley, United Kingdom Died Oct 06, 1536 Vilvoorde, Belgium William Tyndale was an English scholar who became a leading figure in the Protestant Reformation in the years leading up to his execution. He is well known as a translator of the Bible into English, influenced by the works of Erasmus of Rotterdam and Martin

canonical criticism

Canonical criticism, sometimes called canon criticism or the canonical approach, is a way of interpreting the Bible that focuses on the text of the biblical canon itself as a finished product. Brevard Childs popularised this approach, though he personally rejected the term. Whereas other types of biblical criticism focus on the origins, structure and history of texts, canonical criticism looks at the meaning which the overall text, in its final form, has for the community which uses it.

Habiru

Habiru is a term used in 2nd-millennium BCE texts throughout the Fertile Crescent for people variously described as rebels, outlaws, raiders, mercenaries, bowmen, servants, slaves, and laborers.

Hammurabi

Hammurabi was the sixth king of the First Babylonian dynasty of the Amorite tribe, reigning from c. 1792 BC to c. 1750 BC. He was preceded by his father, Sin-Muballit, who abdicated due to failing health. During his reign, he conquered Elam and the city-states of Larsa, Eshnunna, and Mari. He ousted Ishme-Dagan I, the king of Assyria, and forced his son Mut-Ashkur to pay tribute, bringing almost all of Mesopotamia under Babylonian rule. Famous for Hammurabi Code

Tanakh

Hebrew Bible

Hermeneutics

Hermeneutics (/ˌhɜːrməˈnjuːtɪks/) is the theory and methodology of interpretation, especially the interpretation of biblical texts, wisdom literature, and philosophical texts. Hermeneutics is more than interpretative principles or methods used when immediate comprehension fails and includes the art of understanding and communication

Tells

In archaeology, a tell or tel (borrowed into English from Arabic: تَل‎, tall, 'mound' or 'small hill'),[1] is an artificial topographical feature, a species of mound[a] consisting of the stratified debris from the accumulated refuse of generations of people who once formed a settlement and dwelt on the same site.[3][b] A classic tell looks like a low, truncated cone with sloping sides[5] and a flat, mesa-like top.[6] They can be more than 43 m (141 ft) high.[7] Tells are formed from a variety of remains, including organic and cultural refuse, collapsed mudbricks and other building materials, water-laid sediments, residues of biogenic and geochemical processes, and aeolian sediment.[8] Tells are most commonly associated with the ancient Near East, but they are also found elsewhere, such as Southern Europe from Bulgaria to Greece[9] and in North Africa.[10][3][11][12] Within the Near East, they are concentrated in less arid regions, including Upper Mesopotamia, the Southern Levant, Anatolia and Iran, which had more continuous settlement.

Martin Luther

Martin Luther, (born November 10, 1483, Eisleben, Saxony [Germany]—died February 18, 1546, Eisleben), German theologian and religious reformer who was the catalyst of the 16th-century Protestant Reformation. Through his words and actions, Luther precipitated a movement that reformulated certain basic tenets of Christian belief and resulted in the division of Western Christendom between Roman Catholicism and the new Protestant traditions, mainly Lutheranism, Calvinism, the Anglican Communion, the Anabaptists, and the Antitrinitarians. He is one of the most influential figures in the history of Christianity.

Papyri

Papyrus is a material similar to thick paper that was used in ancient times as a writing surface. It was made from the pith of the papyrus plant, Cyperus papyrus, a wetland sedge. Papyrus can also refer to a document written on sheets of such material, joined side by side and rolled up into a scroll, an early form of a book.

textual criticism

Textual criticism is a branch of textual scholarship, philology, and of literary criticism that is concerned with the identification of textual variants, or different versions, of either manuscripts or of printed books

Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia

The Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia, abbreviated as BHS or rarely BH⁴, is an edition of the Masoretic Text of the Hebrew Bible as preserved in the Leningrad Codex, and supplemented by masoretic and text-critical notes.

Codex Sinaiticus

The Codex Sinaiticus, also dating from the fourth century and representing the same form of text as the preceding. It was discovered in 1844 in the Monastery of St. Catherine on Mt. Sinai, and is now kept in the British Museum

The Rosetta Stone

The Rosetta Stone is a granodiorite stele inscribed with three versions of a decree issued in Memphis, Egypt in 196 BC during the Ptolemaic dynasty on behalf of King Ptolemy V Epiphanes. The top and middle texts are in Ancient Egyptian using hieroglyphic and Demotic scripts respectively, while the bottom is in Ancient Greek. The decree has only minor differences between the three versions, making the Rosetta Stone key to deciphering the Egyptian scripts.

Papyrus 52

The Rylands Library Papyrus P52, also known as the St John's fragment and with an accession reference of Papyrus Rylands Greek 457, is a fragment from a papyrus codex, measuring only 3.5 by 2.5 inches at its widest, and conserved with the Rylands Papyri at the John Rylands University Library Manchester, UK. The front contains parts of seven lines from the Gospel of John 18:31-33, in Greek, and the back contains parts of seven lines from verses 37-38.

YHWH

The Tetragrammaton or Tetragram is the four-letter Hebrew word יהוה‎, the name of the national god of Israel. The four letters, read from right to left, are yodh, he, waw, and he. While there is no consensus about the structure and etymology of the name, the form Yahweh is now accepted almost universally.

The Ugaritic Materials

The Ugaritic texts are a corpus of ancient cuneiform texts discovered since 1928 in Ugarit (Ras Shamra) and Ras Ibn Hani in Syria, and written in Ugaritic, an otherwise unknown Northwest Semitic language. Approximately 1,500 texts and fragments have been found to date. The texts were written in the 13th and 12th centuries BCE. The most famous of the Ugarit texts are the approximately fifty epic poems; the three major literary texts are the Baal Cycle, the Legend of Keret, and the Tale of Aqhat. The other texts include 150 tablets describing the Ugaritic cult and rituals, 100 letters of correspondence, a very small number of legal texts (Akkadian is considered to have been the contemporary language of law), and hundreds of administrative or economic texts. Unique among the Ugarit texts are the earliest known abecedaries, lists of letters in alphabetic cuneiform, where not only the canonical order of Phoenician script is evidenced, but also the traditional names for letters of the alphabet.

Latin Vulgate

The Vulgate is a Latin version of the Holy Bible, and largely the result of the labors of St Jerome (Eusebius Sophronius Hieronymus), who was commissioned by Pope Damasus I in 382 A.D. to make a revision of the old Latin translations. By the 13th century this revision had come to be called the versio vulgata, that is, the "commonly used translation", and ultimately it became the definitive and officially promulgated Latin version of the Holy Bible in the Catholic Church

tradition history

Tradition history or tradition criticism is a methodology of biblical criticism that situates a text within a stream of a specific tradition in history and attempts to describe the development of the tradition over the course of time. Tradition criticism was developed by Hermann Gunkel. Tradition history seeks to analyze biblical literature in terms of the process by which biblical traditions passed from stage to stage into their final form, especially how they passed from oral tradition to written form. Tradition history/criticism is a sister discipline of form criticism—also associated with Gunkel, who used the results of source and form criticism to develop the history of tradition interpretation.

source criticism

the analysis and study of the sources used by biblical authors.

Exodus

the second book of the Bible, which recounts the departure of the Israelites from slavery in Egypt, their journey across the Red Sea and through the wilderness led by Moses, and the giving of the Ten Commandments. The events have been variously dated by scholars between about 1580 and 1200 bc

Ramesses II

Although Ramesses has been popularly associated with the pharaoh of the biblical Book of Exodus, there is absolutely no evidence to support this claim. The association of the name `Ramesses' with the unnamed pharaoh of Egypt in the Bible became quite common after the success of Cecil B. DeMille's film The Ten Commandments in 1956. Film versions of the biblical story since, including the popular animated film Prince of Egypt (1998) and the more recent Exodus: Gods and Kings (2014) both followed the lead of DeMille's film but there is no historical support for this association. Exodus 1:11 and 12:37 as well as Numbers 33:3 and 33:5 all mention Per-Ramesses as one of the cities the Israelite slaves labored on and also the city they departed Egypt from. There is no evidence of a mass exodus from the city - nor from any other city in the history of Egypt - and none to support the claim that Per-Ramesses was built by slave labor. Extensive archaeological excavations at Giza and elsewhere throughout Egypt have unearthed ample evidence that the building projects completed under the reign of Ramesses II (and every other king of Egypt) used skilled and unskilled Egyptian laborers who were either paid for their time or who volunteered as part of their civic duty. The custom of Egyptian citizens volunteering their time to work on the king's building projects is well documented and it was even thought that, in the afterlife, souls would be called upon to work for Osiris, Lord of the Dead, on the building projects he would want. The practice of placing shabti dolls in the tombs and graves of the dead was precisely for this purpose: so the dolls would take the place of the deceased in work projects.

Allegory

As a literary/linguistic device, an allegory is a narrative in which a character, place, or event is used to deliver a broader message about real-world issues and occurrences. Authors have used allegory throughout history in all forms of art to illustrate or convey complex ideas and concepts in ways that are comprehensible or striking to its viewers, readers, or listeners.

dynamic equivalence

Dynamic Equivalence is a term coined by Eugene A. Nida that refers to translating [or interpreting] sense-for-sense or meaning-for-meaning from one language into another to elicit the same response as the source (original) language in the target (translated) language. This term is often used to refer to translations that are true to the original message but do not strictly adhere to a word-for-word rendition, which could lead to confusion in the target language.

Etiology

Etiology (pronounced; alternatively: aetiology or ætiology) is the study of causation or origination. The word is derived from the Greek αἰτιολογία (aitiología) "giving a reason for" (αἰτία, aitía, "cause"; and -λογία, -logía). More completely, etiology is the study of the causes, origins, or reasons behind the way that things are, or the way they function, or it can refer to the causes themselves.

form criticism

Form criticism is a field of biblical studies that sees the Bible as a collection of traditional stories and sayings (or "units"), which were circulated orally and eventually strung together and preserved in writing. Form criticism attempts to determine literary patterns in Scripture, isolate units of text, and trace each unit to its "origin" in oral tradition. The form-critic separates a Bible story from its literary context and asks, "What is this unit's literary genre? What is the pre-history of this unit? How did the story change as it was passed down orally?" Originally focused on the Old Testament, this field of research soon became another lens through which to understand portions of the New Testament.

Jerome

Jerome (/dʒəˈroʊm/; Latin: Eusebius Sophronius Hieronymus; Greek: Εὐσέβιος Σωφρόνιος Ἱερώνυμος; c. 342 - c. 347 - 30 September 420), also known as Jerome of Stridon, was a Latin priest, confessor, theologian, and historian; he is commonly known as Saint Jerome. born at Stridon, a village near Emona on the border of Dalmatia and Pannonia.[3][4][5] He is best known for his translation of most of the Bible into Latin (the translation that became known as the Vulgate) and his commentaries on the whole Bible. Jerome attempted to create a translation of the Old Testament based on a Hebrew version, rather than the Septuagint, as Latin Bible translations used to be performed before him. His list of writings is extensive, and beside his Biblical works, he wrote polemical and historical essays, always from a theologian's perspective.

John Wycliffe

John Wycliffe (/ˈwɪklɪf/; also spelled Wyclif, Wickliffe, and other variants; c. 1320s - 31 December 1384)[2] was an English scholastic philosopher, theologian, biblical translator, reformer, priest, and a seminary professor at the University of Oxford. He became an influential dissident within the Roman Catholic priesthood during the 14th century and is considered an important predecessor to Protestantism. Wycliffe questioned the privileged status of the clergy which had bolstered their powerful role in England and the luxury and pomp of local parishes and their ceremonies.[3] Wycliffe advocated translation of the Bible into the common vernacular. According to tradition, Wycliffe is said to have completed a translation directly from the Vulgate into Middle English - a version now known as Wycliffe's Bible. It is probable that he personally translated the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John; and it is possible he translated the entire New Testament, while his associates translated the Old Testament. Wycliffe's Bible appears to have been completed by 1384, additional updated versions being done by Wycliffe's assistant John Purvey and others in 1388 and 1395.

narrative criticism

Narrative criticism is an attempt to understand a biblical text as part of a connected story with a coherent purpose. It seeks to understand how the writer arranged the "story" in order to elicit a certain response from the original audience. This method explains why certain ideas, words, or events are presented as they are and what their intended meaning is. The term criticism, in this case, implies "critique" or "examination," not "condemnation" or "disapproval." Narrative criticism assumes the writer of the text had a specific meaning in mind. So, to accurately understand any part or portion of that text, one must keep the "big idea"—the narrative—in mind. It is most easily understood through the parables of Jesus. We naturally read Jesus' parables with an understanding that there is a "point" to the tale. Jesus is telling the story in order to teach a lesson or to explain an idea. When considering the meaning of Jesus' words, it's important to remember they're part of that particular story. The intended meaning of the larger story should be crucial to how we interpret the meaning of specific words. In simple terms, narrative criticism applies the same mindset to studying Scripture in general.

Further

Ramesses was famous for recording histories of his accomplishments and for embellishing the facts when they did not quite fit history as he wished it preserved. It seems highly unlikely that such a king would neglect to record (with or without a favorable slant) the plagues which allegedly fell upon Egypt or the flight of the Hebrew slaves. One need not rely solely on the inscriptions Ramesses himself ordered, however; the Egyptians, from the time they mastered writing c. 3200 BCE, kept very extensive records and none of them even hint at a large population of Hebrew slaves in Egypt much less their exodus.

reader response criticism

Reader-response criticism is a school of literary theory that focuses on the reader (or "audience") and their experience of a literary work, in contrast to other schools and theories that focus attention primarily on the author or the content and form of the work.

redaction criticism

Redaction criticism, also called Redaktionsgeschichte, Kompositionsgeschichte or Redaktionstheologie, is a critical method for the study of biblical texts. Redaction criticism regards the author of the text as editor of the source materials. Unlike its parent discipline, form criticism, redaction criticism does not look at the various parts of a narrative to discover the original genre. Instead, it focuses on how the redactor shaped and moulded the narrative to express theological and ideological goals.

Rhetorical criticism

Rhetorical criticism analyzes the symbolic artifacts of discourse—the words, phrases, images, gestures, performances, texts, films, etc. that people use to communicate. Rhetorical analysis shows how the artifacts work, how well they work, and how the artifacts, as discourse, inform and instruct, entertain and arouse, and convince and persuade the audience; as such, discourse includes the possibility of morally improving the reader, the viewer, and the listener. Rhetorical criticism studies and analyzes the purpose of the words, sights, and sounds that are the symbolic artifacts used for communications among people

The Dead Sea Scrolls

The Dead Sea Scrolls are ancient Jewish and Hebrew religious manuscripts that were found in the Qumran Caves in the Judaean Desert, near Ein Feshkha on the northern shore of the Dead Sea in the West Bank; the last scrolls discovered were found in the Cave of Horror in Israel. The texts have great historical, religious, and linguistic significance because they include the second-oldest known surviving manuscripts of works later included in the Hebrew Bible canon, along with deuterocanonical and extra-biblical manuscripts which preserve evidence of the diversity of religious thought in late Second Temple Judaism. Almost all of the scrolls are held by the state of Israel in the Shrine of the Book on the grounds of the Israel Museum, but ownership of the scrolls is disputed by Jordan and Palestine.

Enuma Elish

The Enūma Eliš is the Babylonian creation myth. It was recovered by English archaeologist Austen Henry Layard in 1849 in the ruined Library of Ashurbanipal at Nineveh. A form of the myth was first published by English Assyriologist George Smith in 1876; active research and further excavations led to near completion of the texts and improved translation. It includes Gods singing creation into existence and a narrative flood story

Epic of Gilgamesh

The Epic of Gilgamesh is an epic poem from ancient Mesopotamia, regarded as the earliest surviving notable literature and the second oldest religious text, after the Pyramid Texts. The literary history of Gilgamesh begins with five Sumerian poems about Bilgamesh, king of Uruk, dating from the Third Dynasty of Ur. These independent stories were later used as source material for a combined epic in Akkadian. The first surviving version of this combined epic, known as the "Old Babylonian" version, dates to the 18th century BC and is titled after its incipit, Shūtur eli sharrī. Only a few tablets of it have survived. The later Standard Babylonian version compiled by Sîn-lēqi-unninni dates from the 13th to the 10th centuries BC and bears the incipit Sha naqba īmuru. Approximately two-thirds of this longer, twelve-tablet version have been recovered. Some of the best copies were discovered in the library ruins of the 7th-century BC Assyrian king Ashurbanipal.

Kings Highway

The King's Highway was a trade route of vital importance in the ancient Near East, connecting Africa with Mesopotamia. It ran from Egypt across the Sinai Peninsula to Aqaba, then turned northward across Transjordan, to Damascus and the Euphrates River.

The Mari Tablets

The Mari tablets (1796-1761 BC ) were written primarily in the Akkadian language (Semitic dialect) although a few were bilingual, also written in Hurrian and Sumerian. The tablets were primarily from the second millennium (1800-1750 BC) and contained treaty documents between Iasmah-Adad and Zimri-Lim as well as between Zimri-Lim and Hammurabi.1. While the text dealt largely with financial, administrative and business transactions, they mention personal and place names with striking parallels to the Patriarchal records in Genesis. The customs, practices and names reflected in the Mari texts also illustrate practices during Patriarchal times that are similar to those mentioned by Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. For example, treaties and covenants were ratified by the killing of an ass, as described in the pact between the Shechemites and Jacob (Gen 33:19; 34:1-3). Yahweh's name appears in the tables but while not likely worshiped at Mari appears to be known among the Yawi names like the OT name Yawi-El (Joel). The practice of the ban or Hêrem placed on life and property of conquests, that was proclaimed at Jericho (Josh 6), is also described in the Mari tablets as the asakkum. Among the similarities both accounts describe severe penalties for violating the ban.2.

Masoretic text

The Masoretic Text is the authoritative Hebrew and Aramaic text of the 24 books of the Tanakh in Rabbinic Judaism. The Masoretic Text defines the Jewish canon and its precise letter-text, with its vocalization and accentuation known as the masorah

The Documentary Hypothesis (JEDP)

The documentary hypothesis (DH) is one of the models historically used by biblical scholars to explain the origins and composition of the Torah (or Pentateuch, the first five books of the Bible: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy).[4] More recent models include the supplementary hypothesis and the fragmentary hypothesis. All agree that the Torah is not a unified work from a single author, but is made up of sources combined over many centuries by many hands.[5] These models differ on the nature of these sources and how they were combined. The documentary hypothesis posited that the Pentateuch is a compilation of four originally independent documents: the Jahwist (J), Elohist (E), Deuteronomist (D), and Priestly (P) sources. The first of these, J, was dated to the Solomonic period (c. 950 BCE).[1] E was dated somewhat later, in the 9th century BCE, and D was dated just before the reign of King Josiah, in the 7th or 8th century. Finally, P was generally dated to the time of Ezra in the 5th century BCE.[3][2] The sources would have been joined together at various points in time by a series of editors or "redactors."[6]

Via Maris

Via Maris is one modern name for an ancient trade route, dating from the early Bronze Age, linking Egypt with the northern empires of Syria, Anatolia and Mesopotamia — along the Mediterranean coast of modern-day Egypt, Palestine, Israel, Iran, Iraq, Turkey and Syria. In Latin, Via Maris means "way of the sea", a translation of the Greek ὁδὸν θαλάσσης found in Isaiah 9:1 of the Septuagint. It is a historic road that runs in part along the Israeli Mediterranean coast. It was the most important route from Egypt to Syria which followed the coastal plain before crossing over into the plain of Jezreel and the Jordan valley.

Septuagint

a Greek version of the Hebrew Bible (or Old Testament), including the Apocrypha, made for Greek-speaking Jews in Egypt in the 3rd and 2nd centuries bc and adopted by the early Christian Churches.

Shema

a Hebrew text consisting of three passages from the Pentateuch and beginning "Hear, O Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is one." It forms an important part of Jewish evening and morning prayer and is used as a Jewish confession of faith.

Codex

an ancient manuscript text in book form.

Mesopotamia

an ancient region of southwestern Asia in present-day Iraq, lying between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers. Its alluvial plains were the site of the civilizations of Akkad, Sumer, Babylonia, and Assyria.

Codex Sinaiticus or "Sinai Bible" is one of the four great uncial codices

ancient, handwritten copies of a Christian Bible in Greek. The codex is a historical treasure.

Apocrypha

biblical or related writings not forming part of the accepted canon of Scripture.

Deuteronomy

he Book of Deuteronomy is the fifth book of the Torah, where it is called Devarim, "the words", and the fifth book of the Christian Old Testament, where it is also known as the Fifth Book of Moses.

After the Muslim conquest of the Fertile Crescent in the 7th century CE and until the 16th century

it was the darb al-hajj or pilgrimage road for Muslims from Syria, Iraq, and beyond heading to the holy city of Mecca.[1]

Polytheistic

relating to or characterized by belief in or worship of more than one god.