BIBL 201 Exam 1 Messiah C.
The Massoretes were primarily active during which period of the transmission of the Old Testament text?
Standardization
What should you do if you encounter someone who is troubled by the presence of scribal errors in the Bible?
Talk about why scribal errors occurred and how to put them in perspective.
Which of the following is not a language in which the Bible was originally written?
Latin
Which of the following theories of translation is best described as trying to produce a word-for-word translation that sticks as closely to the original language as possible?
Literal/Formal equivalence
An Edomite king list, the use of third person, the phrase "to this day," and a report of the traditionally assumed author's death are taken by some as evidence that
Moses did not write the Pentateuch.
Which of the following was not a criterion which guided the church in the process of shaping the New Testament canon?
None of the above
Which of the following best describes John Wycliffe's motivation to translate the Bible into English?
None of the above.
Which of the following statements best describes Karl Barth's view of Scripture?
None of the above.
Which of the following statements is most accurate concerning Constantine Tischendorf?
One of the manuscripts he discovered, Codex Sinaiticus, contained much of the Old Testament and the complete New Testament.
Which of the following is not one of the principles developed by text critics?
Prefer the easiest reading.
Which of the following is one of the reasons given in class explaining why the church opposed translating the Bible into English?
The church perceived it as a threat to its authority.
Discrepancies in the Bible, such as the different accounts of who killed Goliath or who incited David to take a census present the greatest difficulties to which view of Scripture?
The view of inerrancy
The Leningrad Codex is the manuscript used as the basis for translating the Old Testaments today, and the Greek New Testament, a collection of the best readings from various ancient manuscripts, is the basis for our New Testament translations today.
True
The general movement of the history of the transmission of the Old Testament text is from a fluid and free text to a more fixed one.
True
The oldest New Testament writings were written on papyrus and the oldest Old Testament writings were written on leather.
True
How many books are in the Old Testament that Protestants use?
39
The entire Old Testament was written between
950-150 BCE
Worries that people might misinterpret Scripture by taking verses literally, like Matthew 5:29—"If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away" (NRSV)—caused the church to
resist translating the Bible into English.
In 1546, at the Council of Trent,
the Catholic church declared certain "other" Old Testament books to be canonical.
As discussed in class, the letter Q stands for
the Dead Sea Scrolls
William Tyndale is best remembered for
working on an English translation of the Bible that he wanted to make available to everyone in England
If a copyist is uncertain whether to write the word "threw," "thru," or "through," and ultimately makes the wrong choice, we would call this:
An error of the ear
By the beginning of the fourth century C.E. (i.e. by 300 C.E.) there was no longer any question about which books should be included or excluded from the Old Testament.
False
Even though the New Testament was written after the Old Testament, it took much longer to write the New Testament since there was so much that needed to be said about Jesus.
False
The word inspiration, which appears very frequently in the Bible (approximately thirty-five times), is best understood as the role God played in helping people translate the Bible from one language to another.
False
There is a great deal of evidence that the entrance of almost every book into the canon has been highly controversial and vigorously debated by church leaders.
False
Verse and paragraph divisions, along with vowels, were added to biblical manuscripts of the Old Testament during the period of transmission we call "Diversification."
False
What is the best term to describe the kind of change made when a copyist alters a story in one Gospel to make it sound like the same story told in another Gospel?
Harmonistic change
Books like Joshua, Judges, Ruth, 1 & 2 Samuel, 1 & 2 Kings are typically described as
Historical Books.
The New Testament was written over four hundred years, from approximately 50 C.E. to 450 C.E.
False
The book of Isaiah (125 BCE) found among the Dead Sea Scrolls can be referred to as an "autograph" since it is not a a copy but the actual manuscript written by the original author of the book of Isaiah.
False
Which of the following is true regarding the formation of the Old Testament canon?
Generally speaking, a book's perceived value and usefulness was the key to its canonization.
You are studying the book of 1 Samuel in your College and Career Sunday school class. As the class gets underway, the teacher begins reading the Scripture lesson from the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible beginning with 1 Samuel 10:1. It reads as follows: Samuel took a vial of oil and poured it on his head, and kissed him; he said, "The LORD has anointed you ruler over his people Israel. You shall reign over the people of the LORD and you will save them from the hand of their enemies all around. Now this shall be the sign to you that the LORD has anointed you ruler over his heritage." (READING #1) Your friend is following along in another translation which has the following for 1 Sam. 10:1: Samuel took a vial of oil and poured it on his head, and kissed him; he said, "The LORD has anointed you ruler over his heritage." (READING #2) Using your knowledge of scribal errors, you can tell your friend that the original reading is most likely which one. Correct answer:
Reading #1
Which of the following was not one of the reasons given in class about why the wording of English translations differs from one translation to another?
Translators have different views about how to represent the layout of Hebrew poetry on the pages of their translation.
Throughout church history, people like Jerome and Augustine represented two different opinions about the status of certain "Old Testament" books. Some, like Jerome, believed they were only good for personal edification while others, like Augustine, thought they were fully authoritative and could be used to establish Christian doctrine.
True
We have well over 5,000 ancient Greek manuscripts that bear witness to the New Testament.
True
Uncials and minuscules are best defined as
Two kinds of Greek manuscripts.
The Septuagint (LXX) is a designation for
an ancient Greek translation of the Hebrew Old Testament.
In biblical studies, canon refers to
an authoritative collection of Scripture
Despite their long usage in the church, Protestants ultimately rejected certain Old Testament books as being authoritative because
both the second and third answers above.
Using "shekels" instead of "dollars," "knew" rather than "slept with," and "people" instead of "mankind" in the Bible are best describe as examples of
choices translators make
The view of inspiration that claims God determined the content of Scripture by giving writers certain ideas and themes but not necessarily the exact words is best described as
conceptual inspiration
Catholics regard books such as Judith, Tobit, Wisdom of Solomon, Baruch, Sirach, 1 & 2 Maccabees as
deuterocanonical books.
Which of the following represents the correct order of the four stages of Old Testament textual transmission?
formation, diversification, standardization, reproduction
The error that occurred in one of the readings of 1 Sam 10:1 in the question above was due to
haplography.
The King James Version was
largely dependent upon the English translation Tyndale, Coverdale and others had made.
The discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls was important to biblical studies because it demonstrated that
the process by which biblical manuscripts had been copied was very accurate.
Textual Criticism is best defined as
the process used to determine which reading is-or is closest to-the original text.
Of the following, the Massoretes are best remembered for
their accurate transmission of the consonantal Hebrew text they had received.
The primary reason I showed you two different versions of the story of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer in class was
to demonstrate how textual critics develop principles used in their work
