The
Bible contains the central
religious texts of
Judaism and
Christianity. Modern Judaism generally recognizes a single set of
canonical books known as the
Tanakh, or
Hebrew Bible, as it is written almost entirely in the
Hebrew language, with some small portions in
Aramaic. It is traditionally divided into three parts: the
Torah ("teaching" or "law"), the
Nevi'im ("prophets"), and the
Ketuvim ("writings"). Christianity recognises as canonical the books of the
Tanakh, in a different order, as the
Old Testament. In
Roman Catholicism and
Eastern Orthodoxy, additional books, called the
Deuterocanonical, are included, which
Protestantism regards as
apocryphal. All Christians also recognise the
New Testament, a collection of early Christian writings that consists of the
Gospels, the
Acts of the Apostles, the
Epistles, and the
Apocalypse. There exist
New Testament apocrypha which have not been generally recognised.
Etymology
thumb|upright|An American family Bible dating to 1859 A.D.According to the
Online Etymology Dictionary, the word
bible is from Latin
biblia, traced from the same word through
Medieval Latin and
Late Latin, as used in the phrase
biblia sacra ("holy book"—"In the Latin of the Middle Ages, the neuter plural for Biblia (gen. bibliorum) gradually came to be regarded as a feminine singular noun (biblia, gen. bibliae, in which singular form the word has passed into the languages of the Western world.") This stemmed from the
Greek term
(
ta biblia ta hagia), "the holy books", which derived from
βιβλίον (
biblion), "paper" or "scroll," the ordinary word for "
book", which was originally a diminutive of
βύβλος (
byblos, "Egyptian papyrus"), possibly so called from the name of the
Phoenician port
Byblos from whence Egyptian
papyrus was exported to Greece.
Biblical scholar Mark Hamilton states that the Greek phrase
Ta biblia ("the books") was "an expression Hellenistic Jews used to describe their sacred books several centuries before the time of
Jesus," and would have referred to the
Septuagint. The Online Etymology Dictionary states, "The Christian scripture was referred to in
Greek as
Ta Biblia as early as c.223."
Jewish canon
The Tanakh (
Hebrew: ) consists of 24 books. Tanakh is an acronym for the three parts of the Hebrew Bible: the
Torah ("Teaching/Law" also known as the
Pentateuch),
Nevi'im ("Prophets"), and
Ketuvim ("Writings," or
Hagiographa), and is used commonly by Jews but unfamiliar to many English speakers and others .
(See
Table of books of Judeo-Christian Scripture.)
Torah
The
Torah, or "Instruction," is also known as the "Five Books" of
Moses, thus
Chumash from Hebrew meaning "fivesome," and
Pentateuch from Greek meaning "five scroll-cases."
The Torah comprises the following five books:
The Hebrew book titles come from the first words in the respective texts. The Hebrew title for Numbers, however, comes from the fifth word of that text.
The Torah focuses on three moments in the changing relationship between God and people. The first eleven chapters of Genesis provide accounts of the
creation (or ordering) of the world, and the history of God's early relationship with humanity. The remaining thirty-nine chapters of Genesis provide an account of God's covenant with the Hebrew
patriarchs,
Abraham,
Isaac and
Jacob (also called
Israel), and Jacob's children (the "
Children of Israel"), especially
Joseph. It tells of how God commanded Abraham to leave his family and home in the city of
Ur, eventually to settle in the land of
Canaan, and how the Children of Israel later moved to Egypt. The remaining four books of the Torah tell the story of
Moses, who lived hundreds of years after the patriarchs. His story coincides with the story of the liberation of the Children of Israel from slavery in
Ancient Egypt, to the renewal of their covenant with God at
Mount Sinai, and their wanderings in the desert until a new generation would be ready to enter the land of Canaan. The Torah ends with the death of Moses.
The Torah contains the commandments, of God, revealed at Mount Sinai (although there is some debate amongst Jewish scholars, if this was written down completely in one moment, or if it was spread out during the 40 years in the wandering in the desert). These commandments provide the basis for
Halakha (Jewish religious law). Tradition states that the number of these is equal to
613 Mitzvot or 613 commandments. There is some dispute as to how to divide these up (mainly between the
Ramban and
Rambam).
The Torah is divided into fifty-four portions which are read in turn in Jewish liturgy, from the beginning of Genesis to the end of Deuteronomy, each
Sabbath. The cycle ends and recommences at the end of
Sukkot, which is called
Simchat Torah.
Nevi'im
The
Nevi'im, or "Prophets," tell the story of the rise of the Hebrew monarchy, its division into two kingdoms, and the prophets who, in God's name, warned the kings and the Children of Israel about the punishment of God. It ends with the conquest of the Kingdom of Israel by the Assyrians and the conquest of the Kingdom of Judah by the Babylonians, and the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem. Portions of the prophetic books are read by Jews on the Sabbath (
Shabbat). The
Book of Jonah is read on
Yom Kippur.
According to Jewish tradition, Nevi'im is divided into eight books. Contemporary translations subdivide these into seventeen books.
The Nevi'im comprise the following eight books:
- 6. Joshua, Js—Yehoshua (יהושע)
- 7. Judges, Jg—Shoftim (שופטים)
- 8. Samuel, includes First and Second, 1Sa–2Sa—Shemuel (שמואל)
- 9. Kings, includes First and Second, 1Ki–2Ki—Melakhim (מלכים)
- 10. Isaiah, Is—Yeshayahu (ישעיהו)
- * A. Hosea, Ho—Hoshea (הושע)
- * B. Joel, Jl—Yoel (יואל)
- * C. Amos, Am—Amos (עמוס)
- * E. Jonah, Jh—Yonah (יונה)
- * F. Micah, Mi—Mikhah (מיכה)
- * G. Nahum, Na—Nahum (נחום)
Ketuvim
The
Ketuvim, or "Writings" or "Scriptures," may have been written during or after the
Babylonian Exile but no one can be sure. According to Rabbinic tradition, many of the psalms in the book of
Psalms are attributed to
David;
King Solomon is believed to have written
Song of Songs in his youth,
Proverbs at the prime of his life, and
Ecclesiastes at old age; and the prophet
Jeremiah is thought to have written
Lamentations. The
Book of Ruth is the only biblical book that centers entirely on a non-Jew. The book of Ruth tells the story of a non-Jew (specifically, a
Moabite) who married a Jew and, upon his death,
followed in the ways of the Jews; according to the Bible, she was the great-grandmother of
King David. Five of the books, called "The Five Scrolls" (Megilot), are read on Jewish holidays: Song of Songs on
Passover; the
Book of Ruth on
Shavuot;
Lamentations on the
Ninth of Av; Ecclesiastes on
Sukkot; and the
Book of Esther on
Purim. Collectively, the Ketuvim contain lyrical poetry, philosophical reflections on life, and the stories of the prophets and other Jewish leaders during the Babylonian exile. It ends with the Persian decree allowing Jews to return to Jerusalem to rebuild the Temple.
The Ketuvim comprise the following eleven books:
- 14. Psalms, Ps—Tehillim (תהלים)
- 19. Lamentations, La—Eikhah (איכה), also called Kinot (קינות)
- 23. Ezra, Ea, includes Nehemiah, Ne—Ezra (עזרא), includes Nehemiah (נחמיה)
- 24. Chronicles, includes First and Second, 1Ch–2Ch—Divrei ha-Yamim (דברי הימים), also called Divrei (דברי)
Hebrew Bible translations and editions
The Tanakh was mainly written in
Biblical Hebrew, with some portions (notably in
Daniel and
Ezra) in
Biblical Aramaic.
The Oral Torah
According to some Jews during the
Hellenistic period, such as the
Sadducees only a minimal oral tradition of interpreting the words of the Torah existed, which did not extend into extended biblical interpretation. According to the
Pharisees, however, God revealed both a Written Torah and an
Oral Torah to Moses, the Oral Torah consisting of both stories and legal traditions. In Rabbinic Judaism, the Oral Torah is essential for understanding the Written Torah literally (as it includes neither vowels nor punctuation) and
exegetically. The Oral Torah has different facets, principally
Halacha (laws), the
Aggadah (stories), and the
Kabbalah (esoteric knowledge). Major portions of the Oral Law have been committed to writing, notably the
Mishnah; the
Tosefta;
Midrash, such as
Midrash Rabbah, the
Sifre, the
Sifra, and the
Mechilta; and both the Babylonian and Jerusalem
Talmuds as well.
Orthodox Judaism continues to accept the Oral Torah in its totality.
Masorti and
Conservative Judaism state that the Oral Tradition is to some degree divinely inspired, but disregard its legal elements in varying degrees.
Reform Judaism also gives some credence to the Talmud containing the legal elements of the Oral Torah, but, as with the written Torah, asserts that both were inspired by, but not dictated by, God.
Reconstructionist Judaism denies any connection of the Torah, Written or Oral, with God.
The article
Jewish commentaries on the Bible discusses the Jewish understanding of the Bible, including bible commentaries from the ancient
Targums to classical
Rabbinic literature, the
midrash literature, the classical
medieval commentators, and modern day Jewish bible commentaries.
Christian canons of the Bible
The Christian Bible consists of the Hebrew scriptures, which have been called the
Old Testament, and some later writings known as the
New Testament. Some groups within Christianity include additional books as part of one or both of these "Testaments" of their sacred writings—most prominent among which are the
biblical apocrypha or
deuterocanonical books.
Different versions of the English Christian Bible include the
KJV, the
NKJV, the
NIV, and the
TNIV. To see a complete list, see
List of English Bible translations.
In Judaism, the term
Christian Bible is commonly used to identify only those books like the New Testament which have been added by Christians to the
Masoretic Text, and excludes any reference to an
Old Testament.
Old Testament
The Old Testament is the collection of books written prior to the life of
Jesus but accepted by Christians as
scripture. Broadly speaking, it is the same as the
Hebrew Bible, however it divides and orders them differently, and varies from Judaism in interpretation and emphasis (see for example
Isaiah 7:14). Several Christian denominations also incorporate additional books into their
canons of the Old Testament. A few groups consider particular translations to be
divinely inspired, notably the Greek
Septuagint, the Aramaic
Peshitta, and the English
King James Version.
Apocryphal or deuterocanonical books
The
Septuagint (Greek translation, from Alexandria in Egypt under the
Ptolemies) was generally abandoned in favour of the
Masoretic text as the basis for translations of the Old Testament into
Western languages from St. Jerome's Bible (the
Vulgate) to the present day. In
Eastern Christianity, translations based on the Septuagint still prevail. Some modern Western translations make use of the Septuagint to clarify passages in the Masoretic text, where the Septuagint may preserve a variant reading of the Hebrew text. They also sometimes adopt variants that appear in other texts e.g. those discovered among the
Dead Sea Scrolls.
A number of books which are part of the Peshitta or Greek Septuagint but are not found in the Hebrew (Rabbinic) Bible are often referred to as
deuterocanonical books by Roman Catholics referring to a later secondary (i.e. deutero) canon. Most Protestants term these books as
apocrypha.
Evangelicals and those of the Modern
Protestant traditions do not accept the deuterocanonical books as canonical, although Protestant Bibles
included them in Apocrypha sections until around the 1820s. However, the Roman
Catholic,
Eastern Orthodox, and
Oriental Orthodox Churches include these books as part of their Old Testament.
The Roman Catholic Church recognizes the following books:
- Sirach also called Ecclesiasticus
In addition to those, the Greek and Russian Orthodox Churches recognize the following:
Some other Eastern Orthodox Churches include a few others, typically:
- 2 Esdras i.e. Latin Esdras in the Russian and Georgian Bibles
The Syriac Orthodox Church also has:
The Ethiopian Orthodox Church also has some others such as:
The
Anglican Church uses some of the
Apocryphal books liturgically, but not to establish doctrine. Therefore, editions of the Bible intended for use in the Anglican Church include the Deuterocanonical books accepted by the Catholic Church, plus
1 Esdras,
2 Esdras and the
Prayer of Manasseh, which were in the Vulgate appendix.
There is also
4 Maccabees which is only accepted as canonical in the Georgian Church, but was included by
St. Jerome in an appendix to the
Vulgate, and is an appendix to the Greek Orthodox Bible, and it therefore sometimes included in collections of the Apocrypha.
New Testament
The Bible as used by the majority of
Christians includes the Rabbinic Hebrew Scripture and the
New Testament, which relates the life and teachings of
Jesus, the
letters of the
Apostle Paul and other
disciples to the
early church and the
Book of Revelation.
The
New Testament is a collection of 27 books, of 4 different
genres of Christian literature (
Gospels, one account of the
Acts of the Apostles,
Epistles and an
Apocalypse).
Jesus is its central figure. The New Testament was written primarily in
Koine Greek in the early Christian period, though a minority argue for
Aramaic primacy. Nearly all Christians recognize the New Testament (as stated below) as canonical
scripture. These books can be grouped into:
The GospelsPauline EpistlesGeneral Epistles, also called Jewish Epistles
The order of these books varies according to Church tradition. The New Testament books are ordered differently in the Catholic/Protestant tradition, the Slavonic tradition, the Syriac tradition and the Ethiopian tradition.
Original language
The books of the
New Testament were written in
Koine Greek, the language of the earliest extant manuscripts, even though some authors often included translations from Hebrew and Aramaic texts. Certainly the Pauline Epistles were written in Greek for Greek-speaking audiences. See
Greek primacy. Some scholars believe that some books of the Greek New Testament (in particular, the Gospel of Matthew) are actually translations of a Hebrew or Aramaic original. Of these, a small number accept the Syriac Peshitta as representative of the original. See
Aramaic primacy.
Historic editions
thumb|left|The [[Codex Gigas from the 13th century, held at the
Royal Library in
Sweden.]]
When ancient scribes copied earlier books, they wrote notes on the margins of the page (
marginal glosses) to correct their text—especially if a scribe accidentally omitted a word or line—and to comment about the text. When later scribes were copying the copy, they were sometimes uncertain if a note was intended to be included as part of the text. See
textual criticism. Over time, different regions evolved different versions, each with its own assemblage of omissions and additions.
The
autographs, the Greek
manuscripts written by the original authors, have not survived. Scholars surmise the original Greek text from the versions that do survive. The three main textual traditions of the Greek New Testament are sometimes called the
Alexandrian text-type (generally minimalist), the
Byzantine text-type (generally maximalist), and the
Western text-type (occasionally wild). Together they comprise most of the ancient manuscripts.
Christian theology
While individual books within the Christian Bible present narratives set in certain historical periods, most
Christian denominations teach that the Bible itself has an overarching message.
The Bible has always been central to the life of the Christian church. Bible scholar
N.T. Wright says Jesus himself was profoundly shaped by the scriptures—the ancient Hebrew and Aramaic texts whose stories, songs, prophecy and wisdom permeated the Jewish world of his day. He adds that the earliest Christians also searched those same scriptures in their effort to understand what their living God had accomplished through the brief earthly life of Jesus. They regarded the ancient Israelites' scriptures as having reached a climactic fulfillment in Jesus himself, generating the "new covenant" prophesied by Jeremiah.
[Wright, N.T. The Last Word: Scripture and the Authority of God—Getting Beyond the Bible Wars. HarperCollins, 2005. ISBN 0060872616 / 9780060872618]There are among Christians wide differences of opinion as to how particular incidents as described in the Bible are to be interpreted and as to what meaning should be attached to various prophecies. However, Christians in general are in agreement as to the Bible's basic message. A general outline, as described by
C. S. Lewis, is as follows:
[ by Lewis, CS: Believer's Web.]- At some point in the past, humanity chose to depart from God's will and began to sin.
- Because no one is free from sin, people cannot deal with God directly, so God revealed Himself in ways people could understand.
- God called Abraham and his progeny to be the means for saving all of humanity.
- The resulting nation of Israel went through cycles of sin and repentance, yet the prophets show an increasing understanding of the Law as a moral, not just a ceremonial, force.
- Jesus brought a perfect understanding of the Mosaic Law, that of love and salvation.
- By His death and resurrection, all who believe are saved and reconciled to God.
Many
Christians,
Muslims, and
Jews regard the Bible as inspired by
God yet written by a variety of imperfect men over thousands of years. Many others, who identify themselves as
Bible-believing Christians, regard both the New and Old Testament as the
undiluted Word of God, spoken by God and written down in its perfect form by humans. Still others hold the
Biblical infallibility perspective, that the Bible is free from error in spiritual but not scientific matters. "Bible scholars claim that discussions about the Bible must be put into its context within church history and then into the context of contemporary culture."
Belief in sacred texts is attested to in Jewish antiquity,[Josephus, Contra Apion 1.8.] and this belief can also be seen in the earliest of Christian writings. Various texts of the Bible mention Divine agency in relation to prophetic writings,
In their book A General Introduction to the Bible, Norman Geisler and William Nix wrote: "The process of inspiration is a mystery of the providence of God, but the result of this process is a verbal, plenary, inerrant, and authoritative record."
Most evangelical biblical scholars associate inspiration with only the original text; for example some American Protestants adhere to the 1978 Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy which asserted that inspiration applied only to the autographic text of Scripture. However, some adherents to the King James Only view attribute inerrancy to a particular translation. Canonization
The word "canon" etymologically means cane or reed. In early Christianity "canon" referred to a list of books approved for public reading. Books not on the list were referred to as "apocryphal" — meaning they were for private reading only. Under Latin usage from the fourth century on, canon came to stand for a closed and authoritative list in the sense of rule or norm.[Stagg, Frank. New Testament Theology. Nashville: Broadman, 1962. ISBN 0-8054-1613-7.] Hebrew Bible
The New Testament refers to the threefold division of the Hebrew Scriptures: the law, the prophets, and the writings. refers to the "law of Moses" (Pentateuch), the "prophets" which include certain historical books in addition to the books now called "prophets," and the psalms (the "writings" designated by its most prominent collection). The Hebrew Bible probably was canonized in these three stages: the law canonized before the Exile, the prophets by the time of the Syrian persecution of the Jews, and the writings shortly after AD 70 (the fall of Jerusalem). About that time, early Christian writings began being accepted by Christians as "scripture." These events, taken together, may have caused the Jews to close their "canon." They listed their own recognized Scriptures and also excluded both Christian and Jewish writings considered by them to be "apocryphal." In this canon the thirty-nine books found in the Old Testament of today's Christian Bibles were grouped together as twenty-two books, equaling the number of letters in the Hebrew alphabet. This canon of Jewish scripture is attested to by Philo, Josephus, the New Testament, and the Talmud.
The New Testament writers assumed the inspiration of the Old Testament, probably earliest stated in which may be rendered "All Scripture is inspired of God" or "Every God-inspired Scripture is profitable for teaching." Both translations consider inspiration as a fact. Old and New Testaments
The Old Testament canon entered into Christian use in the Greek Septuagint translations and original books, and their differing lists of texts. In addition to the Septuagint, Christianity subsequently added various writings that would become the New Testament. Somewhat different lists of accepted works continued to develop in antiquity. In the fourth century a series of synods produced a list of texts equal to the 39-to-46-book canon of the Old Testament and to the 27-book canon of the New Testament that would be subsequently used to today, most notably the Synod of Hippo in AD 393. Also c. 400, Jerome produced a definitive Latin edition of the Bible (see Vulgate), the canon of which, at the insistence of the Pope, was in accord with the earlier Synods. With the benefit of hindsight it can be said that this process effectively set the New Testament canon, although there are examples of other canonical lists in use after this time. A definitive list did not come from an Ecumenical Council until the Council of Trent (1545–63).
During the Protestant Reformation, certain reformers proposed different canonical lists than what was currently in use. Though not without debate, see Antilegomena, the list of New Testament books would come to remain the same; however, the Old Testament texts present in the Septuagint, but not included in the Jewish canon, fell out of favor. In time they would come to be removed from most Protestant canons. Hence, in a Catholic context these texts are referred to as deuterocanonical books, whereas in a Protestant context they are referred to as Apocrypha, the label applied to all texts excluded from the biblical canon which were in the Septuagint. It should also be noted, that Catholics and Protestants both describe certain other books, such as the Acts of Peter, as apocryphal.
Thus, the Protestant Old Testament of today has a 39-book canon—the number varies from that of the books in the Tanakh (though not in content) because of a different method of division—while the Roman Catholic Church recognizes 46 books as part of the canonical Old Testament. The term "Hebrew Scriptures" is only synonymous with the Protestant Old Testament, not the Catholic, which contains the Hebrew Scriptures and additional texts. Both Catholics and Protestants have the same 27-book New Testament Canon. Qumran Bible
The Bible used at Qumran excluded Esther but included Tobit. Otherwise, it seems to have been basically the same as the Hebrew Bible or Old Testament, albeit with many textual variants. Ethiopian Orthodox canon
The Canon of the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church is wider than for most other Christian groups. The Ethiopian Old Testament Canon includes the books found in the Septuagint accepted by other Orthodox Christians, in addition to Enoch and Jubilees which are ancient Jewish books that only survived in Ge'ez but are quoted in the New Testament, also Greek Ezra First and the Apocalypse of Ezra, 3 books of Meqabyan, and Psalm 151 at the end of the Psalter. The three books of Meqabyan are not be confused with the books of Maccabees. The order of the other books is somewhat different from other groups', as well. The Old Testament follows the Septuagint order for the Minor Prophets rather than the Jewish order. Marcionite Bible
Marcion, an early Christian heretic, and his followers, had a Bible that excluded the Old Testament. It consisted of an edited Gospel of Luke (excluding what Marcion considered Jewish additions), and the Epistles of Paul (excluding Titus, the two epistles to Timothy, the Epistle to the Hebrews, and passages rejected as Jewish additions). Bible versions and translations
thumb|left|A Bible handwritten in [[Latin, on display in Malmesbury Abbey, Wiltshire, England. This Bible was transcribed in Belgium in 1407 for reading aloud in a monastery.]]
Bible versions are discussed below, while Bible translations can be found on a separate page.
The original texts of the Tanakh were in Hebrew, although some portions were in Aramaic. In addition to the authoritative Masoretic Text, Jews still refer to the Septuagint, the translation of the Hebrew Bible into Greek, and the Targum Onkelos, an Aramaic version of the Bible. There are several different ancient versions of the Tanakh in Hebrew, mostly differing by spelling, and the traditional Jewish version is based on the version known as Aleppo Codex. Even in this version by itself, there are words which are traditionally read differently from written (sometimes one word is written and another is read), because the oral tradition is considered more fundamental than the written one, and presumably mistakes had been made in copying the text over the generations.
The primary biblical text for early Christians was the Septuagint or (LXX). In addition they translated the Hebrew Bible into several other languages. Translations were made into Syriac, Coptic, Ge'ez and Latin, among other languages. The Latin translations were historically the most important for the Church in the West, while the Greek-speaking East continued to use the Septuagint translations of the Old Testament and had no need to translate the New Testament.
The earliest Latin translation was the Old Latin text, or Vetus Latina, which, from internal evidence, seems to have been made by several authors over a period of time. It was based on the Septuagint, and thus included books not in the Hebrew Bible.
Pope Damasus I assembled the first list of books of the Bible at the Council of Rome in AD 382. He commissioned Saint Jerome to produce a reliable and consistent text by translating the original Greek and Hebrew texts into Latin. This translation became known as the Latin Vulgate Bible and in 1546 at the Council of Trent was declared by the Church to be the only authentic and official Bible in the Latin rite.
Bible translations for many languages have been made through the various influences of Catholicism, Orthodox, Protestant, etc especially since the Protestant Reformation. The Bible has seen a notably large number of English language translations.
The work of Bible translation continues, including by Christian organisations such as Wycliffe Bible Translators, New Tribes Mission and the Bible Societies. Of the world's 6,900 languages, 2,400 have some or all of the Bible, 1,600 (spoken by more than a billion people) have translation underway, and some 2,500 (spoken by 270 million people) are judged as needing translation to begin. Biblical criticism
Biblical criticism refers to the investigation of the Bible as a text, and addresses questions such as authorship, dates of composition, and authorial intention. It is not the same as criticism of the Bible, which is an assertion against the Bible being a source of information or ethical guidance. Higher criticism
The traditional view of the Mosaic authorship of the Torah came under sporadic criticism from medieval scholars including Isaac ibn Yashush, Abraham ibn Ezra, Bonfils of Damascus and bishop Tostatus of Avila, who pointed to passages such as the description of the death of Moses in Deuteronomy as evidence that some portions, at least, could not have been written by Moses.
In the 17th century Thomas Hobbes collected the current evidence and became the first scholar to conclude outright that Moses could not have written the bulk of the Torah. Shortly afterwards the philosopher Baruch Spinoza published a unified critical analysis, demonstrating that the problematic passages were not isolated cases that could be explained away one by one, but pervasive throughout the five books, concluding that it was "clearer than the sun at noon that the Pentateuch was not written by Moses…." Despite determined opposition from the Church, both Catholic and Protestant, the views of Hobbes and Spinoza gained increasing acceptance amongst scholars. Documentary hypothesis
Scholars intrigued by the hypothesis that Moses had not written the Pentateuch considered other authors. Independent but nearly simultaneous proposals by H. B. Witter, Jean Astruc, and Johann Gottfried Eichhorn separated the Pentateuch into two original documentary components, both dating from after the time of Moses. Others hypothesized the presence of two additional sources. The four documents were given working titles: J (or Yahwist), E (Elohist), P (Priestly), and D (Deuteronomist), each was discernible by its own characteristic language, and each, when read in isolation, presented a unified, coherent narrative.
Subsequent scholars, notably Eduard Reuss, Karl Heinrich Graf and Wilhelm Vatke, turned their attention to the order in which the documents had been composed (which they deduced from internal clues) and placed them in the context of a theory of the development of ancient Israelite religion, suggesting that much of the Laws and the narrative of the Pentateuch were unknown to the Israelites in the time of Moses. These were synthesized by Julius Wellhausen (1844-1918), who suggested a historical framework for the composition of the documents and their redaction (combination) into the final document known as the Pentateuch. This hypothesis was challenged by William Henry Green in his The Mosaic Origins of the Pentateuchal Codes (). Nonetheless, according to contemporary Torah scholar Richard Elliott Friedman, Wellhausen's model of the documentary hypothesis continues to dominate the field of biblical scholarship: "To this day, if you want to disagree, you disagree with Wellhausen. If you want to pose a new model, you compare its merits with those of Wellhausen's model."
The documentary hypothesis is important in the field of biblical studies not only because it claims that the Torah was written by different people at different times—generally long after the events it describes— but it also proposed what was at the time a radically new way of reading the Bible. Many proponents of the documentary hypothesis view the Bible more as a body of literature than a work of history, believing that the historical value of the text lies not in its account of the events that it describes, but in what critics can infer about the times in which the authors lived (as critics may read Hamlet to learn about seventeenth-century England, but will not read it to learn about seventh-century Denmark). Modern developments
The critical analysis of authorship now encompasses every book of the Bible. In some cases the traditional view on authorship has been overturned; in others, additional support, at least in part has been found.
The development of the hypothesis has not stopped with Wellhausen. Wellhausen's hypothesis, for example, proposed that the four documents were composed in the order J-E-D-P, with P, containing the bulk of the Jewish law, dating from the post-Exilic Second Temple period (i.e., after 515 BC); but the contemporary view is that P is earlier than D, and that all four books date from the First Temple period (i.e., prior to 587 BC). The documentary hypothesis has more recently been refined by later scholars such as Martin Noth (who in 1943 provided evidence that Deuteronomy plus the following six books make a unified history from the hand of a single editor), Harold Bloom, Frank Moore Cross and Richard Elliot Friedman.
The documentary hypothesis, at least in the four-document version advanced by Wellhausen, has been controversial since its formulation. The direction of this criticism is to question the existence of separate, identifiable documents, positing instead that the biblical text is made up of almost innumerable strands so interwoven as to be hardly untangleable—the J document, in particular, has been subjected to such intense dissection that it seems in danger of disappearing.
Although biblical archaeology has confirmed the existence of many people, places, and events mentioned in the Bible, many critical scholars have argued that the Bible be read not as an accurate historical document, but rather as a work of literature and theology that often draws on historical events—as well as upon non-Hebrew mythology—as primary source material (see The Bible and history). For these scholars, the Bible reveals much about the lives and times of its authors and compilers. The relevance of these ideas to contemporary religious life is left to clerics and adherents of contemporary religions to decide. Archaeological and historical research
Biblical archaeology is the archaeology that relates to, and sheds light upon, the Hebrew Scriptures and the New Testament. It is used to help determine the lifestyle and practices of people living in biblical times. It is also used to help clarify the consistency between historical evidence and scripture.
There are a wide range of interpretations of the existing Biblical archaeology. One broad division includes Biblical maximalism that generally take the view that most of the Old Testament or Hebrew Bible is essentially based on history although presented through the religious viewpoint of its time. It is considered the opposite of biblical minimalism which is strictly secular and does not allow any consideration of the Bible as documentary evidence or as a framework of history.
One example of the dispute involves biblical accounts of Israelite bondage in Egypt, wandering in the desert, and conquest the Land of Israel in a military campaign, the accounts of the land being passed on to the 12 tribes of Israel, and David's and Solomon's conquests, and other key elements described in the biblical narratives as occurring in the 10th century BC or before. So far, there is a lack of archaeological evidence to independently support this, which has led some archaeologists, such as Israel Finkelstein, Neil Silberman, and William Dever to believe that these events never happened, and that the ancestors of the Hebrews and the Jews are either nomads who have become sedentary, or people from the plains of Canaan, who fled to the highlands to escape the control of the cities. Others disagree sharply.
Another example involves the story of Noah's Ark. Biblical literalists support a theory of a worldwide flood as described in the story and are looking for archaeological evidence in the region of the mountains of Ararat in north-east Turkey where Genesis says Noah's Ark came to rest. Mainstream scientists (and many Christians and Jews) discount a literal interpretation of the Ark story, on the basis of geology and other sciences.
According to recent theories, linguistic as well as archaeological, the global structure of the texts in the Hebrew Bible were compiled during the reign of King Josiah in the 7th century BC. Even though the components are derived from more ancient writings, the final form of the books is believed to have been set somewhere between the 1st century BC and the 4th century AD. See also
Biblical scholarship and analysis
Perspectives on the Bible
- Bibliomancy is the use of random readings from a book for divination. When practiced in Jewish and Christian cultures, the Bible is often used.
Interpretation
History and the Bible
Biblical topics
Bible societies
Commentaries
See Biblical exegesis. Religious texts
Endnotes and references
References and further reading
- Berlin, Adele, Marc Zvi Brettler and Michael Fishbane. . Oxford University Press, 2003. ISBN 0-19-529751-2.
- Asimov, Isaac. Asimov's Guide to the Bible. New York, NY: Avenel Books, 1981. ISBN 0-517-34582-X.
- Dever, William G. Who Were the Early Israelites and Where Did they Come from? Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2003. ISBN 0-8028-0975-8.
- Ehrman, Bart D. Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why New York, NY: HarperSanFrancisco, 2005. ISBN 0-06-073817-0.
- Geisler, Norman (editor). Inerrancy. Sponsored by the International Council on Biblical Inerrancy. Zondervan Publishing House, 1980, ISBN 0-310-39281-0.
- Head, Tom. The Absolute Beginner's Guide to the Bible. Indianapolis, IN: Que Publishing, 2005. ISBN 0-7897-3419-2
- Hoffman, Joel M. . New York University Press, 2004. ISBN 0-8147-3690-4
- Lindsell, Harold. The Battle for the Bible. Zondervan Publishing House, 1978. ISBN 0-310-27681-0
- Lienhard, Joseph T. The Bible, The Church, and Authority. Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1995.
- Masalha, Nur, The Bible and Zionism: Invented Traditions, Archaeology and Post-Colonialism in Palestine-Israel. London, Zed Books, 2007.
- Miller, John W. The Origins of the Bible: Rethinking Canon History Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 1994. ISBN 0-8091-3522-1.
- McDonald, Lee M. and Sanders, James A., eds. The Canon Debate. Hendrickson Publishers (January 1, 2002). 662p. ISBN 1565635175 ISBN 978-1565635173
- Riches, John. The Bible: A Very Short Introduction, Oxford University Press, 2000. ISBN 0-19-285343-0
- Siku. The Manga Bible: From Genesis to Revelation. Galilee Trade (January 15, 2008). 224p. ISBN 0385524315 ISBN 978-0385524315
- Taylor, Hawley O. "Mathematics and Prophecy." Modern Science and Christian Faith. Wheaton: Van Kampen, 1948, pp. 175–83.
- The Brick Testament http://www.thebricktestament.com/
- Wycliffe Bible Encyclopedia, s.vv. "Book of Ezekiel," p. 580 and "prophecy," p. 1410. Chicago: Moody Bible Press, 1986.
