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| 66 books written from 500 to 100 BCE; 39 books in the Old Testament and 27 in the New Testament |
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| The first 5 books of the Bible: |
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| Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy |
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| The order of events in Genesis: |
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Title and programmatic statement
A cosmogony (generation of land and skies)
An anthropogony (generation of humans)
Name list #1 (sons of Adam)
A flood story (Noah and the ark)
Name list #2 (sons of Noah)
Tower of Babel story (temple in Babylon)
Name list #3 (sons of Shem)
Edited anthology of collected works, not completely new composition by one author |
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| Figure 2.1 - page of Hebrew text |
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| page from the book of Leviticus belonging to one of the oldest copies of the Hebrew Torah; Masoretic text dating from mid-ninth century CE; most contemporary texts today rely on the Masoretic text as its an invaluable source for modern translators |
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| Figure 2.2 -scraps of papyrus with cuneiform |
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| Oldest surviving manuscript of a New Testament, the fragments are of the Gospel of John from 125 C.E., 30 years after the passage was written; preserved for 1800 years in an Egyptian grave; contain four verses from John 18 |
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| A cuneiform list recording the list of Sumerian kings "from the time the kingship was lowered to human society from heaven". One of the oldest and most durable documents of world history, demonstrated that the gods selected teh city - Uruk, Ur - to rule successively over its Mesopotamian neighbors; anticipates the genealogies of Genesis and the Israelite dynastic records of Kings and Chronicles |
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| Figure 3.7 - Image of a Ziggurat |
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| Sumerians built the world's first skyscrapers, towers of sun baked bricks known as ziggurats; in this reconstruction of the ziggurat at Ur, the chapel to Nanna, god of the moon, crowns the temple structure, this temple serves as a pedestal to which ehavenly beings could descend to earth, treading the sacred staircase linking the human and divine worlds |
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| Figure 4.1 - Statue of a scribe |
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| The facial expression on the ancient Egyptian scribe reveals the intelligence and consciousness of power characteristic of the literate professional class that controlled the preservation and interpretation of Egypt's history; In common with its near Eastern neighbors, Israel developed a scribal class associated with the royal court and the temple that played a major role in creating the Bible |
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| The Ice Age glaciers retreat from the area, Stone Age permanent settlements begin |
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| According to the chronology of the Bible the universe is created this year |
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| Mesopotamia: the wheel is invented, resulting in further advances in technologies and in travel, trade, and military usage |
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| Mesopotamia: the first writing system, "cuneiforms" invented, providing first evidence of record-keeping for government, commerce and the military (Sumerian and Akkadian) |
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| Moses leads Israelite slaves from Egypt and establishes the worship of Yahweh at Mount Sinai |
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| According to the Bible, David becomes king of a strong and united Israel that dominates its neighbors militarily an culturally; really, a local tribe chieftain or powerful bandit named David gains control of a large, agriculturally based village later called Jerusalem |
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| According to the Bible, Solomon becomes king of Israel and builds Yahweh's temple in Jerusalem; a Yahwist writer later composes the earliest account of Israel's history |
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| According to the Bible, civil war divides Israel, splitting into the rival kingdoms of Judah to the south composing of ten tribes and Israel to the north composing of two tribes |
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| The Babylonians under Nebuchadnezzar destroy Jerusalem, ending the royal Davidic dynasty |
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| a new sanctuary is complete on the site of Solomon's temple in Jerusalem and stands until its destroyed by the Roman military in 70 CE |
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Religion is a human construct.
The academic study of religion employs analytical methods used in the social sciences and humanities.
Science is not interested in finding truth, as it is static and unchanging.
Science can seem to threaten religious beliefs - it is unsettling and destabilizing because it constantly asks new questions and is never completely settled. |
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1. Observation of a fact
2. Statement of a hypothesis
3. Repeated performance of experiments
4. Construction of a theory
5. Law |
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| the highest level of knowledge since it is both testable and falsifiable; the nature of historical knowledge is characterized as degrees of probability |
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| All traces of the past can be characterized into what two categories? |
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1. Direct testable evidence (observable and testable primary facts and data)
2. indirect hearsay (eye-witness accounts, personal testimonies, stories, secondary interpretations, memories) |
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| the critical science of researching and writing about the past |
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| Steps of analyzing biblical passages: |
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Definition
1. Time and place
2. Language and literary method
3. Authors, scribes and readers
4. Response, context and contents |
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| The five basic elements of most religions |
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Definition
1. Myth and myths
2. Symbol
3. Ritual
4. Belief in a bi-level reality
5. Belief in a cosmic sympathy |
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| The five basic elements of most religions |
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Definition
1. Myth and myths
2. Symbol
3. Ritual
4. Belief in a bi-level reality
5. Belief in a cosmic sympathy |
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| the unknowable in relation to histriography; traditional story that makes the world knowable and manageable, human construct |
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| word or image that represents religious ideas; psychological studies have shown people respond to symbols as if the symbol was the actual object it merely represents |
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| human performance and the manipulation of the sacred; believe they are transcending their limitations and experiencing something of the essence of the religion, religious people do ritual because ritual is a human activity, not an idea or belief |
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| Belief in a bi-level reality: |
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| the sacred and profane levels of existence; an invisible higher world that is good and sacred, and a visible lower world that is either evil or a mixture of good and evil and is thus profane |
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| Belief in a cosmic sympathy: |
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| interconnections between the sacred and profane; makes it possible for humans to manipulate future events by the performance of rituals that are effective in causing gods or spirits in the assumed invisible sacred world to act in the visible profane world on their behalf |
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Colors: white, blue, gold vs. black, red
Clothing: silk, flax, cotton vs. leather, animal skins
Plants: white lily, rose vs. thistle
Metals: gold vs. lead and silver
Numbers: 3, 5, 7, 12 vs. 11, 13 |
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| world, suggests an environment of order (opposite = chaos, disorder) |
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| the earliest archaeological textual evidence for the people of Israel - a nomadic tribe, Egypt destroyed grain supply and kept them from being a military threat |
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| The culture of the Israelites: |
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| raised domesticated animals, raised crops, gradually deforested the area, farmed terraces below hilltop villages that were small and based on extended family relations; based on nonstate or prestate chieftain who kept power by the sword and brute force of manpower |
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| the psychological act of attributing one's own characteristic onto another person or thing and imagining that the other person or thing has those same characteristics; felt that the world was knowable, manageable and less threatening |
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| all natural things come from a higher power and prior divine existence, there are many kings and so there are many gods; The Old Testament does not deny the Israelites were polytheistic, but represents the polytheistic worship as a violation of the covenant |
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| Subcategory of polytheism; the god of one's nation is the only god to be worshipped by that nation |
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| concludes that all conflict and change comes from a single god who creates this diversity; gods of other nations are not gods at all but dead idols or fallen demons; originated in the Ancient Near East with the rise of empires |
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| Radical shift of the religion form polytheism to monotheism: |
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650 - 550 BCE: two political causes
(1) culture was challenged by a series of war and a collapsing economy that put pressures on the ideas of the family and family accountability as the core structure of society
(2) the rise of huge empires in Egypt and Mesopotamia; aggressive monotheistic idea that Yahweh was the only god and the great gods of the conquering empires were mere illusions |
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A process of generation; physical world generated out of preexisting substance.
Only a powerful creator god was powerful enough to turn primeval chaos into orderly cosmos.
Humans were created as laborers because the gods were exhausted from the process of creation and having to maintain agricultural lands - wanted a rest so created humans as servants |
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