Bible

Chapters and verses

:"See Tanakh for the Jewish textual tradition."

The Hebrew Masoretic text contains verse endings as an important feature. According to the Talmudic tradition, the verse endings are of ancient origin. The Masoretic textual tradition also contains section endings called "parashiyot", which are indicated by a space within a line (a "closed" section") or a new line beginning (an "open" section). The division of the text reflected in the "parashiyot" is usually thematic. The "parashiyot" are not numbered.

In early manuscripts (most importantly in Tiberian Masoretic manuscripts, such as the Aleppo codex) an "open" section may also be represented by a blank line, and a "closed" section by a new line that is slightly indented (the preceding line may also not be full). These latter conventions are no longer used in Torah scrolls and printed Hebrew Bibles. In this system the one rule differentiating "open" and "closed" sections is that "open" sections must "always" begin at the beginning of a new line, while "closed" sections "never" start at the beginning of a new line.

Another related feature of the Masoretic text is the division of the "sedarim". This division is not thematic, but is almost entirely based upon the "quantity" of text.

The Byzantines also introduced a chapter division of sorts, called "Kephalaia". It is not identical to the present chapters.

The current division of the Bible into chapters and the verse numbers within the chapters has no basis in any ancient textual tradition. Rather, they are medieval Christian inventions. They were later adopted by many Jews as well, as technical references within the Hebrew text. Such technical references became crucial to medieval rabbis in the historical context of forced debates with Christian clergy (who used the chapter and verse numbers), especially in late medieval Spain.see Spanish Inquisition] Chapter divisions were first used by Jews in a 1330 manuscript and for a printed edition in 1516. However, for the past generation, most Jewish editions of the complete Hebrew Bible have made a systematic effort to relegate chapter and verse numbers to the margins of the text.

The division of the Bible into chapters and verses has often elicited severe criticism from traditionalists and modern scholars alike. Critics charge that the text is often divided into chapters in an incoherent way, or at inappropriate rhetorical points, and that it encourages citing passages out of context, in effect turning the Bible into a kind of textual quarry for clerical citations. Nevertheless, the chapter divisions and verse numbers have become indispensable as technical references for Bible study.

Stephen Langton is reputed to have been the first to put the chapter divisions into a Vulgate edition of the Bible, in 1205. They were then inserted into Greek manuscripts of the New Testament in the 1400s. Robert Estienne (Robert Stephanus) was the first to number the verses within each chapter, his verse numbers entering printed editions in 1551 (New Testament) and 1571 (Hebrew Bible). [http://www.fuller.edu/ministry/berean/chs_vss.htm Chapters and Verses] .] [http://www.theexaminer.org/history/chap6.htm The Examiner] .]

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" ( [http://www.biblicaltheology.org/mop.html available online] ). 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." [Richard Elliott Friedman, "Who Wrote the Bible?," HarperSanFrancisco, 1997 (2nd edition).]

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— [Joel Rosenberg, 1984 "The Bible: Biblical Narrative" in Barry Holtz, ed "Back to the Sources" New York: Summit Books p. 36; Nahum Sarna, 1986 "Understanding Genesis" New York:Schocken Books p. xxi-xxiii] 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. Every book in turn has been hypothesized to bear traces of multiple authorshipFact|date=August 2007, even the book of ObadiahFact|date=August 2007, which is only a single page. 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); [Wellhausen adopted the idea of a post-Exilic date for P from Eduard Reuss.] 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). [Although the "bulk" of all four documents date from before 587 BC, the strand of D known as Dtr2 dates from the following Exilic period.] 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.

Theological responses

Judaism

The claim that the Torah—"the Five Books of Moses"—were not written by Moses, but by many authors long after Moses was said to have lived, directly challenged Jewish orthodoxy. For most, this claim implies that the Torah itself—especially its account of God's revelation at Mt. Sinai—is not historically reliable. Although many Orthodox scholars have rejected this "Higher Criticism", most Conservative and virtually all Reform Jewish scholars have accepted it. Consequently, there has been considerable debate among Jewish scholars as to the nature of revelation and the divine nature of the Torah. Conservative Jewish philosopher Elliot Dorff has categorized five distinct major Jewish positions in these debates within Conservative Judaism in the 20th century: [Elliot Dorff 1978 "Conservative Judaism: Our Ancestors to Our Descendents" New York: United Synagogue Youth pp. 114-115]
* Orthodox (characterized by Eliezer Berkovitz and Norman Lamm): "Verbal Revelation": The Torah, including both the Written and Oral Traditions, consists of the exact words of God. He gave it all as one piece at Sinai."*
*Conservative I (characterized by Isaac Lesser, Alexander Kohut, Abraham Joshua Heschel, and David Novak): "Continuous Revelation":God dictated His will at Sinai and other times. It was written down by human beings, however, and hence the diverse traditions in the Bible."
*Conservative II (characterized by Ben Zion Bokser, Robert Gordis, Max Routtenberg and Emil Fackenheim): "Continuous Revelation": Human beings wrote the Torah, but they were divinely inspired."
*Conservative III (characterized by Louis Jacobs, Seymour Seigel, Jacob Agus, David Lieber and Elliot Dorff): "Continuous Revelation": The Torah is the "human" record of the concounter between God and the People Israel at Sinai. Since it was written by human beings, it contains some laws and ideas which we find repugnant today."
*Conservative IV/Reconstructionist (characterized by Mordecai Kaplan, Ira Eisenstein and Harold Schulweis): "No Revelation": Human beings wrote the Torah. No claim for divinity of the product."

In addition to the 5 categories described by Elliott, other positions have been adopted:

* Traditional Rabbi David Weiss HaLivni, the founder of the Union for Traditional Judaism, adapted a position he describes as "chatu yisrael" ("Israel sinned"), that God revealed the Torah to Moses on Mount Sinai but it subsequently became corrupted and lost, and Ezra restored it by redacting it from multiple manuscripts reflecting disparate traditions. Under this view, the Torah is the best available record of the Divine will, has prophetic commendation, and is binding on the Jewish people, but is not necessarily entirely free of disparaties. [Rabbi David Weiss HaLivni, "Revelation Restored: Divine Writ and Critical Responses". Westview Press, 2001. ISBN 978-0813333472]
*Reform (characterized by the Movement's 1937 Guiding Principles): "Progressive revelation": The Torah is God's will written by human beings. As time goes on, we get to understand his will better and better (="progressive revelation").
*Reconstructionist Reconstructionist Judaism generally adapts the textual critical approach in toto and regards the Torah as either inspired rather than revealed, or an entirely human product rather than the product of an external God.

Christianity

In 1943 Pope Pius XII's encyclical Divino Afflante Spiritu gave the Vatican's imprimatur to textual criticism.

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 [cite book
last = Finkelstein
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title = The Bible Unearthed
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last = Dever
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authorlink = William Dever
title = Who Were the Early Israelites and Where Did They Come from?
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url = http://www.hebrewhistory.info/factpapers/fp014_nomadic.htm
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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 [ [http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/3524676.stm Did Noah really build an ark?, BBC] ] .

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. However, after the split of the Kingdom of Israel in the second half of the 9th century BC, archaeological findings fit the Biblical chronology.Fact|date=July 2008

ee also

Biblical scholarship and analysis

* Dating the Bible
* Textual criticism
* Historical criticism
* Documentary hypothesis
* Synoptic problem
* Biblical manuscripts
* Internal consistency and the Bible
* Mosaic authorship
* Authorship of the Johannine works
* Authorship of the Pauline epistles
* Non-canonical books referenced in the Bible
* Apocrypha
* Dead sea scrolls
* Nag hammadi library
* Biblical archaeology

Perspectives on the Bible

* Bibliolatry
* Calvin's view of Scripture
* Jewish Biblical exegesis
* Islamic view of the Bible
* Biblical narratives and the Qur'an
* Criticism of the Bible
* Gnosticism and the New Testament
* Christianity and Judaism
* Biblical law in Christianity
* Bible prophecy
* Biblical inerrancy
* New Testament view on Jesus' life
* Ten Commandments
* Parsha
* Ritual Decalogue
* Jewish messianism
* Summary of Christian eschatological differences
* Bibliomancy is the use of random readings from a book for divination. When practiced in Jewish and Christian cultures, the Bible is often used.
* Bible conspiracy theory
* Bible code
* The Skeptic's Annotated Bible

Interpretation

* Biblical literalism
* Biblical hermeneutics
* Midrash
* Pardes

History and the Bible

* The Bible and history
* Bible chronology
*
* History of the English Bible
* Code of Hammurabi
* Study Bible
* List of burial places of biblical figures

Biblical topics

* Alcohol in the Bible
* Ethics in the Bible
* Women in the Bible
* The Bible and homosexuality
* Slavery in the Bible
* Circumcision in the Bible
* Crime and punishment in the Bible

Bible societies

* See Bible society for a list.

Commentaries

See Biblical exegesis.

Religious texts

* Qur'an
* Guru Granth Sahib
* Hindu texts
* Book of the Dead

Notes

References and further reading

* Anderson, Bernhard W. "Understanding the Old Testament". ISBN 0-13-948399-3.
* Berlin, Adele, Marc Zvi Brettler and Michael Fishbane. [http://www.newjewishbooks.org/0195297512/ "The Jewish Study Bible"] . 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. [http://www.newjewishbooks.org/ITB/ "In the Beginning"] . 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-10: 1565635175 ISBN-13: 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-10: 0385524315 ISBN-13: 978-0385524315
* Taylor, Hawley O. "Mathematics and Prophecy." "Modern Science and Christian Faith". Wheaton: Van Kampen, 1948, pp. 175–83.
*"Wycliffe Bible Encyclopedia", "Book of Ezekiel," p. 580 and "prophecy," p. 1410. Chicago: Moody Bible Press, 1986.

External links

* [http://www.kingjamesbibleonline.org/ King James Bible]
* [http://bible.thelineberrys.com/BIBLE.HTM New Revised Standard Version]