Biblical canon

The two religions I have choose to write my essay on are Christianity and Judaism. There are many different religions in the world today, however these two sparked my interest. I learned some interesting similarities and differences between these two religions. Christianity was founded by Jesus, Peter, and Paul in Southern Levant in 30 C.E. Christian beliefs center around Jesus of Nazareth who is a teacher and a healer who lived in the first century of Palestine. The Gospels were written

The New Testament is rooted in history; real histories like time and space. It is also striking in its personal tone. The great majority of its documents are letters; personal letters similar to those used in the modern era. The format may be somewhat different for moderns; however, for those recipients receiving and reading the letters in the 1st Century they represented normal writing conventions. The four Gospel accounts the New Testament contains are personalized accounts of the life and

In the first days of discovery and study, there was much excitement and anticipation surrounding these biblical texts. 70 years ago, before the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls, we had only the Masoretic Text, the Samaritan Pentateuch, and the Septuagint. Our history of biblical texts was based on those books. Now, thanks to the Dead Sea Scrolls, we have older copies of biblical texts. This new information shapes our picture of the Bible before 135 B.C. Nothing grand has changed, but our

The Synoptic Puzzle and the Authority of the Gospel of Mark The literary relationship between the Synoptic Gospels of the New Testament has intrigued Bible scholars for centuries. The arrangement of the Gospels, their content, and their portraits of Jesus offer something unique and create three books to be read independently of each other. Upon close examination, however, a wealth of evidence exists to prove that Mark was written first. The two-source hypothesis demonstrates the influence Mark

information that contains books or works written in three different languages: Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek. Many scholars separated the scrolls into three different categories: Biblical - Books found in the Hebrew Bible. Apocryphal or psuedepigraphical - Works not in some Bibles but included in others. Sectarian- ordinances, biblical commentaries, apocalyptic visions, and sacred works. One of the longer texts found in Qumran is the Tehillim or Psalms Scroll. It was found in 1956 in cave 11 and unrolled

Psalms Author Like most books in the Bible, the author of the Book of Psalms cannot be undeniably determined; authorship of Psalms is not perfectly clear to modern biblical scholars, “as the book's history is a combined account of fact and religious tradition” However, modern scholars are able to conclude that Psalms was written over approximately nine hundred years. It is believed that from the 1400s to the 500s BCE, Jewish and Christian traditions suppose that Moses wrote the first of the Psalms

Judaism is a monotheistic religion that developed among the ancient Hebrews.  Being a monotheistic religion encompasses the belief in a singular transcendent God that was revealed to Abraham and Moses.  Abraham is known as the father of Judaism.  VanVoorst, 2013 noted that “the book of Exodus contains the story of Israel’s enslavement in Egypt, God’s call to Moses to lead his people out of Egypt, Pharaoh’s stubborn resistance, and the Israelites’ escape through the parted waters of the Red Sea”.

When exploring the word of God in the Old Testament (OT), it is important to locate the texts into a social and historical context. It is in this context that the word of God is mediated by human expression. To deny the human expression is effectively to place a barrier between the word of God and it’s invitation to revelation. The OT can be seen as a “record of people’s experience of God’s self-revelation” (Rohr & Martos, 2011, p. 22). Thus the theology underpinning the OT meaning and understanding

There are certain similarities between Baphomet and Abraxas and the later probably influenced the former. This is something that the Templars themselves may have recognized. Abraxas seems to have played a central role in the Gnostic cult of Basilides in the second century A.D. Basilides was an Alexandrian mystic and teacher who for all intents and purposes can only be extracted from heresiological sources from the Church Fathers. He is either depicted as a disciple of Menander or Saturninus (both

Although these eighteen of the Wife of Bath Prologue are transcribed into modern English, they are in non-iambic, but rhyming verse. While translating these lines from Middle English to modern English, I did not consider rewriting them in iambic feet because it does not fit in with our contemporary literature. That is, Chaucer most likely felt the need to write in iambic-pentameter because he had competition from other writers like Giovanni Boccaccio and Dante Alighieri. In fact, Chaucer’s Wife of