For over two thousand years many people thought the Pentateuch was founded by Moses. (book citation) Not until around the eighteenth century, however, researchers in biblical interpretation saw that the best method to interpret the documents in the books of the Pentateuch was to see the books as a redaction, which is an edited version of several different original sources. Exegetes used the tecniques of source criticism and redaction criticism to propose that four authors made the five books of the Pentateuch. The authors were the Yahwist, the Elohist, the Deuteronomist, and the Priestly Writers. Using the abbreviations of the sources, the extegetes have called this theory the four-source theory or the JEPD theory, with the Yahwist being abbreviated J for the German word for Yahwist. (book citation) The theory states that each source is by a particular community and situation, not by just one writer. (book citation) …show more content…
The Yahwist was said to be the earliest source of the four sources, written during the reign of King David and Solomon, and also being dated to around the tenth century BCE. The name, Yahwist, was used because God was named Yahweh in its writings. Secondly, the Elohist, was a source that was founded in Israel, which was also called the northern kingdom. It was written during the time of the rule of Jeroboam. in the ninth century BCE, after the Yahwist. The name, Elohist came from writings interpreting the Hebrew God as
In the end, our oldest and most comprehensive lexicon of the New Testament’s use of Kurios is the Septuagint itself. It has been suggested that the majority of NT quotations were taken from the Septuagint. Therefore, if we follow this through to the logical conclusion, based on the following facts, we will see that the NT's use of Kurios means YHWH or Jehovah. Even if we discard the fact that our earliest Septuagint manuscripts used the Tetragrammaton, we know that the Septuagint was translated from the Hebrew Scriptures. The Hebrew Scriptures used the divine name. We have evidence of this in the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Masoretic text. Therefore, at some point the translators of the Septuagint either translated the Tetragrammaton as Kurios or scribes replaced the name at a later date. Now, using our current manuscript copies of the New Testament that use only Kurios, and because the quotations and other references to the God of the Hebrew Scriptures in the NT are from the Septuagint, the intended meaning behind the word Kurios would be the divine name. The NWT is merely using a different, valid lexical English word for Kurios to denote the divine name in the New Testament quotations and elsewhere when God is intended.
Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob were called the patriarchs, or the founders of Judaism. Moses, being one of the great religious leaders in history, God. revealed his name, Yahweh. Yahweh means “to be” in Hebrew. The events recorded in Exodus indicate that through Moses a new and deeper understanding of God was revealed.
The Hebrew Bible, better known as the Old Testament, is a collection of tomes that form part of the Biblical canon. Many scholars around the world do not think that a single author wrote the books contained in the Hebrew Bible, but rather that it represents centuries of stories frequently compiled after the events they describe . The stories were created with visions for the future, in order to allow audiences insight into communities and beliefs that were common thought during their era. The stories responded to the issues and problems of their time, but also addressed contemporary climates. While the stories themselves may not be true, they convey truth without needing literal readings. For example, the creation stories in Genesis, portray God as creating the universe, and while this is considered as not ‘literally true’; the stories communicate theological truths about mankind’s relationship with God through the eyes of Hebrew writers .
On 3/325 I went to see the musical The Book of Mormon at the Eugene O’Neill Theater on Broadway. The Book of Mormon was written by Trey Parker, Matt Stone (the creators of South Park) and Robert Lopez (the writer of Avenue Q and Frozen). The Book of Mormon has won numerous awards from various groups, including a Tony for Best Musical.
The Old Testament and the Bible itself has been studied extensively for centuries. Archeologists and Scholars have labored and pondered over texts trying to decipher its clues. It does not matter how many times the Old Testament has been studied there will always be something new to learn about it or the history surrounding it. In the book Reading the Old Testament: an Introduction, the author Lawrence Boadt presents us with a few different authors of the Old Testament that used different names for God and had a unique insight into the texts. These four sources are titled P for priests, E for Elohim, J for Jehovah, and Y for Yahweh (95). These four unique sources help us realize that there is more than one author of the Pentateuch. These authors took the text and adapted for their culture. This independent source is used by scholars to help gain insight into what was behind the texts of the bible so we are not left with an incomplete picture of what went into the creation of the bible. Julius Wellhausen used these four sources to publish a book to able us to better understand the sources and to give it credibility with the Protestant scholars at the time (Boadt 94). These sources that is independent of the bible as in the DVD Who Wrote the Bible? and the Nova website aide in shedding light on the history that surrounded the writers who wrote the text and what inspired them to write it in the first place. The DVD shows the discovery of The Dead Sea Scrolls and the extensive history of the texts and all its sources in an effort to try to find exactly who wrote the bible (Who Wrote). These scrolls have aided scholars immensely by giving us some of the oldest known manuscripts of the bible in the world today. It shows that the bible w...
The first name used for God is also used predominantly linked with Abraham and that is Elohim. Genesis uses different names for God which are almost always based on the Hebrew root word, El. El was a generic Hebrew term for deity (as in Genesis 35:1b-3; 46:3). The root name El is reflected in numerous names for God in the Torah. In Genesis 14:18-22, God is addressed as "God Most High" (Hebrew, El Elyon). In Genesis 16:13, Hagar recognizes "the God who sees" (Hebrew, El Roi). In Genesis 21:33, Abraham calls on the name of the "God of Eternity" (Hebrew, El Olam). More often, Hebrew ancestors worshipped "God Almighty" (or possibly "God of the Mountain"; Hebrew, El Shaddai), as in Genesis 17:1; 28:3; 35:11; and other passages. Thus, before the divine name Yahweh was revealed to Moses, the Hebrew ancestors worshipped God by many different names rooted in the generic term El. Surprisingly, the name Elohim and El Shaddai are both plural words in Hebrew. This could open up all kinds of avenues of discussion about the interpretation but suffice it to say that all these words describe some part of Gods characteristics.
The Bible is read and interpreted by many people all over the world. Regardless, no one knows the absolute truth behind scripture. Walter Brueggemann, professor of Old Testament, wrote “Biblical Authority” to help people understand what he describes as six different parts that make up the foundation to ones understanding of scripture. He defines these six features as being: inherency, interpretation, imagination, ideology, inspiration, and importance. As Brueggemann explains each individual part, it is easy to see that they are all interconnected because no one can practice one facet without involuntarily practicing at least one other part.
The most highly referenced and revered as sacred are The King James Version, considered a masterpiece of English literature, The Tanakh, or Hebrew Bible, The Aprocrypha, the books believed left out of some bibles, The Vulgate, the Latin Bible used for centuries by the Roman Catholic religion, and The Septuagint, the first ancient Greek translation of the Tanakh (Geisler and Nix 15, McCallum 4). The Bible is considered a sacred text by three major world religions, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Many believers consider it to be the literal truth. Others treat it with great respect, but believe that it was written by human beings and, thus is often contradictory in its tenets.
For centuries now Christians have claimed to possess the special revelation of an omnipotent, loving Deity who is sovereign over all of His creation. This special revelation is in written form and is what has come to be known as The Bible which consists of two books. The first book is the Hebrew Scriptures, written by prophets in a time that was before Christ, and the second book is the New Testament, which was written by Apostles and disciples of the risen Lord after His ascension. It is well documented that Christians in the context of the early first century were used to viewing a set of writings as being not only authoritative, but divinely inspired. The fact that there were certain books out in the public that were written by followers of Jesus and recognized as being just as authoritative as the Hebrew Scriptures was never under debate. The disagreement between some groups of Christians and Gnostics centered on which exact group of books were divinely inspired and which were not. The debate also took place over the way we can know for sure what God would have us include in a book of divinely inspired writings. This ultimately led to the formation of the Biblical canon in the next centuries. Some may ask, “Isn’t Jesus really the only thing that we can and should call God’s Word?” and “Isn’t the Bible just a man made collection of writings all centered on the same thing, Jesus Christ?” This paper summarizes some of the evidences for the Old and New Testament canon’s accuracy in choosing God breathed, authoritative writings and then reflects on the wide ranging
Most people have heard of evil spirits and things that “go bump in the night.” Numerous legends of the fallen angels say they occurred as the ones who originally created evil spirits that plague the earth. Pointedly, one of the first texts written concerning fallen angels tells of this happening.
The historical reliability of the Bible is the first matter that needs to be discussed. There are three criteria that the military historian C. Sanders lists as principles for documentary historical proof: the bibliographical test, internal evidence test, and the external evidence test (McDowell 43). The bibliographical test is the examination of text from the documents that have reached us. The reliability of the copies of the New Testament is tested by the number of manuscripts (MSS) and the time intervals between the time in which the piece of literature was written and our earliest copy. There are more than 5,300 Greek manuscripts of the New Testament and 10,000 Latin vulgate manuscripts, not to mention the other various translations.
Albright claimed “Judah” was an abbreviated theophorous form of “Yahweh” using the jussive hophal of hôdâ, הוד, Qal meaning“majesty,” translating as “Yahweh let be praised.” Albrect Alt altered the landscape of the etymological method contending “Judah” is not related to the name “Yahweh” but it exists as a geographical idiom. This theory, further pursued by Waterman and Noth, is the most agreed upon. Guided by this etymological concept, there is a hypothetical correlation between the Hebrew yᵉhûdâ, in the geographical sense, and the Arabic wahda, meaning “excavated
The Pentateuch, he asserted, comprises four distinct and relatively intact sources, or “documents,” labeled J, E, D, and P. The original basis for separating strands or documents in the Pentateuch was the different names used for God. In one source, J (or the Yahwist), the beginning of the worship of the god of Israel as Yahweh is placed back in the primeval age: “It was then that the name Yahweh was first invoked” (Gen 4.26). In this source in Genesis, the deity is known as Yahweh by Noah (8.20), Abraham (12:8; 15.7; 24.6), Isaac (25.21), Jacob (27.20; 28.13), and others. But according to other sources, this was not the case.
The Hebrew Bible is studied, analyzed, and worshiped by millions each day, it gives insight into the teachings and laws of God. The article “Pentateuch”, obtained from The Zondervan Pictoral Encyclopedia of the Bible by Merrill C. Tenney, deeply examines the authorship of the Pentateuch and displays two compelling arguments of weather the Pentateuch is of Mosaic authorship, or written by authors other than Moses. The Pentateuch is the bases of the entire Bible, it contains the first five books, including Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy, thus the literal meaning of “five volumes”. Theses five books make up the Old Testament and are roadmap to God’s teachings. The two views of Pentateuch authorship are Mosaic authorship
As cultures have grown and evolved throughout history, so too have opinions regarding the authorship of the Pentateuch. The Pentateuch encapsulates the first five books of the Old Testament: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. As a text that is considered to be the most sacred document in history, it is within the nature of the Bible to attract strong presuppositions that have developed across centuries. Exegesis of the Bible, specifically the first five books, naturally leads to questions of its origin. Developing a definitive conclusion regarding authorship is not necessarily a prerequisite to interpret the meaning of the Pentateuch. The stance taken on authorship does, however, have the potential to skew the believability