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Belgium
Belgium (
i/ˈbɛldʒəm/ BEL-jəm), officially the Kingdom of Belgium, is a federal state in Western Europe. It is a founding member of the European Union and hosts the EU's headquarters, and those of several other major international organisations such as NATO. Belgium covers an area of 30,528 square kilometres (11,787 sq mi), and it has a population of about 11 million people. Straddling the cultural boundary between Germanic and Latin Europe, Belgium is home to two main linguistic groups, the Dutch-speakers, mostly Flemish (about 60%), and the French-speakers, mostly Walloons (about 40%), plus a small group of German-speakers. Belgium's two largest regions are the Dutch-speaking region of Flanders in the north and the French-speaking southern region of Wallonia. The Brussels-Capital Region, officially bilingual, is a mostly French-speaking enclave within the Flemish Region. A German-speaking Community exists in eastern Wallonia. Belgium's linguistic diversity and related political conflicts are reflected in the political history and a complex system of government.
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Hebron
Hebron (Arabic:
الخليل (help·info) al-Ḫalīl; Hebrew: חֶבְרוֹן (help·info), Standard Hebrew: Ḥevron, Tiberian: Ḥeḇrôn ISO 259-3: Ḥebron), is located in the southern West Bank, 30 km (19 mi) south of Jerusalem. Nestled in the Judean Mountains, it lies 930 meters (3,050 ft) above sea level. It is the largest city in the West Bank and home to an estimated 175,000 Palestinians, and over 500 Jewish settlers concentrated in and around the old quarter. The city is most notable for containing the traditional burial site of the biblical Patriarchs and Matriarchs and is therefore considered the second-holiest city in Judaism after Jerusalem. The city is also venerated by Muslims for its association with Abraham and was traditionally viewed as one of the "four holy cities of Islam."
Hebron is a busy hub of West Bank trade, responsible for roughly a third of the area's gross domestic product, largely due to the sale of marble from quarries. It is locally well known for its grapes, figs, limestone, pottery workshops and glassblowing factories, and is the location of the major dairy product manufacturer, al-Junaidi. The old city of Hebron is characterized by narrow, winding streets, flat-roofed stone houses, and old bazaars. The city is home to Hebron University and the Palestine Polytechnic University.
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Israel
Coordinates: 31°N 35°E / 31°N 35°E / 31; 35
Israel, officially the State of Israel ( /ˈɪzriːəl/ or /ˈɪzreɪəl/; Hebrew: מְדִינַת יִשְׂרָאֵל, Medīnat Yisrā'el, IPA: [me̞diˈnät jisʁäˈʔe̞l] (
listen); Arabic: دَوْلَة إِسْرَائِيل, Dawlat Isrāʼīl, IPA: [dawlat ʔisraːˈʔiːl]), is a parliamentary republic in the Middle East, along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea. It borders Lebanon in the north, Syria in the northeast, Jordan and the West Bank in the east, Egypt and the Gaza Strip on the southwest, and the Gulf of Aqaba in the Red Sea to the south, and it contains geographically diverse features within its relatively small area. Israel is defined as a Jewish and Democratic State in its Basic Laws and is the world's only Jewish-majority state.
Following the adoption of a resolution by the General Assembly of the United Nations on 29 November 1947 recommending the adoption and implementation of the United Nations plan to partition Palestine, on 14 May 1948 David Ben-Gurion, the Executive Head of the World Zionist Organization and president of the Jewish Agency for Palestine, declared the establishment of a Jewish state in Eretz Israel, to be known as the State of Israel, a state independent from the British Mandate for Palestine. Neighboring Arab states invaded the next day in support of the Palestinian Arabs. Israel has since fought several wars with neighboring Arab states, in the course of which it has occupied the West Bank, Sinai Peninsula, Gaza Strip and the Golan Heights. Portions of these territories, including east Jerusalem, have been annexed by Israel, but the border with the neighboring West Bank has not yet been permanently defined.[neutrality is disputed] Israel has signed peace treaties with Egypt and Jordan, but efforts to resolve the Israeli–Palestinian conflict have so far not resulted in peace.
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Jerusalem
Jerusalem ( /dʒəˈruːsələm/; Hebrew: יְרוּשָׁלַיִם Yerushaláyim ; Arabic: القُدس al-Quds and/or أورشليم Ûrshalîm) is the capital of Israel, though not internationally recognized as such, and one of the oldest cities in the world. It is located in the Judean Mountains, between the Mediterranean Sea and the northern edge of the Dead Sea. If the area and population of East Jerusalem is included, it is Israel's largest city in both population and area, with a population of 801,000 residents over an area of 125.1 km2 (48.3 sq mi). Jerusalem is also a holy city to the three major Abrahamic religions—Judaism, Christianity and Islam.
During its long history, Jerusalem has been destroyed twice, besieged 23 times, attacked 52 times, and captured and recaptured 44 times. The oldest part of the city was settled in the 4th millennium BCE. In 1538, walls were built around Jerusalem under Suleiman the Magnificent. Today those walls define the Old City, which has been traditionally divided into four quarters—known since the early 19th century as the Armenian, Christian, Jewish, and Muslim Quarters. The Old City became a World Heritage site in 1981, and is on the List of World Heritage in Danger. Modern Jerusalem has grown far beyond its boundaries.
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Malmesbury Abbey
Malmesbury Abbey, at Malmesbury in Wiltshire, England, is a religious house dedicated to Saint Peter and Saint Paul. It was one of the few English houses with a continual history from the 7th century through to the Dissolution of the Monasteries.
Malmesbury was founded as a Benedictine monastery around 676 by the scholar-poet Aldhelm, a nephew of King Ine of Wessex. In 941 AD, King Athelstan was buried in the Abbey. Æthelstan had died in Gloucester in October 939. The choice of Malmesbury over the New Minster in Winchester indicated that the king remained an outsider to the West Saxon court.
By the 11th century it contained the second largest library in Europe and was considered one of the leading European seats of learning. The Abbey was the site of an early attempt at human flight when, in 1010, the monk Eilmer of Malmesbury flew a primitive hang glider from a tower. Eilmer flew over 200 yards (200 m) before landing, breaking both legs. He later remarked that the only reason he did not fly further was the lack of a tail on his glider. The 12th-century historian William of Malmesbury was of the community.
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Moab
Moab (/ˈmoʊæb/; Moabite: 𐤌𐤀𐤁 Mʾb; Hebrew: מוֹאָב, Modern Mo'av Tiberian Môʼāḇ ; "seed of father"; Greek Μωάβ Mōav; Assyrian Mu'aba, Ma'ba, Ma'ab ; Egyptian Mu'ab) is the historical name for a mountainous strip of land in Jordan. The land lies alongside much of the eastern shore of the Dead Sea. The existence of the Kingdom of Moab is attested to by numerous archeological findings, most notably the Mesha Stele, which describes the Moabite victory over an unnamed son of King Omri of Israel. The Moabite capital was Dibon. In Biblical times, the nation was often in conflict with its Israelite neighbours to the west.
Moab occupied a plateau about 3,000 feet (910 m) above the level of the Mediterranean, or 4,300 feet (1,300 m) above the Dead Sea, and rising gradually from north to south.
It was bounded on the west by the Dead Sea and the southern section of the Jordan River; on the east by Ammon and the Arabian desert, from which it was separated by low, rolling hills; and on the south by Edom. The northern boundary varied, but in general it may be said to have been represented by a line drawn some miles above the northern extremity of the Dead Sea.
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Phoenicia
Phoenicia (UK /fɨˈnɪʃə/, US /fəˈniːʃə/; from the Greek: Φοινίκη: Phoiníkē), was an ancient Semitic Canaanite civilization situated on the western, coastal part of the Fertile Crescent. The major Phoenician cities were on the coastline of the Mediterranean. It was an enterprising maritime trading culture that spread across the Mediterranean from 1550 BC to 300 BC. The Phoenicians used the galley, a man-powered sailing vessel, and are credited with the invention of the bireme. They were famed in Classical Greece and Rome as 'traders in purple', referring to their monopoly on the precious purple dye of the Murex snail, used, among other things, for royal clothing, and for their spread of the alphabet (or abjad), upon which all major modern phonetic alphabets are derived.
In the Amarna tablets of the 14th century BC, people from the region called themselves Kenaani or Kinaani (Canaanites), although these letters predate the invasion of the Sea Peoples by over a century. Much later, in the 6th century BC, Hecataeus of Miletus writes that Phoenicia was formerly called χνα, a name Philo of Byblos later adopted into his mythology as his eponym for the Phoenicians: "Khna who was afterwards called Phoinix". Egyptian seafaring expeditions had already been made to Byblos to bring back "cedars of Lebanon" as early as the third millennium BC.
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Safed
Safed (Hebrew: צְפַת, Tzfat; Arabic: صفد, Safed, Ashkenazi: Tzfas; Biblical: Ṣ'fath, ISO 259-3: Çpat),[dubious – discuss] is a city in the Northern District of Israel. Located at an elevation of 900 metres (2,953 ft), Safed is the highest city in the Galilee and of Israel. Due to its high elevation, Safed experiences warm summers and cold, often snowy, winters. Since the sixteenth century, Safed has been considered one of Judaism's Four Holy Cities, along with Jerusalem, Hebron and Tiberias; since that time, the city has remained a center of Kabbalah, also known as Jewish mysticism.
Due to its beautiful setting surrounded by pine forests and its mild climate, Safed has become a summer holiday resort frequented by Israelis and foreign visitors alike. It has a lot of historic tourist attractions for both religious and secular Jews, as well as foreign tourists.
According to the Book of Judges, the area where Safed is located was assigned to the Tribe of Naphtali. Legend has it that Safed was founded by a son of Noah after the Great Flood.
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Sweden
Sweden (i/ˈswiːdən/ SWEE-dən; Swedish: Sverige [ˈsværjɛ] ( listen)), officially the Kingdom of Sweden (Swedish: Konungariket Sverige (help·info)), is a Nordic country on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. Sweden borders with Norway and Finland, and is connected to Denmark by a bridge-tunnel across the Øresund.
At 450,295 square kilometres (173,860 sq mi), Sweden is the third largest country in the European Union by area, with a total population of about 9.4 million. Sweden has a low population density of 21 inhabitants per square kilometre (54 /sq mi) with the population mostly concentrated to the southern half of the country. About 85% of the population live in urban areas. Sweden's capital city is Stockholm, which is also the largest city.
Sweden emerged as an independent and unified country during the Middle Ages. In the 17th century, the country expanded its territories to form the Swedish Empire. The empire grew to be one of the great powers of Europe in the 17th and early 18th century. Most of the conquered territories outside the Scandinavian Peninsula were lost during the 18th and 19th centuries. The eastern half of Sweden, present-day Finland, was lost to Russia in 1809. The last war in which Sweden was directly involved was in 1814, when Sweden by military means forced Norway into a personal union. Since then, Sweden has been at peace, practicing "non-participation in military alliances during peacetime and neutrality during wartime". However, Sweden has been a member of the European Union since 1 January 1995 and is a member of the OECD.
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Temple in Jerusalem
The Temple in Jerusalem or Holy Temple (Hebrew: Hebrew: בֵּית־הַמִּקְדָּשׁ, Modern: Bet HaMikdash, Tiberian: Beṯ HamMiqdāš, Ashkenazi: Beis HaMikdosh) was one of a series of structures which were historically located on the Temple Mount in the Old City of Jerusalem, the current site of the Dome of the Rock. Historically, these successive temples stood at this location and functioned as the centre of ancient Israelite and later Jewish worship. According to classical Jewish belief, the Temple acted as the figurative "footstool" of God's presence and a Third Temple will be built there in the future.
The Bible reports that the First Temple was built in 957 BCE by King Solomon (reigned c.970-c.930 BCE). As the sole place of Jewish sacrifice, the Temple replaced the portable sanctuary constructed in the Sinai Desert under the auspices of Moses, as well as local sanctuaries, and altars in the hills. This temple was however sacked a few decades later by Sheshonk I, Pharaoh of Egypt. Although efforts were made at partial reconstruction, it was only in 835 BCE when Jehoash, King of Judah in the second year of his reign invested considerable sums in reconstruction, only to have it stripped again for Sennacherib, King of Assyria in c700 BCE. The First Temple was totally destroyed by the Babylonians in 586 BCE when they sacked the city.
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Tiberias
Tiberias ( /taɪˈbɪəriəs/; Hebrew: טְבֶרְיָה, Tverya, Tiveria (audio) (help·info); Arabic: طبرية, Ṭabariyyah) is a city on the western shore of the Sea of Galilee (also called the Kinneret), Lower Galilee, Israel. Established in 20 CE, it was named in honour of the emperor Tiberius.
Tiberias has been venerated in Judaism since the middle of the 2nd century CE and since the 16th century has been considered one of Judaism's Four Holy Cities, along with Jerusalem, Hebron and Safed. In the 2nd-10th centuries, Tiberias was the largest Jewish city in the Galilee and the political and religious hub of the Jews of Palestine. According to Christian tradition, Jesus performed several miracles in the Tiberias district, making it an important pilgrimage site for Christians. Tiberias has historically been known for its hot springs, believed to cure skin and other ailments, for thousands of years.
Tiberias was founded sometime around 20 CE in Herodian Tetrarchy of Galilee and Peraea by the Roman Jewish client king Herod Antipas, son of Herod the Great. Herod Antopas made it the capital of his realm in the Galilee. Tiberias had a Jewish majority, living alongside a heterogeneous population. It was named in honor of the Roman Emperor Tiberius. There is a legend that Tiberias was built on the site of the Israelite village of Rakkat, mentioned in the Book of Joshua (Joshua 19:35). A discussion of Tiberias as Rakkat appears in the Talmud.[better source needed] In The Antiquities of the Jews, the Roman-Jewish historian Josephus states that Tiberias was located near Emmaus. This location is repeated in The Wars of the Jews.[better source needed]
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Ur
Coordinates: 30°57′45″N 46°06′11″E / 30.9625°N 46.10306°E / 30.9625; 46.10306 Ur (Sumerian: Urim;Sumerian Cuneiform: 𒋀𒀕𒆠 URIM2KI or 𒋀𒀊𒆠 URIM5KI;Akkadian: Uru) was an important city-state in ancient Sumer located at the site of modern Tell el-Muqayyar in Iraq's Dhi Qar Governorate. Once a coastal city near the mouth of the Euphrates on the Persian Gulf, Ur is now well inland, south of the Euphrates on its right bank, 16 kilometres (9.9 mi) from Nasiriyah.
The city's patron deity was Nanna, the Sumerian moon god, and the name of the city is in origin derived from the god's name, URIM2KI being the classical Sumerian spelling of LAK-32.UNUGKI, literally "the abode (UNUG) of Nanna (LAK-32)".
The site is marked by the ruins of the Ziggurat of Ur, which contained the shrine of Nanna, excavated in the 1930s. The temple was built in the 21st century BC (short chronology), during the reign of Ur-Nammu and was reconstructed in the 6th century BC by Nabonidus. The ruins cover an area of 1,200 metres (3,900 ft) northwest to southeast by 800 metres (2,600 ft) northeast to southwest and rise up to about 20 metres (66 ft) above the present plain level.
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Wiltshire, England
Wiltshire ( /ˈwɪltʃər/ or /ˈwɪltʃɪər/, formerly /ˈwɪlʃər/; or the County of Wilts) is a ceremonial county in South West England. It is landlocked and borders the counties of Dorset, Somerset, Hampshire, Gloucestershire, Oxfordshire and Berkshire. It contains the unitary authority of Swindon and covers 3,485 km2 (1,346 square miles). The ancient county town was Wilton, but since 1930 Wiltshire County Council and its successor Wiltshire Council (from 2009) have been based at Trowbridge.
Wiltshire is characterised by its high downland and wide valleys. Salisbury Plain is famous as the location of the Stonehenge and Avebury stone circles and other ancient landmarks and as the main training area in the UK of the British Army. The city of Salisbury is notable for its mediaeval cathedral. Important country houses open to the public include Longleat, near Warminster, and the National Trust's Stourhead, near Mere.
The county, in the 9th century written as Wiltunscir, later Wiltonshire, is named after the former county town of Wilton, itself named after the river Wylye, one of eight rivers which drain the county.
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Abraham
Abraham (Hebrew: אַבְרָהָם (help·info), Modern: Avraham, Tiberian: ʼAḇrāhām, Ashkenazi Avrohom or Avruhom, Arabic: إبراهيم Ibrāhīm, Ge'ez: አብርሃም ʼAbrəham, Greek: Aβραάμ, Russian: Авраам), whose birth name was Abram, is the eponym of the Abrahamic religions, among which are Judaism, Christianity and Islam. According to both the Hebrew Bible and the Qur'an, through his sons Ishmael and Isaac, Abraham is the forefather of many tribes, namely the Ishmaelites, Israelites, Midianites and Edomites. Abraham was a descendant of Noah's son, Shem. Christians believe that Jesus was a descendant of Abraham through Isaac, and Muslims believe that Muhammad was a descendant of Abraham through Ishmael. Abraham is notable for his advocation and promotion of monotheism.
The Book of Genesis narrative that records the life of Abraham presents his role as one that could only be fulfilled through a monotheistic covenant established between him and God. The Qur'an has stories about Abraham and his offspring that are similar to the Bible's. In Islam, Abraham is recognised as a prophet, patriarch and messenger, archetype of the perfect Muslim, and reformer of the Kaaba.
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Abraham Geiger
Abraham Geiger (24 May 1810 in Frankfurt am Main – 23 October 1874 in Berlin) was a German rabbi and scholar who led the founding of Reform Judaism. He sought to remove all nationalistic elements (particularly the "Chosen People" doctrine) from Judaism, stressing it as an evolving and changing religion.
As a child, Geiger started doubting the traditional understanding of Judaism when his studies in classical history seemed to contradict the biblical claims of divine authority. At the age of seventeen, he began writing his first work, a comparison between the legal style of the Mishnah and Biblical and Talmudic law. He also worked on a dictionary of Mishnaic (Rabbinic) Hebrew.
Geiger's friends provided him with financial assistance which enabled him to attend the University in Heidelberg, to the great disappointment of his family. His main focus was centered on the areas of philology, Syriac, Hebrew, and classics, but he also attended lectures in Old Testament, philosophy, and archaeology. After one semester, he transferred to the University of Bonn, where he studied at the same time as Samson Raphael Hirsch. Hirsch initially formed a friendship with Geiger, and with him organized a society of Jewish students for the stated purpose of practicing homiletics, but with the deeper intention of bringing them closer to Jewish values. It was to this society that Geiger preached his first sermon (January 2, 1830). In later years he and Hirsch became bitter opponents as the leaders of two opposing Jewish movements.
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Abraham ibn Ezra
Rabbi Abraham Ben Meir Ibn Ezra (Hebrew: אברהם אבן עזרא or ראב"ע, Arabic ابن عزرا; also known as Abenezra) (1089 — 1164) was born at Tudela, Navarre Tudela, Navarre (now in Spain) in 1089, and died c. 1167, apparently in Calahorra. He was one of the most distinguished Jewish men of letters and writers of the Middle Ages. Ibn Ezra excelled in philosophy, astronomy/astrology, mathematics, poetry, linguistics, and exegesis; he was called The Wise, The Great and The Admirable Doctor.
He was born at Tudela[citation needed], (current day province of Navarre) when the town was under the Muslim rule of the emirs of Zaragoza. Later he lived in Córdoba. In Granada, it is said, he met his future friend (and perhaps his father-in-law) Yehuda Halevi. He left Spain before 1140 to escape persecution of the Jews by the new fanatical regime of the Almohads. He led a life of restless wandering, which took him to North Africa, Egypt (in 1109, maybe in the company of Yehuda Halevi), the Land of Israel, Italy (Rome in 1140-1143, Lucca, Mantua, Verona), Southern France (Rodez, Narbonne, Béziers), Northern France (Dreux), England (London, and Oxford in 1158), and back again to Narbonne in 1161, until his death on January 23 or 28, 1167, the exact location unknown: maybe at Calahorra at the border of Navarre and Aragon, or maybe in Rome or in the Holy Land.
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Asher ben Jehiel
Asher ben Jehiel- Ashkenazi (Hebrew, אשר בן יחיאל, or Asher ben Yechiel, sometimes Asheri) (1250 or 1259 – 1327) was an eminent rabbi and Talmudist best known for his abstract of Talmudic law. He is often referred to as Rabbenu Asher, “our Rabbi Asher” or by the Hebrew acronym for this title, the ROSH (Hebrew, רא"ש, literally "Head"). His yahrzeit is on the 9 Cheshvan.
The Rosh was born in western Germany and died in Toledo, Spain. His family was prominent for learning and piety, his father Yechiel was a Talmudist, and one of his ancestors was Rabbi Eliezer ben Nathan (the RaABaN). Asher had eight sons, the most prominent of whom were Judah and Jacob, author of the Arba'ah Turim, a code of Jewish law. His primary teacher was the Tosafist Rabbi Meir of Rothenburg, then in Worms. In addition to his studies, ROSH worked in money lending, and according to his own statement, was independently wealthy.
In 1286, Emperor Rudolf I had instituted a new persecution of the Jews, and Rabbi Meir left Germany, but was captured and imprisoned. The ROSH raised a ransom for his release, but Rabbi Meir refused it, for fear of encouraging the imprisonment of other rabbis. Thereafter the Rosh assumed Rabbi Meir's position in Worms. He was, however, forced to emigrate (in all likelihood, a victim of blackmail by the government, aimed at acquiring his fortune). After leaving Germany, he first settled in southern France, and then in Toledo, Spain, where he became rabbi on the recommendation of Rabbi Solomon ben Abraham Adret (RaShBA). Rabbenu Asher's son Judah testified to the fact that he died in poverty. Rabbeinu Asher died in Toledo on 9 Cheshvan 5089 (1328 CE).
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Baal Shem Tov
Rabbi Yisroel (Israel) ben Eliezer (רבי ישראל בן אליעזר) (August 25, 1698 — May 22, 1760), often called Baal Shem Tov (/ˌbɑːl ˈʃɛm ˌtʊv/ or /ˌtʊf/) or Besht, was a Jewish mystical rabbi. He is considered to be the founder of Hasidic Judaism (see also Mezhbizh Hasidic dynasty).
The Besht was born to Eliezer and Sara in Okopy (Ukrainian: Окопи) a small village that over the centuries has been part of Poland, Russia, and is now part of Ukraine, (located in the Borschiv Raion (district) of the Ternopil Oblast). He died in Medzhybizh, (Ukrainian: Меджибіж, Polish: Międzybórz, Międzyborz or Międzybóż, Yiddish: מעזשביזש), which had once been part Poland and Russia, and is also now in Ukraine, in the Khmelnytskyi Oblast (not to be confused with other cities of the same name).
The Besht is better known to many religious Jews as “the holy Baal Shem” (der heyliger baal shem in Yiddish), or most commonly, the Baal Shem Tov (בעל שם טוב). The title Baal Shem Tov is usually translated into English as “Master of the Good Name,” but at least two other translations are possible:
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Bart D. Ehrman
Bart D. Ehrman (born 1955) is an American New Testament scholar, currently the James A. Gray Distinguished Professor of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. While Ehrman is a leading New Testament scholar, he has also achieved acclaim at the popular level, authoring four New York Times bestsellers. His best-known works at the popular level are Misquoting Jesus and Jesus, Interrupted. Ehrman's work focuses on New Testament textual criticism and early Christianity.
Ehrman grew up in Lawrence, Kansas, and attended Lawrence High School, where he was on the state champion debate team in 1973. He began studying the Bible and its original languages at the Moody Bible Institute and is a 1978 graduate of Wheaton College in Illinois. He received his PhD and M.Div. from Princeton Theological Seminary, where he studied under Bruce Metzger. He received magna cum laude for both his BA in 1978 and PhD in 1985.
Ehrman became an Evangelical Christian as a teen. In his books, he recounts his youthful enthusiasm as a born-again, fundamentalist Christian, certain that God had inspired the wording of the Bible and protected its texts from all error. His desire to understand the original words of the Bible led him to the study of ancient languages and to textual criticism. His graduate studies, however, eventually convinced him that one ought to acknowledge the contradictions in the biblical manuscripts rather than attempt to harmonize or reconcile discrepancies. He remained a liberal Christian for fifteen years but later became an agnostic after struggling with the philosophical problems of evil and suffering.
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Baruch Spinoza
Baruch Spinoza and later Benedict de Spinoza (24 November 1632 – 21 February 1677) was a Dutch philosopher. Revealing considerable scientific aptitude, the breadth and importance of Spinoza's work was not fully realized until years after his death. By laying the groundwork for the 18th century Enlightenment[citation needed] and modern biblical criticism, he came to be considered one of the great rationalists of 17th-century philosophy. His magnum opus, the posthumous Ethics, in which he opposed Descartes's mind–body dualism, has earned him recognition as one of Western philosophy's most important contributors. In the Ethics, "Spinoza wrote the last indisputable Latin masterpiece, and one in which the refined conceptions of medieval philosophy are finally turned against themselves and destroyed entirely." Philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel said of all contemporary philosophers, "You are either a Spinozist or not a philosopher at all."
Spinoza's name in different languages is Hebrew: ברוך שפינוזה Baruch Spinoza, Portuguese: Benedito or Bento de Espinosa and Latin: Benedictus de Spinoza; in all these languages, the given name means "the Blessed". Spinoza was raised in the Portuguese Jewish community in Amsterdam. He developed highly controversial ideas regarding the authenticity of the Hebrew Bible and the nature of the Divine. The Jewish religious authorities issued a cherem (Hebrew: חרם, a kind of ban, shunning, ostracism, expulsion, or excommunication) against him, effectively excluding him from Jewish society at age 23. His books were also later put on the Catholic Church's Index of Forbidden Books.
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Bernhard Anderson
Bernhard Word Anderson (born 1916, died December 26, 2007) was an American United Methodist pastor and Old Testament scholar.
Born in Dover, Missouri, Anderson earned degrees from the College of the Pacific and Pacific School of Religion. In 1939, he was ordained to the ministry of the (then) Methodist Church. He served Methodist churches in California, and later Congregational churches in both Connecticut and New York.
In 1945 he received the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at Yale, where he specialized in Old Testament studies. He holds honorary degrees from the Pacific School of Religion, the University of the Pacific, and Colgate University.
As a professor, he served Colgate University in New York, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, the Colgate Rochester Divinity School, Drew University, (where he served as Dean of the Theological School for nine years), and finally as a Professor of Old Testament Theology at Princeton Theological Seminary, where he was Professor of Old Testament Theology Emeritus. In retirement, he continued to teach into the late 1980s-early 1990s at Boston University School of Theology.
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David
David (Hebrew: דָּוִד, דָּוִיד, Modern David Tiberian Dāwîḏ; ISO 259-3 Dawid; Strong's Daveed; beloved; Arabic: داوود or داود Dāwūd) was, according to the Hebrew Bible, the second king of the United Kingdom of Israel and, according to the Gospel of Matthew and the Gospel of Luke, an ancestor of Jesus. David is seen as a major Prophet in Islamic traditions. His life is conventionally dated to c. 1040–970 BC, his reign over Judah c. 1010–1003 BC,[citation needed] and his reign over the United Kingdom of Israel c. 1003–970 BC.[citation needed] The Books of Samuel, 1 Kings, and 1 Chronicles are the only sources of information on David, although the Tel Dan stele records "House of David", which some take as confirmation of the existence in the mid-9th century BC of a Judean royal dynasty called the "House of David".
David is very important to Jewish, Christian and Islamic doctrine and culture. In Judaism, David, or David HaMelekh, is the King of Israel, and the Jewish people. Jewish tradition maintains that a direct descendant of David will be the Messiah. In Islam, he is known as Dawud, considered to be a prophet and the king of a nation. He is depicted as a righteous king, though not without faults, as well as an acclaimed warrior, musician, and poet, traditionally credited for composing many of the psalms contained in the Book of Psalms.
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Elijah
Elijah ( /ɨˈlaɪdʒə/; also Elias /ɨˈlaɪ.əs/; Hebrew: אֱלִיָּהוּ, Eliyahu, meaning "Yahweh is my God";Arabic:إلياس, Ilyās), was a prophet in the northern kingdom of Israel during the reign of Ahab (9th century BC), according to the Books of Kings.
According to the Books of Kings, Elijah defended the worship of Yahweh over that of the Phoenician god Baal; he raised the dead, brought fire down from the sky, and was taken up in a whirlwind (either accompanied by a chariot and horses of flame or riding in it). In the Book of Malachi, Elijah's return is prophesied "before the coming of the great and terrible day of the Lord," making him a harbinger of the Messiah and the eschaton in various faiths that revere the Hebrew Bible. Derivative references to Elijah appear in the Talmud, Mishnah, the New Testament, and the Qur'an.
In Judaism, Elijah's name is invoked at the weekly Havdalah ritual that marks the end of Shabbat, and Elijah is invoked in other Jewish customs, among them the Passover seder and the Brit milah (ritual circumcision). He appears in numerous stories and references in the Haggadah and rabbinic literature, including the Babylonian Talmud.
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Elliot N. Dorff
Elliot N. Dorff (born 24 June 1943) is a Conservative rabbi. He is a professor of Jewish theology at the American Jewish University (formerly the University of Judaism) in California (where he is also Rector), author and a bio-ethicist.
Dorff is an expert in the philosophy of Conservative Judaism, Bioethics, and acknowledged within the Conservative community as an expert decisor of Jewish law. Dorff was ordained as a rabbi from the Jewish Theological Seminary of America in 1970. He earned a Ph.D in philosophy from Columbia University in 1971.
Dorff is the chairman of the Rabbinical Assembly's Committee on Jewish Law and Standards, and has written many responsa (opinion papers and legal rulings) on various aspects of Jewish law and philosophy. (There is a separate article on Conservative responsa.)
Among other topics, Dorff is interested in Jewish philosophy. Epistemology is the branch of philosophy that addresses questions such as: "What is knowledge?", "How is knowledge acquired?", and "How do we know what we know?" In addressing this subject the first issue to note is that the terms "knowledge" and "belief" are often used interchangeably by religious believers, but technically these are very distinct terms.
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Frank Kermode
Sir John Frank Kermode (29 November 1919 – 17 August 2010) was a British literary critic known for his work The Sense of an Ending: Studies in the Theory of Fiction, published in 1967 (revised 2000).
Kermode was known for many works of criticism, and also as editor of the popular Fontana Modern Masters series of introductions to modern thinkers. He was a regular contributor to the London Review of Books and The New York Review of Books.
Kermode was born on the Isle of Man, and was educated at Douglas High School and Liverpool University. He served in the Royal Navy during World War II, for six years in total, much of it in Iceland.
Kermode was a contributor for several years to the somewhat neoconservative magazine, Encounter and in 1965 became co-editor. He resigned in less than two years after it became clear that the magazine was funded by the CIA.
He subsequently pursued an academic career, becoming Lord Northcliffe Professor of Modern English Literature at University College London (UCL) from 1967 to 1974. Under Kermode, the UCL English Department chaired a series of graduate seminars which broke new ground by introducing for the first time contemporary French critical theory to Britain.
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Gershom ben Judah
Gershom ben Judah, (c. 960 -1040? -1028?) best known as Rabbeinu Gershom (Hebrew: רבנו גרשום, "Our teacher Gershom") and also commonly known to scholars of Judaism by the title Rabbeinu Gershom Me'Or Hagolah ("Our teacher Gershom the light of the exile"), was a famous Talmudist and Halakhist.
Rashi of Troyes (d. 1105) said less than a century after Gershom's death, "all members of the Ashkenazi diaspora are students of his." As early as the 14th century Asher ben Jehiel wrote that Rabbeinu Gershom's writings were "such permanent fixtures that they may well have been handed down on Mount Sinai."
He is most famous for the synod he called around 1000 CE, in which he instituted various laws and bans.
Born in Metz in 960, Gershom was a student of Judah ben Meir ha-Kohen (Sir Léontin), who was one of the greatest authorities of his time. Having lost his first wife, Gershom married a widow named Bonna and settled at Mainz (Mayence), where he devoted himself to teaching the Talmud. During his lifetime Mainz became a center of Torah and Jewish scholarship for many Jewish communities in Europe that had formerly been connected with the Babylonian yeshivas. He was the spiritual guide of the fledgling Ashkenazic Jewish communities and was very influential in molding them at a time when their population was dwindling.
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Gersonides
Levi ben Gershon, better known by his Latinised name as Gersonides or the abbreviation of first letters as RaLBaG (1288–1344), philosopher, Talmudist, mathematician, astronomer/astrologer. He was born at Bagnols in Languedoc, France. According to Abraham Zacuto and others, he was the son of Gerson ben Solomon Catalan.
As in the case of the other medieval Jewish philosophers little is known of his life. His family had been distinguished for piety and exegetical skill in Talmud, but though he was known in the Jewish community by commentaries on certain books of the Bible, he never seems to have accepted any rabbinical post. It has been suggested that the uniqueness of his opinions may have put obstacles in the way of his preferment. He is known to have been at Avignon and Orange during his life, and is believed to have died in 1344, though Zacuto asserts that he died at Perpignan in 1370.
Part of his writings consist of commentaries on the portions of Aristotle then known, or rather of commentaries on the commentaries of Averroes. Some of these are printed in the early Latin editions of Aristotle’s works. His most important treatise, that by which he has a place in the history of philosophy, is entitled Sefer Milhamot Ha-Shem, ("The Wars of the Lord"), and occupied twelve years in composition (1317–1329). A portion of it, containing an elaborate survey of astronomy as known to the Arabs, was translated into Latin in 1342 at the request of Pope Clement VI.
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Herod the Great
Herod (Hebrew: הוֹרְדוֹס, Hordos, Greek: Ἡρῴδης, Hērōdēs), also known as Herod the Great (born 73 or 74 BCE, died 4 BCE in Jericho), was a Roman client king of Judea. His epithet of "the Great" is widely disputed as he is described as "a madman who murdered his own family and a great many rabbis." He is also known for his colossal building projects in Jerusalem and elsewhere, including his expansion of the Second Temple in Jerusalem (sometimes referred to as Herod's Temple) and the construction of the port at Caesarea Maritima. Important details of his biography are gleaned from the works of the 1st century CE Roman-Jewish historian Josephus Flavius.
The Romans made Herod's son Herod Archelaus ethnarch of Judea, Samaria, and Idumea (biblical Edom) from 4 BCE to 6 CE, referred to as the tetrarchy of Judea. Archelaus was judged incompetent by the Roman emperor Augustus who then combined Samaria, Judea proper and Idumea into Iudaea province under rule of a prefect until 41. Herod's other son Herod Antipas was tetrarch of Galilee from 4 BCE – 39 CE.
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Hiloni
Hiloni (Hebrew: חִלּוֹנִי), plural hilonim (Hebrew: חִלּוֹנִים) derived from the Hebrew word hulin, meaning secular or mundane, is the term used in Israel for non-religious Jews.
As natives of Israel, hilonim speak Hebrew. As Israel is a Jewish state, many hilonim observe national holidays and customs, such as Israel's Independence Day, and Holocaust Remembrance Day.
The concept of Modern-day Political Zionism, in itself, was founded largely upon secular beliefs and values. Theodor Herzl, founder of the Modern Day Zionist movement, was an assimilated Austrian Jew. At first, most of those immigrating to Palestine were Orthodox Jews who immigrated due to the holiness of the land and their wish to be buried in Jerusalem (due to the belief that The Messiah will resurrect those interred in Jerusalem first before the rest of the world). With the onset of numerous pogroms throughout Eastern Europe, many Jews citing security, freedom of religion, and strong Zionist affinities left their surrogate lands to settle in their native homeland, the Land of Israel. During the first wave (1882–1903) of Zionist aliyah, and especially during the Second Aliyah (1904–1914) the Jewish population of Ottoman Palestine, consisting mainly of secular or nontraditional Jews, greatly increased. These Olim founded cities such as Tel Aviv and established kibbutzim which were based around ideas of socialism, not necessarily connected to Judaism as a religion or a set of values. As the number of new immigrants increased so did the proportion of secular Jews. Up to, and during the Establishment of The State of Israel, the number of religious Jews was relatively minor.
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Isaac
Isaac ( /ˈaɪzək/;Hebrew: יִצְחָק, Modern Yitsẖak Tiberian Yiṣḥāq, ISO 259-3 Yiçḥaq, "he will laugh"; Yiddish: יצחק, Yitskhok; Ancient Greek: Ἰσαάκ, Isaak; Latin: Isaac; Arabic: إسحاق or Arabic: إسحٰقʼIsḥāq) as described in the Hebrew Bible, was the only son Abraham had with his wife Sarah, and was the father of Jacob and Esau. Isaac was one of the three patriarchs of the Israelites. According to the Book of Genesis, Abraham was 100 years old when Isaac was born, and Sarah was beyond childbearing years.
Isaac was the only biblical patriarch whose name was not changed, and the only one who did not leave Canaan. Compared to those of Abraham and Jacob, Isaac's story relates fewer incidents of his life. He died when he was 180 years old, making him the longest-lived patriarch.
The anglicized name Isaac is a transliteration of the Hebrew term Yiṣḥāq which literally means "He laughs/will laugh."Ugaritic texts dating from the 13th century BCE refer to the benevolent smile of the Canaanite deity El. Genesis, however, ascribes the laughter to Isaac's parents, Abraham and Sarah, rather than El. According to the biblical narrative, Abraham fell on his face and laughed when Elohim imparted the news of their son's eventual birth. He laughed because Sarah was past the age of childbearing; both she and Abraham were advanced in age. Later, when Sarah overheard three messengers of the Lord renew the promise, she laughed inwardly for the same reason. Sarah denied laughing when Elohim questioned Abraham about it.
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Isaac Abrabanel
Isaac ben Judah Abrabanel, (Lisbon, 1437 – Venice, 1508), commonly referred to (erroneously) just as AbARbanel, was a Portuguese Jewish statesman, philosopher, Bible commentator, and financier.
Abrabanel was born in Lisbon, Portugal, into one of the oldest and most distinguished Jewish Iberian families who had escaped persecution in Castile during 1391. A student of the rabbi of Lisbon, Joseph Chaim, he became well versed in rabbinic literature and in the learning of his time, devoting his early years to the study of Jewish philosophy. Abrabanel is quoted as saying that he included Joseph ibn Shem-Tov as his mentor. At twenty years old, he wrote on the original form of the natural elements, on religious questions and prophecy. Together with his intellectual abilities, he showed a complete mastery of financial matters. This attracted the attention of King Afonso V of Portugal who employed him as treasurer.
Notwithstanding his high position and the great wealth he had inherited from his father, his love for his afflicted brethren was unabated. When Arzila, in Morocco, was captured by the Moors, and the Jewish captives were sold as slaves, he contributed largely to the funds needed to free them, and personally arranged for collections throughout Portugal. He also wrote to his learned and wealthy friend, Vitale (Yehiel) Nissim da Pisa, on behalf of the captives.
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Isaac Alfasi
Isaac ben Jacob Alfasi ha-Cohen (1013 - 1103) (Hebrew: ר' יצחק אלפסי) - also known as the Alfasi or by his Hebrew acronym Rif (Rabbi Isaac al-Fasi), was a Talmudist and posek (decider in matters of halakha - Jewish law). He is best known for his work of halakha, the legal code Sefer Ha-halachot, considered the first fundamental work in halakhic literature. He was born in the Algerian city Al Qal'a of Beni Hammad, but spent the majority of his career in Fes, and is therefore known as "Alfasi" ("of Fes" in Arabic).
Alfasi was born in Al Qal'a of Beni Hammad, the capital city of the Hammadid rulers of central Maghreb. He studied in Kairouan, Tunisia under Rabbeinu's Nissim ben Jacob, and Chananel ben Chushiel the recognized rabbinical authorities of the age. Rabbeinu Chananel trained Alfasi to deduce and to clarify the Halakha from Talmudic sources, and Alfasi then conceived of the idea of compiling a comprehensive work that would present all of the practical conclusions of the Gemara in a clear, definitive manner. To achieve this goal, he worked for ten consecutive years in his father-in-law's attic.
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Isaac Asimov
Isaac Asimov (/ˈaɪzək ˈæzɨməv/ EYE-zək AZ-i-məv; born Isaak Yudovich Ozimov, Russian: Исаак Юдович Озимов; Yiddish: אייזיק יודאָוויטש אסימאוו; c. January 2, 1920 – April 6, 1992) was an American author and professor of biochemistry at Boston University, best known for his works of science fiction and for his popular science books. Asimov was one of the most prolific writers of all time, having written or edited more than 500 books and an estimated 90,000 letters and postcards. His works have been published in all ten major categories of the Dewey Decimal System (although his only work in the 100s—which covers philosophy and psychology—was a foreword for The Humanist Way).
Asimov is widely considered a master of hard science fiction and, along with Robert A. Heinlein and Arthur C. Clarke, he was considered one of the "Big Three" science fiction writers during his lifetime. Asimov's most famous work is the Foundation Series; his other major series are the Galactic Empire series and the Robot series, both of which he later tied into the same fictional universe as the Foundation Series to create a unified "future history" for his stories much like those pioneered by Robert A. Heinlein and previously produced by Cordwainer Smith and Poul Anderson. He wrote many short stories, among them "Nightfall", which in 1964 was voted by the Science Fiction Writers of America the best short science fiction story of all time. Asimov wrote the Lucky Starr series of juvenile science-fiction novels using the pen name Paul French.
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Isaac Luria
Isaac (ben Solomon) Luria Ashkenazi (1534 – July 25, 1572) (Hebrew:יִצְחָק בן שלמה לוּרְיָא אשכנזי Yitzhak Ben Sh'lomo Lurya Ashkenazi), commonly known as "Ha'ARI" (meaning "The Lion"), "Ha'ARI Hakadosh" [the holy ARI] or "ARIZaL" [the ARI, Zikhrono Livrakha] was a foremost rabbi and Jewish mystic in the community of Safed in the Galilee region of Ottoman Palestine. He is considered the father of contemporary Kabbalah, his teachings being referred to as Lurianic Kabbalah. While his direct literary contribution to the Kabbalistic school of Safed was extremely minute (he wrote only a few poems), his spiritual fame led to their veneration and the acceptance of his authority. The works of his disciples compiled his oral teachings into writing. Every custom of the Ari was scrutinized, and many were accepted, even against previous practice.
Luria died at Safed, Ottoman Empire controlled Land of Israel, July 25, 1572 (5 Av 5332). He was buried in the Old Cemetery of Safed.
Luria was born in 1534 in Jerusalem in what is now the Old Yishuv Court Museum to an Ashkenazi father, Solomon, and a Sephardic mother.
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Israel Finkelstein
Israel Finkelstein (b.1949) is an Israeli archaeologist and academic. He is currently the Jacob M. Alkow Professor of the Archaeology of Israel in the Bronze Age and Iron Ages at Tel Aviv University and is also the co-director of excavations at Megiddo in northern Israel. Previously, he served as Director of the Sonia and Marco Nadler Institute of Archaeology at Tel Aviv University from 1996-2002. In 2005 he received the Dan David Prize.
Born in Petah Tikva, he completed his studies at Tel Aviv University, writing his Ph.D. thesis on The Izbet Sartah excavations, for which he was also the Field Director.
Finkelstein specializes in Middle Eastern archaeology of the ancient history of the Land of Israel. Critical of an earlier generation of scholars who read the results of their excavations as confirming the biblical narratives of conquest, Finkelstein earned a reputation for being a "lightning rod" for controversy. In particular, his description of 10th century BCE Jerusalem, the period associated with the biblical kings David and Solomon, as a mere 'village' or tribal center, has been the subject of considerable discussion and criticism.
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Jacob
Jacob ( /ˈdʒeɪkəb/; Hebrew: יַעֲקֹב Standard Yaʿakov, Tiberian Yaʿăqōḇ (help·info); Septuagint Greek: Ἰακώβ Iakōb; Arabic: يَعْقُوب Yaʿqūb; "heel" or "leg-puller"), also later known as Israel (Hebrew: יִשְׂרָאֵל, Standard Yisraʾel, Tiberian Yiśrāʾēl; Septuagint Greek: Ἰσραήλ Israēl; Arabic: إِسْرَائِيل Isrāʾīl; "persevere with God"), as described in the Hebrew Bible, the Talmud, the New Testament and the Qur'an was the third patriarch of the Hebrew people with whom God made a covenant, and ancestor of the tribes of Israel, which were named after his descendants.
In the Hebrew Bible, he is the son of Isaac and Rebekah, the grandson of Abraham and Sarah and of Bethuel, and the younger twin brother of Esau. Jacob had twelve sons and at least one daughter, by his two wives, Leah and Rachel, and by their female slaves Bilhah and Zilpah. The children named in Genesis were Reuben, Simeon, Levi, Judah, Dan, Naphtali, Gad, Asher, Issachar, Zebulun, daughter Dinah, Joseph, and Benjamin.
Before the birth of Benjamin, Jacob is renamed "Israel" by an angel (Genesis 32:28-29 and 35:10). The name "Israel" can be translated as "God contended", but other meanings have also been suggested. Some commentators say the name comes from the verb śœarar ("to rule, be strong, have authority over"), thereby making the name mean "God rules" or "God judges". Other possible meanings include "the prince of God" (from the King James Version) or "El fights/struggles".
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Jeremiah
Jeremiah ( /dʒɛrɨˈmaɪ.ə/;Hebrew：יִרְמְיָה, Modern Hebrew:Yirməyāhū, IPA: jirməˈjaːhu, Tiberian:Yirmĭyahu, Greek:Ἰερεμίας), meaning "Yah exalts", also called the "Weeping prophet" was one of the major prophets of the Hebrew Bible. Jeremiah is traditionally credited with authoring the Book of Jeremiah, 1 Kings, 2 Kings and the Book of Lamentations with the assistance and under the editorship of Baruch ben Neriah, his scribe and disciple.
Judaism considers the Book of Jeremiah part of its canon, and regards Jeremiah as the second of the major prophets. Islam also considers Jeremiah a prophet, and he is listed as a prophet in all the collections of Stories of the Prophets.[citation needed]Christianity also regards Jeremiah as a prophet and he is quoted in the New Testament. It has been interpreted that Jeremiah “spiritualized and individualized religion and insisted upon the primacy of the individual’s relationship with God.”
According to the Book of Jeremiah, Jeremiah was a kohen (Jewish priest), from a landowning family. It is mentioned that he had a joyful early life, however, the difficulties in Jeremiah and the Book of Lamentations have prompted scholars to refer to him as "the weeping prophet". Jeremiah was called to prophetic ministry in c. 626 BC, about a year after King Josiah of Judah had turned the nation toward repentance from the widespread idolatrous practices of his father and grandfather. Jeremiah’s job was to reveal the sins of the people and explain the reason for the impending disaster (destruction by the Babylonian army and captivity), “And when your people say, 'Why has the LORD our God done all these things to us?' you shall say to them, 'As you have forsaken me and served foreign gods in your land, so you shall serve foreigners in a land that is not yours.'"
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Jerome
Saint Jerome (c. 347 – 30 September 420; (also Hierom or Jerom) (Latin: Eusebius Sophronius Hieronymus; Ancient Greek: Εὐσέβιος Σωφρόνιος Ἱερώνυμος) was a Roman Christian priest, confessor, theologian and historian, and who became a Doctor of the Church. He was the son of Eusebius, of the city of Stridon, which was on the border of Dalmatia and Pannonia. He is best known for his translation of the Bible into Latin (the Vulgate), and his list of writings is extensive.
He is recognised by the Catholic Church as a saint and Doctor of the Church, and the Vulgate is still an important text in Catholicism. He is also recognized as a saint by the Eastern Orthodox Church, where he is known as St. Jerome of Stridonium or Blessed Jerome.
Eusebius Sophronius Hieronymus was born at Stridon around 347. He was not baptized until about 360 or 366, when he had gone to Rome with his friend Bonosus (who may or may not have been the same Bonosus whom Jerome identifies as his friend who went to live as a hermit on an island in the Adriatic) to pursue rhetorical and philosophical studies. He studied under the grammarian Aelius Donatus. There Jerome learned Latin and at least some Greek, though probably not the familiarity with Greek literature he would later claim to have acquired as a schoolboy.
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Jesus
Jesus ( /ˈdʒiːzəs/; Greek: Ἰησοῦς; 7–2 BC/BCE to 30–36 AD/CE), also referred to as Jesus Christ or simply Christ, is the central figure of Christianity and most Christian denominations venerate him as God the Son incarnated. In Islam, Jesus (in Arabic: عيسى in Islamic usage, commonly transliterated as Isa) is considered one of God's important prophets.
Most modern historians agree that Jesus existed and was a Jewish teacher from Galilee in Roman Judaea, who was baptized by John the Baptist, and was crucified in Jerusalem on the orders of the Roman Prefect, Pontius Pilate. Scholars have offered competing descriptions and portraits of Jesus, which at times share a number of overlapping attributes, such as a rabbi, a charismatic healer, the leader of an apocalyptic movement, a self-described Messiah, a sage and philosopher, or a social reformer who preached of the "Kingdom of God" as a means for personal and egalitarian social transformation. Scholars have correlated the New Testament accounts with non-Christian historical records to arrive at an estimated chronology of Jesus' life.
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Jewish Buddhist
A Jewish Buddhist (also Jewbu or Jubu or Buju) is a person with a Jewish background who practices forms of Buddhist meditation and spirituality. The term Jubu was first brought into wide circulation with the publication of The Jew in the Lotus (1994) by Rodger Kamenetz. In some cases, the term can refer to individuals who practice both traditions; in other cases, "Jewish" is no more than an ethnic designation where the person's main religious practice is Buddhism. In yet other cases, a Jubu is simply a Jew with an interest in Buddhism. A large demographic of Jewish Buddhists, constituting its majority, still maintain religious practices and beliefs in Judaism coupled with Buddhist practices and perhaps beliefs.
The first recorded instance of an American being converted to Buddhism on American soil occurred at the 1893 exposition on world religions and the convert had been a Jew named Charles Strauss. He declared himself a Buddhist at a public lecture that followed the World Conference on Religions in 1893. Strauss later became an author and leading expositor of Buddhism in the West. After World War II, there was increasing interest in Buddhism, associated with the Beat generation. Zen was the most important influence at that time. A new wave of Jews involved with Buddhism came in the late 1960s. Prominent teachers included Joseph Goldstein, Jack Kornfield and Sharon Salzberg, who founded the Insight Meditation Society and learned vipassana meditation primarily through Thai teachers.
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Jews
The Jews (Hebrew: יְהוּדִים ISO 259-3 Yhudim Israeli pronunciation [jehuˈdim]), also known as the Jewish people, are a nation and an ethnoreligious group, originating in the Israelites or Hebrews of the Ancient Near East. The Jewish ethnicity, nationality, and religion are strongly interrelated, as Judaism is the traditional faith of the Jewish nation.Converts to Judaism, whose status as Jews within the Jewish ethnos is equal to those born into it, have been absorbed into the Jewish people throughout the millennia.
In Jewish tradition, Jewish ancestry is traced to the Biblical patriarchs Abraham, Isaac and Jacob in the second millennium BCE. The modern State of Israel defines itself as a Jewish state in its Basic Laws, and Israel's Law of Return states: "Every Jew has the right to come to this country as an oleh." Israel is the only country where Jews are a majority of the population. Jews achieved political autonomy twice before in ancient history. The first of these periods lasted from 1350 to 586 BCE, and encompassed the periods of the Judges, the United Monarchy, and the Divided Monarchy of the Kingdoms of Israel and Judah, ending with the destruction of the First Temple. The second was the period of the Hasmonean Kingdom spanning from 140 to 37 BCE. Since the destruction of the First Temple, most Jews have lived in diaspora. A minority in every country in which they live (except Israel), they have frequently experienced persecution throughout history, resulting in a population that has fluctuated both in numbers and distribution over the centuries.
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Judah Halevi
Judah Halevi (also Yehuda Halevi; Hebrew: יהודה הלוי; Arabic: يهوذا هاليفي; c. 1075–1141) was a Spanish Jewish physician, poet and philosopher. He was born in Spain, either in Toledo or Tudela, in 1075 or 1086, and died shortly after arriving in Palestine in 1141. Halevi is considered one of the greatest Hebrew poets, celebrated both for his religious and secular poems, many of which appear in present-day liturgy. His greatest philosophical work was The Kuzari.
Convention suggests that Judah ben Shmuel HaLevi was born in Toledo, Spain in 1075. He often referred to himself as coming from Christian territory, which would point to Toledo, which was conquered by Alfonso VI from the Muslims in Halevi's childhood (1086). As a youth, he seems to have gone to Granada, the main center of Jewish literary and intellectual life at the time, where he found a mentor in Moses Ibn Ezra. Although it is often said that he studied in the academy at Lucena, there is no evidence to this effect. He did compose a short elegy on the death of Isaac Alfasi, the head of the academy. His aptitude as a poet was recognized early. He was educated in traditional Jewish scholarship, in Arabic literature, and in the Greek sciences and philosophy that were available in Arabic. As an adult he was a physician, apparently of renown, and an active participant in Jewish communal affairs. For at least part of his life he lived in Toledo and may have been connected with the court there as a physician. In Toledo he complains of being too busy with medicine to devote himself to scholarship. At other times he lived in various Muslim cities in the south.
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Judah the Prince
Judah the Prince, (Hebrew: יהודה הנשיא, Yehudah HaNasi) or Judah I, also known as Rabbi or Rabbenu HaQadosh (Hebrew: רבנו הקדוש, "Our Sacred Teacher"), was a 2nd-century CE rabbi and chief redactor and editor of the Mishnah. He was a key leader of the Jewish community during the Roman occupation of Judea . He was of the Davidic line, the royal line of King David, hence the title nasi, meaning prince. The title nasi was also used for presidents of the Sanhedrin. Judah died on 15 Kislev in 188CE or 219CE .[citation needed]
Judah the Prince was born in 135 CE. According to the Midrash, he came into the world on the same day that Rabbi Akiva died a martyr's death. The Talmud suggests that this was a result of Divine Providence: God had granted the Jewish people another leader of great stature to succeed Rabbi Akiva. His place of birth is unknown; nor is it recorded where his father, Shimon ben Gamliel II, sought refuge with his family during the persecutions under Hadrian. He is the only tanna known as "our holy teacher" due to his deep piety.
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King Solomon
Solomon (Hebrew: שְׁלֹמֹה, Modern Shlomo Tiberian Šəlōmō ISO 259-3 Šlomo; Arabic: سليمان Sulaymān, also colloquially: Silimān; Greek: Σολομών Solomōn), according to the Book of Kings and the Book of Chronicles, a King of Israel and according to the Talmud one of the 48 prophets, is identified as the son of David, also called Jedidiah (Hebrew יְדִידְיָהּ) in 2 Samuel 12:25, and is described as the third king of the United Monarchy, and the final king before the northern Kingdom of Israel and the southern Kingdom of Judah split; following the split his patrilineal descendants ruled over Judah alone. In the Qur'an, he is considered as a major Prophet, known as Sulaiman, son of David.
The Hebrew Bible credits Solomon as the builder of the First Temple in Jerusalem, and portrays him as great in wisdom, wealth, and power, but ultimately as a king whose sin, including idolatry and turning away from Yahweh, leads to the kingdom being torn in two during the reign of his son Rehoboam. Solomon is the subject of many other later references and legends.
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Kohen
Kohen (or Kohain; Hebrew: כֹּהֵן, "priest", pl. כֹּהֲנִים Kohanim) is the Hebrew word for priest. Jewish Kohanim are traditionally believed and halachically required to be of direct patrilineal descent from the Biblical Aaron.
The noun kohen is used in the Torah to refer to priests, both Jewish and non-Jewish, such as the Jewish nation as a whole, as well as the priests (Hebrew kohanim) of Baal (2Kings 10:19). During the existence of the Temple in Jerusalem, Kohanim performed the daily and holiday (Yom Tov) duties of sacrificial offerings.
Today kohanim retain a lesser though somewhat distinct status within Judaism, and are bound by additional restrictions according to Orthodox Judaism.
The Hebrew noun kohen is most often translated as "priest", whether Jewish or pagan, such as the priests of Baal or Dagon, though Christian priests are referred to in Hebrew by the term komer (Hebrew כומר). The word derives from a Semitic root common, at minimum, to the Central Semitic languages; the cognate Arabic word كاهن kāhin means "soothsayer, augur, or priest".
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Leopold Zunz
Leopold Zunz (Hebrew/ Yiddish: יום טוב ליפמן צונץ—"Yom Tov Lipmann Tzuntz"; 10 August 1794 – 17 March 1886) was a German Reform rabbi and writer, the founder of what has been termed "Jewish Studies" or "Judaic Studies" (Wissenschaft des Judentums), the critical investigation of Jewish literature, hymnology and ritual. Zunz's historical investigations and contemporary writings had an important influence on contemporary Judaism.
Leopold Zunz was born at Detmold, and settled in Berlin in 1815, studying at the University of Berlin and obtaining a doctorate from the University of Halle. He was ordained by the early Reformer, Aaron Chorin, and served for two years teaching and giving sermons in the Reform New Synagogue in Berlin. He found the career uncongenial, and in 1840 he was appointed director of a Lehrerseminar, a post which relieved him from pecuniary troubles. Zunz was always interested in politics, and in 1848 addressed many public meetings. In 1850 he resigned his headship of the Teachers' Seminary, and was awarded a pension. Throughout his early and married life he was the champion of Jewish rights, and he did not withdraw from public affairs until 1874, the year of the death of his wife Adelheid Beermann, whom he had married in 1822.
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Maimonides
Mosheh ben Maimon משה בן מימון, called Moses Maimonides and also known as Mūsā ibn Maymūn (Arabic: موسى بن ميمون), or RaMBaM (רמב"ם – Hebrew acronym for "Rabbi Mosheh Ben Maimon"), was a preeminent medieval Jewish philosopher and one of the most prolific and followed Torah scholars and physicians of the Middle Ages. He was born in Córdoba, Almoravid Empire (present-day Spain) on Passover Eve, 1135, and died in Egypt (or Tiberias) on 20th Tevet, December 12, 1204. He was a rabbi, physician and philosopher in Morocco and Egypt.
Although his writings on Jewish law and ethics were met with acclaim and gratitude from most Jews even as far off as Spain, Iraq and Yemen, and he rose to be the revered head of the Jewish community in Egypt, there were also vociferous critics of some of his rulings and other writings particularly in Spain. Nevertheless, he was posthumously acknowledged to be one of the foremost rabbinical arbiters and philosophers in Jewish history, his copious work a cornerstone of Jewish scholarship. His fourteen-volume Mishneh Torah still carries canonical authority as a codification of Talmudic law. In the Yeshiva world he is known as "haNesher haGadol" (the great eagle) in recognition of his outstanding status as a bona fide exponent of the Oral Torah.
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Malachi
Malachi, Malachias or Mal'achi ( /ˈmæləkaɪ/; Hebrew: מַלְאָכִי, Modern Mal'akhi Tiberian Malʼāḵî ; "My Messenger", see malakh) was a Jewish prophet in the Hebrew Bible. He had two brothers, Nathaniel and Josiah. Malachi was the writer of the Book of Malachi, the last book of the Neviim (prophets) section in the Jewish Tanakh. In the Christian Old Testament, the Prophetic Books are placed last, making Book of Malachi the last Old Testament book before the New Testament. No allusion is made to him by Ezra, however, and he does not directly mention the restoration of the temple. The editors of the 1906 Jewish Encyclopedia implied that he prophesied after Haggai and Zechariah (Malachi 1:10; 3:1, 3:10) and speculated that he delivered his prophecies about 420 BC, after the second return of Nehemiah from Persia (Book of Nehemiah13:6), or possibly before his return, comparing Malachi 2:8 with Nehemiah 13:15; Malachi 2:10-16 with Nehemiah 13:23).
According to the 1897 Easton's Bible Dictionary, it is possible that Malachi is not a proper name, but simply means "messenger of YHWH". The Septuagint superscription is ὲν χειρὶ ἀγγήλου αὐτοῦ, (by the hand of his messenger).
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Milton Steinberg
Milton Steinberg (November 25, 1903 - March 20, 1950) was an American rabbi, philosopher, theologian and author.
Born in Rochester, New York, he was raised with the combination of his grandparents' traditional Jewish piety and his father's modernist socialism. He graduated as valedictorian of his class at DeWitt Clinton High School and then majored in Classics at City College of New York which he graduated from summa cum laude in 1924. Steinberg received his doctorate in philosophy from Columbia University in 1928 and then entered the Jewish Theological Seminary of America where he was ordained. In seminary, he was strongly influenced by Rabbi Mordecai Kaplan (1881–1983), the founder of Reconstructionist Judaism.
After five years in a pulpit in Indiana, he was invited by the Seminary to assume the pulpit of Manhattan's Park Avenue Synagogue, then a small congregation with a Reform orientation. In his sixteen years at the congregation, he grew it from 120 to 750 families. In 1943 he had a near fatal heart attack.
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Moab
Moab (/ˈmoʊæb/; Moabite: 𐤌𐤀𐤁 Mʾb; Hebrew: מוֹאָב, Modern Mo'av Tiberian Môʼāḇ ; "seed of father"; Greek Μωάβ Mōav; Assyrian Mu'aba, Ma'ba, Ma'ab ; Egyptian Mu'ab) is the historical name for a mountainous strip of land in Jordan. The land lies alongside much of the eastern shore of the Dead Sea. The existence of the Kingdom of Moab is attested to by numerous archeological findings, most notably the Mesha Stele, which describes the Moabite victory over an unnamed son of King Omri of Israel. The Moabite capital was Dibon. In Biblical times, the nation was often in conflict with its Israelite neighbours to the west.
Moab occupied a plateau about 3,000 feet (910 m) above the level of the Mediterranean, or 4,300 feet (1,300 m) above the Dead Sea, and rising gradually from north to south.
It was bounded on the west by the Dead Sea and the southern section of the Jordan River; on the east by Ammon and the Arabian desert, from which it was separated by low, rolling hills; and on the south by Edom. The northern boundary varied, but in general it may be said to have been represented by a line drawn some miles above the northern extremity of the Dead Sea.
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Mordecai Kaplan
Mordecai Menahem Kaplan (June 11, 1881 – November 8, 1983), was a rabbi, essayist and Jewish educator and the co-founder of Reconstructionist Judaism along with his son-in-law Ira Eisenstein.
Kaplan was born in Švenčionys, Lithuania, to Rabbi Israel and Haya (Anna) Kaplan. In 1889, he emigrated to the United States with his mother and sisters to join his father in New York City who was working with the Chief Rabbi Jacob Joseph. He attended Etz Chaim Yeshiva in Manhattan for a short period. In 1895 Kaplan attended the City College of New York. From 1893 to 1902 he also studied at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America. After graduating from CCNY in 1900 he went to Columbia University studying philosophy, sociology and education receiving a Masters Degree and a Doctorate. Majoring in philosophy he wrote his Masters thesis on the ethical philosophy of Henry Sidgwick. His lecturers included the philosopher of ethical culture Felix Adler and the sociologist Franklin Giddings.
In July 1908 he married Lena Rubin. He received semikhah from Rabbi Isaac Jacob Reines while on his honeymoon. Kaplan began his career as an Orthodox rabbi at Congregation Kehilath Jeshurun, a synagogue in New York. In 1912, he helped to create the Young Israel movement of Modern Orthodox Judaism with Rabbi Israel Friedlander. He was a leader in creating the Jewish community center concept, and helped found the Society for the Advancement of Judaism.
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Moses
Moses (Hebrew: מֹשֶׁה, Modern Moshe Tiberian Mōšéh ISO 259-3 Moše; Greek: Mωϋσῆς Mōüsēs; Arabic: موسىٰ Mūsa) was, according to the Hebrew Bible and Qur'an, a religious leader, lawgiver and prophet, to whom the authorship of the Torah is traditionally attributed. Also called Moshe Rabbenu in Hebrew (מֹשֶׁה רַבֵּנוּ, Lit. "Moses our Teacher/Rabbi"), he is the most important prophet in Judaism, and is also considered an important prophet in Christianity and Islam, as well as a number of other faiths.
The existence of Moses as well as the veracity of the Exodus story is disputed amongst archaeologists and Egyptologists, with experts in the field of biblical criticism citing logical inconsistencies, new archaeological evidence, historical evidence, and related origin myths in Canaanite culture. Other historians maintain that the biographical details, and Egyptian background, attributed to Moses imply the existence of a historical political and religious leader who was involved in the consolidation of the Hebrew tribes in Canaan towards the end of the Bronze Age.
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Moses Mendelssohn
Moses Mendelssohn (6 September 1729 – 4 January 1786) was a German Jewish philosopher to whose ideas Haskalah (the Jewish Enlightenment) is indebted. Although himself a practicing orthodox Jew, he has been referred to as the father of Reform Judaism.
Born to a poor Jewish family in Dessau and originally destined for a rabbinical career, Mendelssohn educated himself in German thought and literature and from his writings on philosophy and religion came to be regarded as a leading cultural figure of his time by both Germans and Jews. He also established himself as an important figure in the Berlin textile industry, which was the foundation of his family's wealth.
Moses Mendelssohn's descendants include the composers Fanny and Felix Mendelssohn and the founders of the Mendelssohn & Co. banking house.
Moses Mendelssohn was born in Dessau. His father's name was Mendel and he later took the surname Mendelssohn ("Mendel's son"). Mendel Dessau was a poor scribe—a writer of torah scrolls—and his son Moses in his boyhood developed curvature of the spine. His early education was cared for by his father and by the local rabbi, David Fränkel, who besides teaching him the Bible and Talmud, introduced to him the philosophy of Maimonides. Fränkel received a call to Berlin in 1743. A few months later Moses followed him.
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N.T. Wright
Nicholas Thomas Wright (born 1 December 1948) is an Anglican bishop and a leading New Testament scholar. He is published as N. T. Wright when writing academic work, or Tom Wright when writing for a more popular readership. His books include What St Paul Really Said and Simply Christian. Wright was the Bishop of Durham in the Church of England from 2003 until his retirement in 2010.
Among modern New Testament scholars, Wright is an important representative of more conservative Christian views compared to more liberal Christians such as his friend Marcus Borg. In particular, he is associated with the Open Evangelical position, the New Perspective on Paul and the historical Jesus. He has promoted more traditional views about Jesus' bodily resurrection[page needed] and second coming as well as on homosexuality.
Wright was born in Morpeth, Northumberland. In a 2003 interview he said that he could never remember a time when he was not aware of the presence and love of God and recalled an occasion when he was four or five when "sitting by myself at Morpeth and being completely overcome, coming to tears, by the fact that God loved me so much he died for me. Everything that has happened to me since has produced wave upon wave of the same."
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Nahmanides
Nahmanides, also known as Rabbi Moses ben Naḥman Girondi, Bonastruc ça (de) Porta and by his acronym Ramban, (Porta, Barcelona, 1194 – Land of Israel, 1270) was a leading medieval Jewish scholar, Catalan rabbi, philosopher, physician, kabbalist, and biblical commentator. He was raised, studied, and lived for most of his life in Girona.
"Nahmanides" is a Greek-influenced formation meaning "son of Naḥman". He is also commonly known by his Hebrew acronym, "Ramban", (Rabbi Moshe ben Naḥman). His Catalan name was Bonastruc ça Porta, (also written Saporta, de Porta).
Nahmanides was born at Porta, Barcelona in 1194. He grew up and studied in Girona (hence his name "Girondi"), and died in the Land of Israel about 1270. He was the grandson of Isaac ben Reuben of Barcelona and cousin of Jonah Gerondi (the Rabbeinu Yonah); possibly his brother was Benveniste de Porta, the bailie of Barcelona.[clarification needed] Among his teachers in Talmud were Judah ben Yakkar and Meïr ben Nathan of Trinquetaille, and he is said to have been instructed in Kabbalah (Jewish mysticism) by his countryman Azriel of Gerona, who was in turn a disciple of Isaac the Blind.
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Neil Asher Silberman
Neil Asher Silberman (born June 19, 1950, Boston, Massachusetts) is an archaeologist and historian with a special interest in history, archaeology, public interpretation and heritage policy. He is a graduate of Wesleyan University and was trained in Near Eastern archaeology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Awarded a 1991 Guggenheim Fellowship, he is a contributing editor for Archaeology Magazine and is a member of the editorial boards of the International Journal of Cultural Property, Heritage Management, and Near Eastern Archaeology.
With Israel Finkelstein, he is the author of The Bible Unearthed: Archaeology's New Vision of Ancient Israel and the Origin of Its Sacred Texts (2001) and David and Solomon: In Search of the Bible's Sacred Kings and the Roots of the Western Tradition (2006). His other books on the themes of history, heritage, and contemporary society include Archaeology and Society in the 21st Century (2001); Heavenly Powers (1998); The Message and the Kingdom (1997); The Archaeology of Israel (1995); Invisible America (1995); The Hidden Scrolls (1994); A Prophet from Amongst You: The Life of Yigael Yadin (1993); Between Past and Present (1989); and Digging for God and Country (1982).
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Norman Geisler
Norman L. Geisler (born 1932) is a Christian apologist and the co-founder of Southern Evangelical Seminary outside Charlotte, North Carolina, where he formerly taught. He holds a Ph.D. in philosophy from Loyola University. Geisler is well known for his scholarly contributions to the subjects of Christian apologetics, philosophy, and moderate Calvinism and is the author, coauthor, or editor of over 60 books and hundreds of articles.
Geisler left the Evangelical Theological Society in 2003, after it did not expel Clark Pinnock, who advocates open theism. Geisler testified in McLean v. Arkansas, defending creationism. In the late 20th Century, Geisler entered the Mormon arena. In 1997 he co-authored When Cultists Ask: A Popular Handbook on Cultic Misinterpretation, with Ron Rhodes. 47 of the articles listed in the index, regarded Mormonism. In 1998, he helped put together a book entitled The Counterfeit Gospel of Mormonism, published by Harvest House publishers in Eugene, Oregon. Danel W. Bachman has accused Geisler of plagiarism. In 2009, Geisler co-founded Veritas Evangelical Seminary in Murrieta California. The seminary offers masters degrees in Theology, Apologetics & Divinity. Geisler currently serves as Chair of Christian Apologetics at the school.
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Paul the Apostle
Paul the Apostle (c. AD 5 – c. AD 67; variously referred to as the "Apostle Paul" or "Saint Paul"), also known as Saul of Tarsus, is perhaps the most influential early Christian missionary. The writings ascribed to him by the church form a considerable portion of the New Testament. The influence on Christian thinking of the epistles ascribed to him has been significant, due in part to his association as a prominent apostle of Christianity during the spreading of the Gospel through early Christian communities across the Roman Empire.
According to the writings in the New Testament, Paul was known as Saul prior to his conversion, and was dedicated to the persecution of the early disciples of Jesus in the area of Jerusalem. While traveling from Jerusalem to Damascus on a mission to "bring them which were there bound unto Jerusalem", the resurrected Jesus appeared to him in a great light. Saul was struck blind, but after three days his sight was restored by Ananias of Damascus, and Paul began to preach that Jesus of Nazareth is the Jewish Messiah and the Son of God.
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Phoenicia
Phoenicia (UK /fɨˈnɪʃə/, US /fəˈniːʃə/; from the Greek: Φοινίκη: Phoiníkē), was an ancient Semitic Canaanite civilization situated on the western, coastal part of the Fertile Crescent. The major Phoenician cities were on the coastline of the Mediterranean. It was an enterprising maritime trading culture that spread across the Mediterranean from 1550 BC to 300 BC. The Phoenicians used the galley, a man-powered sailing vessel, and are credited with the invention of the bireme. They were famed in Classical Greece and Rome as 'traders in purple', referring to their monopoly on the precious purple dye of the Murex snail, used, among other things, for royal clothing, and for their spread of the alphabet (or abjad), upon which all major modern phonetic alphabets are derived.
In the Amarna tablets of the 14th century BC, people from the region called themselves Kenaani or Kinaani (Canaanites), although these letters predate the invasion of the Sea Peoples by over a century. Much later, in the 6th century BC, Hecataeus of Miletus writes that Phoenicia was formerly called χνα, a name Philo of Byblos later adopted into his mythology as his eponym for the Phoenicians: "Khna who was afterwards called Phoinix". Egyptian seafaring expeditions had already been made to Byblos to bring back "cedars of Lebanon" as early as the third millennium BC.
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Pope Damasus I
Pope Saint Damasus I ( /ˈdæməsəs/ DAM-əs-əs) was the bishop of Rome from 366 to 384.
He was born around 305, probably near the city of Idanha-a-Velha (in Lusitania, Hispania), in what is present-day Portugal, then part of the Western Roman Empire. His life coincided with the rise of Emperor Constantine I and the reunion and re-division of the Western and Eastern Roman Empires, which is associated with the widespread legitimization of Christianity and the later adoption of Christianity as the official religion of the Roman state.
Damasus is known to have been raised in the service of the Basilica of Saint Lawrence outside the Walls in Rome, and following the death of Pope Liberius, he succeeded to the papacy amidst factional violence. A group of Damasus' supporters, previously loyal to his opponent Felix, attacked and killed rivals loyal to Liberius' deacon Ursinus in a riot that required the intervention of Emperor Valentinian I to quell.
Damasus faced accusations of murder and adultery (despite having not been married) in his early years as pope. The neutrality of these claims have come into question with some suggesting that the accusations were motivated by the schismatic conflict with the supporters of Arianism. His personal problems were contrasted with his religious accomplishments, which included restoring Saint Lawrence outside the Walls, encouraging his personal secretary Saint Jerome in his Vulgate translation of the Bible, and presiding over the Council of Rome in 382, which set down the canon of Scripture. He also did much to encourage the veneration of the Christian martyrs.
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Rambam
Mosheh ben Maimon משה בן מימון, called Moses Maimonides and also known as Mūsā ibn Maymūn (Arabic: موسى بن ميمون), or RaMBaM (רמב"ם – Hebrew acronym for "Rabbi Mosheh Ben Maimon"), was a preeminent medieval Jewish philosopher and one of the most prolific and followed Torah scholars and physicians of the Middle Ages. He was born in Córdoba, Almoravid Empire (present-day Spain) on Passover Eve, 1135, and died in Egypt (or Tiberias) on 20th Tevet, December 12, 1204. He was a rabbi, physician and philosopher in Morocco and Egypt.
Although his writings on Jewish law and ethics were met with acclaim and gratitude from most Jews even as far off as Spain, Iraq and Yemen, and he rose to be the revered head of the Jewish community in Egypt, there were also vociferous critics of some of his rulings and other writings particularly in Spain. Nevertheless, he was posthumously acknowledged to be one of the foremost rabbinical arbiters and philosophers in Jewish history, his copious work a cornerstone of Jewish scholarship. His fourteen-volume Mishneh Torah still carries canonical authority as a codification of Talmudic law. In the Yeshiva world he is known as "haNesher haGadol" (the great eagle) in recognition of his outstanding status as a bona fide exponent of the Oral Torah.
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Rashi
Shlomo Yitzhaki (Hebrew: רבי שלמה יצחקי), or in Latin Salomon Isaacides, and today generally known by the acronym Rashi (Hebrew: רש"י, RAbbi SHlomo Itzhaki; February 22, 1040 – July 13, 1105), was a medieval French rabbi famed as the author of a comprehensive commentary on the Talmud, as well as a comprehensive commentary on the Tanakh (Hebrew Bible). He is considered the "father" of all commentaries that followed on the Talmud (i.e., the Baalei Tosafot) and the Tanakh (i.e., Ramban, Ibn Ezra, Ohr HaChaim, et al.).
Acclaimed for his ability to present the basic meaning of the text in a concise, lucid fashion, Rashi appeals to both learned scholars and beginning students, and his works remain a centerpiece of contemporary Jewish study. His commentary on the Talmud, which covers nearly all of the Babylonian Talmud (a total of 30 tractates), has been included in every edition of the Talmud since its first printing by Daniel Bomberg in the 1520s. His commentary on Tanakh — especially his commentary on the Chumash ("Five Books of Moses") — is an indispensable aid to students of all levels. The latter commentary alone serves as the basis for more than 300 "supercommentaries" which analyze Rashi's choice of language and citations, penned by some of the greatest names in rabbinic literature.
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Robert Alter
Robert Bernard Alter (born 1935) is an American professor of Hebrew language and comparative literature at the University of California, Berkeley, where he has taught since 1967.
Robert Alter earned his bachelor's degree in English (Columbia University, 1957), and his master's (1958) and doctorate degrees (1962) from Harvard University in comparative literature. He started his career as a writer at Commentary Magazine, where he was for many years a contributing editor. Alter has written twenty-three books, and is noted most recently for his translations of sections of the Bible.
Alter lectures on topics varying from Biblical episodes to Kafka's modernism and Hebrew literature. One of his important contributions is the introduction of the type scene into contemporary scholarly Hebrew Bible studies. An example of a type scene is that of a man meeting a young woman at a well, whom he goes on to marry; this scene occurs twice in Genesis and once in Exodus, and, according to Alter, distortedly in 1 Samuel.
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Robert Estienne
Robert I Estienne (Paris 1503 – Geneva, 7 September 1559), known as Robertus Stephanus in Latin and also referred to as Robert Stephens by 18th and 19th-century English writers, was a 16th century printer and classical scholar in Paris. He was a former Catholic who became a Protestant late in his life and the first to print the Bible divided into standard numbered verses.
Robert was the second son of the famous humanist printer Henri Estienne (the Elder) and became acquainted early on with ancient languages. After Henri's death in 1520 the printing establishment was maintained by his former partner Simon de Colines who also married Robert's mother, the widow Estienne. In 1526 Robert assumed control of his father's printing shop while de Colines established his own firm nearby.
In 1539 Robert adopted as his device an olive branch around which a serpent was twined, and a man standing under an olive-tree, with grafts from which wild branches were falling to the ground, with the words of Romans 11:20, Noli altum sapere, sed time… ("Be not high-minded, but fear.") The latter was called the olive of the Stephens family.
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Saint Peter
Saint Peter or Simon Peter was an early Christian leader and one of the twelve apostles of Jesus who is featured prominently in the New Testament Gospels and the Acts of the Apostles and who is venerated as a saint. The son of John or of Jonah, he was from the village of Bethsaida in the province of Galilee or Gaulanitis. His brother Andrew was also an apostle. Peter is venerated in multiple churches and is regarded as the first Pope by the Catholic Church. After working to establish the church of Antioch, presiding for seven years as the leader of the city's Christian community, he preached to scattered communities of believers, Jews, Hebrew Christians and the gentiles, in Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia Minor and Bithynia.[citation needed] He then went to Rome, where in the second year of Claudius, it is claimed, he overthrew Simon Magus and held the Sacerdotal Chair for 25 years.[citation needed] He is said to have been put to death at the hand of Emperor Nero.
Peter wrote two General epistles. The Gospel of Mark is also ascribed to him (as Mark was his disciple and interpreter). On the other hand, several books bearing his name—the Acts of Peter, Gospel of Peter, Preaching of Peter, Revelation of Peter, and Judgement of Peter—are rejected by the Catholic Church as Apocryphal.
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Samaritan
The Samaritans (Hebrew: שומרונים Shomronim, Arabic: السامريون as-Sāmariyyūn) are an ethnoreligious group of the Levant. Religiously the Samaritans are adherents of Samaritanism, an Abrahamic religion closely related to Judaism. Based on the Samaritan Torah, Samaritans claim their worship is the true religion of the ancient Israelites prior to the Babylonian Exile, preserved by those who remained in the Land of Israel, as opposed to Judaism, which they assert is a related but altered and amended religion brought back by those returning from exile.
Ancestrally, Samaritans claim descent from a group of Israelite inhabitants from the tribes of Ephraim and Manasseh (the two sons of Joseph) as well as some descendants from the priestly tribe of Levi, who have connections to ancient Samaria from the period of their entry into the land of Canaan, while some suggest that it was from the beginning of the Babylonian Exile up to the Samaritan Kingdom of Baba Rabba. The Samaritans, however, derive their name not from this geographical designation, but rather from the Hebrew term Shamerim שַמֶרִים, "Keepers [of the Law]".
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Sarah
Sarah or Sara ( /ˈsɛərə/;Hebrew: שָׂרָה, Modern Sara Tiberian Śārā ISO 259-3 Śarra; Latin: Sara; Arabic: سارة) was the wife of Abraham and the mother of Isaac as described in the Hebrew Bible and the Quran. Her name was originally Sarai. According to Genesis 17:15 God changed her name to Sarah as part of a covenant after Hagar bore Abraham his first son, Ishmael.
The Hebrew name Sarah indicates a woman of high rank and is translated as "princess".
Sarah was the wife of Abraham, as well as being his half-sister, the daughter of his father Terah (Genesis 20:12). The Talmud identifies Sarai with Iscah, daughter of Abraham's deceased brother Haran (Genesis 11:29), so that Sarah turns out to be the niece of Abraham and the sister of Lot and Milcah. She was also the mother-in-law of Rebecca, her successor. She was considered beautiful to the point that Abraham feared that when they were near more powerful rulers she would be taken away and given to another man. Twice he purposefully identified her as being only his sister so that he would be "treated well" for her sake. It is apparent that she remained attractive into her later years. Despite her great beauty, she was barren for an unknown reason. She was originally called "Sarai" which is translated "my princess." Later she was called "Sarah" i.e., princess." In Biblical times, the changing of one's name was significant and used to symbolize the binding of a covenant. In this case, God promised to put an end to her barrenness and give her a child (Isaac).
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Siku (comics)
Siku is the pseudonym of British/Nigerian artist and writer Ajibayo Akinsiku, best known for his work in 2000 AD.
Siku studied design and printing at the Yaba’s School of Art, and theology at the London School of Theology.
Siku's fully painted work (particularly on Judge Dredd and the Pan-African Judges stories) has been appearing in 2000 AD and the Judge Dredd Megazine since 1991.
Quoted from him "As a christian, it is my job to show others the work of God, whatever it takes!"[citation needed] Siku also works in the computer games industry and as a freelance illustrator and artist.
His latest work is The Manga Bible: From Genesis to Revelation, an adaptation of Today's New International Version of the Holy Bible into manga format.
Comics work includes:
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Sirach
File:Ben-Sira Hebrew (Vienna 1814).djvu
The Book of the All-Virtuous Wisdom of Jesus ben Sira ( /ˈsaɪræk/), commonly called the Wisdom of Sirach or simply Sirach, and also known as The Book Ecclesiasticus (/ɨˌkliːziˈæstɪkəs/) or Siracides (/saɪˈræsɨdiːz/), is a work from the early 2nd century B.C. (approximately 200-175 B.C.) written by the Jewish scribe Jesus ben Sirach of Jerusalem. The book was not accepted into the Hebrew Bible and as a result the original Hebrew text was not preserved in the Jewish canon. However, various original Hebrew versions have since been recovered.
There are numerous citations of Sirach in the Talmud and works of rabbinic literature (as "ספר בן סירא", e.g., Hagigah 13a). Despite not finding ultimate acceptance into the scriptural canon of Judaism, it was read as scripture by some Jews. For instance, it was included in the canon of the Jewish Septuagint, the 2nd century BC Greek version of the Jewish scriptures used by Diaspora Jews. Sirach is accepted as part of the Christian biblical canon by Catholics, Eastern Orthodox, and most Oriental Orthodox but not by most Protestants. The Greek Church Fathers also called it the "All-Virtuous Wisdom", while the Latin Church Fathers, beginning with Cyprian, termed it Ecclesiasticus because it was frequently read in churches, leading to the title liber ecclesiasticus (Latin and Latinised Greek for "church book").
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Solomon
Solomon (Hebrew: שְׁלֹמֹה, Modern Shlomo Tiberian Šəlōmō ISO 259-3 Šlomo; Arabic: سليمان Sulaymān, also colloquially: Silimān; Greek: Σολομών Solomōn), according to the Book of Kings and the Book of Chronicles, a King of Israel and according to the Talmud one of the 48 prophets, is identified as the son of David, also called Jedidiah (Hebrew יְדִידְיָהּ) in 2 Samuel 12:25, and is described as the third king of the United Monarchy, and the final king before the northern Kingdom of Israel and the southern Kingdom of Judah split; following the split his patrilineal descendants ruled over Judah alone. In the Qur'an, he is considered as a major Prophet, known as Sulaiman, son of David.
The Hebrew Bible credits Solomon as the builder of the First Temple in Jerusalem, and portrays him as great in wisdom, wealth, and power, but ultimately as a king whose sin, including idolatry and turning away from Yahweh, leads to the kingdom being torn in two during the reign of his son Rehoboam. Solomon is the subject of many other later references and legends.
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Solomon Schechter
Solomon Schechter (Hebrew: שניאור זלמן שכטר; December 7, 1847 – November, 19 1915) was a Moldavian-born Romanian and English rabbi, academic scholar, and educator, most famous for his roles as founder and President of the United Synagogue of America, President of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, and architect of the American Conservative Jewish movement.
Born in Focşani to a Jewish Romanian family adhering to the Chabad Hasidic branch, he attended yeshivas in Eastern Europe. Schechter received his early education from his father who was a shochet ("ritual slaughterer"). Reportedly, he learned to read Hebrew by age three, and by five mastered Chumash. He went to a yeshiva in Piatra Neamţ at age ten and at age thirteen studied with one of the major Talmudic scholars, Rabbi Joseph Saul Nathanson of Lemberg. In his twenties he went to the Rabbinical College in Vienna, where he studied under the more modern Talmudic scholar Meir Friedmann, before in 1879 moving on to undertake further studies at the Berlin Hochschule für die Wissenschaft des Judentums and at the University of Berlin. Three years later he was invited to the UK, to be tutor of rabbinics under Claude Montefiore in London.
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St. Jerome
Saint Jerome (c. 347 – 30 September 420; (also Hierom or Jerom) (Latin: Eusebius Sophronius Hieronymus; Ancient Greek: Εὐσέβιος Σωφρόνιος Ἱερώνυμος) was a Roman Christian priest, confessor, theologian and historian, and who became a Doctor of the Church. He was the son of Eusebius, of the city of Stridon, which was on the border of Dalmatia and Pannonia. He is best known for his translation of the Bible into Latin (the Vulgate), and his list of writings is extensive.
He is recognised by the Catholic Church as a saint and Doctor of the Church, and the Vulgate is still an important text in Catholicism. He is also recognized as a saint by the Eastern Orthodox Church, where he is known as St. Jerome of Stridonium or Blessed Jerome.
Eusebius Sophronius Hieronymus was born at Stridon around 347. He was not baptized until about 360 or 366, when he had gone to Rome with his friend Bonosus (who may or may not have been the same Bonosus whom Jerome identifies as his friend who went to live as a hermit on an island in the Adriatic) to pursue rhetorical and philosophical studies. He studied under the grammarian Aelius Donatus. There Jerome learned Latin and at least some Greek, though probably not the familiarity with Greek literature he would later claim to have acquired as a schoolboy.
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Stephen Langton
Stephen Langton (c. 1150 – 9 July 1228) was Archbishop of Canterbury between 1207 and his death in 1228 and was a central figure in the dispute between King John of England and Pope Innocent III, which was a contributing factor to the crisis which led to the issuing of Magna Carta in 1215. He is also credited with having divided the Bible into the standard modern arrangement of chapters used today.
His father was Henry Langton, a landowner in Langton by Wragby, Lincolnshire. Stephen Langton may have been born in a moated farmhouse in the village. His brother Simon Langton was elected Archbishop of York in 1215, but that election was quashed by Pope Innocent III. Simon served his brother Stephen as Archdeacon of Canterbury in 1227. Simon and Stephen had another brother called Walter, a knight who died childless.
He studied at the University of Paris and lectured there on theology until 1206, when Pope Innocent III, with whom he had formed a friendship at Paris, called him to Rome and made him cardinal-priest of San Crisogono. His piety and learning had already won him prebends at Paris and York and he was recognized as the foremost English churchman.
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Thomas Hobbes
Thomas Hobbes of Malmesbury (5 April 1588 – 4 December 1679), in some older texts Thomas Hobbs of Malmsbury, was an English philosopher, best known today for his work on political philosophy. His 1651 book Leviathan established the foundation for most of Western political philosophy from the perspective of social contract theory.
Hobbes was a champion of absolutism for the sovereign but he also developed some of the fundamentals of European liberal thought: the right of the individual; the natural equality of all men; the artificial character of the political order (which led to the later distinction between civil society and the state); the view that all legitimate political power must be "representative" and based on the consent of the people; and a liberal interpretation of law which leaves people free to do whatever the law does not explicitly forbid.
He was one of the founders of modern political philosophy. His understanding of humans as being matter and motion, obeying the same physical laws as other matter and motion, remains influential; and his account of human nature as self-interested cooperation, and of political communities as being based upon a "social contract" remains one of the major topics of political philosophy.
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Vilna Gaon
Elijah ben Shlomo Zalman Kremer, (Hebrew: ר' אליהו בן שלמה זלמן) known as the Vilna Gaon or Elijah of Vilna and simply by his Hebrew acronym Gra ("Gaon Rabbenu Eliyahu") or Elijah Ben Solomon, (Vilnius April 23, 1720 – Vilnius October 9, 1797), was a Talmudist, halachist, kabbalist, and the foremost leader of non-hasidic Jewry of the past few centuries. He is commonly referred to in Hebrew as ha'Gaon ha'Chasid mi'Vilna, "the saintly genius from Vilnius."
He was one of the most influential Rabbinic authorities since the Middle Ages, and—although he is counted among the sages known as the Acharonim—he is held by many authorities after him as belonging to the Rishonim (Rabbinic authorities of the Middle Ages). Large groups of people, including many yeshivas, uphold the set of Jewish customs and rites (minhag), the "minhag ha-Gra," which is named for him, and which is also considered by many to be the prevailing Ashkenazi minhag in Jerusalem.
Born in Vilnius, capital city of Grand Duchy of Lithuania, the Gaon displayed extraordinary talent while still a child. By the time he was twenty years old, rabbis were submitting their most difficult halakhic problems to him for legal rulings. He was a voluminous author, writing such works as glosses on the Babylonian Talmud and Shulchan Aruch known as Biurei ha-Gra ("Elaboration by the Gra"), a running commentary on the Mishnah (Shenoth Eliyahu ("The Years of Elijah"), and insights on the Pentateuch entitled Adereth Eliyahu ("The Splendor of Elijah"). Various Kabbalistic works have commentaries in his name, and commentaries on the Proverbs and other books of the Tanakh were written later on in his life. None were published in his lifetime.
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William G. Dever
William G. Dever (born 1933) is an American archaeologist, specialising in the history of Israel and the Near East in Biblical times. He was Professor of Near Eastern Archaeology and Anthropology at the University of Arizona in Tucson from 1975 to 2002. He is a Distinguished Professor of Near Eastern Archaeology at Lycoming College in Pennsylvania.
Dever is a 1955 graduate of Milligan College. He received his Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1966.
Dever was Director of the Harvard Semitic Museum-Hebrew Union College Excavations at Gezer from 1966-71, 1984 and 1990; Director of the dig at Khirbet el-Kôm and Jebel Qacaqir (West Bank) from 1967-71; Principal Investigator at Tell el-Hayyat excavations (Jordan) 1981-85, and Assistant Director, University of Arizona Expedition to Idalion, Cyprus, 1991, among other excavations.
He used his extensive background in Near Eastern field archaeology to argue, in Did God Have a Wife? Archaeology and Folk Religion in Ancient Israel (2005), for the persistence of the veneration of Asherah in the everyday religion of 'ordinary people' in ancient Israel and Judah. Discussing extensive archaeological evidence from a range of Israelite sites, largely dated between the 12th and the 8th centuries BC, Dever argued that this 'folk' religion, with its local altars and cultic objects, amulets and votive offerings, was representative of the outlook of the majority of the population, and that the Jerusalem-centred 'book religion' of the Deuteronomist circle set out in the Hebrew Bible was only ever the preserve of an elite, a 'largely impractical' religious ideal.
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Wisdom of Sirach
File:Ben-Sira Hebrew (Vienna 1814).djvu
The Book of the All-Virtuous Wisdom of Jesus ben Sira ( /ˈsaɪræk/), commonly called the Wisdom of Sirach or simply Sirach, and also known as The Book Ecclesiasticus (/ɨˌkliːziˈæstɪkəs/) or Siracides (/saɪˈræsɨdiːz/), is a work from the early 2nd century B.C. (approximately 200-175 B.C.) written by the Jewish scribe Jesus ben Sirach of Jerusalem. The book was not accepted into the Hebrew Bible and as a result the original Hebrew text was not preserved in the Jewish canon. However, various original Hebrew versions have since been recovered.
There are numerous citations of Sirach in the Talmud and works of rabbinic literature (as "ספר בן סירא", e.g., Hagigah 13a). Despite not finding ultimate acceptance into the scriptural canon of Judaism, it was read as scripture by some Jews. For instance, it was included in the canon of the Jewish Septuagint, the 2nd century BC Greek version of the Jewish scriptures used by Diaspora Jews. Sirach is accepted as part of the Christian biblical canon by Catholics, Eastern Orthodox, and most Oriental Orthodox but not by most Protestants. The Greek Church Fathers also called it the "All-Virtuous Wisdom", while the Latin Church Fathers, beginning with Cyprian, termed it Ecclesiasticus because it was frequently read in churches, leading to the title liber ecclesiasticus (Latin and Latinised Greek for "church book").
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Women in the Bible
There are 188 named Women in the Bible, and many others that are left unnamed. Among these women are prominent queens, prophetesses, and leaders. Before and during Biblical times, the roles of women were almost always severely restricted. Because biblical stories were written about important events, most of the people in the Bible, including women, usually have extreme personalities. The Bible rarely describes the average woman, "as if all the women in the ancient world had been saints, whores, or invisible." This article considers some of the specific roles of women described in the Bible, along with some of the more apparent attitudes held about them.
The Hebrew Bible (also called Tanakh in Judaism, Old Testament in Christianity and Taurat/Tawrah in Islam) is the basis for both Judaism and Christianity, and a cornerstone of Western culture. The views of women presented in the Hebrew Bible are complex and often ambivalent. Through its stories and its elaboration of statutes, the Hebrew Bible's views on women have helped shape gender roles and define the legal standing of women in the West for millennia. This influence has waned somewhat as Western culture has become progressively more secular, beginning at the Enlightenment.
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Yehezkel Kaufmann
Yehezkel Kaufmann (Hebrew: יחזקאל קויפמן) (born 1889; died 9 October 1963) was an Israeli philosopher and Biblical scholar associated with Hebrew University.
Kaufmann was born in Ukraine. His Talmudic knowledge was acquired at the yeshiva of Rav Tzair in Odessa and in Petrograd, and his philosophical and Biblical training were at the University of Berne. He completed his doctorate on "the principle of sufficient reason" in 1918, and had it published in 1920 in Berlin. He began teaching in Palestine in 1928, and became Professor of Bible at Hebrew University in 1949.
Kaufmann was the author of dozens of publications, almost exclusively in Hebrew. In 1920 he published Against the claims of the phenomenological approach of Husserl, but this was to be his last publication on abstract philosophy.
His first major work was Exile and Estrangement: A Socio-Historical Study on the Issue of the Fate of the Nation of Israel from Ancient Times until the Present (1930), in which he suggests that what preserved Israel's uniqueness through the ages was solely its religion. Among the basic themes of this work is that it is the tension between "universalism" and "nationalism" that comprises the foundational problem of Judaism. This tension reaches back to the earliest eras of Judaism in which a universalistic conception of God was juxtaposed with the local socio-political issues of a small tribal people, even after that people had been exiled from its homeland. YHVH is the ruler of the entire universe, but he reveals Himself and His commandments only to Israel. It is this same tension which Kaufmann traces to the more modern phenomenon of exile and ghettoization. Among Kaufmann's contentious positions were his belief that Zionism could not provide the ultimate solution to the Jewish problem.
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Ze'ev Herzog
Ze’ev Herzog (Hebrew: זאב הרצוג, born 1941) is an Israeli archeologist, professor of archaeology at The Department of Archaeology and Ancient Near Eastern Cultures at Tel Aviv University specializing in social archaeology, ancient architecture and field archaeology. Ze’ev Herzog has been the director of The Sonia and Marco Nadler Institute of Archaeology since 2005, and serves as archaeological advisor to the Israel Nature and National Parks Protection Authority in the preservation and development of National Parks at Arad and Beer Sheba.
Herzog took part in the excavations of Tel Hazor and Tel Megiddo with Yigael Yadin and in excavations at Tel Arad and Tel Be'er Sheva with Yohanan Aharoni. He directed the excavations at Tel Beer Sheba, Tel Michal and Tel Gerisa and in 1997 began a new exploration project at Tel Yafo (ancient Jaffa).
Herzog is among archaeologists who say that “biblical archaeology is not anymore the ruling paradigm in archaeology and that archaeology became an independent discipline with its own conclusions and own observations which indeed present us a picture of a reality of ancient Israel quite different from the one which is described in the biblical stories.”
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The Bible - Gospel Of John - Part 1 of 2
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 100:57
- Updated: 19 Dec 2012
Full book of John from God's inspired word.
http://wn.com/The_Bible_Gospel_Of_John_Part_1_of_2
Full book of John from God's inspired word.
Decoding The Past - The Bible Code Episode 1: Predicting Armageddon
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 44:52
- Updated: 16 Dec 2012
for more documentaries go to www.DocumentaryList.NET and donate or click an ad and support the site Thanks There are those who believe that the Old Testament is filled with predictions. If one knows where to look, and how, there are references to figures like Hitler, Napoleon and Einstein, and events including the Second World War and the attacks of 9/11. And, of course, there are signs of what the future holds. The Bible Code analyzes this controversial theory with the help of leading lights on both sides of the issue. Code researchers like Roy A. Reingold tell how the ancient code works, and what it says, while skeptics from top institutions like MIT and CalTech weigh in on the other side of the issue, though not everyone in academia believes that the code must be false. Take a balanced look at the surprising theory that holds that, in some ways, the scriptures are the world's first computer program.
http://wn.com/Decoding_The_Past_The_Bible_Code_Episode_1_Predicting_Armageddon
for more documentaries go to www.DocumentaryList.NET and donate or click an ad and support the site Thanks There are those who believe that the Old Testament is filled with predictions. If one knows where to look, and how, there are references to figures like Hitler, Napoleon and Einstein, and events including the Second World War and the attacks of 9/11. And, of course, there are signs of what the future holds. The Bible Code analyzes this controversial theory with the help of leading lights on both sides of the issue. Code researchers like Roy A. Reingold tell how the ancient code works, and what it says, while skeptics from top institutions like MIT and CalTech weigh in on the other side of the issue, though not everyone in academia believes that the code must be false. Take a balanced look at the surprising theory that holds that, in some ways, the scriptures are the world's first computer program.
- published: 15 Jun 2011
- views: 62153
- author: docufans1
THE AMAZING FIRST VERSE OF THE BIBLE - You MUST see this film!
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 8:32
- Updated: 30 Nov 2012
CLEANTV.com CleanTV® is your safe haven for educational and entertaining television programs. www.netsoftwaretools.com EXCLUSIVE! Pastor Gallups responds to Keith Olbermann, MSNBC! www.youtube.com shops.cafepress.com (SHOP!) This is an 8 minute STAND_ALONE film. It deals with several unbelievable "hidden" truths in the very first verse of the Bible. They have been there for over 3000 years! Watch the film until the end...the suprises continue until the last moment! This is a portion of the 70 minute Documentary from Ichthus Films - "THE SCIENTIFIC UNKNOWALBES OF THE BIBLE" - The full-length film is of much higher quality and contains MUCH MUCH more information. I hope you enjoy this segment. This vid. clip is copryrighted by ICHTHUS Films.
http://wn.com/THE_AMAZING_FIRST_VERSE_OF_THE_BIBLE_You_MUST_see_this_film!
CLEANTV.com CleanTV® is your safe haven for educational and entertaining television programs. www.netsoftwaretools.com EXCLUSIVE! Pastor Gallups responds to Keith Olbermann, MSNBC! www.youtube.com shops.cafepress.com (SHOP!) This is an 8 minute STAND_ALONE film. It deals with several unbelievable "hidden" truths in the very first verse of the Bible. They have been there for over 3000 years! Watch the film until the end...the suprises continue until the last moment! This is a portion of the 70 minute Documentary from Ichthus Films - "THE SCIENTIFIC UNKNOWALBES OF THE BIBLE" - The full-length film is of much higher quality and contains MUCH MUCH more information. I hope you enjoy this segment. This vid. clip is copryrighted by ICHTHUS Films.
- published: 15 Feb 2009
- views: 949415
- author: ppsimmons
The Visual Bible - The Gospel Of Matthew
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 258:27
- Updated: 19 Dec 2012
The Visual Bible - The Gospel Of Matthew
http://wn.com/The_Visual_Bible_The_Gospel_Of_Matthew
Banned from the Bible - History Channel
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 90:38
- Updated: 19 Dec 2012
Playlist: www.youtube.com
http://wn.com/Banned_from_the_Bible_History_Channel
NWO: Secret Societies and Biblical Prophecy Vol. 1
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 146:13
- Updated: 19 Dec 2012
NOTE: Please watch the second edition of this video on the LeonardUlrich channel, and transfer links to that edition. The second edition perfects the film's historical accuracy. I intend to pull the first edition in a few weeks. A separate four minute video on my channel discusses the changes between editions.
http://wn.com/NWO_Secret_Societies_and_Biblical_Prophecy_Vol_1
NOTE: Please watch the second edition of this video on the LeonardUlrich channel, and transfer links to that edition. The second edition perfects the film's historical accuracy. I intend to pull the first edition in a few weeks. A separate four minute video on my channel discusses the changes between editions.
- published: 21 Mar 2011
- views: 827272
- author: LeonardUlrich
The Bible vs. The Book of Mormon
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 66:32
- Updated: 19 Dec 2012
Order the DVD at www.Sourceflix.com. The Book of Mormon claims to be "a volume of holy scripture comparable to the Bible." Both the Bible and the Book of Mormon declare themselves to be ancient, historical, and reliable rules of faith--the very word of God. These claims have historically been taken on faith. But is there any evidence to support them one way or the other? Is it even possible to "test" a rule of faith? More to the point, is there any basis for placing one's faith in the Bible or the Book of Mormon? It's an important question. It's an eternal question. This presentation puts the Bible and the Book of Mormon to the same tests. History, archaeology, textual criticism, and other disciplines combine to shed light on what is true...and what is false. Truth never fears investigation. Faith need not--and should not--be blind. Discover for yourself which of these books is worthy of being called "scripture" and which is worth of your trust. Participants: Thomas W. Murphy, William Wilson, Philip Lindholm, Philip Johnston, Peter Williams, Simon Gathercole, Gabriel Barkay, and others.
http://wn.com/The_Bible_vs_The_Book_of_Mormon
Order the DVD at www.Sourceflix.com. The Book of Mormon claims to be "a volume of holy scripture comparable to the Bible." Both the Bible and the Book of Mormon declare themselves to be ancient, historical, and reliable rules of faith--the very word of God. These claims have historically been taken on faith. But is there any evidence to support them one way or the other? Is it even possible to "test" a rule of faith? More to the point, is there any basis for placing one's faith in the Bible or the Book of Mormon? It's an important question. It's an eternal question. This presentation puts the Bible and the Book of Mormon to the same tests. History, archaeology, textual criticism, and other disciplines combine to shed light on what is true...and what is false. Truth never fears investigation. Faith need not--and should not--be blind. Discover for yourself which of these books is worthy of being called "scripture" and which is worth of your trust. Participants: Thomas W. Murphy, William Wilson, Philip Lindholm, Philip Johnston, Peter Williams, Simon Gathercole, Gabriel Barkay, and others.
- published: 06 Nov 2006
- views: 477545
- author: lhvm
Why the Bible? Ravi Zacharias at the University of Illinois
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 6:53
- Updated: 19 Dec 2012
For two evenings, Ravi Zacharias answers hard-hitting questions from a student-packed auditorium at University of Illinois.
http://wn.com/Why_the_Bible?_Ravi_Zacharias_at_the_University_of_Illinois
For two evenings, Ravi Zacharias answers hard-hitting questions from a student-packed auditorium at University of Illinois.
- published: 11 Feb 2008
- views: 552704
- author: Ravi Zacharias International Ministries
Decoding the Past - UFOs in the Bible
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 43:12
- Updated: 18 Dec 2012
For more great documentaries visit www.DocumentaryList.NET and c1ick an ad to support the site
http://wn.com/Decoding_the_Past_UFOs_in_the_Bible
For more great documentaries visit www.DocumentaryList.NET and c1ick an ad to support the site
- published: 23 Jun 2011
- views: 43942
- author: docufans
The Top 10 Reasons Why the Bible is Repulsive
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 10:34
- Updated: 19 Dec 2012
By watching this short video, you will prove to yourself that the Bible is repulsve. A book that is this repulsive has no place in our society. Example 1 The vast majority of Americans believe that God exists, that Jesus is his son, and that God himself gave us the Bible and the Ten Commandments. In fact, Supreme court Justice Antonin Scalia has said that "Ninety-nine percent of Americans believe in the ten commandments." He has also said, "What the commandments stand for is the direction of human affairs by God." If 99% of Americans believe in the ten commandments, how can the Bible be repulsive? Let's take the fourth commandment as an example. It says: Remember the sabbath day, and keep it holy. For six days you shall labour and do all your work. But the seventh day is a sabbath to the Lord your God; you shall not do any work—you, your son or your daughter, your male or female slave, your livestock, or the alien resident in your towns. [Exodus 20: 8-9] This, supposedly, is the word of God, the almighty ruler of the universe. Now think about this. Wal-mart is open on the Sabbath. And so is Target. Best buy is open on the Sabbath. And so is Circuit City. Home Depot is open on the Sabbath. And so is Lowes. In fact, millions of businesses in America have employees working on the Sabbath. Even Christian Family Bookstores has employees working on the Sabbath. What should we do with all of these people who are breaking the fourth commandment? In the Bible's book of exodus ...
http://wn.com/The_Top_10_Reasons_Why_the_Bible_is_Repulsive
By watching this short video, you will prove to yourself that the Bible is repulsve. A book that is this repulsive has no place in our society. Example 1 The vast majority of Americans believe that God exists, that Jesus is his son, and that God himself gave us the Bible and the Ten Commandments. In fact, Supreme court Justice Antonin Scalia has said that "Ninety-nine percent of Americans believe in the ten commandments." He has also said, "What the commandments stand for is the direction of human affairs by God." If 99% of Americans believe in the ten commandments, how can the Bible be repulsive? Let's take the fourth commandment as an example. It says: Remember the sabbath day, and keep it holy. For six days you shall labour and do all your work. But the seventh day is a sabbath to the Lord your God; you shall not do any work—you, your son or your daughter, your male or female slave, your livestock, or the alien resident in your towns. [Exodus 20: 8-9] This, supposedly, is the word of God, the almighty ruler of the universe. Now think about this. Wal-mart is open on the Sabbath. And so is Target. Best buy is open on the Sabbath. And so is Circuit City. Home Depot is open on the Sabbath. And so is Lowes. In fact, millions of businesses in America have employees working on the Sabbath. Even Christian Family Bookstores has employees working on the Sabbath. What should we do with all of these people who are breaking the fourth commandment? In the Bible's book of exodus ...
- published: 15 Aug 2006
- views: 984020
- author: GIIVideo
Jacob, la bible.wmv
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 9:51
- Updated: 05 Dec 2012
http://wn.com/Jacob,_la_biblewmv
Strange Trumpet Sounds - Bible Prophecy? (James L. Paris)
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 16:55
- Updated: 19 Dec 2012
www.jimparisnewsletter.com by http What exactly are these strange trumpet sounds? Could they be warnings of the end of days? Are these apocalyptic trumpets? Are these mysterious trumpet sounds linked to Bible prophecy? Includes James L. Paris interview with LA Marzulli. Check out our podcast on iTunes itunes.apple.com James L. Paris' other videos www.jameslparis.us
http://wn.com/Strange_Trumpet_Sounds_Bible_Prophecy?_James_L_Paris
www.jimparisnewsletter.com by http What exactly are these strange trumpet sounds? Could they be warnings of the end of days? Are these apocalyptic trumpets? Are these mysterious trumpet sounds linked to Bible prophecy? Includes James L. Paris interview with LA Marzulli. Check out our podcast on iTunes itunes.apple.com James L. Paris' other videos www.jameslparis.us
- published: 06 Mar 2012
- views: 362056
- author: James L Paris
Penn & Teller; The Bible is Bullshit.
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 9:55
- Updated: 18 Dec 2012
look into my eyes, the eyes, the eyes, not around the eyes, but the eyes. Please do try to be civil in your discussion.
http://wn.com/Penn_Teller;_The_Bible_is_Bullshit
look into my eyes, the eyes, the eyes, not around the eyes, but the eyes. Please do try to be civil in your discussion.
- published: 24 Mar 2007
- views: 1931348
- author: rgbda
The Bible: Evidence That God Is Evil?
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 9:27
- Updated: 19 Dec 2012
Science & Reason on Facebook: tinyurl.com "Biblical Evidence Proving That God is Evil (1)" by • www.youtube.com --- Subscribe to Science & Reason: • www.YouTube.com • www.YouTube.com • www.YouTube.com • www.YouTube.com --- Top 10 Evil Bible Stories 1. God drowns the whole earth: In Genesis 7:21-23, God drowns the entire population of the earth: men, women, children, fetuses, and perhaps unicorns. Only a single family survives. In Matthew 24:37-42, gentle Jesus approves of this genocide and plans to repeat it when he returns. 2. God kills half a million people: In 2 Chronicles 13:15-18, God helps the men of Judah kill 500000 of their fellow Israelites. 3. God slaughters all Egyptian firstborn: In Exodus 12:29, God the baby-killer slaughters all Egyptian firstborn children and cattle because their king was stubborn. 4. God kills 14000 people for complaining that God keeps killing them: In Numbers 16:41-49, the Israelites complain that God is killing too many of them. So, God sends a plague that kills 14000 more of them. 5. Genocide after genocide after genocide: In Joshua 6:20-21, God helps the Israelites destroy Jericho, killing men and women, young and old, cattle, sheep and donkeys. In Deuteronomy 2:32-35, God has the Israelites kill everyone in Heshbon, including children. In Deuteronomy 3:3-7, God has the Israelites do the same to the people of Bashan. In Numbers 31:7-18, the Israelites kill all the Midianites except for the virgins, whom they take as spoils of war. In ...
http://wn.com/The_Bible_Evidence_That_God_Is_Evil?
Science & Reason on Facebook: tinyurl.com "Biblical Evidence Proving That God is Evil (1)" by • www.youtube.com --- Subscribe to Science & Reason: • www.YouTube.com • www.YouTube.com • www.YouTube.com • www.YouTube.com --- Top 10 Evil Bible Stories 1. God drowns the whole earth: In Genesis 7:21-23, God drowns the entire population of the earth: men, women, children, fetuses, and perhaps unicorns. Only a single family survives. In Matthew 24:37-42, gentle Jesus approves of this genocide and plans to repeat it when he returns. 2. God kills half a million people: In 2 Chronicles 13:15-18, God helps the men of Judah kill 500000 of their fellow Israelites. 3. God slaughters all Egyptian firstborn: In Exodus 12:29, God the baby-killer slaughters all Egyptian firstborn children and cattle because their king was stubborn. 4. God kills 14000 people for complaining that God keeps killing them: In Numbers 16:41-49, the Israelites complain that God is killing too many of them. So, God sends a plague that kills 14000 more of them. 5. Genocide after genocide after genocide: In Joshua 6:20-21, God helps the Israelites destroy Jericho, killing men and women, young and old, cattle, sheep and donkeys. In Deuteronomy 2:32-35, God has the Israelites kill everyone in Heshbon, including children. In Deuteronomy 3:3-7, God has the Israelites do the same to the people of Bashan. In Numbers 31:7-18, the Israelites kill all the Midianites except for the virgins, whom they take as spoils of war. In ...
- published: 15 Jul 2009
- views: 266874
- author: FFreeThinker
Bible Story Abraham Full Movie
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 180:33
- Updated: 19 Dec 2012
http://wn.com/Bible_Story_Abraham_Full_Movie
The Forbidden Book - History of The English Bible
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 58:39
- Updated: 19 Dec 2012
The Forbidden Book, Is A Documentary About How We Came To The AUTHORIZED KJV Holy Bible. With A World Renoun Bible Historian Showing Us A FULL History In An Hour, From Moses To The Reformation, The Historian In This Video Will Show You 2000 Year Old Documents And Older, And He Will Also PROVE That The KJV Holy Bible IS The True Recorded Word Of God. If You Are A Real/True Christian You Need To See This, FOR REAL ! Enjoy. IN JESUS NAME.......AMEN !
http://wn.com/The_Forbidden_Book_History_of_The_English_Bible
The Forbidden Book, Is A Documentary About How We Came To The AUTHORIZED KJV Holy Bible. With A World Renoun Bible Historian Showing Us A FULL History In An Hour, From Moses To The Reformation, The Historian In This Video Will Show You 2000 Year Old Documents And Older, And He Will Also PROVE That The KJV Holy Bible IS The True Recorded Word Of God. If You Are A Real/True Christian You Need To See This, FOR REAL ! Enjoy. IN JESUS NAME.......AMEN !
- published: 04 Aug 2011
- views: 504312
- author: TriforceMinistries3
Obama Mocks & Attacks Jesus Christ And The Bible / Video / Obama Is Not A Christian
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 2:09
- Updated: 19 Dec 2012
Obama Mocks and Attacks Jesus Christ And The Bible. A top US evangelical leader is accusing Sen. Barack Obama of deliberately distorting the Bible and taking a "fruitcake interpretation" of the US Constitution. In comments aired on his radio show, Focus on the Family founder James Dobson criticized the Democratic presidential nominee for comments he made in a June 2006 speech to the liberal Christian group Call to Renewal. In the speech, Obama suggested that it would be impractical to govern based solely on the word of the Bible, noting that some passages suggest slavery is permissible and eating shellfish is disgraceful. "Which passages of scripture should guide our public policy?" Obama asked in the speech. "Should we go with Leviticus, which suggests slavery is OK and that eating shellfish is an abomination? Or we could go with Deuteronomy, which suggests stoning your child if he strays from the faith? Or should we just stick to the Sermon on the Mount? "So before we get carried away, let's read our Bible now," Obama said, to cheers. "Folks haven't been reading their Bible." He also called Jesus' Sermon on the Mount "a passage that is so radical that it's doubtful that our Defense Department would survive its application." Dobson said Obama should not be referencing antiquated dietary codes and passages from the Old Testament that are no longer relevant to the teachings of the New Testament. "I think he's deliberately distorting the traditional understanding of the ...
http://wn.com/Obama_Mocks_Attacks_Jesus_Christ_And_The_Bible_Video_Obama_Is_Not_A_Christian
Obama Mocks and Attacks Jesus Christ And The Bible. A top US evangelical leader is accusing Sen. Barack Obama of deliberately distorting the Bible and taking a "fruitcake interpretation" of the US Constitution. In comments aired on his radio show, Focus on the Family founder James Dobson criticized the Democratic presidential nominee for comments he made in a June 2006 speech to the liberal Christian group Call to Renewal. In the speech, Obama suggested that it would be impractical to govern based solely on the word of the Bible, noting that some passages suggest slavery is permissible and eating shellfish is disgraceful. "Which passages of scripture should guide our public policy?" Obama asked in the speech. "Should we go with Leviticus, which suggests slavery is OK and that eating shellfish is an abomination? Or we could go with Deuteronomy, which suggests stoning your child if he strays from the faith? Or should we just stick to the Sermon on the Mount? "So before we get carried away, let's read our Bible now," Obama said, to cheers. "Folks haven't been reading their Bible." He also called Jesus' Sermon on the Mount "a passage that is so radical that it's doubtful that our Defense Department would survive its application." Dobson said Obama should not be referencing antiquated dietary codes and passages from the Old Testament that are no longer relevant to the teachings of the New Testament. "I think he's deliberately distorting the traditional understanding of the ...
- published: 12 Oct 2008
- views: 5048445
- author: rosaryfilms
Unbelievably Messed-Up Bible Stories 1 - In the Beginning
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 4:30
- Updated: 19 Dec 2012
BIBLE DVD: bit.ly God gets bored and creates stuff. Written, Animated and Voiced by Sam T www.rablats.com
http://wn.com/Unbelievably_Messed-Up_Bible_Stories_1_In_the_Beginning
BIBLE DVD: bit.ly God gets bored and creates stuff. Written, Animated and Voiced by Sam T www.rablats.com
- published: 28 Jul 2009
- views: 414049
- author: ebolaworld
Were the Anunnaki the Nephilim in the Bible?
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 10:50
- Updated: 09 Dec 2012
According to Zecharia Sitchin and his interpretation of ancient Sumerian texts, the Anunnaki were extraterrestrials (aka "angels"?), who were an extremely long-lived race, potentially living as long as 500000 years. Laurence Gardner reduces this to more on the order of 50000 years, and notes specifically that the Anunnaki were not immortal. Sitchin and Gardner also disagree on the date of the Great Deluge/Flood; Sitchin assuming a time frame of 11000 BCE, while Gardner assumes one of 4000 BCE
http://wn.com/Were_the_Anunnaki_the_Nephilim_in_the_Bible?
According to Zecharia Sitchin and his interpretation of ancient Sumerian texts, the Anunnaki were extraterrestrials (aka "angels"?), who were an extremely long-lived race, potentially living as long as 500000 years. Laurence Gardner reduces this to more on the order of 50000 years, and notes specifically that the Anunnaki were not immortal. Sitchin and Gardner also disagree on the date of the Great Deluge/Flood; Sitchin assuming a time frame of 11000 BCE, while Gardner assumes one of 4000 BCE
- published: 21 May 2008
- views: 212362
- author: planetxrobert
"Into The Bible" from Group Publishing
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 2:01
- Updated: 15 Dec 2012
group.com Check out LIVE Children's Curriculum, the customizable digital curriculum that gets kids into the Bible and the Bible into kids. Full of fun, cool videos too just like this one! Find out more at www.group.com
http://wn.com/Into_The_Bible_from_Group_Publishing
group.com Check out LIVE Children's Curriculum, the customizable digital curriculum that gets kids into the Bible and the Bible into kids. Full of fun, cool videos too just like this one! Find out more at www.group.com
- published: 14 Aug 2007
- views: 20643
- author: 4groupmedia
Final Events of Bible Prophecy
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 43:55
- Updated: 19 Dec 2012
Exciting multimedia documentary that reveals the amazing Bible truth behind earth's last day events!
http://wn.com/Final_Events_of_Bible_Prophecy
Exciting multimedia documentary that reveals the amazing Bible truth behind earth's last day events!
- published: 17 Nov 2007
- views: 328757
- author: sygnate
Robin Williams Live on Broadway - Biblical History
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 7:23
- Updated: 16 Dec 2012
Funny as hell...jajajaja
http://wn.com/Robin_Williams_Live_on_Broadway_Biblical_History
QUANTUM MECHANICS and THE BIBLE - The Bible was RIGHT before SCIENCE was!
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 3:59
- Updated: 21 Aug 2012
CLEANTV.com CleanTV® is your safe haven for educational and entertaining television programs. www.netsoftwaretools.com This is a stand-alone film. You will get a quick, easy lesson in quantum mechanics and then you will be shocked to discover that the Bible knew about this from the very beginning of its writing! You will want to share this film with everyone you know! This is a brief "outtake" from the ICHTHUS FILM - "THE SCIENTIFIC UNKNOWABLES OF THE BIBLE" - This youtube vid is copyrighted under ICHTHUS FILMS.
http://wn.com/QUANTUM_MECHANICS_and_THE_BIBLE_The_Bible_was_RIGHT_before_SCIENCE_was!
CLEANTV.com CleanTV® is your safe haven for educational and entertaining television programs. www.netsoftwaretools.com This is a stand-alone film. You will get a quick, easy lesson in quantum mechanics and then you will be shocked to discover that the Bible knew about this from the very beginning of its writing! You will want to share this film with everyone you know! This is a brief "outtake" from the ICHTHUS FILM - "THE SCIENTIFIC UNKNOWABLES OF THE BIBLE" - This youtube vid is copyrighted under ICHTHUS FILMS.
- published: 14 Feb 2009
- views: 49940
- author: ppsimmons
photo: AP / Pablo Martinez Monsivais
19 Dec 2012
WASHINGTON. US President Barack Obama backs a new bill to revive an assault weapons ban and other new gun laws, the White House said Tuesday, fleshing out his nascent response to a shocking school massacre. Obama also called an ardently pro-gun senator who has shifted his position on firearms laws since Friday's carnage in Connecticut and has begun meeting top cabinet officials to consider his options, his spokesman Jay Carney said ... ....(size: 4.9Kb)
photo: AP / Charles Krupa
18 Dec 2012
Article by WN.com Correspondent Dallas Darling. "Most people reason dramatically, not quantitatively." -Oliver Wendell Holmes. On the same day that a 20-year-old, described as brilliant but remote, walked into an elementary school in Connecticut and massacred 26 children and adults, the school where I teach went on "lock-down." Four students with a handgun were arrested ... That morning before school, he had posted on Twitter and Facebook....(size: 14.0Kb)
photo: Creative Commons / Joachim Huber
18 Dec 2012
Article by WN.com Correspondent Dallas Darling. When a Stanford geneticist, Gerald Crabtree, published a provocative and controversial new view on evolutionary change, namely that humans are actually getting dumber, he should have also added that humans are still developing an extermination gene ... Paleontologist Tim Flannery would more than likely agree with Crabtree ... Strange strings of gravel also overlaid some bones ... (1) Kane, Alex ... 195....(size: 9.4Kb)
photo: AP / Narciso Contreras
19 Dec 2012
GENEVA (Reuters) - The United Nations appealed on Wednesday for $1.5 billion (920.1 million pounds) to provide life-saving aid to Syrians suffering from a "dramatically deteriorating" humanitarian situation ... "The magnitude of this humanitarian crisis is indisputable," said Radhouane Nouicer, U.N ... Inside Syria, U.N ... ....(size: 1.5Kb)
photo: AP / Jason DeCrow
18 Dec 2012
An increasing number of US congressmen have called for a national dialogue about measures to curb gun violence following the shooting last week at a primary school in Connecticut that killed 26 people, including 20 children and six adults. White House officials have said that President Barack Obama would make preventing gun-related violence a priority in his second term in office and stricter laws would be part of the effort. ... ....(size: 19.2Kb)
WorldNetDaily
20 Dec 2012
In 1963 the disrespectful-of-religion Supreme Court removed the Bible from public schools – by an 8-1 majority vote ... My intent is to put God, prayer and the Bible back into public schools as a principal component of education ... The message to our federal representatives and senators? Vote to restore the Bible and prayer in public schools or be sent home....(size: 4.9Kb)
WorldNetDaily
20 Dec 2012
“The discovery of the original Barnabas Bible will now undermine the Christian Church and its authority and will revolutionize the religion in the world,” the Basij report says ... Turkey plans to put the Bible on public display ... The mullah said the Bible is not a holy book and its burning is morally acceptable....(size: 5.0Kb)
The Examiner
20 Dec 2012
The events and parables in the Bible have many levels of meaning from the obvious to the hidden. The story of Jesus' birth is no exception. Let's explore a deeper understanding of Christmas. One of the greatest commentators on the esoteric interpretation of the Bible was Omraam Mikhael Aivanhov ... Mary, Joseph, the Holy Spirit, and the Christ ... He wrote, "Joseph, the father, is the intellect... He is born of the... ....(size: 2.5Kb)
WorldNetDaily
20 Dec 2012
If there was no Quran, then as the Bible and the Torah have it, Jesus the son of Miriam is a bastard and a bastard will be forbidden from the heavens of God, and so the high place of Jesus is due to the existence of the Prophet Muhammad as the last prophet by God,” Khorasani said ... Khorasani had previously called the Bible wrong and unjust, a book that does not reflect the words of God but rather one that has been altered....(size: 5.3Kb)
The Examiner
20 Dec 2012
So far in this series we've discussed the pagan roots of Christmas trees, Santa Claus, and celebrating Jesus' birthday. If I were to continue to enumerate the fallacies associated with this holiday, we'd be here til July 4th ... The Bible does NOT say that three wise men came to see Jesus lying in a manger ... Since the Bible condemns both these practices, it is unlikely that the 'three wise men' came with God's blessing, 'following a star.'....(size: 3.6Kb)
WorldNetDaily
20 Dec 2012
This isn’t a commentary or opinion inserted by the psalmist. It is one of the clearest statements of fact in the Bible. When America was a Christian nation, not everyone believed in the God of the Bible for their eternal salvation. But by and large, they agreed with the faithful that a nation guided by Christian principles was on balance a pretty decent place to live. Especially when compared to the alternatives ... Congratulations ... ....(size: 4.5Kb)
The Examiner
20 Dec 2012
Normal. 0. MicrosoftInternetExplorer4. And in despair I bowed my head; “There is no peace on earth,” I said; “For hate is strong, And mocks the song, Of peace on earth, good-will to men! (Henry Wadsworth Longfellow) ... An elementary school ... 28) ... The Bible teaches this ... The Bible tells us, “death is the destiny of every man; the living should take this to heart” (Ecclesiastes 7.2) ... 0 ... Visit the author's blog at http.//blogs.bible.org/blog/26077....(size: 10.8Kb)
noodls
20 Dec 2012
(Source. NBC Universal Inc). Richard Engel, Chief Foreign Correspondent for NBC News, and four of his crew members were freed on Monday after five days in captivity in Syria ... ### ... ###. Chelsea Clinton visits Southern California's Saddleback Church for a look at the amazing progress of the congregation on a diet and fitness regimen called The Daniel Plan, after the Bible's Book of Daniel ... ### ... ### ... ### ... #ROCKBOTTOM. ### ... distributed by....(size: 3.5Kb)
The Daily Telegraph Australia
20 Dec 2012
Barnaby Joyce reveals he's packing dental floss and Bear Grylls, while Penny Wong will take her family and a solar-powered calculator. You know the politicians have a bunker, right? That they're all set up to survive the looming Apocalypse? ... Next question. What will they take with them?. Relax, enjoy your remaining hours on Earth. We already asked ... He'd also take the Bible and Modern Medicine for Dummies ... That's sure to work out well ... ....(size: 3.2Kb)
Huffington Post
20 Dec 2012
Rev. Saeed Abedini, a 32-year-old U.S. citizen and a Christian convert of Iranian origin has been imprisoned without charges in one of Iran's notorious prisons due to his work in Iran's underground Christian community ... citizenship in 2010 when he married his American wife ... "He comes from a very close-knit family, and he loved evangelizing and passing out Bibles on the streets of Tehran. This was his passion," she said ... citizenship ... Like ... ....(size: 4.8Kb)
Sun Sentinel
20 Dec 2012
A trip to Haiti with South Florida's nonprofit Food for the Poor is motivating the mother of basketball star Dwyane Wade to build a village in the struggling Caribbean nation ... Visiting the area in late October, Wade met an older woman who looked "like my mom's sister" and where the poverty "broke my heart." ... "It was like the story in the Bible, where Jesus was coming through, and they were saying Hosanna," she said ... ....(size: 4.0Kb)
Ohio
20 Dec 2012
Walsh Jesuit junior Nathanael Romans has two high school baseball seasons to play, yet he already has made a decision on his college future. Romans made an oral commitment to continue his academic and athletic careers at Ohio State University ... Above all, Nate is a fine young man ... The church, which rents part of North’s building for its weekly Akron-Canton services and Bible studies, raised the money through tithes and donations ... ....(size: 4.4Kb)
WorldNetDaily
20 Dec 2012
The Washington Post features Michael Savage’s new book “Train Tracks ... Working as an apprentice for his father at his antiques market on Ludlow Street in Manhattan, Savage learned tough lessons while growing up, leading him to compare their often difficult relationship with Abraham and Isaac’s relationship in the Bible. Michael Savage’s “Train Tracks” is available now at WND’s Superstore! ... ....(size: 4.8Kb)
For other uses, see Bible (disambiguation).
The Bible (from Koine Greek τὰ βιβλία ta biblia "the books") is any one of the collections of the primary religious texts of Judaism and Christianity. There is no common version of the Bible, as the contents and the order of the individual books (Biblical canon) vary among denominations. The 24 texts of the Hebrew Bible are divided into 39 books in Christian Old Testaments, and complete Christian Bibles range from the 66 books of the Protestant canon to the 81 books of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church Bible. The Hebrew and Christian Bibles are also important to other Abrahamic religions, including Islam[1] and the Bahá'í Faith,[2] but those religions do not regard them as central religious texts.
The Hebrew Bible, or Tanakh, is divided into three parts: (1) the five books of the Torah ("teaching" or "law"), comprising the origins of the Israelite nation, its laws and its covenant with the God of Israel; (2) the Nevi'im ("prophets"), containing the historic account of ancient Israel and Judah focusing on conflicts between the Israelites and other nations, and conflicts among Israelites – specifically, struggles between believers in "the LORD God" and believers in foreign gods, and the criticism of unethical and unjust behavior of Israelite elites and rulers; and (3) the Ketuvim ("writings"): poetic and philosophical works such as the Psalms and the Book of Job.
The Christian Bible is divided into two parts. The first is called the Old Testament, containing the (minimum) 39 books of Hebrew Scripture, and the second portion is called the New Testament, containing a set of 27 books. The first four books of the New Testament form the Canonical gospels which recount the life of Jesus and are central to the Christian faith. Christian Bibles include the books of the Hebrew Bible, but arranged in a different order: Jewish Scripture ends with the people of Israel restored to Jerusalem and the temple, whereas the Christian arrangement ends with the book of the prophet Malachi. The oldest surviving Christian Bibles are Greek manuscripts from the 4th century; the oldest complete Jewish Bible is a Greek translation, also dating to the 4th century. The oldest complete manuscripts of the Hebrew Bible (the Masoretic text) date from the Middle Ages.[3] The bible was separated into chapters in the 13th century by Stephen Langton, who eventually became a Roman Catholic Archbishop, and into verses in the 16th century by Robert Estienne, a french printer.[4]
During the three centuries following the establishment of Christianity in the 1st century, Church Fathers compiled Gospel accounts and letters of apostles into a Christian Bible which became known as the New Testament. The Old and New Testaments together are commonly referred to as "The Holy Bible" (τὰ βιβλία τὰ ἅγια). Many Christians consider the text of the Bible to be divinely inspired, and cite passages in the Bible itself as support for this belief. The canonical composition of the Old Testament is under dispute between Christian groups: Protestants hold only the books of the Hebrew Bible to be canonical; Roman Catholics and Eastern Orthodox additionally consider the deuterocanonical books, a group of Jewish books, to be canonical. The New Testament is composed of the Gospels ("good news"), the Acts of the Apostles, the Epistles (letters), and the Book of Revelation.
The Bible is the best-selling book in history with approximate sales estimates ranging from 2.5 billion to 6 billion,[5][6] and annual sales estimated at 25 million Bibles.[7]
Contents |
Etymology[link]
The English word Bible is from the Latin biblia, from the same word in Medieval Latin and Late Latin and ultimately from Greek τὰ βιβλία ta biblia "the books" (singular βιβλίον biblion).[8]
Medieval Latin biblia is short for biblia sacra "holy book", while biblia in Greek and Late Latin is neuter plural (gen. bibliorum). It gradually came to be regarded as a feminine singular noun (biblia, gen. bibliae) in medieval Latin, and so the word was loaned as a singular into the vernaculars of Western Europe.[9] Latin biblia sacra "holy books" translates Greek τὰ βιβλία τὰ ἅγια ta biblia ta hagia, "the holy books".[10]
The word βιβλίον itself had the literal meaning of "paper" or "scroll" and came to be used as the ordinary word for "book". It is the diminutive of βύβλος bublos, "Egyptian papyrus", possibly so called from the name of the Phoenician port Byblos (also known as Gebal) from whence Egyptian papyrus was exported to Greece. The Greek ta biblia (lit. "little papyrus books")[11] was "an expression Hellenistic Jews used to describe their sacred books (the Septuagint).[12][13] Christian use of the term can be traced to ca. AD 223.[8]
Jewish canon[link]
Development of the Jewish canon[link]
Main article: Development of the Hebrew Bible canon
Tanakh (Hebrew: תנ"ך) reflects the threefold division of the Hebrew Bible, Torah ("Teaching"), Nevi'im ("Prophets") and Ketuvim ("Writings").
Torah[link]
Main article: 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 Hebrew book titles come from some of the first words in the respective texts.
The Torah comprises the following five books:
- Genesis, Ge—Bereshith (בראשית)
- Exodus, Ex—Shemot (שמות)
- Leviticus, Le—Vayikra (ויקרא)
- Numbers, Nu—Bamidbar (במדבר)
- Deuteronomy, Dt—Devarim (דברים)
The Torah focuses on three moments in the changing relationship between God and the Jewish 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. He leads the Children of Israel from their liberation 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 was 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 traditional scholars as to whether these were all written down at one time, or over a period of time during the 40 years of the wanderings in the desert, while several modern Jewish movements reject the idea of a literal revelation, and critical scholars believe that many of these laws developed later in Jewish history).[14][15][16][17] These commandments provide the basis for Halakha (Jewish religious law). Tradition states that there are 613 Mitzvot or 613 commandments. There is some dispute as to how to divide these up (mainly between the rabbis Ramban and Rambam).
The Torah is divided into fifty-four portions which in the Jewish liturgy are read on successive Sabbaths, from the beginning of Genesis to the end of Deuteronomy. The cycle ends and recommences at the end of Sukkot, which is called Simchat Torah.
Nevi'im[link]
Main article: Nevi'im
The Nevi'im, or "Prophets", tell the story of the rise of the Hebrew monarchy and its division into two kingdoms, the Nevi'im ("prophets"), containing the historic account of ancient Israel and Judah focusing on conflicts between the Israelites and other nations, and conflicts among Israelites—specifically, struggles between believers in "the LORD God"[18] and believers in foreign gods,[19][20] and the criticism of unethical and unjust behavior of Israelite elites and rulers;[21][22][23] in which prophets played a crucial and leading role. It ends with the conquest of the Kingdom of Israel by the Assyrians followed by 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, the Nevi'im are divided into eight books. Contemporary translations subdivide these into twenty-one books.
The Nevi'im comprise the following eight books:
- Joshua, Js—Yehoshua (יהושע)
- Judges, Jg—Shoftim (שופטים)
- Samuel, includes First and Second 1Sa–2Sa—Sh'muel (שמואל)
- Kings, includes First and Second, 1Ki–2Ki—Melakhim (מלכים)
- Isaiah, Is—Yeshayahu (ישעיהו)
- Jeremiah, Je—Yirmiyahu (ירמיהו)
- Ezekiel, Ez—Yekhezkel (יחזקאל)
- Twelve, Tre Asar (תרי עשר), comprising what some call the Minor Prophets
- A. Hosea, Ho—Hoshea (הושע)
- B. Joel, Jl—Yoel (יואל)
- C. Amos, Am—Amos (עמוס)
- D. Obadiah, Ob—Ovadyah (עבדיה)
- E. Jonah, Jh—Yonah (יונה)
- F. Micah, Mi—Mikhah (מיכה)
- G. Nahum, Na—Nahum (נחום)
- H. Habakkuk, Hb—Havakuk (חבקוק)
- I. Zephaniah, Zp—Tsefanya (צפניה)
- J. Haggai, Hg—Khagay (חגי)
- K. Zechariah, Zc—Zekharyah (זכריה)
- L. Malachi, Ml—Malakhi (מלאכי)
Ketuvim[link]
Main article: Ketuvim
The Ketuvim, or "Writings", may have been written or compiled during or after the Babylonian Exile. 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 Job is the only biblical book that centers entirely on a non-Jew. The Book of Ruth is the only book to focus on a convert to Judaism. It tells the story of a Moabitess who married a Jew and continued to follow the ways of the Jews after her husband's death; 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, divided, in many modern translations, into twelve through the division of Ezra and Nehemiah:
- Psalms, Ps—Tehillim (תהלים)
- Proverbs, Pr—Mishlei (משלי)
- Job, Jb—Iyyov (איוב)
- Song of Songs, So—Shir ha-Shirim (שיר השירים)
- Ruth, Ru—Rut (רות)
- Lamentations, La—Eikhah (איכה), also called Kinot (קינות)
- Ecclesiastes, Ec—Kohelet (קהלת)
- Esther, Es—Ester (אסתר)
- Daniel, Dn—Daniel (דניאל)
- Ezra, Ea, includes Nehemiah, Ne—Ezra (עזרא), includes Nehemiah (נחמיה)
- Chronicles, includes First and Second, 1Ch–2Ch—Divrei ha-Yamim (דברי הימים), also called Divrei (דברי)
Hebrew Bible translations and editions[link]
Main article: Bible translations
The Tanakh was mainly written in biblical Hebrew, with some portions (notably in Daniel and Ezra) in biblical Aramaic.[24]
Oral Torah[link]
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 include 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. It may have even influenced early Christianity.
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, and that rabbis today must adapt and apply its principles to changing conditions, even if this results in changes in Jewish practice. 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, viewing it instead as the nation's literary and moral genius. Karaite Judaism holds strictly to the Written Torah but not the Oral Torah, maintaining that all of the divine commandments handed down to Moses by God were recorded in the written Torah, without additional Oral Law or explanation.
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.
Septuagint[link]
Main article: Septuagint
The Septuagint was a Greek translation of the Jewish scriptures. The Septuagint included books and additions not found in the Hebrew Bible. Modern Jewish Bibles follow the Masoretic Text rather than the Septuagint. The Septuagint splits certain books in two, so that the book of Kings, for example, became First Kings and Second Kings. Christian Bibles maintain these divisions.[citation needed]
Christian canons[link]
Main article: Christian biblical canons
The Christian Bible consists of the Hebrew scriptures of Judaism, which are known as the Old Testament; and later writings recording the lives and teachings of Jesus and his followers, known as the New Testament. "Testament" is a translation of the Greek διαθηκη (diatheke), also often translated "covenant". It is a legal term denoting a formal and legally binding declaration of benefits to be given by one party to another (e.g., "last will and testament" in secular use). Here it does not connote mutuality; rather, it is a unilateral covenant offered by God to individuals.[11]
Groups within Christianity include differing 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.
Significant versions of the English Christian Bible include the Douay-Rheims, the RSV, the KJV, the ESV, the NKJV, and the NIV. For 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.[25]
Old Testament[link]
Main article: Old Testament
The books which make up the Christian Old Testament differ between Protestants and the Catholic and Orthodox faiths, the Protestant movement accepting only those books contained in the Hebrew Bible, while Catholics and Orthodox have a wider canon. The books were written in classical Hebrew, except for brief portions (Ezra 4:8–6:18 and 7:12–26, Jeremiah 10:11, Daniel 2:4–7:28) which are in the Aramaic language, a sister language which became the lingua franca of the Semitic world.[26] Much of the material, including many genealogies, poems and narratives, is thought to have been handed down by word of mouth for many generations. Very few manuscripts are said to have survived the destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70.[26]
The Old Testament is accepted by Christians as scripture. Broadly speaking, it contains the same material as the Hebrew Bible. However, the order of the books is not entirely the same as that found in Hebrew manuscripts and in the ancient versions and varies from Judaism in interpretation and emphasis (see for example Isaiah 7:14). Christian denominations disagree about the incorporation of a small number of 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[link]
The Septuagint (Greek translation, from Alexandria in Egypt under the Ptolemies) was generally abandoned in favour of the 10th century Masoretic text as the basis for translations of the Old Testament into Western languages. In Eastern Christianity, translations based on the Septuagint still prevail. Some modern Western translations since the 14th century 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 (i.e., among the protocanonical books) are often referred to as deuterocanonical books by Roman Catholics referring to a later secondary (i.e. deutero) canon, that canon as fixed definitively by the Council of Trent 1545-1563.[27][28] It includes 46 books for the Old Testament (45 if Jeremiah and Lamentations are counted as one) and 27 for the New.[29]
See Canon of Trent: List of the Canonical Scriptures.
But if anyone receive not, as sacred and canonical, the said books entire with all their parts, as they have been used to be read in the Catholic Church, and as they are contained in the old Latin vulgate edition; and knowingly and deliberately contemn the traditions aforesaid; let him be anathema.—Decretum de Canonicis Scripturis, Council of Trent, 8 April 1546
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 the 1820s. However, the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Churches include these books as part of their Old Testament.
The Roman Catholic Church recognizes:
- Tobit
- Judith
- 1 Maccabees
- 2 Maccabees
- Wisdom
- Sirach (or Ecclesiasticus)
- Baruch
- The Letter of Jeremiah (Baruch Chapter 6)
- Greek Additions to Esther (Book of Esther, chapters 10:4 – 12:6)
- The Prayer of Azariah and Song of the Three Holy Children verses 1–68 (Book of Daniel, chapter 3, verses 24–90)
- Susanna (Book of Daniel, chapter 13)
- Bel and the Dragon (Book of Daniel, chapter 14)
In addition to those, the Greek and Russian Orthodox Churches recognize the following:
Russian and Georgian Orthodox Churches include:
- 2 Esdras i.e., Latin Esdras in the Russian and Georgian Bibles
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 is therefore sometimes included in collections of the Apocrypha.
The Syriac Orthodox tradition includes:
The Ethiopian Orthodox tradition includes:
and some other books.
The Anglican Churches uses some of the Apocryphal books liturgically. 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.
Role in Christian theology[link]
Further information: Sola scriptura and Christian theology
The Old Testament 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."[30] He adds that the earliest Christians also searched those same scriptures in their effort to understand the 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.[31]
New Testament[link]
Main articles: Canonical gospels and New Testament
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 presupposes the inspiration of the Old Testament (2 Timothy 3:16). Nearly all Christians recognize the New Testament (as stated below) as canonical scripture. These books can be grouped into:
|
General epistles, also called Catholic epistles
Revelation, or the Apocalypse Re |
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[link]
See also: Language of the New Testament
The consensus scholarly view is that 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. Other minority views hold that the original language of the books of the New Testament are Aramaic, Hebrew, or both.
Historic editions[link]
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.
Development of Christian canons[link]
Main articles: Development of the Old Testament canon and Development of the New Testament canon
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 4th century a series of synods produced a list of texts equal to the 39, 46(51),54, or 57 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).[32]
During the Protestant Reformation, certain reformers proposed different canonical lists to those 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 the Apocrypha, the label applied to all texts excluded from the biblical canon but 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 of books (though not the content) varies from the Tanakh because of a different method of division—while the Roman Catholic Church recognizes 46 books(51 books with some books combined into 46 books) as the canonical Old Testament. The Orthodox Churches recognise 3 Maccabees, 1 Esdras, Prayer of Manasseh and Psalm 151 in addition to the Catholic canon. Some include 2 Esdras. The Anglican Church also recognises a longer canon. The term "Hebrew Scriptures" is often used as being synonymous with the Protestant Old Testament, since the surviving scriptures in Hebrew include only those books, while Catholics and Orthodox include additional texts that have not survived in Hebrew. Both Catholics and Protestants have the same 27-book New Testament Canon.
The New Testament writers assumed the inspiration of the Old Testament, probably earliest stated in 2 Timothy 3:16, "All scripture is given by inspiration of God".[11]
Ethiopian Orthodox canon[link]
Main article: Ethiopian Biblical canon
The Canon of the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church is wider than the canons used by most other Christian churches. There are 81 books in the Ethiopian Orthodox Bible.[33] 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[citation needed], 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 to 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.
Divine inspiration[link]
Main articles: Biblical inspiration, Biblical literalism, Biblical infallibility, and Biblical inerrancy
The Bible itself says that "All scripture [is] given by inspiration of God". (2 Timothy 3:16-3:17) [34] Christians believe that the Bible consists of the inspired word of God, where God intervened and influenced the words of the Bible. For many Christians the Bible is also infallible, in that it is incapable of error within matters of faith and practice. For example, that the Bible is free from error in spiritual but not necessarily in historic or scientific matters. A related, but distinguishable belief is that the Bible is the inerrant word of God, without error in any aspect, spoken by God and written down in its perfect form by humans. Within these broad beliefs there are many schools of hermeneutics. "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."[31] Fundamentalist Christians are associated with the doctrine of biblical literalism, where the Bible is not only inerrant, but the meaning of the text is clear to the average reader.[citation needed]
Belief in sacred texts is attested to in Jewish antiquity,[35][36] and this belief can also be seen in the earliest of Christian writings. Various texts of the Bible mention Divine agency in relation to its writings.[37] 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."[38] Most evangelical biblical scholars[39][40][41] 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.[42] A minority even within adherents of Biblical literalism extend the claim of inerrancy to a particular translation, e.g. the King-James-Only Movement.
Versions and translations[link]
Further information: Bible translations and Bible translations by language
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 Roman Catholic Church to be the only authentic and official Bible in the Latin Rite.
Since the Protestant Reformation, Bible translations for many languages have been made. The Bible has seen hundreds of English language translations.
| Number | Statistic |
|---|---|
| 6,800 | Approximate number of languages spoken in the world today |
| 1,500 | Number of translations into new languages currently in progress |
| 1,223 | Number of languages with a translation of the New Testament |
| 471 | Number of languages with a translation of the Bible (Protestant Canon) |
The Bible continues to be translated to new languages, largely by Christian organisations such as Wycliffe Bible Translators, New Tribes Mission and the Bible society.
Biblical criticism[link]
Main articles: Biblical criticism and Criticism of the Bible
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, or observations that the Bible may have translation errors.[44]
Higher criticism[link]
Main articles: Higher criticism and Lower criticism
 |
This unreferenced section requires citations to ensure verifiability. |
In the 17th century Thomas Hobbes collected the current evidence 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, arguing 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 Christians, both Catholic and Protestant, the views of Hobbes and Spinoza gained increasing acceptance amongst scholars.
Archaeological and historical research[link]
Main articles: Biblical archaeology school and The Bible and history
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. There are a wide range of interpretations in the field of biblical archaeology. One broad division includes biblical maximalism which generally takes the view that most of the Old Testament or Hebrew Bible is based on history although it is presented through the religious viewpoint of its time. It is considered the opposite of biblical minimalism which considers the Bible a purely post-exilic (5th century BC and later) composition. Even among those scholars who adhere to biblical minimalism, the Bible is a historical document containing first-hand information on the Hellenistic and Roman eras, and there is universal scholarly consensus that the events of the Babylonian captivity of the 6th century BC have a basis in history.
The historicity of the biblical account of the history of ancient Israel and Judah of the 10th to 7th centuries BC is disputed in scholarship. The biblical account of the 8th to 7th centuries BC is widely, but not universally, accepted as historical, while the verdict on the earliest period of the United Monarchy (10th century BC) and the historicity of David is unclear. Archaeological evidence providing information on this period, such as the Tel Dan Stele, can potentially be decisive. The biblical account of events of the Exodus from Egypt in the Torah, and the migration to the Promised Land and the period of Judges are not considered historical in scholarship.[45][46] Regarding the New Testament, the setting being the Roman Empire in the 1st century AD, the historical context is well established. There has been some debate on the historicity of Jesus, but the mainstream opinion is that Jesus was one of several known historical itinerant preachers in 1st-century Roman Judea, teaching in the context of the religious upheavals and sectarianism of Second Temple Judaism.[citation needed]
See also[link]
- Biblical topics
Endnotes[link]
- ^ "People of the Book". Islam: Empire of Faith. PBS. http://www.pbs.org/empires/islam/faithpeople.html. Retrieved 2010-12-18.
- ^ Smith, Peter (2000). "Bible". A concise encyclopedia of the Bahá'í Faith. Oxford: Oneworld Publications. pp. 91–92. ISBN 1-85168-184-1.
- ^ Davies, Philip R. (2008). Memories of ancient Israel. Westminster John Knox Press. p. 7. ISBN 978-0-664-23288-7. http://books.google.com/books?id=M1rS4Kce_PMC&pg=PA7&hl=en#v=onepage&q&f=false. [dead link]
- ^ "Where did the chapter and verse numbers of the Bible originate?". CA. http://www.catholic.com/quickquestions/where-did-the-chapter-and-verse-numbers-of-the-bible-originate.
- ^ Businessweek on The Bible: "The Bible (2.5 billion copies sold)" (18 July 2005)
- ^ Ash, Russell (2001). Top 10 of Everything 2002. Dorling Kindersley. ISBN 0-7894-8043-3.
- ^ Radosh, Daniel. "The Good Book Business". Condé Nast. http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2006/12/18/061218fa_fact1. Retrieved 28 March 2012.
- ^ a b Harper, Douglas. "bible". Online Etymology Dictionary. http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=bible.
- ^ "The Catholic Encyclopedia". Newadvent.org. http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/02543a.htm. Retrieved 2010-04-23.
- ^ Biblion, Henry George Liddell, Robert Scott, A Greek-English Lexicon, at Perseus.
- ^ a b c Stagg, Frank. New Testament Theology. Nashville: Broadman, 1962. ISBN 0-8054-1613-7.
- ^ "From Hebrew Bible to Christian Bible" by Mark Hamilton on PBS's site From Jesus to Christ: The First Christians.
- ^ Dictionary.com etymology of the word "Bible".
- ^ Mordecai Kaplan 1934 Judaism as a Civilization MacMillan Press
- ^ Elliot N. Dorff 1979 Conservative Judaism: Our Ancestors to Our Descendants[dead link]. United Synagogue. p. 98-99 (114-115 in 1978 edition)
- ^ Milton Steinberg 1947 Basic Judaism[dead link] Harcourt Brace, p.27-28 ISBN 0-15-610698-1
- ^ Gilbert Rosenthal 1973 Four paths to One God Bloch Publishing pp. 116-128, 180-192, 238-242
- ^ 1Kings.18:24;1Kings.18:37-39
- ^ George Savran "I and II Kings" in The Literary Guide to the Bible edited by Robert Alter and Frank Kermode. "Each king is judged either good or bad in black-and-white terms, according to whether or not he "did right" or "did evil" in the sight of the Lord. This evaluation is not reflective of the well-being of the nation, of the king's success or failure in war, or of the moral climate of the times, but rather the state of cultic worship during his reign. Those kings who shun idolatry and enact religious reforms are singled out for praise, and those who encourage pagan practices are denounced." 146
- ^ Yehezkel Kaufmann "Israel In Canaan" in Great Ages and Ideas of the Jewish People edited by Leo Schwartz, The Modern Library. "The fight against Baal was initiated by the prophets" 54
- ^ Yehezkel Kaufmann "The Age of Prophecy" in Great Ages and Ideas of the Jewish People edited by Leo Schwartz, The Modern Library. "The immediate occasion of the rise of the new prophecy was the political and social ruin caused by the wars with Israel's northerly neighbor, Aram, which continued for more than a century. They raged intensely during the reign of Ahab, and did not end until the time of Jeroboam II (784-744). While the nation as a whole was impoverished, a few — apparently of the royal officialdom — grew wealthy as a result of the national calamity. Many of the people were compelled to sell their houses and lands, with the result that a sharp social cleavage arose: on the one hand a mass of propertyless indigents, on the other a small circle of the rich. A series of disasters struck the nation — drought, famine, plagues, death and captivity (Amos 4: 6-11), but the greatest disaster of all was the social disintegration due to the cleavage between the poor masses and the wealthy, dissolute upper class. The decay affected both Judah and Israel....High minded men were appalled at this development. Was this the people whom YHWH had brought out of Egypt, to whom He had given the land and a law of justice and right? it seemed as if the land was about to be inherited by the rich, who would squander its substance in drunken revelry. it was this dissolution that brought the prophetic denunciations to white heat." 57-58
- ^ Abraham Joshua Heschel 1955 The Prophets Harper and Row: "What manner of man is the prophet? A student of philosophy who runs from the discourses of the great metaphysicians to the orations of the prophets may feel as if he were going from the realm of the sublime to an area of trivialities. Instead of dealing with the timeless issues of being and becoming, of matter and form, of definitions and demonstrations, he is thrown into orations about widows and orphans, about the corruption of judges and affairs of the market place. Instead of showing us a way through the elegant mansions of the mind, the prophets take us to the slums. The world is a proud place, full of beauty, but the prophets are scandalized, and rave as if the whole world were a slum. They make much ado about paltry things, lavishing excessive language upon trifling subjects. What if somewhere in ancient Palestine poor people have not been treated properly by the rich? .... Indeed, the sorts of crimes and even the amount of delinquency that fill the prophets of Israel with dismay do not go beyond that which we regard as normal, as typical ingredients of social dynamics. To us a single act of injustice — cheating in business, exploitation of the poor- is slight; to the prophets, a disaster. To us an injustice is injurious to the welfare of the people; to the prophets it is a deathblow to existence; to us an episode; to them, a catastrophe, a threat to the world." 3-4
- ^ Joel Rosenberg "I and II Samuel" in The Literary Guide to the Bible edited by Robert Alter and Frank Kermode. "Samuel is thus a work of national self-criticism. It recognizes that Israel would not have survived, either politically or culturally, without the steadying presence of a dynastic royal house. But it makes both that house and its subjects answerable to firm standards of prophetic justice — not those of cult prophets or professional ecstatics, but of morally upright prophetic leaders in the tradition of Moses, Joshua, Deborah, Gideon, and others ..." 141
- ^ "Bible Study, Bible Facts". http://www.csbbc.net/bible.html. Retrieved 2007-11-05.
- ^ Accuracy of Torah Text.
- ^ a b Sir Godfrey Driver. "Introduction to the Old Testament of the New English Bible." Web: 30 November 2009
- ^ Council of Trent: Decretum de Canonicis Scripturis "Decree Concerning the Canonical Scriptures", from the Council's fourth session, of 4 April 1546: Canons and Decrees of the Council of Trent, The Fourth Session, Celebrated on the eighth day of the month of April, in the year 1546, English translation by James Waterworth (London 1848).
- ^ The Council of Trent confirmed the identical list/canon of sacred scriptures already anciently approved by the Synod of Hippo (Synod of 393), Councils of Carthage (The Council of Carthage, 28 August 397), and Council of Florence (originally Council of Basel), Session 11, 4 February 1442 —[Bull of union with the Copts] seventh paragraph down.
- ^ Catechism of the Catholic Church, Second Edition, n. 120. ——Catechism of the Catholic Church, Second Edition, Latin text copyright © 1994, 1997 Libreria Editrice Vaticana, Citta del Vaticano. English translation of the Catechism of the Catholic Church for the United States of America copyright © 1994, United States Catholic Conference, Inc.—Libreria Editrice Vaticana. English translation of the Catechism of the Catholic Church: Modifications from the Editio Typica copyright © 1997, United States Catholic Conference, Inc.—Libreria Editrice Vaticana. United States Catholic Conference, 3211 Fourth Street, NE, Washington, DC 20017-1194 ISBN 1-57455-109-4.
- ^ Wright, N.T. The Last Word:, page 3 HarperCollins, 2005. ISBN 0-06-087261-6 / 9780060872618
- ^ a b Wright, N.T. The Last Word: Scripture and the Authority of God—Getting Beyond the Bible Wars. HarperCollins, 2005. ISBN 0-06-087261-6 / 9780060872618
- ^ Catholic Encyclopedia: Canon of the New Testament: "The idea of a complete and clear-cut canon of the New Testament existing from the beginning, that is from Apostolic times, has no foundation in history. The Canon of the New Testament, like that of the Old, is the result of a development, of a process at once stimulated by disputes with doubters, both within and without the Church, and retarded by certain obscurities and natural hesitations, and which did not reach its final term until the dogmatic definition of the Tridentine Council."
- ^ "The Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church". Ethiopianorthodox.org. http://www.ethiopianorthodox.org/english/canonical/books.html. Retrieved 2010-11-19.
- ^ Grudem, Wayne (1994). Systematic Theology. Leicester, England: Inter-Varsity Press. pp. 49–50.
- ^ Philo of Alexandria, De vita Moysis 3.23.
- ^ Josephus, Contra Apion 1.8.
- ^ "Basis for belief of Inspiration Biblegateway". Biblegateway.com. http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=2%20Sam%2023:2,2%20Tim%203:16,Luke%201:70,Heb%203:7,10:15-16,1%20Peter%201:11,Mark%2012:36,2%20Peter%201:20-21,Acts%201:16,Acts%203:18,Acts%2028:25;&version=50. Retrieved 2010-04-23.
- ^ Norman L. Geisler, William E. Nix. A General Introduction to the Bible. Moody Publishers, 1986, p.86. ISBN 0-8024-2916-5
- ^ For example, see Leroy Zuck, Roy B. Zuck. Basic Bible Interpretation. Chariot Victor Pub, 1991,p.68. ISBN 0-89693-819-0
- ^ Roy B. Zuck, Donald Campbell. Basic Bible Interpretation. Victor, 2002. ISBN 0-7814-3877-2
- ^ Norman L. Geisler. Inerrancy. Zondervan, 1980, p.294. ISBN 0-310-39281-0
- ^ International Council on Biblical Inerrancy (1978) (PDF). The Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy. International Council on Biblical Inerrancy. http://www.churchcouncil.org/ccpdfdocs/01_Biblical_Inerrancy_A&D.pdf. [dead link]
- ^ Wycliffe Bible Translators, Inc. (WBT) Translation Statistics. 2011: Wycliffe Bible Translators (updated 17 April 2012)
- ^ "Expondo Os Erros Da Sociedade Bíblica Internacional". Baptistlink.com. http://www.baptistlink.com/creationists/expondoerrossbinvi.htm. Retrieved 2012-01-13.
- ^ Finkelstein, Israel; Neil Silberman. The Bible Unearthed.
- ^ Dever, William. Who Were the Early Israelites and Where Did They Come from?.
References and further reading[link]
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- Anderson, Bernhard W. Understanding the Old Testament. ISBN 0-13-948399-3.
- Asimov, Isaac. Asimov's Guide to the Bible. New York, NY: Avenel Books, 1981. ISBN 0-517-34582-X.
- Berlin, Adele, Marc Zvi Brettler and Michael Fishbane. The Jewish Study Bible. Oxford University Press, 2003. ISBN 0-19-529751-2.
- Finkelstein, Israel; Silberman, Neil Asher (2001). The Bible Unearthed: Archaeology's New Vision of Ancient Israel and the Origin of Its Sacred Texts. New York: Simon & Schuster. ISBN 0-7432-2338-1.
- Finkelstein, Israel; Silberman, Neil Asher (August 2002). "Review: "The Bible Unearthed": A Rejoinder". Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research 327: 63–73. JSTOR 1357859
- Herzog, Ze'ev (October 29, 1999). Deconstructing the walls of Jericho. Ha'aretz. http://mideastfacts.org/facts/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=32&Itemid=34 [dead link]
- Dever, William G. (March/April 2007). "Losing Faith: Who Did and Who Didn’t, How Scholarship Affects Scholars". Biblical Archaeology Review 33 (2): 54. http://creationontheweb.com/images/pdfs/other/5106losingfaith.pdf
- 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. In the Beginning. New York University Press, 2004. ISBN 0-8147-3690-4
- Lienhard, Joseph T. The Bible, The Church, and Authority. Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1995.
- Lindsell, Harold. The Battle for the Bible. Zondervan Publishing House, 1978. ISBN 0-310-27681-0
- Masalha, Nur, The Bible and Zionism: Invented Traditions, Archaeology and Post-Colonialism in Palestine-Israel. London, Zed Books, 2007.
- McDonald, Lee M. and Sanders, James A., eds. The Canon Debate. Hendrickson Publishers (January 1, 2002). 662p. ISBN 1-56563-517-5 ISBN 978-1565635173
- Miller, John W. The Origins of the Bible: Rethinking Canon History Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 1994. ISBN 0-8091-3522-1.
- 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 0-385-52431-5 ISBN 978-0385524315
- Taylor, Hawley O. "Mathematics and Prophecy." Modern Science and Christian Faith. Wheaton: Van Kampen, 1948, pp. 175–83.
- Wycliffe Bible Encyclopedia, s.vv. "Book of Ezekiel," p. 580 and "prophecy," p. 1410. Chicago: Moody Bible Press, 1986.
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"The Past" redirects here. For the concept of the past, see past.
| Yu Dafu | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Born | (1896-12-07)December 7, 1896 Fuyang, Zhejiang, China |
| Died | September 17, 1945(1945-09-17) (aged 48) |
| Occupation | Short Story writer and Poet |
Yu Dafu (simplified Chinese: 郁达夫; traditional Chinese: 郁達夫; pinyin: Yù Dáfū; Wade–Giles: Yu Ta-fu) (December 7, 1896—September 17, 1945). Born in Fuyang, Hangzhou, Zhejiang, was a modern Chinese short story writer and poet.
Contents |
Early years[link]
Yu Dafu's father died when he was three, leaving the family poverty-stricken and destitute. He received a number of scholarships through the Chinese government and went on to receive a traditional Chinese education in Hangzhou. Chronologically he studied in Jiangxing-Fu Middle School (before he came to Hangzhou), Hangzhou-Fu Middle School, Yuying Academy[1] (育英学堂, formerly of Zhejiang University).
In 1912, he entered Hangchow University (later its major part merged into Zhejiang University) preparatory through examination. He was there only for a short period before he was expelled for participation in a student strike.[2]
He then moved to Japan, where he studied economics at the Tokyo Imperial University between 1913 and 1922, where he met other Chinese intellectuals (namely, Guo Moruo, Zhang Ziping and Tian Han). Together, in 1921 they founded the Chuangzao she 創造社 ("Creation Society"), which promoted vernacular and modern literature. One of his earlier works Chenlun 沉淪, also his most famous, published in Japan in 1921. The work had gained immense popularity in China, shocking the world of Chinese literature with its frank dealing with sex, as well as grievances directed at the incompetence of Chinese government at the time.
In 1922, he returned to China as a literary celebrity and worked as the editor of Creation Quarterly, editing journals and writing short stories. In 1923, after an attack of tuberculosis, Yu Dafu directed his attention to the welfare of the masses.
In 1927, he worked as an editor of the Hongshui literary magazine. He later came in conflict with the Communist Party of China and fled back to Japan.
Second Sino-Japanese war[link]
After the start of the Second Sino-Japanese war, he returned to China and worked as a writer of anti-Japanese propaganda in Hangzhou, and later in Zhejiang. From 1938 to 1942, he worked as a literary editor for the newspaper Sin Chew Jit Poh in Singapore.
In 1942 when the Imperial Japanese Army invaded Singapore, he was forced to flee to Sumatra. Known under a different identity, he settled there among other overseas Chinese and began a brewery business with the help of the locals. Later he was forced to help the Japanese military police as an interpreter when it was discovered that he was one of the few "locals" in the area who could speak Japanese.
In 1945, he was arrested by the Kempeitai when his true identity was finally discovered. It is believed that he was executed by the Japanese shortly after the surrender of Japan.
Works[link]
- Chenlun 沉淪 "Sinking" (1921)
- Riji jiuzhong 日記九種 “Nine Diaries” (1927)
- Guoqu 過去 “The Past" (1927)
- his first novel?? (1928) (moderately successful)
- his second novel?? (1932)
- Chuben 出奔 "Flight" (1935)
His most popular work, breaking all Chinese sales records, was Jih-chi chiu-chung "Nine Diaries", which detailed his affair with the writer Wang Ying-hsin. The most critically acclaimed work is Kuo-ch'u or "The Past", written in 1927.[citation needed]
References[link]
- Encyclopædia Britannica 2005 Ultimate Reference Suite DVD, article- "Yü Ta-fu"
External links[link]
| Persondata | |
|---|---|
| Name | Yu, Dafu |
| Alternative names | |
| Short description | Chinese writer |
| Date of birth | 1896 |
| Place of birth | Fuyang, Zhejiang, China |
| Date of death | 1945 |
| Place of death | |
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| Ravi Zacharias | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Born | 1946 (1946) (age 66) Chennai, Madras Presidency, British India |
| Residence | Atlanta, Georgia, USA |
| Nationality | Indian, Canadian and American |
| Occupation | Christian apologist, Founder and Chairman of the Board of Ravi Zacharias International Ministries |
| Religion | Christian |
| Website | |
| http://www.rzim.org | |
| Born | Chennai, Madras Presidency, British India |
|---|---|
| Era | 21st-century philosophy |
| Region | Western Philosophy |
| School | Christian philosophy |
| Main interests | Philosophy of religion, Christian Apologetics, Worldview |
| Notable ideas | Four Criteria for a Coherent Worldview |
|
Influenced by
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Frederick Antony Ravi Kumar Zacharias (born 1946) is an Indian-born, Canadian-American evangelical Christian apologist. Zacharias is the author of numerous Christian books, including Gold Medallion Book Award winner Can Man Live Without God?[1] and bestsellers Light in the Shadow of Jihad[2] and The Grand Weaver.[3] He is the founder and chairman of the board of Ravi Zacharias International Ministries, host of the radio programs Let My People Think and Just Thinking, and visiting professor at Wycliffe Hall of Oxford, where he teaches apologetics and evangelism.[4] Zacharias studied as a visiting scholar at Cambridge University and held the chair in Evangelism and Contemporary Thought at Alliance Theological Seminary from 1981 to 1984.[5] Commentator Chuck Colson referred to Zacharias as "the great apologist of our time."[6]
Contents |
Biography[link]
Early life[link]
Zacharias was born in Madras, India. Zacharias claims descent from a woman (of the Nambudiri Brahmin caste) and a low caste Boatman[7]. Missionaries spoke to one of his ancestors about Christianity and thereafter the family was converted. Zacharias grew up in a nominal Anglican household,[7] and he himself was an atheist until the age of 17, when he unsuccessfully tried to commit suicide by swallowing poison. While in the hospital, a local Christian worker brought him a Bible and instructed his mother to read to him out of John 14. Zacharias says that it was John 14:19 that touched him and caused him to commit his life to Christ.[7]
He immigrated with his family to Canada in 1966, earning his undergraduate degree from Ontario Bible College in 1972 (now Tyndale University College & Seminary) and his M. Div. from Trinity International University. In May 1972, Zacharias married Margaret ("Margie") Reynolds, whom he met at his church's youth group.[7] They have three children, Sarah, Naomi and Nathan.[8] He was later ordained by the Christian and Missionary Alliance and commissioned as an international evangelist.[9] He founded Ravi Zacharias International Ministries in 1984 to pursue his calling as a "classical evangelist in the arena of the intellectually resistant."[9]
Ministry[link]
Zacharias was invited to spend the summer of 1971 in Vietnam, where he evangelized to the American soldiers, as well as to POWs and Viet Cong.[7] After graduating from Ontario Bible College, he began an itinerant ministry with the Christian and Missionary Alliance in Canada.[7] In 1974 the C&MA sent him to Cambodia, where he preached only a short time before its fall to the Khmer Rouge.[7] In 1977, after graduating from Trinity, Zacharias was commissioned to preach worldwide.[7]
In 1983, Zacharias was invited to speak in Amsterdam at the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association's annual evangelists' conference. It was here that he first noticed a lack of ministry in the area of Christian apologetics.[7] After Amsterdam, Zacharias spent the summer evangelizing in India, where he continued to see the need for apologetics ministry, both to lead people to Christ and to train Christian leaders. In August 1984 Ravi Zacharias International Ministries was founded in Toronto, Canada. Today its headquarters is located in Atlanta, Georgia, and has offices in Canada, England, India, Singapore and the United Arab Emirates.[7]
In 1989, shortly after the fall of the Berlin Wall, Zacharias was invited to speak in Moscow. While there he spoke to students at the Lenin Military Academy as well as political leaders at the Center for Geopolitical Strategy.[7] This was the first of many evangelism opportunities towards the political world. Future events included an invitation to Bogota, Colombia in 1993, where he spoke to the judiciary committee on the importance of having a solid moral foundation.[7]
Zacharias took a sabbatical in 1990 and spent part of that year as a visiting scholar at Cambridge University. There he heard lectures by men such as Stephen Hawking and studied under professors such as John Polkinghorne and Don Cupitt. He also wrote his first book, A Shattered Visage: The Real Face of Atheism.[7] In 1993 Zacharias was invited to speak at his first Veritas Forum at Harvard University,[7] and later that year was one of the keynote speakers at Urbana.[10] Zacharias continues to be a frequent guest at these forums,[11] both giving lectures and answering students in question and answer sessions at academic institutions such as the University of Georgia,[12] the University of Michigan,[13] and Penn State.[14]
Zacharias attracted media attention when in 2004 The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church) opened its signature pulpit at the Salt Lake Tabernacle to him for a series of messages. Zacharias delivered a sermon on "Who Is the Truth? Defending Jesus Christ as The Way, The Truth and The Life" to some 7,000 lay-persons and scholars from both LDS and Protestant camps in an initiatory move towards open dialog between the camps.[15]
Some evangelicals criticized Zacharias' decision not to use this opportunity to directly address the "deep and foundational" differences between the historic Christian faith and that of the LDS church. He responded by asserting that Christians should not immediately condemn Mormonism's theological differences but "graciously build one step at a time in communicating our faith with clarity and conviction". He said this is just as effective as showing someone the faults of their faith.[16] The speaking engagement was nearly sabotaged by a claim by event organizer Greg Johnson, president of Standing Together, that Zacharias had nothing to do with editing the book The Kingdom of the Cults and had only loaned his name to the latest edition. Johnson later apologized for his comment.[17]
Zacharias is a frequent keynote lecturer within the evangelical community at events such as the Future of Truth conference in 2004,[18] the National Religious Broadcasters' Convention and Exposition in 2005,[19] the National Conference on Christian Apologetics in 2006.[20] On successive nights in October 2007, he addressed first the students and faculty of Virginia Tech, then the community of Blacksburg, Virginia, on the topic of evil and suffering in the wake of the Virginia Tech massacre.[21] Zacharias has represented the evangelical community at occasions such as the National Day of Prayer in Washington, DC, the Annual Prayer Breakfast at the United Nations, and the African Union Prayer Breakfast in Maputo, Mozambique, and was named honorary chairman of the 2008 National Day of Prayer task force.[22]
Zacharias was interviewed in Focus on the Family's Truth Project. In November 2009, Zacharias signed an ecumenical statement known as the Manhattan Declaration calling on Evangelicals, Catholics and Orthodox to engage in civil disobedience with regard to laws which the declaration claims would force them to accept abortion, same-sex marriage or other matters that go against their religious consciences.[23]
Philosophy[link]
Zacharias states that a coherent worldview must be able to satisfactorily answer four questions: that of origin, meaning of life, morality and destiny. He says that while every major religion makes exclusive claims about truth, the Christian faith is unique in its ability to answer all four of these questions.[24] He routinely speaks on the coherency of the Christian worldview,[25] saying that Christianity is capable of withstanding the toughest philosophical attacks.[26] Zacharias believes that the apologist must argue from three levels: the theoretical, to line up the logic of the argument; the arts, to illustrate; and "kitchen table talk", to conclude and apply.[27]
Zacharias's style of apologetic focuses predominantly on Christianity's answers to life's great existential questions,[28] with logical and scientifically inclined defense of God. In some discussion Zacharias appropriates to scientific matters, he answers the question of human origin. He has voiced skepticism over what he believes to be inadequate empirical evidence in the fossil records for an honest endorsement of the theory of evolution. He believes that evolution is incompatible with the second law of thermodynamics, saying that the two are inconsistent and irreconcilable.[29] This view is rejected by many in the scientific community.[30]
Ravi Zacharias also believes that in Christianity homosexual acts are an “aberration” and “violation” of human sexuality and that though some people may have a homosexual “disposition,” they are not justified in expressing that disposition.[31]
Works[link]
- A Shattered Visage: The Real Face of Atheism (1994, 2004) ISBN 0-8010-6511-9
- Can Man Live Without God? (1994, 1996) ISBN 0-8499-3943-7
- Deliver Us From Evil (1996, 1998) ISBN 0-8499-3950-X
- Cries of the Heart (1998, 2002) ISBN 0-8499-4387-6
- The Merchant and the Thief (1999) (Children’s) ISBN 0-7814-3296-0
- The Broken Promise (2000) (Children's) ISBN 0-7814-3451-3
- Jesus Among Other Gods (2000, 2002) ISBN 0-8499-4327-2
- Jesus Among Other Gods (Youth Edition) (2000) ISBN 0-8499-4217-9
- The Lotus and the Cross: Jesus Talks with Buddha (2001) ISBN 1-57673-854-X
- Sense and Sensuality: Jesus Talks with Oscar Wilde (2002) ISBN 1-59052-014-9
- Light in the Shadow of Jihad: The Struggle For Truth (2002) ISBN 1-57673-989-9
- Recapture the Wonder (2003) ISBN 1-59145-276-7
- Is Your Church Ready?: Motivating Leaders to Live an Apologetic Life (2003) (Editor, with Norman Geisler) ISBN 0-310-25061-7
- Who Made God? And Answers to Over 100 Other Tough Questions of Faith (2003) (General Editor, with Norman Geisler) ISBN 0-310-24710-1
- The Kingdom of the Cults (2003) (Editor) ISBN 0-7642-2821-8
- I, Isaac Take Thee, Rebekah: Moving From Romance to Lasting Love (2004) ISBN 0-8499-0822-1
- The Prince and the Prophet: Jesus Talks With Mohammed (Copyright 2004, to be released posthumously) ISBN 1-59052-319-9
- The Lamb and the Führer: Jesus Talks with Hitler (2005) ISBN 1-59052-394-6
- Walking From East to West: God in the Shadows (With R.S.B. Sawyer) (2006) ISBN 0-310-25915-0
- The Grand Weaver: How God Shapes Us Through the Events of Our Lives (2007) ISBN 0-310-26952-0
- Beyond Opinion: Living the Faith We Defend (2008) ISBN 0-8499-1968-1
- The End of Reason: A Response to the New Atheists (2008) ISBN 0-310-28251-9
- Is There Not a Cause (2008) (National Day of Prayer Feature Book)
- New Birth or Rebirth: Jesus Talks with Krishna (2008) ISBN 1-59052-725-9
- There is a Plan (2009) (excerpts from The Grand Weaver) ISBN 0-310-31849-1
- Has Christianity Failed You? (2010) ISBN 0-310-26955-5
- The Lotus and the Cross: Jesus Talks with Buddha (2010) ISBN 1-60142-318-7
- Why Jesus? Rediscovering His Truth in an Age of Mass Marketed Spirituality (2012) ISBN 978-0-89296-319-5
References[link]
- ^ "1995 Gold Medallion Book Awards Winners". Evangelical Christian Publisher's Association. 1995. Archived from the original on 2008-05-18. http://web.archive.org/web/20080518231031/http://www.ecpa.org/christianbookawards/gm1995.php. Retrieved 2008-07-05.
- ^ "Christian Bestsellers List, August 2002". Christian Booksellers Association and the Evangelical Christian Publisher's Association. 2002-08. Archived from the original on 2008-05-19. http://web.archive.org/web/20080519120401/http://www.ecpa.org/bestseller/bestseller0802.php. Retrieved 2008-07-05.
- ^ "Christian Bestsellers List, October 2007". Christian Booksellers Association and the Evangelical Christian Publisher's Association. 2007-10. Archived from the original on 2008-05-19. http://web.archive.org/web/20080519120528/http://www.ecpa.org/bestseller/bestseller1007.php. Retrieved 2008-07-05.
- ^ "Wycliffe Hall - Dr. Ravi Zacharias". http://www.wycliffehall.org.uk/content.asp?id=186. Retrieved 2008-07-05.
- ^ "RZIM - About Ravi Zacharias". 2008-04-30. http://www.rzim.org/ravi/. Retrieved 2008-07-05.
- ^ Staub, Dick (January 2004). "The Dick Staub Interview: Ravi Zacharias's Wonderful World". Christianity Today. http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2004/januaryweb-only/1-12-22.0.html. Retrieved 2010-03-16.
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n Zacharias, Ravi (2006). Walking From East to West: God in the Shadows. Grand Rapids: Zondervan. In order of use: pages 42–43, 45, 101–105, 170, 163, 173, 178, 185, 192–193, 197–199, 200–201, 203, 205–206. ISBN 0-310-25915-0.
- ^ "Ministry Watch - RZIM". 2008-05-12. http://www.ministrywatch.com/mw2.1/F_FullRpt.asp?EIN=133200719. Retrieved 2008-07-05.
- ^ a b Edward Plowman (March 1998). "Meet Ravi Zacharias". National and International Religion Report. Evangelicals Now. http://www.e-n.org.uk/369-Meet-Ravi-Zacharias.htm. Retrieved 2008-03-04.
- ^ Zacharias, Ravi. "Jesus Christ Among Other Gods: Urbana 1993 Address". http://www.urbana.org/_articles.cfm?RecordId=591. Retrieved 2008-07-05. [dead link]
- ^ "NEWS: Truth Makes a Comeback in University Settings". Christianity Today Magazine 40 (1). January 1996. http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/1996/january8/6t1061.html. Retrieved 2008-02-18. "While certain speakers such as Zacharias, sociologist Os Guinness, law professor Phillip Johnson, and philosopher Eleanor Stump have made repeat appearances, the actual presentation differs from school to school."
- ^ Parker, Pearman (2007-09-28). "Celebrated evangelist attracts thousands". redandblack.com (The Red and Black Publishing Company Inc.). http://media.www.redandblack.com/media/storage/paper871/news/2007/09/28/News/Celebrated.Evangelist.Attracts.Thousands-2998652.shtml. Retrieved 2008-02-18.
- ^ Schwartz, Karen (2003-02-04). "U. Michigan: U. Michigan speaker discusses American culture's ties to religion.". The America's Intelligence Wire (Financial Times Ltd.). http://www.accessmylibrary.com/coms2/summary_0286-22303345_ITM. Retrieved 2008-02-18.
- ^ Colella, Kristin (2005-02-17). "Author shares insight on faith". Daily Collegian online (Collegian Inc.). http://www.collegian.psu.edu/archive/2005/02/02-17-05tdc/02-17-05dnews-06.asp. Retrieved 2008-02-18. [dead link]
- ^ Moore, Carrie A. (2004-11-15). "Evangelical preaches at Salt Lake Tabernacle". Deseret Morning News (deseretnews.com). http://deseretnews.com/dn/view/0,1249,595105580,00.html. Retrieved 2008-02-15.
- ^ Chang, Pauline J. (2004-12-24). "Evangelical Defends Decision to Speak at Mormon Tabernacle". The Christian Post (christianpost.com). http://www.christianpost.com/article/20041228/7363_Evangelical_Defends_Decision_to_Speak_at_Mormon_Tabernacle.htm. Retrieved 2008-03-20.
- ^ Beverley, James A. (2005-01). "Evangelist in Brigham Young's Court". Christianity Today (christianitytoday.com). http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2005/january/2.20.html. Retrieved 2008-03-20.
- ^ Newswire, PR (2004-07-15). "Future of Truth Conference Explores Biblical Realities, Exposes Theological Heresies to Present a More Convincing Picture of Truth in Today's Society; Conference Will Feature Trusted Theologians Ravi Zacharias, William Lane Craig, Phillip Johnson, Erwin Lutzer, Emir Caner and Frank Peretti at The Moody Church in Chicago.". PR Newswire Association LLC. http://www.accessmylibrary.com/coms2/summary_0286-21985798_ITM. Retrieved 2008-02-18.
- ^ Chang, Pauline J. (2005-02-13). "Thousands Flock to Anaheim for Largest Christian Communications Convention". The Christian Post. http://www.christianpost.com/article/20050213/13287_Thousands_Flock_to_Anaheim_for_Largest_Christian_Communications_Convention.htm. Retrieved 2008-02-18.
- ^ Vu, Michelle (2007-03-02). "MissionFest Opens Asking 'What Does it Mean to be Human?'". The Christian Post. http://www.christianpost.com/article/20070302/26103_MissionFest_Opens_Asking_'What_Does_it_Mean_to_be_Human%3F'.htm. Retrieved 2008-02-18.
- ^ Key, Lindsay (2007-10-10). "Virginia Tech audience hears Christian speaker". The Roanoke Times (roanoke.com). http://www.roanoke.com/news/nrv/wb/135261. Retrieved 2008-02-15.
- ^ "National Day of Prayer Task Force - Dr. Ravi Zacharias Bio". National Day of Prayer Official Website. Archived from the original on May 30, 2008. http://web.archive.org/web/20080530033425/http://www.ndptf.org/press_room/index_2269.cfm. Retrieved 2008-07-05.
- ^ "Manhattan Declaration: A Call of Christian Conscience". Demossnews.com. http://demossnews.com/manhattandeclaration/press_kit/manhattan_declaration_signers. Retrieved 2011-05-29.
- ^ Zacharias, Ravi (1997). Deliver Us From Evil. Nashville: Word. pp. 219–220. ISBN 0-8499-3950-X.
- ^ Duin, Julia (2003-07-04). "Christian worldview; Theologian-author Zacharias decries media double-standard.". The Washington Times. http://goliath.ecnext.com/coms2/summary_0199-3078820_ITM. Retrieved 2008-02-18.
- ^ "Ravi Zacharias: Defender of the FAITH; Alpharetta minister takes the Gospel to intellectuals.". The Atlanta Journal and The Atlanta Constitution. 1997-03-01. http://nl.newsbank.com/nl-search/we/Archives?p_product=AT&p_theme=at&p_action=search&p_maxdocs=200&p_topdoc=1&p_text_direct-0=0EADA2FFC6CF5BD0&p_field_direct-0=document_id&p_perpage=10&p_sort=YMD_date:D&s_trackval=GooglePM. Retrieved 2008-02-18.
- ^ Zacharias, Ravi; Norman L. Geisler (2003). Is Your Church Ready?. Grand Rapids: Zondervan. ISBN 0-8499-3950-X. http://www.rzim.org/resources/jttran.php?seqid=90. Retrieved 2008-03-17. [dead link]
- ^ For example: Zacharias, Ravi (1994). Can Man Live Without God. Dallas: Word Publishing. Introduction, page xvi. ISBN 0-8499-1173-7.
- ^ Zacharias, Ravi (2004). The Real Face of Atheism. Baker Books. pp. 45–47. ISBN 0-8010-6511-9.
- ^ Robert N. Oerter (2006). "Does Life On Earth Violate the Second Law of Thermodynamics". physics.gmu.edu. http://physics.gmu.edu/~roerter/EvolutionEntropy.htm. Retrieved October 17, 2011. Henry Morris. "Does Entropy Contradict Evolution?". icr.org. http://www.icr.org/article/does-entropy-contradict-evolution/. Retrieved October 17, 2011.
- ^ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CIw6ngIqaD0
External links[link]
- Ravi Zacharias International Ministries
- Ravi Zacharias Radio Broadcasts Just Thinking and Let My People Think
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| Persondata | |
|---|---|
| Name | Zacharias, Ravi |
| Alternative names | |
| Short description | Indian philosopher |
| Date of birth | 1946 |
| Place of birth | Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India |
| Date of death | |
| Place of death | |
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This article is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License, which means that you can copy and modify it as long as the entire work (including additions) remains under this license.
| Penn & Teller | |
|---|---|
| Born | Penn Jillette Raymond Joseph Teller Penn (1955-03-05) March 5, 1955 (age 57) Teller (1948-02-14) February 14, 1948 (age 64) |
| Residence | Las Vegas |
| Known for | Magic Comedy Skepticism |
| Website | |
| pennandteller.com | |
Penn & Teller (Penn Jillette and Teller) are American illusionists and entertainers who have performed together since the late 1970s, and are known for their numerous stage and television shows. Their current Las Vegas show is an amalgam of illusion and comedy. Penn Jillette is a raconteur; Teller generally does not speak while performing, although his voice can occasionally be heard during their performance. They specialize in gory tricks, exposing frauds, and performing clever pranks. More recently they have become associated with atheism, scientific skepticism, and libertarianism, particularly through their television show Penn & Teller: Bullshit!.
Contents |
Career[link]
Penn Jillette and Teller were introduced to one another by Weir Chrisimer, and they performed their first show together at the Minnesota Renaissance Festival on 19 August 1975.[1] From the late 1970s through 1981, Penn, Teller, and Chrisimer performed as a trio called "The Asparagus Valley Cultural Society" which played in San Francisco at the Phoenix Theater. This act was sillier and less "edgy" than today's Penn & Teller act.[citation needed] Chrisimer helped to develop some bits that continued, most notably Teller's "Shadows" trick, which involves a single red rose.
By 1985, Penn & Teller were receiving rave reviews for their Off Broadway show and Emmy award-winning PBS special, Penn & Teller Go Public.[2] In 1987, they began the first of two successful Broadway runs. Through the late 1980s and early 1990s, the duo made numerous television appearances on Late Night with David Letterman and Saturday Night Live, as well as The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, Late Night with Conan O'Brien, Today, and many others.
Penn & Teller had national tours throughout the 1990s, gaining critical praise. They have also made television guest appearances on Babylon 5[3] (as the comedy team Rebo and Zooty), The Drew Carey Show, a few episodes of Hollywood Squares from 1998 until 2004, ABC's Muppets Tonight, FOX's The Bernie Mac Show, an episode of the game show Fear Factor on NBC, NBC's The West Wing, in a two-part episode of the final season of ABC's Home Improvement in 1998, four episodes during season 1 of Sabrina, the Teenage Witch in 1996, NBC's Las Vegas, and Fox's The Simpsons episodes "Hello Gutter, Hello Fadder" and "The Great Simpsina" and the Futurama film Futurama: Into the Wild Green Yonder in 2009. They also appeared as three-card Monte scam artists in the music video for "It's Tricky" by Run-DMC in 1987, and were thrown out of a Las Vegas hotel room in the music video for "Waking Up in Vegas" by Katy Perry in 2009.
Their Showtime network television show Bullshit! took a skeptical look at psychics, religion, the pseudoscientific, conspiracy theories, and the paranormal. It has featured critical segments on gun control, astrology, Feng Shui, environmental issues, PETA, weight loss, the Americans with Disabilities Act, and the war on drugs.
On Bullshit!, the duo described their social and political views as libertarian.
They have also described themselves as teetotalers. Their book, Penn & Teller's How to Play in Traffic, explains that they avoid absolutely all alcohol and other drugs, including caffeine, though they do appear to smoke cigarettes in some videos. Penn has said that he has never even tasted alcohol, and that his tolerance for certain drugs is so low that his doctor only had to administer a minute amount of anesthetic relative to what one would expect necessary for a man of his size to undergo surgery.
The pair have written several books about magic, including Penn & Teller's Cruel Tricks For Dear Friends, Penn & Teller's How to Play with Your Food, and Penn & Teller's How to Play in Traffic. Since 2001, Penn & Teller have performed six nights a week (or as Penn put it on Bullshit!: "Every night of the week ... except Fridays!") in Las Vegas at the Rio All Suite Hotel and Casino.
Penn Jillette hosted a weekday one-hour talk show on Infinity Broadcasting's Free FM radio network from January 3, 2006 to March 2, 2007 with cohost Michael Goudeau.[4][5] He also hosted the game show Identity, which debuted on December 18, 2006 on NBC.
Their new television series Penn & Teller Tell a Lie premiered on the Discovery Channel on October 5, 2011.
Penn & Teller have also shown support for the Brights movement[6] and are now listed on the movement's homepage under the Enthusiastic Brights section.[7] According to an article in Wired magazine, their license plates are customized so they read, "Atheist" and "Godless", and when Penn signs autographs, he often writes "there is no God" with his signature.[8]
Off-stage relationship[link]
Penn Jillette has told interviewer Larry King that a big part of the duo's success and longevity is due to them never having been close friends. They enjoy working together immensely, but have little in common besides magic. As a result of their drastically different lifestyles and interests, they rarely socialize or interact when not working. Jillette believes that their partnership succeeds precisely because they give each other a great deal of space off-stage.
Tricks[link]
Their tricks include Teller hanging upside-down over a cushion of spikes in a straitjacket, Teller submerged in a huge container of water, Teller being run over by an 18-wheel tractor-trailer, Teller swinging going through Penn's hands. Many of their effects rely heavily on shock appeal and violence, although presented in a humorous manner.
Sometimes, the pair will claim to reveal a secret of how a magic trick is done, but those tricks are usually invented by the duo for the sole purpose of exposing them, and therefore designed with more spectacular and weird methods than would have been necessary had it just been a "proper" magic trick. For example, in the "reveal" of one trick, while Teller waits for his cue, he reads magazines and eats a snack.[clarification needed] Another example is their rendition of the cups and balls, using transparent cups.
Penn and Teller perform their own adaptation of the famous bullet catch illusion. Each simultaneously fires a gun at the other through small panes of glass and then "catches" the other's bullet in his mouth. They also have an assortment of card tricks in their repertoire, virtually all of them involving the force of the Three of Clubs on an unsuspecting audience member as this card is easy for viewers to identify on television cameras.[9]
The duo will sometimes perform tricks that discuss the intellectual underpinnings of magic. One of their acts, titled "Magician vs. Juggler", features Teller performing card tricks while Penn juggles and delivers a monologue on the difference between the two: jugglers start as socially aware children who go outside and learn juggling with other children; magicians are misfits who stay in the house and teach themselves magic tricks out of spite.
In one of their most politically charged tricks, they make a U.S. flag seem to disappear by wrapping it in a copy of the United States Bill of Rights, and apparently setting the flag on fire, so that "the flag is gone but the Bill of Rights remains." The act may also feature the "Chinese bill of rights", presented as a transparent piece of acetate. They normally end the routine by restoring the unscathed flag to its starting place on the flagpole; however, on a TV guest appearance on The West Wing this final part was omitted.[10]
One of their more recent tricks[when?] involves a powered nail gun with a quantity of missing nails from the series of nails in its magazine. Penn begins by firing several apparently real nails into a board in front of him. He then proceeds to fire the nailgun into the palm of his hand several times, while suffering no injuries. His pattern builds as he oscillates between firing blanks into his hand and firing nails into the board. While performing he states that the trick is merely memorization, and explains that the fact that he does not flinch when he could be firing a nail into his hand should be a sign that the trick is not actually dangerous. A later revision to the trick replaced the false claims of memorization with a more open explanation, allowing the audience to enjoy the rhythm of the nail gun without fear of a serious mishap.[11]
A trick introduced in 2010 is a modern version of the bag escape, replacing the traditional sack with a black trash bag apparently filled with helium. Teller is placed in the bag which is then pumped full of helium and sealed by an audience member. For the escape, the audience are blinded by a bright light for a second and when they are able to see again, Teller has escaped from the bag and Penn is holding it, still full of helium, above his head, before releasing it to float to the ceiling. The duo had hoped to put the trick in their mini-tour in London; however, it was first shown to the public in their Las Vegas show on 18 August 2010. In June 2011, Penn and Teller performed this trick for the first time in the United Kingdom on their ITV show Fool Us.[12]
Filmography[link]
| Year | Title | Role | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1986 | My Chauffeur | Bone & Abdul | |
| 1987 | Penn & Teller's Cruel Tricks for Dear Friends | Themselves | Direct to Video |
| 1989 | Penn & Teller Get Killed | ||
| 1991 | The Eyes Scream: A History of the Residents[13] | ||
| 1999 | Fantasia 2000 | Presenting the "Sorcerer's Apprentice" segment | |
| 2005 | The Aristocrats | Penn also co-directed the film |
Television[link]
| Year | Title | Role | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1985 | Penn & Teller Go Public | Themselves | Filmed at and first aired on KCET Los Angeles[14] |
| 1985 1986 |
Saturday Night Live | 7 Episodes | |
| 1993 | Live from AT&T Bell Labs[15] | Aired only to American Schools via satellite | |
| 1994 | The Unpleasant World of Penn & Teller | ||
| 1995 | Phobophilia | ||
| 1995 1997 |
The Drew Carey Show | Archibald Fenn & Geller | 2 Episodes: "Drew Meets Lawyers" and "See Drew Run" |
| 1995 2008 |
The Tonight Show with Jay Leno | Themselves | 4 Episodes: 14 November 1995, 27 November 1998, 13 May 2004, 25 November 2008 |
| 1996 1997 |
Sabrina, the Teenage Witch | Drell & Skippy | Episodes: "Pilot", "Terrible Things", "Jenny's Non-Dream", "First Kiss" |
| 1997 | Friends | Salesmen | Episode: "The One With The 'Cuffs" |
| Muppets Tonight | Themselves | Episode: "The Gary Cahuenga Episode" | |
| 1997 2003 |
Late Night with Conan O'Brien | 3 Episodes: 16 October 1997, 7 June 2000, & 23 January 2003 | |
| 1998 | Babylon 5 | Rebo & Zooty | Episode: "Day of the Dead" |
| 1998 1999 |
Penn & Teller's Sin City Spectacular | Themselves | 24 Episodes |
| 1998 2000 |
The Daily Show with Jon Stewart | 2 Episodes: 13 August 1998, 5 June 2000 | |
| 1998 2004 |
Hollywood Squares | 60 Episodes | |
| 1999 | Home Improvement | Episode: "Knee Deep" | |
| 1999 2011 |
The Simpsons | Episodes: "Hello Gutter, Hello Fadder", "The Great Simpsina" | |
| 2002 | ¡Mucha Lucha! | "The Return of El Maléfico" | |
| Grand Illusions: The Story of Magic | Discovery Channel documentary | ||
| Fear Factor | Episode: "Celebrity Fear Factor 3" | ||
| 2003 | Las Vegas | Episode: "Luck Be a Lady" | |
| Penn & Teller's Magic and Mystery Tour | Three-part mini-series | ||
| The Bernie Mac Show | Episode: "Magic Jordan" | ||
| 2003 2010 |
Penn & Teller: Bullshit! | 89 Episodes | |
| 2004 | The West Wing | Episode: "In The Room" | |
| 2004 2010 |
Last Call with Carson Daly | 6 Episodes: 13 July 2004, 16 November 2005, 5 April 2007, 16 June 2008, 5 April 2010, 5 May 2010 | |
| 2005 | Penn & Teller: Off the Deep End | Made for NBC, shown November 13th, 2005 | |
| 2007 2008 |
Late Show with David Letterman | 2 Episodes: #15.32, #15.113 | |
| 2009 | Futurama: Into the Wild Green Yonder | ||
| The Great American Road Trip | Guests | ||
| 2010 | FETCH! with Ruff Ruffman | They taught one of the show's contestants, Rubye, to perform magic tricks | |
| 2011 | Cash Cab | Guest contestants playing for charity | |
| Penn & Teller: Fool Us | 9 Episodes, ITV1 | ||
| Penn & Teller: Tell a Lie |
Books[link]
- Penn & Teller's How to Play in Traffic (1997, ISBN 1-57297-293-9)
- Penn & Teller's How to Play with Your Food (1992, ISBN 0-679-74311-1)
- Penn & Teller's Cruel Tricks for Dear Friends (1989, ISBN 0-394-75351-8)
- Sock 2004, ISBN 0-312-32805-2 (Penn Jillette sole author)
- How to Cheat Your Friends at Poker: The Wisdom of Dickie Richard 2006, ISBN 0-312-34905-X (Penn Jillette and Mickey D. Lynn)
- When I'm Dead All This Will Be Yours: Joe Teller—A Portrait By His Kid 2000, ISBN 0-922233-22-5 (Teller sole author)
Other Media[link]
Music[link]
- "The Horse You Rode In On" by Pigface (Penn Jillette only)
- "Spookshow" by Adil Omar (Penn Jillette only)
- "Penn & Teller Present: Music to Look at Boxes By" (With Mike "Jonesy" Jones)
- "Never Mind the Sex Pistols" by Bongos, Bass, & Bob (Penn Jillette with Dean J Seal and Bob "Running" Elk)
- "Tattoo of Blood" by the Captain Howdy (Penn Jillette with Mark Kramer)
- "Money Feeds My Music Machine" by the Captain Howdy (Penn Jillette with Mark Kramer)
- "It's Tricky" by Run–D.M.C. (Penn & Teller shown throughout the video and at the end appear to take over the persona of Run–D.M.C.)
- "Waking up in Vegas" by Katy Perry (Penn & Teller are kicked out of their hotel room by Perry and her boyfriend. They later kick Perry out again.)
Jillette also toured with the Residents during the Mole Show, and hosted Ralph Records' 10th Anniversary Radio Special (1982). There is some mild controversy and confusion surrounding this. While the premise of 10th Anniversary Radio Special revolved around Jillette having never heard of the label or any of the bands on it (the Residents included), he was credited as a collaborator on the 1981 album Mark of the Mole,[16] and he can be heard giving news bulletins in the first track. This has led some to speculate that Jillette may have been a Resident at one point.
Theater[link]
In 2008 Teller co-directed a production of Macbeth in Red Bank, New Jersey and Washington, DC.[17]
Video games[link]
- Penn & Teller's Smoke and Mirrors 1995 – Absolute Entertainment for Sega CD & 3DO, Unreleased.
- Sabrina, the Teenage Witch: Spellbound 1998 – Simon & Schuster for PC – Voices for Drell & Skippy
- Desert Bus 2011 – Amateur Pixels.
The 1995 video game Penn & Teller's Smoke and Mirrors featured an unusual mini-game called Desert Bus in which the player drove a realistic bus route between Tucson and Las Vegas. This mini-game became popular due to the fact that it imitated a real 8 hour bus ride. Once reaching the destination, the player gets 1 point and, if desired, can then drive the return route. The game was long and boring, but found a cult audience due to the dark humor and weirdness behind the idea.
The game has since been used in an annual charity called "Desert Bus for Hope" run by website desertbus.org. The site invites celebrities play the game streamed live online, with all proceeds being donated to Child's Play (charity). on November 14, 2011 an iOS port of Desert Bus was created and released in the Apple Inc iTunes store. The game was developed in conjunction with the Desert Bus for hope event and all profits from the game are donated to charity.
References[link]
- ^ http://twitter.com/#!/pennjillette/status/104745893533716480
- ^ Booking Entertainment: Penn & Teller bio
- ^ Penn & Teller on Babylon 5
- ^ Infinity Broadcasting article on Penn
- ^ Penn & Teller website
- ^ [1]
- ^ The Brights' Net: Enthusiastic Brights
- ^ Gagnon, Geoffrey (November 2006). "The Illusionists". Faces of the New Atheism. Wired Magazine. http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/14.11/faces2.html. Retrieved 14 March 2010. "Never shy about their atheism (Penn's got the Nevada license plates ATHEIST and GODLESS), the two have been raising their voices – even the oft-silent Teller – to decry the muddying line between church and state... Sometimes they'll even sign autographs with "There is no God.""
- ^ Penn & Teller on force trick
- ^ Guide to West Wing on Penn & Teller
- ^ Penn Says: Nail Gun Trick
- ^ [2]
- ^ "The Eyes Scream: A History of the Residents (Video 1991) - IMDb". IMDb. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0264607/. Retrieved 30 April 2012.
- ^ "New Honor For Penn, Teller". Los Angeles Times. 1986. http://articles.latimes.com/1986-05-15/entertainment/ca-5374_1_penn-gillette. Retrieved 04 May 2012.
- ^ AT&T Archives and History Center, Warren, NJ (1993). "AT&T Archives: Live from AT&T Bell Labs (1993)". AT&T. AT&T Tech Channel. http://techchannel.att.com/play-video.cfm/2012/4/27/AT&T-Archives-Live-From-Bell-Labs-1993?utm_source=att&utm_medium=attcom&utm_campaign=att_aboutus. Retrieved 30 April 2012.
- ^ Residents Web: Mark of the Mole information page
- ^ http://www.pennandteller.com/03/coolstuff/tellersmacbethindex.html Teller's MacBeth
External links[link]
 |
Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Penn & Teller |
- Official website
- Penn's "Hydro-therapeutic stimulator" (aka Jill-jet) patent
- A man, a ball, a hoop, a bench (and an alleged thread)… TELLER!
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| Persondata | |
|---|---|
| Name | Teller, Penn & |
| Alternative names | |
| Short description | |
| Date of birth | March 5, 1955 |
| Place of birth | San Francisco (Residence: Las Vegas) |
| Date of death | |
| Place of death | |
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| English | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Pronunciation | /ˈɪŋɡlɪʃ/[1] | |||
| Spoken in | (see below) | |||
| Native speakers | ca. 380 million (2001)[2] L2: ≈ 250 million (2001)[2] to ≈ 1.8 billion (2004)[3] |
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| Language family | ||||
| Writing system | English alphabet (Latin script) | |||
| Official status | ||||
| Official language in | 54 countries 27 non-sovereign entities United Nations European Union Commonwealth of Nations CoE NATO NAFTA OAS OIC PIF UKUSA |
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| Language codes | ||||
| ISO 639-1 | en | |||
| ISO 639-2 | eng | |||
| ISO 639-3 | eng | |||
| Linguasphere | 52-ABA | |||
Countries where English is an official or de facto official language, or national language, and is spoken fluently by the majority of the population
Countries where it is an official but not primary language
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English is a West Germanic language spoken originally in England, and is now the most widely used language in the world.[4] It is spoken as a first language by a majority of the inhabitants of several nations, including the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada, Australia, Ireland and New Zealand. It is the third most common native language in the world, after Mandarin Chinese and Spanish,[5] and the most commonly used as a second language; its total number of speakers – counting both native and non-native – exceeds those of any other language. English is an official language of the European Union, many Commonwealth countries and United Nations, as well as in many world organisations.
English arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and what is now south-east Scotland, but was then under the control of the kingdom of Northumbria. Following the extensive influence of Great Britain and the United Kingdom from the 18th century, via the British Empire, and of the United States since the mid-20th century,[6][7][8][9] it has been widely dispersed around the world, becoming the leading language of international discourse and the lingua franca in many regions.[10][11]
Historically, English originated from the fusion of closely related dialects, now collectively termed Old English, which were brought to the eastern coast of Great Britain by Germanic (Anglo-Saxon) settlers by the 5th century – with the word English being derived from the name of the Angles, and ultimately from their ancestral region of Angeln (in what is now Schleswig-Holstein).[12] A significant number of English words are constructed based on roots from Latin, because Latin in some form was the lingua franca of the Christian Church and of European intellectual life.[13] The language was further influenced by the Old Norse language due to Viking invasions in the 8th and 9th centuries.
The Norman conquest of England in the 11th century gave rise to heavy borrowings from Norman-French, and vocabulary and spelling conventions began to give the appearance of a close relationship with Romance languages[14][15] to what had then become Middle English. The Great Vowel Shift that began in the south of England in the 15th century is one of the historical events that mark the emergence of Modern English from Middle English.
Owing to the assimilation of words from many other languages throughout history, modern English contains a very large vocabulary. Modern English has not only assimilated words from other European languages but also from all over the world, including words of Hindi and African origin. The Oxford English Dictionary lists over 250,000 distinct words, not including many technical, scientific, and slang terms.[16][17]
Contents |
Significance[link]
See also: English-speaking world and Anglosphere
Modern English, sometimes described as the first global lingua franca,[18][19] is the dominant language or in some instances even the required international language of communications, science, information technology, business, seafaring,[20] aviation,[21] entertainment, radio and diplomacy.[22] Its spread beyond the British Isles began with the growth of the British Empire, and by the late 19th century its reach was truly global.[3] Following British colonisation from the 16th to 19th centuries, it became the dominant language in the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. The growing economic and cultural influence of the US and its status as a global superpower since World War II have significantly accelerated the language's spread across the planet.[19] English replaced German as the dominant language of science Nobel Prize laureates during the second half of the 20th century.[23] English equalled and may have surpassed French as the dominant language of diplomacy during the last half of the 19th century.
A working knowledge of English has become a requirement in a number of fields, occupations and professions such as medicine and computing; as a consequence over a billion people speak English to at least a basic level (see English language learning and teaching). It is one of six official languages of the United Nations.[24]
One impact of the growth of English is the reduction of native linguistic diversity in many parts of the world. Its influence continues to play an important role in language attrition.[25] Conversely, the natural internal variety of English along with creoles and pidgins have the potential to produce new distinct languages from English over time.[26]
History[link]
Main article: History of the English language
English is a West Germanic language that originated from the Anglo-Frisian and Old Saxon dialects brought to Britain by Germanic settlers from various parts of what is now northwest Germany, Denmark and the Netherlands.[27] Up to that point, in Roman Britain the native population is assumed to have spoken the Celtic language Brythonic alongside the acrolectal influence of Latin, from the 400-year Roman occupation.[28]
One of these incoming Germanic tribes was the Angles,[29] who Bede believed to have relocated entirely to Britain.[30] The names 'England' (from Engla land[31] "Land of the Angles") and English (Old English Englisc[32]) are derived from the name of this tribe—but Saxons, Jutes and a range of Germanic peoples from the coasts of Frisia, Lower Saxony, Jutland and Southern Sweden also moved to Britain in this era.[33][34][35]
Initially, Old English was a diverse group of dialects, reflecting the varied origins of the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of Great Britain[36] but one of these dialects, Late West Saxon, eventually came to dominate, and it is in this that the poem Beowulf is written.
Old English was later transformed by two waves of invasion. The first was by speakers of the North Germanic language branch when Halfdan Ragnarsson and Ivar the Boneless started the conquering and colonisation of northern parts of the British Isles in the 8th and 9th centuries (see Danelaw). The second was by speakers of the Romance language Old Norman in the 11th century with the Norman conquest of England. Norman developed into Anglo-Norman, and then Anglo-French – and introduced a layer of words especially via the courts and government. As well as extending the lexicon with Scandinavian and Norman words these two events also simplified the grammar and transformed English into a borrowing language—more than normally open to accept new words from other languages.
The linguistic shifts in English following the Norman invasion produced what is now referred to as Middle English; Geoffrey Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales is its best-known work.
Throughout all this period Latin in some form was the lingua franca of European intellectual life, first the Medieval Latin of the Christian Church, but later the humanist Renaissance Latin, and those that wrote or copied texts in Latin[13] commonly coined new terms from Latin to refer to things or concepts for which there was no existing native English word.
Modern English, which includes the works of William Shakespeare[37] and the King James Bible, is generally dated from about 1550, and when the United Kingdom became a colonial power, English served as the lingua franca of the colonies of the British Empire. In the post-colonial period, some of the newly created nations which had multiple indigenous languages opted to continue using English as the lingua franca to avoid the political difficulties inherent in promoting any one indigenous language above the others. As a result of the growth of the British Empire, English was adopted in North America, India, Africa, Australia and many other regions, a trend extended with the emergence of the United States as a superpower in the mid-20th century.
Classification and related languages[link]
The English language belongs to the Anglo-Frisian sub-group of the West Germanic branch of the Germanic family, a member of the Indo-European languages. Modern English is the direct descendant of Middle English, itself a direct descendant of Old English, a descendant of Proto-Germanic. Typical of most Germanic languages, English is characterised by the use of modal verbs, the division of verbs into strong and weak classes, and common sound shifts from Proto-Indo-European known as Grimm's Law. The closest living relatives of English are Scots (spoken primarily in Scotland and parts of Northern Ireland where Ulster Scots is spoken) and Frisian (spoken on the southern fringes of the North Sea in Denmark, the Netherlands, and Germany).
After Scots and Frisian come those Germanic languages that are more distantly related: the non-Anglo-Frisian West Germanic languages (Dutch, Afrikaans, Low German, High German), and the North Germanic languages (Swedish, Danish, Norwegian, Icelandic, and Faroese). With the (partial) exception of Scots, none of the other languages is mutually intelligible with English, owing in part to the divergences in lexis, syntax, semantics, and phonology, and to the isolation afforded to the English language by the British Isles, although some, such as Dutch, do show strong affinities with English, especially to earlier stages of the language. Isolation has allowed English and Scots (as well as Icelandic and Faroese) to develop independently of the Continental Germanic languages and their influences over time.[38]
In addition to isolation, lexical differences between English and other Germanic languages exist due to heavy borrowing in English of words from Latin and French. For example, compare "exit" (Latin), vs. Dutch uitgang, literally "out-going" (though outgang survives dialectally in restricted usage) and "change" (French) vs. German Änderung (literally "alteration, othering"); "movement" (French) vs. German Bewegung ("be-way-ing", i.e. "proceeding along the way"); etc. Preference of one synonym over another also causes differentiation in lexis, even where both words are Germanic, as in English care vs. German Sorge. Both words descend from Proto-Germanic *karō and *surgō respectively, but *karō has become the dominant word in English for "care" while in German, Dutch, and Scandinavian languages, the *surgō root prevailed. *Surgō still survives in English, however, as sorrow.
Despite extensive lexical borrowing, the workings of the English language are resolutely Germanic, and English remains classified as a Germanic language due to its structure and grammar. Borrowed words get incorporated into a Germanic system of conjugation, declension, and syntax, and behave exactly as though they were native Germanic words from Old English (For example, the word reduce is borrowed from Latin redūcere; however, in English one says "I reduce - I reduced - I will reduce" rather than "redūcō - redūxī - redūcam"; likewise, we say: "John's life insurance company" (cf. Dutch "Johns levensverzekeringsmaatschappij" [= leven (life) + verzekering (insurance) + maatschappij (company)] rather than "the company of insurance life of John", cf. the French: la compagnie d'assurance-vie de John). Furthermore, in English, all basic grammatical particles added to nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs are Germanic. For nouns, these include the normal plural marker -s/-es (apple - apples; cf. Frisian appel - appels; Dutch appel - appels; Afrikaans appel - appels), and the possessive markers -'s (Brad's hat; German Brads Hut; Danish Brads hat) and -s' . For verbs, these include the third person present ending -s/-es (e.g. he stands/he reaches ), the present participle ending -ing (cf. Dutch -ende; German -end(e)), the simple past tense and past participle ending -ed (Swedish -ade/-ad), and the formation of the English infinitive using to (e.g. "to drive"; cf. Old English tō drīfenne; Dutch te drijven; Low German to drieven; German zu treiben). Adverbs generally receive an -ly ending (cf. German -lich; Swedish -ligt), and adjectives and adverbs are inflected for the comparative and superlative using -er and -est (e.g. hard/harder/hardest; cf. Dutch hard/harder/hardst), or through a combination with more and most. These particles append freely to all English words regardless of origin (tsunamis; communicates; to buccaneer; during; calmer; bizarrely) and all derive from Old English. Even the lack or absence of affixes, known as zero or null (-Ø) affixes, derive from endings which previously existed in Old English (usually -e, -a, -u, -o, -an, etc.), that later weakened to -e, and have since ceased to be pronounced and spelt (e.g. Modern English "I sing" = I sing-Ø < I singe < Old English ic singe; "we thought" = we thought-Ø < we thoughte(n) < Old English wē þōhton).
Due to the Viking colonisation and influence of Old Norse upon Middle English, English syntax follows a pattern similar to that of North Germanic languages (Danish, Swedish, Icelandic, etc.) in contrast to other West Germanic languages, such as Dutch and German. This is especially evident in the order and placement of verbs. For example, English "I will never see you again" = Danish "Jeg vil aldrig se dig igen"; Icelandic "Ég mun aldrei sjá þig aftur", whereas in Dutch and German the main verb is placed at the end (e.g. Dutch "Ik zal je nooit weer zien"; German "Ich werde dich nie wieder sehen", literally, "I will you never again see"). This is also observable in perfect tense constructions, as in English "I have never seen anything in the square" = Danish "Jeg har aldrig set noget på torvet"; Icelandic "Ég hef aldrei séð neitt á torginu", where Dutch and German place the past participle at the end (e.g. Dutch "Ik heb nooit iets op het plein gezien"; German "Ich habe nie etwas auf dem Platz gesehen", literally, "I have never anything in the square seen"). As in most Germanic languages, English adjectives usually come before the noun they modify, even when the adjective is of Latinate origin (e.g. medical emergency, national treasure). Also, English continues to make extensive use of self-explaining compounds (e.g. streetcar, classroom), and nouns which serve as modifiers (e.g. lamp post, life insurance company), traits inherited from Old English (See also Kenning).
The kinship with other Germanic languages can also be seen in the tensing of English verbs (e.g. English fall/fell/fallen/will or shall fall, West Frisian fal/foel/fallen/sil falle, Dutch vallen/viel/gevallen/zullen vallen, German fallen/fiel/gefallen/werden fallen, Norwegian faller/falt/falt or falne/vil or skal falle), the comparatives of adjectives and adverbs (e.g. English good/better/best, West Frisian goed/better/best, Dutch goed/beter/best, German gut/besser/best), the treatment of nouns (English shoemaker, shoemaker's, shoemakers, shoemakers'; Dutch schoenmaker, schoenmakers, schoenmakers, schoenmakeren; Swedish skomakare, skomakares, skomakare, skomakares), and the large amount of cognates (e.g. English wet, Scots weet, West Frisian wiet, Swedish våt; English send, Dutch zenden, German senden; English meaning, Swedish mening, Icelandic meining, etc.). It also gives rise to false friends (e.g. English time vs Norwegian time, meaning "hour"; English gift vs German Gift, meaning "poison"), while differences in phonology can obscure words that really are related (tooth vs. German Zahn; compare also Danish tand). Sometimes both semantics and phonology are different (German Zeit ("time") is related to English "tide", but the English word, through a transitional phase of meaning "period"/"interval", has come primarily to mean gravitational effects on the ocean by the moon, though the original meaning is preserved in forms like tidings and betide, and phrases such as to tide over).[citation needed]
Many North Germanic words entered English due to the settlement of Viking raiders and Danish invasions which began around the 9th century (see Danelaw). Many of these words are common words, often mistaken for being native, which shows how close-knit the relations between the English and the Scandinavian settlers were (See below: Old Norse origins). Dutch and Low German also had a considerable influence on English vocabulary, contributing common everyday terms and many nautical and trading terms (See below: Dutch and Low German origins).
Finally, English has been forming compound words and affixing existing words separately from the other Germanic languages for over 1500 years and has different habits in that regard. For instance, abstract nouns in English may be formed from native words by the suffixes "‑hood", "-ship", "-dom" and "-ness". All of these have cognate suffixes in most or all other Germanic languages, but their usage patterns have diverged, as German "Freiheit" vs. English "freedom" (the suffix "-heit" being cognate of English "-hood", while English "-dom" is cognate with German "-tum"; compare also North Frisian fridoem, Dutch vrijdom, Norwegian fridom, "freedom"). The Germanic languages Icelandic and Faroese also follow English in this respect, since, like English, they developed independent of German influences.
Many French words are also intelligible to an English speaker, especially when they are seen in writing (as pronunciations are often quite different), because English absorbed a large vocabulary from Norman and French, via Anglo-Norman after the Norman Conquest, and directly from French in subsequent centuries. As a result, a large portion of English vocabulary is derived from French, with some minor spelling differences (e.g. inflectional endings, use of old French spellings, lack of diacritics, etc.), as well as occasional divergences in meaning of so-called false friends: for example, compare "library" with the French librairie, which means bookstore; in French, the word for "library" is bibliothèque. The pronunciation of most French loanwords in English (with the exception of a handful of more recently borrowed words such as mirage, genre, café; or phrases like coup d’état, rendez-vous, etc.) has become largely anglicised and follows a typically English phonology and pattern of stress (compare English "nature" vs. French nature, "button" vs. bouton, "table" vs. table, "hour" vs. heure, "reside" vs. résider, etc.).
Geographical distribution[link]
Pie chart showing the relative numbers of native English speakers in the major English-speaking countries of the world
US (57.3%)
UK (16.3%)
Canada (4.9%)
Australia (4.1%)
Nigeria (1.1%)
Ireland (1%)
South Africa (1%)
New Zealand (1%)
Other (13.3%)
Approximately 375 million people speak English as their first language.[39] English today is probably the third largest language by number of native speakers, after Mandarin Chinese and Spanish.[5][40] However, when combining native and non-native speakers it is probably the most commonly spoken language in the world, though possibly second to a combination of the Chinese languages (depending on whether or not distinctions in the latter are classified as "languages" or "dialects").[41][42]
Estimates that include second language speakers vary greatly from 470 million to over a billion depending on how literacy or mastery is defined and measured.[43][44] Linguistics professor David Crystal calculates that non-native speakers now outnumber native speakers by a ratio of 3 to 1.[45]
The countries with the highest populations of native English speakers are, in descending order: the United States (215 million),[46] the United Kingdom (61 million),[47] Canada (18.2 million),[48] Australia (15.5 million),[49] Nigeria (4 million),[50] Ireland (3.8 million),[47] South Africa (3.7 million),[51] and New Zealand (3.6 million) in a 2006 Census.[52]
Countries such as the Philippines, Jamaica and Nigeria also have millions of native speakers of dialect continua ranging from an English-based creole to a more standard version of English. Of those nations where English is spoken as a second language, India has the most such speakers ('Indian English'). Crystal claims that, combining native and non-native speakers, India now has more people who speak or understand English than any other country in the world.[53][54]
Countries in order of total speakers[link]
| Country | Total | Percent of population | First language | As an additional language | Population | Comment | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| United States | 251,388,301 | 96% | 215,423,557 | 35,964,744 | 262,375,152 | Source: US Census 2000: Language Use and English-Speaking Ability: 2000, Table 1. Figure for second language speakers are respondents who reported they do not speak English at home but know it "very well" or "well". Note: figures are for population age 5 and older | |
| India | 125,344,736 | 12% | 226,449 | 86,125,221 second language speakers. 38,993,066 third language speakers |
1,028,737,436 | Figures include both those who speak English as a second language and those who speak it as a third language. 2001 figures.[55][56] The figures include English speakers, but not English users.[57] | |
| Nigeria | 79,000,000 | 53% | 4,000,000 | >75,000,000 | 148,000,000 | Figures are for speakers of Nigerian Pidgin, an English-based pidgin or creole. Ihemere gives a range of roughly 3 to 5 million native speakers; the midpoint of the range is used in the table. Ihemere, Kelechukwu Uchechukwu. 2006. "A Basic Description and Analytic Treatment of Noun Clauses in Nigerian Pidgin." Nordic Journal of African Studies 15(3): 296–313. | |
| United Kingdom | 59,600,000 | 98% | 58,100,000 | 1,500,000 | 60,000,000 | Source: Crystal (2005), p. 109. | |
| Philippines | 48,800,000 | 58%[58] | 3,427,000[58] | 43,974,000 | 84,566,000 | Total speakers: Census 2000, text above Figure 7. 63.71% of the 66.7 million people aged 5 years or more could speak English. Native speakers: Census 1995, as quoted by Andrew González in The Language Planning Situation in the Philippines, Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, 19 (5&6), 487–525. (1998). Ethnologue lists 3.4 million native speakers with 52% of the population speaking it as an additional language.[58] | |
| Canada | 25,246,220 | 85% | 17,694,830 | 7,551,390 | 29,639,030 | Source: 2001 Census – Knowledge of Official Languages and Mother Tongue. The native speakers figure comprises 122,660 people with both French and English as a mother tongue, plus 17,572,170 people with English and not French as a mother tongue. | |
| Australia | 18,172,989 | 92% | 15,581,329 | 2,591,660 | 19,855,288 | Source: 2006 Census.[59] The figure shown in the first language English speakers column is actually the number of Australian residents who speak only English at home. The additional language column shows the number of other residents who claim to speak English "well" or "very well". Another 5% of residents did not state their home language or English proficiency. | |
| Note: Total = First language + Other language; Percentage = Total / Population | |||||||
Countries where English is a major language[link]
Main article: List of countries where English is an official language
English is the primary language in Anguilla, Antigua and Barbuda, Australia, the Bahamas, Barbados, Belize, Bermuda, the British Indian Ocean Territory, the British Virgin Islands, Canada, the Cayman Islands, Dominica, the Falkland Islands, Gibraltar, Grenada, Guam, Guernsey, Guyana, Ireland, the Isle of Man, Jamaica, Jersey, Montserrat, Nauru, New Zealand, Pitcairn Islands, Saint Helena, Ascension and Tristan da Cunha, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Singapore, South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands, Trinidad and Tobago, the Turks and Caicos Islands, the United Kingdom and the United States.
In some countries where English is not the most spoken language, it is an official language; these countries include Botswana, Cameroon, the Federated States of Micronesia, Fiji, Gambia, Ghana, India, Kenya, Kiribati, Lesotho, Liberia, Madagascar, Malta, the Marshall Islands, Mauritius, Namibia, Nigeria, Pakistan, Palau, Papua New Guinea, the Philippines (Philippine English), Rwanda, Saint Lucia, Samoa, Seychelles, Sierra Leone, the Solomon Islands, Sri Lanka, Sudan, South Sudan, Swaziland, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia, and Zimbabwe. Also there are countries where in a part of the territory English became a co-official language, e.g. Colombia's San Andrés y Providencia and Nicaragua's Mosquito Coast. This was a result of the influence of British colonisation in the area.
It is also one of the 11 official languages that are given equal status in South Africa (South African English). English is also the official language in current dependent territories of Australia (Norfolk Island, Christmas Island and Cocos Island) and of the United States (American Samoa, Guam, Northern Mariana Islands, Puerto Rico, and the US Virgin Islands),[60] and the former British colony of Hong Kong. (See List of countries where English is an official language for more details.)
English is not an official language in the United States.[61] Although the United States federal government has no official languages, English has been given official status by 30 of the 50 state governments.[62] Although falling short of official status, English is also an important language in several former colonies and protectorates of the United Kingdom, such as Bahrain, Bangladesh, Brunei, Cyprus, Malaysia, and the United Arab Emirates.
English as a global language[link]
See also: English in computing, International English, World language, and English as a foreign or second language
Because English is so widely spoken, it has often been referred to as a "world language", the lingua franca of the modern era,[19] and while it is not an official language in most countries, it is currently the language most often taught as a foreign language. Some linguists believe that it is no longer the exclusive cultural property of "native English speakers", but is rather a language that is absorbing aspects of cultures worldwide as it continues to grow.[19] It is, by international treaty, the official language for aerial and maritime communications.[63] English is an official language of the United Nations and many other international organisations, including the International Olympic Committee.
English is the language most often studied as a foreign language in the European Union, by 89% of schoolchildren, ahead of French at 32%, while the perception of the usefulness of foreign languages amongst Europeans is 68% in favour of English ahead of 25% for French.[64] Among some non-English-speaking EU countries, a large percentage of the adult population claims to be able to converse in English – in particular: 85% in Sweden, 83% in Denmark, 79% in the Netherlands, 66% in Luxembourg and over 50% in Finland, Slovenia, Austria, Belgium, and Germany.[65]
Books, magazines, and newspapers written in English are available in many countries around the world, and English is the most commonly used language in the sciences[19] with Science Citation Index reporting as early as 1997 that 95% of its articles were written in English, even though only half of them came from authors in English-speaking countries.
This increasing use of the English language globally has had a large impact on many other languages, leading to language shift and even language death,[66] and to claims of linguistic imperialism.[67] English itself is now open to language shift as multiple regional varieties feed back into the language as a whole.[67]
Dialects and varieties[link]
Main article: List of dialects of the English language
English has been subject to a large degree of regional dialect variation for many centuries. Its global spread now means that a large number of dialects and English-based creole languages and pidgins can be found all over the world.
Several educated native dialects of English have wide acceptance as standards in much of the world. In the United Kingdom much emphasis is placed on Received Pronunciation, an educated dialect of South East England. General American, which is spread over most of the United States and much of Canada, is more typically the model for the American continents and areas (such as the Philippines) that have had either close association with the United States, or a desire to be so identified. In Oceania, the major native dialect of Australian English is spoken as a first language by the vast majority of the inhabitants of the Australian continent, with General Australian serving as the standard accent. The English of neighbouring New Zealand as well as that of South Africa have to a lesser degree been influential native varieties of the language.
Aside from these major dialects, there are numerous other varieties of English, which include, in most cases, several subvarieties, such as Cockney, Scouse and Geordie within British English; Newfoundland English within Canadian English; and African American Vernacular English ("Ebonics") and Southern American English within American English. English is a pluricentric language, without a central language authority like France's Académie française; and therefore no one variety is considered "correct" or "incorrect" except in terms of the expectations of the particular audience to which the language is directed.
Scots has its origins in early Northern Middle English[68] and developed and changed during its history with influence from other sources. However, following the Acts of Union 1707 a process of language attrition began, whereby successive generations adopted more and more features from Standard English. Whether Scots is now a separate language or is better described as a dialect of English (i.e. part of Scottish English) is in dispute, although the UK government accepts Scots as a regional language and has recognised it as such under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages.[69] There are a number of regional dialects of Scots, and pronunciation, grammar and lexis of the traditional forms differ, sometimes substantially, from other varieties of English.
English speakers have many different accents, which often signal the speaker's native dialect or language. For the most distinctive characteristics of regional accents, see Regional accents of English, and for a complete list of regional dialects, see List of dialects of the English language. Within England, variation is now largely confined to pronunciation rather than grammar or vocabulary. At the time of the Survey of English Dialects, grammar and vocabulary differed across the country, but a process of lexical attrition has led most of this variation to die out.[70]
Just as English itself has borrowed words from many different languages over its history, English loanwords now appear in many languages around the world, indicative of the technological and cultural influence of its speakers. Several pidgins and creole languages have been formed on an English base, such as Jamaican Patois, Nigerian Pidgin, and Tok Pisin. There are many words in English coined to describe forms of particular non-English languages that contain a very high proportion of English words.
Formal written English[link]
Main article: Formal written English
A version of the language almost universally agreed upon by educated English speakers around the world is called formal written English. It takes virtually the same form regardless of where it is written, in contrast to spoken English, which differs significantly between dialects, accents, and varieties of slang and of colloquial and regional expressions. Local variations in the formal written version of the language are quite limited, being restricted largely to minor spelling, lexical and grammatical differences between British, American, and other national varieties of English.
Simplified and constructed varieties[link]
Artificially simplified versions of the language have been created that are easier for non-native speakers to read. Basic English is a constructed language with a restricted number of words created by Charles Kay Ogden and described in his book Basic English: A General Introduction with Rules and Grammar (1930). Ogden said that it would take seven years to learn English, seven months for Esperanto, and seven weeks for Basic English.[citation needed] Thus, Basic English may be employed by companies that need to make complex books for international use, as well as by language schools that need to impart some knowledge of English in a short time.
Ogden did not include any words in Basic English that could be said instead with a combination of other words already in the Basic English lexicon, and he worked to make the vocabulary suitable for speakers of any other language. He put his vocabulary selections through a large number of tests and adjustments. Ogden also simplified the grammar but tried to keep it normal for English users. Although it was not built into a program, similar simplifications were devised for various international uses.
Simplified English is a controlled language originally developed for aerospace industry maintenance manuals. It employs a carefully limited and standardised[71] subset of English. Simplified English has a lexicon of approved words and those words can only be used in certain ways. For example, the word close can be used in the phrase "Close the door" but not "do not go close to the landing gear".
Other constructed varieties of English include:
- E-Prime excludes forms of the verb to be.
- English reform is an attempt to improve collectively upon the English language.
- Manually Coded English consists of a variety of systems that have been developed to represent the English language with hand signals, designed primarily for use in deaf education. These should not be confused with true sign languages such as British Sign Language and American Sign Language used in Anglophone countries, which are independent and not based on English.
- Seaspeak and the related Airspeak and PoliceSpeak, all based on restricted vocabularies, were designed by Edward Johnson starting from the 1980s to aid international cooperation and communication in specific areas.
- Special English is a simplified version of English used by the Voice of America. It uses a vocabulary of only 1500 words.
Phonology[link]
Main article: English phonology
The phonology (sound system) of English differs between dialects. The descriptions below are most closely applicable to the standard varieties known as Received Pronunciation (RP) and General American. For information concerning a range of other varieties, see IPA chart for English dialects.
Consonants[link]
The table below shows the system of consonant phonemes that functions in most major varieties of English. The symbols are from the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA), and are also used in the pronunciation keys of many dictionaries. For more detailed information see English phonology: Consonants.
| Bilabial | Labio- dental |
Dental | Alveolar | Post- alveolar |
Palatal | Velar | Labial- velar |
Glottal | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nasal | m | n | ŋ | ||||||
| Plosive | p b | t d | k ɡ | ||||||
| Affricate | tʃ dʒ | ||||||||
| Fricative | f v | θ ð | s z | ʃ ʒ | (x) | h | |||
| Approximant | r | j | w | ||||||
| Lateral | l |
Where consonants are given in pairs (as with "p b"), the first is voiceless, the second is voiced. Most of the symbols represent the same sounds as they normally do when used as letters (see Writing system below), but /j/ represents the initial sound of yacht. The symbol /ʃ/ represents the sh sound, /ʒ/ the middle sound of vision, /tʃ/ the ch sound, /dʒ/ the sound of j in jump, /θ/ and /ð/ the th sounds in thing and this respectively, and /ŋ/ the ng sound in sing. The voiceless velar fricative /x/ is not a regular phoneme in most varieties of English, although it is used by some speakers in Scots/Gaelic words such as loch or in other loanwords such as Chanukah.
Some of the more significant variations in the pronunciation of consonants are these:
- In non-rhotic accents such as Received Pronunciation and Australian English, /r/ can only appear before a vowel (so there is no "r" sound in words like card). The actual pronunciation of /r/ varies between dialects; most common is the alveolar approximant [ɹ].
- In North American English and Australian English, /t/ and /d/ are flapped [ɾ] in many positions between vowels.[72] This means that word pairs such as latter and ladder may become homophones for speakers of these dialects.
- The th sounds /θ/ and /ð/ are sometimes pronounced as /f/ and /v/ in Cockney, and as dental plosives (contrasting with the usual alveolar plosives) in some Irish varieties. In African American Vernacular English, /ð/ has merged with dental /d/.
- A voiceless w, [ʍ], sometimes written /hw/, for the wh in words like when and which, is preserved in Scottish and Irish English and by some speakers elsewhere.
- The voiceless plosives /p/, /t/ and /k/ are frequently aspirated, particularly at the start of stressed syllables, but they are not aspirated after an initial /s/, as in spin.
Vowels[link]
The system of vowel phonemes and their pronunciation is subject to significant variation between dialects. The table below lists the vowels found in Received Pronunciation (RP) and General American, with examples of words in which they occur. The vowels are represented with symbols from the International Phonetic Alphabet; those given for RP are in relatively standard use in British dictionaries and other publications. For more detailed information see English phonology: Vowels.
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Some points to note:
- For words which in RP have /ɒ/, most North American dialects have /ɑ/ (as in the example of box above) or /ɔ/ (as in cloth). However some North American varieties do not have the vowel /ɔ/ at all (except before /r/); see cot–caught merger.
- In General American and some other rhotic accents, the combination of vowel+/r/ is often realized as an r-colored vowel. For example, butter /ˈbʌtər/ is pronounced with an r-colored schwa, [ɚ]. Similarly nurse contains the r-colored vowel [ɝ].
- The vowel conventionally written /ʌ/ is actually pronounced more centrally, as [ɐ], in RP. In the northern half of England this vowel is replaced by /ʊ/ (so cut rhymes with put).
- In unstressed syllables there may or may not be a distinction between /ə/ (schwa) and /ɪ/ (/ɨ/). So for some speakers there is no difference between roses and Rosa's. For more information see Reduced vowels in English.
- The diphthongs /eɪ/ and /əʊ/ (/oʊ/) tend towards the monophthongal pronunciations [eː] and [oː] in some dialects, including Canadian, Scottish, Irish and Northern English.
- In parts of North America /aɪ/ is pronounced [ʌɪ] before voiceless consonants. This is particularly true in Canada, where also /aʊ/ is pronounced [ʌʊ] in this position. See Canadian raising.
- The sound /ʊə/ is coming to be replaced by /ɔː/ in many words; for example, sure is often pronounced like shore. See English-language vowel changes before historic r.
Stress, rhythm and intonation[link]
English is a strongly stressed language, in which stress is said to be phonemic, i.e. capable of distinguishing words (such as the noun increase, stressed on the first syllable, and the verb increase, stressed on the second syllable; see also Initial-stress-derived noun). In almost any word of more than one syllable there will be one syllable identified as taking the primary stress, and possibly another taking a secondary stress, as in civilization /ˌsɪvəlaɪˈzeɪʃn̩/, in which the first syllable carries secondary stress, the fourth syllable carries primary stress, and the other syllables are unstressed.[73]
Closely related to stress in English is the process of vowel reduction; for example, in the noun contract the first syllable is stressed and contains the vowel /ɒ/ (in RP), whereas in the verb contract the first syllable is unstressed and its vowel is reduced to /ə/ (schwa).[74] The same process applies to certain common function words like of, which are pronounced with different vowels depending on whether or not they are stressed within the sentence. For more details, see Reduced vowels in English.
English also has strong prosodic stress – the placing of additional emphasis within a sentence on the words to which a speaker wishes to draw attention, and corresponding weaker pronunciation of less important words. As regards rhythm, English is classed as a stress-timed language – one in which there is a tendency for the time intervals between stressed syllables to become equal, with corresponding faster pronunciation of groups of unstressed syllables.
As concerns intonation, the pitch of the voice is used syntactically in English; for example, to convey surprise or irony, or to change a statement into a question. Most dialects of English use falling pitch for definite statements, and rising pitch to express uncertainty, as in questions (particularly yes-no questions). There is also a characteristic change of pitch on strongly stressed syllables, particularly on the "nuclear" (most strongly stressed) syllable in a sentence or intonation group. For more details see Intonation (linguistics): Intonation in English.
Grammar[link]
Main article: English grammar
English grammar has minimal inflection compared with most other Indo-European languages. For example, Modern English, unlike Modern German or Dutch and the Romance languages, lacks grammatical gender and adjectival agreement. Case marking has almost disappeared from the language and mainly survives in pronouns. The patterning of strong (e.g. speak/spoke/spoken) versus weak verbs (e.g. love/loved or kick/kicked) inherited from its Germanic origins has declined in importance in modern English, and the remnants of inflection (such as plural marking) have become more regular.
At the same time, the language has become more analytic, and has developed features such as modal verbs and word order as resources for conveying meaning. Auxiliary verbs mark constructions such as questions, negative polarity, the passive voice and progressive aspect.
Vocabulary[link]
The English vocabulary has changed considerably over the centuries.[75]
Like many languages deriving from Proto-Indo-European (PIE), many of the most common words in English can trace back their origin (through the Germanic branch) to PIE. Such words include the basic pronouns I, from Old English ic, (cf. German Ich, Gothic ik, Latin ego, Greek ego, Sanskrit aham), me (cf. German mich, mir, Gothic mik, mīs, Latin mē, Greek eme, Sanskrit mam), numbers (e.g. one, two, three, cf. Dutch een, twee, drie, Gothic ains, twai, threis (þreis), Latin ūnus, duo, trēs, Greek oinos "ace (on dice)", duo, treis), common family relationships such as mother, father, brother, sister etc. (cf. Dutch moeder, Greek meter, Latin mater, Sanskrit matṛ; mother), names of many animals (cf. German Maus, Dutch muis, Sanskrit mus, Greek mus, Latin mūs; mouse), and many common verbs (cf. Old High German knājan, Old Norse kná, Greek gignōmi, Latin gnoscere, Hittite kanes; to know).
Germanic words (generally words of Old English or to a lesser extent Old Norse origin) tend to be shorter than Latinate words, and are more common in ordinary speech, and include nearly all the basic pronouns, prepositions, conjunctions, modal verbs etc. that form the basis of English syntax and grammar. The shortness of the words is generally due to syncope in Middle English (e.g. OldEng hēafod > ModEng head, OldEng sāwol > ModEng soul) and to the loss of final syllables due to stress (e.g. OldEng gamen > ModEng game, OldEng ǣrende > ModEng errand), not because Germanic words are inherently shorter than Latinate words (the lengthier, higher-register words of Old English were largely forgotten following the subjugation of English after the Norman Conquest, and most of the Old English lexis devoted to literature, the arts, and sciences ceased to be productive when it fell into disuse. Only the shorter, more direct, words of Old English tended to pass into the Modern language.) Consequently, those words which tend to be regarded as elegant or educated in Modern English are usually Latinate. However, the excessive use of Latinate words is considered at times to be either pretentious or an attempt to obfuscate an issue. George Orwell's essay "Politics and the English Language", considered an important scrutinisation of the English language, is critical of this, as well as other perceived misuses of the language.
An English speaker is in many cases able to choose between Germanic and Latinate synonyms: come or arrive; sight or vision; freedom or liberty. In some cases, there is a choice between a Germanic derived word (oversee), a Latin derived word (supervise), and a French word derived from the same Latin word (survey); or even Germanic words derived from Norman French (e.g., warranty) and Parisian French (guarantee), and even choices involving multiple Germanic and Latinate sources are possible: sickness (Old English), ill (Old Norse), infirmity (French), affliction (Latin). Such synonyms harbour a variety of different meanings and nuances. Yet the ability to choose between multiple synonyms is not a consequence of French and Latin influence, as this same richness existed in English prior to the extensive borrowing of French and Latin terms. Old English was extremely resourceful in its ability to express synonyms and shades of meaning on its own, in many respects rivaling or exceeding that of Modern English (synonyms numbering in the thirties for certain concepts were not uncommon). Take for instance the various ways to express the word "astronomer" or "astrologer" in Old English: tunglere, tungolcræftiga, tungolwītega, tīdymbwlātend, tīdscēawere.[76] In Modern English, however, the roles of such synonyms have largely been replaced by equivalents taken from Latin, French, and Greek, as English has taken the position of a diminished reliance upon native elements and resources for the creation of new words and terminologies. Familiarity with the etymology of groups of synonyms can give English speakers greater control over their linguistic register. See: List of Germanic and Latinate equivalents in English, Doublet (linguistics).
An exception to this and a peculiarity perhaps unique to a handful of languages, English included, is that the nouns for meats are commonly different from, and unrelated to, those for the animals from which they are produced, the animal commonly having a Germanic name and the meat having a French-derived one. Examples include: deer and venison; cow and beef; swine/pig and pork; and sheep/lamb and mutton. This is assumed to be a result of the aftermath of the Norman conquest of England, where an Anglo-Norman-speaking elite were the consumers of the meat, produced by lower classes, which happened to be largely Anglo-Saxon, though this same duality can also be seen in other languages like French, which did not undergo such linguistic upheaval (e.g. boeuf "beef" vs. vache "cow"). With the exception of beef and pork, the distinction today is gradually becoming less and less pronounced (venison is commonly referred to simply as deer meat, mutton is lamb, and chicken is both the animal and the meat over the more traditional term poultry. (Use of the term mutton, however, remains, especially when referring to the meat of an older sheep, distinct from lamb; and poultry remains when referring to the meat of birds and fowls in general.)
There are Latinate words that are used in everyday speech. These words no longer appear Latinate and oftentimes have no Germanic equivalents. For instance, the words mountain, valley, river, aunt, uncle, move, use, push and stay ("to remain") are Latinate. Likewise, the inverse can occur: acknowledge, meaningful, understanding, mindful, lavish, behaviour, forbearance, behoove, forestall, allay, rhyme, starvation, embodiment come from Anglo-Saxon, and allegiance, abandonment, debutant, feudalism, seizure, guarantee, disregard, wardrobe, disenfranchise, disarray, bandolier, bourgeoisie, debauchery, performance, furniture, gallantry are of Germanic origin, usually through the Germanic element in French, so it is oftentimes impossible to know the origin of a word based on its register.
English easily accepts technical terms into common usage and often imports new words and phrases. Examples of this phenomenon include contemporary words such as cookie, Internet and URL (technical terms), as well as genre, über, lingua franca and amigo (imported words/phrases from French, German, Italian, and Spanish, respectively). In addition, slang often provides new meanings for old words and phrases. In fact, this fluidity is so pronounced that a distinction often needs to be made between formal forms of English and contemporary usage.
See also: sociolinguistics
Number of words in English[link]
The General Explanations at the beginning of the Oxford English Dictionary states:
The Vocabulary of a widely diffused and highly cultivated living language is not a fixed quantity circumscribed by definite limits... there is absolutely no defining line in any direction: the circle of the English language has a well-defined centre but no discernible circumference.
The current FAQ for the OED further states:
How many words are there in the English language? There is no single sensible answer to this question. It's impossible to count the number of words in a language, because it's so hard to decide what actually counts as a word.[77]
The vocabulary of English is undoubtedly vast, but assigning a specific number to its size is more a matter of definition than of calculation. Unlike other languages such as French (the Académie française), German (Rat für deutsche Rechtschreibung), Spanish (Real Academia Española) and Italian (Accademia della Crusca), there is no academy to define officially accepted words and spellings. Neologisms are coined regularly in medicine, science, technology and other fields, and new slang is constantly developed. Some of these new words enter wide usage; others remain restricted to small circles. Foreign words used in immigrant communities often make their way into wider English usage. Archaic, dialectal, and regional words might or might not be widely considered as "English".
The Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd edition (OED2) includes over 600,000 definitions, following a rather inclusive policy:
It embraces not only the standard language of literature and conversation, whether current at the moment, or obsolete, or archaic, but also the main technical vocabulary, and a large measure of dialectal usage and slang (Supplement to the OED, 1933).[78]
The editors of Webster's Third New International Dictionary, Unabridged include 475,000 main headwords, but in their preface they estimate the true number to be much higher.
Comparisons of the vocabulary size of English to that of other languages are generally not taken very seriously by linguists and lexicographers. Besides the fact that dictionaries will vary in their policies for including and counting entries,[79] what is meant by a given language and what counts as a word do not have simple definitions. Also, a definition of word that works for one language may not work well in another,[80] with differences in morphology and orthography making cross-linguistic definitions and word-counting difficult, and potentially giving very different results.[81] Linguist Geoffrey K. Pullum has gone so far as to compare concerns over vocabulary size (and the notion that a supposedly larger lexicon leads to "greater richness and precision") to an obsession with penis length.[82]
In December 2010 a joint Harvard/Google study found the language to contain 1,022,000 words and to expand at the rate of 8,500 words per year.[83] The findings came from a computer analysis of 5,195,769 digitised books. Others have estimated a rate of growth of 25,000 words each year.[84]
Word origins[link]
One of the consequences of the French influence is that the vocabulary of English is, to a certain extent, divided between those words that are Germanic (mostly West Germanic, with a smaller influence from the North Germanic branch) and those that are "Latinate" (derived directly from Latin, or through Norman French or other Romance languages). The situation is further compounded, as French, particularly Old French and Anglo-French, were also contributors in English of significant numbers of Germanic words, mostly from the Frankish element in French (see List of English Latinates of Germanic origin).
The majority (estimates range from roughly 50%[85] to more than 80%[86]) of the thousand most common English words are Germanic. However, the majority of more advanced words in subjects such as the sciences, philosophy and mathematics come from Latin or Greek, with Arabic also providing many words in astronomy, mathematics, and chemistry.[87]
| 1st 100 | 1st 1,000 | 2nd 1,000 | Subsequent | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Germanic | 97% | 57% | 39% | 36% |
| Italic | 3% | 36% | 51% | 51% |
| Hellenic | 0 | 4% | 4% | 7% |
| Others | 0 | 3% | 6% | 6% |
| Source: Nation 2001, p. 265 | ||||
Numerous sets of statistics have been proposed to demonstrate the proportionate origins of English vocabulary. None, as of yet, is considered definitive by most linguists.
A computerised survey of about 80,000 words in the old Shorter Oxford Dictionary (3rd ed.) was published in Ordered Profusion by Thomas Finkenstaedt and Dieter Wolff (1973)[88] that estimated the origin of English words as follows:
- Langue d'oïl, including French and Old Norman: 28.3%
- Latin, including modern scientific and technical Latin: 28.24%
- Germanic languages (including words directly inherited from Old English; does not include Germanic words coming from the Germanic element in French, Latin or other Romance languages): 25%
- Greek: 5.32%
- No etymology given: 4.03%
- Derived from proper names: 3.28%
- All other languages: less than 1%
A survey by Joseph M. Williams in Origins of the English Language of 10,000 words taken from several thousand business letters gave this set of statistics:[89]
- French (langue d'oïl): 41%
- "Native" English: 33%
- Latin: 15%
- Old Norse: 2%
- Dutch: 1%
- Other: 10%
Old Norse origins[link]
Main article: List of English words of Old Norse origin
Many words of Old Norse origin have entered the English language, primarily from the Viking colonisation of eastern and northern England between 800–1000 CE during the Danelaw. These include common words such as anger, awe, bag, big, birth, blunder, both, cake, call, cast, cosy, cross, cut, die, dirt, drag, drown, egg, fellow, flat, flounder, gain, get, gift, give, guess, guest, gust, hug, husband, ill, kid, law, leg, lift, likely, link, loan, loose, low, mistake, odd, race (running), raise, root, rotten, same, scale, scare, score, seat, seem, sister, skill, skin, skirt, skull, sky, stain, steak, sway, take, though, thrive, Thursday, tight, till (until), trust, ugly, want, weak, window, wing, wrong, the pronoun they (and its forms), and even the verb are (the present plural form of to be) through a merger of Old English and Old Norse cognates.[90] More recent Scandinavian imports include angstrom, fjord, geyser, kraken, litmus, nickel, ombudsman, saga, ski, slalom, smorgasbord, and tungsten.
French origins[link]
Main article: List of English words of French origin
A large portion of English vocabulary is of French or Langues d'oïl origin, and was transmitted to English via the Anglo-Norman language spoken by the upper classes in England in the centuries following the Norman Conquest. Words of Norman-French origin include competition, mountain, art, table, publicity, role, pattern, joust, choice, and force. As a result of the length of time they have been in use in English, these words have been anglicised to fit English rules of phonology, pronunciation and spelling.
Some French words were adopted during the 17th to 19th centuries, when French was the dominant language of Western international politics and trade. These words can normally be distinguished because they retain French rules for pronunciation and spelling, including diacritics, are often phrases rather than single words, and are sometimes written in italics. Examples include police, routine, machine, façade, table d'hôte and affaire de cœur. These words and phrases retain their French spelling and pronunciation because historically their French origin was emphasised to denote the speaker as educated or well-travelled at a time when education and travelling was still restricted to the middle and upper classes, and so their use implied a higher social status in the user. (See also: French phrases used by English speakers).
Dutch and Low German origins[link]
Main article: List of English words of Dutch origin
Many words describing the navy, types of ships, and other objects or activities on the water are of Dutch origin. Yacht, skipper, cruiser, flag, freight, furlough, breeze, hoist, iceberg, boom, duck ("fabric, cloth"), and maelstrom are examples. Other words pertain to art and daily life: easel, etch, slim, staple (Middle Dutch stapel "market"), slip (Middle Dutch slippen), landscape, cookie, curl, shock, aloof, boss, brawl (brallen "to boast"), smack (smakken "to hurl down"), shudder, scum, peg, coleslaw, waffle, dope (doop "dipping sauce"), slender (Old Dutch slinder), slight, gas, pump. Dutch has also contributed to English slang, e.g. spook, and the now obsolete snyder (tailor) and stiver (small coin).
Words from Low German include bluster, cower, dollar, drum, geek, grab, lazy, mate, monkey, mud, ogle, orlop, paltry, poll, poodle, prong, scurvy, smug, smuggle, trade.
Writing system[link]
Main articles: English alphabet and English orthography
Since around the 9th century, English has been written in the Latin script, which replaced Anglo-Saxon runes. The modern English alphabet contains 26 letters of the Latin script: a, b, c, d, e, f, g, h, i, j, k, l, m, n, o, p, q, r, s, t, u, v, w, x, y, z (which also have majuscule, capital or uppercase forms: A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, J, K, L, M, N, O, P, Q, R, S, T, U, V, W, X, Y, Z). Other symbols used in writing English include the ligatures, æ and œ (though these are uncommon). There is also some usage of diacritics, mainly in foreign loanwords (like the acute accent in café and exposé), and in the occasional use of a diaeresis to indicate that two vowels are pronounced separately (as in naïve, Zoë). For more information see English words with diacritics.
The spelling system, or orthography, of English is multilayered, with elements of French, Latin and Greek spelling on top of the native Germanic system; further complications have arisen through sound changes with which the orthography has not kept pace. This means that, compared with many other languages, English spelling is not a reliable indicator of pronunciation and vice versa (it is not, generally speaking, a phonemic orthography).
Though letters and sounds may not correspond in isolation, spelling rules that take into account syllable structure, phonetics, and accents are 75% or more reliable.[91] Some phonics spelling advocates claim that English is more than 80% phonetic.[92] However, English has fewer consistent relationships between sounds and letters than many other languages; for example, the letter sequence ough can be pronounced in 10 different ways. The consequence of this complex orthographic history is that reading can be challenging.[93] It takes longer for students to become completely fluent readers of English than of many other languages, including French, Greek, and Spanish.[94] English-speaking children have been found to take up to two years longer to learn to read than children in 12 other European countries.[95]
As regards the consonants, the correspondence between spelling and pronunciation is fairly regular. The letters b, d, f, h, j, k, l, m, n, p, r, s, t, v, w, z represent, respectively, the phonemes /b/, /d/, /f/, /h/, /dʒ/, /k/, /l/, /m/, /n/, /p/, /r/, /s/, /t/, /v/, /w/, /z/ (as tabulated in the Consonants section above). The letters c and g normally represent /k/ and /g/, but there is also a soft c pronounced /s/, and a soft g pronounced /dʒ/. Some sounds are represented by digraphs: ch for /tʃ/, sh for /ʃ/, th for /θ/ or /ð/, ng for /ŋ/ (also ph is pronounced /f/ in Greek-derived words). Doubled consonant letters (and the combination ck) are generally pronounced as single consonants, and qu and x are pronounced as the sequences /kw/ and /ks/. The letter y, when used as a consonant, represents /j/. However this set of rules is not applicable without exception; many words have silent consonants or other cases of irregular pronunciation.
With the vowels, however, correspondences between spelling and pronunciation are even more irregular. As can be seen under Vowels above, there are many more vowel phonemes in English than there are vowel letters (a, e, i, o, u, y). This means that diphthongs and other long vowels often need to be indicated by combinations of letters (like the oa in boat and the ay in stay), or using a silent e or similar device (as in note and cake). Even these devices are not used consistently, and consequently vowel pronunciation remains the main source of irregularity in English orthography.
See also[link]
 |
Book: English language |
| Wikipedia books are collections of articles that can be downloaded or ordered in print. | |
- Changes to Old English vocabulary
- English for academic purposes
- English language in Europe
- Language Report
- Lists of English words
- Teaching English as a foreign language
- The Adventure of English (film)
- The Story of English
- European Society for the Study of English
References[link]
- ^ English Adjective – Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary – Oxford University Press ©2010.
- ^ a b The Triumph of English, The Economist, 20 Dec. 2001
- ^ a b "Lecture 7: World-Wide English". EHistLing. http://classic-web.archive.org/web/20070401233529/http://www.ehistling-pub.meotod.de/01_lec06.php. Retrieved 26 March 2007.
- ^ Seth Mydans (14 May 2007) "Across cultures, English is the word" New York Times. Retrieved 21 September 2011
- ^ a b "Ethnologue, 1999". Archived from the original on 29 April 1999. http://web.archive.org/web/19990429232804/www.sil.org/ethnologue/top100.html. Retrieved 31 October 2010.
- ^ Ammon, pp. 2245–2247.
- ^ Schneider, p. 1.
- ^ Mazrui, p. 21.
- ^ Howatt, pp. 127–133.
- ^ Crystal, pp. 87–89.
- ^ Wardhaugh, p. 60.
- ^ "English – Definition from the Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary". Merriam-webster.com. 25 April 2007. http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/English. Retrieved 2 January 2010.
- ^ a b Daniel Weissbort (2006). "Translation: theory and practice : a historical reader". p.100. Oxford University Press, 2006
- ^ "Words on the brain: from 1 million years ago?". History of language. http://www.historyworld.net/wrldhis/PlainTextHistories.asp?historyid=ab13. Retrieved 5 September 2010.
- ^ Albert C. Baugh & Thomas Cable (1978). "Latin Influences on Old English". An excerpt from Foreign Influences on Old English. http://www.orbilat.com/Influences_of_Romance/English/RIFL-English-Latin-The_Inflluences_on_Old_English.html. Retrieved 5 September 2010.
- ^ "How many words are there in the English Language?". Oxforddictionaries.com. http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/page/howmanywords.
- ^ "Vista Worldwide Language Statistics". Vistawide.com. http://www.vistawide.com/languages/language_statistics.htm. Retrieved 31 October 2010.
- ^ "Global English: gift or curse?". http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract;jsessionid=92238D4607726060BCBD3DB70C472D0F.tomcat1?fromPage=online&aid=291932. Retrieved 4 April 2005.
- ^ a b c d e David Graddol (1997). "The Future of English?" (PDF). The British Council. http://www.britishcouncil.org/de/learning-elt-future.pdf. Retrieved 15 April 2007.
- ^ "IMO Standard Marine Communication Phrases". International Maritime Organization. http://www.imo.org/OurWork/Safety/Navigation/Pages/StandardMarineCommunicationPhrases.aspx. Retrieved 2 June 2011. [dead link]
- ^ "FAQ – Language proficiency requirements for licence holders – In which languages does a licence holder need to demonstrate proficiency?". International Civil Aviation Organization – Air Navigation Bureau. http://www.icao.int/icao/en/trivia/peltrgFAQ.htm#23. Retrieved 2 June 2011.
- ^ "The triumph of English". The Economist. 20 December 2001. http://www.economist.com/world/europe/displayStory.cfm?Story_ID=883997. Retrieved 26 March 2007. (Subscription required)
- ^ Graphics: English replacing German as language of Science Nobel Prize winners. From J. Schmidhuber (2010), Evolution of National Nobel Prize Shares in the 20th Century at [http://arxiv.org/abs/1009.2634 arXiv:1009.2634v1
- ^ http://www.un.org/en/aboutun/languages.shtml
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- ^ Cheshire, Jenny (1991). English Around The World: Sociolinguistic Perspectives. Cambridge University Press. DOI:10.2277/0521395658. ISBN 0-521-39565-8.
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- ^ "Bede's Ecclesiastical History of England | Christian Classics Ethereal Library". Ccel.org. 1 June 2005. http://www.ccel.org/ccel/bede/history.v.i.xiv.html. Retrieved 2 January 2010.
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- ^ Bosworth, Joseph; Toller, T. Northcote. "Englisc". An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary (Online). Prague: Charles University. http://bosworth.ff.cuni.cz/009433.
- ^ Collingwood, R. G.; et al (1936). "The English Settlements. The Sources for the period: Angles, Saxons, and Jutes on the Continent". Roman Britain and English Settlements. Oxford, England: Clarendon. pp. 325 et sec. ISBN 0-8196-1160-3.
- ^ "Linguistics Research Center Texas University". Utexas.edu. 20 February 2009. http://www.utexas.edu/cola/centers/lrc/eieol/engol-0-X.html. Retrieved 21 April 2010.
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- ^ David Graddol, Dick Leith, and Joan Swann, English: History, Diversity and Change (New York: Routledge, 1996), 101.
- ^ See Cercignani, Fausto, Shakespeare's Works and Elizabethan Pronunciation, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1981.
- ^ A History of the English Language|Page: 336 | By: Albert C. Baugh and Thomas Cable | Publisher: Routledge; 5 edition (21 March 2002)
- ^ Curtis, Andy. Color, Race, And English Language Teaching: Shades of Meaning. 2006, page 192.
- ^ CIA World Factbook, Field Listing – Languages (World).
- ^ Languages of the World (Charts), Comrie (1998), Weber (1997), and the Summer Institute for Linguistics (SIL) 1999 Ethnologue Survey. Available at The World's Most Widely Spoken Languages
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- ^ Crystal, David (2003). English as a Global Language (2nd ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 69. ISBN 978-0-521-53032-3. http://books.google.com/?id=d6jPAKxTHRYC. , cited in Power, Carla (7 March 2005). "Not the Queen's English". Newsweek. http://www.newsweek.com/id/49022.
- ^ "U.S. Census Bureau, Statistical Abstract of the United States: 2003, Section 1 Population" (PDF). U.S. Census Bureau. pp. 59 pages. http://www.census.gov/prod/2005pubs/06statab/pop.pdf. Table 47 gives the figure of 214,809,000 for those five years old and over who speak exclusively English at home. Based on the American Community Survey, these results exclude those living communally (such as college dormitories, institutions, and group homes), and by definition exclude native English speakers who speak more than one language at home.
- ^ a b "The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language, Second Edition, Crystal, David; Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, [1995] (3 August 2003)". Cambridge.org. http://www.cambridge.org/catalogue/catalogue.asp?isbn=0521530334. Retrieved 21 April 2010.
- ^ Population by mother tongue and age groups, 2006 counts, for Canada, provinces and territories–20% sample data, Census 2006, Statistics Canada.
- ^ Census Data from Australian Bureau of Statistics Main Language Spoken at Home. The figure is the number of people who only speak English at home.
- ^ Figures are for speakers of Nigerian Pidgin, an English-based pidgin or creole. Ihemere gives a range of roughly 3 to 5 million native speakers; the midpoint of the range is used in the table. Ihemere, Kelechukwu Uchechukwu. 2006. "A Basic Description and Analytic Treatment of Noun Clauses in Nigerian Pidgin." Nordic Journal of African Studies 15(3): 296–313.
- ^ Census in Brief, page 15 (Table 2.5), 2001 Census, Statistics South Africa
- ^ "About people, Language spoken". Statistics New Zealand. 2006 census. http://www.stats.govt.nz/Census/2006-census-data/classification-counts-tables/about-people/language-spoken.aspx. Retrieved 28 September 2009. [dead link] (links to Microsoft Excel files)
- ^ Subcontinent Raises Its Voice, Crystal, David; Guardian Weekly: Friday 19 November 2004.
- ^ Yong Zhao; Keith P. Campbell (1995). "English in China". World Englishes 14 (3): 377–390. Hong Kong contributes an additional 2.5 million speakers (1996 by-census).
- ^ Table C-17: Population by Bilingualism and trilingualism, 2001 Census of India [1]
- ^ Tropf, Herbert S. 2004. India and its Languages[dead link]. Siemens AG, Munich
- ^ For the distinction between "English Speakers" and "English Users", see: TESOL-India (Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages). Their article explains the difference between the 350 million number mentioned in a previous version of this Wikipedia article and a more plausible 90 million number:
Wikipedia's India estimate of 350 million includes two categories – "English Speakers" and "English Users". The distinction between the Speakers and Users is that Users only know how to read English words while Speakers know how to read English, understand spoken English as well as form their own sentences to converse in English. The distinction becomes clear when you consider the China numbers. China has over 200~350 million users that can read English words but, as anyone can see on the streets of China, only handful of million who are English speakers.
- ^ a b c "Ethnologue report for Philippines". Ethnologue.com. http://www.ethnologue.com/show_country.asp?name=PH. Retrieved 2 January 2010.
- ^ "Australian Bureau of Statistics". Censusdata.abs.gov.au. http://www.censusdata.abs.gov.au/ABSNavigation/prenav/ViewData?action=404&documentproductno=0&documenttype=Details&order=1&tabname=Details&areacode=0&issue=2006&producttype=Census%20Tables&javascript=true&textversion=false&navmapdisplayed=true&breadcrumb=TLPD&&collection=Census&period=2006&productlabel=Proficiency%20in%20Spoken%20English/Language%20by%20Age%20-%20Time%20Series%20Statistics%20(1996,%202001,%202006%20Census%20Years)&producttype=Census%20Tables&method=Place%20of%20Usual%20Residence&topic=Cultural%20&. Retrieved 21 April 2010.
- ^ Nancy Morris (1995). Puerto Rico: Culture, Politics, and Identity. Praeger/Greenwood. p. 62. ISBN 0-275-95228-2. http://books.google.com/?id=vyQDYqz2kFsC&pg=RA1-PA62&lpg=RA1-PA62&dq=%22puerto+rico%22+official+language+1993.
- ^ Languages Spoken in the US[dead link], National Virtual Translation Center, 2006.
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- ^ Oxford English Dictionary, see entry "civilisation"
- ^ Oxford English Dictionary, see entry "contract"
- ^ For the processes and triggers of English vocabulary changes cf. English and General Historical Lexicology (by Joachim Grzega and Marion Schöner)
- ^ Baugh, Cable, A History of the English Language Fifth Edition, 50.
- ^ "How many words are there in the English language?". Oxford Dictionaries Online. Oxford University Press. http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/page/howmanywords. Retrieved 17 September 2010.
- ^ It went on to clarify,
Hence we exclude all words that had become obsolete by 1150 [the end of the Old English era]... Dialectal words and forms which occur since 1500 are not admitted, except when they continue the history of the word or sense once in general use, illustrate the history of a word, or have themselves a certain literary currency.
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- Cercignani, Fausto, Shakespeare's Works and Elizabethan Pronunciation, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1981.
- Crystal, David (1997). English as a Global Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-53032-6. http://books.google.com/?id=d6jPAKxTHRYC.
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- Dunton-Downer, Leslie (2010). The English Is Coming!: How One Language Is Sweeping the World. New York: Touchstone Books. ISBN 978-1-4391-7665-8. http://books.google.com/books?id=NBK6FoHLgcEC&printsec=frontcover.
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External links[link]
 |
Look up Appendix:List of Proto-Indo-European roots in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. |
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Wikiversity has learning materials about Topic:English Language |
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Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: English language |
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Look up English in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. |
Media related to English language at Wikimedia Commons- Accents of English from Around the World (University of Edinburgh) Hear and compare how the same 110 words are pronounced in 50 English accents from around the world – instantaneous playback online
- Dictionaries
- Collection of English bilingual dictionaries
- dict.org
- Dictionary of American Regional English
- English language word roots, prefixes and suffixes (affixes) dictionary
- Merriam-Webster's online dictionary
- Macquarie Dictionary Online
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