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11th century manuscript of the Hebrew Bible with Aramaic Targum

The Hebrew Bible (Latin Biblia Hebraica, also Hebrew Scriptures, Jewish Bible) is a term used by biblical scholars to refer to the Tanakh (Hebrew: תנ"ך‎), a canonical collection of Jewish texts, and the common textual source of the several canonical editions of the Christian Old Testament. These texts are composed mainly in Biblical Hebrew, with some passages in Biblical Aramaic (in the books of Daniel, Ezra and a few others).

The content, to which the Protestant Old Testament closely corresponds, does not act as source to the deuterocanonical portions of the Roman Catholic, nor to the Anagignoskomena portions of the Eastern Orthodox Old Testaments. The term does not comment upon the naming, numbering or ordering of books, which varies with later Christian Biblical canons.

The term is an attempt to provide specificity with respect to contents, while avoiding allusion to any particular interpretative tradition or theological school of thought. It is widely used in academic writing and interfaith discussion in relatively neutral contexts meant to include dialogue among all religious traditions, but not widely in the inner discourse of the religions which use its text.

Usage[link]

Hebrew Bible is a term that refers to the Tanakh (Jewish canon) in relation to the many Christian biblical canons. In its Latin form, Biblia Hebraica, it traditionally serves as a title for printed editions of the Masoretic Text.

Many scholars advocate use of the term Hebrew Bible when discussing these books in academic writing, as a neutral substitute to terms with religious connotations (e.g., the non-neutral term "old testament").^[1] The Society of Biblical Literature's Handbook of Style, which is the standard for major academic journals like Harvard Theological Review and conservative Protestant journals like Bibliotheca Sacra and Westminster Theological Journal, suggests that authors "be aware of the connotations of alternative expressions such as ... Hebrew Bible [and] Old Testament" without prescribing the use of either.^[2]

Additional difficulties include:

• In terms of theology, Christianity has struggled with the relationship between "old" and "new" testaments from its very beginnings.^[3][4] Modern Christian formulations of this tension, sometimes building upon ancient and medieval ideas, include supersessionism, covenant theology, dispensationalism, and dual-covenant theology. However, all of these formulations, except some forms of dual-covenant theology, are objectionable to mainstream Judaism and to many Jewish scholars and writers, for whom there is one eternal covenant between God and Israel, and who therefore reject the very term "Old Testament."
• In terms of canon, Christian usage of "Old Testament" does not refer to a universally agreed upon set of books, but rather varies depending on denomination.

Hebrew in the term Hebrew Bible refers to the original language of the books, but it may also be taken as referring to the Jews of the Second Temple era and the Diaspora, and their descendants, who preserved the transmission of the Masoretic Text up to the present day. The Hebrew Bible includes some small portions in Aramaic (mostly in the books of Daniel and Ezra), which are written and printed in the Aramaic square-script, was adopted as the Hebrew alphabet after the Babylonian exile. The Paleo-Hebrew alphabet was the Hebrew alphabet of the classical era of Solomon's Temple. Some Qumran Hebrew biblical manuscripts are written using the Paleo-Hebrew alphabet of the classical era of Solomon's Temple.^[5] The famous examples of the Paleo-Hebrew alphabet are the Siloam inscription (8th century BCE), the Lachish ostraca (6th century BCE), and the Bar Kokhba coin shown above (circa 132 CE).

Biblia Hebraica[link]

The Biblia Hebraica is edited by various German publishers.

• Between 1906 and 1955 Rudolf Kittel published 9 editions of it.
• 1966, the Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft published the renamed Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia in six editions until 1997.
• Since 2004 the Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft publishes the Biblia Hebraica Quinta including all variants of the Qumran manuscripts as well as the Masorah Magna.

See also[link]

Judaism portal

• Biblical canon
• Books of the Bible
• Christianity and Judaism
• Development of the Hebrew Bible canon
• Judeo-Christian
• Non-canonical books referenced in the Bible
• Torah
• List of major biblical figures

References[link]

Further reading[link]

• Brueggemann, Walter. An introduction to the Old Testament: the canon and Christian imagination (Westminster John Knox Press, 1997).
• Charlesworth, James H., ed. The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha. (2 vols.; Garden City: Doubleday, 1985).
• Hamilton, Mark (April 1998). "From Hebrew Bible to Christian Bible: Jews, Christians and the Word of God". From Jesus to Christ. PBS.org/Frontline. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/religion/first/scriptures.html. Retrieved 9 June 2011. 
• Johnson, Paul (1987). A History of the Jews (First, hardback ed.). London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson. ISBN 0-297-79091-9. 
• Kugel, James. The Bible as It Was. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1997).
• Kugel, James. In Potiphar's House: The Interpretive Life of Biblical Texts. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1990).
• Kuntz, John Kenneth. The People of Ancient Israel: an introduction to Old Testament Literature, History, and Thought, Harper and Row, 1974. ISBN 0-06-043822-3
• Leiman, Sid. The Canonization of Hebrew Scripture. (Hamden, CT: Archon, 1976).
• Levenson, Jon. Sinai and Zion: An Entry into the Jewish Bible. (San Francisco: HarperSan Francisco, 1985).
• Minkoff, Harvey. "Searching for the Better Text". Biblical Archaeology Review (online). http://www.bib-arch.org/e-features/searching-for-better-text.asp. Retrieved 9 June 2011. 
• Noth, Martin. A History of Pentateuchal Traditions. (1948; trans. by Bernhard Anderson; Atlanta: Scholars, 1981).
• Schniedewind, William M (2004). How the Bible Became a Book. Cambridge. http://books.google.com.au/books?id=tCTVc8_2vVQC&printsec=frontcover&dq=How+the+Bible+Became+a+Book#v=onepage&q&f=false. 
• Vermes, Geza, ed. The Dead Sea Scrolls in English. (3d ed.; New York: Penguin, 1987).

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Charles "Chuck" Missler is an author, evangelical Christian, Bible teacher, former businessman and US Naval officer. He is the founder of the Koinonia House ministry based in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho.

Biography[link]

Missler was for several years the chairman, the chief executive, and the largest shareholder of Western Digital. In 1983 he became the chairman and chief executive of Helionetics Inc., another technology company.^[1] After teaching for many years at Calvary Chapel Costa Mesa, Missler moved to Coeur d'Alene in 1992 and founded Koinonia House. Through this organization, Missler distributes a monthly newsletter, Bible study tapes, and a radio show, and speaks at conferences.^[2]

Missler is a prominent speaker on the subject of bible prophecy.^[3] Missler has had numerous programs aired on the Christian television station GOD TV, namely the DVD versions of his biblical studies "Learn the Bible in 24 Hours", "The Book of Revelation", "The Book of Genesis", and "The Book of Daniel".^{[citation needed]} A Los Angeles Times article reported that Missler and co-author Hal Lindsey had plagiarized a portion of Miami University Professor Edwin Yamauchi's 1982 book Foes From the Northern Frontier in their own 1992 book The Magog Factor.^[4] A YouTube video in which Missler uses a jar of peanut butter to attempt to disprove evolution attracted media attention in 2007-2008.^[5][6]

Books[link]

• 2002 Learn the Bible in 24 Hours Pub: Nelson Books ISBN 0-7852-6429-9
• 2006 Prophecy 20/20: Profiling the Future Through the Lens of Scripture Pub: Thomas Nelson ISBN 0-7852-1889-0
• Alien Encounters: The Secret Behind the UFO Phenomenon. Koinonia House. 2003. ISBN 1-57821-205-7. 
• Eastman, Mark, & Missler, Chuck (1995). The Creator: Beyond Time & Space. Word For Today. ISBN 0-936728-61-2. 
• Cosmic Codes: Hidden Messages From the Edge of Eternity. Koinonia House. 2004. ISBN 1-57821-255-3. 
• Hidden Treasures in the Biblical Text. Koinonia House. 2000. ISBN 1-57821-127-1. 

References[link]

External links[link]

Biography portal

• Koinonia House – Official website

This biographical article needs additional citations for verification. Please help by adding reliable sources. Contentious material about living persons that is unsourced or poorly sourced must be removed immediately, especially if potentially libelous or harmful. (August 2008)

Hector Avalos (born in Nogales, Sonora, México, October 8, 1958) is a professor of Religious Studies at Iowa State University and the author of several books about religion.^[1] He is a former Pentecostal preacher and child evangelist.^[2]

He has a Doctor of Philosophy in Hebrew Bible and Near Eastern Studies from Harvard University (1991), a Master of Theological Studies from Harvard Divinity School (1985), and a Bachelor of Arts in Anthropology from the University of Arizona in 1982.

Avalos arrived at Iowa State University in the Fall of 1993 after completing a postdoctoral fellowship (1991–93) in the departments of Anthropology and Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. In 1996 Avalos was named Professor of the Year at Iowa State University, where he was also named a Master Teacher for 2003–04. Other awards include The Early Achievement in Research and Creative Activity Award (College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, 1996), and the Outstanding Professor Award (College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, 1996)[1].

Avalos is an internationally recognized opponent of neo-creationism and the intelligent design movement, and is frequently linked to Guillermo Gonzalez, an astrophysicist and proponent of intelligent design who was denied tenure at Iowa State University in 2007. Avalos co-authored a statement against intelligent design in 2005, which was eventually signed by over 130 faculty members at Iowa State University. That faculty statement became a model for other statements at the University of Northern Iowa and at the University of Iowa.^{[citation needed]} Gonzalez and Avalos are both featured in the movie Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed (2008).

Avalos is an atheist activist and advocate of secular humanist ethics.

Research and publication[link]

Avalos' first major work was Illness and Health Care in the Ancient Near East: The Role of the Temple in Greece, Mesopotamia, and Israel (1995), published in the Harvard Semitic Monograph series. The book was the first to combine systematically critical biblical studies with medical anthropology to reconstruct the health care systems of Greece, Mesopotamia, and Israel.^[3] In Health Care and the Rise of Christianity (1999) Avalos outlined the thesis that Christianity began, in part, as a health care reform movement that sought to address the problems voiced by patients in the Greco-Roman world.^[4]

Since 2004, Avalos had turned his attention to the study of U.S. Latinos, the name given to people who live in the United States and trace their ancestry to the Spanish-speaking countries of Latin America. Latinos are now the largest "minority" in the United States, numbering over 40 million persons. By then, Avalos also served as General Editor of Religion in the Americas book series for Brill Publishers. He was the editor of, and a contributor to, Introduction to the U.S. Latina and Latino Religious Experience (2004), which aimed to be the first general textbook on U.S. Latino/a religions. It was unusual because it covered groups such as Dominicans and Central Americans, which most other books on Latino religion usually overlook.^{[citation needed]}

His book Fighting Words: The Origins of Religious Violence (2005) used scarce resource theory to explain the role of religion in violence. Avalos argues that all conflict is usually the result of some resource that is either scarce or perceived to be scarce. This could range from love in a family to energy on a global scale. When religion causes violence, it does so because it has created a new scarce resource somewhere. Such scarce resources could include sacred space ("The Holy Land"), group privileging, and eternal life. Violence may result from the effort to maintain or acquire these religiously-created resources, and people may be willing to give or take life in pursuit of these resources. However, unlike scarcities that are verifiable (e.g., water, oil), resources such as eternal life are unverifiable and created entirely by religious bellief. Therefore, when one kills for religious reasons, one is usually trading actual lives for resources that are either not scarce or cannot even be verified to exist. He made the further argument that religious violence is always immoral, whereas secular violence is only sometimes immoral. The book also offered a scathing critique of religionist scholars who defended biblical violence and genocide, as well as a critique of the thesis that the Nazi Holocaust was an example of atheistic violence. Avalos and his book were featured on National Public Radio's Talk of the Nation on August 22, 2005. It established his position as a critic of religion alongside Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens and Daniel Dennett.

The same year, Avalos published Strangers in Our Own Land: Religion in U.S. Latina/o Literature (2005), which was the first systematic study of how Latino authors address issues of religion and specific religions (e.g., Judaism, Islam, Protestantism, Catholicism, African Religions, and Indigenous religions).

In 2007 Avalos published The End of Biblical Studies (2007) where he argued that academic biblical scholarship was primarily an apologetic religionist enterprise meant to provide the illusion that the Bible was still a culturally and morally superior authority. He critiqued numerous fields (translation, archaeology, history, textual criticism, literary aesthetics) arguing the discipline was permeated with pro-religionist biases. John Merrill of the Biblical Archaeology Review writes that "instead of being constructive, Avalos’s arguments come off in the end as an exercise in emotional nihilism whose conclusions seem ultimately self-defeating."^[5]

This Abled Body: Rethinking Disabilities in Biblical Studies, published also in 2007, saw Avalos returning to health care studies. He contributed to, and co-edited (with Sarah Melcher and Jeremy Schipper), an anthology that explores how biblical authors conceptualize the human body and deviations from "normative" views of the human body.^[6]

In 2011, Avalos published Slavery, Abolitionism, and the Ethics of Biblical Scholarship (Sheffield Phoenix Press), which seeks to deconstruct the claim that reliance on biblical and Christian ethics was a main factor in the abolition of slavery in western civilizations.^[7]

In addition to books, Avalos has published dozens of articles in peer reviewed and semi-scholarly periodicals (e.g., Journal of Biblical Literature, Journal of Hispanic/Latino Theology, Catholic Biblical Quarterly, and Traditio), as well as in standard reference books such as The Anchor Bible Dictionary (1992), The Oxford Companion to the Bible (1993), The Oxford Encyclopedia of Archaeology in the Near East (1996), Eerdmans Dictionary of the Bible (2000), and The New Interpreter's Dictionary of the Bible (2006–).The subjects have ranged from Astronomy and the Bible to targumic textual criticism.

Books[link]

• Slavery, Abolitionism, and the Ethics of Biblical Scholarship (Sheffield,UK: Sheffield Phoenix Press, 2011) ISBN 978-1-907534-28-7
• This Abled Body: Rethinking Disabilities in Biblical Studies (co-edited with Sarah Melcher and Jeremy Schipper) (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2007) ISBN 1-58983-186-1.
• The End of Biblical Studies (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2007) ISBN 1-59102-536-2.
• Strangers in Our Own Land: Religion in U.S. Latina/o Literature, (Nashville: Abingdon, 2005) ISBN 0-687-33045-9.
• Fighting Words: The Origins of Religious Violence, (Amherst, NY: Prometheus, 2005) ISBN 1-59102-284-3
• Introduction to the U.S. Latina and Latino Religious Experience, (Editor; Boston: Brill, 2004) ISBN 0-391-04240-8.
• Se puede saber si Dios existe? [Can One Know if God Exists?]. (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Press, 2003) ISBN 1-59102-043-3.
• Health Care and the Rise of Christianity, (Peabody: Mass: Hendrickson Press, 1999) ISBN 1-56563-337-7.
• Illness and Health Care in the Ancient Near East: The Role of the Temple in Greece, Mesopotamia, and Israel (Harvard Semitic Monographs 54: Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1995) ISBN 0-7885-0098-8.
• A chapter called, "Why Biblical studies must end" p107 in The End of Christianity edited by John W. Loftus, (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2011) ISBN 1-61614-413-5.

References[link]

External links[link]

• Hector Avalos Faculty Webpage
• Works by or about Hector Avalos in libraries (WorldCat catalog)
• Hector Avalos debates William Lane Craig — Resurrection of Jesus: Fact or Fiction?