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114-738: The words used in the Bible in Hebrew to designate mercy, including divine mercy, are rakham ( Exodus 34 :6; Isaiah 55 :7), khanan ( Deut. 4 :31) and khesed ( Nehemiah 9 :32). In the Greek of the New Testament and of the Septuagint , the word most commonly used to designate mercy, including divine mercy, is eleos . The Arabic word used in Islam to refer to divine mercy is raḥma . In Christianity and Judaism, it

228-549: A Jewish revolt that resulted in the end of Greek occupation. Hasmonean Judea was a client kingdom of the Romans, and in the 1st century BCE , the Romans replaced them with their protégé Herod the Great . After Herod’s death, Judea became a province under Rome's direct rule. Heavy taxes under the Romans and insensitivity towards the Jewish religion led to a revolt , and in 70   CE

342-468: A Messiah of (meaning descended from) David. Wisdom, or hokmah , implied the learning acquired by study and formal education: "those who can read and write, those who have engaged in study, and who know literature, are the wise par excellence ". The literature associated with this tradition includes the books of Job , Psalms , Proverbs , Ecclesiastes , Song of Songs , Sirach and the Wisdom of Solomon ,

456-623: A combined linguistic and historiographical approach, Hendel and Joosten date the oldest parts of the Hebrew Bible (the Song of Deborah in Judges 5 and the Samson story of Judges 16 and 1 Samuel) to having been composed in the premonarchial early Iron Age ( c.  1200 BCE ). The Dead Sea Scrolls , discovered in the caves of Qumran in 1947, are copies that can be dated to between 250 BCE and 100 CE. They are

570-517: A figure similar to a Messiah, as a descendant of the House of David who seemed, briefly, to be about to re-establish the ancient royal line. Zechariah writes of two messiahs, one royal and the other priestly. These early hopes were dashed (Zerubabbel disappears from the historical record, although the High Priests continued to be descended from Joshua ), and thereafter there are merely general references to

684-515: A goddess called the Queen of Heaven , probably a fusion of Astarte and the Mesopotamian goddess Ishtar , was possibly also worshiped, though this is often viewed as another title for Asherah. Baal and Yahweh coexisted in the early period but were considered irreconcilable after the 9th century. The worship of Yahweh alone, the concern of a small party in the monarchic period, gained ascendancy only in

798-611: A later addition), and the books of Tobit and Esther . The eastern Jews were also responsible for the adoption and transmission of the Babylonian and Persian apocalyptic tradition seen in Daniel. The Hebrew Bible represents the beliefs of a small sector within the Israelite community who were exiled by the Babylonians and emphasized on orthodox worship, genealogical purity and adherence to

912-472: A minority adopted views from Jubilees and 4QMMT , which promoted the idea that Jews were "radically discontinuous with the rest of humanity". Those works were of Essene, Hasidean or Sadducee origin. Other Jews were dissatisfied with the Pentateuch 's national-geographic definition of Jewishness, which did not sufficiently distinguish the multi-ethnic inhabitants of Judea from Jewish diasporas. For example,

1026-407: A period in which the living conditions of the writers – political, cultural, economic, and ecological – varied enormously. There are texts which reflect a nomadic existence, texts from people with an established monarchy and Temple cult, texts from exile, texts born out of fierce oppression by foreign rulers, courtly texts, texts from wandering charismatic preachers, texts from those who give themselves

1140-463: A place like Alexandria, Egypt. Moreover, in the early centuries of the church, some locales had better scribes than others. Modern scholars have come to recognize that the scribes in Alexandria – which was a major intellectual center in the ancient world – were particularly scrupulous, even in these early centuries, and that there, in Alexandria, a very pure form of the text of the early Christian writings

1254-686: A prophecy of Jeremiah . The Persian period ended after Alexander the Great 's conquest of the Mediterranean coast in 333-332   BCE. His empire disintegrated after his death, and Judea fell to the Ptolemies , who ruled Egypt. In 200   BCE, Israel and Judea were conquered by the Seleucids , who ruled Syria. Around 167   BCE, for reasons that remain obscure, the Seleucid king Antiochus IV Epiphanes attempted to suppress Jewish worship; this provoked

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1368-463: A special two-column form emphasizing their internal parallelism, which was found early in the study of Hebrew poetry. "Stichs" are the lines that make up a verse "the parts of which lie parallel as to form and content". Collectively, these three books are known as Sifrei Emet (an acronym of the titles in Hebrew, איוב, משלי, תהלים yields Emet אמ"ת, which is also the Hebrew for "truth"). Hebrew cantillation

1482-588: A variety of hypotheses regarding when and how the Torah was composed , but there is a general consensus that it took its final form during the reign of the Persian Achaemenid Empire (probably 450–350 BCE), or perhaps in the early Hellenistic period (333–164 BCE). The Hebrew names of the books are derived from the first words in the respective texts. The Torah consists of the following five books: The first eleven chapters of Genesis provide accounts of

1596-402: Is also known as the "Five Books of Moses " or the Pentateuch , meaning "five scroll-cases". Traditionally these books were considered to have been dictated to Moses by God himself. Since the 17th century, scholars have viewed the original sources as being the product of multiple anonymous authors while also allowing the possibility that Moses first assembled the separate sources. There are

1710-416: Is any deviation between two texts. Textual critic Daniel B. Wallace explains that "Each deviation counts as one variant, regardless of how many MSS [manuscripts] attest to it." Hebrew scholar Emanuel Tov says the term is not evaluative; it is a recognition that the paths of development of different texts have separated. Medieval handwritten manuscripts of the Hebrew Bible were considered extremely precise:

1824-529: Is believed that God chooses to be merciful and is not obliged to act as such. In Christianity, it is believed that it is through his action that God reveals his mercy. Divine mercy is appealed to in Christian repentances . In the Catholic Church , God's mercy is seen as the "universal root" of all of God's acts: divine mercy is the cause of all actions God accomplishes outside of himself. The Catechism of

1938-595: Is defined by what we love". Natural law is in the Wisdom literature, the Prophets, Romans 1, Acts 17, and the book of Amos (Amos 1:3–2:5), where nations other than Israel are held accountable for their ethical decisions even though they don't know the Hebrew god. Political theorist Michael Walzer finds politics in the Hebrew Bible in covenant, law, and prophecy, which constitute an early form of almost democratic political ethics. Key elements in biblical criminal justice begin with

2052-511: Is no surprise that different localities developed different kinds of textual tradition. That is to say, the manuscripts in Rome had many of the same errors, because they were for the most part "in-house" documents, copied from one another; they were not influenced much by manuscripts being copied in Palestine; and those in Palestine took on their own characteristics, which were not the same as those found in

2166-448: Is not possible to determine what their share was in the total Jewish population. Some scholars suggest that Jesus ' quote in the Gospel of Matthew , "Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You travel over land and sea to win a single convert, and when you have succeeded, you make them twice as much a child of hell as you are", is evidence of Jewish proselytism during

2280-641: Is not until the Babylonian Talmud ( c.  550 BCE ) that a listing of the contents of these three divisions of scripture are found. The Tanakh was mainly written in Biblical Hebrew , with some small portions (Ezra 4:8–6:18 and 7:12–26, Jeremiah 10:11, Daniel 2:4–7:28) written in Biblical Aramaic , a language which had become the lingua franca for much of the Semitic world. The Torah (תּוֹרָה)

2394-540: Is taken from the masoretic text (called the Leningrad Codex ) which dates from 1008. The Hebrew Bible can therefore sometimes be referred to as the Masoretic Text. The Hebrew Bible is also known by the name Tanakh ( Hebrew : תנ"ך ‎). This reflects the threefold division of the Hebrew scriptures, Torah ("Teaching"), Nevi'im ("Prophets") and Ketuvim ("Writings") by using the first letters of each word. It

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2508-555: Is the Jewish religion as it developed during the Second Temple period , which began with the construction of the Second Temple around 516 BCE and ended with the Roman siege of Jerusalem in 70   CE. The Second Temple period was marked by the emergence of multiple religious currents as well as extensive cultural, religious, and political developments among Jews . It saw the progression of

2622-562: Is the manner of chanting ritual readings as they are written and notated in the Masoretic Text of the Bible. Psalms, Job and Proverbs form a group with a "special system" of accenting used only in these three books. The five relatively short books of Song of Songs , Book of Ruth , the Book of Lamentations , Ecclesiastes , and Book of Esther are collectively known as the Hamesh Megillot . These are

2736-524: Is thought to have occurred before 68 during Nero's reign. Early Christians transported these writings around the Empire, translating them into Old Syriac , Coptic , Ethiopic , and Latin , and other languages. Bart Ehrman explains how these multiple texts later became grouped by scholars into categories: during the early centuries of the church, Christian texts were copied in whatever location they were written or taken to. Since texts were copied locally, it

2850-483: The Baháʼí Faith , and other Abrahamic religions . The Bible is an anthology (a compilation of texts of a variety of forms) originally written in Hebrew , Aramaic , and Koine Greek . The texts include instructions, stories, poetry, prophecies, and other genres. The collection of materials that are accepted as part of the Bible by a particular religious tradition or community is called a biblical canon . Believers in

2964-626: The Hebrew Bible or the Christian Bible, which contains both the Old and New Testaments . The English word Bible is derived from Koinē Greek : τὰ βιβλία , romanized:  ta biblia , meaning "the books" (singular βιβλίον , biblion ). The word βιβλίον itself had the literal meaning of " scroll " and came to be used as the ordinary word for "book". It is the diminutive of βύβλος byblos , "Egyptian papyrus", possibly so called from

3078-543: The Hebrew Bible was assembled, revised and edited in the 5th century   BCE to reflect the realities and challenges of the Persian era. The returnees had a particular interest in the history of Israel: the written Torah (the books of Genesis , Exodus , Leviticus , Numbers and Deuteronomy ), for example, likely existed in various forms during the Monarchy (the period of the kingdoms of Israel and Judah ), but according to

3192-680: The Hebrew Bible : the Septuagint , the Masoretic Text , and the Samaritan Pentateuch (which contains only the first five books). They are related but do not share the same paths of development. The Septuagint, or the LXX, is a translation of the Hebrew scriptures, and some related texts, into Koine Greek, and is believed to have been carried out by approximately seventy or seventy-two scribes and elders who were Hellenic Jews , begun in Alexandria in

3306-517: The Hebrew Bible canon , the synagogue , and Jewish eschatology . Additionally, the rise of Christianity began in the final years of the Second Temple period. According to Jewish tradition, authentic prophecy ( נְבוּאָה ‎ , Nevu’ah ) ceased during the early years of the Second Temple period; this left Jews without their version of divine guidance at a time when they felt most in need of support and direction. Under Hellenistic rule ,

3420-570: The Israelites and other nations, and conflicts among Israelites, specifically, struggles between believers in "the L ORD God" ( Yahweh ) and believers in foreign gods, and the criticism of unethical and unjust behaviour of Israelite elites and rulers; in which prophets played a crucial and leading role. It ends with the conquest of the Kingdom of Israel by the Neo-Assyrian Empire , followed by

3534-644: The Land of Israel as they expanded their independent territory. The later years of the Second Temple period saw the development of several Jewish messianic ideas . From c.  170 BCE to 30   CE, five successive generations of the Zugot headed the Jews' spiritual affairs; it was during this period that several factions, such as the Pharisees , Sadducees , Essenes , Zealots , and early Christians were formed. The " people of

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3648-597: The Mediterranean (fourth century to the founding of the Principate , 27  BCE ), the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple (70 CE), and the extension of Roman rule to parts of Scotland (84 CE). The books of the Bible were initially written and copied by hand on papyrus scrolls. No originals have survived. The age of the original composition of the texts is therefore difficult to determine and heavily debated. Using

3762-656: The Nevi'im ("prophets"), was canonized in the third century BCE. A third collection called the Ketuvim ("writings"), containing psalms, proverbs, and narrative histories, was canonized sometime between the second century BCE and the second century CE. These three collections were written mostly in Biblical Hebrew , with some parts in Aramaic , which together form the Hebrew Bible or "TaNaKh" (an abbreviation of "Torah", "Nevi'im", and "Ketuvim"). There are three major historical versions of

3876-411: 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 biblical 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

3990-684: The documentary hypothesis (disputed by some Christians) it was in the Second Temple that it was edited and revised into something like its current form, and the Chronicles , a history written at this time, reflects the concerns of the Persian Yehud in its almost exclusive focus on Judah and the Temple. Prophetic works were also of particular interest to the Persian-era authors, with some works being composed at this time (the last ten chapters of Isaiah and

4104-609: The names of God in Islam is al-raḥmān and al-raḥīm ("the Compassionate" and "the Merciful"). In Islam, portions of God's mercy are considered as being within all the world (and not only in humanity). Bible The Bible is a collection of religious texts or scriptures which to a certain degree are held to be sacred in Christianity , Judaism , Samaritanism , Islam ,

4218-545: The resurrection of the dead , which was rejected by the Sadducees) and possibly later led to Christians' expulsion from synagogues (see Council of Jamnia for other theories). While Marcionism rejected all Jewish influence on Christianity, proto-orthodox Christianity instead retained some of the doctrines and practices of 1st-century Judaism while rejecting others. They held the Tanakh to be authoritative and sacred, employing mostly

4332-512: The 17th century; its oldest existing copies date to c. 1100 CE. Samaritans include only the Pentateuch (Torah) in their biblical canon. They do not recognize divine authorship or inspiration in any other book in the Jewish Tanakh. A Samaritan Book of Joshua partly based upon the Tanakh's Book of Joshua exists, but Samaritans regard it as a non-canonical secular historical chronicle. In

4446-512: The 19th century to the present day. Research has not yet yielded a consensus among scholars: some believe that Judaism was a missionary religion, and others reject their conclusions. Some assess that the conversion of Gentiles to Judaism in the Hellenistic and Roman periods was a wide-ranging phenomenon of great demographic importance, while others doubt this. Modern research does not have the possibility to determine how many Gentiles converted, and it

4560-563: The 1st century   CE historian Josephus reports that there were more Jews in Syria (i.e., the Seleucid Empire) than in any other land. There was also a significant Egyptian diaspora, although the Jews of Egypt were immigrants, not deportees, "... attracted by Hellenistic culture, eager to win the respect of the Greeks and to adapt to their ways." The Egyptian diaspora was slow to develop, but by

4674-484: The 20th and early 21st centuries have accepted that widespread Torah observance began sometime around the middle of the 5th century   BCE. However, scholars such as David Zvi Hoffmann and Umberto Cassuto devote lengthy treatises to refuting Wellhausen's theories. More recently, Yonatan Adler has argued that in fact there is no surviving evidence to support the notion that the Torah was widely known, regarded as authoritative, and put into practice, any time prior to

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4788-463: The Bible "often juxtaposes contradictory ideas, without explanation or apology". The Hebrew Bible contains assumptions about the nature of knowledge, belief, truth, interpretation, understanding and cognitive processes. Ethicist Michael V. Fox writes that the primary axiom of the book of Proverbs is that "the exercise of the human mind is the necessary and sufficient condition of right and successful behavior in all reaches of life". The Bible teaches

4902-514: The Bible generally consider it to be a product of divine inspiration , but the way they understand what that means and interpret the text varies. The religious texts were compiled by different religious communities into various official collections. The earliest contained the first five books of the Bible, called the Torah in Hebrew and the Pentateuch (meaning five books ) in Greek. The second-oldest part

5016-471: The Bible has also been used to support abolitionism . Some have written that supersessionism begins in the book of Hebrews where others locate its beginnings in the culture of the fourth century Roman empire. The Bible has been used to support the death penalty , patriarchy , sexual intolerance , the violence of total war , and colonialism ; it has also been used to support charity , culture, healthcare and education . The term "Bible" can refer to

5130-700: The Bible. A number of biblical canons have since evolved. Christian biblical canons range from the 73 books of the Catholic Church canon, and the 66-book canon of most Protestant denominations, to the 81 books of the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church canon, among others. Judaism has long accepted a single authoritative text, whereas Christianity has never had an official version, instead having many different manuscript traditions. All biblical texts were treated with reverence and care by those that copied them, yet there are transmission errors, called variants, in all biblical manuscripts. A variant

5244-614: The Catholic Church states that "[t]he Gospel is the revelation in Jesus Christ of God's mercy to sinners ", and that "[t]here are no limits to the mercy of God, but anyone who deliberately refuses to accept his mercy by repenting, rejects the forgiveness of his sins and the salvation offered by the Holy Spirit ". In Islam , God's mercy is designated by the Arabic term raḥma. One of

5358-670: The Former Prophets ( Nevi'im Rishonim נביאים ראשונים , the narrative books of Joshua, Judges, Samuel and Kings) and the Latter Prophets ( Nevi'im Aharonim נביאים אחרונים , the books of Isaiah, Jeremiah and Ezekiel and the Twelve Minor Prophets ). The Nevi'im tell a story of the rise of the Hebrew monarchy and its division into two kingdoms, the Kingdom of Israel and the Kingdom of Judah , focusing on conflicts between

5472-401: The Galilean cities of Tiberias and Jerusalem, and in Babylonia (modern Iraq). Those living in the Jewish community of Tiberias in ancient Galilee ( c.  750 –950), made scribal copies of the Hebrew Bible texts without a standard text, such as the Babylonian tradition had, to work from. The canonical pronunciation of the Hebrew Bible (called Tiberian Hebrew) that they developed, and many of

5586-404: The Greek phrase ta biblia ("the books") to describe both the Old and New Testaments together. Latin biblia sacra "holy books" translates Greek τὰ βιβλία τὰ ἅγια ( tà biblía tà hágia , "the holy books"). Medieval Latin biblia is short for biblia sacra "holy book". It gradually came to be regarded as a feminine singular noun ( biblia , gen. bibliae ) in medieval Latin, and so

5700-495: The Hasmoneans were criticized for blurring the line between gentile and Jew when they converted Idumeans but others, who held a strict interpretation of Deuteronomy 17:15 , feared the Idumean Herodians would usurp the Hasmoneans. But most Jews believed the Idumeans were acceptable converts since they lived in the Promised Land . C.L. Crouch states that pro-integrationist Jews were more likely to descend from Jews who were re-settled in Babylonian urban centers. Second Temple Judaism

5814-429: The Hebrew Bible was produced. During the rise of Christianity in the first century CE, new scriptures were written in Koine Greek. Christians eventually called these new scriptures the "New Testament" and began referring to the Septuagint as the "Old Testament". The New Testament has been preserved in more manuscripts than any other ancient work. Most early Christian copyists were not trained scribes. Many copies of

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5928-489: The Hebrew Bible was written with spaces between words to aid in reading. By the eighth century CE, the Masoretes added vowel signs. Levites or scribes maintained the texts, and some texts were always treated as more authoritative than others. Scribes preserved and changed the texts by changing the script and updating archaic forms while also making corrections. These Hebrew texts were copied with great care. Considered to be scriptures ( sacred , authoritative religious texts),

6042-443: The Hellenistic period it exceeded the Babylonian community in importance. In addition to these major centres there were Jewish communities throughout the Hellenistic and subsequently the Roman world, from North Africa to Asia Minor and Greece and in Rome. There is also evidence for Jewish missionary activities in the Greco-Roman world. Overall, Second Temple Judaism and Samaritanism were two religions that gradually split from

6156-423: The Hellenistic period, the scriptures were translated into Greek as the Septuagint by the Jews of the Alexandrian diaspora in Egypt, who also produced a rich literature of their own covering epic poetry, philosophy, tragedy and other forms. Less is known of the Babylonian diaspora , but the Seleucid period produced works such as the court tales of the Book of Daniel (chapters 1-6 of Daniel - chapters 7-12 were

6270-427: The High Priest, which was unheard of in earlier times, became the governing authority, making the province of Yehud a de facto theocracy , although it seems unlikely that they had significant autonomy. In the Hellenistic period, the High Priest continued to play a vital role with both cultic and civic obligations, and the office reached its height under the Hasmoneans who made themselves priest-kings. Both Herod and

6384-399: The Jewish messiah, was God made flesh , who died for the sins of humanity, marking the beginning of Christology . Scholars additionally note the role of Hellenistic Judaism in Christianity and believe that the doctrine of Jesus's death for the redemption of mankind was not possible without Hellenism. While on one hand Jesus and the very first Christians had all been ethnically Jewish,

6498-402: The Jewish people and called from them his first disciples. Jewish Christians regarded "Christianity" as an affirmation of every aspect of contemporary Judaism, with the addition of one extra belief—that Jesus is the Messiah. The doctrines of the apostles of Jesus brought the early church into conflict with some Jewish religious authorities (e.g., the Book of Acts records a dispute over

6612-406: The Jewish tradition of writing and incorporating what it saw as inspired, authoritative religious books. The gospels , Pauline epistles , and other texts quickly coalesced into the New Testament . With estimated total sales of over five billion copies, the Bible is the best-selling publication of all time. It has had a profound influence both on Western culture and history and on cultures around

6726-399: The Persian conqueror Cyrus , and in 538   BCE, the exiles were permitted to return to Yehud Medinata , a Judean province of the Persian Empire . The Temple is commonly said to have been rebuilt in the period 520–515   BCE, but it seems probable that this is an artificial date chosen so that 70 years could be said to have passed between the destruction and the rebuilding, fulfilling

6840-472: The Prophets were accepted as authoritative by the 1st century   CE, but beyond this core the different Jewish groups continued to accept different groups of books as authoritative. The priesthood underwent profound changes with the Second Temple. Under the First Temple, the priesthood had been subordinate to the kings, but in the Second Temple, with the monarchy and even the state in the hands of foreign rulers, they became independent. The priesthood under

6954-450: The Roman general (and later emperor) Titus captured Jerusalem and destroyed the Temple, bringing an end to the Second Temple period. The Jewish exiles in Babylon were not slaves or prisoners, nor were they badly treated, and when the Persians gave permission for them to return to Jerusalem the majority elected to remain where they were. They and their descendants formed the diaspora , a large community of Jews living outside Judea, and

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7068-407: The Romans severely reduced the importance of the High Priest, appointing and deposing High Priests to suit their purposes. Since the Hasmonean era, the Idumeans were heavily integrated in Judean society. Idumean-majority populations existed in southern and western Judea, and they intermingled with Judeans. It is disputed whether this integration was forced or voluntary. Regardless, their presence

7182-419: The Septuagint or Targum translations and adding other texts as the New Testament canon developed . Christian baptism was another continuation of a Judaic practice. Recent work by historians paints a more complex portrait of late Second Temple Judaism and early Christianity. Some historians have suggested that, before his death, Jesus created amongst his believers such certainty that the Kingdom of God and

7296-423: The Tanakh, in Hebrew and Aramaic, that is considered the authoritative text of the Hebrew Bible by modern Rabbinic Judaism . The Septuagint is a Koine Greek translation of the Tanakh from the third and second centuries BC; it largely overlaps with the Hebrew Bible. Christianity began as an outgrowth of Second Temple Judaism , using the Septuagint as the basis of the Old Testament . The early Church continued

7410-624: The Zealots shared beliefs with the Pharisees , the latter were more democratic, respected the status quo, and believed Jewishness was a matter of choice than birth. Some historians argue the Pharisees were more interested in converting non-Pharisaical Jews. As a Jewish sect, early Christians also saw themselves as "true Israel". Compared to other Jews, they believed gentiles could assimilate without adopting customs such as circumcision. These beliefs, among others, caused Judaism and Christianity to separate as distinct religions. Whilst most contemporary Jews had no problem with integrating gentiles,

7524-427: The airs of sophisticated Hellenistic writers. It is a time-span which encompasses the compositions of Homer , Plato , Aristotle , Thucydides , Sophocles , Caesar , Cicero , and Catullus . It is a period which sees the rise and fall of the Assyrian empire (twelfth to seventh century) and of the Persian empire (sixth to fourth century), Alexander 's campaigns (336–326), the rise of Rome and its domination of

7638-426: The aural dimension" of the texts. Current indications are that writing and orality were not separate so much as ancient writing was learned in a context of communal oral performance. The Bible was written and compiled by many people , who many scholars say are mostly unknown, from a variety of disparate cultures and backgrounds. British biblical scholar John K. Riches wrote: [T]he biblical texts were produced over

7752-456: The belief in God as the source of justice and the judge of all, including those administering justice on earth. Carmy and Schatz say the Bible "depicts the character of God, presents an account of creation, posits a metaphysics of divine providence and divine intervention, suggests a basis for morality, discusses many features of human nature, and frequently poses the notorious conundrum of how God can allow evil." The authoritative Hebrew Bible

7866-422: The biblical account provided in the Book of Nehemiah (chapter 8), a priestly scribe named Ezra reads a copy of the Mosaic Torah before the populace of Judea assembled in a central Jerusalem square. Wellhausen believes that this narrative should be accepted as historical because it sounds plausible, noting "the credibility of the narrative appears on the face of it." Following Wellhausen, most scholars throughout

7980-441: The books of Haggai , Zechariah , Malachi and perhaps Joel ) and the older prophets edited and reinterpreted. The corpus of Wisdom books saw the composition of Job , parts of Proverbs , and possibly Ecclesiastes , while the book of Psalms was possibly given its modern shape and division into five parts at this time (although the collection continued to be revised and expanded well into Hellenistic and even Roman times). In

8094-416: The books of Ketuvim in the order they appear in most current printed editions. The Jewish textual tradition never finalized the order of the books in Ketuvim. The Babylonian Talmud ( Bava Batra 14b–15a) gives their order as Ruth, Psalms, Job, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Solomon, Lamentations of Jeremiah, Daniel, Scroll of Esther, Ezra, Chronicles. Second Temple Judaism Second Temple Judaism

8208-421: The books were compiled by different religious communities into various biblical canons (official collections of scriptures). The earliest compilation, containing the first five books of the Bible and called the Torah (meaning "law", "instruction", or "teaching") or Pentateuch ("five books"), was accepted as Jewish canon by the fifth century BCE. A second collection of narrative histories and prophesies, called

8322-465: 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 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

8436-688: The codified law. In the earliest stages of the Persian period, the returnees insisted on a strict separation between themselves ("Israel") and those who had never gone into exile ("Canaanites"), to the extent of prohibiting intermarriage; this was presented in terms of religious purity, but there may have been a practical concern for land ownership. Ethnic markers for Israelite (or later, Jewish) identity were radically reformed, with increased emphasis on genealogical descent and/or faith in Yahweh, compared to circumcision . Views on gentile integration varied across Jewish schools of thought. The Sadducees doubted

8550-531: The common religion of Yahwism . For most of the Second Temple period, Samaria was larger, richer, and more populous than Judea—down to about 164   BCE there were probably more Samaritans than Judeans living in Palestine. They had their own temple on Mount Gerizim near Shechem and regarded themselves as the true Israel, who remained after Eli , a wicked high priest , convinced the other Israelites to abandon Gerizim and worship at Shiloh. Second Temple Judeans, however, derided them as foreign converts and

8664-578: The conquest of the Kingdom of Judah by the neo-Babylonian Empire and the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem . The Former Prophets are the books Joshua, Judges, Samuel and Kings. They contain narratives that begin immediately after the death of Moses with the divine appointment of Joshua as his successor, who then leads the people of Israel into the Promised Land , and end with the release from imprisonment of

8778-583: The early Christian church translated its canon into Vulgar Latin (the common Latin spoken by ordinary people), a translation known as the Vulgate . Since then, Catholic Christians have held ecumenical councils to standardize their biblical canon. The Council of Trent (1545–63), held by the Catholic Church in response to the Protestant Reformation , authorized the Vulgate as its official Latin translation of

8892-461: The end of the Talmudic period ( c.  300 – c.  500 CE ), but the actual date is difficult to determine. In the sixth and seventh centuries, three Jewish communities contributed systems for writing the precise letter-text, with its vocalization and accentuation known as the mas'sora (from which we derive the term "masoretic"). These early Masoretic scholars were based primarily in

9006-438: The exilic and early post-exilic period, and it was only in the post-exilic period that the very existence of other gods was denied. The Persian period saw the development of expectation in a future human king who would rule a purified Israel as God's representative at the end of time – that is, a messiah . The first to mention this were Haggai and Zechariah , both prophets of the early Persian period. They saw Zerubbabel as

9120-572: The first century BCE. Fragments of the Septuagint were found among the Dead Sea Scrolls; portions of its text are also found on existing papyrus from Egypt dating to the second and first centuries BCE and to the first century CE. The Masoretes began developing what would become the authoritative Hebrew and Aramaic text of the 24 books of the Hebrew Bible in Rabbinic Judaism near

9234-595: The globe. The study of it through biblical criticism has indirectly impacted culture and history as well. The Bible is currently translated or is being translated into about half of the world's languages. Some view biblical texts to be morally problematic, historically inaccurate, or corrupted, although others find it a useful historical source for certain people and events or a source of moral and ethical teachings. The Bible neither calls for nor condemns slavery outright, but there are verses that address dealing with it, and these verses have been used to support it, although

9348-534: The gospels and Paul's letters were made by individual Christians over a relatively short period of time very soon after the originals were written. There is evidence in the Synoptic Gospels, in the writings of the early church fathers , from Marcion , and in the Didache that Christian documents were in circulation before the end of the first century. Paul's letters were circulated during his lifetime, and his death

9462-633: The growing Hellenization of Judaism became a source of resentment among Jewish traditionalists who clung to strict monotheistic beliefs . Opposition to Hellenistic influence on Jewish religious and cultural practices was a major catalyst for the Maccabean Revolt against the Seleucid Empire . Following the establishment of the Hasmonean dynasty , traditional Judaism was reasserted by the Maccabees across

9576-482: The hands of Gentiles is divine judgment for Judean wickedness. Daniel R. Scwhartz considers 2 Maccabees to be implicitly anti-Hasmonean and pro-Pharisee. One reason for the covert criticism includes 2 Maccabees being written too early and their authors being diasporic. In his seminal Prolegomena zur Geschichte Israels , Julius Wellhausen argues that Judaism as a religion based on widespread observance Torah law first emerged in 444   BCE when, according to

9690-509: The impure offspring of mixed marriages. By the late 2nd century   BCE, the Jews and Samaritans permanently split after a Hasmonean king destroyed a Samaritan temple at Mount Gerizim; before that the Samaritans seem to have regarded themselves as part of the wider Jewish community, but afterwards they denounced the Jerusalem temple as anathema to Yahweh. In recent decades it has become increasingly common among scholars to assume that much of

9804-481: The land ", that is the uneducated people of the Holy Land , may be seen as another faction of Second Temple Judaism. (Note: dates and periods are in many cases approximate and/or conventional) In 586   BCE, Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar II captured Jerusalem , destroyed the Temple of Solomon , and deported the elite of the population to Babylon (the " Babylonian exile "). In 539   BCE, Babylon fell to

9918-653: The last king of Judah . Treating Samuel and Kings as single books, they cover: The Latter Prophets are Isaiah , Jeremiah , Ezekiel and the Twelve Minor Prophets , counted as a single book. Ketuvim (in Biblical Hebrew : כְּתוּבִים , romanized:  Kəṯūḇīm "writings") is the third and final section of the Tanakh. The Ketuvim are believed to have been written under the inspiration of Ruach HaKodesh (the Holy Spirit) but with one level less authority than that of prophecy . In Masoretic manuscripts (and some printed editions), Psalms, Proverbs and Job are presented in

10032-461: The late third century BCE and completed by 132 BCE. Probably commissioned by Ptolemy II Philadelphus , King of Egypt, it addressed the need of the primarily Greek-speaking Jews of the Graeco-Roman diaspora. Existing complete copies of the Septuagint date from the third to the fifth centuries CE, with fragments dating back to the second century BCE. Revision of its text began as far back as

10146-526: The latest books collected and designated as authoritative in the Jewish canon even though they were not complete until the second century CE. The books of Esther , Daniel , Ezra-Nehemiah and Chronicles share a distinctive style that no other Hebrew literary text, biblical or extra-biblical, shares. They were not written in the normal style of Hebrew of the post-exilic period. The authors of these books must have chosen to write in their own distinctive style for unknown reasons. The following list presents

10260-610: The middle of the 2nd century   BCE. Adler explores the likelihhood that Judaism, as the widespread practice of Torah law by Jewish society at large, first emerged in Judea during the reign of the Hasmonean dynasty, centuries after the putative time of Ezra. Nonetheless, this view conflicts with the scholarly consensus. The issue of conversion to Judaism and Jewish proselytism in Second Temple Judaism has occupied many scholars from

10374-452: The most authoritative documents from which to copy other texts. Even so, David Carr asserts that Hebrew texts still contain some variants. The majority of all variants are accidental, such as spelling errors, but some changes were intentional. In the Hebrew text, "memory variants" are generally accidental differences evidenced by such things as the shift in word order found in 1 Chronicles 17:24 and 2 Samuel 10:9 and 13. Variants also include

10488-457: The name of the Phoenician seaport Byblos (also known as Gebal) from whence Egyptian papyrus was exported to Greece. The Greek ta biblia ("the books") was "an expression Hellenistic Jews used to describe their sacred books". The biblical scholar F. F. Bruce notes that John Chrysostom appears to be the first writer (in his Homilies on Matthew , delivered between 386 and 388 CE) to use

10602-525: The nature of authority and the sharing of power, animals, trees and nature, money and economics, work, relationships, sorrow and despair and the nature of joy, among others. Philosopher and ethicist Jaco Gericke adds: "The meaning of good and evil, the nature of right and wrong, criteria for moral discernment, valid sources of morality, the origin and acquisition of moral beliefs, the ontological status of moral norms, moral authority, cultural pluralism, [as well as] axiological and aesthetic assumptions about

10716-443: The nature of valid arguments, the nature and power of language, and its relation to reality. According to Mittleman, the Bible provides patterns of moral reasoning that focus on conduct and character. In the biblical metaphysic, humans have free will, but it is a relative and restricted freedom. Beach says that Christian voluntarism points to the will as the core of the self, and that within human nature, "the core of who we are

10830-404: The nature of value and beauty. These are all implicit in the texts." However, discerning the themes of some biblical texts can be problematic. Much of the Bible is in narrative form and in general, biblical narrative refrains from any kind of direct instruction, and in some texts the author's intent is not easy to decipher. It is left to the reader to determine good and bad, right and wrong, and

10944-517: The notes they made, therefore differed from the Babylonian. These differences were resolved into a standard text called the Masoretic text in the ninth century. The oldest complete copy still in existence is the Leningrad Codex dating to c. 1000 CE. The Samaritan Pentateuch is a version of the Torah maintained by the Samaritan community since antiquity, which was rediscovered by European scholars in

11058-407: The oldest existing copies of the books of the Hebrew Bible of any length that are not fragments. The earliest manuscripts were probably written in paleo-Hebrew , a kind of cuneiform pictograph similar to other pictographs of the same period. The exile to Babylon most likely prompted the shift to square script (Aramaic) in the fifth to third centuries BCE. From the time of the Dead Sea Scrolls,

11172-427: The path to understanding and practice is rarely straightforward. God is sometimes portrayed as having a role in the plot, but more often there is little about God's reaction to events, and no mention at all of approval or disapproval of what the characters have done or failed to do. The writer makes no comment, and the reader is left to infer what they will. Jewish philosophers Shalom Carmy and David Schatz explain that

11286-528: The possibility of gentiles becoming Jews but were tolerant of cross-cultural interactions. The Essenes community believed gentiles, including proselytes, were ritually impure, but the Essenes were even stricter and regarded other Jews as impure until they completed a prolonged initiation ritual . Likewise, the Zealots and Sicarii held xenophobic views but were willing to ally with Idumeans (or Edomites ). Whilst

11400-410: The religious systems that preceded them. Not only were rabbinic Judaism and Christianity religious twins, but, like Jacob and Esau, the twin sons of Isaac and Rebecca, they fought in the womb, setting the stage for life after the womb." The first Christians (the disciples or followers of Jesus) were essentially all ethnically Jewish or Jewish proselytes. In other words, Jesus was Jewish , preached to

11514-480: The resurrection of the dead was at hand, that with few exceptions when they saw him shortly after his execution, they had no doubt that he had been resurrected, and that the arrival of the kingdom and resurrection of the dead was at hand. These specific beliefs were compatible with Second Temple Judaism. In the following years the restoration of the kingdom, as Jews expected it, failed to occur. Some Christians began to believe instead that Christ, rather than simply being

11628-573: The rituals found in the First Temple era. For example, many Jews argued that only full-body immersion could achieve ritual purity. There was a sharp break between ancient Israelite religion and the Judaism of the Second Temple. Pre-exilic Israel was mostly polytheistic (see Yahwism ). Asherah was probably worshiped as Yahweh's consort, within his temples in Jerusalem, Bethel , and Samaria featuring what seem to be standing stones for another deity, and

11742-419: The seventh century, the first codex form of the Hebrew Bible was produced. The codex is the forerunner of the modern book. Popularized by early Christians, it was made by folding a single sheet of papyrus in half, forming "pages". Assembling multiples of these folded pages together created a "book" that was more easily accessible and more portable than scrolls. In 1488, the first complete printed press version of

11856-561: The so-called Sapiential books . During the Hasmoean dynasty, Jews were conflicted on whether to be religiously or politically oriented, which was represented by the thematic differences in 1 Maccabees and 2 Maccabees . 1 Maccabees, for instance, focuses on Judean affairs, generalizes all gentile rulers as being evil, believes Jewish martyrs were "pious fools", makes little mention of God and prayer, and attributes events to blind chance. 2 Maccabees argues that anti-Judean persecution by

11970-528: The substitution of lexical equivalents, semantic and grammar differences, and larger scale shifts in order, with some major revisions of the Masoretic texts that must have been intentional. Intentional changes in New Testament texts were made to improve grammar, eliminate discrepancies, harmonize parallel passages, combine and simplify multiple variant readings into one, and for theological reasons. Bruce K. Waltke observes that one variant for every ten words

12084-508: The time period. However, scholars such as Martin Goodman , for instance, argue that phrase relates to the Pharisees' attempt to persuade Jews to join their school of thought rather than their efforts to convert non-Jews. Early Christianity emerged within Second Temple Judaism during the 1st century , the key difference between Judaism and Jewish Christianity being the Christian belief that Jesus

12198-432: The word was loaned as singular into the vernaculars of Western Europe. The Bible is not a single book; it is a collection of books whose complex development is not completely understood. The oldest books began as songs and stories orally transmitted from generation to generation. Scholars of the twenty-first century are only in the beginning stages of exploring "the interface between writing, performance, memorization, and

12312-515: Was a collection of narrative histories and prophecies (the Nevi'im ). The third collection (the Ketuvim ) contains psalms, proverbs, and narrative histories. " Tanakh " is an alternate term for the Hebrew Bible composed of the first letters of those three parts of the Hebrew scriptures: the Torah ("Teaching"), the Nevi'im ("Prophets"), and the Ketuvim ("Writings"). The Masoretic Text is the medieval version of

12426-564: Was believed to influence Second Temple Judaism, particularly Pharisaical Judaism. They introduced religious innovations such as ritual immersion in baths, burial in caves with kokhim , and the perforation of pottery vessels so they could be purified. The Herodians continued this trend, with Judea, Jerusalem and the Temple being shaped by Idumean culture. Their contributions were obfuscated by religious Jews belonging to later variants of Second Temple Judaism and Rabbinic Judaism . Hayah Katz sees these ritual immersion rituals as being stricter than

12540-403: Was centered not on synagogues, which began to appear only in the 3rd century   BCE, but on the Temple, and a cycle of continual animal sacrifice . Torah, or ritual law, was also important, and the Temple priests were responsible for teaching it, but the concept of scripture developed only slowly. Thus the reading and study of scripture was a late development. The written Torah and the books of

12654-665: Was noted in the recent critical edition of the Hebrew Bible, the Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia, leaving 90% of the Hebrew text without variation. The fourth edition of the United Bible Society's Greek New Testament notes variants affecting about 500 out of 6900 words, or about 7% of the text. The narratives, laws, wisdom sayings, parables, and unique genres of the Bible provide opportunity for discussion on most topics of concern to human beings: The role of women, sex, children, marriage, neighbours, friends,

12768-582: Was preserved, decade after decade, by dedicated and relatively skilled Christian scribes. These differing histories produced what modern scholars refer to as recognizable "text types". The four most commonly recognized are Alexandrian , Western , Caesarean , and Byzantine . The list of books included in the Catholic Bible was established as canon by the Council of Rome in 382, followed by those of Hippo in 393 and Carthage in 397. Between 385 and 405 CE,

12882-412: Was ready to enter the land of Canaan. The Torah ends with the death of Moses. The commandments in the Torah provide the basis for Jewish religious law . Tradition states that there are 613 commandments ( taryag mitzvot ). Nevi'im ( Hebrew : נְבִיאִים , romanized :  Nəḇī'īm , "Prophets") is the second main division of the Tanakh, between the Torah and Ketuvim. It contains two sub-groups,

12996-486: Was the resurrected Jewish Messiah. Judaism is known to allow for multiple messianic figures, the two most relevant being Messiah ben Joseph and the Messiah ben David. The idea of two messiahs—one suffering and the second fulfilling the traditional messianic role—was normal in ancient Judaism and possibly even predated Jesus. Alan Segal states "one can speak of a 'twin birth' of two new Judaisms, both markedly different from

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