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Abraham In History And Tradition
:''This article presents information about the John Van Seters book; for general information about the topic, see Abraham: Historicity and origins and The Bible and history.'' ''Abraham in History and Tradition'' is a book by biblical scholar John Van Seters. The book is divided into two parts, ''Abraham in History'' and ''Abraham in Tradition''. In Part I, Van Seters argues that there is no unambiguous evidence pointing to an origin for the stories in the 2nd millennium BC. "Arguments based on reconstructing the patriarch's nomadic way of life, the personal names in Genesis, the social customs reflected in the stories, and correlation of the traditions of Genesis with the archaeological data of the Middle Bronze Age have all been found, in Part One above, to be quite defective in demonstrating an origin for the Abraham tradition in the second millennium B.C.". This finding has implications for certain then-current strands in Biblical criticism: "Consequently, without any such ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
John Van Seters
John Van Seters (born May 2, 1935 in Hamilton, Ontario) is a Canadian scholar of the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament) and the Ancient Near East. Currently University Distinguished Professor Emeritus at the University of North Carolina, he was formerly James A. Gray Professor of Biblical Literature at UNC. He took his Ph.D. at Yale University in Near Eastern Studies (1965) and a Th.D. h.c. from the University of Lausanne (1999). His honours and awards include a Guggenheim Fellowship, an NEH fellowship, an ACLS Fellowship, and research fellowships at Oxford, Cambridge, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, and National Research Foundation of South Africa. His many publications include '' The Hyksos: A New Investigation'' (1966); ''Abraham in History and Tradition'' (1975); ''In Search of History'' (1983, for which he won the James H. Breasted Prize and the American Academy of Religion book award); ''The Edited Bible'' (2006); and ''The Biblical Saga of King David'' (2009). Education Van Sete ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hermann Gunkel
Hermann Gunkel (23 May 1862 – 11 March 1932), a German Old Testament scholar, founded form criticism. He also became a leading representative of the history of religions school. His major works cover Genesis and the Psalms, and his major interests centered on the oral tradition behind written sources and in folklore. Biography Gunkel was born in Springe, Kingdom of Hanover, where his father and grandfather were Lutheran pastors. He studied at the University of Göttingen and the University of Giessen. He eventually taught at both universities in addition to those of Berlin and Halle. Gunkel started his career in New Testament studies at Göttingen in 1888. However, he was soon transferred to Halle (1889-1894) and told to concentrate on the Hebrew Bible by the Prussian academic appointments authority. He went on to teach in Berlin (1894-1907), where he made many inter-disciplinary contacts. His 1895 book, ''Creation and Chaos in the Primeval Era and the Eschaton'', compar ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ipuwer Papyrus
The Ipuwer Papyrus (officially Papyrus Leiden I 344 ''recto'') is an ancient Egyptian hieratic papyrus made during the Nineteenth Dynasty of Egypt, and now held in the Dutch National Museum of Antiquities in Leiden, Netherlands. It contains the ''Admonitions of Ipuwer'', an incomplete literary work whose original composition is dated no earlier than the late Twelfth Dynasty of Egypt (c.1991–1803 BCE). Content In the poem, Ipuwer – a name typical of the period 1850–1450 BCE – complains that the world has been turned upside-down: a woman who had not a single box now has furniture, a girl who looked at her face in the water now owns a mirror, while the once-rich man is now in rags. He demands that the Lord of All (a title which can be applied both to the king and to the creator sun-god) should destroy his enemies and remember his religious duties. This is followed by a violent description of disorder: there is no longer any respect for the law and even the king's burial in ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Chedorlaomer
Chedorlaomer, also spelled Kedorlaomer (; Hebrew: כְּדָרְלָעֹמֶר, Tiberian: ''Kəḏorlā'ōmer''; Vat. Χοδολλογομορ), is a king of Elam mentioned in Genesis 14. Genesis portrays him as allied with three other kings, campaigning against five Canaanite city-states in response to an uprising in the days of Abraham. Etymology The name Chedorlaomer is associated with familiar Elamite components, such as ''kudur'', meaning "servant", and Lagamar, who was a high goddess in the Elamite pantheon. The 1906 ''Jewish Encyclopedia'' stated that, apart from the fact that Chedorlaomer can be identified as a proper Elamite compound, all else is matter of controversy and "the records give only the rather negative result that from Babylonian and Elamite documents nothing definite has been learned of Chedorlaomer". Background Chedorlaomer's reign After twelve years of being under Elamite rule, in the thirteenth year, the Cities of the Plain (Sodom, Gomorrah, Admah, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Source Criticism
Source criticism (or information evaluation) is the process of evaluating an information source, i.e.: a document, a person, a speech, a fingerprint, a photo, an observation, or anything used in order to obtain knowledge. In relation to a given purpose, a given information source may be more or less valid, reliable or relevant. Broadly, "source criticism" is the interdisciplinary study of how information sources are evaluated for given tasks. Meaning Problems in translation: The Danish word ''kildekritik'', like the Norwegian word ''kildekritikk'' and the Swedish word ''källkritik'', derived from the German ''Quellenkritik'' and is closely associated with the German historian Leopold von Ranke (1795–1886). Historian Wolfgang Hardtwig wrote: His anke'sfirst work ''Geschichte der romanischen und germanischen Völker von 1494–1514'' (History of the Latin and Teutonic Nations from 1494 to 1514) (1824) was a great success. It already showed some of the basic charact ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Biblical Minimalism
Biblical minimalism, also known as the Copenhagen School because two of its most prominent figures taught at Copenhagen University, is a movement or trend in biblical scholarship that began in the 1990s with two main claims: # that the Bible cannot be considered reliable evidence for what had happened in ancient Israel; and # that "Israel" itself is a problematic subject for historical study. Minimalism is not a unified movement, but rather a label that came to be applied to several scholars at different universities who held similar views, chiefly Niels Peter Lemche and Thomas L. Thompson at the University of Copenhagen, Philip R. Davies, and Keith Whitelam. Minimalism gave rise to intense debate during the 1990s—the term "minimalists" was in fact a derogatory one given by its opponents, who were consequently dubbed "maximalists", but in fact neither side accepted either label. Maximalists, or neo-Albrightians, are composed of two quite distinct groups, the first represe ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Biblical Criticism
Biblical criticism is the use of critical analysis to understand and explain the Bible. During the eighteenth century, when it began as ''historical-biblical criticism,'' it was based on two distinguishing characteristics: (1) the concern to avoid dogma and bias by applying a neutral, non-sectarian, reason-based judgment to the study of the Bible, and (2) the belief that the reconstruction of the historical events behind the texts, as well as the history of how the texts themselves developed, would lead to a correct understanding of the Bible. This sets it apart from earlier, pre-critical methods; from the anti-critical methods of those who oppose criticism-based study; from later post-critical orientation, and from the many different types of criticism which biblical criticism transformed into in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. Most scholars believe the German Enlightenment () led to the creation of biblical criticism, although some assert that its roots ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Rolf Rendtorff
Rolf Rendtorff (10 May 1925 – 1 April 2014) was Emeritus Professor of Old Testament at the University of Heidelberg. He has written frequently on the Jewish scriptures and was notable chiefly for his contribution to the debate over the origins of the Pentateuch (the first five books of the Old Testament). Biography Rendtorff was born at Preetz, Holstein, Germany. He studied theology from 1945 to 1950 at the universities of Kiel, Göttingen and Heidelberg. He undertook his doctoral studies under Gerhard von Rad, 1950–53. He died on 1 April 2014. Major achievements Rendtorff has published many works on Old Testament subjects, but was notable chiefly for his 1977 book, "Das überlieferungsgeschichtliche Problem des Pentateuch" (''The Problem of the Transmission of the Pentateuch''). The book was a study of the question of Pentateuchal origins (the question of how the first five books of the bible – Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Book of Numbers and Deuteronomy – came to be ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Babylonian Exile
The Babylonian captivity or Babylonian exile is the period in Jewish history during which a large number of Judeans from the ancient Kingdom of Judah were captives in Babylon, the capital city of the Neo-Babylonian Empire, following their defeat in the Jewish–Babylonian War and the destruction of Solomon's Temple in Jerusalem. The event is described in the Hebrew Bible, and its historicity is supported by archaeological and extra-biblical evidence. After the Battle of Carchemish in 605 BCE, the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar II besieged Jerusalem, which resulted in tribute being paid by the Judean king Jehoiakim. In the fourth year of Nebuchadnezzar II's reign, Jehoiakim refused to pay further tribute, which led to another siege of the city in Nebuchadnezzar II's seventh year (598/597 BCE) that culminated in the death of Jehoiakim and the exile to Babylonia of his successor Jeconiah, his court, and many others; Jeconiah's successor Zedekiah and others were exiled when Nebu ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Wellhausen
Julius Wellhausen (17 May 1844 – 7 January 1918) was a German biblical scholar and orientalist. In the course of his career, he moved from Old Testament research through Islamic studies to New Testament scholarship. Wellhausen contributed to the composition history of the Pentateuch/Torah and studied the formative period of Islam. For the former, he is credited as one of the originators of the documentary hypothesis. Biography Wellhausen was born at Hamelin in the Kingdom of Hanover. The son of a Protestant pastor, he later studied theology at the University of Göttingen under Georg Heinrich August Ewald and became ''Privatdozent'' for Old Testament history there in 1870. In 1872, he was appointed professor ordinarius of theology at the University of Greifswald. However, he resigned from the faculty in 1882 for reasons of conscience, stating in his letter of resignation: He became professor extraordinarius of oriental languages in the faculty of philology at Halle, was elec ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Yahwist
The Jahwist, or Yahwist, often abbreviated J, is one of the most widely recognized sources of the Pentateuch (Torah), together with the Deuteronomist, the Priestly source and the Elohist. The existence of the Jahwist is somewhat controversial, with a number of scholars, especially in Europe, denying that it ever existed as a coherent independent document. Nevertheless, many scholars do assume its existence. The Jahwist is so named because of its characteristic use of the term Yahweh (German: ''Jahwe''; Hebrew: ) for God. Background Modern scholars agree that separate sources underlie the Pentateuch, but there is much disagreement on how these sources were used by the authors to write the first five books of the Bible. The explanation called the documentary hypothesis dominated much of the 20th century, but the consensus surrounding this hypothesis has now broken down. Its critics suggest that contemporary upholders tend to give a much larger role to the redactors, who are now s ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Redactor
Redaction is a form of editing in which multiple sources of texts are combined and altered slightly to make a single document. Often this is a method of collecting a series of writings on a similar theme and creating a definitive and coherent work. The word is also used in the different sense of removing sensitive information from a document, also known as sanitization. This article is about the literary usage. Forms On occasion, the persons performing the redaction (the redactors) add brief elements of their own. The reasons for doing so are varied and can include the addition of elements to adjust the underlying conclusions of the text to suit the redactor's opinion, adding bridging elements to integrate disparate stories, or the redactor may add a frame story, such as the tale of Scheherazade which frames the collection of folk tales in ''The Book of One Thousand and One Nights''. Sometimes the source texts are interlaced, particularly when discussing closely related detai ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
