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Christian Interpolation
In textual criticism, Christian interpolation generally refers to textual insertion and textual damage to Jewish and pagan source texts during Christian scribal transmission. Old Testament pseudepigrapha Notable examples among the body of texts known as Old Testament pseudepigrapha include the disputed authenticity of Similitudes of Enoch and 4 Ezra which in the form transmitted by Christian scribal traditions contain arguably later Christian understanding of terms such as Son of Man. Other texts with significant Christian interpolation include the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs and the ''Sibylline Oracles''. Josephus Notable disputed examples in the works of Josephus include Josephus' sections on John the Baptist and James the Just which is widely accepted, and the '' Testimonium Flavianum'', which is widely regarded as at best damaged. Josephus: The Essential Writings - Page 265 Paul L. Maier - 1990 "scholars have long suspected a Christian interpolation, since Joseph ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Textual Criticism
Textual criticism is a branch of textual scholarship, philology, and literary criticism that is concerned with the identification of textual variants, or different versions, of either manuscripts (mss) or of printed books. Such texts may range in dates from the earliest writing in cuneiform, impressed on clay, for example, to multiple unpublished versions of a 21st-century author's work. Historically, scribes who were paid to copy documents may have been literate, but many were simply copyists, mimicking the shapes of letters without necessarily understanding what they meant. This means that unintentional alterations were common when copying manuscripts by hand. Intentional alterations may have been made as well, for example, the censoring of printed work for political, religious or cultural reasons. The objective of the textual critic's work is to provide a better understanding of the creation and historical transmission of the text and its variants. This understanding may ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sibylline Oracles
The ''Sibylline Oracles'' (; sometimes called the pseudo-Sibylline Oracles) are a collection of oracular utterances written in Greek hexameters ascribed to the Sibyls, prophetesses who uttered divine revelations in a frenzied state. Fourteen books and eight fragments of Sibylline Oracles survive, in an edition of the 6th or 7th century AD. They are not to be confused with the original '' Sibylline Books'' of the ancient Etruscans and Romans which were burned by order of the Roman general Flavius Stilicho in the 4th century AD. Instead, the text is an "odd pastiche" of Hellenistic and Roman mythology interspersed with Jewish, Gnostic and early Christian legend. The content of the individual books is probably of different age, dated to anywhere between the 1st and 7th centuries AD. The ''Sibylline Oracles'' are a valuable source for information about classical mythology and early first millennium Gnostic, Hellenistic Jewish and Christian beliefs. Some apocalyptic passages ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Biblical Criticism
Modern Biblical criticism (as opposed to pre-Modern criticism) is the use of critical analysis to understand and explain the Bible without appealing to the supernatural. 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 the post-critical orientation of later scholarship; and from the multiple distinct schools of criticism into which it evolved in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. The emergence of biblical criticism is ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Josephus On Jesus
Flavius Josephus was a first-century Jewish historian who provided external information on some people and events found in the New Testament. Josephus was a general in Galilee, which is where Jesus ministered and people who knew him still lived; he dwelled near Jesus's hometown of Nazareth for a time, and kept contact with groups such as the Sanhedrin and Ananus II who were involved in the trials of Jesus and his brother James. The extant manuscripts of Josephus' book ''Antiquities of the Jews'', written , contain two references to Jesus of Nazareth and one reference to John the Baptist. The first and most extensive reference to Jesus in the ''Antiquities'', found in wikisource:The Antiquities of the Jews/Book XVIII#Chapter 3, Book 18, states that Jesus was the Messiah and a wise teacher who was crucified by Pontius Pilate. It is commonly called the '. Though nearly all modern scholars hold that the passage, in its present form, cannot be authentic; most nevertheless hold that it ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Louis Feldman
Louis Harry Feldman (October 29, 1926March 25, 2017) was an American classicist. He was the Abraham Wouk Family Professor of Classics and Literature at Yeshiva University, the institution at which he taught since 1955. Feldman was a scholar of Hellenistic civilization, specifically the works of Josephus Flavius. Feldman's work on Josephus is widely respected by other scholars. Biography Feldman received his undergraduate degree (as valedictorian) from Trinity College in 1946 and his master's degree the following year. In 1951, he received his doctoral degree in philology from Harvard University for his dissertation ''Cicero's Concept of Historiography''. He returned to Trinity College as a teaching fellow and eventually served as classics instructor before leaving for Hobart and William Smith Colleges in 1953. Feldman began teaching at Yeshiva University as an instructor in 1955, became an assistant professor in 1956, an associate professor in 1961 and, in 1966, a professor ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
James, Brother Of Jesus
James the Just, or a variation of James, brother of the Lord ( from , and , , can also be Anglicized as "Jacob"), was, according to the New Testament, a brother of Jesus. He was the first Jewish bishop of Jerusalem. Traditionally, it is believed he was martyred either in 62 AD by being stoned to death on the order of High Priest Ananus ben Ananus, or in 69 AD by being thrown off the pinnacle of the Temple by scribes and Pharisees and then clubbed to death. James, Joses, Simon, and Judas are mentioned as the brothers of Jesus as well as two or more unnamed sisters. (See Matthew 13:55; Mark 6:3.) Catholics and Orthodox Christians teach that James, along with others named in the New Testament as brothers of Jesus, were not the biological children of Mary, mother of Jesus, but were cousins of Jesus, or step-brothers from a previous marriage of Joseph (as related in the non-canonical Gospel of James). Others consider James to be the son of Mary and Joseph. T ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
John The Baptist
John the Baptist ( – ) was a Jewish preacher active in the area of the Jordan River in the early first century AD. He is also known as Saint John the Forerunner in Eastern Orthodoxy and Oriental Orthodoxy, John the Immerser in some Baptist Christianity, Christian traditions, and as the prophet Yahya ibn Zakariya in Islam. He is sometimes referred to as John the Baptiser. John is mentioned by the History of the Jews in the Roman Empire, Roman Jewish historian Josephus, and he is revered as a major religious figure in Christianity, Islam, the Baháʼí Faith, the Druze faith, and Mandaeism; in the last of these he is considered to be the final and most vital prophet. He is considered to be a prophet of God in Abrahamic religions, God by all of the aforementioned faiths, and is honoured as a saint in many Christian denominations. According to the New Testament, John anticipated a messianic figure greater than himself; in the Gospels, he is portrayed as the precursor or forerunn ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Josephus
Flavius Josephus (; , ; ), born Yosef ben Mattityahu (), was a Roman–Jewish historian and military leader. Best known for writing '' The Jewish War'', he was born in Jerusalem—then part of the Roman province of Judea—to a father of priestly descent and a mother who claimed Hasmonean royal ancestry. He initially fought against the Roman Empire during the First Jewish–Roman War as general of the Jewish forces in Galilee, until surrendering in AD 67 to the Roman army led by military commander Vespasian after the six-week siege of Yodfat. Josephus claimed the Jewish messianic prophecies that initiated the First Jewish–Roman War made reference to Vespasian becoming Roman emperor. In response, Vespasian decided to keep him as a slave and presumably interpreter. After Vespasian became emperor in AD 69, he granted Josephus his freedom, at which time Josephus assumed the Emperor's family name of '' Flavius''. Flavius Josephus fully defected to the Roman s ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Testaments Of The Twelve Patriarchs
The Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs is a constituent of the apocryphal scriptures connected with the Bible. It is believed to be a pseudepigraphical work of the dying commands of the twelve sons of Jacob. It is part of the Oskan Armenian Orthodox Bible printed in 1666. Fragments of similar writings were found at Qumran, but opinions are divided as to whether these are the same texts. It is generally considered apocalyptic literature. The Testaments were written in Hebrew or Greek, and reached their final form in the 2nd century CE. In the 13th century they were introduced into the Western world through the agency of Robert Grosseteste, Bishop of Lincoln, whose Latin translation of the work immediately became popular. He believed that it was a genuine work of the twelve sons of Jacob, and that the Christian interpolations were a genuine product of Jewish prophecy; he accused Jews of concealing the Testaments "on account of the prophecies of the Saviour contained in them." ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Interpolation (manuscripts)
An interpolation, in relation to literature and especially ancient manuscripts, is an entry or passage in a text that was not written by the original author. As there are often several generations of copies between an extant copy of an ancient text and the original, each handwritten by different scribes, there is a natural tendency for extraneous material to be inserted into such documents over time. Overview Interpolations originally may be inserted as an authentic explanatory note (for example, ), but may also be included for fraudulent purposes. The forged passages and works attributed to the Pseudo-Isidore are an example of the latter. Similarly, the letters of Ignatius of Antioch were interpolated by Apollinarian heretics, three centuries after the originals were written. Charters and legal texts are also subject to forgery of this kind. In the 13th century, a medieval romance, the Prose ''Tristan'', inserted another prose romance, the Vulgate Cycle's ''Queste del Saint ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Anchor Bible Dictionary
The Anchor Bible Series, which consists of a commentary series, a Bible dictionary, and a reference library, is a scholarly and commercial co-venture which was begun in 1956, with the publication of individual volumes in the commentary series. Over 1,000 scholars—representing Jewish, Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Protestant, Muslim, secular, and other traditions—have contributed to the project. Their works offer discussions that reflect a range of viewpoints across a wide theological spectrum. more than 120 volumes had been published, initially under oversight of the series' founding General Editor David Noel Freedman (1956–2008), and subsequently under John J. Collins (2008–2025). Each volume was originally published by Doubleday (a division of Random House, Inc.), but in 2007, the series was acquired by Yale University Press. Yale now prints all new volumes as the Anchor Yale Bible Series, while continuing to offer all previously published Anchor Bible titles as well ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
