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Criticism Of The Bible
Criticism of the Bible refers to a variety of criticisms of the Bible, the collection of religious texts held to be sacred by Christianity, Judaism, Samaritanism, and other Abrahamic religions. Criticisms of the Bible often concern the text’s factual accuracy, moral tenability, and supposed inerrancy claimed by biblical literalists. There remain questions of biblical authorship and what material to include in the biblical canon. In direct opposition to such criticisms are devout Christians who regard the Bible as the perfect word of God ( fundamentalist Jews have held the Hebrew Bible in similar high regard). Authorship At the end of the 17th century, only a few Bible scholars doubted that Moses wrote the Torah (also known as the Pentateuch, traditionally called the "Five Books of Moses"), such as Thomas Hobbes, Isaac La Peyrère and Baruch Spinoza, but in the late 18th century some scholars such as Jean Astruc (1753) began to systematically question his authorship. B ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bible
The Bible is a collection of religious texts that are central to Christianity and Judaism, and esteemed in other Abrahamic religions such as Islam. 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 accepted as part of the Bible by a particular religious tradition or community is called a biblical canon. Believers 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 was a collection of narrative histories and prophecies (the Nevi'im). The third co ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mosaic Authorship
Mosaic authorship is the Judeo-Christian tradition that the Torah, the first five books of the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament, were dictated by God to Moses. The tradition probably began with the Deuteronomic Code, legalistic code of the Book of Deuteronomy and was then gradually extended until Moses, as the central character, came to be regarded not just as the mediator of law but as author of both laws and narrative. The books of the Torah do not name any author, as authorship was not considered important by the society that produced them, and it was only after Jews came into intense contact with author-centric Hellenistic culture in the late Second Temple Judaism, Second Temple period that the rabbis began to find authors for their scriptures. By the 1st century CE, it was already common practice to refer to the five as the "Law of Moses", but the first unequivocal expression of the idea that this meant authorship appears in the Babylonian Talmud, an encyclopedia of Jewish traditio ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Albrecht Alt
Albrecht Alt (20 September 1883, in Stübach (Franconia) – 24 April 1956, in Leipzig), was a leading Germans, German Protestantism, Protestant theology, theologian. Eldest son of a Lutheran minister, he completed high school in Ansbach and studied theology at Friedrich-Alexander-University, Erlangen-Nuremberg, Friedrich-Alexander-University in Erlangen and the University of Leipzig. From 1907 to 1908 he was a candidate for the office of lecturer at Munich Predigerseminar (Lutheran preachers seminary). In 1908 he was a scholarship holder of the German Protestant Institute of Archaeology, German Protestant Institute of Archaeology of the Holy Land in Jerusalem and undertook his first Palestine (region)#Ottoman rule (1841–1917), Palestine journey. In the same year he became a supervisor of the theological College in Greifswald. In 1909 he wrote ''Israel und Aegypten'' ("Israel and Egypt") as part of his doctorate at the University of Greifswald. In 1912 he became an associate pro ... [...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'' co ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Polemic
Polemic ( , ) is contentious rhetoric intended to support a specific position by forthright claims and to undermine the opposing position. The practice of such argumentation is called polemics, which are seen in arguments on controversial topics. A person who writes polemics, or speaks polemically, is called a polemicist. The word derives , . Polemics often concern questions in religion or politics. A polemical style of writing was common in Ancient Greece, as in the writings of the historian Polybius. Polemic again became common in medieval and early modern times. Since then, famous polemicists have included satirist Jonathan Swift, Italian physicist and mathematician Galileo, French theologian Jean Calvin, French Enlightenment writer, historian, and philosopher Voltaire, Russian author Leo Tolstoy, socialist philosophers Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, novelist George Orwell, playwright George Bernard Shaw, communist revolutionary Vladimir Lenin, linguist Noam Chomsky, so ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ezra
Ezra ( fl. fifth or fourth century BCE) is the main character of the Book of Ezra. According to the Hebrew Bible, he was an important Jewish scribe (''sofer'') and priest (''kohen'') in the early Second Temple period. In the Greek Septuagint, the name is rendered as ' (), from which the Latin name Esdras comes. His name is probably a shortened Aramaic translation of the Hebrew name ('), meaning " Yah helps". In the Hebrew Bible, or the Christian Old Testament, Ezra is an important figure in the books of Ezra and Nehemiah, which he is traditionally held to have written and edited, respectively. According to tradition, Ezra was also the author of the Books of Chronicles and the Book of Malachi. He is depicted as instrumental in restoring the Jewish scriptures and religion to the people after the return from the Babylonian Captivity and is a highly respected figure in Judaism. He is regarded as a saint in the Roman Catholic Church, which sets his feast day as July 13, the same ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
David
David (; , "beloved one") was a king of ancient Israel and Judah and the third king of the United Monarchy, according to the Hebrew Bible and Old Testament. The Tel Dan stele, an Aramaic-inscribed stone erected by a king of Aram-Damascus in the late 9th/early 8th centuries BCE to commemorate a victory over two enemy kings, contains the phrase (), which is translated as " House of David" by most scholars. The Mesha Stele, erected by King Mesha of Moab in the 9th century BCE, may also refer to the "House of David", although this is disputed. According to Jewish works such as the '' Seder Olam Rabbah'', '' Seder Olam Zutta'', and '' Sefer ha-Qabbalah'' (all written over a thousand years later), David ascended the throne as the king of Judah in 885 BCE. Apart from this, all that is known of David comes from biblical literature, the historicity of which has been extensively challenged,Writing and Rewriting the Story of Solomon in Ancient Israel; by Isaac Kalimi; page 3 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Abraham Kuenen
Abraham Kuenen (16 September 1828 – 10 December 1891) was a Dutch Protestant theologian. Kuenen was born in Haarlem, the son of an apothecary. On his father's death it became necessary for him to leave school and take a humble place in the business. By the generosity of friends he was educated at the gymnasium at Haarlem and afterwards at the University of Leiden. He studied theology, and won his doctor's degree by an edition of thirty-four chapters of Genesis from the Arabic version of the Samaritan Pentateuch. In 1853 he became professor extraordinarius of theology at Leiden, and in 1855 full professor. He married a daughter of Willem Muurling, one of the founders of the Groningen school, which made the first pronounced breach with Calvinistic theology in the Reformed Church of the Netherlands. Kuenen himself soon became one of the main supporters of the modern theology, of which Jan Hendrik Scholten and Karel Willem Opzoomer (b. 1821) were the chief founders, and of which ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Julius Wellhausen
Julius Wellhausen (17 May 1844 – 7 January 1918) was a German biblical scholar and orientalist. In the course of his career, his research interest 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 ph ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jean Astruc
Jean Astruc (19 March 1684, in Sauve, France – 5 May 1766, in Paris) was a professor of medicine in France at Montpellier and Paris, who wrote the first great treatise on syphilis and venereal diseases, and also, with a small anonymously published book, played a fundamental part in the origins of critical textual analysis of works of the Bible. Astruc was the first to propose and hypothesize, by using the techniques of textual analysis that were commonplace in studying the secular classics, the theory that Genesis was composed based on several sources or manuscript traditions, an approach now called the ''documentary hypothesis.'' Life and career The son of a Protestant minister who had converted to Catholicism, but who returned to Protestantism before his death. Astruc was educated at Montpellier, one of the great schools of medicine in early modern Europe. His dissertation and first publication, submitted when he was only 19, is on decomposition, and contains many referenc ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Baruch Spinoza
Baruch (de) Spinoza (24 November 163221 February 1677), also known under his Latinized pen name Benedictus de Spinoza, was a philosopher of Portuguese-Jewish origin, who was born in the Dutch Republic. A forerunner of the Age of Enlightenment, Spinoza significantly influenced modern biblical criticism, 17th-century rationalism, and Dutch intellectual culture, establishing himself as one of the most important and radical philosophers of the early modern period. Influenced by Stoicism, Thomas Hobbes, René Descartes, Ibn Tufayl, and heterodox Christians, Spinoza was a leading philosopher of the Dutch Golden Age. Spinoza was born in Amsterdam to a Marrano family that fled Portugal for the more tolerant Dutch Republic. He received a traditional Jewish education, learning Hebrew and studying sacred texts within the Portuguese Jewish community, where his father was a prominent merchant. As a young man, Spinoza challenged rabbinic authority and questioned Jewish doctrines, leadi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Isaac La Peyrère
Isaac La Peyrère (; 1596–1676), also known as Isaac de La Peyrère or Pererius, was a French-born theologian, writer, and lawyer. La Peyrère is best known as a 17th-century predecessor of the scientific racialist theory of polygenism in the form of his Pre-Adamite hypothesis, which offered a challenge to traditional Abrahamic understandings of the descent of the human races as derived from the ''Book of Genesis''. In addition to this, La Peyrère anticipated Zionism, advocating a Jewish return to Palestine, within the context of premillennialist Messianic theology. He moved in prominent circles and was known for his connections to the Prince of Condé and the abdicated Queen Christina of Sweden. Born to a Huguenot family, possibly of Portuguese Jewish ''converso'' or Marrano heritage, La Peyrère was pressured to renounce his views and publicly converted to the Catholic Church towards the end of his life, though the sincerity of this conversion has been questioned. Biography B ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
