The Hebrew Bible (eBook)

A Contemporary Introduction to the Christian Old Testament and the Jewish Tanakh

David M. Carr (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2021 | 2. Auflage
John Wiley & Sons (Verlag)
978-1-119-63668-7 (ISBN)

Infos

Discover the historical and social context of one of the most influential works ever written with this authoritative new resource

The newly revised second edition of The Hebrew Bible: A Contemporary Introduction to the Christian Old Testament and Jewish Tanakh delivers a brief and up-to-date introduction to the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament in the broader context of world history. Its treatment of the formation of the Bible amidst different historical periods allows readers to understand the biblical texts in context. It also introduces readers to scholarly methods used to explore the formation of the Hebrew Bible and its later interpretation by Jews and Christians.

Written by a leading scholar in the field, this new edition incorporates the most recent research on the archaeology and history of early Israel, the formation of the Pentateuch, and the development of the historical and poetic books. Students will benefit from the inclusion of study questions in each chapter, focus texts from the Bible that illustrate major points, timelines, illustrations, photographs and a glossary to help them retain knowledge.

The book also includes:

• A deepened and up-to-date focus on recent methods of biblical study, including trauma studies, African American, womanist, and ecocritical approaches to the Bible
• An orientation to multiple bibles, translations and digital resources for study of the Bible
• An exploration of the emergence of ancient Israel, its first oral traditions and its earliest writings
• Discussions of how major features of the Bible reflect communal experiences of trauma and resilience as Israel survived under successive empires of the Ancient Near East.
• Fuller treatment of the final formation of biblical books in early Judaism, including coverage of diverse early Jewish texts (e.g. Ben Sira, Enoch, Judith) that were revered as scripture before there were more clearly defined Jewish and Christian Bibles

Designed for students of seminary courses and undergraduate students taking an introduction to the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament, this second edition of The Hebrew Bible also will interest general readers with interest in the formation of the Bible.

DAVID M. CARR is Professor of Hebrew Bible/Old Testament at Union Theological Seminary in New York. He is an accomplished scholar and author and has written several books on the formation of the Bible, trauma studies and the Bible, and sexuality and the Bible.

Inhalt

List of Figures vii

List of Maps ix

Main Discussions/Outlines of Biblical Books x

Preface xiv

Acknowledgments xvii

List of Abbreviations xix

Overview of the Historical Period xx

Timeline xxii

Prologue: Multiple Bibles, Versions, and Translations 1

1 Studying the Bible in its Ancient Context(s) 19

2 The Emergence of Ancient Israel and its First Oral Traditions 35

3 Beginnings of the Monarchy and Royal and Zion Texts 59

4 Interlude: Echoes of Past Empires in Biblical Wisdom, Love Poetry, Law, and Narrative 77

5 Narrative and Prophecy Amidst the Rise and Fall of The Northern Kingdom 101

6 Micah, Isaiah, and the Southern Prophetic Encounter with Assyria 123

7 Torah and History in the Wake of the Assyrian Empire 139

8 Prophecy in the Transition from Assyrian to Babylonian Domination 165

9 Laments, History, and Prophecies after the Destruction of Jerusalem 177

10 Torah and Trauma 199

11 The Torah, the Psalms, and the Persian-Sponsored Rebuilding of Judah 227

12 Other Texts Formed in the Crucible of Post-Exilic Rebuilding 249

13 Hellenistic Empires and the Formation of Multiple Scriptures 265

Glossary 287

Index 301

Textauszug

PROLOGUE: MULTIPLE BIBLES, VERSIONS, AND TRANSLATIONS

1. The Bible as a Complex Product of Many Hands
2. The Different Scriptures of Judaism and Christianity
3. Becoming an Informed User of a Contemporary Bible Translation
4. Bible Abbreviations, Chapters, and Verses
5. Conclusion on Critically Analyzing a Page of Your Own Bible
6. Chapter Review
7. Resources for Further Study
8. Appendix 1: Translation and Paraphrase Comparison of Isa 52:13–15
9. Appendix 2: Characteristics of Select English Translations of the Bible

CHAPTER OVERVIEW

This prologue helps you learn the basic characteristics and background of the Bible that you will use across the course. As you will see, not all Bibles are the same. Judaism and different forms of Christianity include different books in their Bibles. Also, ancient manuscripts of the Bible diverge from one another, and contemporary translations follow different manuscript readings and translation practices. By the end of this chapter you should know the differences between the Bibles of Judaism and Christianity, as well as the relationship of the Islamic Qur’an to both sets of scriptures. You will also learn about how study of different readings of ancient manuscripts of the Bible, “textual criticism,” and advances in knowledge of ancient languages have led to major progress in translation of the Bible since the King James Version was completed in 1611. Finally, you will learn some basic things to keep in mind in choosing and using an up‐to‐date English translation of the Bible.

EXERCISES

1. 1) Using the parallels provided at the end of the chapter in Appendix 1, compare the translations (and paraphrase) of Isa 52:13–15. What differences do you notice?
2. 2) Take a look at two pages of a biblical book in your Bible. Make a list of all types of elements on those pages aside from the actual text of the Bible. Using the discussions in this chapter, identify where those elements came from

The Bible as a Complex Product of Many Hands

We start here with your Bible – the book that you hold in your hands. A major aim of this chapter, and this introduction as a whole, is to give you a deeper appreciation of the way this seeming simple book is actually the complex product of centuries of human work. The last stages of that work are already obvious when you take a closer look at a Bible you hold in your hands. Notice the type of cover it is packaged in (unless you are working with a digital copy!). Take a look at the typeface used for the biblical text and various aids that are provided for you as a reader (depending on your particular Bible): paragraph divisions, headings for different Bible passages, and maybe some cross‐references to other Bible passages or brief explanatory notes. None of these aspects come from ancient manuscripts. They are aids that the publisher of your Bible provides to you as a reader.

These parts of your Bible, however, are just the first set of ways that your Bible has been worked into the form you have it now. Take, for example, the chapter and verse numbers in your Bible. None appear in ancient manuscripts. They were added to the text over a thousand years after it was written. Or consider the translation in your Bible. The biblical texts were originally written in Hebrew, Aramaic (an ancient language similar to Hebrew), and Greek. We will see in this prologue how every translation of these ancient texts involves significant style decisions, reasoned guesses, and compromises. In addition, we have multiple handwritten copies of ancient biblical manuscripts. These ancient copies disagree with each other. As a result, a translator must not just decide how to translate a given biblical verse. She or he also must choose which manuscript reading to translate in the first place. And all this does not even get into the centuries‐long process that produced these ancient Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek biblical texts, or how they were collected into specific scriptural collections by Jews and Christians. That long process will be the focus of much of the rest of this introduction.

For now we are focusing on some of the elements that were added to those texts in the Bible before you, many of which distinguish one Bible that you might find from another. These include what books are included and in what order, what kind of translation is used, and how translators chose, for a given phrase or word, to follow a reading in one ancient manuscript versus another. This prologue discusses these elements in turn, aiming to help you be a more informed user of your Bible.

The Different Scriptures of Judaism and Christianity

To begin, it is important to recognize that the Bibles of different faith communities contain somewhat different books, put those books in different order, and call their Bibles different things. Your Bible reflects one of those collections or a mix of them. These are often referred to as different “canons” of the Bible, with “canon” meaning a collection of books that are recognized as divinely inspired scripture by a given religious community. Such books are recognized as “canonical.”

In Judaism, the scriptures are called the “Tanakh” (with the kh pronounced like the ch in Bach). Tanakh is a word formed out of the first letters of the Hebrew names of the three main parts of the Jewish Bible: Torah (Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy), Neviim (“prophets”), and Ketuvim (“writings”). See the box on p. 4 for an overview of the contents of each of these three parts. Judaism focuses particularly on the Torah, otherwise known as the Pentateuch, with most synagogues reading the Torah’s five books all across the year, starting with Genesis at the outset of the Fall (the Jewish New Year) and concluding with Deuteronomy 12 months later. Jews certainly read other parts of the Tanakh, for example singing psalms (part of the “Writings”) and reading portions of the “Prophets” to accompany the Torah reading. Nevertheless, the Torah takes pride of place within the Jewish Bible, while other parts of the Tanakh are often seen as commentary on it.

The Christian version of these scriptures, the “Old Testament” (OT), is part of a two‐part Bible that also includes specifically Christian scriptures, the New Testament (NT). The Christian Old Testament is organized differently from the Jewish Tanakh. Though both the Tanakh and the Christian Old Testament start with the biblical narrative‐historical books of Genesis to 2 Kings, the Christian Old Testament follows those books with the parallel narration of that history in Chronicles, Ezra, and Nehemiah. It then sequences the other biblical books in the order of their traditional authors, starting with the book of Job (an early Edomite sage), and moving through Psalms (David as traditional author), Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and Song of Songs (Solomon as traditional author), and on to the major (Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel) and minor (Hosea, etc.) prophets. As in the case of the Jewish Tanakh, the ending of the Christian Old Testament is revealing. It concludes with the last chapter of Malachi, a prediction of the second coming of Elijah (Mal 4:5). This ending leads nicely into the first book of the New Testament, the Gospel of Matthew, which describes the coming of John the Baptist, who is clothed like Elijah and prophesies the coming of Jesus (Matt 3:1–6).

You also should know that there are differences between the books included in different Christian Old Testament collections. The Protestant Old Testament contains the same books as the Jewish Tanakh, though in the above‐noted different order leading up to the New Testament. The Roman Catholic Old Testament includes some additional books such as 1 and 2 Maccabees, Sirach, and the Wisdom of Solomon. The Ethiopic church recognizes the book of Enoch as part of its Old Testament, and various forms of Orthodox Christianity likewise recognize slightly different groups of additional books. For Roman Catholics, such additional books (not in the Jewish Tanakh) are “deuterocanonical,” which means that they belong to a “second canon.” For Protestants, such books not in the Jewish Tanakh are not considered true scripture, but “apocrypha,” which means “books hidden away.” I will not hide such books away in this textbook, but neither will I discuss them at length. Instead, I briefly discuss a sampling of them: Ben Sira/Sirach, Enoch, and Judith. In addition, toward the end of this introduction I will return to discuss how Jewish and Christian communities ended up with these slightly different collections of scriptural books.

“Hebrew Bible” is yet another term that is often used to designate the scriptures shared by Jews and Christians. Many teachers and scholars prefer the expression “Hebrew Bible” because it avoids the pejorative connotations that the term “Old Testament” has assumed in some Christian circles. The terms “Old” and “New Testament” derive from Greek and Latin terms that have been used by Christians to contrast an old covenant (with Israel) and new covenant (through Jesus Christ). Often this has been part of a Christian supersessionist...

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 16.4.2021
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Geisteswissenschaften ► Religion / Theologie ► Christentum
• Schlagworte: Altes Testament • Bibelstudien • Bible Guide • Bible history • Bible Introduction • Bible scholarship • Bible study • biblical context • biblical history • Biblical Studies • Biblical Study • biblical trauma • Hebrew bible guide • history of the bible • Introduction to the Bible • Old Testament • old testament guide • Religion • Religion & Theology • Religion u. Theologie
• ISBN-10: 1-119-63668-X / 111963668X
• ISBN-13: 978-1-119-63668-7 / 9781119636687