Lecture 1 Introduction & Background Information
Lecture 1
Introduction
The Old Testament is also called the Hebrew Bible. It is called the Hebrew Bible because of its being written in Hebrew. The Hebrew Bible is the sacred scripture of the people who, at differing times in their history, have been called Hebrews, Israelites, and Jews.
The Old Testament is actually a library of books, produced over a period of more than a thousand years (1200-200 b.c.e.). The word "bible" is derived from the Greek word biblia which means "little books." This denotes its nature as an anthology or library of diverse compositions. The Hebrew Bible was the Bible that was known to Jesus, the Apostles, and members of the early Christian church. When Christian writings began to be viewed as sacred, which was after 70 C.E. when the Romans destroyed Jerusalem, Christians began to refer to the Hebrew Bible as the Old Covenant or the Old Testament and Christian sacred writings as the New Covenant or the New Testament.
The Book and Those Who Study It
The Process: How the OT was written.
Some terms to know:
a. Scripture -- This is a term designating writings that a religious group considers to be sacred and authoritative in determining the group's belief and practice.
b. Canon -- This is a term designating the official list of books that a religious community accepts as authentic and binding.
c. Hermeneutics -- This is the study of how literary texts are interpreted. The OT took shape thru a long historical process.
The Main Event:
Throughout the Old Testament, the one theme that continually appears is the Exodus. This was the supreme event in Israelite history. Israel became a people through this event and other events that followed.
Brief story of history of Israel:
The ancestors of the Jewish people originated in the Tigris and Euphrates River valleys. These ancestors then went to Palestine and eventually into Egypt. In Egypt they were enslaved and in bondage. According to the OT, God then raised up a leader named Moses. Moses led the Hebrew people into the Sinai desert and from there into Israel, called the Promised Land. It was called the Promised Land because it had been promised to their ancestors, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. After a long and difficult period, the land became theirs.
After many years, they settled on a monarchy as their form of government. Saul became the first king. David was the second king. Under David, the nation reached its greatest territorial limits. Solomon was David's son and the third and final king of a united Israel. Under Solomon, there was peace and great economic prosperity. Rehoboam was Solomon's son and he followed Solomon as king. However, his unwise policies resulted in the kingdom splitting. Israel split into two separate states, Israel in the north and Judah in the south.
In 722 or 721 B.C.E., Israel, the Northern Kingdom, was destroyed by the the Assyrians. Assyria deported all that was left of its upper classes. Foreigners were brought in and they intermarried with the poor people left in the land. This intermarrying produced the Samaritans.
In 586 B.C.E., Judah, the Southern Kingdom, fell to the Babylonians. Most of the members of Judah?s surviving leadership were deported. In response to the Exile and the threat of annihilation, Jewish scholars began to collect and shape the literature of the people. Much of the Old Testament as we now know it took shape during the Exile and immediately afterward. But the process of forming the literature of the OT began much earlier.
There is a common belief that God directly dictated the words of the Bible. This is called "plenary verbal inspiration." Neither the instructor nor the textbook assumes this view.
Tanak
This is another name for the OT or Hebrew Bible.
It is an acronym based on the first letter of each of its three major divisions:
1. Torah (divine instruction or law).
2. Nevi'im (Prophets).
3. Kethubim (Writings).
So, the three primary sections of the OT or Hebrew Bible are
1. the Torah or Law.
2. the Prophets.
3. the Writings.
Each of these 3 major sections of the Hebrew Bible opens and/or closes with a statement about God's repeated promises to give Israel a national homeland.
Further Discussion of the 3 Different Sections
1. The first part of the Hebrew Bible is the five books of the Pentateuch. This first part of the OT is called the Torah, which means "teaching" or "instruction." Because Moses is the leading human figure in four books of the Torah (Exodus through Deuteronomy), this division is also known as the "Mosaic Law" or "Books of Moses." Moses is the person through whom God conveys his legal commands and other instructions. This part of the Hebrew Bible achieved sacred status around 400 B.C.E.
2. The Hebrew Bible's second part is the Nevi'im (Prophets). The Nebi'im became canonical around 200 B.C.E. The Nevi'im is divided into two subsections, the former and latter prophets.
a. The Former Prophets.
This first section consists of narratives relating Israel's historical experience from its conquest of Canaan, the territory God had promised to the Israelites, to its loss of that land when the Near Eastern empire of Babylon destroyed the capital, Jerusalem, and took its ruling classes into exile. Recounted in the books of Joshua, Judges, 1 and 2 Samuel, and 1 and 2 Kings,this narrative section covers the period from about 1250 B.C.E. to 587 B.C.E. The long narrative that begins in Genesis with God's creation of the world and his promise of a permanent homeland to Abraham's descendants (the people of Israel) thus ends tragically-and abruptly-in 2 Kings, with Abraham's progeny captive in Babylon.
b. The Latter Prophets.
The second subsection of the Nevi'im does not continue the narrative of Israel's history or describe its eventual return from exile to rebuild Jerusalem. This second section consists instead of collections of oracles of Israel's prophets. The prophetic books include Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel and the Book of the Twelve. Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel are generally known as the "major" prophets. The Twelve are generally known to Christians as the Minor Prophets. The minor prophets include Amos, Hosea, Micah, Jonah, and Malachi. Most of these prophetic oracles relate to specific political crises in Israel's history, such as the threat from Assyria, and the Babylonian invasion of the early sixth century B.C.E.
3. The Hebrew Bible's third and final division is the Kethubim (Writings). This part contains the most diverse material, including volumes of poetry, such as Psalms, Song of Songs, and Lamentations; short stories, such as Ruth and Esther; and books of Wisdom, such as Proverbs, Job, and Ecclesiastes. A postexilic writer composed the books of Ezra and Nehemiah. These are historical narratives which offer brief glimpses of life in Jerusalem after the exile, when Israel was under the domination of Persia, the empire that had replaced Babylon as ruler of the ancient Near East. The Kethuvim also includes Daniel, the only apocalypse admitted to the Tanak and, in the opinion of most scholars, the last-written book in the Hebrew Bible canon. The Kethubim had achieved canonical status not later than 100 C.E.
* Notice the last books of the Tanak and the Christian OT.
The Tanak ends with 2 Chronicles.
The Christian OT ends with Malachi.
The Septuagint is the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible. The word septuagint actually means "the work of the seventy" because seventy-two translators were divided into 12 groups of six each and each group came out with almost exactly the same translation. It was used by the Jewish community of Alexandria in Egypt. It differed from the Hebrew canon as to what books should be included in the Kethubim. It contained some fifteen extra books. The Septuagint influenced the fourth-century scholar Jerome who translated the OT and NT into Latin. This Latin translation is called the Vulgate.