586 BCE and After

1
586 BCE and After

• The World that Created the Bible

2
What happened in 586 BCE?

• Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon completed the conquest
  of Israel by making Judah, the southern half, a
  vassal state
• All priests, prophets, scribes, and members of
  the royal family were exiled throughout the
  Babylonian empire (Babylon, Egypt, Persia,
  Africa). This dispersion is called the Diaspora.
• Farmers workers remained as slaves. The
  religions they practiced were an amalgam of
  several forms of Judaism and paganism.

3
What was Israel before?

• From 10th century (900s) BCE to 586 BCE, Israel
  was a divided Kingdom. The north, Israel, had ten
  tribal units, and the south, Judah, had two. Each
  kingdom had its own priests, scribes, kings, and
  its own versions of the biblical narratives.
• While both kingdoms had fallen to the Assyrians
  in the 721 BCE, the south, where the Jerusalem
  temple housed many important archives, had
  regained its independence by 586, only to lose it
  again.
• Most of the biblical story is told by survivors
  of the Southern Kingdom.
• Jew and Judaism are named for the southern
  Kingdom.

4
The Northern Kingdoms Alternate Judaism

• A northern sect of Judaism, called Samaritanism,
  later compiled an alternate version of the Torah
  (the first five books). It used northern
  landmarks, mentions a northern capital (Gerizim),
  and rejects all books other than its own Torah.
  It is written in a different alphabet.
• The Samaritan Torah reflects political tensions,
  too. The north did not join with the south in its
  resistance to the Greek tyrant Antiochus IV.
• In Jesuss time, Jews regarded Samaritans as
  members of a different faith entirely. Although
  Jesus himself embraced them, almost none of them
  became Christians.

5
And before that?

• Before the 10th century, scholars believe Israel
  had a tribal organization. The story of Jacobs
  12 sons is an etiological tale that explains how
  the 12 tribes got their name.
• The people were Semitic or Asiatic, according
  to the Egyptians. They probably migrated all over
  Mesopotamia and into Egypt because of famine or
  conquest, but their base was Canaan, and
  Israelites were indistinguishable from
  Canaanites.

This photo of an Egyptian Wall paint- ing shows
Asiatic workers making bricks in Egypt in
the 15th c. BCE.
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Why Canaan?

• At some point, everyone seems to have invaded
  this region, which is the size of a large
  American county.
• In the early Bronze age, Canaan was settled by
  the Akkadians and the Egyptians. In biblical
  times, it was sought by the Philistines, the
  Phoenicians, the Assyrians, and many others.
• Why? Climate change was common, but for much of
  this time, most the surrounding region was
  desert.

Canaan was not only a maritime port, but a
habitable area of the Fertile Crescent, a region
fed by the Nile river as well as the Tigris and
Euphrates, the site of the bibles Garden of
Eden.
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Whom did the Canaanites worship?

• They worshipped various gods including El, his
  wife Asherah, grain god Dagon, a sea god Yam and
  his serpent ally Lotan, a huntress Anath, a love
  goddess Quadeshtu, and the storm god Baal Hadad,
  who superseded El in the Canaanite Pantheon.

Asherah was worshipped in hill shrines through
poles, teraphim, etc. In 586, Jeremiah complains
that Hebrew women are still baking Asherah
cakes.
Baal, God of Thunder, became a chief rival of
Yahweh
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What happened?

• At some point, the Israelites began thinking of
  themselves as separate from Canaanites. It may
  have happened during a stay in Egypt.
• In Joshua, it says the Israelites conquered the
  Canaanites, destroying them utterly.
• But Israelites and Canaanites actually lived side
  by side for centuries, speaking the same language
  and worshipping some of the same gods.
• After the exile, the Jews blamed this double
  identity for all their suffering. At that time,
  they may have edited older texts to emphasize the
  differences between Israelite and Canaanite.

9
El Yahweh?

• According to the Canaanite myths, Els marriage
  to Beirut (City) produced Heaven and Earth.
• In the bible, when you see God, it is a
  translation of one of many versions of El
  (Elohimsons of god, El Shaddai God almighty,
  El Roi God of seeing, El Elyon God of the
  mountains).
• When you see LORD, it is a translation of JHWH,
  probably pronounced Yahweh, which means, I
  am. Jews may not pronounce the Tetragrammaton or
  sacred name of God.
• Though these names are often used
  interchangeably, some think they were originally
  two different gods, one Kenite (or Cainite) and
  one Canaanite.
• These gods merged in the story of Exodus.

10
What else happened _at_ 586?

• Franks and Saxons inhabited the Germanic region
• 1st limited democracy created in Athens, Greece
• 1st great western philosopher, Anaximenes,
  declared water the basis of all matter
• The great mathematician, Pythagoras, preached
  about the transmigration of souls.
• 35-yr old Nepalese aristocrat Siddhartha Gautama
  founded Buddhism
• Confucius was active in China.

11
Why 586? Literacy

• The exile and the post-exile Persian and Greek
  (or Second Temple) period was when most of the
  bible was written in final form. By 586, Israel
  employed many scribes and priests.
• The exiled author Ezekiel was one of the first to
  have his own story written down, and Lamentations
  was set down soon after composition.
• Before 586, the temple had archives, records,
  collections of sayings, but most stories in the
  bible we know now were oral legends and folktales
  existing in several different versions.

12
586 The Impact of Exile

• When Solomons Temple was destroyed, most records
  were lost too. In exile, priests and scribes
  reconstructed old stories, invented others, and
  saw the importance of a permanent canon. But the
  canon had many more books than the Hebrew bible
  has today, and was not finally closed until 1st
  century CE.
• Because most texts were composed or finished
  post-exile, they reflect post-exile concerns
• a permanent sense of homelessness
• a covenant that is indefinitely postponed
• an identify defined by exclusion, separation, and
  ethnic and cultural purity.

13
586 Impact of other cultures on Israel

• During the Babylonian, Persian, and Hellenistic
  (Greek) periods that followed, Israel (also
  called Palestine after Greek invaders that once
  lived there) joined a large, vibrant empire.
• The bibles writers were influenced by religious
  and literary traditions from Egypt, Persia
  (Iran), Babylon (Iraq), Greece, Assyria,
  Ethiopia, and parts of India.
• They borrowed keys concepts (Devil, heaven/hell,
  guardian angels, demons) from Persia, and their
  creation, flood, and law stories could have been
  influenced by other cultures as well.

14
Alexanders Empire
15
What is the bible, anyway?

• Bible is a Greek word meaning little books.
  No single bible exists, because the canon of each
  group is different. Our bible has three main
  parts
• The Hebrew bible, written mostly in Hebrew
• The Apocrypha, written mostly in Greek
• The New Testament, written mostly in Greek

16
The Hebrew Bible?

• The Hebrew Bible or TNK (Torah, Prophets,
  Writings) is similar to what Christians call the
  Old Testament, but in a different order.
• It is written mostly in Hebrew but also in
  Aramaic (the common language of the Persian
  empire).
• The last book accepted in the Hebrew bible was
  Daniel, which they took because it was set in the
  time of exile (but actually written around 165
  BCE).
• Our bible uses the Christian order of texts, but
  our rental uses the Jewish order.

17
The Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha

• The Apocrypha is a collection of later Jewish
  books, written mostly in Greek. These were known
  by first century CE Jews like Jesus, Paul, and
  the authors of the gospels, but were excluded
  from the final Jewish canon as being too new.
  Most are pseudonymous, meaning they are
  attributed to famous people but not written by
  them. They are in the Catholic and Greek canons,
  but not the Protestant canon.
• The Apocrypha contains Greek additions to Esther,
  Daniel, and Esther, as well as many other texts.
• A huge number of texts did not make it into any
  canon. These are sometimes called the
  Pseudepigrapha. Some, like the Testament of
  Solomon and the Book of Enoch, had a strong
  impact on the Catholic church and our notions of
  hell, Satan, original sin, and purgatory.

18
The New Testament?

• The NT was written in Greek in the Roman Empire,
  mostly by Jews, mostly after the destruction of
  Jerusalems second temple in 70 CE. Its authors,
  except for Paul, were anonymous or pseudonymous,
  but probably none knew Jesus or spoke his
  language.
• Its main character, Jesus, existed in many
  versions that synthesized many spiritual
  traditions and practices Rabbinical Judaism
  Greek philosophy Roman mystery rites that
  practiced ritual cannibalism and believed in
  purification by death, resurrection, and baptism
  Zoroastrianism and perhaps others.
• The final Catholic canon, fixed around the 4th c.
  CE, also excluded many books and traditions about
  Jesus.
• While the NT was being composed, Rabbinical Jews
  were closing the written canon of the Hebrew
  bible but beginning a vast interpretive tradition
  called the Talmud and the Midrash. These works
  are also canonical in Jewish tradition.

19
Was Jesus a Christian?

• No. Jesus was a Jew. He probably lived in Galilee
  but worked with his father in a Roman business
  center called Sepphoris.
• Jesuss name was Jeshua or Joshua, not Jesus.
• The first Christians were his disciples, led by
  his brother James. Paul created a variant version
  of this Jesus movement, and his version caught
  on.

Above a zodiac wheel in a Jewish synagogue in
Sepphoris. No Christian existed before 36 CE,
so the audience for the Hebrew Bible contained no
Christians.
20
How did the bible get into English? Latin 1st

• The bible was translated into Latin by way of
  Greek by Jeremiah. For centuries, it was the only
  version of the bible available, and it was a
  crime to translate it, so most Europeans knew the
  bible only through paintings and street plays.
• It was a good translation, but it made many
  errors. For example, the character Lucifer is a
  Latin mis-translation of sons of light, or
  Babylonians. Though the King James Bible retains
  this error and others like it, no character
  Lucifer is actually mentioned in the Bible.

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Whats the King James Bible?

• In the 14th and 15th centuries, people suffered
  great persecution to translate the bible into
  their spoken languages.
• The King James bible was a translation authorized
  by the King of England in 1611. It followed other
  great translations such as the Wycliffe bible,
  the Coverdale bible, and the Geneva bible.
• The Geneva bible and the King James bible went
  back to the original Greek and Hebrew sources, so
  they were good, but their translators knew less
  about biblical Hebrew than we know today.

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Why are we using the NRSV translation?

• Currency the King James bible was written in
  Shakespeares time by poets. It was beautiful,
  but hard for ordinary people to understand, then
  as now.
• Accuracy The NRSV translation not only reflects
  the latest scholarship about Hebrew and biblical
  studies, but it incorporates some variations used
  by different versions of these texts, versions
  discovered in the 1940s among the Dead Sea
  Scrolls in Qumran.

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Why this translation continued

• Principles of translation because ancient Hebrew
  is so different from English, translators choose
  either Dynamic equivalence (expresses the main
  idea, sometimes to the point of
  reinterpretation), formal equivalence (expresses
  the literal meaning, even if it doesnt make
  sense), or a balance between the two.
• The New Revised Standard Version uses an
  excellent balance, and our version provides
  footnotes whenever an alternate literal reading
  is possible. Because this balanced translation
  isnt associated with a denomination or sect, it
  is more trustworthy than some others.

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Three approaches examples
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What difference does the translation make? The
Case of Leviticus

• This passage from Leviticus 1822 is used by many
  fundamentalist Christians and Jews to make laws
  against same sex behavior
• You shall not lie with a male as with a woman
  it is an abomination. (NRSV)But what does
  Leviticus really mean? That depends..

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Temple Prostitution and the Sacred Marriage

• Many ancient pagan cultures had a sacred
  fertility practice called heiros gamos or sacred
  marriage, and because the bible refers to temple
  prostitutes, some think heiros gamos was part of
  ancient Hebrew temple ritual.
• Leviticus deals with proper temple worship and
  prohibits the fertility worship practices found
  in early Pagan cultures ritual same-sex behavior
  in Pagan temples was one such practice, so some
  think Lev 1822 refers only to temple sex.
• So how does one translate and interpret this
  passage? These translations show a wide
  variation, depending on how you read the
  surrounding passages.

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Leviticus 1822 some translations

• RSV You shall not lie with a male as with a
  woman it is an abomination.
• Good News Never have sexual intercourse with a
  man as with a woman. It is disgusting.
• NLT (New Living Translation) "Do not practice
  homosexuality it is a detestable sin."
  (homosexual coined in the 19th c.)
• New International Readers Version 'Do not have
  sex with a man as you would have sex with a
  woman. I hate that.
• These translations differ not only in their
  reading of lie with but in their interpretation
  of Towebah or abomination.
• Who hates this lying, God or priests? Is it
  only in the temple, or everywhere? Does it apply
  to women too? And does it apply to all acts, or
  just certain kinds?
• Too often, translations reflect the religious
  beliefs of translators. We cant know for sure
  what the writers meant or what conditions
  motivated them.

28
No Bible has the Last Word

• Not only do many canons exist, but we now know
  each text existed in multiple versions
• The Hebrew Bible was transmitted orally, then
  copied, changed, edited, harmonized, and
  recopied. Exile communities possessed many
  variants.
• The New Testament gospels were written long after
  Jesus died not only dont the gospels themselves
  agree, but variant texts and gospels existed all
  over the empire.
• Translation shapes how we read texts, so we
  should look at as many as we can. When possible,
  we should look at the original meaning in the
  original language.