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 10 th century (900’s) 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 Kingdom’s 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 Jesus’s 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 10 th century, scholars believe Israel had a tribal organization. The story of Jacob’s 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 15 th c. BCE.

6. 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 bible’s Garden of Eden.

7. 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

8. 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, El’s 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 (Elohim=sons 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 @ 586? Franks and Saxons inhabited the Germanic region 1 st limited democracy created in Athens, Greece 1 st 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 Solomon’s 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 1 st 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 bible’s 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. Alexander’s 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 Jerusalem’s 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 4 th 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. Jesus’s 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 1 st 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.

21. What’s the King James Bible? In the 14 th and 15 th 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.

22. Why are we using the NRSV translation? Currency: the King James bible was written in Shakespeare’s 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 1940’s among the Dead Sea Scrolls in Qumran.

23. 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 doesn’t 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 isn’t associated with a denomination or sect, it is more trustworthy than some others.

24. Three approaches: examples Formal EquivalenceBalanced ApproachExtensive Dynamic Equivalence American Standard Version of 1901 New American Standard Bible King James Version (formal equivalence, albeit to 17th-century English) New King James Version English Standard Version Revised Standard Version Douay-Rheims American Version Green's Literal Translation Holman Christian Standard Bible called "optimal" equivalence New Revised Standard Version New American Bible New English Translation Murdock's Translation Modern Language Bible New International Version Today's New International Version[5] New Jerusalem Bible Revised English Bible Good News Bible (formerly "Today's English Version") Complete Jewish Bible New Living Translation The Living Bible Phillips Modern English The Message

25. What difference does the translation make? The Case of Leviticus This passage from Leviticus 18:22 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…..

26. 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 18:22 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.

27. Leviticus 18:22 – 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 19 th c.) New International Reader’s 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 can’t 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 don’t 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.