christian scriptures exam #3

By 332, Alexander the Great had taken control

of the regions of Judea and Samaria (Judah and Israel)

Alexander dies in

323 BCE, without an obvious heir

General Ptolemy took

Egypt, Libya, and Palestine

General Seleucus took

most of the Eastern part of the empire, including Syria

In 167 BCE, Antiochus IV

outlaws the practice of Judaism

Antiochus IV defiles the temple,

erecting a statue of Zeus and sacrificing a pig on the altar

Judas (Maccabeus) takes over after the death of Mattathias, and

after a few years of guerilla warfare, takes control of the temple in Jerusalem

The Maccabean’s

purify and rededicate the temple in 164 BCE(Hannakuah)

Three of the sons of Mattathias continue to lead the revolt until 142 BCE,

when the Jews in Judea are no longer forced to pay tribute to the Seleucid leadership in Syria

Hasmonean period involves

Jewish autonomous rule over Judea

In lieu of aiding one side or the other, Roman General Pompey simply

occupied Judea and annexes it into the Roman
empire(63 BCE)

General P instates a Hasmonean ruler as governor,

but Jewish autonomy is gone

Herod the Great is know as the 

Great Builder(Temple)

In 66 CE Rome responded to Jewish unrest by

raiding the temple

Years of siege warfare and continuing Jewish infighting inside

Jerusalem, it led to the fall of Jerusalem in 70 CE

The second temple was destroyed and

religious leadership was eliminated

When the 2nd temple was destroyed, it sparked another Jewish uprising,

led by Simon Bar Kokhba, in 132 CE

The Roman army suppressed the revolt by 136 CE and…

• Judaism was outlawed in Judea

• Judea was effectively depopulated

• Jewish people would not possess an autonomous ruler

• No Jewish state until 1948

The Sanhedrin

The seat of religious and political authority

The Synagogue

Houses of worship and study (but no sacrifices),
often led by non-priests

Pharisees came from

all parts of society

Pharisees emphasized study

of the Torah and the Oral Torah

Pharisees embraced many of the

religious developments of the Second Temple Period

Sadducees typically came from the

aristocratic elite

Sadducees were responsible

for the administration of the Temple

The rejected the authority of the Oral Torah and

most of the religious developments of the Hellenistic period

Essenes lived in isolated communities,

under monastery-like ascetic guidelines

Most well-known group lived near

Qumran which produced the Dead Sea Scrolls

Samaritians Differences

• Place of Worship
• Different Biblical traditions, reflecting their
preference for Mt. Gerizim

Diasporic Groups without the sacrificial system and the temple, Judaism in diaspora emphasized other religious practices like

• Sabbath
• Kashrut
• Torah Study

Dias

The synagogue became the center of religious and intellectual life

DAILY LIFE PRE-70 CE

Messianic expectations

Judaism without the Temple:

• Torah observance and the synagogue effectively replaced the sacrificial system and the Temple
• Pharisaic Judaism was the only form to survive

Of the 4 canonical gospels, 3 share a significant amount of material which is

Matthew, Mark and Luke(“synoptic” means seen together")

John contains some elements from the Synoptics, but considerably less like

no exorcisms or parables, and the structure is different

Ancient biographies used the subject in question

to encourage a particular response to a particular context

The gospel of Mark is split in half with

Peter’s proclamation in 8:27

The gospel of Matthew is organized into

5-part cycle of teachings and narrative

The gospel of Matthew has an abundance of

scriptural citation

The gospel of Matthew has Jesus’s

birth narrative

The gospel of Luke has a more

universal outlook

The gospel of Matthew has an emphasis on

the socially marginalized

The gospel of Matthew has Jesus’s journey to Jerusalem as

the largest part of the book

The authorship of Acts is

likely the same author who wrote the gospel of luke

The author of Acts wrote it as a

series of “we” sections

The structure of Acts is a

3-Part structure: Jerusalem for chapter 1-8, Judea and Samaria for chapters 8-12, and to ends of the earth for chapter 13-28

Pauls missionary journeys in chapter 15 of acts is about

the council of jerusalem

Paul is teaching that not only do with not have to be ethnically jewish

you dont even have to be religiously Jewish

The similarities between the synoptic gospels are

they have the same basic plot/characters

There are also similarities between the synoptic gospels from the

highest concentration of Jesus’s arrest, trial, and death

The differences between synoptic gospels are

the chronology, geography, and the book of John lacks many central episodes common to all three synoptics, and John includes several characters not in the synoptics

The prologue of John 

offers a “cosmic” beginning and echos Genesis 1:1

In the book of John, there are 7 instances in the Gospel of John

where Jesus makes a declarative statement about his identity using the phrase “I am...”

John 1:19-12:50 Jesus’s “I am” statements echos

Exodus 3:14 in Greek: “I am that I am”

The Gospel of John

contains no parables

The book of John has less emphasis on the nature of the Kingdom of God and

more emphasis on the identity of its King

In the Gospel of John, miracles function

more like prophetic sign acts