Christian Scriptures Notes

ECS Notes

First 2 exams

25-38

Geography of Palestine

• 150 miles by 70 miles

• Crucial to understand the geography as it heavily influenced what happens in the texts. Unity amongst the whole country would be hard as the geography is so diverse. Different regions set the path for a lot of the texts to develop on their own as in the case of the Old Testament wherein the Mesopotania and Egypt lands were. The Exodus spends a lot of time in Egypt.

• By understanding the way that the ancient people lived, by way of understanding the geography that shaped their lives, we can better understand the texts they wrote.

• The Near East was full of religion and ritual where most cultures were polytheistic mainly.

• The coastal plain is in the south and narrows as it goes down.

  • Gaza and Ashdod are familiar biblical names in this area

• Central hill country

  • In the center of Palestine

  • Lots of hills

  • Far south leads to the Sinai Desert

• Jordan Rift

  • Begins near mount Hermon

  • Jordan River

• Transjordan Plateau

  • Bashan - todays Golan Heights known for cattle

Archaeology

• Important to understand the Meditterranian and Near East

• Find anything about the peoples way of life

• Not used to prove or disprove the bible, rather, it gives as much info as possible

• KEY FINDS

  • Rosetta stone

  • Ugaritic Materials

  • Mari Tablets

  • Dead Sea Scrolls

Primeval History

• Pentateuch is also the Old Testament and the first division in the Hebrew Canon

• 4 sections in order to understand the texts: Primeval History, Ancestral Stories, The Exodus, and Covenant

In The Beginning

The Garden of Eden

• Portrays god in anthropomorphic language and has a very different style to Genesis

• God creates the man AKA Adam from dust on the ground

• The search for community lead to the creation of a woman, the mother of all living things

• The start of Genesis has a weird connection with otyher narratives, specifically, the Babylonian epic from Mesopotania

  • The epic showcases a war between the gods and goddesses, with the Earth being shaped from the corpse of Tiamat

  • Parallels to Genesis 1

    • Begins with watery chaos

    • Order of creation is very similar except that in the Babylonian text, the parts of creation are tied to several gods and godesses.

• In order to understand Genesis in its fullest, we have to be able to understand to an extent the various historical and social settings of the era

• In Enuma Elish, the humans were slaves to trhe gods and godesses while in Genesis, they are of the creation of god

• Chapter 3 introduces the serpent whicvh tempts Eve into eating the fruit of the tree.

  • God lowkey crashes out and forces Adam and Eve out of the Garden of Eden to find their own world

• Genesis 1 and 2 provide two different accounts for the creation

  • Genesis 1 starts with a watery chaos that then becomes an ordered creation

  • Genesis 2 has land watered by a mist.

  • The shapers for the book of Genesis did not see this as a contradiction in narrative, but rather two different perspectives

Genesis 4-11

• Consider the types of literature in the text and how they relate.

  • Genesis 1-11 = primeval

  • Genesis 12-50 = ancestral

• Genesis 4 is about Cain and Abel, the sons of Adam and Eve.

  • Cain kills Abel when he is enraged about Abel’s sacrifice being accepted by god. This is associated with Sin

  • God confronts Cain and the retort from Cain, “Am I my brothers keeper?” is said

  • Cain was banished from the family and forced to be a fugitive and wanderer of the Earth

  • God provides a mark of protection for Cain

Genesis 6-9

• Evil has spread throughout humanity and taken the form of a flood

• Noah and his family are blessed by God and instructed to make an ark to hold representatives of every animal

• After the flood, God renews the creation with the promise that God will not again ‘destroy every living creature’

Genesis 11

• Tower of Babel.

• After the flood, humanity shares one language and they decide to build a city and tower to storm the heavens

• God crashes out again at the sight of their ambition and scatters people across the whole world and confusing their languages

Genesis analysis

• Each story from Genesis follows a pattern of disobedience against God, the consequences, and grace

38-50

Abraham and Sarah

• God summons the pair to go to Egypt because they were facing famine and Egypt had new promises

• Abraham tries to pass his wife off as his sister so the locals wouldn’t seek her

• Abraham becomes wealthy and uses said wealth to solve his problems.

• Abraham wants to have a child for two reasons:

  • 1: He was promised to have one

  • 2: Wants a child to prevent the lead house servant from obtaining the wealth

  • He engages in a strange ritual involing an animal cut in half with smoke passed between the halves to signal to God that is present. God pops up and says, “yo we gots to get you dat baby or you finna have to slice me yams in half like dis here animal yuh”

• Sarai was unable to have a child so she instructs the servant Hagar to have a child with Abram = Ishmael

• Weird af story

Isaac and Rebekah

• Transitions the story to a new generation

• Chapter 26 reaffirms the promise and blessing of progeny, land, and blessing

Jacob and Rachel

• These two are twins born from Isaac and Rebekah

• Rivalry between the two

• Jacob tricked Esau out of his birthright and blessing from his father

• Jacob flees to his Uncle to escape the murderous threat of his brother

• Jacob has a dream known as Jacobs ladder where God gtives the ancestral covenant promise to Jacob

• More deception happens and Jacob wants to marry his first cousin Rachel but is tricked into marryingf two of his first cousins

• Jacob and Rachel leave and Jacob has another encounter with the divine

  • His name is changed from Jacob, the trickster, to Israel

Joseph Generation

• God does not appear in the same way as before but rather as the natural processes of life

• He is seen as wise and able to interpret dreams as a way forward

• His brothers sell him into slavery and tell his father that an animal killed his son

• Joseph becomes a servant and is falsely accused of assaulting Potiphars wife

• Because he can interpret dreams, he is put in the Pharaohs court and he rises to be the prime minister of Egypt

• The promise still ends up alive in the end

Compiling the Pentateuch

• Composed over time from many different accounts

• The 17th century turned peoples brains on and they started to question the origins of these texts.

• Julius Wellhausen in 1878 hypothesized that the pentateuch came from several documents

• Potentially in the 10th century BCE a theologian told the stories of the pentateuch to tell Israels ancient origins

• Untrustworthy since so many peoples hands have touched and edited the texts

• 4 different types of Pentateuch

  • J (Yahwist) - Uses YHWH for god. Creation. Mount Sinai is where Mosaic covenant is concluded.

  • E (Elohist) - More abstract. Less picturesque than J.

  • D (Deuteronomist) - Relfects style and attitudes towards Josiahs reform. Only one central sanctuary is acceptable

  • P (Priestly) - Priestly concers, lawful, precise, censuses and geanealogies.

• A different approach to the pentateuch doesn’t care for the original texts and instead focuses on the final version.

  • Follows clues of canonical criticism

Exodus in context

50-60

Covenant as Sinai

• Introduces the Decalogue AKA the ten commandments in Exodus 20

• This claw of code expands into the daily lives of the citizens and binds Israel and YHWH to a covenant

• Apodictic law is basic and universal in nature. An example of this would be the Ten Commandments as they are very broad

• Casuistic law is very defined and makes up a lot of the Covenant Code where specific actions have a designated consequence

• Assyrian laws are very very strict and moderated by Babylonian law. It is a reflection of their times with clear hierarchys to denote people

Covenant and worship

• The back half of the book determines a bunch of rules regarding the ways in which people can worship and serve in ritual for their deities.

• The priests follow instruction for a tabernacle and God says it is fitting for worship

• The book of Leviticus is basically about how to worship after doing the necessary steps to set it up

Leviticus

• It is the task of the Levites to teach about worship and support the priests

• Manual of sacrifice:

  • Whole burnt oppffering dedicating ones whole life to YHWH - an atoning sacrifice

  • Ceareal offering to suggest everyday life is from YHWH

  • Shared offering in which YHWH and worshippers share the sacrificed meal

  • Purification offering brining cleansing from sin and uncleanliness

  • Compensation offering making amends for guilt

• There are different views on how sacrifice was viewed itself. Some saw it as a way to actually have and show faith in your deity while it also could’ve been a negative view where one is bribing an angry deity

• The second half of the book (11-16) focuses on how to prepare your worship, which is why its called the Manual of Purity

  • Clean suggests it is acceptable to accept as a diety

• Because some of the rituals were to cleanse ones sins, it was important to make sure the area was as clean as possible so God can engage, otherwise it would be a fracture in the relationship between God and the people

• Holiness Code (17-26)

  • Instructs the community how to interpret the actions of God

  • Instructs the people to live as those in a relationship with God rather than their own individualized lives

  • Instructions on incest

  • Because the Deity is so holy and the purest possible, everyone should strive to be as close as you can do such

Sojourn in the Wilderness

    The book of Numbers

• Named after the numbering and census of the people with which it begins

• It is organized into 2 themes

  • 1st theme is about the ordering of life as covenant people of YHWH

    • Those that cared for the tabernacle and watched over the Ark of the covenant were called the Levites

    • The ordering of people is very concrete with no interpretation

  • 2nd theme is the wilderness rebellions

    • People were up in arms about authority and a lack of provisions which led to distrust and people dying, lowering the numbering

• Numbers 22-24 is about the story of Balaam and shows some of the conflicts in Israel in a comical way to contrast to some of the other death in the wilderness.

• Balak hires Balaam to curse Israel and its people but he does the opposite and blesses them instead. Accounts show that people have begun to fear God.

The Book of Deuteronomy

• End of the Pentateuch

• Is a collection of farewell addresses from Moses to the Covenant

• It embodies the people as people of God as he leads them with an outstretched arm

• Basis of Mosaic covenant and summons the people to respond with fidelity as they enter a new era

• The relationship betweeb a lord and their subordinants is described by twentioeth century scholars as they became aware of Covenant Treaties

  • Preamble addressing the lord

  • Previous history of beneficience (glaze)

  • Basic understanding of the relationship

  • Instructions in the shape of the relationship

  • Divine witness to the agreement

  • Consequences of keeping ort breaking the treaty

• The Book of Deuteronomy broadly follows this structure, aside from divine witnesses. It is also seen in other covenant books such as Exodus and the Torah

• The Book of Deuteronomy addressed its time period but also had influence over other things as well

  • 7th century BCE - Addresses Jerusalem and becomes part of Josiahs grand reform that besically removed a lot of fucked up things

• The book of Deuteronomy closes out the Pentateuch and begins the lives for the Israeli people as they are ordered by God in the book to come into existence in order to strive with him.

• YHWH tells them all that he is the one and only god and be loyal to him alone

• The question posed by the book of Deuteronomy is how the israel people will live their lives and if they obey the covenant relationship

60-63

The Book of Deuteronomy

• Means second law and is another recounting of Mosaic tradition of Torah

• Series of Farewell addresses from Moses to the covenant

• He asks them to have faith in teh covenant as YHWH takes them to a sacred place in open arms

• chapters 27-28 has blessings and curses based on if you keep or break the covenant

• Covenant formularies are the relationship between a ord and servant opossed to a parity treaty where the two parties are equal

• Deuteronomy has no gods or goddesses as witnesses

• King Josiah found the book of deuteronomy and used it as a basis for Josiahs grand reform

  • Centralization of worship

  • Abolition of astral worship

  • Removal of sacred prostitutes

  • Prohibition of child sacrifice

  • Removal of necromancers

  • Reinstitution of the passover in temple

• The book illustrates monotheism where YHWH is the only god to worship

Theological Reflection: Creation and Covenant

• The Hebrew canon can be split by two themes

  • Creation is the first half that recounts the creation of everything by gods will as the first stories in the old testament

  • Covenant is varried by different things.

    • Noachic covenant and ancestral covenant are primary for Genesis

    • Mosaic and Sinaitic covenant

• God establishes a covenant in order to save the people in Exod. 3:7-9 after they suffer through oppression

• Going forward sees how the Israeli people move forward with this covenant

64-67

Chapter 3 - Former and Latter Prophets

Historical and Social Contexts

• The Former prophets are all the historical books and include significant characters

  • Recounts from Joshua to the fall of the southern kingdom of Judah

  • The perspective from the characters in the books recount the history of the times but in their own perspective, giving their insight.

  • Recounts the listed events but focuses on the relationship between the people and YHWH

  • DIfferent authors argue how these books came together with some arguing the books came together at once by one singular redactor while others think they came together over more time

• Latter prophets are all of the Major prophets as well as the twelve Minor Prophets

69-76

Wars with YHWH

• A major issue was the battles in the name of the covenant diety

• Battle was very ritualistic and people believed their diety would give them the strategies tow in since the battle on land were also held by gods above

• Battles that were devoted to destruction meant essentially that everythiong brought into battle would be destroyed and a way of sacrifice to YHWH

  • This heavily conflicts witht eh ideals of peace in several Canon

• Several historians have tried to find reasons and justifications as to why they took place at all

  • It might haved been just part of the culture in those times

  • Could have been in defense

The Book of Judges

• Early Israel was, rather than one unified state, a loose tribal group that only came together for worship or military needs. Everything else was done byt eh tribes themselves

• The leaders of these people were called ‘judges’

• The main cycle that judges went through were as follows

  • The israelites do evil in the sight of YHWH

  • They suffer oppression as a consequence

  • Israel cries out to YHWH

  • YHWH raises up a deliverer, a judge

• Major Judges

  • Othniel

    • Best illustration of the judge cycle

  • Ehud

    • Dark humor

  • Deborah

    • Her and her general Barak deliver people from the Canaanite king Jabin and his general Sisera

  • Gideon

    • Unlikely judge because of his weaknesses

    • Surprise tactics that delivers Israel from Midianite oppression

    • His son sucks as trying a monarchy

  • Jephtah

    • Delivers Israel from the Ammonites

    • Sacrifices his daughter

  • Samson

    • Nazarite who delivers the Israelites from the Philistines

    • Broke his Nazarite vow

Deuteronomic theme

• The covenant during the time of the judges was not good

• A lot of bad traits are defining characteristics of early Israel

• This era and the cycles within is defined by a lack of faith and repenting is key to establishing a relationship with YHWH

• There was no king of Israel and the people did what they saw fit

Movement to Monarchy

• Israel was still characterized by being only united by religion and war

• The last Judge, Samuel, appointed two kings

• He transitioned Israel from a collection of charismatic leaders of tribes, to a kingdom with an established monarchy.

• Samuel became a ruler of Israel

• The covenant relationship was still dim, but YHWH still had a lot of power as shown when the Philistines took the ark and it began giving them issues, so they ended up returning it

• Saul transitions the times from Samuel to David and isn’t super important. He’s a good military leader but isn’t treated well by the people

• David marries Saul’s daughter Michal to become part of the royal family

• Saul fights his son Jonathon to the death and David is brought to be king after a life on the lamb

• The Prophet Nathan prophesizes that David and his sons will rule over the people of Jerusalem

Kingship in Israel

• The people ask Samuel for a king since the tribes have become so split from each other because of different factors. He warns about kings because they could take away from worshipping YHWH

• They decided that the king should be gods representative instead of a king that hasd their own divinity such as in Egypt

• There was a huge concern that having a king could create even more covenant disobedience but it doesn’t happen this way as Israel flourishes under David and Solomon

Davids Reign

• David kills the Philistine giant Goliath and it brings him great fame

• He gets a close relationship with Sauls son Jonathon and Saul fears David will go for the throne, so David becomes a nomad and later king of Judah after Saul and Jonathon die

• David decides to make Jerusalem the capital of the kingdom to worship YHWH

• Who will succeed David? He created a cabinet in order to operate a bureaucracy

• David has an affair and out comes little Solomon who then grows up to pass his father on the throne

• It appears that, because there was no theogany involved in the decision of Solomon taking the throne, that YHWH trusted David to make the decision

• Lowkey the goat although he was scandelous

• Davids reign brought a lot of prosperity and although he made pushes for a lot of belief and faith in YHWH, it became more so a covenant to David rather than to YHWH.

84-92

Hosea

• Starts with a recount of his family biography

• Hoseas prophecies focus on the indictment of Israel and lays out a case against the people of Israel

• People continuously break covenant by chasing other gods

• He asks that the people return to the beginning of their relationship with YHWH in the wilderness

Isaiah focused 3 distinct crises

• Syro-ephraimite crisis

  • The north tried to pressue Judah into joining an alliance but Isaiah said they should put faith in YHWH for protection

• Assyrian threat

  • Same as above

• Asyrian siege

  • Isaiah viewed that the city would be delivered by YHWH

Micah

• Is a rural prophet and different that Isaiah in that regard

• People offer sacrafices to God even though all he wants is people to do kindness and love each other

Judah

• Most of the rulers were pretty good, notably Hezekiah and Josiah who found an ancient scroll to bring reform to Jerusalem

Jeremiah lowkey told everyone they’d die and explode because they lack a good covenant with YHWH and will suffer the consequences for their disobedience

His later prophecies were more hopeful and often times don’t appear in Greek versions of the text because those hopeful prophecies were later additions and didn’t come with the original.

94-97 and Lamentation

Exam 3

139-146

146-153

166-172

172-180

180-187

187-193

194-205

Notes by topic

Exams 1 and 2

Canons Of The Bible 8/28/26

• Canon just means the books that are officially part of a religions specific bible

• A lot of variation of both the new and old testament

• Process of canonization is a process of scripturization

  • Some books take authority over another

CRITERIA for Canon

• Age - how old is it? Older books have a more immediate precidence

• Connected to authoritive figures

• Consistency of message - does align and convey the common messages found in other books

• Corroboration from other sources - Does it cite other books or reference other ones

Canonization of the Hebrew Bible - TaNaK

• Slow and somewhat obscure

• Council of Jamnia

• Some books were authoritative before others were

• Torah was the first authoritative scripture

  • Known and Pentateuch (5 books)

  • Genesis, exodus, leviticus, numbers, deuteronomy

• More text become more important known as the prophets - Nevi’im

  • Former prophets

  • Second most important book used to clarify the Torah

  • Latter prophets

• Final set of writings as authoritative scripture was the Ketuvim - Writings

• Order of what books are the most important

Torah - the most authoritative books

• Hebrew Bible organized as more so instructions that explain each other in a degree of authority

• Old testament is organized by genre

Old Testament

• Catholic old testament includes additonal writings not found in the protestant oldtestament

• Jews in Diaspora were losing their Hebrew tongue so they translated the books to Greek - AKA The Septuagint

  • They had 72 people translate the bible word for word to compare the books to ensure that they were the same

  • Broader selection of books that included books popular in the alexandria library

• Catholic old Testament follows the Sept. by using extra books not in the Hebrew bible

  • Second canon

• Protestant bibles which has extra books are in the back, hidden away, known as the Apocrypha

  • Protestant reformers wanted to skip past all the translations to select old text only originally written in Hebrew, not Greek which is where a lot of books in the Apocrypha are from.

The Canonization of the New Testament 8/31/26

• The time frame for the writing and canonization is much smaller than the Hebrew scriptures, however the process was very similar

• Rather than one epicenter of authority, there were instead collections of books instead of one collection holding authority over the others to refer back to

• Ancient people probably only have a very limited amount of text

  • People in the area decided as a group which text would be kept and which are important based on the text they had available

    • Is it apostolitic, universal, or traditional?

The Bible says?…

• Which bible?

• Does it say that?

Tools, Terms, and Texts 8/31/26

• There are no autographs of the bible - no originals that they made

  • Copies of copies of copies of copies of copies . . .

  • The earliest fragments we have are still super old

  • All Biblical books contain variant readings

    • Translations and copies back in the day had the potentials to have real human error

    • Sometimes they have editorial changes motivated by theological concerns - Actual changes to the intention and literal things in the book

• Text critics are translators alike use the MASORETIC TEXT (MT) as the base text to reconstruct the old testament

  • Masoretes - The scribes were meticulous in order to make the texts they made as close to each other as possible

  • About 1,000 after Jesus died, which is 1,500 hundred years after the texts were originally written

• Dead Sea Scrolls - The scrolls found in a cave in the mid 20th century

  • All texts are basically incomplete

  • The texts demonstrate variant readings

• Older texts have more variant while newer ones are more aligned

Textual Criticism of the Old Testament

• Hebrew stopped being used by Jews so we use translations of the common language at the time

Textual Criticism of the New Testament

• Has WAYYYY more texts than the Old Testament written by hand.

• A lot more Christians than Jews in the ancient word

• Codices - more complete and generally later (4th - 5th centuries CE)

• Papyri - Usually fragmentary (2nd - 3rd centuries CE)

Translating the Bible

• Formal Correspondance

  • Word for word translation, maintaining the grammatical forms of each translated word.

  • Sometimes makes an issue that doesn’t make sense

• Dynamic Equivalence

  • Focuses on the meaning of the text and tries to recreate the meaning using contemporary language

For the Exam 9/4/26

• Multiple choice questions (2 points): 20

• Short answer (5 points): 6

• Passage identification (5 points): 6

• Be able to identify every part of the book

The Exodus From Egypt 9/9/26

Hagar neared death with no agency over what happened to her

No archaeological evidence for the Exodus from Egypt described in the bible

Wanderings and Deuteronomy 9/11/26

Concept of a Patron Deity

• A lot of cultures believed in a pantheon of gods but there was one special god known as a patron god

• Ancient Israelites might have started with believing YHWH as a patron god at first instead of just being the sole individual god

  • He was the god of their individual selves and of their land, accessible only to their land and no one else

  • There were instances of people in the bible referencing multiple gods but only worshipping one

• Henotheism - Only worships one god but doesn’t deny other ones existing

Book of Numbers

• God punishes everyone by saying they will all not be able to go into the promise land because they lacked faith in YHWH

• 2nd Census comes along and they’re more fit for getting to the promise land

Book of Deuteronomy

• Non linear book

• Laws

• Guidelines for curses and blessings if you disobey or follow the law

• Moses puts Joshua in charge

• 
  

Entry Into the Promise Land 9/14/26

Joshua

• Moses gives the second acount of the law to the 2nd generation but he dies so Joshua, his successor, leads the people into the promise land

• Israelites are commanded by god to attack the Caananites

• Farewell speeches about the covenant

• Archaeological evidence

  • Not a lot of evidence that the conquest happened

  • There is evidence for the fall of most civilizations into the dark age

• Kherem

  • An ethical problem

  • The practice of destroying everything in war to show worship to God

Judges

• Not judges in the modern sense of the word

• Charismatic military rules and rule after delivering the Israel

• Not kings because there’s no hereditary monarchy

• Is it a cycle or Spiral?

Samson

The Israelite Monarchy 9/16/26

Specialized roles

• judges

  • Not hereditary one time ruler

• kings

  • Hereditary and in charge of economy and infrastructure

• Priest

  • Knows the ins and outs with how to worship

  • Made their living from taking sacrifices

• Prophets

  • Only israelis had prophets and not taken from other cultures

  • Acted as a spokesperson against the king

  • The main function was not to tell the future but rather seeting conditions

721

• 10 tribes of Israel wiped out by Assyrian empire

Babylonians destroy Jerusalem after they stop paying tribute

The Pre-Exilic Prophets 9/21/26

Misc.

• The literature was less narrative prose and more poetic

• Prophetic literature

• Israelite prophetic literature is unique in the middle near east

• Prophecies started as short, isolated, spoken oracles

  • No narrative or

• The writings once collected can speak past their original context

• The universalization of the prophecies need to be updated to the historical situations

• Oracle

  • Short

  • Poetic

  • Often demarcated

• Pre 586 period

  • Amos in the North

• Assyrian period

  • Hosea

  • Isaiah

  • Micah

• Post assyrian

  • Nahum

  • Zephaniah

• The Northern kingdom was fairly wealthy until the Assyrian takeover

• Southern kingdom is at its strongest after the Assyrians fall but before the Babylonians takeover

• Economy is based on landgrants

Amos

• Shephard of Tekoa

  • A nowhere place and in the south even though he prophecizes the north

• Oracles against the Nations

  • GOD DESTROYS THEM ALLLLLL

    • War against Damascus

    • War against Gaza

    • War against Tyre

    • Ammon

    • Edom

    • Moab

    • Judah

    • ISRAELLL

• Why against Israel?

  • Past - Israels repeated Failures

  • Present - Israels sinful conditions

  • Future - Israels impending downfall

• Oracles against Israel

• A series of visions

  • Locusts

  • A shower of fire

  • A plumb line to measure Israel

  • A basket of fruit

    • This is a pun on the words for fruit and destruction

    • Quayits = fruit, Qet = end

Hosea

• Northern prophet

• God tells prophets to do weird things

• God tells Hosea to marry and have children with a prostitute

  • Children are importent

    • Jezrael

    • Nomercy

    • Notmypeople

• Worship of Baal

  • Happens because the neighbors of the israelites need to water their crops and live

Isaiah

• First half of the book described Judah in the monarchal period

• Second half is Babylon at the end of the exile

• Some believe the discrepency in time frame is that his students updated the prophecies after he died to fit the historical situations

Jeremiah and Lamentations 9/23/26

Exilic Prophets 9/25/26

The Book of Ezekiel

• Timeframe

  • Around the same time as the book of Jeremiah

  • Ezekiel was deported with Jehoiachin in the first Babylonian deportation in 597 BCE

  • His book records the fall of Jerusalem even though he wasn’t physically there

  • The book ends with Ezekiel and the other Israelites in exile

• The prophet

  • Not as much detail compared to other prophets

  • God asked Ezekiel not to mourn his wife as a sign act

  • Priest. He was trained to be a priest but was exiled before he could be officiated

  • He was an elite member of upper society and was why he was taken into exile

• Classic Tripartite structure

  • Everyone is destroyed but only Judah will be destroyed

Prophetic Responses to the Exiles

• It’s a lot and hard to process

• The throne transcends the sky

• God is so big and complex he can’t be described or put to granite or stone or art in a comprehensible way

• The Babylonian exiles presented a theological problem

  • If the actions on Earth to be reflected by the Gods, does God losing mean he’s less powerful than other gods

• There are four prophetic scrolls

  • Isaiah and the book of the twelve skip the Exile completely

  • The parts skipped were covered by Jeremiah and Ezekiel

• Jeremiah

  • YHWH isn’t defeated or out of control, but let the Israelites be destroyed

  • The Exile was YHWH’s punishment against Israel

  • Rooted in Deuteronomistic theology

• Ezekiel

  • Rooted in Priestly theology

  • Israel failed to maintain the level of holiness needed to commune with the divine

  • YHWH abandoned the temple and removed his protection

• This is the first steps from Henotheism to Monotheism

A New Theological Questions

• If Israel has never proven itself to stop sinning, how will Israel be reconciled?

  • Jeremiah - Law written on the heart

  • Ezekiel - An entirely new heart

• A new and better Israel will have a Messianic Leader

• Rebuilt Temple

Voices From the Return 9/28/26

Historical Developments Since the Exile

• Nabodidus doesn’t know he’s the last Babylonian king and leaves his empire to Arabia for no apparent reason

  • The Bible says he goes mad for 7 years before being restored

  • Maybe he was trying to develop trade routes

• While he was gone, the Persians took over pretty easily because they didn’t have a king and declared the end of the Babylonians

• Cyrus expands Eastwards and the empire becomes even larger than Babylon was

• Cyrus is one of two people listed in the Bible to be a messiah

The Return to Judea

• No written record of when they came back yet there are stories that they existed and came back eventually

• Zerubbabel is a descendent of David

• Shift from monarchy to Diarchy

  • The Davidic Heir

  • The high priest

Growing Influence of the Priesthood

• The exile was a wake up call

• Preservation of history and culture

• Word from God doesn’t need to come from a prophet anymore since its now in the Bible

• Priests aren’t just in charge of worship, but translating the word of God to the people

Book of Haggai

• Book is about recosntructing the temple

• In the structure of four oracles and addresses the problem about how to address the temple

• First oracle

  • Why do you live in your own house when the temple, Gods house, remains in ruin

  • God has famished the fields because they haven’t rebuilt the temple

• Second Oracle

  • Doesn’t the temple look great now!

  • This temple will look better than the first one

• Third Oracle

  • Recall how bad things were before you made the temple and now the fruits are producing once the temple is made

• Fourth Oracle

  • Zerubbabel is just chilling right now

  • YHWH says he will destroy the kingdom of the nations and give Zerubbabel his throne

Aftermath of Haggais prophecies

• The temple lowkey wasn’t as good and old people who saw the 1st temple wept because it wasn’t as grand

• The people that never lived in Jerusalem feel restored while those that used to live there don’t feel fulfilled

The Nature of Biblical Prophecies

• Prophecies are weird because they’re conditional

Late Prophetic Voices 9/30/26

Background to Jonah

• Jeroboam was the first king of Israel and built two places of worship when everyone should only pray to Jerusalem

• Jonah prophecized to Jeroboam II, the grandson of the 1st

• Jonah prophecized good things to bad kings

Jonah 1

Jonah 2

Jonah 3

Jonah 4

Ruth 10/2/26

• In the other writings of the Hebrew Bible

• Between Judges and Samuel in Christian Bible

  • References Judges and Ruth is an ancestor of David

• IDEK bruh just kms

• 
  

Psalms 10/5/26

The Ketuvim - Writings

• After the former and latter prophets

• The least authoritive of the Hebrew canon except the book of psalms

  • It was probably a collection of songs that came even before the Torah

• Proverbs and Job are the poetic books

• The Five Megiloth - Festival scrolls

  • All significant for holidays

  • Ruth

  • Lamentations

  • Ecclesiastes

  • Esther

Hebrew Poetry

• Hebrew poetry is not the same as western poetry as there is no rhyming or meter

• Poetry from prose

  • Economy of language

    • Not as complex and shortened words with the same meaning

  • Density of metaphors/words

  • Literary devices

  • Parallelism - Easiest way to distinguish prose from poetry

Parallelism

• Robert Lowth published that Hebrew Poetry was characterized by couplets or sometimes triplets

  • Synonymous parallelism - repeats the same thing in different words

  • Antithetical parallelism - Same sentiments but with different or negative examples

  • Synthetic parallelism - Catch all category for misc. types

• Adele Berlin and Robert Alter suggest that following lines in a couplet or triplet, those repeated words are an intensification of the first

The Psalter

• This is a collection of individual psalms, gradually becoming the big book of psalms

• 150 psalms (151 in LXX) and put into 5 books to parallel the Torah

The Psalm

• Starts with a superscription

  • Instructions for the psalm and essentially for the musicians

  • Uses a lot of musical terms we don’t know anymore

  • Starts with certain historical narratives to give context

The Individual Psalm

• Herman Gunkel noticed the poems are part of genres across the near east

• Genres act in the same way as they do today where different genres have conventions and expectations

• Form Criticism

Sitz in Leben

Proverbs and Wisdom 10/7/26

What is Wisdom

Wisdom literature in the Hebrew Bible

The Book of Proverbs

Responses to Traditional Wisdom

The Book of Job 10/12/26

The Central Question

• Why does evil exist?

  • God is all powerful, so why is there evil?

  • God is just: good for good, bad for bad

    • Not super true

Shape of the Book of Job

• The Prose Story

• Poetic Dialogues

• Elihus Speech

• Gods Speech from the Whirlwind

Extra:

Daniel and Apocalyptic Literature 10/14/26

Dualistic Structure

• 1-6 are court tales

  • Short stories about Israelites living in the court and a focus on the Babylonian empire

• 7-12 are dreams Daniel has. Apocalyptic visions of Daniel

  • Focuses on the fate of Jerusalem

  • Written in two languages: Aramic and Hebrew but they don’t line up with the split in the of the book of Daniel

  • 2:4b-7:28 is where the split happens

Date of the Book of Daniel

• The specific dates usually don’t matter except in the case in the book of Daniel

• Book is set in the height of the Babylonian empire

  • Lots of historical troubles

• This is a fluid text

  • Stories can be added and removed and in the case of Daniel, there are two languages

  • The Greek version has a bunch of other wierd stories not in the Hebrew canon

• Likely written in the Maccabean period

  • 167 BCE

Daniel 1-6 - Court Tales

• Diaspora literature AKA how to live as a Jew not in Jerusalem

  • How to maintain success and maintain identity

• Narratives about exiled Israelites succeeding in the court of a major foreign power

• Dream interpretation as prophecy

• Maintaining Israelite identity

  • Dietary laws

  • Sabbath - rest on 7th day

  • Maintain ethnic boundaries

• CHAPTERS

  • Ch. 1 - Daniel and his friends keep kosher

    • They refuse to eat the meat at the kings table because it was not kosher and eat vegetables

  • Ch. 2 - Daniel interprets Nebuchadnezzars dream

    • King saw a statue with a head of gold and a big rock shows up

    • Basically says that all the following kingdoms after the king will fall

  • Ch. 3 - Daniels friends are cast into a furnace

  • Ch. 4 - Another dream that Nebuchadnezzar will go mad and become a cow for 7 years

  • Ch. 5 - Belshazzars feast

  • Ch. 6 - Daniel is an advisor for the Persian king

    • A test of loyalty to his faith and he lives from a lions in its den

• As long as you remain loyal to your faith and practice good, you will thrive and all the bad will end soon

Daniel 7-12

• Apocalyptic literature

  • Popular during the second temple period

  • Two major types

    • Journey through the heavens to see what’s beyond the realm into the divine world

    • Periodization of history

      • From the begining of times to the end

  • Lots of weird and fantastical things

    • Visions

    • Angelic interpreter

    • Elaborate cosmology

    • Dense symbolism

  • The empire will come to an end and a violent end

• Can be understood as a form of resistance literature

• Predicts the judgement of the oppressor/vindication of the oppressed

• Daniel was probably written against the backdrop historically of the reign of antioches IV Epiphanes

  • While the Persians were accepting to others, this king desacrated the temple and killed a king on the temple, not YHWH

  • Persecuted Jews for practicing their religion

Developments in Religious Thoughts

• Gods work is hidden

• Judgement of the individual

• Resurrection of the Individual

• Moral forces other than the self

  • Introduction of other forces such as demonic or angelic forces

Exam 3

MIDRASH ASSIGNMENT!!!

Bible Notes

Exam 1 - 9/18/26

Genesis - The creation of the Earth and a lot of primevil history

(1:1-4:16)

• Earth started as complete chaos until God swept over the land to create light and separate darkness fgrom the light, saying the light is good. Light was day and dark was night

• God made the rest of everything else to be good and in his image

• God made humans to have dominion over everything else he made

• Garden of Eden story

• The serpant tricked Eve into eating from the sacred tree of wisdom

• God is mysogonistic and makes childbirth painful

• God sent them out in fear they’d become immortal like he

• They gave birth to Cain and Abel

  • Abel sacrifice to God and Cain killed him for it

  • Cain is punished for this and driven out of the land

  • God put his mark on Cain to protect him.

(11:1-9)

• Tower of Babel Story

• Earth shared one language in the same words and came across a plain to settle at

• They wanted to make a tower to reach the heavens

• God realizes they are powerful because they are unified

• God scattered them across the face of the Earth and mixed up their languages so they couldn’t communicate

(12:1-3)

• Lord said to Abram, “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. I will make of you a great nation and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you, I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed

(15:1-17:22)

• God came to Abram in a dream

• God asked him to count the stars and if he does so then he’ll get a kid

• The lord Said to Abram that Abram will rest peacefully but his descendents for the next 400 years will be subjected to slavery

• God promised his descendents a bunch of land after making a covenant with him

• Sarai gave birth to no children and asked Abram to get with the slave Hagar to have children

• An angel came to Hagar and told her to go back and obey to Sarai and bear a child named Ishmael which no one will like as a person

• God renamed Abram to Abraham as the ancestor for entire nations

• Circumcision is a sign of the covenant

• God says he will give Sarah a child which they’ll name Isaac to establish a covenant with him

(18:1-15)

• God appeared to Abram and Sarah

• He brings god and the angels food and washes dem toes

• One angel said they would bring Sarah a child

• Sarah did a fearful laugh when she heard this and she denied she laughed but God was like, nah gurl you deinitely did

(21:1-21)

(22:1-19)

Exodus - The orders and instructions from god to save the Israelites

(3:1-6:13)

• God appears out of a bush to give instructions to Moses

  • Tell the people held in Egypt to follow him out and be delivered

  • Refer to god as The Lord when they ask who said to do this

  • The king of egypt will not let them go unless compelled by force

  • God gave Moses 3 different ways to prove he actually met him: turning his cane into a snake, turning his hand white, and pouring water on the ground to make blood

  • Moses was insecure about his speaking voice so god instructs him to tell his brother what to say in his place

• Foreskin foot

• Moses and his brother Aaron convince the people of Israel and they bow down in worship

• Moses makes the situation worse because the Pharaoh instructs the taskmasters to maintain the same amount of work but make the people gather their own straw instead of providing it

• God promises deliverance and instructs moses and aaron to rid egypt of israelites

(7:1-24)

• Moses tries to convince the pharaoh to release the israelites but he is not convinced by any of the acts done by Moses

(13:17-15:1)

• God appeared as a pillar of cloud and pillar of fire to guide the people to the wilderness

• Parting of the red sea

(20:1-21:36)

• God says that he is the one true god the Israeli will worship and he is a jealous god

• 10 commandments

• Laws about slaves

Leviticus - Instructions on how to worship god

(11:1-47)

Numbers - Details the unfaithfulness of the people yet god still has faith in them

Deuteronomy - Speeches from Moses about the promised land

(1:1-3:29)

• Moses tells them that they have been at the mountain long enough and can resume their journey to Amorites and neighboring regions and to take possession of the land that once belonged to their ancestors

• He promises the Israeli to increase in size and that they will need tribal leaders to help guide and lead each other with the increased amount

• They went through the Amorites until they reached Kadesh-barnea. They sent 12 representatives from the tribes to scout out the land and they reported back that the land was good

• The people are hesitant to go into the land because the reports from the 12 representatives said the people there were huge and the fortresses even larger.

(4:1-14) -

(12:1-32) -

(31:1-29) -

Joshua - Fighting the Caananites and dividing into tribes

(2:1-3:17)

(6:1-7:26)

Judges - Low faith and the cycle of judges

(3:1-5:31)

(13:1-16:31)

1 Samuel - Transition from tribes with no leader to a king

(9:1-10:16)

• Saul went looking for donkeys

• They go to the village where a women tells him where to meet Samuel

• God tells samuel to appoint Saul as king

• Saul was told to forget the donkeys and ate with Samuel

• Samuel instructs saul with a long list of instructions for him to complete and will meet Saul 7 days after he completes them

• Saul does not tell his family about what happened

(12:1-25)

• Saul is now old and has done no wrong to the people

• Warns them that the people have to follow the lord and if they don’t then they will suffer

• Obey the lord

(15:1-18:9)

• God instructed Saul to destroy the kingdom of Amalek and he mostly obeys except for the King, some sheep, and some Ox

• Samuel takes away his kingship for his betrayal of the word of god

• Saul kills the king of Amalek to repent and isnt seen by Samuel till his death

• God regrets making him the King of Israel

• God decided on a new king for Samuel to choose and Samuel goes to Bethelhem to retrieve Jesse under the cover of inviting him for ritual

• The spirit of the lord left Saul and Entered david

• Saul called for David to be by his side to cleanse his spirit since he has the spirit of the lord

• David and Goliath

•  And David said, “The Lord who delivered me from the paw of the lion and from the paw of the bear will deliver me from the hand of this Philistine.” And Saul said to David, “Go, and the Lord be with you!”

• Jonathon and David are lowkey kinda gay for each other

• When David and Saul returned, the women praised them both but praised David far more than Saul claiming he slayed ten thousand and Saul only thousands

2 Samuel - David becomes king and makes Jerusalem sacred

(7:1-17)

• David was in Ziklag for two days

• On the third day he hears word from a man that just came from Israel that Saul and his son Jonathon are dead

• The man tried to decieve David by wording around the fact he killed the lords anointed

(11:1-12:25)

• David got a woman pregnant

• David sent the husband of the woman off to die in battle to cover things up and he end up having the kid with her

• The lord sent Nathan to David to scold him for betraying him and being greedy

• The lord will give his wives away to his neighbors and kill the child he had with the other woman

• After seven days of fasting and refusing to get up until he gets a word from the lord on his childs health, the child dies and David stops fasting

• He had a child with his real wife and bore Solomon

1 Kings - David dies and Israel becomes divided

(11:1-40)

• David could not get warm so the servants thought to find the most beautiful woman for the king but he didn’t know her

• Adonijah tries to set himself up as the next king by getting some affairs in order such as 50 men and chariots and sacrificing lots of animals

• He however did not invite Nathan or Solomon

• Nathan questions why Adonijah is the next king if the lord promised to David that solomon would take his place

• David has yet to make an official decision even though everyone around Adonijah is praising him as king already

• David officiates Solomon to become the next king

• Zadok the priest and Nathan anopint Solomon as the next king

2 Kings - Israel strays even further from god and gets attacked by Babylonians

(21:1-23:27)

(24:20-25:21)

Exam 2 - 10/16/26

Hosea

(1:1-2:23)

• Hosea was told by god to have a child with a prostitute to which he found Gomer and had a son named Jezreel

• They had another child and named her ‘No Mercy’ on the house of Israel but have mercy on Judah

• They had another son ‘Not My People’ because they are not his people and he is not their God

• God punishes Israel for their lack of faith in him and for worshipping Baal instead

Amos

(1:1-2:16)

• God attacks pretty much everyone for their various sins

• More punishment against Israel

(6:1-9:15)

• He had visions of locusts eating all the crops, fires, and a plumb line to measure Israel

• He was told to leave the city and as a response God tells them through Amos that they will be punished

• Once all is destroyed, God says he’ll restore Israel

Ezekiel

1:1-3:15

10:1-11:25

43:1-5

Isaiah

(1:1-19)

• Visions of Isaiah of Judah and Jerusalem

• God claims his children have gone against him and that his people simply don’t understand

• He says the people of Israel are sick from head to toe

• God questions the multitudes of the sacrifices given to him as he does not indulge in the burnt offerings or blood of bulls

• He asks for no more vain offerings

• He won’t listen to their prayers because their hands are full of blood

• “If you are willing and obedent, you shall eat the good of the land; but if you refuse and rebel, you shall be eaten by the sword.”

(6:1-13)

• Isaiah saw the lord on his throne and the seraphims surrounding him. One took a coal and put it to Isaiahs lips to cleanse him of sin

• The lord tells Isaiah as his messenger to tell everyone a message from the lord. The land will be in ruin and destruction and only after then will a tenth of the population remain to be the seed of the future generations

(39:1-8)

• The son of the king of Babylon, Merodach-baladan, sent gifts to Hezekiah to praise his recovery from being ill

• Hezekiah showed the envoys all his treasures he owns

• Isaiah said he will have to give everything up and some of his sons to the king of Babylon and he agrees since he has faith in the lord to give him peace

(40:1-31)

• God had delivered his hand to Jerusalem

• A voice from the forest says that everything in the land must be level and flat to reveal the truth of God

• No one and nothing can compare to the greatness and scale of God

• People are like grasshoppers he looks down on

• The only thing that can compare is an Idol made of everlasting materials

(52:13-53:12)

• This is about an ugly servant of god who was made to bear the sins of everyone

• He is familiar with grief and iniquity

Jeremiah

(1:1-19)

(25:1-38)

(32:1-44)

Lamentations

(1:1-5:22)

• A once great city has fallen and become a slave. It only has enemies as no friends or lovers remain. AKA Jerusalem

• The lord has punished the city for the many transgressions her people have done

• She pleads to the Lord to punish those that are doing her wrong just as the Lord punished her for her wrongdoings

• God had a fierce judgement against Jerusalem in 586

• God has a steadfast love for everyone with his unwavering mercy

• There was a great horror and evil in the fall of Jerusalem

Haggai

1:1-2:23

• Haggai spoke to Judah the word of the Lord

• Why does everyone live in such nice houses when the house of God lies in ruin?

• All the bad things happening are because the house of God is destroyed

• They began working on the temple

• The lord will give them peace

Ezra

1:1-11

3:1-13

9:1-10:44

Jonah - dude gets swallowed by a giant fish

1:1-4:11

Ruth

1:1-4:22

Psalms

1

• A person is happy by not indulging in his sins, but by praising the lord

• He is like a tree by a stream, filled by its nutrition

• God will thrive, wicked will perish

2

• The lord is mocking the people below him for discarding their faith in God and putting it in the different kings

• He annoints a Davidic monarch in Zion for them to praise instead

22

• King David is the speaker in this psalm asking God why he was made the king if he is forsaken by the people

• If God saves him, he will speak high praise of him for others to praise him too

88

• The speaker is crying to God to listen to his prayers

• His people around him despise and look down on him

118

• The Lords love is steadfast for all

• Cut off all mortal rulers such as kings and princes in favor of the lords power

• God forgives all

150

• Very short

• Praise the lord with music

Proverbs

1:1-33

• Proverbs of Solomon, son of David, King of Israel

9:1-10:32

• Way of Wisdom

• Way of folly

• Proverbs of solomon

31:10-31

• Words of king Lemuel

• The Woman who fears the lord

Ecclesiastes

1:1-11

3:1-22

Job - fuck god

1:1-3:26

31:1-40

38:1-18

40:1-24

41:1-34

42:1-17

Daniel - apocalypse

1:1-2:49

• Daniel refused to eat the kings food and only be given vegetables and to be tested after 10 days, his fitness

• The king wants his dream to be read and intepreted but no one except Daniel can do so

• Daniel reveals to the audience what the dream is and proceeds to interpret it

• The dream is about a statue being destroyed. A statue made of gold, bronze, iron, and partly clay, all of which destroyed by a stone

• Daniel interprets the dream as the metals and clay represent the following kingdoms after Nebuchadnezzars ruling being weaker than the gold and falling

• Daniel was promoted after the king claimed his god is the god of all gods for being the only power able to interpret his dream

3:1-6:28

• King Neba proclaimed all shall worship him when they hear the sound of music and those that don’t will be cast into fire

• He tried to light 3 Jews on fire but they were fine with it because they worshipped their god and said that he’d protect them from harm whcih ended up happening

• King Neba has another dream he need sto be interpreted about a giant tree that reached the heavens, abundant with fruit. Someone chopped the tree down and the minds of the beast and apples were scattered across the land

• Daniel says that King Neba will end up going insane and wander the Earth eating grass like a cow for 7 years unless he repents for his sins

• King Nebus son finds writing on the walls and needs someone to decipher it and will adorn the translator with purple robes and is informed of Daniel

• Daniel says that he follows similarly as his father and still commits sins instead of doing what’s right in worshipping the lord

• The translation read that the kings days were numbered and that his kingdom will fall which happens the same night as this king is assassinated

• The news kings officials said that he should decree everyone to worship him and that those who don’t will be cast into the lions den

• He lived ofc

7:1-28

• Daniel became the new king of Babylon and had a vision of freakish animals and beasts with lots of teeth and horns

• It basically said Daniel would be the last king of Babylon and the power would be given to the people

Exam 3 - 11/06/26

Mark

1:1-16:19

Matthew

1:1-2:23

5:1-7:29

10:1-11:1

13:1-53

24:1-25:46

28:1-20

Luke

1:1-2:52

10:25-12:12

15:1-16:31

18:1-14

24:1-53

Acts

1:1-4:37

6:1-15

7:54-8:3

9:1-11:18

15:1-29

28:16-31

John

1:1-18

2:1-4:42

11:38-44

18:1-21:25