Untitled Flashcards Set

Gamaliel: a famous rabbi of first-century C.E. Judaism.
Gematria: Jewish method of interpreting a word on the basis of the numerical
value of its letters (in both Greek and Hebrew, the letters of the alphabet also serve
as numerals).
Genre: the literary type or form of a document
Gentile: a non-Jew
Gnosticism: a religious movement or attitude widespread about the time of the
emergence of the Christian faith. Believers possessed a secret knowledge (gnosis)
and sought to escape the ephemeral earthly world for the eternal heavenly world.
Gospel: originally the message of good news that God has revealed himself as
gracious in the event of Jesus Christ. The term later came to designate also the
literary form in which the good news of Jesus' life, death, and resurrection is
narrated.
Greco-Roman World: the lands (and culture) around the Mediterranean from the
time of Alexander the Great to the Emperor Constantine, roughly 300 B.C.E. to
300 C.E.
Haggadah: a Hebrew term designating rabbinic traditions, usually in narrative
form that illustrate the moral teaching of the Torah.
Halakah: a Hebrew term (meaning "to walk") designating rabbinic tradition
regulating conduct.
Hasmonean: the actual family name for the Maccabees, leaders of the Jewish
revolt against Syria.
Hellenization: the process or result of the spread of Greek language and culture in
the Mediterranean after Alexander the Great.
Hermeneutics: the science dealing with the interpretation and the determination of
the meaning of texts.
Heresy: any worldview or set of beliefs deemed by those in power to be deviant,
from a Greek word meaning "choice."
High Priest: prior to 70 C.E., the highest-ranking authority in Judaism in charge of
the operation of the Jerusalem Temple and its priests.
Historiography: the literary reconstruction of historical events; the writing of
history; and the study and analysis of historical narrative

Historical Criticism: method that approaches the Bible with historical questions.
Typically, its goal is to understand the historical setting of the Bible.
Holy: that which has to do with, is set apart for, God or the divine power &
majesty

Demeter: the Greek and Roman goddess of grain, worshipped in a prominent
mystery cult in Eleusis, Greece.
Deutero-Pauline Epistles: the letter Ephesians, Colossians, and 2 Thessalonians,
which some claim have a "secondary" (Deutero) standing in the Pauline corpus.
Diaspora or dispersion: the Jewish community scattered (dispersed) outside the
holy land of Palestine. This dispersion originated in the Babylonian exile of 587
B.C.
Didache or "Teaching of the Twelve Apostles": an anonymous second-century
Christian manual for church life.
Disciple: a follower, one who is "taught" (as opposed to an apostle, one who is
"sent" as an emissary).
Divination: any practice used to ascertain the will of the gods.
Docetism (Greek dokein, "to seem"): an early Christian heresy in which Jesus only
seemed to suffer and die.
Ebionites: a group of second-century Adoptionists who maintained Jewish
practices and Jewish forms of worship.
Epistle: a letter of a formal or didactic nature; the term is traditionally applied to
the New Testament letters.
Eschatology: discourse about last things (Greek eschatos, "last").
Essenes: an ascetic, Jewish religious group existing at the time of the New
Testament. They stressed radical obedience to the Jewish law.
Ethics: a broad term applied to such related matters as moral codes and practices,
theories of value, and the imperatives of Christian faith as they pertain to relations
of one person to another.
Eucharist: derived from the Greek word meaning "thankfulness" and used of the
sacrament of the Lord's Supper.
Exegesis: the critical interpretation of a text. Literally the term means "to lead out"
the meaning from the text.
Expiation: "making right," by means of some act or rite, the offense done by one
party to another, especially expiation for sin before God.
Form Criticism: the classification of the "forms" in which the tradition,
especially the Gospel tradition, circulated before being written down

Daimonia: category of divine beings in the Greco-Roman world widely thought to
be less powerful than the gods but far more powerful than humans and capable of
influencing human lives.
Dead Sea Scrolls: ancient Jewish documents from the period of Christian origins,
found near the Dead Sea. Decalogue or Ten Commandments: the name given the
ten words Moses received, according to tradition, from God on Mt. Sinai