Bible and Bibles

Author(s):  
Michael Coogan

What is the Bible? The Bible is the sacred scripture of Judaism and Christianity. In its pages we encounter some of the most memorable characters in world literature: Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel, Abraham and Sarah, Jacob, Moses, Samson and Delilah, David and Bathsheba,...

1983 ◽  
Vol 5 (6) ◽  
pp. 179-183
Author(s):  
Frederick Hecht ◽  
Barbara K. Hecht

Twins are nothing new. They have been of interest for thousands of years. The Song of Solomon sang in amorous tones: "Thy breasts are like two young roes that are twins, which feed among the lilies." Genesis relates the story of Adam and Eve and their sons: Cain and Abel. According to Mohammedan tradition, Cain and Abel were born with twin sisters. Adam wished for Cain to marry Abel's twin and for Abel to marry Cain's twin. However, Cain was enamored of his own twin sister and so in jealousy slew his brother Abel. Twins appear in many ancient writings beyond the Bible. Romulus and Remus, the mythic founders of Rome, were twins. Shakespeare wrote of "twinn'd lambs that did frisk; ' the sun, and bleat the one of the other" in The Winter's Tale. GALTON: THE STUDY OF TWINS Modern scientific interest in twins dates to Sir Francis Galton. In 1875, Galton emphasized the importance of studies of twins to distinguish heredity from environment or, as he put it, "nature from nurture." Galton, a cousin of Charles Darwin, made numerous other contributions, among them the study of fingerprints which are remarkably alike in identical twins. Fingerprints are today commonplace in law. In pediatrics, dermatoglyphic features assist in the rapid clinical diagnosis of trisomy 13, 18, and 21 (Down syndrome).


2021 ◽  
pp. 29-48
Author(s):  
Cayetana Heidi Johnson

The Old Testament is clearly a mixture of myths and real historical figures with their events. There is no question about the contribution of mythology, since much of Genesis has been formed from common mythological accounts from all over the ancient Near East. The stories of Creation, the primordial couple, the Garden of Eden, Cain and Abel, the Great Flood, and much more, are a commonplace of narratives throughout the region. Although these accounts are mythological, it does not mean that they have not been shaped by real events. Specialists speculate about a great flood that took place in the Near East as a result of rising water levels at the end of the last Ice Age (around 5000 BC). This coincided at a time when the Agricultural Revolution had taken over the Fertile Crescent and Egypt. Various peoples of the Levant adopted mythological narratives and reformulated them to create their own unique and original tales. Some of the main figures of the Bible, such as Adam and Eve, Noah, Lot, finally the patriarchs (Abraham, Isaac and Jacob) were their own compositions but, as can be seen with the patriarch Abraham, who was not an exclusive figure of the Hebrew people, his conversion to monotheism is, however, something peculiar to the spiritual creativity of the Jews. Here as in the composition of the New Testament, archeology is the necessary aid to locate the reality and the truth of sacred history and its development in human time.


Author(s):  
Jennifer L. Koosed

Food is a comprehensive cultural code. In ancient Israel and early Judaism, food production and preparation structured lives; what one did in the process was determined by gender and class status and sometimes even marked by ethnic and religious identity. Food also serves to structure narrative, shape characterization, and add layers of symbolic signification to story. In the Bible, the drama of the first few chapters revolves around proper versus improper eating, and the final book portrays God as a lamb sacrificed for the Passover meal. Between picking and tasting the forbidden fruit, and slaughtering and eating God, a whole host of food-related plots, characters, and images proliferate, many of which revolve around the most important of foodstuffs: bread. This chapter explores the centrality of bread in the story of Adam and Eve, the book of Ruth, and the gospels of Jesus.


2017 ◽  
Vol 73 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Christoffel Lombaard

This contribution is part of a series on Methodology and Biblical Spirituality. In this, the fourth contribution, the scope is widened; more practical-analytically oriented, three thoroughly different but nevertheless all unusual kinds of interpretations of the Bible are described, characterised and contextualised. Namely:• In order to explain what are perceived as textual anomalies, some Old Testament authors have been described by US-based medical practitioners as having suffered psychiatric dysfunctions.• The Garden of Eden from Genesis 2 and further has been located by a recently diseased Nigerian scholar as having been in her home country, with a Nigerian race having been the predecessors of biblical Adam and Eve.• Rastafarians, primarily Jamaica-based, regard marijuana as a holy herb and find direct support for their religious use of this plant in the Bible.However strange such ‘mystifying’ interpretations may seem within the theological mainstreams of Judeo-Christianity, there is more to these kinds of interpretations than simple whim. Certain cultural conditions along with personal, particularly spiritual, commitments enable these interpretations, which must be taken seriously in order to come to a fuller understanding of the text–interpreter dynamic. These then can cast at least some form of reflective light on the more usual current biblical-interpretative mainstreams within Judeo-Christianity, posing in a new light the question of what constitutes legitimate interpretations, also within mainstream interpretations, as religiously inclined people try to live their lives in the light of Scripture.


Religions ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (6) ◽  
pp. 310
Author(s):  
Mary Frances McKenna

This paper explores the female line in the Bible that Joseph Ratzinger identifies as running in parallel to, and being indispensable for, the male line in the Bible. This female line expands the understanding of Salvation History as described by Dei Verbum so that it runs not just from Adam through to Jesus, but also from Adam and Eve to Mary and Jesus, the final Adam. Ratzinger’s female line demonstrates that women are at the heart of God’s plan for humanity. I illustrate that this line is evident when Ratzinger’s method of biblical interpretation is applied to the women of Scripture. Its full potential comes into view through Ratzinger’s development of the Christian notion of person: Person as revealed by Jesus Christ is relatedness without reserve with God and is fully applicable to the human being through Christ. I argue that together, the male and female lines in the Bible form the human line in the Bible, in which the male line represents “the humanity”, every human being, while the female line represents the communal aspect of humanity. Moreover, I contend that Christianity’s notion of mother in relation to God (as Father, Son and Holy Spirit) should be understood through Mary’s response at the Annunciation. Mother in relation to God is to be understood through the Incarnation when Mary, as person, lived her life wholly in relation with and for God.


2020 ◽  
Vol 42 (4) ◽  
pp. 453-471
Author(s):  
John R. Levison

The seemingly sudden introduction of an allusion to Cain and Abel in 1 Jn 3.12 is puzzling. To explain this apparent intrusion, select scholars have turned to early Jewish interpretations of Gen. 4. The purpose of this study is to provide further grist for this mill. Beginning with an appraisal of the role Jewish texts play in the analyses of Ernst Lohmeyer, Raymond Brown and Judith Lieu, it continues with a detailed study of an ancient text that has been neglected in the interpretation of 1 Jn 3.12, the Greek Life of Adam and Eve (GLAE). A consideration of key features in the story of Cain and Abel in GLAE strengthens the possibility that 1 Jn 3.12 was part and parcel of an interpretive milieu that sharpened the divide between righteous and evil, between murderer and martyr.


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