Category: Uncategorized

It was very interesting to look at the history of the Bible in the aspect of the line of kings, which starts with Saul, then David, then Solomon, and the list keeps going on until the Babylonian exile. Talking about the stories of David and Goliath and David and Bathsheba also fascinated me because they are stories that I know quite well of, but there were certain details I found out today or ways of looking at each story in which I never have before. In David and Goliath, I didn’t realize that there were different interpretations of the height of Goliath based on how one would convert the measurements of when this story was written to today’s measurements. In David and Bathsheba, I knew he committed adultery with her, but I never considered the fact that he may have raped her, which is quite frightening to think about, considering the man being David.

I also found interesting when we talked about how Solomon’s son, Rehoboam, and how his effect on the lives in his kingdom was so negative. When I think about the kings in the Bible, I think of the positive effects they had on Israel and how they did so much good, but in this case Rehoboam knew that Solomon had made life harder for the civilians, and instead of lightening the yoke on these people, he instead did the opposite by making this yoke they have to carry even heavier.

In all honesty this lecture and pre-class material didn’t really captivate me. The topic that I found most interesting is the ancient archaeology and its relation to the Bible. This is especially interesting when you dive into groups that think the Bible is inerrant. What do they do when errancy is proven in the Bible using the scientific process. They then have to deny one of the two most influential creations for modern society, in my opinion. I also think the archaeology section is interesting for what it actually is. Applying the archaeological concepts to the bricks found and trying to figure out what time period of the Bible they would fit in is fascinating. My favorite part is how they searched for the bones of the livestock the ancient people killed and figured out they were Israelites because they were Kosher. I can only imagine how excited the research team was when they got the information to make that conclusion.

What really stood out to me from this lesson was the short documentary that touched on the city of Jericho and how it fell-down. I found myself reminiscing on the song I learned years ago about Joshua fighting the battle at Jericho and the walls come tumbling down as I watched the video referencing Jericho. But in all reality, the structure of Jericho might have come down because of seismic activity years before Joshua was ever there. What I wonder is if the inhabitants of ancient Jericho might have attributed the seismic activity to an act of Godly intervention? It is interesting to see how archaeologists have found this action and figured out how the walls fell and when this happened. Through cross-referencing remains that were at the same level as pieces that fell is a way that the archaeologist could have referenced when this happened. Furthermore, they could do carbon-dating on the physical remains and DNA tests on the human remains, thus double-checking the resources to which the walls might have fallen. What is even more interesting is the comparison to the bible stories and the dates of when these happened as well. Joshua must have come in at some point to Jericho, but was this battle as dramatic as it has been put up to in the Bible and how did this become a huge event as written by the author?

Something that I’ve never really thought of when it comes to the Bible is how its history can actually be attempted to be proven. I have always had the mindset that the Bible is divine and everything that takes place in the Bible, no matter how you interpret it, seems quite untouchable physically because of how many years have passed since events from the Bible have taken place, which is between about 3500-2000 years. To uncover and discover physical documents or other physically attainable things from that time period is mind-blowing to me, and to actually interpret these artifacts and compare these interpretations to the Bible and what it says is so fascinating.

I had so closely associated the history of Israel with the stories from the Bible that it hasn’t occurred very often for me to look up the archeological or written history of Israel outside the stories in the Bible. It’s not impossible for the stories that we see in the Bible to be dramatized, abridged cultural stories of Mesopotamia. Earlier in the semester we looked at different stories, like Gilgamesh, that share strong similarities to different stories in the Bible. The Epic of Gilgamesh was written in where modern-day Iraq is located, giving it a close cultural proximity to the authors of the Bible. We also looked at two rock formations that are in both Israel and Jordan that are known to both lands as Lot’s wife, who turned into a pillar of salt. The rock formations are referenced to be the same person, and it’s not hard to image that tales and stories migrated back and forth from places like Jordan and Israel. Books like Genesis could be abridged versions of cultural tales much like Aesop’s Fables: a compilation of tales that aim to teach morals to the next generation.

What is “ethnocentrism”? Ethnocentrism is the natural tendency to understand other cultures by comparing it to their own, your culture is us, and theirs them. By recognizing our natural tendencies towards bias rather than outright ignoring them is the preferred approach when interpreting scripture. Ethnocentrism isn’t just on a cultural level, it exists also on an ideological level as well, many of the early Church’s teachings had elements of Aristotelian and Platonic philosophy in their dogmatics. Others have gone as far as to apply modern political and economic ideologies to scripture, this ended up as modern liberation theology and the so-called “Radical Christianity,” a postmodern critical theory of Christianity.

The Orthodox Church with its many national patriarchates does interpret scripture through the language that is spoken in said patriarchate yet they are limited by the very medium which the information is conveyed. The Church has made it clear that phyletism, ethnic tribalism, is heresy after the Bulgarian Patriarchate opened a church in Constantinople which was only open to Bulgarians. Because of the natural tendency to be ethnocentric, I find that individual interpretation should be done with care, I would say that using academic biblical standards is the most fool-proof method against interpretations which might go too far.

This was my favorite lecture so far because of the portion where we talked about biblical economics, I’m an economics major. The situation we talked about with ancient peoples selling themselves to slavery in times of need was a crazy thing to think about, even if we did talk about how slavery wasn’t as bad then. When I think of American society and really all of western society the number one priority I think of is our civil liberties, to give them up is the very last thing I would do on this planet. When you really dive into it and think about the moral differences in today’s society and then it makes sense. We discussed a lot of the differences between now and then in class, but for our morals to be so different when we come from the same religious roots is fascinating. It doesn’t seem like God would change the things he wants humans to practice so this begs the question of who’s truly following God’s word best.

The First Commandment “You shall have no other gods before me,” is the first commandment for a reason. By making it the first commandment, this places the rest of the commandments in the context of the first, perhaps making it the root of all law. With God as the root, this gives value to upholding the law, to uphold it is now the objective good. We are of course called to uphold the “spirit of the law” rather than the law itself as individuals since sin is individual, not collective. These laws were formulated as natural theology, the Judeans certainly believed that basic ethics such as not killing, stealing, and the like should be enforced before the emergence of Abrahamic ideology.

Because of the commandments as products of natural promulgation of Jewish ethics, they were already the cultural norm. To go against these laws was to be a social outcast thus, simple social shunning was frequent until the situation was rectified. Is revenge ever justified in the Old Testament? It is never justified for man to take revenge on someone if the Commandments are broken, God speaks of taking vengeance (Dt. 32:35) but it is justified. The Apostle Paul writes in his epistle to the Romans “Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God: for it is written,” (Rms. 12:19). By separating man from God in justification, we understand that enforcing the commandments for the sake of vengeance is never justified.

During the class on Tuesday, we discussed slavery and the Bible.  Now, the word has a bit of a different connotation to what we know as American slavery, however I still feel like it is a bit problematic to just sweep it to the side.  We know slavery as the buying and selling of people against their will, that’s what happened more modern-day and that’s what the current definition is.  However, slavery back then was more of indentured servitude – people working to pay off their debts when say, a year of crops goes bad and they can’t make money back.  This is vastly different from the slavery we know, the times were completely different and this doesn’t constitute the Bible “promoting” slavery.  However, if it is so different than slavery we know now, why are we not using a separate word in the translations is my question?  We know what they mean through context and through discussion, but had I never listened to the discussion on Tuesday I probably would not have come to the conclusion that it was indentured servitude to pay off debts, and not the form of slavery that we’re more familiar with.  Of course in the grand scheme of things it does not mean much, but I do find it interesting that even though slavery back then was different, since the word and connotation has evolved we haven’t changed anything about how it is worded/printed.

In class we discussed slavery within the Bible. Many people seem shocked when realizing that even the Bible speaks and shows slavery throughout history. An important part that I’m glad was brought up was the thought of how slavery was most likely more indentured servantry rather than colonized slavery. As can be seen through the past within the United States, slavery was ownership. Slaves were bought and sold. They were treated as farm animals. The Bible is most likely talking about repaying debts with servantry. I enjoyed the conversation that we had about how people would pay their debts. You can’t just kill someone so what do you? I didn’t realize that people would give their child to work as a slave/indentured servant if they needed the money to survive. This was very interesting and sad to me.