Terms

Pentateuch Terms

Used in: Pentateuch and the Historical Books SS517

A

• Adonai: “the Lord”

• Allegorical:

• apocryphal: Books that are included in the Catholic Bible but are not found in the Hebrew Bible or in the Protestant canon. (Collins) see deutero-canonical

• Archaeology: Literally means the “study of beginnings”. An organized and systematic science of humanity’s past. Asa science studies the physical remains of the human past. (Boadt 1984).

B

• Bethel: house of El or house of God

• Binding of Isaac: The story (gen 22) of Abraham sacrifice of his son Isaac

C

• Canonicity:

• concordism:
• Concupiscence: A tendency within all humans toward selfishness that is due to their evolutionary origin. (Wimmer)

• cuneiform: Babylonian “wedge shaped writing.

• Diaspora: Literally, scattering or dispersion, used to refer to exiles from Judah to Babylonia in early 6th century B.C. and subsequently for any Jews kiving outside of Israel.

• Documentary Hypothesis – The theory classically formulated by Julius Wellhausen in 1878, which explains the repetitions and inconsistencies in the first five books of the bible, the Pentateuch, as a result of originally independent sources or documents having been combined over several centuries. The principal hypothetical sources are J [Yahwist], E, D, and P.

• doublets: variant forms of the same story. (see Collins p 50 for a great list of doublets.

• deutero-canonical: “secondly-canonical” Books whose divine inspiration was disputed at one time but which did make the Catholic canon. Protestant Churches, which do not recognize them as inspired, call them apocryphal (hidden or spurious” (Wimmer notes p 10)

E

• Elohim: The general Hebrew name for God.

• endogamy: Marriage within ones ethnic, cultural or religious community, for the survival of the community’s identity, and for keeping its property within the group. opp: exogamy.

• Ephraim: a term used in biblical poetry for the northern kingdom of Israel as a whole.

• etiology: Pertaining to the causes or origins of thins
• etiological narrative: An example of a literary form in form criticism pioneered by Herman Gunkel.
  • structure: narrative account of the origin of a peculiar
    • phenomenon e.g. why do snakes crawl on their belly and eat dust?
    • Geographical feature e.g. Bethel
    • Personal names e.g. change of Abram’s name to Abraham (gen 17:5)
  • Sitz im Leben: popular wisdom
• Eve "mother of all of the living"
• exegetes: Those who interpret scripture.

F

• Form criticism:
  • The study of patterns of speech in relation to their roles in human life. Stated that a literary form (genre) has two parts Structure of the text and Sitz im Leben). Worked out by Hermann Gunkel in early 20th century. Identification of smaller units within source criticism (Coogan p 77).
  • The method begins by identifying a form or genre, and then determining its function in its original context or Sitz im Leben (Wimmer notes p 49). Forms include: etiology or etiological narrative, causuistic law, apodictic law, saga, legend, and eponym.
  • The study of relatively short literary units in literature and in fokelore with regard to their forms or genres, their original settings sitz im leben, and their social, religious and political functions It was developed by Herman Gunkel. (Coogan Glossary p. 549)

• Judah: The name of one of Jacob’s sons, the ancestor of the tribe of Judah. The tribe dominated southern Israel and became the southern kingdom of Judah. Later the same region was called Judea.

• Israel: This name is used in several senses. First, it is the new name given to the patriarch Jacob in Genesis 32.28; Jacobs twelve sons then became the ancestors of the tribes of Israel. Second, it designates the people and later the geopolitical entity formed from the twelve tribes. Third, it is used as the name of the northern kingdom of Israel, as opposed to the southern kingdom of Judah.
• hermeneutical: Referring to the rules for interpreting text.

• Hykos period: Brief time when Egypt was ruled by dynasties originally of Semitic origin.

• Inspiration

• Kirta Epic of: An extrabiblical text partially preserved on three clay tablets found at Ugarit. The epic shares several details of plot with the ancesteral narratives in Genesis. In both we have childless ancestors; divine promise of offspring, sometimes in a dream; a journey for a wife; in the course of the journey a stop at a shrine where a vow is made; and ultimately the birth of children.

• Linear genealogy – traces one line through several generations, trace descendants in a direct line from father to firstborn son to his first born son and so on.

• Literary Criticism

M

• Midrash Haggadah embraces the interpretation, illustration, or expansion, in a moralizing or edifying manner, of the non-legal portions of the Bible (see Haggadah; Midrash; Midrash Halakah). The word "haggadah" (Aramaic, "agada") means primarily the recitation or teaching of Scripture; (http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/view.jsp?artid=587&letter=M)

• myth:
  • In the 19th century, "myth" meant fable, invention, fiction; today scholars regard mythic stories as "true" and precious because they are sacred, exemplary and significant. "Myth narrates a sacred history; it relates an event that took place in primordial time, the fabled time of the "beginnings" (Eliade 1963, 5). Mythic events can occur in remote times that are either primordial and prehistoric or are in the distant future. These events while taking place outside of historical time, nevertheless impact historical events. Myth describes the beginning of human and earthly happenings, and points them toward their end. Mythical events are normative and appear as prototypes of all happenings. It may be said that "it never happened but it is always there" (Sacramentum Mundi IV, 153). The tension between eternity and time is expressed in Christian thought through "myth". Myth articulates God in the language of history, eternity in the language of time, and the transcendent in the language of human action. In a sense "myth" is not something unrea, a fairy tale. It is a means of talking about the reality of God, and the "myth" of creation is true, not a a literal event, but as an affirmation about the relation of everythine in the world to God as a Creator. "The myth of creation does not tell us about a first miment of time any more than the myth of the Fall tells us about a first human being. What is does tell us is that every moment of time, is like every contingent being, what comes to be from the creative power of God (Gilley 1965, 317) Source: (Wimmer).

O

• original sin
  • the traditional Christian explanation of evil
  • The need for salvation of Christ that is universal to all human beings and acquired through natural generation.

P

• pre-exilic: previous to the exile of the Jews to Babylon in about 600 b.c.

• Primeval:
• proto-evangelium: Literally "the first gospel"; Genesis 3:15 viewed as a promise of future salvation.
• Providentissimus Deus: Pope Leo XIII, 1893

• Rosetta Stone: Text written in three languages – Greek, Demonic (a late form of Egyptian) and ancient hieroglyphics (picture writing) – led French scholar Jean-Francois Champollion to a major breakthrough in 1821: the deciphering of the ancient Egyptian hieroglyphic language by comparison to Greek.

S

• Segmented genealogy traces several different lines descended from a common ancestor

• Second Temple period: Between 516 BCE and 70 CE, during which time it was the center of Jewish sacrificial worship. It was the second temple in Jerusalem, built to replace the First Temple which was destroyed in 586 BCE when the Jewish nation was exiled to Babylon.

The accession of Cyrus the Great of Persia in 538 BCE made the re-establishment of the city of Jerusalem and the rebuilding of the Temple possible.

• Sensus Plenior The fuller Sense.
  • The deeper meaning of the text, intended by God but not clearly expressed by the human author. It's existence in the biblical text comes to be known when one studies the text in light of other biblical texts which utilize it or in its relationship with internal developments of revelation. (Pontifical Biblical Commission, Interpretation of the Bible 1994, II B 3)
  • "... The fuller sense is a way of indicating the spiritual sense of a biblical text in the case where the spiritual sense is distinct from the literal sense.

• Septuagint: Greek translation of OT

• Sitz im Leben: Original context e.g. etiological narrative.

• Source analysis

• Source Critical Theory

• Stratigraphy: an archaeological technique that is literally noting and mapping the strata, or levels of civilization and settlement on this particular mound (Boadt)

• pseudepigraphy: Books that are attributed to famous ancient people (such as Enoch), who did not actually write them, (collins)

• Sumerian King List

T

• teledot: Hebrew word meaning a series of “generations” or “births” (e.g. Gen 25.12)

• tell: from the Arabic (and Hebrew) word for ruin. They are, in effect, artificial mountains made up of accumulated layers of mudbrick and refuse let by successive levels of occupation (Boadt)

• theodicy: Defense of Gos's goodness and omnipotence in view of the existence of evil.

• Torah: Hebrew word has a broader sense of the word than the law and includes a sense of traditional teaching.

• Typological:

• Ugaritc Text: A writing system found on clay tablets. Thousands of tablets were found including three which contained the Epic of Kirta were found around 1929 thought to be from 1200 BCE. This extraordinary find was one of the most important of the 20th century for illuminating the larger context in which the Hebrew Bible is written. In these texts, the Canaanites speak for themselves. (Coogan p 82)

• Word of God see 2 Pet 3:16

Y

• Yahwist: Term applied to the author of those parts of the Pentateuch that refer to the God of Israel primarily as Yahweh, especially the stories in Genesis of Adam and Eve, Cain and Able, the Flood, the Tower of Babel, and Abraham. He is presumed to have written sometime between 950 and 650 B.B.
• yetzer hara: an "inclination to evil". The Yahwist arrtibuted the flood to this "inclination to evil" Gen. 6:5

Resources:

• Fear and Trembling: an extended essay prompted by Genesis 22 by 19th century Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard asked whether a person was obliated to obey a divine command even if the person know that the command was morally wrong.

Glossary Sources

• D. Domning + J. Wimmer, “Evolution and Original Sin: Accounting for Evil in the World,” D Domming + J Wimmer March 2008.
• Collins, John J. Introduction to the Hebrew Bible. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2004
• Coogan, Michael D. The Old Testament: A Historical and Literary Introduction to the Hebrew Scriptures (2006)
• http://catholic-resources.org/Bible/Glossary.htm