The last book of the New Testament is Revelations, one of the more controversial books in that there was not widespread agreement whether it should be included. Considered one of the later books to be written, it was penned near the end of the 1st century perhaps between 81-96 common era, it is an apocalyptic [...]

محمد Muhammad’s First Revelation 610 CE محمد Muhammad was overtaken by a divine presence and he began to utter what would later be compiled into the Quran. At last God had spoken to the Arabs in their own language and had brought them into the community of true believers. Thus محمد Muhammad did not see [...]

Gospels Synoptic Gospels They more or less tell the same story about Jesus. They agree overall. Synoptic means with one eye. Describe the birth ministry and death of Jesus. The gospels develop an emerging infant animosity between Jesus and local Jewish leaders. This establishes the tension that emerges between Judaism and Christianity. Matthew Mark Luke [...]

A canon defines for a religious community what is authoritative literature, the divine word. The Hebrew Bible and Old Testament evolved over thousands of years until about 100 BC, and canonized even later when certain people decided which books to include and which to exclude. The word myth when referring to canon is not a [...]

Dan to Beer-sheba Refers to the northern and southern boundaries of Israel. Threshing floor It is a community gathering space after the harvest, a flat space, and this is particularly important because in the hilly country there is not much flat space where people can gather. Pericope A section of biblical treat usually corresponding to [...]

Zeal of Mattathias Mattarhias kills a Jew forced to sacrifice to the foreign god. This was the first action on the part of the maccabbeees to throw off the Seleucid yoke. He tore down altars like other kingdom deemed righteous in the ore exilic era Hezekiah and Josiah. This places him literarily in history. Then [...]

Tahrif means corruption, referring to the Islamic belief that Jewish and Christian scribes corrupted biblical manuscripts.

Early Christianity Christianity superseded from Judaism. Rise of Christology: 200-400 BC Christians are part of New Testament — should Hebrew Bible even be included in the canon? Marcion argues that God always seems angry, in a bad mood, in the OT. He emphasizes these parts where god is merciful. Then in the NT god has [...]

Muhammad’s Night Journey, when he floated from Mecca to Jerusalem, where he launched off to heaven and received a divine doctrine from God. Eighth century traditions came to associate his launching-point as the Rock commemorated by the Dome.

At this time, Christianity was divided into two realms, the West (Europe) and the East (Anatolia, Palestine, Syria). The pope could be likened to an emperor over Western Europe, the Holy Roman Empire. First Crusade Pope Urban II’s Speech 1095 Pope Urban II issued a famous speech calling for all Christians to sell their land [...]

Roman governance style was not to appoint a governor, but to find a middleman well aware of Jewish sensibilities and in 40 BC the Romans find the able politician and successful military leader Herod to hold this position. His family is from Edom to the southeast of Jerusalem, and area outside the traditional border of [...]

Ezra and Nehemiah were the leaders of a second wave of returnees to Zion; the governor Nehemiah arrived in 445 BC and the priest Ezra arrived in 398 BC. Ezra and Nehemiah represented a group of returnees who claimed that they had a pure lineage traceable all the way back to before the exile, and [...]

Life in Jerusalem was strifed by bad harvests and a weak economy. Enthusiasm for rebuilding the Temple waned when there was not enough to even eat. But in August 520 the prophet Haggai scolded the Golah, the community of exiles: How could plenty, wealth and vivacity flourish without that essential aspect, the Temple, the link [...]

Like most ancient rulers, the Ptoelemies did not interfere overmuch in local affairs, though they introduced a more streamlined and efficient type of administration that was flexible enough to treat the different regions of their Kingdom differently. Some parts of the province were crown lands that were ruled directly by royal officials; so were the [...]

The Maccabees books are not preserved in the Jewish or Protestant bible, but not due to rejection of their content. In fact, one of the most cherished Jewish holidays, Chanukah, is described in the Apocrypha.

Christianity’s supersession refers to its inextricable relation to Judaism and eventual emancipation. The former asserted itself as an upgrade, an improvement on the latter. Supersession is a bond of heritage and of rejection. At the millennial dawn, the Temple was a historical-physical institution loved by Jesus and the rest of the Jews. Jesus himself was [...]

Temple Destroyed AD 70 The Jewish Temple had been destroyed during the Roman sack of Jerusalem, and never rebuilt. The destroyed Temple would be contrasted with the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. Church Construction AD 326 – ? Constantine initiated construction fo the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. Holy Sepulchre Church and the Solomonic Temple [...]

Caliph ‘Abd al-Malik bin Marwan (688-703) had the مسجد قبة الصخرة Dome of the Rock built in 692. It had no precedent in Islamic architecture’s short history of simple and utilitarian buildings. If anything, the Dome was not functional, it was not even a mosque, but it was commemorative, a monument, a shrine to the [...]

Ancient Israel spans 8300 BC to Alexander the Great’s arrival in 332 BC and is located in the southern Levant. Syro-Phoenician = Syro-Canaanite = Syro-Palestinian = Levantine (coast). Periods are not defined just by material culture, but also by Egyptian dynasties. Neolithic Levant 8300 – 4500 BC Chalcolithic Levant 4300 – 3500 BC Bronze Age [...]

Jerusalem is in the south of Canaan, a relatively poor and dry part of the fertile crescent. The northern Levant had the upper hand on trade, making it wealthier and more urbanized than the southern Levant; the former’s advantage was due to near eastern trade routes that culminated at the Levantine bays, but the southernmost [...]

Rise of Islam 7th Cent AD The religion’s founder, the Prophet Muhammad, was a political leader as well as a religious guide. Islamic Empire Founded 632 AD After Muhammad’s death in 632, his successors established a vast empire. Islamic Empire Expands 750 By 750 the single Islamic empire stretched from the Atlantic Ocean to the [...]

2 Samuel 24 can be split into three section: David takes a census of Israel (2 Samuel 24:1-9); David is stricken with grief over his acts, and is given a choice of various punishments to descend upon israel (2 Samuel 24:10-14); God orders an angel to deliver a plague onto Israel as punishment for David’s [...]

Psalm 27 has the same motif as Psalm 11; both psalms deal with a pious protagonist on the verge of an attack, yet safe within the shelter, the refuge, the warm presence of God. 1 The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear? The Lord is the refuge of my life; [...]

In Ezekiel 40-48, after being exiled from Canaan, Ezekiel is shown by a divine guide the bureaucratic, religious and architectural details of a restored Israel. Ezekiel 47:1-12 describes a river that will provide Israel life and sustenance, and Ezekiel 47:13-23 lays out the boundaries and divisions within Israel. These two portions of the same chapter [...]

Psalm 11 is from the point of view of the protagonist, a pious Israelite. He rebuked a doubter who serves as a literary foil representing the shortsighted and the faithless. 1 In the Lord I take refuge; how can you say to me, “Flee like a bird to the mountains; 2 for look, the wicked [...]

The Prophet Ezekiel was exiled in 597 BC, the first Judean deportation, to a community along the Khabur River in modern Syria. He lived as a recluse until he received a dramatic vision of God, or of God’s glory, an apprehensible manifestation of the inapprehensible. That a deportee could connect with God outside the promised [...]

Like Psalms 46 and 137, Psalm 48 is a Song of Zion. It unites images of destruction with praise for Jerusalem, though in its own unique way; Psalm 46 describes the earth as seeming to collapse into itself (likely the latter days), while Psalm 48 tells of attacking kings being repelled from Jerusalem by its [...]

The Ark of the Covenant is a hierophany, the manifestation of God as king that represents his presence in the tabernacle. It may be a footstool, and is later actually referred to as the footstool of God; the mercy seat is perhaps the seat upon which a king would sit. Atop the Mercy Seat, or [...]

A failed king who preceded David, known as the good king.

Since “our world” is a cosmos, any attack from without threatens to turn it into chaos. And as “our world” was founded by imitating the paradigmatic work of the God’s, the cosmogony, so the enemies who attack it are assimilated to the enemies of the gods, the demons, and especially to the archdemon, the primordial [...]

We have a sequence of religious conceptions and cosmological images that are inseparably connected and form a system that may be called the “system of the world” prevalent in traditional societies: (a) a sacred place constitutes a break in the homogeneity of space; (b) this break is symbolized by an opening by which passage from [...]

The burning bush, a hierophany. It was ablaze but was not consumed. © L M Clancy, 2011 As defined in Mircea Eliade’s The Sacred and the Profane, a hierophany is an event in which one sensorily experiences a manifestation of the sacred. A hierophany can be seen (ie, a star or an angel), felt (ie, [...]

In The Sacred and the Profane, Mircea Eliade defines the sacred as that which is not non-sacred. This is a tautology, albeit a useful one: that which is sacred is an interruption in the non-sacred world. The sacred provides identity, induces prosperity and is an authority to appeal to; it is a relationship of power. [...]

Mircea Eliade’s The Sacred and the Profane (Introduction, p 8 – 18) The first possible definition of the sacred is that it is the opposite of the profane. (Eliade, p 10) For religious man, space is not homogenous … there is, then, a sacred space … there are other spaces that are not sacred and [...]

Psalm 46 is an example of a Song of Zion (see Psalm 137), as attested by its focus on the temples, mountains and security of Jerusalem due to its potection by God. Jerusalem’s sacredness is demonstrated by first describing the world around it; there is the contrast between safe and unsafe, between Jerusalem and the [...]

The תַּנַ”ךְ‎ Tanakh is the Jewish canon. Its contents are identical to the Protestant Old Testament, though individual books are ordered differently; thus the Tanakh is also called the Hebrew Bible. The Catholic Old Testament is slightly different from the Protestant version, as it contains seven additional books written later than the Tanakh: the Apocrypha, [...]

2 Samuel 7 tells of David’s wish to build a house for God, as David himself lives in a palace, but God wishes instead for the House of David, the establishment of a Davidic dynasty. David laments that he lives in a great palace, while God lives in a tent. God responds to David via [...]

2 Samuel 6 can be split into two sections: David brings the ark to Jerusalem, a roundabout process with much celebration in the end (2 Samuel 6:6-19); and Saul’s daughter Michael criticizes David, but only his steadfast response and her lonely fate await her (2 Samuel 6:20-23). David leads a procession of 30,000 Israelite men [...]

2 Samuel 5 can be split into four sections: David becomes king of all the tribes of Israel and Judah (2 Samuel 5:1-5); David captures Jerusalem from the Jebusites (2 Samuel 5:6-8); David makes his capital (2 Samuel 5:9-16); and he successfully wars with the Philistines (2 Samuel 5:17-25). The elders of the tribes of [...]

Lived c 3 – c 66 Feast Day June 29 Patron Saint Tent-makers,saddlers, missionaries Attributes Sword, book One of the twelve apostles, Saint Paul stands out for his pivotal role in the spread of early Christianity. Born Jewish as Saul of Tarsus, he viewed Christianity as hateful to the Yahweh he worshiped and ardently persecuted [...]

Judean king Manasseh ruled from 698-642 BC, beginning his reign when he was only 12 years old. Migrants from the destroyed Northern Kingdom had brought their Canaanite characteristics into the Southern Kingdom, despite Hezekiah’s reforms. Canaanite cults flourished, including astrology and Ba’al worship (Ba’al is a traditional Canaanite deity). Also, the name Manasseh itself is [...]

Nehemiah went to Judah in 445 BC, the 20th year of Persian king Artaxerxes (Neh 1:1, 2:1). Nehemiah had been a cupbearer to the Persian king (Neh 1:1). Nehemiah rebuilt the walls of Jerusalem (part of a confrontation with the Samaritans), battled social injustice in Jerusalem (Neh 5) and built upon Ezra’s reforms. The books [...]

The period of Persian hegemony (538-332 BC) began when Persian king Cyrus seized Babylonia. Persian Control is split into Persian I (538-450 BC) and Persian II (450-332 BC), ending with Alexander’s conquest of the Levant (332 BC). Jewish diaspora communities appeared in Israel and Judah (amidst the First Return and Second Return), as well as [...]

After destroying Ashkelon and the Philistine coastal plain, the Babylonians besieged Judah and controlled it form 604-538 BC (Jerusalem was destroyed in 586 BC). The Persian Empire (its first incarnation was under the Medes) began around this time. The Babylonian administration in Judah used an Assyrian approach of balkanization: Megiddu (capital at Megiddo); Samerina (Samaria); [...]

16 “Thus says Yahweh, ‘Behold, I will bring evil on this place, and on its inhabitants, even all the words of the book which the king of Judah has read. 17 Because they have forsaken me, and have burned incense to other gods, that they might provoke me to anger with all the work of [...]

1 Now in the third year of Hoshea, son of Elah, king of Israel, Hezekiah, the son of Ahaz, became king of Judah. 2 He was twenty-five years old when he became king, ruling in Jerusalem for twenty-nine years; his mother’s name was Abi, the daughter of Zechariah. 3 He did what was right in [...]

Solomon (970-930 BC) (I Kings 2:12–11:42) did not engage in military campaigns as his father David had. Instead Solomon entered treaties, many of which involved large sacrifices on his part. For example, Solomon began a maritime trade venture with Hiram of Tyre (1 Kings 9:26-28;10:11,22); however, he also bestowed 20 towns in the Galilee to [...]

Pre-Monarchic Israel Emergence Mid 13th Cent BC Early Israelite material culture (1250-1000 BC) is characterized by collared-rim storejars (very large store jars) and four-room houses (found at Jericho and Ai). The earliest Israelite settlement was in the 11th century at Wadi Feinan. Saul ?-1,007 BC The first Israelite king. Jonathan Saul’s son Jonathan was victorious [...]

Jeroboam I After leading the 930 BC coup that led to his control of Israel (the Northern Kingdom), Jeroboam established a capital at Tirzah in Shechem (1 Kings 12:25). Jeroboam also created public temples with shrines to golden calves (Canaanite god Ba’al) at Bethel and Dan (1 Kings 12:26-33) to service the northern and southern [...]

David succeeded Saul’s Jonathan, and was portrayed as an ideal king as opposed to the flawed Saul. David’s capture of Jerusalem established the United Monarchy. However, David ruled from Hebron because Jerusalem was not the seat of Israelite power yet. David, like his successor Solomon, was essentially a warlord ruling a territorial kingdom, which requires [...]

Dates based on 480 years before completion of temple in Jerusalem in 967 BC. 1877 BC Exodus 12:41 Isaelites enter Egypt and sojourn begins. 1447 BC 1 Kings 6:1 Israelite exodus. 1447-1407 BC 40 years (one generation) of wandering. 1,407 BC Entry into promised land. 1407-? BC Joshua Conquest during life of Joshua. Days of [...]