Bible
From JudaismWiki
BIBLE. From the Greek biblia, meaning books. In Hebrew TaNaKh, meaning Torah, Prophets, Writings. The Hebrew Bible came to have many names: the Holy Scriptures, the Book of Books, the Old Testament, Divine Revelation.
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[edit] Canon
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[edit] Influence of the Bible
For Jews, the Bible has been the source of life, growth, and survival. They read in it the record of their people’s spiritual progress, from Abraham, the first to reject polytheism, to the prophets’ momentous vision of God as the loving Father of all creation. When the Jews were expelled from Palestine and became wanderers, the Bible became a way of life and a Jewish “portable homeland.”
The influence of the Bible was not limited to Judaism, but has extended to two other religions: Christianity and Islam. Mohammed, the creator of Islam, was so deeply influenced by the Bible that at first he thought of himself as a new prophet of Judaism. His mind was so filled with biblical stories that he traced his descent to Ishmael, son of Abraham and Hagar. The theology of the Koran, the sacred book of Islam, shows Mohammed’s debt to the Bible and to Judaism. As Mohammedanism spread, the Bible influenced many people in the East.
Christianity took over the Hebrew Bible and added the New Testament. As Western civilization took shape, it absorbed the Hebrew Old Testament ideas. Biblical ideas—the common origin of man, the equality of men before God, the law of mercy, and the equal right to knowledge—filtered down only gradually to the common man in the Christian world. For at first the Bible was known only to priests and to those few who could read its ancient Greek and Latin translations. But the Renaissance movement, the invention of printing, and the religious Reformation spread learning and knowledge of the Bible to increasing numbers of people. As they read the Bible, the people began to apply its ideas to their own lives.
When Adam delved and Eve span,
Who was then the gentleman?
John Ball used this old English rhyme in a speech to the rebels of the Wat Tyler Insurrections in 1381. His rough peasant worker audience understood well this Bible-inspired view of equality.
[edit] Bible Translations
The first translation of the Bible was the Septuagint, a Greek translation for the Jews of Alexandria begun in the middle of the 3rd century B.C.E. and continued until the end of the next century. During the 2nd century C.E., a series of new Greek translations was made by the Christian Church Fathers. The first great translation into a West European tongue, the Latin Vulgate version of 382, became the official Bible of the Roman Catholic Church. Each age produced Bible translations in hundreds of languages, all over the world. The Jews found the need to make translations: after the Septuagint came the Aramaic translations by Onkelos and by Jonathan Ben Uziel. In the 10th century, the great scholar Saadiah Gaon completed one of the most successful Arabic translations. A Persian translation appeared about 400 years later. By the middle of the 15th century, Europe saw the first Bible printed from wood blocks. It was an inexpensive illustrated Bible known as the Poor Man’s Bible, and under its many pictures of biblical scenes were short explanations in Latin and the local vernacular. The Renaissance and the Reformation brought new translations to western Europe. Martin Luther’s 1534 German translation exerted great influence. In France, Roman Catholic scholars published the important Douay Version in 1610. Perhaps the greatest and most influential translation is the English King James Version of 1611. The beauty of its language came close to the spirit of the Hebrew Bible. The King James version became an instrument that formed noble minds and inspired great works of music and literature. New translations, by Jews and non-Jews, are still being performed. To this day, scholars research the ancient Hebrew texts as they are discovered (see Dead Sea Scrolls), compare the translations with the originals, and correct errors. The Bible has been translated into 1,108 languages, and missionary linguists have initiated additional translations into 2,000 dialects for primitive peoples in the distant corners of New Guinea, Africa, Southeast Asia, and for South American Indians.
[edit] Bible in American History
The influence of the Bible in the early history of the United States cannot be overstated. The Puritans lived by the Bible. They looked upon themselves as God’s chosen people, like the ancient Israelites, and in New England colonies they formed their “Holy Commonwealth.” They felt their church to be a continuation of the Covenant between God and the Jews. For the early Protestants of New England, the Old Testament was the supreme authority, and in the colleges where their sons trained for the ministry, the Bible was studied in the original Hebrew. Records of births, deaths, and marriages were kept in the family Bible. Every day a chapter was read aloud to the household. American pioneers gave biblical names to their towns and villages: Jerusalem in the State of Washington, Jonah in Texas. New England settlers based the political laws governing their colonies on the Scriptures. Forty-six of the 48 laws in the Body of Liberties which they drew up in 1641 were based on the Hebrew Bible. It is no wonder that a verse from the Bible was engraved on the Liberty Bell when it rang out in July 1776 to announce the Declaration of Independence: “Proclaim liberty throughout the land unto all the inhabitants thereof” (Lev. 25:10).
The influence of the Bible on Western literature and art cannot be briefly put. From earliest times, storytellers and poets, sculptors, and painters have used biblical themes for their books and poems, for their statues and pictures. The libraries and museums of the Western World are filled with works of art inspired by the Bible. In great concert halls people listen to musical translations of the Bible, from Handel’s oratorio Israel in Egypt to Ernest Bloch’s Schelomo rhapsody. Books, works of art, and music are only some ways in which people recognize the Bible as a great spiritual heritage for all humankind. (See also Reading of the Law.)
