Bible

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Bible

The Bible (Latin singular Biblia, from the Greek plural ta Biblia, "the Books") is a collection of documents representing various literary genres: epic, poetry, legal codes, historical accounts, prophetic oracles, wisdom sayings, letters, and gospels, the last a unique genre combining features of biography and foundational legend. The Bible is meaningful to many religions in the United States; in it, Muslims, Jews, Christians, and Mormons find the sacred stories concerning the founders of their religions. The Bible is authoritative, however, only in Judaism and Christianity.

Origin and Contents

There are many "bibles," for each biblical tradition has its own authoritative collection of books known as a "canon" (from the Greek kanon, "measuring stick"). The Jewish canon consists of twenty-four books known as the Hebrew Bible, although parts of Daniel and Ezra are in Aramaic, a Semitic language less ancient than Hebrew. This collection is called Tanakh, from the first letters of the three Hebrew words Torah ("instruction"), Nevi'im ("prophets"), and Ketuvim ("writings"). The first five books, known as the Torah or the Pentateuch (from the Greek, "five scrolls"), are the earliest and derive from oral narratives traditionally assigned to Moses (ca. 1200 b.c.e.). These narrate the creation; God's covenant with Abraham, the progenitor of the Jews; and the giving of the Torah (the "Law") to Moses. Literary evidence suggests that the oral traditions were put into writing during and after the exile (586–539 b.c.e.), when the nation of Israel was conquered and brought captive to Babylon. The Nevi'im also date from the exile, though most of the prophecies were spoken by figures from the eighth through sixth centuries b.c.e. They warn Israel of the coming judgment of God, realized in the exile, for their disobedience to the covenant. The Ketuvim contain the latest of the books, some from as late as the second century b.c.e.

The Hebrew Scriptures are also authoritative for Christians, who know them as the Old Testament, or Old Covenant. The Christian canon takes three different forms that have their basis in the history of the Jewish canon. The earliest collection of Jewish biblical writings dates to the third and second centuries b.c.e., when the various Hebrew writings were translated into Greek for the many Greek-speaking Jews outside Palestine. Together with some later works composed in Greek, this collection became the Septuagint (from the Latin for "seventy," referring to the seventy scribes who translated it). When the Jews in Palestine, who still could read Hebrew, compiled their canon in the second century c.e., they admitted only those works written in Hebrew. Some of the later works in the Septuagint were either originally written in Greek or had lost their Hebrew original and thus were excluded.

The early Christians, however, were predominantly Greek-speaking, and had always used the Septuagint. Saint Jerome, although he could read the Hebrew texts, used this larger Greek collection as the basis of his Latin translation of the Bible, the Vulgate (from the Latin for "common," completed in 405 c.e.). This translation achieved authoritative status, finally ratified at the Council of Trent (1545–1563), and was the first book produced by Gutenberg on the printing press (1456). The Roman Catholic church uses this canon and thus has an Old Testament with forty-six books. The Christian reformer Martin Luther (1483–1546 c.e.) followed the Hebrew canon as the basis of his German translation of the Bible (1534 c.e.), printing the remaining books of the Septuagint in a separate section, the "Apocrypha" ("hidden things"). The Protestant canon accordingly contains thirty-nine books, because it excludes the same works as does the Hebrew canon (the Protestant Old Testament has a higher number of books because it subdivides several of the Hebrew works). Most Russian Orthodox do not consider the Apocrypha authoritative. The Greek Orthodox do, and include five additional books not accepted by Roman Catholics, such as Psalm 151 and 3 Maccabees.

The twenty-seven Greek works about Jesus and his teachings are authoritative for all Christian denominations. These are designated the "New Testament" or "New Covenant," on the assumption that they supersede God's covenant with Israel in the "Old Testament." These date from the mid-first century c.e. into the second century and comprise a number of biographies of Jesus (gospels), a history of the early church, letters of instruction to churches by Paul and others, and a prophetic oracle. For Christians, the Hebrew Bible is read in light of the New Testament, which is regarded as more normative.

Liturgical Use in Community

In modern American religious communities the Bible is the prime source of normative ethical and moral instruction read and explicated during weekly ceremonies. Jewish communities read the entire Torah every year, in short passages in synagogue each Sabbath, completing the cycle at the festival of Shavuot ("Weeks"). Sermons each week offer commentary on the text. Among Christians, the Roman Catholics, Episcopalians, and Lutherans have three set readings each Sunday (the two Testaments and the Gospel) on a similar yearly schedule called the lectionary, followed by a brief sermon. In evangelical denominations, the service contains no lectionary but consists of a lengthy sermon interpreting Biblical passages. For both Christians and Jews, the house of worship is also the location for the study of the Bible during the week, either in consultation with the leaders of the congregation or in organized study groups.

Individual Piety

From the Torah, Jews derive the 613 commandments that form the basis of their covenant with God. The ability to read the Torah in the original Hebrew is taught to children in Orthodox and Reform Judaism, and the successful public demonstration of this ability, expected at the age of thirteen, is a rite of passage into adulthood celebrated by one of the main ceremonies of Jewish life. The child who can read the Torah is known henceforth as a bar Mitzvah or bat Mitzvah ("son" or "daughter" "of the commandment"), and is expected to follow the commandments as a responsible member of the community.

Most Christian denominations have similar rites of instruction. In the Roman Catholic church, confirmation, one of the seven sacraments, occurs upon completion of a course in doctrine (the catechism) around the age of eight or ten; this follows similar instruction around the first eucharist, at the age of five or six. The Bible has received greater emphasis in this instruction since the Second Vatican Council (1962–1965), which also encouraged accessible English translations. Although for Protestants confirmation is not a sacrament, most denominations offer a course of formal instruction that marks an important stage in a young adult's life, and the emphasis is usually on the Bible rather than on doctrine.

For both Jews and Christians, formal instruction in the Bible is only the beginning of a lifelong vocation of reading, study, and memorization. The Bible is the source of moral guidance and the basis of ethical decisions throughout life, and the revelation of the will and character of God himself. Proper application of its commandments is the primary form of personal piety in Judaism. The constant presence of the Torah in daily life is symbolized in most Jewish houses by a mezuzah at the doorway, a small box containing a parchment with a passage from the Torah. Many Christians engage in daily devotional reading of the Bible along with their prayers. For them, the Bible is the source of a unitary message of God's forgiveness of sins through the self-sacrifice of Jesus. Reading the Bible gives encouragement in personal difficulties through its message of God's love and providence. Some Christian denominations encourage memorization through contests or public recitals by young people.

Formation of Religious Communities

Attitudes toward biblical interpretation have defined denominational movements within Christianity and Judaism. Luther's original grievance with the Roman Catholic church concerned its role in the mediation of God's forgiveness, but he defended his position by biblical interpretation, extending the biblicist positions of radical reformers John Wyclif (1328–1384) and Jan Hus (1373–1415): sola scriptura, "scripture alone," not church dogma, was the only source of authority. This emphasis on the Bible, the Protestant Reformation's "paper pope," led to its rapid translation from the Latin Vulgate into modern European languages, which, coupled with the recently invented printing press and concomitant spread of literacy, made of Protestant Europe a continent of Bible readers. Many of the most radical colonized the United States. Their predilection for democratic preaching direct from the Bible played an important role in nineteenth-century American Protestantism, and Evangelicalism in particular. The Fundamentalist movement (ca. 1910) championed the literal inerrancy of the Bible, forming further denominations in the conservative wing of American Evangelicalism.

The Enlightenment of the eighteenth century marked a watershed in attitudes toward the Bible in all traditions. It was henceforth studied not only as a sacred text, but also as any other historical document, resulting, for example, in the discovery that the Torah was not written by a single author, but revised several times by editors with varying theological perspectives (the documentary hypothesis). This undercut the notion of Mosaic authorship. Reform Jews, although accepting the authority of Torah, correspondingly do not believe that Moses wrote all of it, which the orthodox do believe. The debate between these two movements about proper ritual behavior, such as how to keep dietary laws, is ultimately a dispute over the interpretation of the Bible in the modern age.

Culture

Even before the age of widespread literacy, the Bible dominated Western Christian culture as the source of narratives for art, literature, and music. Cathedral windows illustrating biblical stories were the "Bibles of the poor," available even to the illiterate. Widespread literacy led to the Christian possession of what Jews had always retained: a deep verbal resonance with the text of the Bible. Bible narratives were the content of early American primary readers, imbuing everyday language with proverbs and metaphors, such as "the blind leading the blind" (Luke 6:39). Every page of Shakespeare and Milton is dotted with biblical language and allusions to biblical narratives, an influence also perceptible in American classics such as Herman Melville's Moby Dick and the novels of William Faulkner.

American political life also owes a large biblical debt; the form of government itself derives from the concept of covenant found in the Hebrew Bible, and orators have turned time and again to the Bible for powerful language. The speeches of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., demonstrate how effectively biblical turns of phrase can motivate Americans to positive civil action, for the Bible expresses a heritage shared not only by Christians and Jews, but also by Muslims and by American popular culture outside the three monotheist traditions.