The Bible as Literature: The New Testament

BEN53001 聖經文學：新約

Syllabus

Glossary of Bible Literature Terms

The following list provides brief definitions of biblical/literary terms frequently used when disucssing the Bible as literature.

allegorical interpretation: a reading of a text for a hidden or spiritual or philosophical meaning, one beyond the literal or surface meaning.

androcentric: any perspective that places men and male concerns at the center and puts the concerns of women to the periphery or outside.

apocalypse: a piece of writing designed to be a revelation for a religious in-group; concerned with events leading up to the soon-to-occur "last days" and characterized by pseudonymous authorship, mysterious visions, descriptions of mythical animals, reports of disasters, and assignments of reward and punishment.

Apocrypha: Jewish religious writings preserved in the Greek Bible (Septuagint); accepted by the early Christian Church and by Roman Catholics as canonical, but not by Jews or Protestants.

Aramaic: the Semitic language, closely related to Hebrew, employed for official purposes by the eastern conquerors of Israel and Judah; gradually replaced Hebrew as the language of Jews; the language spoken by Jesus of Nazareth.

aretalogies: accounts of the deeds of extraordinary men.

Bible as anthology: the Bible considered as a collection of writings composed across a period of a thousand years by scores of authors, each author addressing a specific audience about matters relevant to that audience.

Bible as literature: the Bible considered in terms of its human authors, contemporary subjects and literary forms, original languages and translations, and development through time as an anthology of documents.

canon: the body of writings considered by a religious body to be sacred.

canonization: the process by which a religion, over a long period of time, works out which of its religious books are not just religious but sacred, i.e., divinely inspired.

codex: a manuscript in the physical form of a book (as opposed to a scroll).

cuneiform writing: writing done by pressing the end of a wedge-shaped stylus into damp clay tablets to form characters.

Dead Sea Scrolls: documents including books of the Jewish scriptures as well as nonbiblical works composed from the second century B.C.E. to the first century C.E. by a Jewish sect (perhaps the Essenes) and deposited in caves in the Judean desert; discovered in the mid-twentieth century.

Deuteronomic History: the biblical books Deuteronomy, Joshua, Judges, and 1-2 Kings, edited into a unit with an overriding view of the relationship between Yahweh and Israel.

Deuteronomic source: an ancient, no longer existing document thought to have provided the material for the book of Deuteronomy; notable for its declamatory style and its insistence upon the view that faithfulness brings rewards, unfaithfulness brings punishment.

diatribe: a blunt sort of public address designed to draw an audience into the case being made by the use of such devices as rhetorical questions, dramatic interruptions, and concrete examples.

Deuteronomic thesis: the view that when Israel was faithful to Yahweh it flourished, when it was unfaithful it fell before its enemies.

Documentary hypothesis: the view that the Pentateuch and books immediately following were artfully created by combining a number of older documents into a single, sustained account.

Elohim: the title ("God" in English) of the deity of the Israelites; also, the generic term for deities in general ("gods").

Elohist source: an ancient, no longer existing document thought to have provided a major block of material making up the Pentateuch and the following books. It is characterized by its representing the deity, whom it designates as "Elohim," as appearing to humans in dreams and through angels.

feminist: a broad category of perspectives that focus on issues of women's participation in society. Many ideological feminists assert female superiority, others seek only to redress the male-dominated andocentric analyses that have traditionally driven the formation of Western culture by insisting that women be considered on parity with men.

Former Prophets: a block of books of history in the Jewish Bible: Joshua, Judges, and 1-2 Kings.

gender: socially constructed elements imposed upon one's biological sex that work together to create notions of "masculinity" or "femininity"; can be likened to a mask or a set of cultural roles that people adopt as appropriate to their sex in a society at a particular time.

Gender Studies: a new discipline or area of studies in colleges and universities, sometimes replacing Women's Studies because of an emphasis on constructions of gender as a whole, not specifically on the female gender; thus includes a theoretical focus on the masculine as well as the feminine.

gospel: the "good news" about Jesus (the word derives from Anglo-Saxon godspell, a translation of Greek euangelion, both meaning "good news"); also, a written work that presents such an account.

hellenism: the complex of Greek values, beliefs, and practices that ordered the lives of people after Alexander the Great's conquest of the ancient world; a potent force for change in Judaism and an influence on Jewish religious writing in the late centuries B.C.E. and on early Christianity and Christian writings.

Higher Criticism: the scholarly investigation of such matters as the authorship, sources, dates, and occasions of biblical writings.

historical recital: a summary in historical terms of the covenant relationship between the Israelites and their deity, Yahweh.

J source: see "Yahwist source."

Koine: the dialect of ancient Greek that was the lingua franca of the Near East following the conquests of Alexander the Great; the dialect in which the New Testament was written.

Latter Prophets: the "prophetic" books of the Jewish Bible: Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and "The Book of the Twelve" (i.e., the twelve minor prophets).

Law: see "Pentateuch."

lingua franca: any language that serves as a common means of communication, particularly for commercial and governmental purposes, among peoples of diverse languages.

literary prophets: prophets for whom books of the Hebrew Bible are named; also, the books themselves .

New Testament Apocrypha: noncanonical Christian works written in imitation of canonical works (or ones that were on their way to becoming canonical).

outside books: ancient Bible-like writings that might have been included within the canon but for one reason or another were not.

papyrus: a paperlike writing material made by compressing the pith of a marsh-grown plant into sheets.

parable: originally, a brief story that employed details from ordinary life to illustrate a moral point; later, occasionally, a story assumed to require allegorical interpretation to explain its hidden truth.

parallelism: the defining characteristic of Hebrew poetry, in which the sense of one line is repeated or otherwise responded to in different terms in the next line.

parchment: a paperlike writing material made (usually) from the skin of sheep and goats by dehairing, scraping, stretching, and whitening the skin.

passion narrative: a story of the last days and death of Jesus.

patriarchy and patriarchalism (literally, "father-rule"): a political, cultural, and ideological system in which women are subordinated to men; narrowly, a system of oppression in which the the "father" (usually a single, elite male) dominates completely over not only women but also lesser-status people. It does not mean the complete suppression and silencing of women or the complete removal of power and agency from women; it does mean, however, that the role of a man in society is considered dominant according to stated or unstated doctrines of authority. The Bible has functioned, historically, as an important ideological product and tool of patriarchy, although there are portions of it that can be read and interpreted otherwise.

Pentateuch: the first five books (literally, "the five scrolls") of the Jewish and Christian Bibles; called also the Torah or the Law.

pericopes: brief literary units, often of oral origination, that were drawn upon by writers in constructing their own version of a larger story; the "building blocks" of the gospels.

Priestly source: an ancient, no longer extant document thought to have provided the material in the Pentateuch concerned particularly with religious ritual and the regulation of behavior.

pronouncement story: an account of an event in Jesus' ministry that leads up to a brief, forceful saying.

prophets: spokespersons for a deity, addressing themselves to conditions in their own time and to the consequences of those conditions for the future.

Prophets: the second division of the Jewish Bible, subdivided into the Former and Latter Prophets.

Pseudepigrapha: Bible-like writings that are included in none of the canons of scripture.

redactors: ancient editors of biblical documents who created finished versions of texts out of earlier materials.

rewritten Bible: later writings, both in the Bible and outside it, that adapt biblical writings in such a way as both to maintain the permanence of the scriptures and also to alter them to suit current needs.

Septuagint: the Greek translation, made in the late centuries B.C.E., of the Hebrew Bible and a number of noncanonical Jewish writings.

Synoptics: the gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke, which share a view of Jesus quite different from that of John.

Torah: the first five books of the Jewish Bible; also known as the Pentateuch or the Law.

Vulgate: Jerome's Latin translation of the Bible, made in the late fourth century C.E.

Wisdom literature: writings that explore how the world works, the place of humans in such a world, and the nature of appropriate behavior; includes Job, Proverbs, and Ecclesiastes in the Jewish canonical scriptures, and Ecclesiasticus and The Wisdom of Solomon in the Apocrypha.

womanist: refers to a system of critical analysis reflecting primarily the concerns of African American feminists. Womanist critics take a step beyond feminism to investigate the politics of race and racial identity in forming dominant, patriarchal notions of women.

Writings: the third division of the Jewish Bible, containing all of the canonical books not already found in the Pentateuch and the Prophets.

Yahweh: the personal name of the deity of the Israelites.

Yahwist source: an ancient, no longer existing document thought to have provided a major block of material making up the Pentateuch and the following books. It is characterized by its anthropomorphic view of the deity, whom it designates as "Yahweh," and by its fine storytelling and its earthiness; also known as the "J source."

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