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20090929-930 The Bible (Group 2)

Page history last edited by Krysta Klein 14 years, 4 months ago

Summary:

 

     Today we began the new unit about Religious Heroes with a discussion on the chapters of Genesis in the Bible.  We examined the Bible's literary meaning and significance rather than its religious meaning.  The Bible has become a major reference point for western literature.  There is evidence that the stories of the Bible were initially passed down through oral tradition. The first two books of Genesis give an excellent example of this.  They both describe the creation story, but in different orders.  In Genesis one God created light first and humans last. In Genesis two God created the heavens and the earth first and humans in the middle.  

 

     The Bible can be compared to ancient texts including The Odyssey and The Ramayana.  All three are didactic texts that describe what is expected in regards to proper behavior and family relations for each respective culture.  The Bible's equivilent to xenia or dharma is represented by the Ten Commandments and covenants.  These are rules that everyone must abide by or suffer the consequences, comparable to the Greek and Indian gods.  However, the gods of Greek culture play favorites and punish as they see fit, while the God of the Bible is a 'God of justice' and punishes according to the set rules.  The Biblical God always includes mercy in conjunction with his punishments which is in great contrast to the Greek gods.  Covenants are a little different in that they require action from God and an individual or family. They have consequences for not following through but also great rewards if upheld.  Lastly these three texts all attempt to explain the 'answers to life'.  These include major issues like why we're here and why we die, and also smaller questions like why we have rainbows or different languages.

 

          

 

Word Count - 296


 Passages:

 

"And God said to Noah and to his sons with him, "And I, I am about to establish My covenant with you and with your seed after you, and with every living creature that is with you. . .every beast of the earth.  And I will establish My covenant with you, that never again shall all flesh be cut off by the waters of the Flood, and never again shall there be a flood to destroy the earth. . .My bow [a rainbow] I have set in the clouds to be a sign of the coventant that I set between Me and you and the earth. . ." (Genesis 8, p. 104)

 

This passage shows God creating a universal covenant between himself and Noah's family and all living flesh on earth.  We see that he is a merciful God because even though he destroyed most life on earth for disobeying his rules, he did save Noah and pairs of each animal to repopulate earth.  This story also gives the "big answer" about how rainbows came to be.  The specific individual covenant appears again in Genesis between God Sarah,and Abraham; God, Abraham, and Isaac; and God and Jacob.

 

"And it happened after these things that God tested Abraham.  And He saide to him, "Abraham!" and he said, "Here I am." and He said, "Take, pray, your son, your only one, whom you love, Isaac, and go forth to the land of Moriah and offer him up as a burnt offering on one of the mountains which I shall say to you.". . .and Abraham reached out his hand and took the cleaver to slaughter his son.  And the Lord's messenger called out to him from the heavens and said. . ."Do not reach out your hand against the lad, and do nothing to him, for I know that you fear God and you have not held back your son, your only one, from Me."" (Genesis 22, p. 108-9)

 

This passage shows that God tests people and their loyalty to him when they have a covenant to uphold with him.  Here God wants to see if Abraham will continue to follow God even though it puts his son whom he loves to death.  It is part of Abraham's covenant to do as he is told or suffer consequences.  The individual covenant appears again in Genesis between God Sarah,and Abraham; God, Abraham, and Isaac; and God and Jacob.This is similar to events in The Odyssey.  Gods in The Odyssey, especially Athena, like to test people such as when Athena constantly tests Odysseus.  Gods testing people appears to be a recurring theme in western literature, which adds to the Bible's literary significance.

 

"And the two messengers came into Sodom at evening, when Lot was sitting in the gate of Sodom.  And Lot saw, and he rose to greet them and bowed, with his face to the ground.  And he said, 'O please, my lords, turn aside to your servant's house to spend the night, and bathe your feet, and you can set off early on your way.'  And they said, 'No.  We will spend the night in the square.'  And he pressed them hard, and they turned aside to him and came into his house, and he prepared them a feast and baked flat bread, and they ate." (Genesis 19 p. 107)

 

Lot shows a typical form of xenia when he invites strange visitors of Sodom into his home.  He asks no questions of them and insists that they stay with him.  Once they agree to come into his house, Lot prepares a feast, and they eat.  This is an example of the Bible teaching proper behavior, and is very similar to Greek culture.

 


Key Terms:

Bible - literally means 'book', includes the Old and New Testaments

Torah - Jewish term -  literally means 'instruction', contains only the Old Testament, the first 5 books of the Bible

Pentateuch - the Greek word for the first five books of the Bible

Covenant - a 2 way promise, in the Bible at first universal between God and all living flesh, then narrows down to between God and Abraham and his descendants.

Didactic- intended to teach or instruct; intended to teach a moral lesson

 

Comments (6)

Krysta Klein said

at 6:40 pm on Sep 30, 2009

I added to the summary to add detail, didn't update the word count, I'll come back and finish around 9 if no one else does.-
-Krysta

Gabrielle Conlon said

at 11:34 pm on Sep 30, 2009

The word count was at 423 before I edited...I know it's still over right now but I'm having a hard time shortening it anymore. I feel like we talked about a lot in class and it's hard to summarize in just 300 words.

Krysta Klein said

at 11:46 pm on Sep 30, 2009

Let's incorporate more of the discussion into the 3 passages so we can add the detail there rather than in the summary. That might help shorten more.

Cody said

at 11:59 pm on Sep 30, 2009

Ok i took out a lot of stuff that was just fluff and also things that were repeated. Also changed the order of things a little bit and wording to make it flow better.

Valerie White said

at 12:33 am on Oct 1, 2009

Looks good guys. I just did some grammar editing so feel free to change whatever.

Brian Croxall said

at 1:46 pm on Oct 3, 2009

This is a pretty good set of notes for our discussion of the Bible. As Gabrielle notes (and I'm very pleased to see you making good use of the comments), there was a lot that we covered, but you got things narrowed down in a fairly readable form.

Your definitions hit all the right spots, and you've chosen good passages that connect three of the major themes that we talked about in relation to the Bible: covenants, testing, and xenia. (Too bad there wasn't space to include Adam and Eve or Jacob and Esau.) Where I think you could still improve a bit is in your summary. You've covered the main things that we talked about in class, but I wonder if it might be more effective for you to put the main points of the discussion into separate paragraphs rather than organize the summary by the order of what we did in class. This makes it easier to see and review what we've done in class by the time it comes to exams. This might have made it easier to see how important justice is and the concept of punishments being connected explicitly to commandments. And it might have made the distinction that I drew between commandments and covenants a little more plain.

Having said that, you've done well.

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