From: turpin@cs.utexas.edu (Russell Turpin)
Newsgroups: talk.religion.misc
Subject: Biblical history: A Quiz
Date: 26 Aug 1992 18:42:59 -0500
Organization: CS Dept, University of Texas at Austin
NNTP-Posting-Host: cs.utexas.edu
Summary: From a non-believer

-*----
I originally posted this quiz to the net during Christmas, 1990.
Recently, I promised to send it to someone with whom I had an
e-mail conversation, and then I promptly forgot to whom I
promised it.  (My apologies to whoever this was.)  Since I know
the respondent reads this newsgroup, and because this quiz might
be of broader interest, and because it has not been posted in a
while, I am reposting it now.  (Note, however, that I do not
plan on returning to participation in this newsgroup.)

-*----
By way of introduction, I would opine that Christians, with
exceptions whose percentage starts with a decimal point, are
amazingly ignorant about the Bible.  Tellingly, those who cling
tightest to the notion that the Bible is the inerrant word of
their god, whose clear meaning they can fathom, and those who
think that history provides some support for the truth of
Christianity, are usually the most ignorant of the Bible, of
related history, and of historical reasoning.  (Some blame for
this can be laid at the feet of authors such as Josh, whose
writings best serve as fodder for logic classes, standing out
only for their density of fallacy.)

Two events originally spurred me to write this.  The first: A
Christian of the sola scriptura brand wanted to purge me from the
"wrong" views of Christianity with which I was acquainted.  All
of that, I was told, was the corrupted tradition of man.  *Only*
the scripture has the truth.  "Tell me," I asked, "why do you
call it the Gospel according to Matthew?"  The Christian
explained, thinking to teach, that it was written by the apostle
Matthew.  I continued, "why do you think that?"  It says so, was
the answer.  As gently as I could, I explained that nowhere does
the New Testament state the authorship of the gospels (with the
exception of hints in John that may not mean much); and that the
attributions that name the gospels are solely tradition, the kind
of thing that she had just accused of corrupting "pure"
Christianity. 

The second event caused me to wonder how many Christians even
read the Bible.  I know they read the words and move their lips.
But how many actually think about what they are reading?  I got a
chuckle when someone asked me, in a post in this newsgroup,
whether I thought Paul woke up one day to find he was Christian.
Don't you think, the poster asked, that he carefully investigated
the evidence on both sides of the question?  Here was a Christian
who did not know the traditional and famous story about Saul's
conversion!  (For the curious, it is told in Acts 9.)

Sigh.

I have often lamented the widespread ignorance among Christians
of Biblical history.  More than anything else, its knowledge
would turn fundamentalist believers into more sophisticated
believers.  The dross of talk.religion.misc might come to have a
few more gems.  (I have sampled it recently, and if anything, it
has become worse.)  Sometimes I have even thought that Biblical
history should be a required course in public schools, the
problem being that fundamentalists would use it as an excuse to
push ignorant pulp like that written by Josh.  How many of those
who have read his crap have also read "Who Wrote the Bible," by
Friedman?  The classic Church history by Latourette?  Anything by
Elide Mirceau?  A very small percentage, I wager. 

-*---- 
The quiz is imagined as a "final exam" for a hypothetical
freshman course on Biblical history.  Not all questions have
"right" answers.  It is closed book.  Grammar and spelling count.
Those who know this subject well (of whom there are not many in
this newsgroup, and I am not one) will likely criticize some of
the questions or find them simplistic, but this will be
informative, too.  Have fun.

BEGIN THE QUIZ

GENERAL

	Name three books in the Catholic Bible that are not
	in the Protestant Bible.

	Name three ancient, Christian apocryphal works in neither.

	What are the oldest surviving religious writings?

NEW TESTAMENT

	Which books of the New Testament did John the Elder
	allegedly write?  Says who?

	For whom was Mark supposedly an amaneunsis?  Who gave
	us this tradition?

	What language did Jesus speak?

	According to traditional attributions, who is the major
	author of the New Testament?  The second author?  Were
	either of these with Jesus during his travels and
	preachings? 

	If you are a teacher, and two students turn in papers
	that include sections that are identical, does that
	indicate a common source, i.e., that not both are 
	original?  What if this occurs in three gospels?  

	According to traditional attributions, how many of the
	original twelve apostles contributed to the New Testament?

	What did Origen cut off?  Why did Tertullian believe?
	BONUS: Answer the second question in Latin.

	Other than Origen and Tertullian, name three church
	fathers of the second and third centuries.

	Who wrote the Gospel according to Thomas?  Says who?

	What are the synoptic gospels?  What do they have in
	common? 

	Which of the four canonical gospels, in its oldest 
	version, gives no account of the resurrected
	Jesus?

	It was common in the ancient world for a disciple or
	student to write what a famous person or teacher
	(allegedly) said, and put the teacher's name on the
	work.  How does the importance of such indirect
	attributions differ for philosophical works (e.g.,
	Socrates' apology) as opposed to historical or 
	biographical works?

OLD TESTAMENT

	What is the Torah? 

	Which book of the Old Testament was partly written in
	Aramaic?  What is the importance of this?

	What is the Septuagint?  Which Ptolemy commissioned it?
	What tradition explains its name?  Why is it important?

	From which older culture do some scholars think parts
	of Levitical law derive?  To what kind of evidence do
	they appeal?

	Which was written first, the Pentateuch or the
	Homeric epics?  (This is a trick question; the goal is
	to give an answer that makes some kind of sense.)

	Which occurred first, Moses leading the Jews out of
	Egypt, or the Achaean's war against Troy?  Other than the
	Homeric epics, what evidence do we have for the latter?
	Other than the Pentateuch, what evidence do we have
	for the former?

	Which country held Judah before Nebuchadnezzar's reign?
	BONUS: What does Nebuchadnezzar's name mean?
	BIG BONUS: What does "Mene, mene, tekel, upharsin" mean?

	What century did David live?  Why are we more sure of
	David's existence than King Arthur's?

	What is a redactor?

	What was special about the tribe of Levi?

	Who was Antiochus Epiphanes?  What was his importance
	to the Old Testament?

	Why are multiple sources postulated for the Pentateuch?

ESSAY

	Name at least two cultures that influenced Jewish history
	and that had deities whose ceremonies included sexual
	activity.  Describe the ceromonies and their importance.
	Name the gods.  Explain how the	conflict between these
	cultures and the Israelites influenced portions of the
	Bible.

	Name two heresies that were important prior to
	Constantine.  Name apocryphal works (if any) associated
	with these.  In the final analysis, what determines
	orthodoxy?  Is your answer from the viewpoint of a
	particular sect or based on prior religious assumptions?
	In what sense is it objective?

	Jesus, among some other famous religious leaders, never
	wrote a book, nor otherwise left us a direct composition
	of his thoughts.  Instead, we have only sayings that
	others attribute to him (most likely via oral tradition).  
	Even if we make the assumption that all such quotes are
	verbatim, does the process of setting the context and
	selecting what was important enough to write down
	constitute an interpretation?  Is there any sense in
	which we "can go back to the source" and study Jesus's
	own thoughts the way we can study, for example,
	Wittgenstein's or Jefferson's?

	Who was the thirteenth apostle?  How would Christianity
	be different if he had not become Christian?

END OF QUIZ
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