From: lip@s1.gov (Loren I. Petrich)
Newsgroups: talk.religion.misc
Subject: Re: Biblical history: A Quiz
Date: 28 Aug 92 16:44:14 GMT
Organization: LLNL

In article <17h4u3INN9da@cs.utexas.edu> turpin@cs.utexas.edu (Russell Turpin) writes:
>BEGIN THE QUIZ

	[I'll do this from memory; I don't expect to be able to get
everything]

>GENERAL

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

	These would be some of the Apocrypha. They include the Books
of Maccabees, and the Books of Tobit and Judith.

>	Name three ancient, Christian apocryphal works in neither.

	These would be some of the Gnostic Gospels, such as the Gospel
of Thomas, the Gospel of the Truth, and the Gospel according to the
Egyptians [if I remember correctly]

>	What are the oldest surviving religious writings?

	That's a difficult question, because that depends on how one
counts the "writing" of something. Before modern times, where books
and literacy are essentially universal, information was often
transmitted orally. So does one count the time of composition or does
one count the time of writing down? And even for written documents,
there is the possibility that they were around before they were given
any sacred character.

	Even given these caveats, the older parts of the Old Testament
must rank among the champions in this field; the oldest halfway
reliable history is about at the beginning of the monarchy, which was
at about 1000 BCE. The competition? The Homeric epics: 800 BCE; the
Zoroastrian scriptures: when Zoroaster lived is very uncertain,
anywhere from 900 to 600 BCE; the Vedas of Hinduism: the Rig Veda is
dated from linguistic evidence to about 1200 BCE.

>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?

	Aramaic (it wasn't King James English :-)

>	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? 

	Paul and John. Neither had known JC directly, though Paul
claimed to have had a vision of him.

>	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?  

	Indeed that does. When one writes something, one makes
numerous decisions as to little details of phrasing and vocabulary,
and each individual makes these decisions differently. Many such
differences are recognizable as individual styles; there are even
difference in the styles of the same person for different contexts and
different times.

	So if one sees identical language, one has to ask if the
identity is due to copying from a common source. If that is the case,
then one suspects plagiarism. One student was copying from the other,
both from each other, or even both from someone else.

	If in three documents, one has to suspect multiple plagiarism.

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

	Four: Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.

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

	Origen: his testicles. He wanted to follow Matthew 19:12
literally, which meant that he tried to make himself a eunuch for the
sake of the Kingdom of Heaven. The physician Galen, who actually
admired the early Christians, reported that some young Christian men
actually asked to be castrated.

	Tertullian: credo quia absurdum (I believe because it's absurd)

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

	St. Ambrose, St. Augustine, Irenaeus, Lactantius [I'm not sure
if I got the dates quite right]

>	Who wrote the Gospel according to Thomas?  Says who?

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

	Matthew, Mark, and Luke. They have a similar style and JC
comes off pretty much the same in all three. They even share an
abundance of identical text.

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

	I think it was Mark. That's thought the oldest of the four
from other grounds, and it was probably the source for much of Matthew
and Luke.

	Having no account of the resurrection of JC is critical
because it is consistent with the idea of his being resurrected having
emerged only well _after_ his death. An relatively old document would
not mention "history" that was not invented until after it was
mentioned.

>	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?

	For philosophical and other such "original" works, it arouses
serious questions as to who was the "real" author. Platonists debate
endlessly how much of the "Socrates" in Plato's Dialogues was really
Socrates and how much was Plato putting words into his mouth.

	The same question arises for the NT: how much was "really" JC,
and how much was his followers putting words into his mouth?


>OLD TESTAMENT

>	What is the Torah? 

	The first 5 books, a.k.a. the Pentateuch

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

	The Book of Daniel and parts of the Book of Ezra are in
Aramaic. This is thought to be a by-product of being under Persian
rule, where Aramaic was the language of administration.

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

	An early Greek translation of the OT. It was supposedly worked
on by about 70 scholars and they supposedly all agreed, thus
indicating that their translations were divinely inspired (by the
plagiarism criterion mentioned above)

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

	Mesopotamian law. Various stylistic similarities.

>	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.)

	The Pentateuch was written over some centuries and collected
at the time of the Babylonian Exile; some of it is older and some of
it younger than the Homeric epics.

>	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?

	The Jews leaving Egypt (~1500 BCE) was before the Achaeans'
War against Troy (~1200 BCE).

	For the Achaeans' war against Troy, we have some indirect
archeological evidence, but only that. The Mycenaeans' only written
record was the Linear B tablets, which were only for bookkeeping.
Furthermore, these clay tablets survived only because of the
destruction of the buildings that had contained them; they were
apparently mashed up each year and recycled or made into pots.
However, the city identified as Troy shows several destructions over
the centuries of its existence, and one of them seems to be about the
right age for a raid late in the Mycenaeans' existence.

	For the Israelites' leaving Egypt, we have zero on-the-spot
evidence. The earliest mention of them is in a victory stele (~1200
BCE) in which the Pharaoh Merneptah brags of his military victories;
he states that "Israel has no seed". This could be accounted for by a
small nomadic tribe not leaving much behind for archeologists to
discover; however, there is no Egyptian account that convincingly
parallels the Exodus account (although an Egyptian account would
likely make the Egyptians the great victor).

	The closest one can come is the great caldera eruption of
Thera at about that time; some of the Ten Plagues of Egypt closely
parallel the side effects of a big fall of volcanic ash. But even
_that_ does not tell us anything about what the Israelites had been up
to at the time.

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

	Judah had been conquered by the Assyrians before that.

	Nebuchadnezzar was originally Nabu-kudurri-usur, something
like "Nabu [a god] guard the boundary"

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

	About the tenth century BCE.

>	What is a redactor?

	A fancy term for editor. It is applied to whoever did the
cut-and-paste job that is evident in the early books of the Bible.

>	What was special about the tribe of Levi?

	They were the priestly tribe, and apparently a rather
privileged tribe also (they got to use perfume, for example), and they
had some sort of Egyptian connections. The name "Moses" (_Mosheh_ in
Hebrew) is probably of Egyptian origin (consider Pharaohs named
Ahmose, Thutmose, Ramses, etc.); could it have simply been some
Levites who made the Exodus? And it was apparently they who introduced
the worship of Yahweh, though at first not exclusive worship.

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

	He was some Hellenistic king.

>	Why are multiple sources postulated for the Pentateuch?

	A range of stylistic and vocabulary differences. One source
refers to God as _Elohim_, another as _Yahweh_, to name just one
example.

>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.

	The Canaanite (native) and the Mesopotamian. Both had ritual
sex as a religious rite. The Canaanites had temple prostitution at the
temples of Ashtoreth, while the Babylonians had a custom where young
women must sacrifice their virginity at the temple of Mylitta/Ishtar
(Herodotus wrinkles his nose when describing this custom).

	Some of the Israelite priests and prophets got annoyed at the
sight of Israelite men lusting after foreign women and marrying them,
and they may have seen the sacred prostitution as an example of how
wicked these foreign women were.

>	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?

	Gnosticism and Manichaeism

	I guess in this case, orthodoxy was determined by which side
succeeding in suppressing all the others.

>	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?

	I think it does. Because JC's biographers may only have
written down what was interesting to them, or what fit their agendas,
or whatever.

	I don't know if we will know for sure what the historical JC
was like, for the reasons given. It's something like the
Socrates-and-Plato question mentioned earlier.

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

	Paul. It was apparently he who made the idea of JC rising from
the dead so critical, and it was he who came up with the idea of his
execution as substitute punishment for the sins of whoever made
themselves believe in JC. The resurrection idea seems copied from some
pagan "mystery religions"; in some versions of the Cybele-and-Attis
cult, three days after Attis's death (he was killed by a boar, or he
pricked himself on an evergreen tree and bled to death, or...), a
light appeared in his tomb and he rose from the dead, assuring his
followers that they, too, can be saved. This death-and-resurrection
motif occurs in several forms in the Eastern Mediterranean area
(consider also Osiris, Adonis, and Tammuz); it may be as old as the
Neolithic.

	Paul also decided to try to convert non-Jews, which some early
Christians were apparently averse to. Christianity had not gotten far
among the Jews, which most considered too heretical for their taste,
though it did get a lot farther among non-Jews :-)

>END OF QUIZ