Bib Arch Seminary

GENESIS AND OTHER CREATION ACCOUNTS
Copyright, John T. Stevenson, 2000

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. (Genesis 1:1). So begins the text of Genesis 1:1. Though it points back to the creation of all things, it must be understood that this was not the first thing ever to be written. Moses wrote these words in the 15th century B.C. There had already been many books written before this time and some which dealt with the question of creation.

Among the multitude of tablets found in the Library of Ashurbanipal in Nineveh were a group of seven tablets known as the Enuma Elish. Though the library dates only to the late 7th century B.C., the present form of the epic itself goes all the way back to the days of Hammurabi (1700 B.C.), while the story descends from the days of the Sumerians.

The Enuma Elish (”When on high”) draws its title from the first sentence of its narrative: “When on high the heaven had not been named, firm ground below had not been named…”

The text was found written on seven tablets, but this has no bearing on the seven days of the Genesis account. If the tablets had been larger then there would only have been six.

    * Tablet 1: Aspu and Tiamat come together to give birth to the primitive forces and gods. However, Aspu turns against his offspring, but is slain by them. Tiamat is enraged at the death of her husband and she prepares to avenge his death.

    * Tablet 2: Marduk, one of the second generation gods, is elected to fight Tiamat.

    * Tablet 3: The assembly of gods decrees the outcome of the battle and the glory of Marduk.

    * Tablet 4: They each create seven assistants to help them. Marduk wins the conflict and dissects the body of Tiamat.

    * Tablet 5: From the body of Tiamat, Marduk creates heaven and earth. The moon and the stars are established to mark the seasons.

    * Tablet 6: Tiamat’s second in command, Kingu, is slain and from drops of his blood Marduk creates man so that there will be one to sacrifice to the gods.

My blood will I take and bone will I fashion
I will make man, that man may be his name,
I will create man who shall inhabit the earth,
That the service of the gods may be established, and that their shrines may be built.
But I will alter the ways of the gods, and I will change their paths;
Together shall they be oppressed and unto evil shall they….

    * Tablet 7: Marduk advances from the chief god of Babylon to become head of the entire pantheon. He is given 50 names representing the power of the various deities.

It can be seen from this brief outline that this account is only superficially related to the Genesis account.

Similarities and Differences with the Genesis Account

Since the initial discovery of the seven tablets, other copies have been found relating the same story but on ten tablets.

There is a real difference between the Genesis account and the creation accounts of other pagan religions. In other religious systems, the natural world was seen as a manifestation of all of the deities – the sun, moon, stars, oceans, storms. The cosmos always had the status of deity. The Bible is unique in that the cosmos is merely creation. Only God is GOD.

THE NATURE OF THE TWO CREATION ACCOUNTS

A reading of Genesis 1-2 will show immediately that we have two separate and distinct accounts of creation.

Rather than being contradictive, these two accounts are complimentary. Indeed, this method of first giving a panoramic view and then coming back to focus on important details is found all through Genesis.

For example, in the account of Jacob and Esau, Esau’s story comes first, but it is Jacob’s which is more fully developed and which holds the place of higher importance to the theme of the book.

THE SIX DAYS OF CREATION

The six days of creative work are topical in nature. This does not rule out a literal interpretation, but the topical nature should also be realized.

The Jews delighted in this sort of parallelism – it was akin to poetry. This does not take away from its inspiration or its value as an authoritative historical account of creation.

THE CREATION OF MAN

Then God said, “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; and let them rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over the cattle and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.”

And God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them. (Genesis 1:26-27).

The creative work of God reaches a crescendo when it reaches the creation of man.

a. The plurality of the Planner.

Notice the use of the plural pronoun (”Let US make man in OUR image”).

The Jews held this to be a conversation that the Lord was having with the angels. However, the fulfillment of the plan in verse 27 does NOT say that God created man in the image of God and the angels. Indeed, angels are nowhere mentioned in the first half of the book of Genesis.

It has been suggested by some that this may be a foreshadowing of the doctrine of the Trinity. On the other hand, it may also be a literary device known as a “plural of majesty.” Even today in the English language, it is customary for edicts coming from a royal personage to speak in the plural even though it is a single person doing the speaking.

b. In the image of God.

In what way was man created in the image and likeness of God? The context suggests only one way – the area of rulership. As God was sovereign over all that He had created, so now man was placed into a position of relative sovereignty over all that was upon the earth.

THE GARDEN OF EDEN

And the Lord God planted a garden toward the east, in Eden; and there He placed the man whom He had formed. (Genesis 2:8).

Now a river flowed out of Eden to water the garden; and from there it divided and became four rivers.
The name of the first is Pishon; it flows around the whole land of Havilah, where there is gold.
And the gold of that land is good; the bdellium and the onyx stone are there.
And the name of the second river is Gihon; it flows around the whole land of Cush.
And the name of the third river is Tigris; it flows east of Assyria. And the fourth river is the Euphrates. (Genesis 2:10-14).

This passage has been a source of great confusion because it seems to join geographical areas which are far removed from one another.

Verse 10 says literally, “from there it divided and became four heads” .

a. Pishon – “Full flowing).

The Pishon “flows around the whole land of Havilah.”

Havilah is a reference to lands in northern Arabia where the descendants of Ishmael made their homes (Genesis 25:18).

In the 1990’s, Boston University scientist Farouk El-Baz used photos from satellites orbiting the earth and space Shuttle Imaging Radar to locate an underground river which now runs under a portion of the desert of Saudi Arabia (James A. Sauer, “The River Runs Dry,” Biblical Archaeology Review, Vol. 22, No. 4, July/August 1996, pp. 52-54, 57, 64 and Molly Dewsnap, “The Kuwait River,” Biblical Archaeology Review, Vol. 22, No. 4, July/August 1996, p. 55.).

In Kuwait, a dry riverbed (Wadi Al-Batin) cuts through limestone and appears to disappear into the desert of Saudi Arabia. Actually, the river ran underground along a fault line under the sand. From the Hyaz Mountains in Saudi Arabia, this river carried granite and basalt pebbles 650 miles northeast to deposit them at its delta in Kuwait near the Persian Gulf.

Some have theorized that this lost river corresponds to biblical descriptions of the Pishon River. This one discovery was enough to make Sauer, the former curator of the Harvard Semitic Museum’s archaeological collections, reverse his previous skepticism regarding the historical accuracy of the Bible.

b. Gihon – The root word means “to bring forth, gush.”

The Gihon is said to flow around the whole land of Cush (Genesis 2:13). This presents a difficulty in that Cush was the land to the south of Egypt. However, there was also an area to the east of the Tigris River which was known as Cush. If this is the case, then this could be a reference to the Karun River which flows into the Tigris and Euphrates just before they enter the Persian Gulf.

c. Tigris: The Hebrew name comes from a compound made up of two words:

          o “Sharp.”

          o “Arrow.”

The Persian word tir also means “arrow” and is the designation for the Tigris River.

d. Euphrates.

          o Eu is the pronoun “it” (or “he”).

          o Phrates means “sweet water.”

The last two rivers are known to us. The first two are not. However, they come with geographical identifiers. This perhaps indicates that they were not well known to the readers of this account as they are not well known to us.

The location of the last two river points to a location for the Garden of Eden at the northwest end of the Persian Gulf. There is the possibility that the first two rivers can also support such a location.

THE FALL INTO SIN

1. The Temptation Seals.

In the 1930’s a seal was found at an excavation at Tepe Gawra, a few miles to the north of Nineveh. It depicted a man, a woman, and a serpent.

Another excavation in Nineveh uncovered a seal (now in the British Museum) showing a tree in the center with a man on the right, a woman on the left plucking fruit, and a serpent standing erect behind her.

2. The Prophecy of the Seed.

The first prophecy of a coming Messiah was not made to either the man or the woman, but to the serpent.

“And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed; He shall bruise you on the head, and you shall bruise Him on the heel.” (Genesis 3:15).

This verse provides the theme of the rest of Genesis. This will be a book about two seeds. Even though Cain was descended from Eve, he eventually follows the way of the Serpent in rebellion against God. While he is the physical descendant of Adam and Eve, he is the spiritual descendant of the Serpent. Like the Serpent, he rebels against God. And like the Serpent, he is cursed for his rebellion. The story continues as we are given two separate genealogies representing each of these two seeds.

Lamech is the culmination of the Seed of the Serpent through Cain. He takes Cain’s sin and compounds it, threatening to do seven times the damage that Cain had done. In contrast, Enoch walks with God and Noah obeys the Lord in the building of an ark. But after Noah, there is again a departure of a seed to follow after the Seed of the Serpent.

Ham sins and shows by his sin that he is of the Seed of the Serpent. His son Canaan is cursed and continues to be a curse to the Israelites. The pattern continues as Ishmael is cast out while Isaac shows himself to be the son of faith. And again when Esau despises the promises of God, it is to Jacob that the promise is given.

Moses writes the book of Genesis to the Israelites in the wilderness. It is much more than a mere history book. It is a call to be a seed and a generation and a people.

The question before the Israelites in the wilderness is which seed they will be a part of – the seed of the serpent or the seed of the woman?

Genesis will be a book about a line of children. Thus, a key word in Genesis will be “generations.”

          o The Hebrew word for “generations” is toledoth.

          o It is taken from the root word , “to give birth.”

Each new generation will determine which seed it is. Will it continue in the covenant relation to God and show itself to be a part of the promised seed? Or will it turn from God to join and be a part of the seed of the serpent?

MILESTONES IN THE HISTORY OF BIBLICAL ARCHAEOLOGY

Copyright, John T. Stevenson, 2000 (Used With Permission)

1. The Rosetta Stone.

Napoleon Bonaparte invaded Egypt in 1798. He was hoping to cut England’s supply line to her holdings in India. It was an ill-fated expedition for Napoleon and for France, but it also marks the beginning of modern archaeology. Napoleon had brought with him 175 scholars made up of linguists, botanists, naturalists, artists and historians. Though Napoleon left the following year in defeat, this group of scholars eventually succeeded in publishing their findings in the 36-volume study entitled, “Description of Egypt.”

In August 1799, just two months before Napoleon would abandon his army to escape back to France, a French soldier digging a trench at the fort of St Julien near Rosetta came across a black stone covered with writing.

It was a black, irregular-shaped stone

One side was polished and inscribed with a text in three different languages:

No one living in that day was able to read either the hieroglyphs or the demotic. The Greek, on the other hand, was easily readable.

As the spoils of war, the Rosetta Stone ended up in the British Museum where it resides to this day. But it was left to a young French scholar to break its secret.

Jean Francois Champollion theorized that all three inscriptions were differing translations of the same message. In 1822, he used this as the key to deciphering the mystery of the Egyptian hieroglyphics. His first breakthrough was in determining the meaning of the symbol representing Ptolemy.

It had been assumed in the past that hieroglyphics were “picture-writings” in which each symbol represented a single word or concept. Thus a picture of a pig might mean “dirty man” or a lion’s front paws might stand for “strength.” But this proved not to be the case.

There were actually three types of hieroglyphics:

         1. Pictures.

            Some symbols did indeed represent a single word or concept. For example, a picture of a man with a stick stood for the verb, “to beat.”
         2. Related Sounds.

            Some pictures came to stand for things which they sounded like. It would be like drawing a picture of a train in order to communicate the idea of “training (teaching) a student.” An actual example is the Egyptian word wr. It is the word for a swallow (bird). The hieroglyphic is a picture of a swallow. But it is also the word for “great.”
         3. Syllable Sounds.

The symbol for “swallow” came to be used whenever the Egyptians were writing a word which had the sound wr as one of its syllables.

2. The Behistun Inscription.

In 1833 British officer Sir Henry Rawlinson traveled to Persia to organize the Shah’s army. There he came across a Persian inscription located high up a cliff wall on the Rock of Behistun in western Iran. The rock stands above a spring of water on the caravan route between Ecbatana and Babylon; it is the last peak of a long narrow range of mountains. Today the small village of Behistun lies around the spring.

In 1842, Rawlinson succeeded in climbing the wall and copying the entire inscription. The inscription is composed in three languages:

a. Old Persian.

b. Elamites

c. Akkadian.

All three languages are written with cunieform characters. An Aramaic version of the inscription was later discovered at Elephantine in Upper Egypt.

It was ultimately determined that the pictorial relief was of King Darius of Persia. The scene represents Darius receiving the submission of a group of rebels. The king’s left foot is placed on the neck of one of his enemies.

Rawlinson managed to decipher the Persian part of the inscription. This was then used to make the first translations of the other two languages. Thus the Behistun Inscription is to cuneiform was the Rosetta Stone is the Egyptian hieroglyphics.

3. Moabite Stone.

This stela was discovered by a French Anglican medical missionary by the name of F.A. Klein in 1868 in Divon, modern Jordan on the east side of the Dead Sea. The inscription parallels Biblical history as it relates the events described in 2 Kings 1 and 3, though it relates these same events from the Moabite perspective. The stone measures as follows:

Unfortunately the stone was broken into pieces by the local Bedouin before it could be acquired by the authorities. About two-thirds of the pieces were recovered and those, along with an impression made before the stela was destroyed, allowed all but the last line to be reconstructed. There are a total of 34 lines, written in Moabite, a language almost identical to Hebrew.

4. Gezer Calendar.

Discovered in 1908 at Tell el-Jazari, the site of the ancient city of Gezer about 15 miles to the northwest of Jerusalem, this small limestone rock seems to be a student’s homework. The translation reads as follows:

Two months are harvest
Two months are planting
Two months are late (planting)
One month is hoeing flax
One month is barley-harvest
One month is harvest and feasting
Two months are (vine-)pruning
One month is summer fruit.

This inscription dates back to 925 B.C. It serves as evidence that the Hebrews living in Israel at that time were a literary people capable of writing the Old Testament Scriptures.

5. Ras Shamrah – The Lost City of Ugarit.

In the spring of 1928, Mahmoud az-Zir, was ploughing land he had rented in the south of Minet el-Beida (”white harbor”), Syria. As he was working, his plough struck something hard just under the surface. That evening, he returned to the site with some companions, and they began to clear away a thin layer of top soil. They very quickly came across some man-made paving stones, and on lifting these, they discovered a chambered tomb full of pottery.

When archaeologists were sent in to investigate, they discovered a palace and an entire royal port city buried beneath the tell. Within these ruins were hundreds of cuneiform tablets. It was not until 1932 that it was determined that the name of this lost city was Ugarit.

The style of writing discovered at Ugarit is known as alphabetic cuneiform. This is a unique blending of an alphabetic script (like Hebrew) and cuneiform (like Akkadian); thus it is a unique blending of two styles of writing. Most likely it came into being as cuneiform was passing from the scene and alphabetic scripts were making their rise. Ugaritic is thus a bridge from one to the other and very important in itself for the development of both.

Ugaritic greatly helps us in correctly translating difficult Hebrew words and passages in the Old Testament. As a language develops the meaning of words changes or their meaning is lost altogether. This is also true of the Biblical text. But after the discovery of the Ugaritic texts we found information concerning archaic words in the Hebrew text.

6. Ebla.

In 1964 Italian archaeologists directed by Paolo Matthiae of the University of Rome excavated a mound in northern Syria known as Tell Mardikh. In 1968, Matthiae and his team uncovered ancient Akkadian inscriptions of King Ibbit-Lim. In this text the king identified himself as the ruler of Ebla. During excavations in 1974 and 1975, public and royal archives containing over 15,000 clay tablets came to light. The Eblaite scribes recorded information on clay tablets, inscribed in cuneiform, as developed by the Sumerians, which was found in the ruins of the royal palace in 1974 A.D. The people of Ebla spoke a Semitic language that resembled ancient Hebrew. The most likely date of these archives is about 2500 B.C.

A royal library was found in 1974 consisting of 20,000 clay tablets, 80 percent of which were written in Sumerian and the rest in an unknown Semitic language akin to Hebrew that is now called Eblaite. Located halfway between modern Aleppo and Hama, at the top of the Fertile Crescent, the city was in the heart of Abraham’s ancestral home territory of Haran and flourished in 2200 B.C. Names like David, Micah, Jerusalem, Sodom, Gomorrah, Haran, and Ur appear in the texts. The city of Ebla was destroyed around 2250 B.C.

7. Tell Dan Inscription.

In 1994, a team working under Avraham Biran in Upper Galilee discovered three pieces of a single inscription on basalt. It is written in Aramaic and mentions a military victory over Bth-Dwd – “The House of David.” This is the earliest archaeological mention of King David.

8. Tell El-Amarna.

A series of letters were discovered at the ancient Egyptian city of Akhenaton, located on the east bank of the Nile midway between Giza and Thebes. The city has since become known as Tell el-Amarna by the combining of two names:

a. El-Til is the name of the modern-day village in the area.

b. El-Amarna is one of the Arab tribes which has settled in the area.

In 1887, a peasant woman digging for fertilizer found some tablets in the ruins of Tell el-Amarna. She sold them for ten piastres. The tablets were offered to European scholars, but were suspected of being forgeries and were rejected. The tablets were taken to Luxor and sold to tourists. By the time that scholars realized the tablets were genuine, a number of the tablets had been sold. Excavations began in 1891 and a total of 380 tablets were eventually uncovered.

The tablets date to the 18th dynasty of Egypt, specifically during the reign of Akhenaton. These tablets consist correspondence between the Pharaoh of Egypt at the kings of the cities of Jerusalem, Gezer, Lachish, Jarmuth and Eglon. However, they are written in Akkadian, demonstrating that this was the language of international diplomacy.

In several of these letters, there are complaints and requests for protection from invading Hapiru, a nomadic people who were overrunning the land. Some of these Hapiru had been joined by the Canaanites and some had offered their services as mercenaries (there is a possible correlation here to the Gibeonites).

THE FORMING OF ANCIENT TELLS

Ancient cities were sometimes built on a hill. This would allow the natural formation of the landscape to assist in the fortifying of the city. Jerusalem is a good example of this phenomenon. The original Jebusite city was located on a narrow ridge so that three sides of the city were protected by steep inclines.

Other cities often found themselves in areas which were originally lowlands, but which began to elevate as each succeeding city was built over top of its predecessor.

The word tell in both Hebrew and Arabic means “mound.” What originally appeared to be mere hills in the landscape sometimes turned out to be a series of forgotten cities each built one on top of the rubble of its predecessor.

One example of this phenomenon is Tell el-Husn on the Jordan River, 14 miles south of the Sea of Galilee. This was the site of the Biblical city of Bethshan, the home of those who took the body of Saul after he had been slain in the battle of Gilboa.

This site was excavated from 1921 to 1933 by the University of Pennsylvania. Excavators dug down 70 feet through 18 distinct strata. The history of the city begins as early as 3500 B.C. and continues into the present era.

METHODS OF EXCAVATIONS

There are four basic methods of excavation which are used by modern archaeologists.

THREE TYPES OF SURVIVING WRITINGS

    * Monumental.

These are texts for public display. They were made on monuments and they were made to last and to withstand the elements.

    * Professional.

Texts made by trained scribes. They were often done of clay tablets or on papyrus.

    * Occasional.

These were things written in everyday business. They could be written on papyrus, parchment, goatskin, or even upon broken pieces of pottery known as “potsherds” or “ostraca” (the ancient version of “scrap paper”).

INTRODUCTION TO BIBLICAL ARCHAEOLOGY

Copyright, John T. Stevenson, 2000 (Used With Permission)

The Bible is a historical book. Rather than being a “once upon a time” fairytale, it is rooted in history. Ernst Renan once said that “all history is incomprehensible without Christ.” But it is also true that both Christ and the Scriptures are equally incomprehensible without the historical backdrop against which they are framed.

WHAT IS ARCHAEOLOGY?

Archaeology is one of the newer sciences. As such, it is a new study of old subjects. The word itself takes us back to antiquity. “Arche” is the Greek word for “beginning.” Archaeology therefore is the study of beginnings. The following definitions have been proposed.

   1. The science of the study of history from the remains of early human cultures as researched primarily by systematic excavations.
   2. A systematic and descriptive study of antiquities via the exploration of the remains of past humans.
   3. That branch of historical research which investigates past civilizations from surviving art, architecture, monuments, inscriptions literature, language, customs, and other material traces.

Biblical archaeology is that area of archaeology which throws light upon our understanding of the Bible. As such, Biblical archaeology will be primarily restricted to the study of the culture and history of the Middle East and the Mediterranean world – that area which served as the historical context for the Bible.

REASONS FOR STUDYING BIBLICAL ARCHAEOLOGY

1. To Aid us in Understanding the Bible.

Each book of the Bible was written to a particular audience.

          o Genesis is written to Israelites who have come out of Egypt.

          o Judges is written to Israelites living under the monarchy of Israel.

          o Chronicles is written to post-exilic Jews returning to the land.

          o The epistles are written to various churches throughout the Roman Empire.

In each case, the human author of the book assumes a certain amount of a prior knowledge. He assumes that he can speak of various geographic or cultural areas and that they will be known and understood and applied by his readers.

Our problem is that we are reading ancient Scriptures from a 21st century vantage point. A study of Biblical archaeology helps us to step into the sandals of the original readers and to interpret the Scriptures properly. It is only then that we will be able to apply the truths of the Scriptures rightly in our day.

2. To Affirm the Scriptural Narrative.

The Bible’s historical accuracy has long been the source of attack. These attacks have not abated in recent years; they have escalated in intensity. One of the necessary fields of Biblical apologetics will be the defense of the historical veracity of the Bible. The battlefield for this conflict will be the arena of Biblical archaeology.

Make no mistake, this is no easy conflict. There are many archaeologists who reject the Bible out of hand, going so far as to deny the historicity of the patriarchs, the Exodus event and the existence of David or Solomon and their kingdoms.

At the same time, we must realize that there are many things in the Bible which are not substantiated in current Biblical archaeology. That is because we have only found a small fraction of the remains of antiquity.

Principle: The absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. This has been proven time and time again as new finds have substantiated areas which were previously thought to be in error.

3. To Aid us in the Work of Bible Translation.

Language is not a constant. It is always changing. One has only to pick up a King James Bible to see how much the English language has changed over the past 400 years. What it true of the English language is also true of the languages in which the Bible was written.

          o The Old Testament was written primarily in Hebrew with a few chapters in Daniel being penned in Aramaic. Modern Hebrew has gone through some changes and there are a number of words in the Old Testament which are “hapax legomenon” – words which appear only once and which appear nowhere else.

How are we to determine the meanings of such words? It is the field of archaeology which provides assistance. Archaeological writings give us other examples of the usage of certain words and are a great help in interpreting the Bible.

          o The New Testament is written in Koine Greek. The Greek of the New Testament is very different from the modern Greek which is spoken today. Fortunately, we have a great deal of examples of Koine Greek to compare with our New Testament vocabulary.

THE SCOPE OF BIBLICAL ARCHAEOLOGY

The lands of the Bible go far beyond the tiny boarders of the land of Israel. The story of the Bible begins in Mesopotamia, the land between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers. By the end of the New Testament, our horizons have been stretched westward all the way to Spain. This means that we could divide Biblical Archaeology into two distinct parts:

1. Old Testament Archaeology.

The lands of the Old Testament would be those around the Fertile Crescent. This is a large band of relatively fertile land stretching from the Persian Gulf northward along the courses of the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers and then south along the Levant. Though known as the “Fertile Crescent,” much of these lands can only be considered fertile when compared to the surrounding deserts.

2. New Testament Archaeology.

Although still centered in the land of Palestine, our focus in the New Testament turns its attention westward. The story of Acts and the Epistles is a movement from Jerusalem to Rome.

Between these two periods is a time known as the “Silent Years.” It is a period when there were no prophets in Israel. But it is not a period which is silent with reference to history.  

The Latest Archeology News Extracts From The World Of Research Via The Web

The Codex Vaticanus is an ancient copy of the Old and New Testaments written in Greek. It is the first complete Bible written in codex, or book form. Codex was a format, developed in the second century AD, in which several sheets of papyrus, or parchment, were folded in the middle and stitched, or otherwise bound together along the fold, producing pages that could be read like a modern book. ⁵⁵

At the end of the nineteenth century, two British scholars, Brooke Westcott and Fenton Hort, produced a volume titled The New Testament in the Original Greek (1881). Along with this publication, they stated their position that Codex Vaticanus and Codex Sinaiticus, along with a few other early manuscripts, represent a text that most closely replicates the original writings. In the twentieth century, many second- and third-century papyrus manuscripts of the New Testament have been discovered. Most of these papyrus manuscripts have a text that is very similar to Codex Vaticanus and to Codex Sinaiticus. ⁷¹

Linguistic scholars have observed that Codex Vaticanus is reminiscent of classical and Platonic Greek, not Koine Greek of the New Testament (see Adolf Deissman’s Light of the Ancient East). Nestle admitted that he had to change his Greek text (when using Vaticanus and Sinaiticus) to make it “appear” like Koine Greek. ⁶⁹

One of the most noteworthy papyrus manuscripts is P75, a copy of Luke and John dated c.175-200. It is universally recognized as a very accurate manuscript and one that bears extremely close resemblance to Codex Vaticanus. This shows that a pure line of textual transmission was preserved from the middle of the second-century to the fourth century. The papyrus P75 and several other papyrus manuscripts have helped twentieth-century scholars produce a Greek text that is even closer to the original text than that of Westcott and Hort. This most recent edition is commonly known as the Nestle-Aland Greek New Testament. ⁷¹

The Vatican Codex, in spite of the views of Tischendorf, who held for the priority of the Codex Sinaiticus , discovered by him, is rightly considered to be the oldest extant copy of the Bible . It may be said that the Vatican Codex, written in the first half of the fourth century, represents the text of one of those recensions of the Bible which were current in the third century, and that it belongs to the family of manuscripts made use of by Origen in the composition of his Hexapla. ²³

Many other scholars have made special collations for their own purposes e.g. Tregelles, Tischendorf, Alford, etc. B, denou phototypice expressus, jussu et cura praesidum Bibliothecae Vaticanae” (Milan, 1904-6). This edition contains a masterly anonymous introduction (by Giovanni Mercati), in which the writer corrects many inexact statements made by previous writers. Until recently the privilege of consulting this ancient manuscript quite freely and fully was not granted to all who sought it. The material condition of the Vatican Codex is better, generally speaking, than that of its contemporaries; it is foreseen, however, that within a century it will have fallen to pieces unless an efficacious remedy, which is being earnestly sought for, shall be discovered. ⁸²

The Nestle/Aland GreekText, with its many revisions, took over from the Westcott and Hort era, along with the United Bible Society (UBS). These used basically the same Sinaitic (Aleph) and Vaticanus (B) manuscripts with its allies, which amount to less than 1% of the 5400 Greek manuscripts that make up the Majority Text. For example, the New International Version (NIV) concerning Mark, Chapter 16:9-20, wants you to believe these verses do not belong in God�s Word. They draw a line across the page after Verse 8 and insert their explanation. ⁷³

Codex Vaticanus is one of the most important manuscripts for Textual criticism and is a leading member of the Alexandrian text-type. It was heavily used by Westcott and Hort in their edition, The New Testament in the Original Greek (1881). ¹

Codex Vaticanus (B), the earliest of the great parchment manuscripts at about 300 AD, has resided in the Vatican since the middle ages and remains there today. It is one of the most important manuscripts for textual criticism. ⁷⁰

Westcott and Hort preferred the Vaticanus manuscript as their chief authority above all other Greek manuscripts. It was “their touchstone” (Aland, The Text of the New Testament, p. 14). ²⁵

Pasquale Amicarelli, of Italy, has put together a module that contains images of Codex Alexandrinus. These images are indexed so that if you are looking at any New Testament text in BibleWorks you can click a link in your Resource Summary Window and be taken immediately to the correct page. Pasquale is working on similar modules for Vaticanus and Sinaiticus! ⁷⁴

In June 2005, a joint project to produce a new digital edition of the manuscript (involving all four holding libraries) and a series of other studies was announced. This will include the use of hyperspectral imaging to photograph the manuscripts to look for hidden information such as erased or faded text. ²

References

• en.wikipedia.org
• oce.catholic.com
• members.aol.com
• en.wikipedia.org
• www.library.arizona.edu
• www.catholic.org
• mb-soft.com
• www.newlivingtranslation.com
• www.linguistsoftware.com
• www.1611kingjamesbible.com
• www.timetracts.com
• en.wikisource.org
• www.tertullian.org
• www.wayoflife.org
• www.heritagebbc.com
• rosetta.reltech.org
• www.religionfacts.com
• bibleworks.oldinthenew.org

These Extracts are offered as important pieces of information, gleaned from the web. References are given at the end of each extract for further research by the reader. Web URLs are given at the end to facilitate independent investigation. Use the Archeology Extract mainly as a pointer to research

The Latest Archeology News Extracts From The World Of Research Via The Web

David Noel Freedman (May 22 1922 – 8 April 2008), son of Romanian and Russian immigrants, was a biblical scholar, author, editor, archaeologist and an ordained Presbyterian minister (Th.B., Princeton Theological Seminary, 1944). After earning a doctorate in Semitic Languages and Literature at the Johns Hopkins University in 1948, Freedman held a series of professorial and administrative positions at various theological institutions and universities. ¹

As the general editor of several distinguished series, including the Anchor Bible Series (1956-2008), Eerdmans Critical Commentaries (2000-2008), and The Bible in Its World (2000-2008), and as the editor and author of numerous other award-winning volumes, including the Eerdmans Dictionary of the Bible (2000), Freedman has produced over three hundred and thirty scholarly books. Recent seminal works as an author include ?The Unity of the Hebrew Bible? Freedman and his colleagues brought the world?s oldest complete Hebrew Bible to synagogues, churches, libraries and individuals around the world for the first time in history. ¹

David Noel Freedman has been General Editor and a contributing coauthor of the Anchor Bible series since its inception in 1956. He is a professor in Hebrew Bible at the University of California, San Diego, and lives in La Jolla, California. ⁷

Freedman was born Noel Freedman on May 12, 1922, in New York city, to Beatrice and David Freedman. He deeply admired his immigrant father, a successful playwright and shtik writer for the likes of Eddie Cantor and Buster Keaton. The over-worked Freedman senior died in 1936 at age 38, and his son adopted a new first name in his honor. In his 70s and 80s, David Noel Freedman tried to bring back his father?s memory in another way, reissuing some of his works in print and arranging for a staging of his father?s first hit, Mendel, Inc. ¹⁷

Noel was the workaholic’s workaholic; into his 60s and 70s, seventy-hour work-weeks were the norm. At any rate, he thrived working at a pace that would have killed an ordinary person, even though cataracts severely limited his vision. Noel claimed to take the most pride in the books he wrote or midwifed. But, in the end, what kept him going, literally, was teaching. Up until his last week, he participated in a graduate seminar via the Internet from his son�s home in Petaluma. Noel held an indistinguishable belief in the public appetite for scholarship about the Bible. David Noel Freedman was admired and beloved by his students, his colleagues, and a far wider audience that knew him only from lectures or from reading. In his day, he served as the �nerve center� of American biblical scholarship. ⁴⁷

The heart-broken Noel watched three weeks later as every stick of furniture his family owned was auctioned off and they returned to the poverty from whence it came. Yet nothing has broken Noel’s heart more than to see his father’s name forgotten. Once David Freedman had been the king of the comedy writers. Today, hardly anyone knows his name and his plays are virtually forgotten. ¹⁵

Freedman held a series of professorial and administrative positions at various theological seminaries (Western Theological Seminary, Pittsburgh; Pittsburgh Theological Seminary; San Francisco Theological Seminary; Graduate Theological Union), before settling into long, overlapping tenures at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor (1971-92) and UCSD (1986-2008). His alumni hold teaching positions in dozens of universities, colleges and seminaries around the nation, not to mention the hundreds of clergy that passed under his tutelage. ¹⁷

During a career of 60 years, Freedman wrote, co-authored or edited 470 books and articles on the Hebrew Bible, the New Testament, the Dead Sea Scrolls, and archaeology. Some of these proved controversial, but Freedman?s attitude toward the work of others was, ?Let a thousand flowers bloom!? He was the most uncensorious of men, and his unpretentious demeanor earned him the love of hundreds of students, colleagues and readers. Freedman was a tireless spokesman for the beauty, interest and relevancy of the Bible and biblical studies. His work affected a variety of cultural communities, with fans including Jews and Christians of all stripes, plus numerous secularists. ¹⁷

It is too soon to identify Freedman?s personal contribution to biblical studies. His interests were so wide-ranging, and so unique, that they seem to have stood apart from their time. But Freedman?s other legacy is already crystal-clear. There never was such an entrepreneur-facilitator-collaborator-disseminator of biblical scholarship. His own formidable intellect and inordinate capacity for work, combined with a rare affability, qualified Freedman to lead a variety of enterprises?as archaeological director (Ashdod), as director of the Albright Institute of Archaeological Research (1969-70, 1976-77), as journal editor (Journal of Biblical Literature [1955-59], Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research [1974-78], Biblical Archaeologist [1976-82]), and book editor. In the last capacity, he oversaw the publication of hundreds of popular and technical works, especially in the Anchor Bible Series, now at abound 120 volumes. ¹⁷

Freedman never retired, having fought years earlier for the abolition of mandatory retirement at UC. His life was his work and his work his life. Until the week of his death, he was engaged in editing manuscripts and teaching UCSD graduate students via webcam. At the close of what proved to be his final session, he proposed to use the Internet, a new discovery to him, to bring 10,000 viewers into his classroom! ¹⁷

“David Noel Freedman was a scholar of monumental proportion, but the three-pronged Anchor Bible project is his main legacy,” said Astrid Beck, an associate of Freedman on the project. “He knew the Bible inside out, and he was an original thinker.” ⁹

Born in Botosani, Romania, David immigrated to the United States as an infant. He first became a short story writer. Yet, after marrying and starting a family in his early 20s, he discovered the flaw in this career choice. His father was active in the Jewish community and knew everyone. ¹⁵

Retirement was not in his rather extensive vocabulary. The week before he died, Propp and Dr. Freedman were team teaching a Hebrew Bible seminar, with Dr. Freedman broadcasting via Web cam from his son’s home and Propp in the classroom with the students. At the end of the session, Dr. Freedman joked about expanding the class to 10,000 viewers – and charging them, Propp said. ¹⁹

Cantor would promise payment but not always come through. So David, who had a staff and gambling habit to support, expanded his client list, writing Baby Snooks sketches for Fanny Brice and six different radio shows. He wrote the Ziegfield Follies of 1936 the year he died. Noel attended opening night. “It was a special treat because the star of the show was Gypsy Rose Lee,” he remembers. ¹⁵

References

• en.wikipedia.org
• philologos.org
• yalepress.typepad.com
• www.sdjewishjournal.com
• www.parentsorensen.com
• www.latimes.com
• www.signonsandiego.com

These Extracts are offered as important pieces of information, gleaned from the web. References are given at the end of each extract for further research by the reader. Web URLs are given at the end to facilitate independent investigation. Use the Archeology Extract mainly as a pointer to research