Author Archives: hannah

4/25 Short Books

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Ephisians – Bernice

The Episians were written by the apostle Paul. During the time, Ephesus was in a bad economic state, so Paul goes there on a missionary trip, and gets thrown in jail because the Jews didnt like what he was saying. His teachings were to remind the ephisians of their commitment they have with god and remind them of his teachings. Paul wanted to make sure they werent sinning and to make sure who their god was, because they were making idols. I felt that this book was very interesting, because the Jews are seen as the villians in this context. From my knowledge, the only other place where the Jews are seen in a similar way is in the book of John.

1st and 2nd Timothy – Mark

These were letters from paul to timothy, about how the church should be run and how a good christian should behave. 1st Timothy seeks to establish how a good christian leaders and a good christian should behave. In addition, it also tells how we should pray more and how the bishops and deacons should behave. In 2nd Timothy, Paul is in Jail abandoned by most of his followers. He tells timothy how he should spread the word of christ, and that it doesnt matter who you are or where you come from, because god has a use for you.

A lot of people believe that Paul actually had nothing to do with the lettes and that they were written after his death. Even if that is the case, he teachings still matter and we should continue to take them to heart, because they are good teachings.

1 & 2 Peter – Shawn

These are the last 2 letter as meant of a last wish from peter to paul to quell non believers and to say that the second coming will come. They were written to keep people to their good values and to say how wives should treat their husbands. In 1 & 2 peter, it is the first time where satan is actually mentioned. In addition, there is also the mention of fallen angels. Though Shawn said that this was the first time where satan is referred to, I would like to point out that God also speaks with the devil/satan in the book of Job. Whether or not god actually says the name “satan,” god does speak with the devil.

Corinthians – Michelle

the purpose of this book was to answer a letter from the Corinthians to Paul, questioning his authority. It pointed out problems in the church and how it condemns sexual immorality and says that you may eat food dedicated to false idols, as long as it doesnt harm another christian. Though I am all for the freedom to do what you wish, I am a bit confused by this. Isnt the whole point of any religion that you strictly believe in their god? Even if eating food dedicated to an idol may not harm anyone, it does go against the entire idea of believing in one god. I did like the fact that it also said in this book that each person has a given talent and that they all contribute to christianity and have something to offer. I thought that this was a nice touch to add, and gives a sense of community.

4/20 short books

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Hosea, A prophetic Book – Andrew

Hosea is the first of 12 minor prophetic books. Unlike many of the other books we have looked at, I found it very interesting that Hosea is actually the author of this one. God tells Hosea that he wants to destroy israel, so he asks them to repent. This has been seen over and over in the Bible, and can be referred back to sues presentation on the cycle of sin. What is different about this case is that god eventually has compassion and decided that he will not destroy them. I found this to be very interesting, because it is almost as if God is learning from his mistakes, sucha s when he destroyed sodom and the world with the flood.

Jonah – Kia

I thought it was interesting how most of the other prophetic books focused on israel and Judah, but the book of Jonah only focuses on a prophet who is sent to the assyrians in nenevah. In addition, while most of the other names in the bible are very strong, Jonah, meaning dove, is unlike the others. In this book, God asks Jonah to make a prophecy in Nenevah, but Jonah refuses. This is unlike anythign we have seen before in the bible. Instead of arguing with God, or just agreeing, Jonah flat out says no. In response, the lord throws jonah into the belly of a whale, where jonah repents and finally preaches gods word in nenevah. Overall, the message from this story is that when god sends you to do something, you do it, because if you dont, you could become fish food.

Amos – Anne

Amos is the first of the prophetic books. It begins with god promising to revoke punishments for the transgressions of a bunch of nations. God declares that samaria is corrupt and will be surrounded and defeated by enemies. The women of samaria will also be punished for social injustice and arrogance. Amos then has a bunch of visions in which god is destructive. When Amos tells God to stop, God actually does! Unlike Abraham, who had to argue continuously with god, Amos was able to get god  to not bring locusts upon the crops and not bring a shower of fire. However, when god orders a total destruction of israel, he does not stop, but instead says that after the jews have been exiled, he will promise to restore david’s kingdom.

 

4/18 Short Books

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Proverbs – Katherine

The proverbs are a collection of stories promoting wisdom and to teach a specific goal or lesson. In these messages, wisdom is symbolized as a woman, lady wisdom. She represents Israelite women as a whole and the roles they play as teachers and mothers. Katherine also said that lady wisdom could be a symbol of the israelite goddess Astarte. I found this last part to be very interesting, simply because I had never heard of this goddess. I was under the impression that Jews only believed in one God. This idea of having a goddess seems very greek to me.

Lamentations – Tom

Lamentations are poems expressing sorrow over the loss of Jerusalem. Some say the author was Jeremiah, but most likely they were written by survivors writing about anger and sorrow. To me, the latter seems more likely, because only the people who went through the strife of losing Jerusalem would be able to write about it in such a way. Tom also mentioned that the main theme of the proverbs is that the Jews are asking God for forgiveness and why he did it. This reminds me of the cycle of sin in Judges, and how there is first peace, then Israel does something bad, is then punished, then israel cries out and gets a new judge. Similarly, in Lamentations, the people of Jerusalem brought it upon themselves, and then the babylonians were sent by God to punish those who had sinned.

Daniel – Nick A

During the time of Daniel, Israel was under the control of Antiochus (which no one could pronounce haha). Daniel was taken into babylonian captivity by king Nezer, and helps to interpret Nezer’s dreams. this reminds me a lot of Joseph and how he was taken into captivity by the Egyptians, but found favor through Pharaoh by interpreting his dreams.

Esther – Redgina

I love the book of Esther, and during eighth grade, my class and I had to put on a play of the story of Purim. We did ours based on the broadway show, hairspray. Anyways, I really love this book, mainly because of the character of Esther. Unlike many of the other women in the Bible, Esther is an amazing role model and helps to save her people, without any regard to her own life. She, like Ruth (who I did my short book presentation on) is an amazing role model, and definitely overlooked.

Micah – Nicollette

Micah was an advocator for world peace and was against the gap between the rich and the poor. he was a preacher of truth and offered salvation. He was told that there would be doom coming to the cities of Judah, so he deicided he would keep justice so as to keep the people together. He spoke on behalf of God’s complaint. Micah also believed that even though there are a lot of evil people, the do gooders should continue being faithful and god will forgive the evils they have done. This reminds me of Abraham, when he argued with god to save Sodom, because he believed that there were still some good people living there. Like Abraham, Micah also believes that there is internal good in everybody.

4/13 Gabel

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Appendix 1 & 2

The first appendix was the name of Israel’s God, known as Yaweh. Instead of using adonai for God’s name, the bible uses Yaweh, and it comes up about 6,008 time. As a Jew, I was always told not to say adonai, because it was part of the ten commandments. However, I have never heard of the word yaweh until this class. I do not even know what it means, interestingly enough. I assume its just a way that non-Jews refer to God in the Old Testament.

Appendix 2 was the writing in Bible times. During that time, people wrote on tablets made from clay. Moses was said to use stone tablets, but overall, parchment was generally the standard. I wanted to introduce something that I had heard once, it may have been a midrash. Anyways, when God made the commandments on the 2 twin tablets, He was said to have carved them into stone twin tablets. What is interesting about this, is that when God put the commandments on the stone, it could be seen from the other side, but read the same as on the other side. Unlike a mirror, it could be read normally from the front and the back. I just thought that this was interesting.

4/11 Gabel Presentations

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Waleska did the texts of the Bible for her Gabel presentation. She noted that the only way to produce more bibles is to copy them. This creates alterations and differences. With the evolution of Christianity, they needed the Bible to keep up with it. That being said, how can we know if the Bible is really true? The farther you go back, the more variant and confusing the translations were. For our class, we were told to purchase the Harper Collins Study Bible, however, nto every student has this version. Others have different versions. For example, I am aware that Bernice was using a King James Version. I remember that during a class discussion, we noted that in the H.C version, it said that an evil spirit of God was in Samuel, while in Bernice’s it said that the spirit was distressful. While I do not remember the exact wording, I thought it was interesting how the kIng James version used different wording to make God seem less harsh.

Gabel 4/4 Sue

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Though I am partial to my own presentation and felt that mine was the best (: I also thought Sue made a few interesting points. Sue’s chapter was the Formation of the Canon and for her presentation, she mainly discussed the different judges and  the cycle of sin. The chart she gave for the cycle of sin was very funny in my opinion, because it is so true! This is basically the whole plot of the entire Old Testament. First there is peace, then the Israelites do something bad, God punishes them, they cry and ask for forgiveness, God gives us a new Judge and then there is peace again. In addition, I also liked her remark about the only female judge, Deborah, who is said to be the most powerful female figure in the Bible. This is very nice and refreshing compared to what we have seen in the past, like Sarah cheating Hagar and Dina getting kidnapped and raped. It’s nice to know that there are some women figures who are role models. This also makes me think of my own short book presentation. Like Deborah, Ruth is also a very strong female character and an ideal role model.

Gabel 4/2 Kia

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Kia’s presentation on the Prophetic Writings was very interesting. She brought to light the idea that were the prophets poets? Or were their teachings later translated into a more stylistically appealing way? One other thing that Kia mentioned was that prophets held the most appeal in the Old Testament. Why is this? They’re modern appeal is that the prophets symbolize the destruction  of evildoers and bringing good fortune for those who do good. In the Old Testament, God was new to the whole creation. It is clear from God’s actions, such as bringing on the flood and destroying Sodom, that He was kind of like a new parent in my opinion. That is why it was necessary to have prophets to tell the Israelites God’s teachings. Having a human who the Israelites can relate to over an omnipotent being is much more suitable. As more prophets began to appear, they lost their sincerity. With so many prophets, how are we to really know what is right in the eyes of God?

Overall, I felt that Kia’s presentation was very good and definitely made me think.

Presentation 3/30 – Nicollete

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I thought that Nicollete did a good job with her presentation. She was able to remain focused and alert throughout the entirety of her presentation, which helped to keep me interested in what she had to say. While we have discussed in the past during class that the Old Testament was written by more than one author (J author, P author, etc…), her presentation was really able to give substantial proof that this was true. She explained how in some parts, moses is seen as an actor playing in the story, while at other times, it seems he is speaking as the narrator in Deuteronomy. In addition, Moses writes/speaks about his own death, from beyond the grave (ooooo). For anyone who still believes that Moses is the author I laugh.

In any case, Nicollete’s presentation reminded me of one of our very first classes, when we were discussing the book of Genesis. This was when Dr. Solomons first began to teach us about the various authors (J, P) when we got into groups and had to write what was difficult about the reading, many people said that it was difficult to follow, because the story skipped around a lot, then all of a sudden, the text would jump to describing in full detail the ENTIRE lineage of one person. These stylistic differences are best seen in the book of Genesis in my opinion.

3/28 Gabel Presentations – Mr. Wark

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For this blog, I am mainly going to reiterate what I said in class. I thought Mr. Wark’s presentation was very informative and interesting. Having been to Israel many times in the past with my family, I am well aware of the minuscule size of the country (approx. the size of NJ) and the extreme differences in the weather for such a small place. Though I have known all of this information, I never really gave it much thought. When you really think about it, for a place the size of NJ to have snow on one end, and hot sunny weather on the other is ridiculous.

I also found interesting what Mr. Wark said about the people living in Israel during that time. From what I remember, he said that communities of people were scarce and far apart. Because of this, these groups of people were mainly self sufficient and lived off of the land, growing and cultivating for themselves. When hearing this, I was reminded of the kibbutzim in Israel. Though they were more common in the mid 20th century, they are still around. In these kibbutzim, groups of people work together in a socialist environment. Together as a whole, these communities (kibbutzim) are self sufficient, just as how the people were living in Israel (Palestine, I guess) long before like Mr. Wark said.

James Carroll + Mark

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I thoroughly enjoyed Mr. Carroll’s lecture on Monday. Being Jewish, I have absolutely no knowledge of the New Testament. Before giving his lecture, when I was reading the book of Mark, I did not even know this was the book where Jesus was crucified. Although i’ve been told by other people and learned from tv shows (like south park and robot chicken) that the Jews were kind of responsible for his death, I did not know what it is they did. Though I knew the Romans played a part in his crucifixion, I was also not sure of what they did either. Hearing Mr. Carroll talk about the importance of context really help to answer some of my questions. I had no idea that Jews for Jesus originated to that far back, and I was also unaware of the Jews rebelliousness during this time. The whole concept of the division between the jews after the temple was destroyed is really interesting to me. I liked Mr. Carroll’s explanation that while some Jews wanted to reain loyal to the laws and rules of the Torah, the other Jews felt at lost with their heritage when the temple was destroyed. Therefore, they felt they had to turn to Christ to be their new “temple.”

By the way, I would really like to hear from Mr. Carroll again in the future, I have many questions that I would find interesting to hear from a Christian’s perspective. Especially since he knows so much about the Bible.