Tag Archives: gabel

4/13 Gabel

Leave a reply

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

Leave a reply

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

2 Replies

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

Leave a reply

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.

3/28 Gabel Presentations – Mr. Wark

Leave a reply

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.