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Gospel
literary genre telling of account of Jesus's life and "good news" that he brought. Includes words and deeds done by Jesus. -4 in the New Testament (Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John) -others studied: Gospel of Peter, Infancy gospel of Thomas
Apocalypse
literary genre where a usually pseudonymous author tells symbolic dreams or visions told through an angelic mediator that reveal heavenly mysteries to make sense of earthly realities
Apostolic Fathers
collection of non canonical writings by 2nd century proto-orthodox Christians who were thought to have been followers of the apostles; some of these works were considered scripture in some early churches
manuscript
a handwritten copy of a literary text
Son of God
Greco-Roman circles: person born to a god, can perform miraculous deeds and/or convey superhuman teachings Jewish circles: persons chosen to stand in a special relationship with the God of Israel, including ancient Jewish kings
Greco-Roman World
the lands (and culture) around the Mediterranean from the time of Alexander the Great to the Emperor Constantine, roughly 300 B.C.E to 300 C.E.
monotheism
belief that there is only one God
Pharisees
Jewish sect, which may have originated during the Maccabean period, that emphasized strict adherence to the purity laws set by the Torah
Sadducees
Jewish party associated with the Temple cult and the Jewish priests who ran it, comprising principally the Jewish aristocracy in Judea. The High priest was the party leader and served as the highest ranking local official and chief liaison with the Roman governor
Torah
Hebrew for "guidance" or "direction" usually translated to "law." designates either the Law of God given by Moses or the first five books of the Jewish bible said to have been written by Moses. (Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy)
Paganism
any of the polytheistic religions of the Greco-Roman World, umbrella term for ancient Mediterranean religions other than Judaism and Christianity
Pontius Pilate
Roman aristocrat who was the governor of Judea from 26-36 C.E. and was responsible for ordering Jesus' crucifixion. Didn't think Jesus was guilty was swayed by the crowd to order Jesus' crucifixion
tradition
any doctrine, idea, practice, or custom that has been handed down from one person to another. can be written, oral, etc.
Gentile
Jewish name for a non-Jew
Messianic Secret
In Mark, Jesus attempts to keep his identity a secret: cast out demons 1:34; 3:23; heals a leper 1:43; raises young girl from the dead 5:43, even when Peter says Jesus is the Christ, he tells him to be quiet 8:27 -30. German scholar, William Wrede, argues that the disciples invented the s…
Passion
From Greek word that means "suffering" used to refer to the traditions os Jesus' last days, up to and including his crucifixion
Son of Man
meaning is disputed among modern scholars used in some apocalyptic texts to refer to a cosmic judge sent from heaven at the end of time
Day of Atonement
Hebrew "Yom Kippur" one day of the year that the high priest was allowed to enter the Holy of Holies in the Temple, first to sacrifice an animal to atone for his own sins, and then another animal to atone for the sins of the people of Israel. In Matthew, the curtain of the Holy of Holies …
Synoptic Problem
The problem of explaining the similarities and differences between the three Synoptic gospels (Matthew, Mark, and Luke). A solution to this problem is the 4-source hypothesis
literary-historial method
Method used to study literary text by asking how its genre text functioned in its historical context and by exploring, then, its historical meaning (meaning understood to the readers of the time when it was written) in light of its literary characteristics.
Markan Priority
The view that Mark was the first of the Synoptic Gospels to be written and was one of the sources used by Matthew and Luke
redaction criticism
The study of how authors modified or edited their sources in view of their own vested interests and concerns. Have to have a source to compare the text to (i.e. doing a redactional criticism of Luke using Mark as a source)
Synoptic Gospels
Literal meaning: "to be seen together." The Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke, which narrate so many of the same stories that they can be placed side by side in parallel columns and so "be seen together"
Four-Source Hypothesis
A solution to the "Synoptic Problem" which maintains that there are four sources that lie behind the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke: 1. Mark was the source for much of Matthew and Luke; 2. Q was the source for the sayings found in Matthew and Luke but not in Mark; 3. M provided the ma…
baptism
from Greek "baptizo" meaning "to immerse." The earliest Christian practice of baptism in water is seen as an initiation rite (underwent when joining the christian community); probably derived from the practice of John the Baptist, who baptized Jews as well as Jesus, in anticipation of the…
Proto-orthodox
Form of Christianity endorsed by some Christians of the second and third centuries (including Apostolic Fathers), which promoted doctrines that were declared "orthodox" in the fourth and later centuries by the victorious Christian party, in opposition to such groups as the Ebionites, the …
Antithesis
"Contrary statements," used as a technical term to designate six sayings of Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount where he states Jewish law and then his own interpretations over it
comparative method
method used to study a literary text by noting its similarities to and differences from other, related, texts, whether or not any of these other texts was used as a source for the text in question. As an example we used the comparative method with Jesus and the Samaritan woman and Jesus…
general history
genre of ancient literature that traced the significant events in the history of a people to show how their character was established. Examples: Acts of the Apostles
biography (ancient)
narrative of an individual's life, often within a chronological framework, employing numerous subgenres so as to reflect important aspects of his or her character, principally for purposes of instruction, exhortation, or propaganda
thematic method
method used to study a literary text by isolating its leading ideas, or themes, and exploring them, seeing how they are developed in the text, so as if to understand the author's overarching emphases.
Pentecost
Jewish agricultural festival, celebrated fifty days after Passover, from the Greek word for fifty
"we" passages
describe a set of four passages in the book of Acts in which the author stops speaking in third person about what Paul and his companions ("they") were doing, and speaks instead in the first person about what "we" were doing. Some scholars take these passages as evidence that author of Lu…
Christology
Any teaching about the nature of Christ. High Christology vs a low Christology. The gospels started as a low christology(Mark) and as time progressed there became a higher christology(John and the acts of Paul).
Farewell Discourse
Final discourse that Jesus delivers in the Gospel of John, and only in John. Includes ch. 13-16; this discourse may have been created by combining two different accounts of Jesus' last words to his disciples before his arrest. Two sources could explain problems and controversies in the pa…
"I am" sayings
group of sayings found only in the gospel of John, Jesus identifies himself. In some of the sayings he speaks in metaphor and other times he identifies himself simply by saying "I am"-possible reference to the name of God from exodus 3.
socio-historical method
A method used to study a literary text that seeks to reconstruct the social history of the community that lay behind it.
Diatesseron
"gospel harmony" produced by the mid-second-cetury Syrian Christian Tatian, who took the four Gospels and combined their stories into one long narrative (literally means through the four: this then is the one long narrative told through the four accounts).
Gospel Harmony
A literary attempt to take several Gospels and combine them into a longer, more complete Gospel, by incorporating the various accounts into one
signs source
a document, which no longer survives, thought by many scholars to have been used as one of the sources of Jesus' ministry in the Fourth Gospel; it reportedly narrated a number of miraculous deeds of Jesus
docetism
The view that Jesus was not a human being, but only appeared to be, from Greek word meaning "to seem" or "to appear"
criterion of contextual credibility
one of the criteria commonly used by scholars to establish historically reliable material; with repeat to the historical Jesus, the criterion maintains that if a saying or deed of Jesus cannot be credibly fit into his own 1st century Palestinian context, then it cannot be regarded as auth…
Josephus
1st-century C.E. Jewish historian, appointed court historian by the Roman emperor Vespasian, whose works Jewish War and Antiquities of the Jews are principal resources for information about life in 1st Century Palestine
Pliny the Younger
Roman aristocrat who ruled the province of Bithynia-Pontus in the early second- century C.E. and whose correspondence with the Trojan emperor had the earliest reference to Christ in a pagan source
dissimilarity
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Fourth Philosophy
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independent attestation
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Passover
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prophet
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Cynics
believed that a moral protest against hypocrisy and materialism and proposed that that the purpose of life was to live in accordance with nature through rejection of conventional desires for wealth, power, pleasure and fame
chief priests
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Caiaphas
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