Absalom and Achitophel
Absalom and Achitophel is a celebrated satirical poem by John Dryden, written in heroic couplets and first published in 1681. The poem tells the Biblical tale of the rebellion of Absalom against King David, but this tale is an allegory used to represent a story contemporary to Dryden, a story of King Charles II and the Exclusion Crisis; the poem references the Popish Plot and the Monmouth Rebellion. Absalom and Achitophel is "generally acknowledged as finest political satire in the English language", it is described as an allegory regarding contemporary political events, a mock heroic narrative. On the title page, Dryden himself describes it as “a poem”. In the prologue, "To the Reader", Dryden states that "the true end of satire is the amendment of vices by correction", he suggests that in Absalom and Achitophel he did not let the satire be too sharp to those who were least corrupt: "I confess I have laid in for those, by rebating the satire, where justice would allow it, from carrying too sharp an edge."Absalom and Achitophel has inspired a great deal of discussion regarding satire: how satire was defined when Dryden wrote, how this poem contrasts with the ancient models of Horace and Juvenal.
Dryden himself is considered a father of the modern essay, one of literature’s most important critics of the literary form in his essay "A Discourse Concerning the Original and Progress of Satire", where he writes a history of satire “from its first rudiments of barbarity, to its last polishing and perfection”. He offers a definition of satire: Heinsius, in his dissertations on Horace, makes it for me, in these words. At one point in the essay, "A Discourse Concerning the Original and Progress of Satire", Dryden mentions Absalom and Achitophel: The nicest and most delicate touches of satire consist in fine raillery … How easy it is to call rogue and villain, that wittily? But how hard to make a man appear a fool, a blockhead, or a knave, without using any of those opprobrious terms? … The character of Zimri in my Absalom, is, in my opinion, worth the whole poem:'Tis not bloody, but'tis ridiculous enough. And he for whom it was intended, was too witty to resent it as an injury … And thus, my lord, you see I have preferred the manner of Horace, of your Lordship, in this kind of satire, to that of Juvenal.
The story of Absalom's rebellion against his father, King David, is told in the Old Testament of the Bible, in the Second Book of Samuel. The beautiful Absalom is distinguished by his extraordinarily abundant hair, thought to symbolise his pride; when David's renowned advisor, Achitophel joins Absalom's rebellion, another advisor, plots with David to pretend to defect and give Absalom advice that plays into David's hands. The result is that Absalom takes the advice of the double agent Hushai over the good advice of Achitophel. Achitophel, realising that the rebellion is doomed to failure, hangs himself. Absalom is killed after getting caught by his hair in the thick branches of a great oak tree: "His head caught fast in the oak, he was left hanging between heaven and earth, while the mule, under him went on"; the death of his son, causes David enormous personal grief. A second allegory in the poem, beginning on line 425, is the Parable of the Prodigal Son, which can be found in the New Testament in the Gospel of Luke, chapter 15, verse 11-32.
It is the tale of a son who asks for his birthright early, loses it, returns to his father, who takes pity on him and shares with him his remaining fortune. The father's forgiveness contrasts with the response of David towards Achitophel, but still the story works well for a theme that deals with problems of ascension, Dryden uses similarities and differences in the two stories to express the poem's themes. Ideas from this second allegory occur throughout the poem. In 1681 in England, Charles II was aged 51, he had produced a number of illegitimate children. One of these was James Scott, the Duke of Monmouth, popular, both for his personal charisma and his fervor for the Protestant cause. Charles had no legitimate heirs, his brother, the future King James II, was a Roman Catholic; when Charles's health suffered, there was a panic in the House of Commons over the potential for the nation being ruled by a Roman Catholic king. The Earl of Shaftesbury had sponsored and advocated the Exclusion Bill, which would prevent James from succeeding to the throne, but this bill was blocked by the House of Lords on two occasions.
In the spring of 1681, at the Oxford Parliament, Shaftesbury appealed to Charles to legitimise Monmouth. Monmouth was caught preparing to rebel and seek the throne, Shaftesbury was suspected of fostering this rebellion; the poem was written at Charles's behest, published in early November 1681. On 24 November 1681, Shaftesbury was charged with high treason. A trial before a jury picked by Whig sheriffs acquitted him. After the death of his father, the Duke of Monmouth—unwilling to see his uncle James become King—executed his pla
Judas Iscariot
Judas Iscariot was a disciple and one of the original Twelve Disciples of Jesus Christ. According to all four canonical gospels, Judas betrayed Jesus to the Sanhedrin in the Garden of Gethsemane by kissing him and addressing him as "Rabbi" to reveal his identity to the crowd who had come to arrest him, his name is used synonymously with betrayal or treason. Judas's epithet Iscariot most means he came from the village of Kerioth, but this explanation is not universally accepted and many other possibilities have been suggested; the Gospel of Mark, the earliest gospel, gives no motive for Judas's betrayal, but does present Jesus predicting it at the Last Supper, an event described in all the gospels. The Gospel of Matthew 26:15 states that Judas committed the betrayal in exchange for thirty pieces of silver; the Gospel of Luke 22:3 and the Gospel of John 13:27 suggest. According to Matthew 27:1–10, after learning that Jesus was to be crucified, Judas attempted to return the money he had been paid for his betrayal to the chief priests and committed suicide by hanging.
The priests used the money to buy a field to bury strangers in, called the "Field of Blood" because it had been bought with blood money. The Book of Acts 1:18 quotes Peter as saying that Judas used the money to buy the field himself and, he " headlong... burst asunder in the midst, all his bowels gushed out." His place among the Twelve Apostles was filled by Matthias. Despite his notorious role in all the gospel narratives, Judas remains a controversial figure in Christian history. For instance, Judas's betrayal is seen as setting in motion the events that led to Jesus's crucifixion and resurrection, according to traditional Christian theology, brought salvation to humanity; the Gnostic Gospel of Judas – rejected by the mainstream Church as heretical – praises Judas for his role in triggering humanity's salvation and exalts Judas as the best of the apostles. Since the Middle Ages, Judas has sometimes been portrayed as a personification of the Jewish people and his betrayal has been used to justify Christian antisemitism.
Although Judas Iscariot's historical existence is widely accepted among secular historians, this relative consensus has not gone unchallenged. The earliest possible allusion to Judas comes from the First Epistle to the Corinthians 11:23-24, in which Paul the Apostle does not mention Judas by name, but uses the passive voice of the Greek word paradidōmi, which most Bible translations render as "was betrayed": "...the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took a loaf of bread..." Nonetheless, many biblical scholars argue that the word paradidōmi should be translated as "was handed over". This translation could still refer to Judas, but it could instead refer to God metaphorically "handing Jesus over" to the Romans. In his book Antisemitism and Modernity, the Jewish scholar Hyam Maccoby suggests that, in the New Testament, the name "Judas" was constructed as an attack on the Judaeans or on the Judaean religious establishment held responsible for executing Jesus. In his book The Sins of Scripture, John Shelby Spong concurs with this argument, insisting, "The whole story of Judas has the feeling of being contrived...
The act of betrayal by a member of the twelve disciples is not found in the earliest Christian writings. Judas is first placed into the Christian story by the Gospel of Mark, who wrote in the early years of the eighth decade of the Common Era."Most scholars reject these arguments for non-historicity, noting that there is nothing in the gospels to associate Judas with Judeans except his name, an common one for Jewish men during the first century, that numerous other figures named "Judas" are mentioned throughout the New Testament, none of whom are portrayed negatively. Positive figures named Judas mentioned in the New Testament include the prophet Judas Barsabbas, Jesus's brother Jude, the apostle Judas the son of James. B. J. Oropeza argues that Christians should not repeat the historic tragedy of associating Judas Iscariot with the Judeans but regard him instead as an emergent Christian apostate, hence, one of their own, his betrayal over a sum of money warns auditors against the vice of greed.
The name Judas is a Greek rendering of the Hebrew name Judah, an common name for Jewish men during the first century AD, due to the renowned hero Judas Maccabeus. Numerous other figures with this name are mentioned throughout the New Testament. In the Gospel of Mark 3:13-19, the earliest of all the gospels, written in the mid 60s or early 70s AD, Judas Iscariot is the only apostle named Judas. Matthew 10:2-4 follows this portrayal; the Gospel of Luke 6:12-19, replaces the apostle whom Mark and Matthew call "Thaddeus" with "Judas son of James". Peter Stanford suggests that this renaming may represent an effort by the author of the Gospel of Luke to create a "good Judas" in contrast to the betrayer Judas Iscariot. Judas's epithet Iscariot, which distinguishes him from the other people named Judas in the gospels, is thought to be a Greek rendering of the Hebrew phrase איש־קריות, meaning "the man from Kerioth"; this interpretation is supported by the statement in the Gospel of John 6:71 that Judas was "the son of Simon Iscariot".
Nonetheless, this interpretation of the name is not accepted by all scholars. One of the most popular alternative explanations holds that Iscariot (
Bathsheba
Bathsheba was the wife of Uriah the Hittite and of David, according to the Hebrew Bible. She is most known for the biblical narrative in which she was summoned by King David, who had seen her bathing and lusted after her, she was the mother of Solomon. Bathsheba was the daughter of Eliam. An Eliam is mentioned in 2 Samuel 23:34 as the son of Ahithophel, described as the Gilonite. Bathsheba was the wife of Uriah the Hittite. David's first interactions with Bathsheba are described in 2 Samuel 11, are omitted in the Books of Chronicles. David, while walking on the roof of his palace, saw a beautiful woman bathing, he found out that she was Bathsheba, wife of Uriah. He desired her and made her pregnant. In an effort to conceal his sin, David summoned Uriah from the army in the hope that Uriah would have sex with her and think that the child belongs to him, but Uriah was unwilling to violate the ancient kingdom rule applying to warriors in active service. Rather than go home to his own bed, he preferred to remain with the palace troops.
After repeated efforts to convince Uriah to have sex with Bathsheba the king gave the order to his general, that Uriah should be placed on the front lines of the battle, where Uriah would be more to die. David had Uriah. After Uriah had been killed, David married Bathsheba. David's action was displeasing to the Lord. After relating the parable of the rich man who took away the one little ewe lamb of his poor neighbor, exciting the king's anger against the unrighteous act, the prophet applied the case directly to David's action with regard to Bathsheba; the king expressed sincere repentance. Bathsheba's first child by David was struck with a severe illness and died, unnamed, a few days after birth, which the king accepted as his punishment. Nathan noted that David's house would be punished for Uriah's murder. Bathsheba gave birth to David's son Solomon. In David's old age, Bathsheba secured the succession to the throne by Solomon instead of David's elder surviving sons by his other wives, such as Chileab and others.
David's punishment came to pass years when one of David's much-loved sons, led an insurrection that plunged the kingdom into civil war. Moreover, to manifest his claim to be the new king, Absalom had sexual intercourse in public with ten of his father's concubines, which could be considered a direct, tenfold divine retribution for David's taking the woman of another man in secret. John Gill mentions that in Rabbinic literature Bathsheba is supposed to have been the granddaughter of Ahitophel; the argument is. 11:3, 2 Sam 23:34 mentions an Eliam, the son of Ahithophel the Gilonite, one of David's "thirty". The assumption is that these two Eliams are the same person; however in 1 Chronicles the names are different: Bathsheba is called Bathshua the daughter of Ammiel in 1 Chronicles 3:5. And in the list of David's thirty in 1 Chronicles 11:36 we have Ahijah the Pelonite; some have questioned whether Ahithophel would have been old enough to have a granddaughter. Bathsheba was the granddaughter of David's famous counselor.
The Haggadah states that Ahithophel was misled by his knowledge of astrology into believing himself destined to become king of Israel. He therefore induced Absalom to commit an unpardonable crime, which sooner or would have brought with it, according to Jewish law, the penalty of death, his astrological information had been, misunderstood by him. The Midrash portrays the influence of Satan bringing about the sinful relation of David and Bathsheba as follows: Bathsheba was bathing behind a screen of wickerwork. Satan is depicted as coming in the disguise of a bird. David, shooting at the bird, strikes the screen. In Matthew 1:6, "the wife of Uriah" is mentioned as one of the ancestors of Jesus. Bathsheba is recognized as the archetypal example of the Queen Mother, foreshadowing the role of the Blessed Virgin Mary as Queen of Heaven. Bathsheba's son, King Solomon, rises to greet her, bows down in veneration, furnishes her a seat at his right hand; this demonstrates her exalted share in the royal kingdom.
Bathsheba acts as intercessor for her subjects, delivering their petitions to the King: "Pray ask King Solomon—he will not refuse you—to give me Abishag the Shunammite as my wife". When Jesus founds the Church, he maintains continuity with his hereditary House of David: Mary, mother of Christ the King, is accorded the highly-favored status in Catholicism as the Queen Mother in the Kingdom of God, continues to intercede on behalf of the faithful who pray to her. In Islam David is considered to be a prophet, some Islamic tradition views the Bible story as incompatible with the principle of infallibility of the prophets. A hadith quoted in Tafsir al-Kabir and Majma' al-Bayan expresses that Ali bin Abi Talib said: "Whoever says that David, has married Uriah's wife as the legends are narrate, I will punish him twice: one for qazf and the other for desecrating the prophethood (def
Jesus
Jesus referred to as Jesus of Nazareth and Jesus Christ, was a first-century Jewish preacher and religious leader. He is the central figure of Christianity, is described as the most influential person in history. Most Christians believe he is the incarnation of God the Son and the awaited Messiah prophesied in the Old Testament. All modern scholars of antiquity agree that Jesus existed although the quest for the historical Jesus has produced little agreement on the historical reliability of the Gospels and on how the Jesus portrayed in the Bible reflects the historical Jesus. Jesus was a Galilean Jew, baptized by John the Baptist and began his own ministry, he preached orally and was referred to as "rabbi". Jesus debated with fellow Jews on how to best follow God, engaged in healings, taught in parables and gathered followers, he was arrested and tried by the Jewish authorities, turned over to the Roman government, crucified on the order of Pontius Pilate, the Roman prefect. After his death, his followers believed he rose from the dead, the community they formed became the early Church.
The birth of Jesus is celebrated annually on December 25th as Christmas. His crucifixion is honored on his resurrection on Easter; the used calendar era "AD", from the Latin anno Domini, the equivalent alternative "CE", are based on the approximate birthdate of Jesus. Christian doctrines include the beliefs that Jesus was conceived by the Holy Spirit, was born of a virgin named Mary, performed miracles, founded the Christian Church, died by crucifixion as a sacrifice to achieve atonement for sin, rose from the dead, ascended into Heaven, from where he will return. Most Christians believe; the Nicene Creed asserts that Jesus will judge the living and the dead either before or after their bodily resurrection, an event tied to the Second Coming of Jesus in Christian eschatology. The great majority of Christians worship Jesus as the incarnation of God the Son, the second of three persons of the Trinity. A minority of Christian denominations reject Trinitarianism, wholly or as non-scriptural. Jesus figures in non-Christian religions and new religious movements.
In Islam, Jesus is considered one of the Messiah. Muslims believe Jesus was a bringer of scripture and was born of a virgin, but was not the son of God; the Quran states. Most Muslims do not believe that he was crucified, but that he was physically raised into Heaven by God. In contrast, Judaism rejects the belief that Jesus was the awaited Messiah, arguing that he did not fulfill Messianic prophecies, was neither divine nor resurrected. A typical Jew in Jesus' time had only one name, sometimes followed by the phrase "son of <father's name>", or the individual's hometown. Thus, in the New Testament, Jesus is referred to as "Jesus of Nazareth". Jesus' neighbors in Nazareth refer to him as "the carpenter, the son of Mary and brother of James and Joses and Judas and Simon", "the carpenter's son", or "Joseph's son". In John, the disciple Philip refers to him as "Jesus son of Joseph from Nazareth"; the name Jesus is derived from the Latin Iesus, a transliteration of the Greek Ἰησοῦς. The Greek form is a rendering of the Hebrew ישוע, a variant of the earlier name יהושע, or in English, "Joshua", meaning "Yah saves".
This was the name of Moses' successor and of a Jewish high priest. The name Yeshua appears to have been in use in Judea at the time of the birth of Jesus; the 1st-century works of historian Flavius Josephus, who wrote in Koine Greek, the same language as that of the New Testament, refer to at least twenty different people with the name Jesus. The etymology of Jesus' name in the context of the New Testament is given as "Yahweh is salvation". Since early Christianity, Christians have referred to Jesus as "Jesus Christ"; the word Christ was a office, not a given name. It derives from the Greek Χριστός, a translation of the Hebrew mashiakh meaning "anointed", is transliterated into English as "Messiah". In biblical Judaism, sacred oil was used to anoint certain exceptionally holy people and objects as part of their religious investiture. Christians of the time designated Jesus as "the Christ" because they believed him to be the Messiah, whose arrival is prophesied in the Hebrew Bible and Old Testament.
In postbiblical usage, Christ became viewed as a name—one part of "Jesus Christ". The term "Christian" has been in use since the 1st century; the four canonical gospels are the foremost sources for the message of Jesus. However, other parts of the New Testament include references to key episodes in his life, such as the Last Supper in 1 Corinthians 11:23. Acts of the Apostles refers to the early ministry of its anticipation by John the Baptist. Acts 1:1 -- 11 says more about the Ascension of Jesus. In the undisputed Pauline letters, which were written earlier than the gospels, the words or instructions of Jesus are cited several times; some early Christian groups had separate descriptions of the life and teachings of Jesus that are not included in the New Testament. These include the Gospel of Thomas, Gospel
Books of Samuel
The Books of Samuel, 1 Samuel and 2 Samuel, form part of the narrative history of Israel in the Nevi'im or "prophets" section of the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament, called the Deuteronomistic history, a series of books that constitute a theological history of the Israelites and aim to explain God's law for Israel under the guidance of the prophets. According to Jewish tradition, the book was written by Samuel, with additions by the prophets Gad and Nathan. Modern scholarly thinking is that the entire Deuteronomistic history was composed in the period c. 630–540 BC by combining a number of independent texts of various ages. Samuel begins with God's call to him as a boy; the story of the Ark of the Covenant that follows tells of Israel's oppression by the Philistines, which brought about Samuel's anointing of Saul as Israel's first king. But Saul proved unworthy and God's choice turned to David, who defeated Israel's enemies, purchased the threshing floor, where his son, Solomon built the Temple and brought the Ark to Jerusalem.
God promised David and his successors an everlasting dynasty. The childless Hannah vows to Yahweh of hosts. Eli, the priest of Shiloh, blesses her, a child named Samuel is born. Samuel is dedicated to the Lord as a Nazirite – the only one besides Samson to be identified in the Bible. Eli's sons and Phinehas, sin against God's laws and the people, of the priesthood and are killed in battle during the Battle of Aphek, but the child Samuel grows up "in the presence of the Lord." The Philistines capture the Ark of the Covenant from Shiloh and take it to the temple of their god Dagon, who recognizes the supremacy of Yahweh. The Philistines are afflicted with plagues and return the ark to the Israelites, but to the territory of the tribe of Benjamin rather than to Shiloh; the Philistines attack. Samuel appeals to Yahweh, the Philistines are decisively beaten, the Israelites reclaim their lost territory. In Samuel's old age, he appoints his sons Joel and Abijah as judges, but they walked not in the ways of the Lord with perverted judgement, lucre, bribes because of the corruption the people ask for a king to rule over them instead of rejecting God and his laws, forgetting all God had done to bring them out of the Land of Egypt The Lord tells Samuel to tell the people of Israel what they have asked for.
This king says Samuel that you have asked to rule over you will take the best of all your labor your fields, crops and give them to his servants. He will take your sheep, your asses, he will take your daughters and your manservants, you will cry out but the Lord will not hear you. But the people refused to obey the voice of Samuel. After Samuel inquires of God he directs Samuel to grant them a king God There was a mighty man of Benjamin whose name was Kish, the son of Abiel, the son of Zeror, the son of Bechorath the son of Aphiah a Benjamin a might man of power and he had a son, Saul a choice young man a goodly, there was not among the children of Israel a goodlier person than he. Samuel had never met God led Saul to Samuel to be anointed as King. God gave Saul a new heart 1Samuel 10:9 God was with Saul and he defeats the enemies of the Israelites, but disobeys God; the spirit of the Lord departs from Saul because of his disobedience. But the Lord has selected another godly man as King over his people, David son of Jesse the Bethlehemite, David was his youngest son a Shepard boy, he is described as "ruddy and withal of beautiful countenance and goodly to look at" and "fair" 1Samuel 16:12 God tells Samuel to anoint David of Bethlehem as king, David enters Saul's court as his armor-bearer and harpist.
Saul's son and heir Jonathan recognizes him as the rightful king. Saul plots David's death, but David flees into the wilderness, where he becomes a champion of the Hebrews. David joins the Philistines but continues secretly to champion his own people, until Saul and Jonathan are killed in battle at Mount Gilboa. At this point, David offers a majestic eulogy, where he praises the bravery and magnificence of both his friend Jonathan and King Saul; the elders of Judah anoint David as king, but in the north Saul's son Ish-bosheth, or Ishbaal, rules over the northern tribes. After a long war, Ishbaal is murdered by Rechab and Baanah, two of his captains who hope for a reward from David. David is anointed King of all Israel. David brings the Ark there. David wishes to build a temple, but Nathan tells him that one of his sons will be the one to build the temple. David defeats the enemies of Israel, slaughtering Philistines, Edomites and Arameans. David commits adultery with Bathsheba; when her husband, Uriah the Hittite returns from battle, David encourages him to go home and see his wife but Uriah declines in case David might need him.
David thus deliberately sends Uriah on a suicide mission. Nathan tells David. For the remainder of his reign there are problems. Amnon rapes his half-sister Tamar. Absalom kills Amnon, rebels against his father, David flees from Jerusalem. Absalom is killed following the Battle of the Wood of Ephraim, David is restored as king, he returns to his palace. Only two contenders for the succession remain, son of David and Haggith, Solomon, son of David and Bathsheba; the Second Book of Samuel concludes with four chapters (chap
John Dryden
John Dryden was an English poet, literary critic and playwright, made England's first Poet Laureate in 1668. He is seen as dominating the literary life of Restoration England to such a point that the period came to be known in literary circles as the Age of Dryden. Walter Scott called him "Glorious John". Dryden was born in the village rectory of Aldwincle near Thrapston in Northamptonshire, where his maternal grandfather was rector of All Saints, he was the eldest of fourteen children born to Erasmus Dryden and wife Mary Pickering, paternal grandson of Sir Erasmus Dryden, 1st Baronet, wife Frances Wilkes, Puritan landowning gentry who supported the Puritan cause and Parliament. He was a second cousin once removed of Jonathan Swift; as a boy Dryden lived in the nearby village of Titchmarsh, where it is that he received his first education. In 1644 he was sent to Westminster School as a King's Scholar where his headmaster was Dr. Richard Busby, a charismatic teacher and severe disciplinarian. Having been re-founded by Elizabeth I, Westminster during this period embraced a different religious and political spirit encouraging royalism and high Anglicanism.
Whatever Dryden's response to this was, he respected the headmaster and would send two of his sons to school at Westminster. As a humanist public school, Westminster maintained a curriculum which trained pupils in the art of rhetoric and the presentation of arguments for both sides of a given issue; this is a skill which would remain with Dryden and influence his writing and thinking, as much of it displays these dialectical patterns. The Westminster curriculum included weekly translation assignments which developed Dryden's capacity for assimilation; this was to be exhibited in his works. His years at Westminster were not uneventful, his first published poem, an elegy with a strong royalist feel on the death of his schoolmate Henry, Lord Hastings from smallpox, alludes to the execution of King Charles I, which took place on 30 January 1649 near the school where Dr. Busby had first prayed for the King and locked in his schoolboys to prevent their attending the spectacle. In 1650 Dryden went up to Cambridge.
Here he would have experienced a return to the religious and political ethos of his childhood: the Master of Trinity was a Puritan preacher by the name of Thomas Hill, a rector in Dryden's home village. Though there is little specific information on Dryden's undergraduate years, he would most have followed the standard curriculum of classics and mathematics. In 1654 he obtained his BA. In June of the same year Dryden's father died, leaving him some land which generated a little income, but not enough to live on. Returning to London during the Protectorate, Dryden obtained work with Oliver Cromwell's Secretary of State, John Thurloe; this appointment may have been the result of influence exercised on his behalf by his cousin the Lord Chamberlain, Sir Gilbert Pickering. At Cromwell's funeral on 23 November 1658 Dryden processed with the Puritan poets John Milton and Andrew Marvell. Shortly thereafter he published his first important poem, Heroic Stanzas, a eulogy on Cromwell's death, cautious and prudent in its emotional display.
In 1660 Dryden celebrated the Restoration of the monarchy and the return of Charles II with Astraea Redux, an authentic royalist panegyric. In this work the interregnum is illustrated as a time of anarchy, Charles is seen as the restorer of peace and order. After the Restoration, as Dryden established himself as the leading poet and literary critic of his day, he transferred his allegiances to the new government. Along with Astraea Redux, Dryden welcomed the new regime with two more panegyrics: To His Sacred Majesty: A Panegyric on his Coronation and To My Lord Chancellor; these poems suggest that Dryden was looking to court a possible patron, but he was to instead make a living in writing for publishers, not for the aristocracy, thus for the reading public. These, his other nondramatic poems, are occasional—that is, they celebrate public events, thus they are written for the nation rather than the self, the Poet Laureate is obliged to write a certain number of these per annum. In November 1662 Dryden was proposed for membership in the Royal Society, he was elected an early fellow.
However, Dryden was inactive in Society affairs and in 1666 was expelled for non-payment of his dues. On 1 December 1663 Dryden married the royalist sister of Sir Robert Howard—Lady Elizabeth. Dryden's works contain outbursts against the married state but celebrations of the same. Thus, little is known of the intimate side of his marriage. Lady Elizabeth outlived her husband. With the reopening of the theatres in 1660 after the Puritan ban, Dryden began writing plays, his first play The Wild Gallant appeared in 1663, was not successful, but was still promising, from 1668 on he was contracted to produce three plays a year for the King's Company in which he became a shareholder. During the 1660s and 1670s, theatrical writing was his main source of income, he led the way in Restoration comedy, his best-known work being Marriage à la Mode, as well as heroic tragedy and regular tragedy, in which his greatest success was All for Love. Dryden was never satisfied with his theatrical writings and suggested that his talents were wasted on unworthy audiences.
He thus was making a bid for poetic fame off-stage. In 1667, around the same time his dramatic career began, he published Annus Mirabilis, a lengthy historical poem which descr
Tetragrammaton
The tetragrammaton, יהוה in Hebrew and YHWH in Latin script, is the four-letter biblical name of the God of Israel. The books of the Torah and the rest of the Hebrew Bible contain this Hebrew name. Religiously observant Jews and those who follow Talmudic Jewish traditions do not pronounce יהוה, nor do they read aloud transliterated forms such as Yahweh. Common substitutions for Hebrew forms are hakadosh baruch hu, HaShem; the letters, properly read from right to left, are: The letters. In unpointed Biblical Hebrew, most vowels are not written and the rest are written only ambiguously, as certain consonants can double as vowel markers; these are referred to as matres lectionis. Therefore, in general, it is difficult to deduce how a word is pronounced only from its spelling, the tetragrammaton is a particular example: two of its letters can serve as vowels, two are vocalic place-holders, which are not pronounced; the original consonantal text of the Hebrew Bible was, several centuries provided with vowel marks by the Masoretes to assist reading.
In places that the consonants of the text to be read differed from the consonants of the written text, they wrote the qere in the margin as a note showing what was to be read. In such a case the vowels of the qere were written on the ketiv. For a few frequent words, the marginal note was omitted: these are called qere perpetuum. One of the frequent cases was the tetragrammaton, which according to Jewish practices should not be pronounced but read as "Adonai", or, if the previous or next word was Adonai, as "Elohim"; the combination produces יְהֹוָה and יֱהֹוה non-words that would spell "Yehovah" and "Yehovih" respectively. The oldest complete or nearly complete manuscripts of the Masoretic Text with Tiberian vocalisation, such as the Aleppo Codex and the Leningrad Codex, both of the 10th or 11th century write יְהוָה, with no pointing on the first h, it could be because the o diacritic point plays no useful role in distinguishing between Adonai and Elohim and so is redundant, or it could point to the qere being Shema, Aramaic for "the Name".
The Hebrew scholar Wilhelm Gesenius suggested that the Hebrew punctuation יַהְוֶה, transliterated into English as Yahweh, might more represent the pronunciation of the tetragrammaton than the Masoretic punctuation "יְהֹוָה", from which the English name Jehovah has been derived. His proposal to read YHWH as "יַהְוֶה" was based in large part on various Greek transcriptions, such as ιαβε, dating from the first centuries CE but on the forms of theophoric names. In his Hebrew Dictionary, Gesenius supports Yahweh because of the Samaritan pronunciation Ιαβε reported by Theodoret, because the theophoric name prefixes YHW and YW, the theophoric name suffixes YHW and YH, the abbreviated form YH can be derived from the form Yahweh. Gesenius's proposal to read YHWH as יַהְוֶה is accepted as the best scholarly reconstructed vocalised Hebrew spelling of the tetragrammaton. An image on the piece of pottery found at Kuntillet Ajrud is adjacent to a Hebrew inscription "Berakhti etkhem l’YHVH Shomron ul’Asherato" dated around 800 BCE, on the walls of the second tomb on the southern slope of the Khirbet el-Qom hill, on the seal from the collections of the Harvard Semitic Museum, on ostracons from the collections of Shlomo Moussaieff, on silver rolls from Ketef Hinnom, on inscriptions in the tombs of Khirbet Beit Lei, on ostracons from Tel Arad, on the Lachish letters and on a stone from Mount Gerizim.
The Elephantine papyri, on which the jhw form appears, with the form of jhh are found on Elephantine. One time jh appears, but it was a form of jhw in which the final letter in disappeared. In eight cases, the tetragram occurs in the formula of the oath: "God's jhh". God's name appears in the Greek magical texts, the formation of, established between the second century BCE to CE, it takes the following forms: Ieoa, Iaoai, Ioa, Iaeo, Ieou, Iabas, Iabe, Iaon. God's name in the form of Ἰαῶ appears in: Diodorus Siculus, Marcus Terentius Varro according to the message of John the Lydian, Pedanius Dioscorides, Aelius Herodian, Hesychius of Alexandria. A form of the name appears on the following Egyptian inscriptions: on the list of Amenhotep III discovered in the Temple of Amon in Soleb and in its copy from the time of Ramesses II in West Amara, on the list of places in the temple of Ramesses III in Medinet Habu. Mesha Stele The oldest known inscription of the tetragrammaton dates to 840 BCE, on the Mesha Stele.
It bears the earliest certain extra-biblical reference to the Israelite God Yahweh. The most recent discovery of a tetragrammaton inscription, dating to the 6th century BCE, was found written in Hebrew on two silver scrolls recovered from Jerusalem. Magical papyri The spellings of the te
This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Easton, Matthew George (1897). . Easton's Bible Dictionary (New and revised ed.). T. Nelson and Sons.
This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Herbermann, Charles, ed. (1913). . Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton.
