1.
Perfect fourth
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In classical music from Western culture, a fourth is a musical interval encompassing four staff positions, and the perfect fourth is a fourth spanning five semitones. For example, the interval from C to the next F is a perfect fourth, as the note F lies five semitones above C. Diminished and augmented fourths span the same number of staff positions, the perfect fourth may be derived from the harmonic series as the interval between the third and fourth harmonics. The term perfect identifies this interval as belonging to the group of perfect intervals, so called because they are neither major nor minor, up until the late 19th century, the perfect fourth was often called by its Greek name, diatessaron. Its most common occurrence is between the fifth and upper root of all major and minor triads and their extensions. A perfect fourth in just intonation corresponds to a ratio of 4,3, or about 498 cents, while in equal temperament a perfect fourth is equal to five semitones. A helpful way to recognize a fourth is to hum the starting of the Bridal Chorus from Wagners Lohengrin. Other examples are the first two notes of the Christmas carol Hark, the Herald Angels Sing or El Cóndor Pasa, and, for a descending perfect fourth, the second and third notes of O Come All Ye Faithful. The perfect fourth is a perfect interval like the unison, octave, and perfect fifth, in common practice harmony, however, it is considered a stylistic dissonance in certain contexts, namely in two-voice textures and whenever it appears above the bass. Conventionally, adjacent strings of the bass and of the bass guitar are a perfect fourth apart when unstopped, as are all pairs. Sets of tom-tom drums are also tuned in perfect fourths. The 4,3 just perfect fourth arises in the C major scale between G and C, play The use of perfect fourths and fifths to sound in parallel with and to thicken the melodic line was prevalent in music prior to the European polyphonic music of the Middle Ages. In the 13th century, the fourth and fifth together were the concordantiae mediae after the unison and octave, in the 15th century the fourth came to be regarded as dissonant on its own, and was first classed as a dissonance by Johannes Tinctoris in his Terminorum musicae diffinitorium. In practice, however, it continued to be used as a consonance when supported by the interval of a third or fifth in a lower voice. Modern acoustic theory supports the medieval interpretation insofar as the intervals of unison, octave, the octave has the ratio of 2,1, for example the interval between a at A440 and a at 880 Hz, giving the ratio 880,440, or 2,1. The fifth has a ratio of 3,2, and its complement has the ratio of 3,4, ancient and medieval music theorists appear to have been familiar with these ratios, see for example their experiments on the Monochord. In early western polyphony, these simpler intervals were generally preferred, however, in its development between the 12th and 16th centuries, In the earliest stages, these simple intervals occur so frequently that they appear to be the favourite sound of composers. Later, the more complex intervals move gradually from the margins to the centre of musical interest
2.
Syriac language
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Syriac /ˈsɪri. æk/, also known as Syriac Aramaic, is a dialect of Middle Aramaic that was once spoken across much of the Fertile Crescent and Eastern Arabia. Indeed, Syriac literature comprises roughly 90% of the extant Aramaic literature, Old Aramaic was adopted by the Neo-Assyrian Empire when they conquered the various Aramean city-kingdoms to its west. The Achaemenid Empire, which rose after the fall of the Assyrian Empire, also adopted Old Aramaic as its official language, during the course of the third and fourth centuries AD, the inhabitants of the region began to embrace Christianity. Along with Latin and Greek, Syriac became one of the three most important Christian languages in the centuries of the Christian Era. Primarily a Christian medium of expression, Syriac had a cultural and literary influence on the development of Arabic. Syriac remains the language of Syriac Christianity to this day. Syriac is a Middle Aramaic language and, as such, a language of the Northwestern branch of the Semitic family and it is written in the Syriac alphabet, a derivation of the Aramaic alphabet. Syriac was the local accent of Aramaic in Edessa, that evolved under the influence of Church of the East and it has been found as far afield as Hadrians Wall in Ancient Britain, with inscriptions written by Assyrian and Aramean soldiers of the Roman Empire. Modern Syriac/Modern Syriac Aramaic is an occasionally used to refer to the modern Eastern Aramaic languages. In this terminology, Modern Syriac is divided into, Modern Western Syriac Aramaic, note however that these are sometimes excluded from the category of Modern Syriac. The modern varieties are, therefore, not discussed in this article, in 132 BC, the kingdom of Osroene was founded in Edessa and Proto-Syriac evolved in that kingdom. Many Syriac-speakers still look to Edessa as the cradle of their language, there are about eighty extant early Syriac inscriptions, dated to the first three centuries AD. All of these examples of the language are non-Christian. As an official language, Syriac was given a relatively coherent form, style, in the 3rd century, churches in Edessa began to use Syriac as the language of worship. There is evidence that the adoption of Syriac, the language of the Assyrian people, was to effect mission, much literary effort was put into the production of an authoritative translation of the Bible into Syriac, the Peshitta. At the same time, Ephrem the Syrian was producing the most treasured collection of poetry, in 489, many Syriac-speaking Christians living in the eastern reaches of the Roman Empire fled to the Sassanid Empire to escape persecution and growing animosity with Greek-speaking Christians. The Christological differences with the Church of the East led to the bitter Nestorian schism in the Syriac-speaking world, as a result, Syriac developed distinctive western and eastern varieties. Syriac literature is by far the most prodigious of the various Aramaic languages and its corpus covers poetry, prose, theology, liturgy, hymnody, history, philosophy, science, medicine and natural history
3.
Gospel harmony
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A gospel harmony is an attempt to compile the Christian canonical gospels into a single account. This may take the form either of a single, merged narrative, or a format with one column for each gospel, technically known as a synopsis. The construction of harmonies has always favoured by more conservative scholars. Students of higher criticism, on the hand, see the divergences between the Gospel accounts as reflecting the construction of traditions by the early Christian communities. The earliest known harmony is the Diatessaron by Tatian in the 2nd century, the 16th century witnessed a major increase in the introduction of Gospel harmonies and the parallel column structure became widespread. At this time visual representations also started appearing, depicting the Life of Christ in terms of a gospel harmony. A Gospel harmony is an attempt to collate the Christian canonical gospels into a single gospel account and this approach, almost as old as the gospels themselves, has largely been abandoned in the modern era. Harmonists must either choose which they think is correct, or conclude that separate events are described, a similar problem arises with the centurion whose servant is healed, at a distance. In the Matthew Gospel he comes to Jesus, in the Luke version he sends Jewish elders, since these are clearly describing the same event, the harmonist must decide which is the more accurate description. The terms harmony and synopsis have been used to refer to approaches that aim to achieve Gospel harmony, technically, a harmony weaves together sections of scripture into a narrative, merging the four Gospels. There are four types of harmony, radical, synthetic, sequential. A synopsis, much like a parallel harmony focuses on key events and brings together similar texts or accounts in parallel format, usually in columns. Harmonies may also have a form and be undertaken to create narratives for artistic purposes. To illustrate the concept of harmony, a simple example of a synopsis fragment is shown here. A more comprehensive parallel harmony appears in a section below, specific issues at times resists distillation into a single harmonized chronology, as the variety of readings that appear in multiple harmony efforts attests. An example is determining whether Jesus cursed the fig tree before or after the Cleansing of the Temple, however, the construction of harmonies remains an important element of biblical study and to gain a better understanding of the Gospel accounts of the life of Jesus. Tatians influential Diatessaron harmony which dates to about AD160 was perhaps the very first harmony. The Diatessaron reduced the number of verses in the four gospels from 3,780 to 2,769 without missing any event of teaching in the life of Jesus from any of the gospels, some scholars believe Tatian may have drawn on one or more noncanonical Gospels
4.
Early Christianity
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Early Christianity is the period of Christianity preceding the First Council of Nicaea in 325. It is typically divided into the Apostolic Age and the Ante-Nicene Period, the early Gospel message was spread orally, probably in Aramaic, but almost immediately also in Greek. After the conversion of Paul the Apostle, he claimed the title of Apostle to the Gentiles, Pauls influence on Christian thinking is said to be more significant than that of any other New Testament author. As the New Testament canon developed, the Pauline epistles, the canonical gospels, Early Christians demonstrated a wide range of beliefs and practices, many of which were later denounced as heretical. The earliest followers of Jesus composed an apocalyptic, Second Temple Jewish sect, the first part of the period, during the lifetimes of the Twelve Apostles, is called the Apostolic Age. The relationship of Paul the Apostle and Judaism is still disputed although Pauls influence on Christian thinking is said to be more significant than any other New Testament author and they think the Christians the cause of every public disaster, of every affliction with which the people are visited. The first action taken against Christians by the order of an emperor occurred half a century earlier under Nero after the Great Fire of Rome in 64 AD. During the Ante-Nicene Period following the Apostolic Age, a diversity of views emerged simultaneously with strong unifying characteristics lacking in the apostolic period. Part of the trend was an increasingly harsh anti-Judaism and rejection of Judaizers. Early Christianity gradually grew apart from Judaism during the first two centuries and established itself as a predominantly gentile religion in the Roman Empire. From the writings of early Christians, historians have tried to piece together an understanding of various early Christian practices including worship services, customs, Early Christian writers such as Justin Martyr described these practices. Early Christian beliefs regarding baptism probably predate the New Testament writings and it seems certain that numerous Jewish sects and certainly Jesuss disciples practised baptism, which became integral to nearly every manifestation of the religion of the Jews. John the Baptist had baptized many people, before took place in the name of Jesus Christ. Many of the interpretations that would later become Orthodox Christian beliefs concerning baptism can be traced to such as Paul. On the basis of this description, it was supposed by some modern theologians that the early Christians practised baptism by submersion and this interpretation is debated between those Christian denominations who advocate immersion baptism exclusively and those who practice baptism by affusion or aspersion as well as by immersion. Yet the Didache, one of the earliest Christian writings on liturgical practices, the Orthodox Church continues this practice, submerging the baptized and then pouring water on the head in that formula. Infant baptism was practised at least by the 3rd century. Others believe that infants were excluded from the baptism of households, citing verses of the Bible that describe the baptized households as believing, in the 2nd century, Irenaeus, bishop of Lyons, may have referred to it
5.
Assyrian people
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Assyrian people, or Syriacs, are an ethnic group indigenous to the Middle East. Some of them self-identify as Chaldeans, or as Arameans and they speak modern Aramaic, whose subdivisions include Northeastern, Central, and Western Neo-Aramaic, as well as another language, dependent on the country of residence. The Assyrians are typically Syriac-speaking Christians who claim descent from Assyria, one of the oldest civilizations in the world, the areas that form the Assyrian homeland are parts of present-day northern Iraq, southeastern Turkey, northwestern Iran and northeastern Syria. The majority have migrated to regions of the world, including North America, the Levant, Australia, Europe, Russia. Assyrians are predominantly Christian, mostly adhering to the East and West Syrian liturgical rites of Christianity, whereas the churches of the West Syrian rite, the Syriac Orthodox Church and Syriac Catholic Church, mostly speak the Central and Western branches. According to a 2013 report by a Chaldean Syriac Assyrian Popular Council official, in prehistoric times, the region that was to become known as Assyria was home to Neanderthals such as the remains of those which have been found at the Shanidar Cave. The earliest Neolithic sites in Assyria belonged to the Jarmo culture c.7100 BC and Tell Hassuna, the history of Assyria begins with the formation of the city of Assur perhaps as early as the 25th century BC. The Assyrian king list records kings dating from the 25th century BC onwards, the earliest being Tudiya, who was a contemporary of Ibrium of Ebla. However, many of early kings would have been local rulers. In the traditions of the Assyrian Church of the East, they are descended from Abrahams grandson, however, there is no historical basis for the biblical assertion whatsoever, there is no mention in Assyrian records. The Assyrian people, after the fall of their empire, fell under foreign domination ever since, the Persian Empire was founded, which consumed the entire Neo-Babylonian or Chaldean Empire in 539 BC. Assyrians became front line soldiers for the Persian Empire under Xerxes I, the Assyrian army accounted for three legions of the Roman army, defending the Parthian border. In the 1st century, it was the Assyrian army that enabled Vespasians coup, from the later 2nd century, the Roman Senate included several notable Assyrians, including Tiberius Claudius Pompeianus and Avidius Cassius. From the 1st century BC, Assyria was the theatre of the protracted Roman–Persian Wars and it would become a Roman province from 116 to 363 AD. Despite the influx of foreign elements, the presence of Assyrians is confirmed by the worship of the god Ashur, the Greeks, Parthians, and Romans had a rather low-level of integration with the local population in Mesopotamia, which allowed their cultures to survive. The Assyrians were Christianized in the first to third centuries in Roman Syria, the population of the Sasanian province of Asōristān was a mixed one, composed of Assyrians, Arameans in the far south and the western deserts, and Persians. The Greek element in the cities, still strong during the Parthian Empire, the majority of the population were Eastern Aramaic speakers. Along with the Arameans, Armenians, Greeks, and Nabataeans, the Council of Seleucia of ca.325 dealt with jurisdictional conflicts among the leading bishops
6.
Apologetics
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Apologetics is the religious discipline of defending or proving the truth of religious doctrines through systematic argumentation and discourse. Early Christian writers who defended their beliefs against critics and recommended their faith to outsiders were called Christian apologists, in 21st century usage, apologetics is often identified with debates over religion and theology. The term apologetics derives from the Ancient Greek word apologia, in the Classical Greek legal system, two key technical terms were employed, the prosecution delivered the kategoria, and the defendant replied with an apologia. To deliver an apologia meant making a speech or giving an explanation to reply and rebut the charges, as in the case of Socrates Apologia defense. This term appears in the Koine Greek of the New Testament, the Apostle Paul employs the term apologia in his trial speech to Festus and Agrippa when he says I make my defense in Acts 26,2. A cognate form appears in Pauls Letter to the Philippians as he is defending the gospel in Philippians 1,7, many apologetic books have been written in defence of the history or teachings of the Baháí Faith. The religions founders wrote several books presenting proofs of their religion, among them are the Bábs Seven Proofs, later Baháí authors wrote prominent apologetic texts, such as Mírzá Abul-Fadls The Brilliant Proof and Udo Schaefer et al. s Making the Crooked Straight. In the mid-19th century, encounters between Buddhists and Christians in Japan prompted the formation of a Buddhist Propagation Society. In recent times, A. L. De Silva, an Australian convert to Buddhism, has written a book, Beyond Belief, providing Buddhist apologetic responses, gunapala Dharmasiri wrote an apologetic critique of the Christian concept of God from a Theravadan Buddhist perspective. Christian apologetics combines Christian theology, natural theology, and philosophy to present a basis for the Christian faith, to defend the faith against objections. Christian apologetics has taken many forms over the centuries, in the Roman Empire, Christians were severely persecuted, and many charges were brought against them. J. David Cassel gives several examples, Tacitus wrote that Nero fabricated charges that Christians started the burning of Rome, other charges included cannibalism and incest. Saul of Tarsus, Justin Martyr, Irenaeus and others often defended Christianity against charges that were brought to justify persecution, later apologists have focused on providing reasons to accept various aspects of Christian belief. Christian apologists of many traditions, in common with Jews, Muslims, theodicy is one important aspect of such arguments, and Alvin Plantingas arguments have been highly influential in this area. Many prominent Christian apologists are scholarly philosophers or theologians, frequently with additional work in physics, cosmology, comparative religions. Others take a popular or pastoral approach. Christian apologists employ a variety of philosophical and formal approaches, including ontological, cosmological, the Christian presuppositionalist approach to apologetics utilizes the Transcendental argument for the existence of God. Tertullian was a notable early Christian apologist and he was born, lived and died in Carthage
7.
Gospel
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A gospel is an account describing the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth. Christianity places a value on the four canonical gospels, which it considers to be revelations from God. This position however, requires a view of Biblical inerrancy. The word gospel derives from the Old English gōd-spell, meaning good news or glad tidings, the gospel was considered the good news of the coming Kingdom of Messiah, and of redemption through the life and death and resurrection of Jesus, the central Christian message. The Greek word euangelion is also the source of the terms evangelist, the authors of the four canonical Christian gospels are known as the Four Evangelists. Paul the Apostle used the term εὐαγγέλιον when he reminded the people of the church at Corinth of the gospel I preached to you, the earliest extant use of gospel to denote a particular genre of literature dates to the 2nd century. Justin Martyr in the Apology wrote of. the apostles, in the memoirs composed by them, more generally, gospels compose a genre of early Christian writings. Gospels that did not become canonical also circulated in Early Christianity, many, such as the work known today as Gospel of Thomas, lack the narrative framework typical of a gospel. Scholars hold a wide spectrum of views on the origins and composition of the gospels, for example, the vast majority of material in Mark is also present in either Luke or Matthew or both, suggesting that Mark was a source for Matthew and Luke. He writes that the four gospels were probably all written by the end of the first century. But they did not yet at that time have a consistent narrative, in 170 Tatian sought to find a solution by composing a single narrative out of Matthew, Mark, and Luke, with some additional oral material. Richies concludes that the gospel passages themselves can be unclear, and some of the messages within are straightforwardly ambiguous, the gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke are considered synoptic gospels on the basis of many similarities between them that are not shared by the Gospel of John. Synoptic means here that they can be seen or read together, the fourth gospel, the Gospel of John, presents a very different picture of Jesus and his ministry from the synoptics. Of the many gospels written in antiquity, only four came to be accepted as part of the New Testament. An insistence upon there being a canon of four gospels, and no others, was a theme of Irenaeus of Lyons. Irenaeus was ultimately successful in declaring that the four gospels collectively and he also supported reading each gospel in light of the others. This canon, which corresponds to the modern Catholic canon, was used in the Vulgate, Gospel of Matthew Gospel of John Gospel of Luke Gospel of Mark This order is found in the following manuscripts, Bezae, Monacensis, Washingtonianus, Tischendorfianus IV, Uncial 0234. Although there is no set order of the four gospels in patristic lists or discussions, moody Smith suggests that the standard order of Matthew-Mark-Luke-John projects a kind of intention that can scarcely be ignored
8.
Gospel of Matthew
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The Gospel According to Matthew is the first book of the New Testament. The narrative tells how the Messiah, Jesus, rejected by Israel, most scholars believe the Gospel of Matthew was composed between AD80 and 90, with a range of possibility between AD70 to 110. The title Son of David identifies Jesus as the healing and miracle-working Messiah of Israel, as Son of Man he will return to judge the world, an expectation which his disciples recognise but of which his enemies are unaware. As Son of God he is God revealing himself through his son, the gospel reflects the struggles and conflicts between the evangelists community and the other Jews, particularly with its sharp criticism of the scribes and Pharisees. The original versions of the Gospel of Matthew and the gospels are lost. The oldest relatively complete extant manuscripts of the Bible are the Codex Vaticanus and the Codex Sinaiticus, besides these, there exist manuscript fragments ranging from a few verses to whole chapters. P104 and P67 are notable fragments of Matthew, in the process of recopying, variations slipped in, different regional manuscript traditions emerged, and corrections and adjustments were made. The Gospel of Matthew is anonymous, the author is not named within the text, the consensus is that Papias does not describe the Gospel of Matthew as we know it, and it is generally accepted that Matthew was written in Greek, not in Aramaic or Hebrew. The majority view of scholars is that Mark was the first gospel to be composed. The author of Matthew did not, however, simply copy Mark, an additional 220 verses, shared by Matthew and Luke but not found in Mark, from a second source, a hypothetical collection of sayings to which scholars give the name Quelle, or the Q source. The author also had at his disposal the Greek scriptures, both as book-scrolls and in the form of collections, and, if Papias is correct. The majority view among scholars is that Matthew was a product of the last quarter of the 1st century, the Christian community to which Matthew belonged, like many 1st-century Christians, were still part of the larger Jewish community, hence the designation Jewish Christian to describe them. The author of Matthew wrote for a community of Greek-speaking Jewish Christians located probably in Syria, Matthew, alone among the gospels, alternates five blocks of narrative with five of discourse, marking each off with the phrase When Jesus had finished. The Gospel of Matthew begins with the words The Book of Genealogy of Jesus Christ, John baptizes Jesus, and the Holy Spirit descends upon him. Jesus prays and meditates in the wilderness for forty days, and is tempted by Satan and his early ministry by word and deed in Galilee meets with much success, and leads to the Sermon on the Mount, the first of the discourses. The sermon presents the ethics of the kingdom of God, introduced by the Beatitudes and it concludes with a reminder that the response to the kingdom will have eternal consequences, and the crowds amazed response leads into the next narrative block. From the authoritative words of Jesus the gospel turns to three sets of three miracles interwoven with two sets of two stories, followed by a discourse on mission and suffering. Opposition to Jesus comes to a head with accusations that his deeds are done through the power of Satan, Jesus in turn accuses his opponents of blaspheming the Holy Spirit
9.
Gospel of Mark
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The Gospel According to Mark, the second book of the New Testament, is one of the four canonical gospels and the three synoptic gospels. It portrays Jesus as a man of action, an exorcist, a healer. Jesus is also the Son of God, but he keeps his identity secret, all this is in keeping with prophecy, which foretold the fate of the messiah as Suffering Servant. The gospel ends, in its version, with the discovery of the empty tomb, a promise to meet again in Galilee. Traditionally thought to be an epitome of Matthew, which accounts for its place as the gospel in the Bible. The Gospel of Mark is anonymous, early Christian tradition ascribes it to John Mark, a companion and interpreter of the apostle Peter. Hence its author is often called Mark, even though most modern scholars are doubtful of the Markan tradition and instead regard the author as unknown. It was probably written c. AD 66–70, during Neros persecution of the Christians in Rome or the Jewish revolt, as suggested by references to war in Judea. The author used a variety of pre-existing sources, such as stories, apocalyptic discourse. Mark was written in Greek, for an audience of Greek-speaking Christians, Rome, Galilee, Antioch. The gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke bear a resemblance to each other. Their close relationship is termed the problem, and has led to a number of hypotheses explaining their interdependence. The most widely accepted hypothesis is that Mark was the first gospel and was used as a source by both Matthew and Luke, together with additional material. The strongest argument for this is the fact that Matthew and Luke agree with other in their sequence of stories. The 19th century recognition of Mark as the earliest gospel led to the belief that it must therefore be the most reliable, the modern consensus is that Marks purpose was to present a theological message rather than to write history. Marks gospel is nevertheless seen as the most reliable of the four in terms of its overall description of Jesuss life. This recognition allows scholars to chart the evolution of Jesus in the scriptures, Marks Christ, for example, dies with the cry, My God, my God, historical reconstruction suggests that the original despairing death of Jesus has become more and more victorious over time. From the outset, Christians depended heavily on Jewish literature, supporting their convictions through the Jewish scriptures and those convictions involved a nucleus of key concepts, the messiah, the son of God and the son of man, the Day of the Lord, the kingdom of God
10.
Gospel of Luke
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The Gospel According to Luke, also called the Gospel of Luke, or simply Luke, is the third of the four canonical Gospels. It tells of the origins, birth, ministry, death, resurrection, Luke is the second-longest of the four gospels, and together with Acts of the Apostles, the pair make up a two-volume work from the same pen, called Luke–Acts. The cornerstone of Luke-Acts theology is salvation history, the understanding that Gods purpose is seen in the way he has acted. The gospels sources are the Gospel of Mark, the collection called the Q source, and a collection of material called the L source. Luke-Acts does not name its author, the most probable date for its composition is around 80–100 AD, and there is evidence that it was still being revised well into the 2nd century. Autographs of Luke and the other Gospels have not been preserved, as is typical for ancient documents, the gospel of Luke and the Acts of the Apostles make up a two-volume work which scholars call Luke–Acts. The author is not named in either volume and he admired Paul, but his theology was significantly different from Pauls on key points and he does not represent Pauls views accurately. The eclipse of the attribution to Luke the companion of Paul has meant that an early date for the gospel is now rarely put forward. Luke-Acts is a history of the Founder of the church and his successors. All three authors anchor the histories of their respective peoples by dating the births of the founders and narrate the stories of the founders births from God, each founder taught authoritatively, appeared to witnesses after death, and ascended to heaven. Crucial aspects of the teaching of all three concerned the relationship between rich and poor and the question of whether foreigners were to be received into the people. The author used as his sources the gospel of Mark, the collection called the Q source. Mark, written around 70 AD, provided the narrative outline, for these Luke turned to Q, which consisted mostly, although not exclusively, of sayings. Mark and Q account for about 64% of Luke, the remaining material, known as the L source, is of unknown origin and date. Most Q and L-source material is grouped in two clusters, Luke 6, 17-8,3 and 9, 51-18,14, Luke was written to be read aloud to a group of Jesus-followers gathered in a house to share the Lords supper. The author assumes an educated Greek-speaking audience, but directs his attention to specifically Christian concerns rather than to the Greco-Roman world at large. He begins his gospel with a preface addressed to Theophilus, the name means Lover of God, here he informs Theophilus of his intention, which is to lead his reader to certainty through an orderly account of the events that have been fulfilled among us. He did not, however, intend to provide Theophilus with a justification of the Christian faith – did it happen
11.
Gospel of John
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The Gospel According to John is one of the four canonical gospels in the New Testament. It traditionally appears fourth, after the gospels of Matthew, Mark. John begins with the witness and affirmation of John the Baptist and concludes with the death, burial, resurrection, although the Gospel of John is anonymous, Christian tradition historically has attributed it to John the Apostle, son of Zebedee and one of Jesus Twelve Apostles. C. K. Barrett, and later Raymond E. Brown, suggested that a tradition developed around the Johannine Community, and that this tradition gave rise to the gospel. The discovery of a number of papyrus fragments of manuscripts with Johannine themes has led more scholars to recognize that the texts were among the most influential in the early Church. The discourses contained with this gospel seem to be concerned with issues of the debate at the time of composition. It is notable that in John, the community appears to define itself primarily in contrast to Judaism, though Christianity started as a movement within Judaism, it gradually separated from Judaism because of mutual opposition between the two religions. The Gospel of John can be divided into four sections, a prologue, a Book of Signs, a Book of Glory, the narrative of Jesus public ministry, beginning with the introduction of the first disciples of Jesus. It consists of seven miracles, or signs, interspersed with long dialogues, discourses, Amen, amen sayings, in John it is this, and not the cleansing of the Temple, that prompts the authorities to have Jesus executed. The narrative of Jesus Passion, Resurrection, and post-Resurrection appearances and this is followed by Jesus Farewell Discourse, an account of his betrayal, arrest, trial, death, burial, post-Resurrection appearances, and final commission for his followers. Jesus mocking and crowning with thorns, the Ecce homo, the discovery of the empty tomb, the noli me tangere, the Great Commission, and the incredulity of Thomas. The section ends with a conclusion on the purpose of the gospel, that may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, a large majority of scholars believes this chapter to be an addition to the gospel. The Gospel of John is anonymous, traditionally, Christians have identified the author as the Disciple whom Jesus loved mentioned in John 21,24, who is understood to be John son of Zebedee, one of Jesus Twelve Apostles. These identifications, however, are rejected by the majority of biblical scholars. Nevertheless, the author of the fourth Gospel is sometimes called John the Evangelist, a significant minority consider the traditional account of John the Apostles authorship to be genuine. In addition, the ancient external attestation for Johannine authorship is strong, John is usually dated to AD 90–110. It arose in a Jewish Christian community in the process of breaking from the Jewish synagogue, scholars believe that the text went through two to three redactions, or editions, before reaching its current form. John, which regularly describes Jesus opponents simply as the Jews, is more hostile to the Jews than any other body of New Testament writing
12.
Synoptic Gospels
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The gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke are referred to as the Synoptic Gospels because they include many of the same stories, often in a similar sequence and in similar wording. They stand in contrast to John, whose content is comparatively distinct, the term synoptic comes via Latin from the Greek σύνοψις, synopsis, i. e. This strong parallelism among the three gospels in content, arrangement, and specific language is attributed to literary interdependence. Broadly speaking, the gospels are similar to John, all are composed in Koine Greek, have a similar length. In content and in wording, though, the synoptics diverge widely from John but have a deal in common with each other. Though each gospel includes some material, the majority of Mark and roughly half of Matthew and Luke coincide in content, in much the same sequence. This common material is termed the triple tradition and this stands in contrast to the material found in only two of the gospels, which is much more variable in order. The classification of text as belonging to the tradition is not always definitive. For example, Matthew and Mark report the cursing of the fig tree, clearly a single incident, despite some differences of wording. Searching Luke, however, we find only the parable of the fig tree. Some would say that Luke has extensively adapted an element of the triple tradition, an illustrative example of the three texts in parallel is the healing of the leper, More than half the wording in this passage is identical. Just as interesting, though, is that each gospel includes words absent in the two and omits something included by the other two. It has been observed that the tradition itself constitutes a complete gospel quite similar to the shortest gospel. Mark, unlike Matthew and Luke, adds little to the triple tradition. Pericopae unique to Mark are scarce, notably two healings involving saliva and the naked runaway, Marks additions within the triple tradition tend to be explanatory elaborations or Aramaisms. The pericopae Mark shares with only Luke are also few, the Capernaum exorcism and departure from Capernaum, the strange exorcist. A greater number, but still not many, are shared with only Matthew, most notably the so-called Great Omission from Luke of Mk 6, most scholars take these observations as a strong clue to the literary relationship among the synoptics and Marks special place in that relationship. The hypothesis favored by most experts is Marcan priority, that Mark was composed first, a leading alternative hypothesis is Marcan posteriority, that Mark was formed primarily by extracting what Matthew and Luke shared in common
13.
Healing the blind near Jericho
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Each of the three Synoptic Gospels tells of Jesus healing the blind near Jericho, as he passed through that town, shortly before his passion. The Gospel of Mark tells of the cure of a man named Bartimaeus healed by Jesus as he is leaving Jericho, the Gospel of Matthew and the Gospel of Luke include different versions of this story. The earliest version is in the Gospel of Mark which tells of the cure of a beggar named Bartimaeus. As Jesus is leaving Jericho with his followers, Bartimaeus calls out, and persists even though the crowd tries to silence him. Jesus has them bring the man to him and asks what he wants, Jesus tells him that his faith has cured him, he immediately regains his sight and follows Jesus. Apart from telling a story that shows the power of Jesus. It shows a character who understands who Jesus is and the way to respond to him - with faith. The beggar, on being called to Jesus, discards his cloak, and the use of the title, Son of David - the only occasion on which this is used in the Gospel of Mark - serves to identify Jesus as the Messiah. 20, 29-34 A version of the story is told earlier in the narrative. On this occasion, he asks the men if they believe he can cure them. He warns them to tell nobody of this, but they go, vernon K. just before Jesus departure for Jerusalem, the long-foreshadowed site of his sufferings. The title Son of David is a messianic name, thus, Bartimaeus exclamation was, according to Mark, the first public acknowledgement of the Christ, after St. Peters private confession at Mark 8, 27–30. The naming of Bartimaeus is unusual in several respects, the fact that a name is given at all, the strange Semitic-Greek hybrid, with an explicit translation Son of Timaeus
14.
Genealogy of Jesus
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The New Testament provides two accounts of the genealogy of Jesus, one in the Gospel of Matthew and another in the Gospel of Luke. Matthews starts with Abraham, while Luke begins with Adam, the lists are identical between Abraham and David, but differ radically from that point. Some modern biblical scholars such as Marcus J. Borg and John Dominic Crossan see both genealogies as inventions, to bring the Messianic claims into conformity with Jewish criteria. Thus there were fourteen generations in all from Abraham to David, fourteen from David to the exile to Babylon, Matthew emphasizes, right from the beginning, Jesus title Christ—the Greek rendering of the Hebrew title Messiah—meaning anointed, in the sense of an anointed king. Jesus is presented as the long-awaited Messiah, who was expected to be a descendant of King David. Matthews introductory title has been interpreted in ways, but most likely is simply a title for the genealogy that follows. Matthews genealogy is considerably more complex than Lukes, the second spans the Davidic royal line, but omits several generations, ending with Jeconiah and his brothers at the time of the exile to Babylon. The last, which appears to only thirteen generations, connects Joseph to Zerubbabel through a series of otherwise unknown names. The total of 42 generations is achieved only by omitting several names, various explanations have been suggested, fourteen is twice seven, symbolizing perfection and covenant, and is also the gematria of the name David. The rendering into Greek of Hebrew names in this genealogy is mostly in accord with the Septuagint, the form Asaph seems to identify King Asa with the psalmist Asaph. Likewise, some see the form Amos for King Amon as suggesting the prophet Amos, both may simply be assimilations to more familiar names. More interesting, though, are the unique forms Boes and Rachab, three consecutive kings of Judah are omitted, Ahaziah, Jehoash, and Amaziah. These three kings are seen as especially wicked, from the line of Ahab through his daughter Athaliah to the third. The author probably felt justified in omitting them in creating a set of fourteen. Another omitted king is Jehoiakim, the father of Jeconiah, also known as Jehoiachin, in Greek the names are even more similar, both being sometimes called Joachim. While some see this as a mistake, others argue that the omission was once again deliberate, the final group seems to contain only thirteen generations. If Josiahs son was intended as Jehoiakim, then Jeconiah could be counted separately after the exile, another possibility is that Mary is counted as a generation, proceeding laterally by her marriage to Joseph. Though such a reckoning is otherwise unknown, it may have seemed necessary in light of the claim of a virgin birth, some have even proposed that Matthews original text had one Joseph as the father of Mary, who then married another man of the same name
15.
Jesus and the woman taken in adultery
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Jesus and the woman taken in adultery – a passage known as the Pericope Adulterae or Pericope de Adultera – is a famous passage found in the Gospel of John 7, 53-8,11. They bring in an adulteress, and invite Jesus to pass judgment upon her, should she be stoned, as Moses taught, Jesus first ignores the interruption, and writes on the ground as though he does not hear them. But after the religious leaders continue their challenge, he states that the one who is without sin is the one who should cast the first stone, the religious leaders depart, leaving Jesus and the woman in the midst of the crowd. Jesus then asks the woman if anyone has condemned her, when she answers that no one has condemned her, Jesus says that he, too, does not condemn her, and tells her to go and sin no more. The Jerusalem Bible claims the author of this passage is not John. On the other hand, Leo the Great, cited the passage in his 62nd Sermon, mentioning that Jesus said to the adulteress who was brought to him, ‘Neither will I condemn you, go and sin no more. In the early 400s, Saint Augustine used the passage extensively, the Council of Trent, held between 1545 and 1563, declared that the Latin Vulgate was authentic and authoritative. In terms of quantities, 1 495 Greek manuscripts include the pericope adulterae. Among those 267, however, are some manuscripts which are exceptionally early, the subject of Jesus writing on the ground was fairly common in art, especially from the Renaissance onwards, with examples by artists including those by Pieter Bruegel and Rembrandt. This is very probably a matter of guesswork based on Jeremiah 17,13, there have been other speculations about what Jesus wrote. John 7, 53-8,11 in the New Revised Standard Version,53 Then each of them went home,1 while Jesus went to the Mount of Olives,2 Early in the morning he came again to the temple. All the people came to him and he sat down and began to teach them,5 Now in the law Moses commanded us to stone such women. Now what do you say. ’6 They said this to test him, Jesus bent down and wrote with his finger on the ground. 9 When they heard it, they went away, one by one, beginning with the elders,10 Jesus straightened up and said to her, ‘Woman, where are they. Has no one condemned you. ’11 She said, ‘No one, sir. ’ And Jesus said, ‘Neither do I condemn you. Go your way, and from now on do not sin again. ’ This episode, both let him who is without sin, cast the first stone and go, and sin no more have found their way into common usage. The English idiomatic phrase to cast the first stone is derived from this passage. The passage has been taken as confirmation of Jesus ability to write, otherwise only suggested by implication in the Gospels, in this passage and also in Leviticus 20,10, death is fixed as the penalty of adultery, applicable to both the man and the woman concerned
16.
Irenaeus
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Irenaeus, also referred to as Saint Irenaeus, was Bishop of Lugdunum in Gaul, then a part of the Roman Empire. He was an early Church Father and apologist, and his writings were formative in the development of Christian theology. A resident of Smyrna, he heard the preaching of St. Polycarp, as one of the first great Christian theologians, he emphasized the traditional elements in the Church, especially the episcopate, Scripture, and tradition. His polemical work is credited for laying out the orthodoxies of the Christian church, its faith, its preaching and his writings, with those of Clement and Ignatius, are taken as among the earliest signs of the doctrine of the primacy of the Roman see. Irenaeus is the earliest witness to recognition of the character of all four gospels. Irenaeus is recognized as a saint in both the Catholic Church and the Eastern Orthodox Church, the Lutheran Church commemorates Irenaeus on that same date for his life of exemplary Christian witness. In the Eastern Catholic Church and Orthodox Church his feast day is 23 August, Irenaeus was born during the first half of the 2nd century, and he is thought to have been a Greek from Polycarps hometown of Smyrna in Asia Minor, now İzmir, Turkey. Unlike many of his contemporaries, he was brought up in a Christian family rather than converting as an adult, during the persecution of Marcus Aurelius, the Roman Emperor from 161–180, Irenaeus was a priest of the Church of Lyon. While Irenaeus was in Rome, a massacre took place in Lyon, returning to Gaul, Irenaeus succeeded the martyr Saint Pothinus and became the second Bishop of Lyon. During the religious peace which followed the persecution of Marcus Aurelius, almost all his writings were directed against Gnosticism. The most famous of these writings is Adversus haereses, Irenaeus alludes to coming across Gnostic writings, and holding conversations with Gnostics, and this may have taken place in Asia Minor or in Rome. However, it appears that Gnosticism was present near Lyon. Little is known about the career of Irenaeus after he became bishop, nothing is known of the date of his death, which must have occurred at the end of the 2nd or the beginning of the 3rd century. A few within the Roman Catholic Church and Orthodox Church celebrate him as a martyr and he was buried under the Church of Saint John in Lyon, which was later renamed St Irenaeus in his honour. The tomb and his remains were destroyed in 1562 by the Huguenots. Irenaeus wrote a number of books, but the most important that survives is the Against Heresies, in Book I, Irenaeus talks about the Valentinian Gnostics and their predecessors, who go as far back as the magician Simon Magus. In Book II he attempts to provide proof that Valentinianism contains no merit in terms of its doctrines, in Book III Irenaeus purports to show that these doctrines are false, by providing counter-evidence gleaned from the Gospels. Book IV consists of Jesus sayings, and here Irenaeus also stresses the unity of the Old Testament, in the final volume, Book V, Irenaeus focuses on more sayings of Jesus plus the letters of Paul the Apostle
17.
Lectionary
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A lectionary is a book or listing that contains a collection of scripture readings appointed for Christian or Judaic worship on a given day or occasion. There are sub-types such as a gospel lectionary or evangeliary, in addition to these Torah readings, the later Gemara portion of the Talmud also knows of assigned annual readings from the prophets. By the Medieval era the Jewish community had a schedule of scripture readings both from the Torah and the prophets to be read in the synagogue. A sequential selection was read from the Torah, followed by the haftarah – a selection from the books or historical narratives closely linked to the selection from the Torah. Jesus may have read a providentially random reading when he read from Isaiah 61, 1-2, as recorded in Luke 4, 16-21, the early Christians adopted the Jewish custom of reading extracts from the Old Testament on the Sabbath. They soon added extracts from the writings of the Apostles and Evangelists, both Hebrew and Christian lectionaries developed over the centuries. The existence of both one-year and three-year cycles occurs in both Christianity and Judaism, within Christianity, the use of pre-assigned, scheduled readings from the scriptures can be traced back to the early church, and seems to have been inherited from Judaism. Not all of the Christian Church used the same lectionary, and throughout history, until the Second Vatican Council, most Western Christians used a lectionary that repeated on a one-year basis. This annual lectionary provided readings for Sundays and, in those Churches that celebrated the festivals of saints, the Eastern Orthodox Church and many of the Oriental Churches continue to use an annual lectionary. Within Lutheranism there remains a minority of pastors and congregations who use the old one-year lectionary. The Reformed churches divided the Heidelberg Catechism into 52 weekly sections, lectionaries from before the invention of the printing press contribute to understanding the textual history of the Bible. See also List of New Testament lectionaries, the lectionaries are organized into three-year cycles of readings. The years are designated A, B, or C, each yearly cycle begins on the first Sunday of Advent. Year B follows year A, year C follows year B, the Roman Catholic lectionary includes a two-year cycle for the weekday mass readings. Odd-numbered years are Cycle I, even-numbered ones are Cycle II, the weekday lectionary includes a reading from the Old Testament, Acts, Revelation, or the Epistles, a responsorial Psalm, and a reading from one of the Gospels. These readings are generally shorter than those appointed for use on Sundays, the pericopes for the first reading along with the psalms are arranged in a two-year cycle. The Gospels are arranged so that portions of all four are read every year and this weekday lectionary has also been adapted by some denominations with congregations that celebrate daily Eucharistic services. It has been published in the Episcopal Churchs Lesser Feasts and Fasts and this eucharistic lectionary should not be confused with the various Daily Office lectionaries in use in various denominations
18.
Peshitta
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The Peshitta is the standard version of the Bible for churches in the Syriac tradition. This New Testament, originally excluding certain disputed books, had become a standard by the early 5th century, the five excluded books were added in the Harklean Version of Thomas of Harqel. However, the 1905 United Bible Society Peshitta used new editions prepared by the Irish Syriacist John Gwynn for the missing books, the name Peshitta is derived from the Syriac mappaqtâ pšîṭtâ, literally meaning simple version. However, it is possible to translate pšîṭtâ as common, or straight. Syriac is a dialect, or group of dialects, of Eastern Aramaic and it is written in the Syriac alphabet, and is transliterated into the Latin script in a number of ways, Peshitta, Peshittâ, Pshitta, Pšittâ, Pshitto, Fshitto. All of these are acceptable, but Peshitta is the most conventional spelling in English, there is no full and clear knowledge of the circumstances under which the Peshitta was produced and came into circulation. Whereas the authorship of the Latin Vulgate has never been in dispute, almost every assertion regarding the authorship of the Peshitta and its time, the chief ground of analogy between the Vulgate and the Peshitta is that both came into existence as the result of a revision. This, indeed, has strenuously denied, but since Dr. The very designation, Peshito, has given rise to dispute and it has been applied to the Syriac as the version in common use, and regarded as equivalent to the Greek koiné and the Latin Vulgate. The word itself is a form, meaning simple, as in easy to be understood. It seems to have used to distinguish the version from others which are encumbered with marks. However, the term as a designation of the version has not been found in any Syriac author earlier than the 9th or 10th century, as regards the Old Testament, the antiquity of the version is admitted on all hands. The tradition, however, that part of it was translated from Hebrew into Syriac for the benefit of Hiram in the days of Solomon is surely a myth. That a translation was made by a priest named Assa, or Ezra and that the translation of the Old Testament and New Testament was made in connection with the visit of Thaddaeus to Abgar at Edessa belongs also to unreliable tradition. Mark has even been credited in ancient Syriac tradition with translating his own Gospel, F. Crawford Burkitt concluded that the translation of the Old Testament was probably the work of Jews, of whom there was a colony in Edessa about the commencement of the Christian era. The older view was that the translators were Christians, and that the work was late in the 1st century or early in the 2nd. The Old Testament known to the early Syrian church was substantially that of the Palestinian Jews and it contained the same number of books but it arranged them in a different order. Most of the Deuterocanonical books of the Old Testament are found in the Syriac, of the New Testament, attempts at translation must have been made very early, and among the ancient versions of New Testament Scripture the Syriac in all likelihood is the earliest
19.
Justin Martyr
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Saint Justin, also known as Justin Martyr was an early Christian apologist, and is regarded as the foremost interpreter of the theory of the Logos in the 2nd century. He was martyred, alongside some of his students, and is considered a saint by the Roman Catholic Church, the Anglican Church, Most of his works are lost, but two apologies and a dialogue did survive. Further, he indicates, as St Augustine did regarding the true religion that predated Christianity. This notion allows him to many historical Greek philosophers, in whose works he was well studied. Justin Martyr was born at Flavia Neapolis in Samaria into a pagan family and he says he tried first the school of a Stoic philosopher, who was unable to explain Gods being to him. He then attended a Peripatetic philosopher but was put off because the philosopher was too eager for his fee, then he went to hear a Pythagorean philosopher who demanded that he first learn music, astronomy, and geometry, which he did not wish to do. Subsequently, he adopted Platonism after encountering a Platonist thinker who had settled in his city. Moved by the aged mans argument, Justin renounced both his religious faith and his philosophical background, choosing instead to re-dedicate his life to the service of the Divine. As a result, he decided that the only option for him was to travel throughout the land. His conversion is commonly assumed to have taken place at Ephesus though it may have occurred anywhere on the road from Judaea to Rome and he then adopted the dress of a philosopher himself and traveled about teaching. During the reign of Antoninus Pius, he arrived in Rome, Tatian was one of his pupils. In the reign of Marcus Aurelius, after disputing with the cynic philosopher Crescens, he was denounced by the latter to the authorities, according to Tatian and Eusebius. Justin was tried, together with six companions, by Junius Rusticus, who was urban prefect from 163-167, though the precise year of his death is uncertain, it can reasonably be dated by the prefectoral term of Rusticus. The martyrdom of Justin preserves the record of the trial. The Prefect Rusticus says, Approach and sacrifice, all of you, Justin says, No one in his right mind gives up piety for impiety. The Prefect Rusticus says, If you do not obey, you will be tortured without mercy, and all the martyrs said, Do as you wish, for we are Christians, and we do not sacrifice to idols. The Prefect Rusticus read the sentence, Those who do not wish to sacrifice to the gods, the holy martyrs glorifying God betook themselves to the customary place, where they were beheaded and consummated their martyrdom confessing their Saviour. The church of St. John the Baptist in Sacrofano, a few north of Rome
20.
Rome
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Rome is a special comune and the capital of Italy. Rome also serves as the capital of the Lazio region, with 2,873,598 residents in 1,285 km2, it is also the countrys largest and most populated comune and fourth-most populous city in the European Union by population within city limits. It is the center of the Metropolitan City of Rome, which has a population of 4.3 million residents, the city is located in the central-western portion of the Italian Peninsula, within Lazio, along the shores of the Tiber. Romes history spans more than 2,500 years, while Roman mythology dates the founding of Rome at only around 753 BC, the site has been inhabited for much longer, making it one of the oldest continuously occupied sites in Europe. The citys early population originated from a mix of Latins, Etruscans and it was first called The Eternal City by the Roman poet Tibullus in the 1st century BC, and the expression was also taken up by Ovid, Virgil, and Livy. Rome is also called the Caput Mundi, due to that, Rome became first one of the major centres of the Italian Renaissance, and then the birthplace of both the Baroque style and Neoclassicism. Famous artists, painters, sculptors and architects made Rome the centre of their activity, in 1871 Rome became the capital of the Kingdom of Italy, and in 1946 that of the Italian Republic. Rome has the status of a global city, Rome ranked in 2014 as the 14th-most-visited city in the world, 3rd most visited in the European Union, and the most popular tourist attraction in Italy. Its historic centre is listed by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site, monuments and museums such as the Vatican Museums and the Colosseum are among the worlds most visited tourist destinations with both locations receiving millions of tourists a year. Rome hosted the 1960 Summer Olympics and is the seat of United Nations Food, however, it is a possibility that the name Romulus was actually derived from Rome itself. As early as the 4th century, there have been alternate theories proposed on the origin of the name Roma. There is archaeological evidence of occupation of the Rome area from approximately 14,000 years ago. Evidence of stone tools, pottery and stone weapons attest to about 10,000 years of human presence, several excavations support the view that Rome grew from pastoral settlements on the Palatine Hill built above the area of the future Roman Forum. Between the end of the age and the beginning of the Iron age. However, none of them had yet an urban quality, nowadays, there is a wide consensus that the city was gradually born through the aggregation of several villages around the largest one, placed above the Palatine. All these happenings, which according to the excavations took place more or less around the mid of the 8th century BC. Despite recent excavations at the Palatine hill, the view that Rome has been indeed founded with an act of will as the legend suggests in the middle of the 8th century BC remains a fringe hypothesis. Traditional stories handed down by the ancient Romans themselves explain the earliest history of their city in terms of legend and myth
21.
Greek language
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Greek is an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages, native to Greece and other parts of the Eastern Mediterranean. It has the longest documented history of any living language, spanning 34 centuries of written records and its writing system has been the Greek alphabet for the major part of its history, other systems, such as Linear B and the Cypriot syllabary, were used previously. The alphabet arose from the Phoenician script and was in turn the basis of the Latin, Cyrillic, Armenian, Coptic, Gothic and many other writing systems. Together with the Latin texts and traditions of the Roman world, during antiquity, Greek was a widely spoken lingua franca in the Mediterranean world and many places beyond. It would eventually become the official parlance of the Byzantine Empire, the language is spoken by at least 13.2 million people today in Greece, Cyprus, Italy, Albania, Turkey, and the Greek diaspora. Greek roots are used to coin new words for other languages, Greek. Greek has been spoken in the Balkan peninsula since around the 3rd millennium BC, the earliest written evidence is a Linear B clay tablet found in Messenia that dates to between 1450 and 1350 BC, making Greek the worlds oldest recorded living language. Among the Indo-European languages, its date of earliest written attestation is matched only by the now extinct Anatolian languages, the Greek language is conventionally divided into the following periods, Proto-Greek, the unrecorded but assumed last ancestor of all known varieties of Greek. The unity of Proto-Greek would have ended as Hellenic migrants entered the Greek peninsula sometime in the Neolithic era or the Bronze Age, Mycenaean Greek, the language of the Mycenaean civilisation. It is recorded in the Linear B script on tablets dating from the 15th century BC onwards, Ancient Greek, in its various dialects, the language of the Archaic and Classical periods of the ancient Greek civilisation. It was widely known throughout the Roman Empire, after the Roman conquest of Greece, an unofficial bilingualism of Greek and Latin was established in the city of Rome and Koine Greek became a first or second language in the Roman Empire. The origin of Christianity can also be traced through Koine Greek, Medieval Greek, also known as Byzantine Greek, the continuation of Koine Greek in Byzantine Greece, up to the demise of the Byzantine Empire in the 15th century. Much of the written Greek that was used as the language of the Byzantine Empire was an eclectic middle-ground variety based on the tradition of written Koine. Modern Greek, Stemming from Medieval Greek, Modern Greek usages can be traced in the Byzantine period and it is the language used by the modern Greeks, and, apart from Standard Modern Greek, there are several dialects of it. In the modern era, the Greek language entered a state of diglossia, the historical unity and continuing identity between the various stages of the Greek language is often emphasised. Greek speakers today still tend to regard literary works of ancient Greek as part of their own rather than a foreign language and it is also often stated that the historical changes have been relatively slight compared with some other languages. According to one estimation, Homeric Greek is probably closer to demotic than 12-century Middle English is to modern spoken English, Greek is spoken by about 13 million people, mainly in Greece, Albania and Cyprus, but also worldwide by the large Greek diaspora. Greek is the language of Greece, where it is spoken by almost the entire population
22.
Septuagint
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The Septuagint is a Koine Greek translation of an Hebraic textual tradition that included certain texts which were later included in the canonical Hebrew Bible and other related texts which were not. As the primary Greek translation of the Old Testament, it is called the Greek Old Testament. This translation is quoted a number of times in the New Testament, particularly in Pauline epistles, the title and its Roman numeral LXX refer to the legendary seventy Jewish scholars who solely translated the Five Books of Moses into Koine Greek as early as the 3rd century BCE. Separated from the Hebrew canon of the Jewish Bible in Rabbinic Judaism, the traditional story is that Ptolemy II sponsored the translation of the Torah. The Septuagint should not be confused with the seven or more other Greek versions of the Old Testament, of these, the most important are those by Aquila, Symmachus, and Theodotion. However, it was not until the time of Augustine of Hippo that the Greek translation of the Jewish scriptures came to be called by the Latin term Septuaginta. This narrative is found in the pseudepigraphic Letter of Aristeas to his brother Philocrates, the story is also found in the Tractate Megillah of the Babylonian Talmud, King Ptolemy once gathered 72 Elders. He placed them in 72 chambers, each of them in a separate one and he entered each ones room and said, Write for me the Torah of Moshe, your teacher. God put it in the heart of one to translate identically as all the others did. Philo of Alexandria, who relied extensively on the Septuagint, says that the number of scholars was chosen by selecting six scholars from each of the tribes of Israel. After the Torah, other books were translated over the two to three centuries. It is not altogether clear which was translated when, or where, some may even have been translated twice, into different versions, the quality and style of the different translators also varied considerably from book to book, from the literal to paraphrasing to interpretative. The translation of the Septuagint itself began in the 3rd century BCE and was completed by 132 BCE, initially in Alexandria, the Septuagint is the basis for the Old Latin, Slavonic, Syriac, Old Armenian, Old Georgian and Coptic versions of the Christian Old Testament. Some sections of the Septuagint may show Semiticisms, or idioms and phrases based on Semitic languages like Hebrew, other books, such as Daniel and Proverbs, show Greek influence more strongly. The Septuagint may also elucidate pronunciation of pre-Masoretic Hebrew, many nouns are spelled out with Greek vowels in the LXX. However, it is unlikely that all ancient Hebrew sounds had precise Greek equivalents. As the work of translation progressed, the canon of the Greek Bible expanded, the Torah always maintained its pre-eminence as the basis of the canon, but the collection of prophetic writings, based on the Jewish Neviim, had various hagiographical works incorporated into it. In addition, some books were included in the Septuagint
23.
Arabic
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Arabic is a Central Semitic language that was first spoken in Iron Age northwestern Arabia and is now the lingua franca of the Arab world. Arabic is also the language of 1.7 billion Muslims. It is one of six languages of the United Nations. The modern written language is derived from the language of the Quran and it is widely taught in schools and universities, and is used to varying degrees in workplaces, government, and the media. The two formal varieties are grouped together as Literary Arabic, which is the language of 26 states. Modern Standard Arabic largely follows the standards of Quranic Arabic. Much of the new vocabulary is used to denote concepts that have arisen in the post-Quranic era, Arabic has influenced many languages around the globe throughout its history. During the Middle Ages, Literary Arabic was a vehicle of culture in Europe, especially in science, mathematics. As a result, many European languages have borrowed many words from it. Many words of Arabic origin are found in ancient languages like Latin. Balkan languages, including Greek, have acquired a significant number of Arabic words through contact with Ottoman Turkish. Arabic has also borrowed words from languages including Greek and Persian in medieval times. Arabic is a Central Semitic language, closely related to the Northwest Semitic languages, the Ancient South Arabian languages, the Semitic languages changed a great deal between Proto-Semitic and the establishment of the Central Semitic languages, particularly in grammar. Innovations of the Central Semitic languages—all maintained in Arabic—include, The conversion of the suffix-conjugated stative formation into a past tense, the conversion of the prefix-conjugated preterite-tense formation into a present tense. The elimination of other prefix-conjugated mood/aspect forms in favor of new moods formed by endings attached to the prefix-conjugation forms, the development of an internal passive. These features are evidence of descent from a hypothetical ancestor. In the southwest, various Central Semitic languages both belonging to and outside of the Ancient South Arabian family were spoken and it is also believed that the ancestors of the Modern South Arabian languages were also spoken in southern Arabia at this time. To the north, in the oases of northern Hijaz, Dadanitic and Taymanitic held some prestige as inscriptional languages, in Najd and parts of western Arabia, a language known to scholars as Thamudic C is attested
24.
Latin
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Latin is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. The Latin alphabet is derived from the Etruscan and Greek alphabets, Latin was originally spoken in Latium, in the Italian Peninsula. Through the power of the Roman Republic, it became the dominant language, Vulgar Latin developed into the Romance languages, such as Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, French, and Romanian. Latin, Italian and French have contributed many words to the English language, Latin and Ancient Greek roots are used in theology, biology, and medicine. By the late Roman Republic, Old Latin had been standardised into Classical Latin, Vulgar Latin was the colloquial form spoken during the same time and attested in inscriptions and the works of comic playwrights like Plautus and Terence. Late Latin is the language from the 3rd century. Later, Early Modern Latin and Modern Latin evolved, Latin was used as the language of international communication, scholarship, and science until well into the 18th century, when it began to be supplanted by vernaculars. Ecclesiastical Latin remains the language of the Holy See and the Roman Rite of the Catholic Church. Today, many students, scholars and members of the Catholic clergy speak Latin fluently and it is taught in primary, secondary and postsecondary educational institutions around the world. The language has been passed down through various forms, some inscriptions have been published in an internationally agreed, monumental, multivolume series, the Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum. Authors and publishers vary, but the format is about the same, volumes detailing inscriptions with a critical apparatus stating the provenance, the reading and interpretation of these inscriptions is the subject matter of the field of epigraphy. The works of several hundred ancient authors who wrote in Latin have survived in whole or in part and they are in part the subject matter of the field of classics. The Cat in the Hat, and a book of fairy tales, additional resources include phrasebooks and resources for rendering everyday phrases and concepts into Latin, such as Meissners Latin Phrasebook. The Latin influence in English has been significant at all stages of its insular development. From the 16th to the 18th centuries, English writers cobbled together huge numbers of new words from Latin and Greek words, dubbed inkhorn terms, as if they had spilled from a pot of ink. Many of these words were used once by the author and then forgotten, many of the most common polysyllabic English words are of Latin origin through the medium of Old French. Romance words make respectively 59%, 20% and 14% of English, German and those figures can rise dramatically when only non-compound and non-derived words are included. Accordingly, Romance words make roughly 35% of the vocabulary of Dutch, Roman engineering had the same effect on scientific terminology as a whole
25.
Syriac Christianity
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With a history going back to the 1st century AD, Syriac Christianity is, in modern times, represented by denominations primarily in the Middle East, Asia Minor and in Kerala, India. Christianity began in the Middle East in Jerusalem among Jewish Aramaic-speaking Semitic peoples of Judah and it quickly spread, initially to other Semitic peoples, in Parthian-ruled Assyria and Mesopotamia, Roman-ruled Syria, Phoenicia, southern and eastern Asia Minor, and northwestern Persia and Malta. Adherents sometimes identify as Syriacs or Syrians, Syriac Christian heritage is transmitted through various Neo Aramaic dialects of old Aramaic. Unlike the Greek Christian culture, Assyrian Christian culture borrowed much from early Rabbinic Judaism, Antioch was the political capital of this culture, and was the seat of the Patriarchs of the church. However, Antioch was heavily Hellenized, and the Assyrian cities of Edessa, Nisibis and this split owed just as much to the politics of the day as it did to theological orthodoxy. Ctesiphon, which was at the also the Sassanid capital. After the Council of Chalcedon in 451, many Syriac Christians within the Roman Empire rebelled against its decisions, the Patriarchate of Antioch was then divided between a Chalcedonian and non-Chalcedonian communion. The Chalcedonians were often labelled Melkites, while their opponents were labelled as Monophysites and Jacobites, the Maronite Church found itself caught between the two, but claims to have always remained faithful to the Catholic Church and in communion with the bishop of Rome, the Pope. The church has persisted as an entity under Islamic rule. The community was one of those granted autonomy in governing itself in religious, in the 19th century many left for other parts of Christendom, creating a substantial diaspora. Over time, some groups within each of these branches have entered into communion with the Church of Rome, when they lost Assyria itself to the Parthian Empire, they retained the name Syria but only applied it to what had been Aramea, which they still retained. The Neo-Assyrian kingdom of Osroene was the first Christian kingdom in history, in 431 A. D. the Council of Ephesus declared Nestorianism to be a heresy. The Nestorian priests, who were persecuted in the Byzantine Empire, sought refuge in Mesopotamia where the Church of the East was dominant, there was a synthesis between the Assyrian Church and Nestorian doctrine. From there they spread Christianity to Persia, India, China and this was the beginning of the Nestorian Church, the eastern branch of Syrian Christianity. The western branch, the Jacobite Church, appeared after the Council of Chalcedon condemned Monophysitism in 451 A. D and these people are in fact ethnic Assyrians originating from the Assyrian homeland in northern Iraq. The older Assyrian designation has almost completely replaced the word Nestorian, however, the word Nestorian continues to be used in some Western academic literature. The word Syrian has become ambiguous in English since it can refer now to a citizen of Syria regardless of ethnicity, in Arabic, however, the word for a citizen of Syria has a different form from the traditional word for an ethnic Assyrian/Syrian. The Maronites in Lebanon are divided between those who claim Lebanese-Phoenician national identity and those who claim Arab national identity, the Maronite Church, a West Syrian Rite Eastern Catholic Church
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Ephrem the Syrian
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Ephrem the Syrian was a Syriac Christian deacon and a prolific Syriac-language hymnographer and theologian of the 4th century. He is especially beloved in the Syriac Orthodox Church, and counted as a Venerable Father in Eastern Orthodoxy and his feast day is celebrated on 28 January and on the Saturday of the Venerable Fathers. He has been declared a Doctor of the Church in Roman Catholicism in 1920, Ephrem wrote a wide variety of hymns, poems, and sermons in verse, as well as prose biblical exegesis. These were works of theology for the edification of the church in troubled times. So popular were his works, that, for centuries after his death and he has been called the most significant of all of the fathers of the Syriac-speaking church tradition. Ephrem was born around the year 306 in the city of Nisibis, internal evidence from Ephrems hymnody suggests that both his parents were part of the growing Christian community in the city, although later hagiographers wrote that his father was a pagan priest. Numerous languages were spoken in the Nisibis of Ephrems day, mostly dialects of Aramaic, the Christian community used the Syriac dialect. The culture included pagan religions, Judaism and early Christian sects, Jacob, the second bishop of Nisibis, was appointed in 308, and Ephrem grew up under his leadership of the community. Jacob of Nisibis is recorded as a signatory at the First Council of Nicea in 325, Ephrem was baptized as a youth and almost certainly became a son of the covenant, an unusual form of syriac proto-monasticism. Jacob appointed Ephrem as a teacher and he was ordained as a deacon either at his baptism or later. He began to compose hymns and write biblical commentaries as part of his educational office, in his hymns, he sometimes refers to himself as a herdsman, to his bishop as the shepherd, and to his community as a fold. Ephrem is popularly credited as the founder of the School of Nisibis, in 337, Emperor Constantine I, who had legalised and promoted the practice of Christianity in the Roman Empire, died. Seizing on this opportunity, Shapur II of Persia began a series of attacks into Roman North Mesopotamia, Nisibis was besieged in 338,346 and 350. During the first siege, Ephrem credits Bishop Jacob as defending the city with his prayers, in the third siege, of 350, Shapur rerouted the River Mygdonius to undermine the walls of Nisibis. The Nisibenes quickly repaired the walls while the Persian elephant cavalry became bogged down in the wet ground, Ephrem celebrated what he saw as the miraculous salvation of the city in a hymn that portrayed Nisibis as being like Noahs Ark, floating to safety on the flood. One important physical link to Ephrems lifetime is the baptistery of Nisibis, the inscription tells that it was constructed under Bishop Vologeses in 359. In that year, Shapur attacked again, the cities around Nisibis were destroyed one by one, and their citizens killed or deported. Constantius II was unable to respond, the campaign of Julian in 363 ended with his death in battle
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Wadi El Natrun
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Wadi El Natrun is a valley located in Beheira Governorate, Egypt, including a town with the same name. The name refers to the presence of eight different lakes in the region that produce natron salt, in Christian literature it is usually known as Scetis and is one of the three early Christian monastic centers located in the desert of the northwestern Nile Delta. The other two centers are Nitria and Kellia. These three centers are often confused and sometimes referred to as a single place, but the locales are distinct, though geographically close together. Scetis, now called Wadi El Natrun, is best known today because its ancient monasteries remain in use, the Nitrian Desert is sometimes used to mean the entire region where the monasteries are located. It can also specifically refer to the immediate area around Nitria and Kellia. The alkali lakes of the Natron Valley provided the Ancient Egyptians with the sodium bicarbonate used in mummification and in Egyptian faience, the desolate region became one of Christianitys most sacred areas. The desert fathers and cenobitic monastic communities used the deserts solitude, hermit monks believed that desert life would teach them to eschew the things of this world and follow Gods call. Between the 4th and 7th century A. D. hundreds of thousands of people from the world joined the hundreds of Christian monasteries in the Nitrian Desert, centered on Nitria, Kellia. Saint Macarius of Egypt first came to Scetis around 330 AD where he established a monastic site. His reputation attracted a band of anchorites, hermits and monks who settled nearby in individual cells. By the end of the century, four distinct communities had developed, Baramus, Macarius, Bishoi. At first these communities were groupings of cells centered on a church and facilities. Nitria, Kellia, and Scellis also experienced internal fractures related to disputes in Egypt. The monasteries flourished during the Muslim conquest of Egypt, but in the eighth and ninth centuries taxation and administration led to conflicts with the Muslim government. Nitria and Kellia were eventually abandoned in the 7th and 9th centuries respectively, maximos and Domatios, Saint Poimen The Great and Saint Samuel the Confessor. The environs of Wadi Natrun have been identified as the site of where the plane of French aviator Antoine de Saint-Exupéry crashed on December 30,1935. After miraculously surviving the crash, he and his planes mechanic nearly died of thirst before being rescued by a nomad, Saint-Exupéry documented his experience in his book Wind, Sand and Stars, and is thought to have inspired his masterpiece, The Little Prince
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Cyrrhus
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Cyrrhus was a city in ancient Syria founded by Seleucus Nicator, one of Alexander the Greats generals. Other names for the city include Hagioupolis, Nebi Huri, Khoros, a false etymology of the sixth century connects it to Cyrus, king of Persia due to the resemblance of the names. The former Roman/Byzantine bishopric is now a double Catholic titular see and its ruins are located in northern Syria, near the Turkish border. It lies about 70 km northwest of Aleppo and 24 km west of Killis, Cyrrhus was the capital of the extensive district of Cyrrhestica, between the plain of Antioch and Commagene. The site of the city is marked by the ruins at Khoros,20 km from Azaz, Syria, standing near the river Afrin Marsyas River, a tributary of the Orontes, which had been banked up by Bishop Theodoret. The Cyrrhus in Syria was founded by Seleucus Nicator shortly after 300 BC and it was taken by the Armenian Empire in the 1st century BC, then became Roman when Pompey took Syria in 64 BC. By the 1st century AD, it had become a Roman administrative, military and it was the base of the Roman legion Legio X Fretensis. The Sassanid Persian Empire took it several times during the 3rd century, in the 6th century, the city was embellished and fortified by Byzantine Emperor Justinian. It was however taken by the Muslims in 637 and known at that time under the name of Qorosh, nur ad-Din Zangi recaptured it in 1150. Muslim travelers of the 13th and 14th century report it both as a city and as largely in ruins. The city has been excavated by the Lebanese Syrian Archaeological Mission of Cyrrhus, initial results indicate a square layout with Hippodamian grid road plan and a central main road with Colonnades typical of the Hellenistic east. The road layout seems to have survived until into the Islamic times, remains in Cyrrhus include two Roman Bridges in working order, a dilapidated theatre outside the town and foundations of a Basilica church and some city fortifications. In the 6th century a Byzantine citadel was built on the top of the hill behind the theatre, with evidence of Greek and Egyptian influences in the design work. This citadel is still largely unexcavated, Cyrrhus became a Christian bishopric at an early date, a suffragan of Hierapolis Bambyce, capital and metropolitan see of the Roman province of Euphratensis. Under Justinian, it became an autocephalous ecclesiastical metropolis subject directly to the Patriarch of Antioch and its bishop Syricius was present at the First Council of Nicaea in 325. The Arian Abgar was at the Council of Seleucia, Theodoret mentions as another Arian a bishop called Asterius of the time of the Roman Emperor Valens. Isidorus attended the First Council of Constantinople in 381, the most celebrated of the bishops of Cyrrhus is Theodoret himself, a prolific writer, well known for his rôle in the history of Nestorianism, Eutychianism, and Marcionism. He tells us that his small diocese contained 800 churches, which supposes a very dense population, in 476, a bishop named Ioannes held a synod against Peter the Fuller
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Syria (region)
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The historic region of Syria is an area located east of the Mediterranean sea. The oldest attestation of the name Syria is from the 8th century BC in an inscription in Hieroglyphic Luwian and Phoenician. In this inscription the Luwian word Sura/i was translated to Phoenician ʔšr Assyria, for Herodotus in the 5th century BC, Syria extended as far north as the Halys river and as far south as Arabia and Egypt. For Pliny the Elder and Pomponius Mela, Syria covered the entire Fertile Crescent and this late definition is equivalent to the region known in Classical Arabic by the name ash-Shām الشام /ʔaʃ-ʃaːm/, which means the north. After World War I, the name Syria was applied to the French Mandate for Syria and the Lebanon, the area was passed to French and British Mandates following World War I and divided into Greater Lebanon, various Syrian-mandate states, Mandatory Palestine and Transjordan. The Syrian-mandate states were unified as the State of Syria. Throughout this period, pan-Syrian nationalists advocated for the creation of a Greater Syria, the name Syria derives from the ancient Greek name for Syrians, Σύριοι Syrioi, which the Greeks applied without distinction to various Near Eastern peoples living under the rule of Assyria. Modern scholarship confirms the Greek word traces back to the cognate Ἀσσυρία, Assyria, the classical Arabic pronunciation of Syria is Sūriyya. This name was not widely used among Muslims before about 1870, according to the Syrian Orthodox Church, Syrian used to mean Christian in early Christianity. In English, Syrian historically meant a Syrian Christian, following the declaration of Syria in 1936, the term Syrian became to designate citizens of that state regardless of ethnicity. The adjective Syriac has come into use since as a demonym to avoid the ambiguity of Syrian. To some opinions, the origin of the Hellenistic term Syria is bound in the etymology of the Neo-Assyrian Empire, Syria in this wider sense could correspond to Greater Assyria and include all of the Levant and Mesopotamia. Currently, the Arabic term Suriyya refers to the state of Syria. The term etymologically means land of the hand, referring to the fact that for someone in the Hejaz facing east. Sham comes from the Arabic consonantal root shin-hamza-mim ش ء م, as seen in alternative Arabic spellings such as شأم, there is no connection with the name of Shem son of Noah, as is sometimes assumed. Herodotus uses Συρία to refer to the stretch of land from the Halys river, including Cappadocia in todays Turkey to the Mount Casius, which Herodotus says is located just south of Lake Serbonis. According to Herodotus various remarks in different locations, he describes Syria to include the stretch of Phoenician coastal line as well as cities such Cadytis. In Greek usage, Syria and Assyria were used almost interchangeably, various writers used the term to describe the entire Levant region during this period, the New Testament used the name in this sense on numerous occasions
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Christian heresy
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When heresy is used today with reference to Christianity, it denotes the formal denial or doubt of a core doctrine of the Christian faith as defined by one or more of the Christian churches. In Western Christianity, heresy most commonly refers to those beliefs which were declared to be anathema by any of the ecumenical councils recognized by the Catholic Church, in the East, the term heresy is eclectic and can refer to anything at variance with Church tradition. Since the Great Schism and the Protestant Reformation, various Christian churches have used the concept in proceedings against individuals. The Catholic Church distinguishes between formal heresy and material heresy, the former involves willful and persistent adherence to an error in matters of faith and is a grave sin and produces excommunication. Material heresy is the holding of erroneous opinions through no fault of ones own and is not sinful, historical examination of heresies focuses on a mixture of theological, spiritual, and socio-political underpinnings to explain and describe their development. For example, accusations of heresy have been levelled against a group of believers when their beliefs challenged, or were seen to challenge, some heresies have also been doctrinally based, in which a teaching was deemed to be inconsistent with the fundamental tenets of orthodox dogma. The study of heresy requires an understanding of the development of orthodoxy, Heresy remained an officially punishable offence in Roman Catholic nations until the late 18th century. In Spain, heretics were prosecuted and punished during the Counter-Enlightenment movement of the restoration of the monarchy there after the Napoleonic Era, the word appears in the New Testament and was appropriated by the Church to mean a sect or division that threatened the unity of Christians. Heresy eventually became regarded as a departure from orthodoxy, a sense in which heterodoxy was already in Christian use soon after the year 100. Since the time of the apostles, the term anathema has come to mean a form of religious sanction beyond excommunication. The earliest recorded instance of the form is in the Council of Elvira, in his book Orthodoxy, G. K. Chesterton asserts that there have been substantial disagreements about faith from the time of the New Testament and Jesus. He pointed out that the Apostles all argued against changing the teachings of Christ as did the earliest church fathers including Ignatius of Antioch, Irenaeus, Justin Martyr and Polycarp. The development of doctrine, the position of orthodoxy, and the relationship between the various opinions is a matter of continuing theological debate. Early attacks upon alleged heresies formed the matter of Tertullians Prescription Against Heretics, the development of doctrine, the position of orthodoxy, and the relationship between the early Church and early heretical groups is a matter of academic debate. Scholars such as Pagels and Ehrman have built on Bauers original thesis, drawing upon distinctions between Jewish Christians, Gentile Christians, and other groups such as Gnostics, they see early Christianity as fragmented and with contemporaneous competing orthodoxies. Ehrmans view is that while the specifics of Bauers demonstration were later rejected, his intuitions are broadly accepted by scholars, turners response was in objection to Bauers. In 2006, Darrell Bock addressed Walter Bauers theory, stating that it does not show an equality between the church and outsiders including Simon Magus. Florovksy stating as an apology that the very tenet of Catholic or sobornost was the churchs response to the idea that there were multiple orthodoxies
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Vernacular
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Some linguists use vernacular and nonstandard dialect as synonyms. The use of vernacular is not recent, here vernacular, mother language and dialect are already in use in a modern sense. The figurative meaning was broadened from the diminutive extended words vernaculus, varro, the classical Latin grammarian, used the term vocabula vernacula, termes de la langue nationale or vocabulary of the national language as opposed to foreign words. In general linguistics, a vernacular is contrasted with a lingua franca, for instance, in Western Europe until the 17th century, most scholarly works had been written in Latin, which was serving as a lingua franca. Works written in Romance languages are said to be in the vernacular, the Divina Commedia, the Cantar de Mio Cid, and The Song of Roland are examples of early vernacular literature in Italian, Spanish, and French, respectively. In Europe, Latin was used instead of vernacular languages in varying forms until c. 1701, in its latter stage as New Latin, in Catholicism, vernacular bibles were later provided, but Latin was used at Tridentine Mass until the Second Vatican Council of 1965. Certain groups, notably Traditionalist Catholics, continue to practice Latin Mass, in India, the 12th century Bhakti movement led to the translation of Sanskrit texts to the vernacular. In science, a user of the vernacular was Galileo. 1600, though some of his works remained in Latin, a later example is Isaac Newton, whose 1687 Principia was in Latin, but whose 1704 Opticks was in English. Latin continues to be used in fields of science, notably binomial nomenclature in biology, while other fields such as mathematics use vernacular. In diplomacy, French displaced Latin in Europe in the 1710s, certain languages have both a classical form and various vernacular forms, with two widely used examples being Arabic and Chinese, see Varieties of Arabic and Chinese language. In the 1920s, due to the May Fourth Movement, Classical Chinese was replaced by written vernacular Chinese, the vernacular is also often contrasted with a liturgical language, a specialized use of a former lingua franca. Similarly, in Hindu culture, traditionally religious or scholarly works were written in Sanskrit or in Tamil in Tamil country. With the rise of the movement from the 12th century onwards, religious works were created in the other languages, Hindi, Kannada, Telugu. These circumstances are a contrast between a vernacular and language variant used by the same speakers, according to one school of linguistic thought, all such variants are examples of a linguistic phenomenon termed diglossia. In it, the language is bifurcated, i. e. the speaker learns two forms of the language and ordinarily uses one but under special circumstances the other. The one most frequently used is the low variant, equivalent to the vernacular, the concept was introduced to linguistics by Charles A. Ferguson, but Ferguson explicitly excluded variants as divergent as dialects or different languages or as similar as styles or registers
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Vetus Latina
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However, the Vetus Latina texts survive in places in the liturgy. The Vetus Latina manuscripts that are preserved today are dated from 350 to the 13th century AD, there is no single Vetus Latina Bible. Instead, Vetus Latina is a collection of biblical texts that are Latin translations of Septuagint passages that preceded Jeromes Vulgate. After comparing readings for Luke 24, 4–5 in Vetus Latina manuscripts, other biblical passages, however, are extant only in excerpts or fragments. The language of Vetus Latina translations is uneven in quality, as Augustine of Hippo lamented in De Doctrina Christiana, grammatical solecisms abound, some reproduce literally Greek or Hebrew idioms as they appear in the Septuagint. Many grammatical idiosyncrasies come from the use of Vulgar Latin grammatical forms in the text and he broke with church tradition and translated most of the Old Testament of his Vulgate from Hebrew sources rather than from the Greek Septuagint. His choice was criticized by Augustine, his contemporary, a flood of still less moderate criticism came from those who regarded Jerome as a forger. Jeromes Vulgate offered a single, stylistically consistent Latin text translated from the original tongues, Jerome, in a letter, complains that his new version was initially disliked by Christians who were familiar with the phrasing of the old translations. Vetus Latina translations of books continued to be found in manuscripts as late as the 13th century. However, the Vulgate generally displaced the Vetus Latina as the standard Latin translation of the Bible to be used by the Catholic church, below are some comparisons of the Vetus Latina with text from critical editions of the Vulgate
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Gospel of the Hebrews
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The fragments contain traditions of Jesus pre-existence, incarnation, baptism, and probable temptation, along with some of his sayings. It was probably composed in Greek in the first decades of the 2nd century and it is the only Jewish–Christian gospel which the Church Fathers referred to by name, believing there was only one Hebrew Gospel, perhaps in different versions. The gospel was used as a supplement to the gospels to provide source material for their commentaries based on scripture. Modern scholars classify the Gospel of the Hebrews as one of the three Jewish–Christian gospels, along with the Gospel of the Nazarenes and the Gospel of the Ebionites, others suggest that these three titles may have been referring to one and the same book. All are known only from fragments preserved in quotations by the early Church Fathers. The relationship between the Jewish–Christian gospels and a hypothetical original Hebrew Gospel remains a speculation, the Gospel of the Hebrews is the only Jewish–Christian gospel which the Church Fathers refer to by name. The language of composition is thought to be Greek, instead, it seems to be taken from alternative oral forms of the same underlying traditions. Some of the fragments suggest a syncretic gnostic influence, while others support close ties to traditional Jewish Wisdom literature, the Gospel of the Hebrews is preserved in fragments quoted or summarized by various early Church Fathers. Based on the fragments, the overall structure of the gospel appears to have been similar to the canonical ones. It consisted of a narrative of the life of Jesus which included his baptism, temptation, transfiguration, last supper, crucifixion, the gospel also contained sayings of Jesus. The events in the life of Jesus have been interpreted in a way that reflects Jewish ideas present in a Hellenistic cultural environment. There is wide agreement about seven quotations cited by Philipp Vielhauer in the critical 3rd German edition of Wilhelm Schneemelchers New Testament Apocrypha, the translations below follow Vielhauers order,1. When Christ wished to come upon the earth to men, the good Father summoned a mighty power in heaven, which was called Michael, and the power came into the world and was called Mary, and Christ was in her womb seven months. Fragment 1 identifies Jesus as the son of the Holy Spirit, for thou art my rest, thou art my first-begotten Son that reignest for ever. Fragment 2 uses the language of Jewish Wisdom literature, but applies it to the Holy Spirit, the rest that the Holy Spirit finds in the Son belongs to the Christian gnostic idea of the pre-existent Redeemer who finally becomes incarnate in Jesus. Even so did my mother, the Holy Spirit, take me by one of my hairs and he that marvels shall reign, and he that has reigned shall rest. He that seeks will not rest till he finds, and he that has found shall marvel, and he that has marveled shall reign, fragment 4 is a chain-saying, seek–find–marvel–reign–rest, describing the steps towards salvation, where rest equals the state of salvation. The saying is similar to found in Jewish Wisdom literature
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Vulgate
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The Vulgate is a late fourth-century Latin translation of the Bible that became, during the 16th century, the Catholic Churchs officially promulgated Latin version of the Bible. The translation was largely the work of St. Jerome, who, in 382 AD, was commissioned by Pope Damasus I to revise the Vetus Latina collection of biblical texts in Latin then in use by the Church. Once published, it was adopted and eventually eclipsed the Vetus Latina and, by the 13th century, was known as the versio vulgata or, more simply. The Catholic Church affirmed it as its official Latin Bible at the Council of Trent, the Vulgate has a compound text that is not entirely the work of Jerome. Its components include, Jeromes independent translation from the Hebrew, the books of the Hebrew Bible, usually not including his translation of the Psalms. Translation from the Greek of Theodotion by Jerome, The three additions to the Book of Daniel, Song of the Three Children, Story of Susanna, and The Idol Bel and the Dragon. The Song of the Three Children was retained within the narrative of Daniel, translation from the Septuagint by Jerome, the Rest of Esther. Jerome gathered all these additions together at the end of the Book of Esther, translation from the Hexaplar Septuagint by Jerome, his Gallican version of the Book of Psalms. Jeromes Hexaplaric revisions of other books of Old Testament continued to circulate in Italy for several centuries, free translation by Jerome from a secondary Aramaic version, Tobias and Judith. Revision by Jerome of the Old Latin, corrected with reference to the oldest Greek manuscripts available, Old Latin, more or less revised by a person or persons unknown, Baruch, Letter of Jeremiah,3 Esdras, Acts, Epistles, and the Apocalypse. Old Latin, wholly unrevised, Epistle to the Laodiceans, Prayer of Manasses,4 Esdras, Wisdom, Ecclesiasticus, and 1 and 2 Maccabees. Jerome did not embark on the work with the intention of creating a new version of the whole Bible, how much of the rest of the New Testament he then revised is difficult to judge today, but little of his work survived in the Vulgate text. Jerome first embarked on a revision of the Psalms, translated from the revised Septuagint Greek column of the Hexapla and he also appears to have undertaken further new translations into Latin from the Hexaplar Septuagint column for other books. But from 390 to 405, Jerome translated anew from the Hebrew all 39 books in the Hebrew Bible, including a further version of the Psalms. This new translation of the Psalms was labelled by him as iuxta Hebraeos, the Vulgate is usually credited as being the first translation of the Old Testament into Latin directly from the Hebrew Tanakh, rather than the Greek Septuagint. Moreover, Augustine in that passage demonstrates his own preference for the Greek thus eliminating any possibility that Saint Jerome translated the OT from Greek. In these letters, Jerome described those books or portions of books in the Septuagint that were not found in the Hebrew as being non-canonical, Jeromes views did not, however, prevail, and all complete manuscripts and editions of the Vulgate include some or all of these books. Their style is markedly distinguishable from Jeromes
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Codex Fuldensis
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The Codex Fuldensis, also known as the Victor Codex, designated by F, is a New Testament manuscript based on the Latin Vulgate made between 541 and 546. The codex is considered the second most important witness to the Vulgate text and it is an important witness in any discussion about the authenticity of 1 Corinthians 14, 34-35 and the Comma Johanneum. It is one of the earliest dated manuscripts of the New Testament and it was corrected until 2 May,546 CE. It contains the Diatessaron and 23 canonical books of the New Testament, plus the Epistle to the Laodiceans, and it represents the Italian type of text. The four gospels are harmonised into a continuous narrative, according to the form of Tatians Diatessaron. Its text is akin to that of Codex Amiatinus, the harmonised gospel text is preceded by a listing of its sections, with a summary of their contents, which was copied unchanged from the Old Latin exemplar. From this it can be determined that the Old Latin source had lacked the Genealogy of Jesus, but that the source had included the passage of Jesus and this section is marked by umlaut in Codex Vaticanus. Several manuscripts of the Western text-type, placed section 1 Cor 14, also codex 88, which is not representative of the Western text, placed this section after 1 Cor 14,40. One manuscript of the Vulgate does the same, according to Metzger the evidence of the codex is ambiguous. Perhaps the scribe, without actually deleting verses 34-35 from the text, the 1 John text section omits the Comma Johanneum. However, the Vulgate Prologue to the Canonical Epistles includes a reference to the heavenly witnesses. In this Prologue unfaithful translators are criticized for removal of the verse, the Prologue from about 1700 on had often been attacked as a late forgery, not really by Jerome, at the time the earliest known extant Vulgate with the Prologue was about 800 AD. The Prologue was noted to be in the Codex Fuldensis in the mid-to-late 1800s, Victor of Capua reports that he found an Old Latin harmony of the Gospels, which he recognised as following Tatians arrangement of the Diatessaron. He substituted the Vulgate text for the Old Latin, appending the rest of the New Testament books from the standard Vulgate, St. Boniface acquired the codex and in 745 gave it to the monastic library, in Fulda, where it remains to the present day. It served as the text for vernacular harmonies in Old High German, Eastern Frankish. Codex Sangallensis 56 was copied, in the 9th century, from the Diatessaron of the Codex Fuldensis and it also contains some extracts from the Acts of the Apostles. Ernst Ranke published the text of the codex in 1868, list of New Testament Latin manuscripts Biblical manuscripts Textual criticism Ernestus Ranke, Codex Fuldensis. John Chapman, Notes on the Early History of the Vulgate Gospels, heinrich Joseph Vogels, Beiträge zur Geschichte des Diatessaron im Abendland, Münster 1919, pp. 1–34
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Fulda
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Fulda is a city in Hesse, Germany, it is located on the river Fulda and is the administrative seat of the Fulda district. In 1990, the hosted the 30th Hessentag state festival. In 744 Saint Sturm, a disciple of Saint Boniface, founded the Benedictine monastery of Fulda as one of Bonifaces outposts in the reorganization of the church in Germany. It later served as a base from which missionaries could accompany Charlemagnes armies in their political and military campaign to fully conquer, the initial grant for the abbey was signed by Carloman, the son of Charles Martel. The support of the Mayors of the Palace and later, the early Pippinid, Fulda also received support from many of the leading families of the Carolingian world. Sturm, whose tenure as abbot lasted from 747 until 779, was most likely related to the Agilolfing dukes of Bavaria. Fulda also received large and constant donations from the Etichonids, a family in Alsace. Under Sturm, the donations Fulda received from these and other important families helped in the establishment of daughter-houses -Johannesberg and Petersberg - near Fulda, after his martyrdom by the Frisians, the relics of Saint Boniface were brought back to Fulda. Because of the stature this afforded the monastery, the donations increased, meanwhile, Saint Lullus, successor of Boniface as archbishop of Mainz, tried to absorb the abbey into his archbishopric, but failed. This was one reason that he founded Hersfeld Abbey - to limit the attempts of the enlargement of Fulda, between 790 and 819 the community rebuilt the main monastery church to more fittingly house the relics. The crypt of the abbey church still holds those relics. A small, 9th-century chapel remains standing within walking distance of the church, rabanus Maurus served as abbot at Fulda from 822 to 842. Prince-abbot Balthasar von Dernbach adopted a policy of counterreformation, in 1571 he called in the Jesuits to found a school and college. He insisted that the members of the chapter should return to a form of life. The foundation of the abbey Fulda and its territory originated with an Imperial grant, Fulda became a bishopric in 1752 and the prince-abbots were given the additional title of prince-bishop. The prince-abbots ruled Fulda and the region until the bishopric was forcibly dissolved by Napoleon in 1802. The city went through a building campaign in the 18th century. This included a remodeling of Fulda Cathedral and of the Stadtschloss by Johann Dientzenhofer, the city parish church, St. Blasius, was built between 1771–85
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Old High German
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Old High German is the earliest stage of the German language, conventionally covering the period from around 700 to 1050. Coherent written texts do not appear until the half of the 8th century. There are, however, a number of Elder Futhark inscriptions dating to the 6th century, as well as single words, during the migration period, the Elbe Germanic tribes settled in what became Alamannia, the Duchy of Bavaria and the Kingdom of Lombardy. Old High German comprises the dialects of these groups which underwent the Second Sound Shift during the 6th Century, namely all of Elbe Germanic, in the south, the Langobards, who had settled in Northern Italy, maintained their dialect until their conquest by Charlemagne in 774. This area did not become German-speaking again until the German eastward expansion of the early 12th century, though there was some attempt at conquest, Old High German literacy is a product of the monasteries, notably at St. Gallen, Reichenau and Fulda. Its origins lie in the establishment of the German church by Boniface in the mid 8th century, einhard tells how Charlemagne himself ordered that the epic lays should be collected for posterity. It was the neglect or religious zeal of later generations that led to the loss of these records, thus, it was Charlemagnes weak successor, Louis the Pious, who destroyed his fathers collection of epic poetry on account of its pagan content. Hrabanus Maurus, a student of Alcuins and abbot at Fulda from 822, was an important advocate of the cultivation of German literacy, among his students were Walafrid Strabo and Otfrid of Weissenburg. Notker Labeo towards the end of the Old High German period was among the greatest stylists in the language, the main difference between Old High German and the West Germanic dialects from which it developed is that it underwent the High German consonant shift. This is generally dated approximately to the late 5th and early 6th centuries—hence dating its start to around 500, the result of this sound change is that the consonantal system of German remains different from all other West Germanic languages, including English and Low German. Grammatically, however, Old High German remained very similar to Old English, Old Dutch, by the mid 11th century the many different vowels found in unstressed syllables had all been reduced to /ə/. Since these vowels were part of the endings in the nouns and verbs. For these reasons,1050 is seen as the start of the Middle High German period, for this reason the dialects may be termed monastery dialects. It declined after the conquest of the Lombard Kingdom by the Franks in 774 and it is classified as Upper German on the basis of evidence of the Second Sound Shift. The continued existence of a West Frankish dialect in the Western, claims that this might have been the language of the Carolingian court or that it is attested in the Ludwigslied, whose presence in a French manuscript suggests bilingualism, are controversial. The charts show the vowel and consonant systems of the East Franconian dialect in the 9th century and this is the dialect of the monastery of Fulda, and specifically of the Old High German Tatian. Old High German had five long vowels and six phonemic short vowels. Both occurred in stressed and unstressed syllables, notes, All back vowels likely had front-vowel allophones as a result of Umlaut
38.
Old Saxon
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Old Saxon, also known as Old Low German, is a Germanic language and the earliest recorded form of Low German. It belongs to the West Germanic branch and is most closely related to the Anglo-Frisian languages and it is documented from the 8th century until the 12th century, when it evolved into Middle Low German. It was spoken on the north-west coast of Germany and in the Netherlands by Saxon peoples and it is close enough to Old Anglo-Frisian that it partially participates in the Ingvaeonic nasal spirant law, it is also closely related to Old Dutch. The grammar of Old Saxon was fully inflected with five grammatical cases, the dual forms occurred in the first and second persons only and referred to groups of two. For a long time, Old Saxon and Old Dutch were not distinguished, there are also various differences in their phonological evolutions, Old Saxon being considered as an Ingvaeonic language whereas Old Dutch is an Istvaeonic language. Old Saxon probably evolved primarily from Ingvaeonic dialects in the West Germanic branch of Proto-Germanic in the 5th century. However, it seems that some Middle Dutch took the Old Saxon a-stem ending from some Middle Low German dialects, however,1150 marks the inceptive period of profuse Low German writing wherein the language is patently different from Old Saxon. One of the most striking differences between Middle Low German and Old Saxon is in a feature of speech known as vowel reduction, while round vowels in word-final syllables were rather frequent in Old Saxon, in Middle Low German, such are leveled to a schwa. Thus, such Old Saxon words like gisprekan or dagô became gespreken and daghe, Old Saxon did not participate in the High German consonant shift, and thus preserves stop consonants p, t, k that have been shifted in Old High German to various fricatives and affricates. The Germanic diphthongs ai, au consistently develop into long vowels ē, ō, whereas in Old High German they appear either as ei, ou or ē, ō depending on the following consonant. Old Saxon, alone of the West Germanic languages except for Frisian, consistently preserves Germanic -j- after a consonant, Germanic umlaut, when it occurs with short a, is inconsistent, e. g. hebbean or habbian to have. This feature was carried over into the descendant-language of Old Saxon, Middle Low German, apart from the e, however, the umlaut is not marked in writing. The table below lists the consonants of Old Saxon, phonemes written in parentheses represent allophones and are not independent phonemes. Notes, The voiceless spirants /f/, /θ/, and /s/ gain voiced allophones when between vowels and this change is only faithfully reflected in writing for. The other two continued to be written as before. Beginning in the later Old Saxon period, stops became devoiced word-finally as well, notably, geminated /v/ gave /bb/, and geminated /ɣ/ probably gave /ɡɡ/. Germanic *h is retained as in these positions and thus merges with devoiced /ɣ/, notes, Long vowels were rare in unstressed syllables and mostly occurred due to suffixation or compounding. Notes, The closing diphthongs /ei/ and /ou/ sometimes occur in texts, probably under the influence of Franconian or High German dialects, the situation for the front opening diphthongs is somewhat unclear in some texts
39.
Heliand
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The Heliand is an epic poem in Old Saxon, written in the first half of the 9th century. The title means saviour in Old Saxon, and the poem is a Biblical paraphrase that recounts the life of Jesus in the alliterative verse style of a Germanic epic, Heliand is the largest known work of written Old Saxon. The poem must have been popular and widespread because it exists in two manuscript versions and four fragmentary versions. It takes up about 6,000 lines, a praefatio exists, which could have been commissioned by either Louis the Pious or Louis the German. This praefatio was first printed by Matthias Flacius in 1562, the first mention of the poem itself in modern times occurred when Franciscus Junius found a fragment in 1587. It was not printed until 1705, by George Hickes, the first modern edition of the poem was published in 1830 by Johann Andreas Schmeller. Than tôgid he iu ên gôdlîc hûs, hôhan soleri, the is bihangen al fagarun fratahun, thar gi frummien sculun uuerdscepi mînan. Thar bium ik uuiskumo selƀo mid mînun gesîđun, thô uurđun sân aftar thiu thar te Hierusalem iungaron Kristes forđuuard an ferdi, fundun all sô he sprak uuordtêcan uuâr, ni uuas thes giuuand ênig. Taken from The Saxon Savior by G. Ronald Murphy, S. J and it contained when entire about 6000 lines, and portions of it are preserved in two nearly complete manuscripts and four fragments. The Cotton MS. in the British Library, written probably in the half of the 10th century, is one of the nearly complete manuscripts. It is believed to have a closer to the original version because it is divided into fitts. This manuscript is now retained in Munich at the Bavarian State Library, because it was produced on calf skin of high quality, it has been preserved in good condition. Neumes above the text in this version reveal that the Heliand may have been sung, a fragment discovered at Prague in 1881 contains lines 958–1006, and another, in the Vatican Library, discovered by K. Zangemeister in 1894, contains lines 1279–1358. Two additional fragments exist that were discovered most recently, the first was discovered in 1979 at a Jesuit High School in Straubing by B. Bischoff and is held in Bayerische Staatsbibliothek. It consists of three leaves and contains 157 poetic lines. The final fragment was found in Leipzig in 2006 by T. Doring and this fragment consists of only one leaf that contains 47 lines of poetry, and it is currently kept at Bibliotheca Albertina. As mentioned above, the Heliand was probably written at the request of emperor Louis the Pious around AD830 to combat Saxon ambivalence toward Christianity
40.
Middle English
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This stage of the development of the English language roughly followed the High to the Late Middle Ages. Middle English developed out of Late Old English, seeing many dramatic changes in its grammar, pronunciation and this largely forms the basis for Modern English spelling, although pronunciation has changed considerably since that time. Middle English was succeeded in England by the era of Early Modern English, by that time, a variant of the Northumbrian dialect was developing into the Scots language. During the Middle English period many Old English grammatical features were simplified or disappeared, noun, adjective and verb inflections were simplified, a process that included the reduction of most grammatical case distinctions. Middle English also saw an adoption of Norman French vocabulary, especially in areas such as politics, law. Everyday English vocabulary remained mostly Germanic, with Old Norse influence becoming apparent, significant changes in pronunciation took place, especially for long vowels and diphthongs, which in the later Middle English period began to undergo the Great Vowel Shift. Little survives of early Middle English literature, most likely due to the Norman domination, poets wrote both in the vernacular and courtly English. It is popularly believed that William Shakespeare wrote in Middle English, the latter part of the 11th century was a period of transition from Late Old English to Early Middle English. The influence of Old Norse certainly helped move English from a synthetic language towards a more analytic or isolating word order and it was, after all, a salutary influence. The gain was greater than the loss, there was a gain in directness, in clarity, and in strength. The change to Old English from Old Norse was substantive, pervasive and it is most important to recognise that in many words the English and Scandinavian language differed chiefly in their inflectional elements. The body of the word was so nearly the same in the two languages only the endings would put obstacles in the way of mutual understanding. In the mixed population which existed in the Danelaw these endings must have led to confusion, tending gradually to become obscured. This blending of peoples and languages resulted in simplifying English grammar. There are also many Norman-derived terms relating to the cultures that arose in the 12th century. Sometimes, and particularly later, words were taken from Latin, giving such sets as kingly, later French borrowings came from standard rather than Norman French, this leads to such cognate pairs as warden, guardian. The end of Anglo-Saxon rule did not, of course, change the language immediately, the general population would have spoken the same dialects as before the Conquest, these changed slowly until written records of them became available for study, which varies in different regions. Once the writing of Old English came to an end, Middle English had no standard language, Early Middle English has a largely Anglo-Saxon vocabulary, but a greatly simplified inflectional system
