King James Version
The King James Version known as the King James Bible or the Authorized Version, is an English translation of the Christian Bible for the Church of England, begun in 1604 and completed as well as published in 1611 under the sponsorship of James VI and I. The books of the King James Version include the 39 books of the Old Testament, an intertestamental section containing 14 books of the Apocrypha, the 27 books of the New Testament; the translation is noted for its "majesty of style", has been described as one of the most important books in English culture and a driving force in the shaping of the English-speaking world. It was first printed by Robert Barker, the King's Printer, was the third translation into English approved by the English Church authorities: The first had been the Great Bible, commissioned in the reign of King Henry VIII, the second had been the Bishops' Bible, commissioned in the reign of Queen Elizabeth I. On the European continent, the first generation of Calvinists had produced the Geneva Bible of 1560 from the original Hebrew and Greek Scriptures, influential in the writing of the Authorized King James Version.
In January 1604, King James convened the Hampton Court Conference, where a new English version was conceived in response to the problems of the earlier translations perceived by the Puritans, a faction of the Church of England. James gave the translators instructions intended to ensure that the new version would conform to the ecclesiology of, reflect the episcopal structure of, the Church of England and its belief in an ordained clergy; the translation was done by 47 scholars. In common with most other translations of the period, the New Testament was translated from Greek, the Old Testament from Hebrew and Aramaic, the Apocrypha from Greek and Latin. In the Book of Common Prayer, the text of the Authorized Version replaced the text of the Great Bible for Epistle and Gospel readings, as such was authorised by Act of Parliament. By the first half of the 18th century, the Authorized Version had become unchallenged as the English translation used in Anglican and English Protestant churches, except for the Psalms and some short passages in the Book of Common Prayer of the Church of England.
Over the course of the 18th century, the Authorized Version supplanted the Latin Vulgate as the standard version of scripture for English-speaking scholars. With the development of stereotype printing at the beginning of the 19th century, this version of the Bible became the most printed book in history all such printings presenting the standard text of 1769 extensively re-edited by Benjamin Blayney at Oxford, nearly always omitting the books of the Apocrypha. Today the unqualified title "King James Version" indicates this Oxford standard text; the title of the first edition of the translation, in Early Modern English, was "THE HOLY BIBLE, Conteyning the Old Teſtament, AND THE NEW: Newly Tranſlated out of the Originall tongues: & with the former Tranſlations diligently compared and reuiſed, by his Maiesties ſpeciall Comandement". The title page carries the words "Appointed to be read in Churches", F. F. Bruce suggests it was "probably authorised by order in council" but no record of the authorisation survives "because the Privy Council registers from 1600 to 1613 were destroyed by fire in January 1618/19".
For many years it was common not to give the translation any specific name. In his Leviathan of 1651, Thomas Hobbes referred to it as the English Translation made in the beginning of the Reign of King James. A 1761 "Brief Account of the various Translations of the Bible into English" refers to the 1611 version as a new and more accurate Translation, despite referring to the Great Bible by its name, despite using the name "Rhemish Testament" for the Douay-Rheims Bible version. A "History of England", whose fifth edition was published in 1775, writes that new translation of the Bible, viz. that now in Use, was begun in 1607, published in 1611. King James's Bible is used as the name for the 1611 translation in Charles Butler's Horae Biblicae. Other works from the early 19th century confirm the widespread use of this name on both sides of the Atlantic: it is found both in a "Historical sketch of the English translations of the Bible" published in Massachusetts in 1815, in an English publication from 1818, which explicitly states that the 1611 version is "generally known by the name of King James's Bible".
This name was found as King James' Bible: for example in a book review from 1811. The phrase "King James's Bible" is used as far back as 1715, although in this case it is not clear whether this is a name or a description; the use of Authorized Version and used as a name, is found as early as 1814. For some time before this, descriptive phrases such as "our present, only publicly authorised version", "our Authorized version", "the authorized version" are found; the Oxford English Dictionary records a usage in 1824. In Britain, the 1611 translation is known as the "Authorized Version" today; as early as 1814, we find King James' Version, evidently a descriptive phrase, being used. "The King James Version" is found, unequivocally used as a name, in a letter from 1855. The next year King James Bible, with no possessive, appears as a name in a Scottish source. In the United States, the "1611 translation" is generally
Searches for Noah's Ark
Searches for Noah's Ark have been made from at least the time of Eusebius to the present day. Despite many expeditions, no physical proof of the ark has been reliably identified. Many of the supposed findings and methods are regarded as pseudoscience and pseudoarchaeology by geologists and archaeologists. Modern organized searches for the ark tend to originate in American evangelical circles. According to Larry Eskridge, An interesting phenomenon that has arisen within twentieth-century conservative American evangelism – the widespread conviction that the ancient Ark of Noah is embedded in ice high atop Mount Ararat, waiting to be found, it is a story that has combined earnest faith with the lure of adventure, questionable evidence with startling claims. The hunt for the ark, like evangelism itself, is a complex blend of the rational and the supernatural, the modern and the premodern. While it acknowledges a debt to pure faith in a literal reading of the Scriptures and centuries of legend, the conviction that the Ark lies on Ararat is a recent one, backed by a twentieth-century canon of evidence that includes stories of shadowy eyewitnesses, tales of mysterious missing photographs, rumors of atheistic conspiracy, pieces of questionable "ark wood" from the mountain.
Moreover, it skirts the domain of pop pseudoscience and the paranormal, making the attempt to find the ark the evangelical equivalent of the search for Bigfoot or the Loch Ness monster. In all these ways, it reveals much about evangelicals' distrust of mainstream science and the motivations and modus operandi of the scientific elite. Ark-seeker Richard Carl Bright considers the search for the ark a religious quest, dependent on God's blessing for its success. Bright is confident that there is a multinational government conspiracy to hide the "truth" about the ark: I believe that the governments of Turkey and the United States know where the ark sits, they suppress the information. The structure will be revealed in its time. We climb the search, hoping it is, in fact, God's time as we climb. Use us, O Lord, is our prayer. According to Genesis 8:4, the Ark came to rest "on the mountains of Ararat." Early commentators such as Josephus, authorities quoted by him, Hieronymus the Egyptian and Nicolaus of Damascus, record the tradition that these "mountains of Ararat" are to be found in the region known as Armenia corresponding to Eastern Anatolia.
Syrian tradition of the early centuries BC had a tradition of the ark landing at Mount Judi, where according to Josephus the remains of the ark were still shown in the 1st century BC. The location of the "Place of Descent" described by Josephus was some 100 km to the southeast of the peak now known as Mount Ararat, in what is today Iraqi Kurdistan. According to Jewish Rabbinic tradition, the Ark was looted in antiquity, the remains being used for idol worship, as related in the Talmud Tractate Sanhedrin by Sennacherib circa 705 – 681 BC, as related in the Midrash anthology Yalkut Shimoni by Haman circa 486–465 BC. Marco Polo wrote in his book, The Travels of Marco Polo: In the heart of the Armenian mountain range, the mountain's peak is shaped like a cube, on which Noah's ark is said to have rested, whence it is called the Mountain of Noah's Ark, it is so long that it takes more than two days to go around it. On the summit the snow lies so deep all the year round that no one can climb it. Sir Walter Raleigh, writing c.
1616, made a laborious argument taking up several whole chapters of his History of the World, that the term "Mountains of Ararat" encompassed all the adjoining and taller ranges of Asia, that Noah's Ark could only have landed in the Orient – since Armenia is not technically east of the plain of Shinar, but more northwest. In 1829, Dr. Friedrich Parrot, who had made an ascent of Greater Ararat, wrote in his Journey to Ararat that "all the Armenians are persuaded that Noah's Ark remains to this day on the top of Ararat, that, in order to preserve it, no human being is allowed to approach it." In 1876, James Bryce, statesman, diplomat and Professor of Civil Law at Oxford, climbed above the tree line and found a slab of hand-hewn timber, four feet long and five inches thick, which he identified as being from the Ark. In 1883, the British Prophetic Messenger and others reported that Turkish commissioners investigating avalanches had seen the Ark. Searches since the mid-20th century have been supported by evangelical, millenarian churches along with local farmers and sustained by ongoing popular interest, faith-based magazines, lecture tours and occasional television specials.
In 1949, Aaron J. Smith, dean of the People's Bible College in Greensboro, NC, led an unsuccessful expedition to locate the ark. Former astronaut James Irwin led two expeditions to Ararat in the 1980s, was kidnapped once, but found no tangible evidence of the Ark. "I've done all I can," he said, "but the Ark continues to elude us." In the 1980s and 1990s, the Durupınar site was promoted by Ron Wyatt. It receives a steady stream of visitors and according to the local authorities a nearby mountain is called "Mount Cudi", making it one of about five Mount Judis in the land of Kurdistan. Geologists have identified the Durupınar site as a natural formation, but Wyatt's Ark Discovery Institute continues to champion its claims. In 2004, Honolulu-based businessman Daniel McGivern announced he would finance a $900,000 expedition to the peak of Greater Ararat in Ju
Vulgate
The Vulgate is a late-4th-century Latin translation of the Bible that became the Catholic Church's promulgated Latin version of the Bible during the 16th century. The translation was the work of Jerome, who in 382 had been commissioned by Pope Damasus I to revise the Vetus Latina Gospels in use by the Roman Church. Jerome, on his own initiative, extended this work of revision and translation to include most of the books of the Bible, once published, the new version was adopted and eclipsed the Vetus Latina; the Catholic Church affirmed the Vulgate as its official Latin Bible at the Council of Trent, though there was no authoritative edition at that time. The Clementine edition of the Vulgate of 1592 became the standard Bible text of the Roman Rite of the Catholic Church and remained so until 1979 when the Nova Vulgata was promulgated; the Vulgate has a compound text, not the work of Jerome. While Jerome revised all the Gospels of the Vetus Latina from the Greek, it is unknown who revised the rest of the New Testament.
Several unrevised books of the Vetus Latina Old Testament commonly became included in the Vulgate. Medieval Vulgate Bibles might further include the Prayer of Manasses, 4 Esdras, the Epistle to the Laodiceans and Psalm 151. Jerome himself translated all books of the Jewish Bible from Hebrew; the Vulgate's components include: Independent translation from the Hebrew by Jerome: the books of the Hebrew Bible, including a translation of the Psalms from the Hebrew, found in early medieval Vulgate manuscripts but is supplanted by Jerome's Gallican version in bibles. This was completed in 405. Free translation from a secondary Aramaic version by Jerome: Tobias and Judith. Translation from the Greek of Theodotion by Jerome: The three additions to the Book of Daniel; the Song of the Three Children was retained within the narrative of Daniel, Susanna was moved by Jerome from before the beginning of Daniel to the end of the book along with Bel and the Dragon. These additions he marked with an obelus to distinguish them from the canonical text.
Translation from the Common Septuagint by Jerome: the Additions to Esther. Jerome gathered all these additions together at the end of the Book of Esther, marking them with an obelus. Translation from the Hexaplar Septuagint by Jerome: his Gallican version of the Book of Psalms. Jerome's Hexaplaric revisions of other books of Old Testament continued to circulate in Italy for several centuries, but only Job and fragments of other books survive. Revision of the Old Latin by Jerome: the Gospels, corrected with reference to the best Greek manuscripts Jerome considered available. Revision of the Old Latin: the Roman Psalter including Psalm 151, undertaken prior to Jerome but continuing in liturgical use, included in many medieval Vulgate Old Testaments and liturgical psalters. Revision of the Old Latin by a person or persons unknown, contemporary with Jerome: Acts, Pauline epistles, Catholic epistles and the Apocalypse. Old Latin, wholly unrevised: Epistle to the Laodiceans, Prayer of Manasses, 4 Esdras, Ecclesiasticus, 1 and 2 Maccabees.
The Book of Baruch and the Letter of Jeremiah were excluded by Jerome as non-canonical, but sporadically re-admitted into the Vulgate tradition from the Additions to the Book of Jeremiah of the Old Latin from the 9th century onwards. Independent translation, distinct from the Old Latin, he had been commissioned by Damasus I in 382 to revise the Old Latin text of the four Gospels from the best Greek texts. By the time of Damasus' death in 384, Jerome had completed this task, together with a more cursory revision from the Greek Common Septuagint of the Old Latin text of the Psalms in the Roman Psalter, a version which he disowned and is now lost. How much of the rest of the New Testament he revised is difficult to judge today, but none of his work survived in the Vulgate text of these books; the revised text of the New Testament outside the Gospels is the work of one or more other scholars. This unknown reviser worked more than Jerome had done using older Greek manuscript sources of Alexandrian text-type, had published a complete revised New Testament text by 410 at the latest, when Pelagius quoted from it in his commentary on the letters of Paul.
In 385, Jerome was forced out of Rome and settled in Bethlehem. There he was able to use a surviving manuscript of the Hexapla from the nearby Theological Library of Caesarea Maritima, a column
Syrians
Syrians known as the Syrian people, are the majority inhabitants of Syria, who share a common Levantine Semitic ancestry. The cultural and linguistic heritage of the Syrian people is a blend of both indigenous elements and the foreign cultures that have come to rule the land and its people over the course of thousands of years; the Syrian Arab Republic has a population of 19.5 million as of 2018, in addition to 6 million Syrian refugees abroad, which includes minorities such as Kurds and others. The dominant racial group are the Syrian descendants of the old indigenous peoples who mixed with Arabs and identify themselves as such in addition to ethnic Arameans; the Syrian diaspora consists of 15 million people of Syrian ancestry who immigrated to North America, European Union member states, South America, the West Indies and Australia. The name "Syrians" was employed by the Romans to denote the inhabitants of Syria; the ethnic designation "Syrian" is derived from the word "Assyrian" and appeared in the Hellenistic and Roman periods.
Some argue that the discovery of the Çineköy inscription in 2000 seems to support the theory that the term Syria derives from Assyria. The Greeks used the terms "Syrian" and "Assyrian" interchangeably to indicate the indigenous Arameans and other inhabitants of the Near East, Herodotus considered "Syria" west of the Euphrates. Starting from the 2nd century BC onwards, ancient writers referred to the Seleucid ruler as the King of Syria or King of the Syrians; the Seleucids designated the districts of Seleucis and Coele-Syria explicitly as Syria and ruled the Syrians as indigenous populations residing west of the Euphrates in contrast to Assyrians who had their native homeland in Mesopotamia east of the Euphrates. However, the interchangeability between Assyrians and Syrians persisted during the Hellenistic period. In one instance, the Ptolemies of Egypt reserved the term "Syrian Village" as the name of a settlement in Fayoum; the term "Syrians" is under debate whether it referred to Jews or to Arameans, as the Ptolemies referred to all peoples originating from Modern Syria and Palestine as Syrian.
The term Syrian was imposed upon Arameans of modern Levant by the Romans. Pompey created the province of Syria, which included modern-day Lebanon and Syria west of the Euphrates, framing the province as a regional social category with civic implications. Plutarch described the indigenous people of this newly created Roman province as "Syrians", so did Strabo, who observed that Syrians resided west of the Euphrates in Roman Syria, he explicitly mentions that those Syrians are the Arameans, whom he calls Aramaei, indicating an extant ethnicity. Posidonius noted. In his book The Great Roman-Jewish War, Josephus, a Hebrew native to the Levant, mentioned the Syrians as the non-Hebrew, non-Greek indigenous inhabitants of Syria; the Arabs called the Levant Al-Sham. The national and ethnic designation "Syrian" is one, reused and espoused by the Syrian people since the advent of modern nationalism, which emanated from Europe and began with the culmination of the Napoleonic Wars of the early 1800s. Syrians emerged from various origins.
Ancient Syria of the first millennium BC was dominated by the Aramaeans. The Seleucids ruled the Syrians as a conquered nation. Outside Greek colonies, the Syrians lived in districts governed by local temples that did not use the Greek civic system of poleis and colonies; the situation changed after the Roman conquest in 64 BC. The idioms Syrian and Greek were used by Rome to denote civic societies instead of separate ethnic groups; the Aramaeans assimilated the earlier populations through their language. Islam and the Arabic language had a similar effect where the Aramaeans themselves became Arabs regardless of their ethnic origin following the Muslim conquest of the Levant. On the eve of the Rashidun Caliphate conquest of the Levant, 634 AD, Syria's population spoke Aramaic. Arabization and Islamization of Syria began in the 7th century, it took several centuries for Islam, the Arab identity, language to spread; the Arabs accommodated many new tribes in isolated areas to avoid conflict with the locals.
Syrians who belonged to Monophysitic denominations welcomed the Arabs as liberators. The Abbasids in the eighth and ninth century sought to integrate the peoples under their authority, the arabization of the administration was one of the tools. Arabization gained momentum with the increasing numbers of Muslim converts.
Tiberian Hebrew
Tiberian Hebrew is the canonical pronunciation of the Hebrew Bible or Tanakh committed to writing by Masoretic scholars living in the Jewish community of Tiberias in ancient Judea c. 750–950 CE. They wrote in the form of Tiberian vocalization, which employed diacritics added to the Hebrew letters: vowel signs and consonant diacritics and the so-called accents; these together with the marginal notes masora magna and masora parva make up the Tiberian apparatus. Though the written vowels and accents came into use only c. 750 CE, the oral tradition they reflect is many centuries older, with ancient roots. Although not in common use today, the Tiberian pronunciation of Hebrew is considered by textual scholars to be the most accurate reproduction of the original Semitic consonantal and vowel sounds of ancient Hebrew. Today's Hebrew grammar books do not teach the Tiberian Hebrew, described by the early grammarians; the prevailing view is that of David Qimchi's system of dividing the graphic signs into "short" and "long" vowels.
The values assigned to the Tiberian vowel signs reveals a Sephardi tradition of pronunciation. The phonology of Tiberian Hebrew can be gleaned from the collation of various sources: The Aleppo Codex of the Hebrew Bible and ancient manuscripts of the Tanakh cited in the margins of early codices, all which preserve direct evidence in a graphic manner of the application of vocalization rules such as the widespread use of chateph vowels where one would expect simple sheva, thus clarifying the color of the vowel pronounced under certain circumstances. Most prominent are the use of chateph chireq in five words under a consonant that follows a guttural vocalized with regular chireq as well as the anomalous use of the raphe sign over letters that do not belong to בגדכפ"ת or א"ה; the explicit statements found in grammars of the 10th and 11th centuries, including the Sefer haQoloth ספר הקולות of Moshe ben Asher. In the last two, it is evident that the chain of transmission is breaking down or that their interpretations are influenced by local tradition.
Ancient manuscripts that preserve similar dialects of Hebrew or Palestinian Aramaic but are vocalized in Tiberian signs in a "vulgar" manner and so reveal a phonetic spelling rather than a phonemic spelling. These include the so-called "pseudo-Ben Naphtali" or "Palestinian-Sephardi" vocalized manuscripts, which conform to the rules enumerated below, such as pronouncing sheva as /ĭ/ before consonantal yod, as in /bĭji/ בְּיִ. Other traditions such as the vocalization of the Land of Israel and the Babylonian vocalization; each community developed systems of notation for pronunciation in each dialect, some of which are common among the traditions. Transcriptions of Biblical text into Arabic characters and vocalized with Tiberian signs. Various oral traditions that of Yemenite Hebrew pronunciation and the Karaite tradition. Tiberian Hebrew has 29 consonantal phonemes, represented by 22 letters; the sin dot distinguishes between the two values of ש, with a dot on the left being pronounced the same as the letter Samekh.
The letters בגדכפת had two values each: fricative. The following are the most salient characteristics of the Tiberian Hebrew consonantal pronunciation: Waw ו conjunctive was read, before the labial vowels and shva, as אוּ /ʔu/, rather than וֻ /wu/; the threefold pronunciation of Resh ר. Though there is no agreement as to how it was pronounced, the rules of distribution of such pronunciation is given in הורית הקורא Horayath haQoré:a) "Normal" Resh /ʀ/ pronounced thus in all other instances: אוֹר b) The "peculiar" resh before or after Lamed or Nun, any of the three being vocalized with simple sheva and Resh after Zayin ז, Daleth ד, Samekh ס, Sin שׂ, Taw ת, Tzadi צ, Teth ט, any of them punctuated with simple sheva: יִשְׂרָאֵל, עָרְלָה; because of the proximity of a dental consonant, it is that Resh was pronounced as an alveolar trill, as it still is in Sephardi Hebrew.c) There is still another pronunciation, affected by the addition of a dagesh in the Resh in certain words in the Bible, which indicates it was doubled: הַרְּאִיתֶם.
As can be seen, this pronunciation has to do with the progressive increase in length of this consonant. It was preserved only by the population of Ma'azya, in Tiberias. A possible threefold pronunciation of Taw ת. There are three words in the Torah and Writings of, said that "the Taw is pronounced harder than usual", it is said that this pronunciation was
Jerome
Saint Jerome was a Christian priest, confessor and historian. He was born at a village near Emona on the border of Dalmatia and Pannonia, he is best known for his translation of most of the Bible into Latin, his commentaries on the Gospels. His list of writings is extensive; the protégé of Pope Damasus I, who died in December of 384, Jerome was known for his teachings on Christian moral life to those living in cosmopolitan centers such as Rome. In many cases, he focused his attention on the lives of women and identified how a woman devoted to Jesus should live her life; this focus stemmed from his close patron relationships with several prominent female ascetics who were members of affluent senatorial families. Jerome is recognised as a saint and Doctor of the Church by the Catholic Church, the Eastern Orthodox Church, the Lutheran Church, the Anglican Communion, his feast day is 30 September. Eusebius Sophronius Hieronymus was born at Stridon around 347AD, he was of Illyrian ancestry, although his ability to speak the Illyrian languages causes controversy.
He was not baptized until about 360–366, when he had gone to Rome with his friend Bonosus of Sardica to pursue rhetorical and philosophical studies. He studied under the grammarian Aelius Donatus. There Jerome learned Latin and at least some Greek, though not the familiarity with Greek literature he would claim to have acquired as a schoolboy; as a student in Rome, Jerome engaged in the superficial escapades and sexual experimentation of students there, which he indulged in quite casually but for which he suffered terrible bouts of guilt afterwards. To appease his conscience, he would visit on Sundays the sepulchres of the martyrs and the Apostles in the catacombs; this experience would remind him of the terrors of hell: Often I would find myself entering those crypts, deep dug in the earth, with their walls on either side lined with the bodies of the dead, where everything was so dark that it seemed as though the Psalmist's words were fulfilled, Let them go down quick into Hell. Here and there the light, not entering in through windows, but filtering down from above through shafts, relieved the horror of the darkness.
But again, as soon as you found yourself cautiously moving forward, the black night closed around and there came to my mind the line of Vergil, "Horror ubique animos, simul ipsa silentia terrent". Jerome used a quote from Virgil—"On all sides round horror spread wide. Jerome used classical authors to describe Christian concepts such as hell that indicated both his classical education and his deep shame of their associated practices, such as pederasty, found in Rome. Although skeptical of Christianity, he was converted. After several years in Rome, he travelled with Bonosus to Gaul and settled in Trier where he seems to have first taken up theological studies, where, for his friend Tyrannius Rufinus, he copied Hilary of Poitiers' commentary on the Psalms and the treatise De synodis. Next came a stay of at least several months, or years, with Rufinus at Aquileia, where he made many Christian friends; some of these accompanied Jerome when about 373, he set out on a journey through Thrace and Asia Minor into northern Syria.
At Antioch, where he stayed the longest, two of his companions died and he himself was ill more than once. During one of these illnesses, he had a vision that led him to lay aside his secular studies and devote himself to God, he seems to have abstained for a considerable time from the study of the classics and to have plunged into that of the Bible, under the impulse of Apollinaris of Laodicea teaching in Antioch and not yet suspected of heresy. Seized with a desire for a life of ascetic penance, Jerome went for a time to the desert of Chalcis, to the southeast of Antioch, known as the "Syrian Thebaid", from the number of eremites inhabiting it. During this period, he seems to have found time for writing, he made his first attempt to learn Hebrew under the guidance of a converted Jew. Around this time he had copied for him a Hebrew Gospel, of which fragments are preserved in his notes, is known today as the Gospel of the Hebrews, which the Nazarenes considered to be the true Gospel of Matthew.
Jerome translated parts of this Hebrew Gospel into Greek. Returning to Antioch in 378 or 379, Jerome was ordained there by Bishop Paulinus unwillingly and on condition that he continue his ascetic life. Soon afterward, he went to Constantinople to pursue a study of Scripture under Gregory Nazianzen, he seems to have spent two years there left, the next three he was in Rome again, as secretary to Pope Damasus I and the leading Roman Christians. Invited for the synod of 382, held to end the schism of Antioch as there were rival claimants to be the proper patriarch in Antioch. Jerome had accompanied one of the claimants, Paulinus back to Rome in order to get more support for him, distinguishing himself to the pope, took a prominent place in his papal councils. Jerome was given duties in Rome, he undertook a revision of the Latin Bible, to be based on the Greek manuscripts of the New Testament, he updated the Psalter containing the Book of Psalms in use in Rome, based on the Septuagint. Though he did not realize it
St Paul's Cathedral
St Paul's Cathedral, London, is an Anglican cathedral, the seat of the Bishop of London and the mother church of the Diocese of London. It is a Grade I listed building, its dedication to Paul the Apostle dates back to the original church on this site, founded in AD 604. The present cathedral, dating from the late 17th century, was designed in the English Baroque style by Sir Christopher Wren, its construction, completed in Wren's lifetime, was part of a major rebuilding programme in the City after the Great Fire of London. The cathedral building destroyed in the Great Fire, now referred to as Old St Paul's Cathedral, was a central focus for medieval and early modern London, including Paul's walk and St. Paul's Churchyard being the site of St. Paul's Cross; the cathedral is one of the most recognisable sights of London. Its dome, framed by the spires of Wren's City churches, has dominated the skyline for over 300 years. At 365 feet high, it was the tallest building in London from 1710 to 1967; the dome is among the highest in the world.
St Paul's is the second-largest church building in area in the United Kingdom after Liverpool Cathedral. Services held at St Paul's have included the funerals of Admiral Nelson, the Duke of Wellington, Sir Winston Churchill and Baroness Thatcher. St Paul's Cathedral is the central subject of much promotional material, as well as of images of the dome surrounded by the smoke and fire of the Blitz; the cathedral is a working church with daily services. The tourist entry fee at the door is £ 20 for adults. A list of the 16 "archbishops" of London was recorded by Jocelyn of Furness in the 12th century, claiming London's Christian community was founded in the 2nd century under the legendary King Lucius and his missionary saints Fagan, Deruvian and Medwin. None of, considered credible by modern historians but, although the surviving text is problematic, either Bishop Restitutus or Adelphius at the 314 Council of Arles seems to have come from Londinium; the location of Londinium's original cathedral is unknown.
Bede records that in AD 604 Augustine of Canterbury consecrated Mellitus as the first bishop to the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of the East Saxons and their king, Sæberht. Sæberht's uncle and overlord, Æthelberht, king of Kent, built a church dedicated to St Paul in London, as the seat of the new bishop, it is assumed, although not proved, that this first Anglo-Saxon cathedral stood on the same site as the medieval and the present cathedrals. On the death of Sæberht in about 616, his pagan sons expelled Mellitus from London, the East Saxons reverted to paganism; the fate of the first cathedral building is unknown. Christianity was restored among the East Saxons in the late 7th century and it is presumed that either the Anglo-Saxon cathedral was restored or a new building erected as the seat of bishops such as Cedd and Earconwald, the last of whom was buried in the cathedral in 693; this building, or a successor, was rebuilt in the same year. King Æthelred the Unready was buried in the cathedral on his death in 1016.
The cathedral was burnt, with much of the city, in a fire in 1087, as recorded in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. The present structure of St Peter upon Cornhill was designed by Christopher Wren following the Great Fire of London in 1666, it stands upon the highest point in the area of old Londinium, medieval legends tie it to the city's earliest Christian community. In 1995, however, a large and ornate 5th-century building on Tower Hill was excavated, which might have been the city's cathedral; the Elizabethan antiquarian William Camden argued that a temple to the goddess Diana had stood during Roman times on the site occupied by the medieval St Paul's Cathedral. Wren reported that he had found no trace of any such temple during the works to build the new cathedral after the Great Fire, Camden's hypothesis is no longer accepted by modern archaeologists; the fourth St Paul's referred to as Old St Paul's, was begun by the Normans after the 1087 fire. A further fire in 1136 disrupted the work, the new cathedral was not consecrated until 1240.
During the period of construction, the style of architecture had changed from Romanesque to Gothic and this was reflected in the pointed arches and larger windows of the upper parts and East End of the building. The Gothic ribbed vault was constructed, like that of York Minster, of wood rather than stone, which affected the ultimate fate of the building. An enlargement programme commenced in 1256. This'New Work' was consecrated in 1300 but not complete until 1314. During the Medieval period St Paul's was exceeded in length only by the Abbey Church of Cluny and in the height of its spire only by Lincoln Cathedral and St. Mary's Church, Stralsund. Excavations by Francis Penrose in 1878 showed that it was 100 feet wide; the spire was about 489 feet in height. By the 16th century the building was starting to decay. After the Protestant Reformation under Henry VIII and Edward VI, the Dissolution of the Monasteries and Chantries Acts led to the destruction of interior ornamentation and the cloisters, crypts, shrines and other buildings in St Paul's Churchyard.
Many of these former Catholic
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