What Is Septuagint? The Septuagint (septuāgintā literally “seventy”; often abbreviated as 70 in Roman numerals, i.e., LXX; sometimes called the Greek Old Testament) is the earliest extant Koine Greek translation of the Hebrew scriptures. It is estimated that the first five books of the Hebrew Bible, known as the Torah or Pentateuch, were translated in the mid-3rd century BCE and the...
Christian Biblical Canons Christian biblical canons are the set of books that a particular Christian denomination or denominational family regards as being divinely inspired and thus constituting an authorized Christian Bible. Such bibles are always divided into the Old Testament and the New Testament. The Early Church primarily used the...
Authorship Of Luke–Acts The authorship of the Gospel of Luke and the Acts of the Apostles, collectively known as Luke–Acts, is an important issue for biblical exegetes who are attempting to produce critical scholarship on the origins of the New Testament. Traditionally, the text is believed to have been written by Luke the...
Fifty Bibles Of Constantine The Fifty Bibles of Constantine were Bibles in the original Greek language commissioned in 331 by Constantine I and prepared by Eusebius of Caesarea. They were made for the use of the Bishop of Constantinople in the growing number of churches in that very new city. Eusebius quoted the letter of commission in his Life of Constantine,...
Protestant Bible A Protestant Bible is a Christian Bible whose translation or revision was produced by Protestants. Such Bibles comprise 39 books of the Old Testament (according to the Jewish Hebrew Bible canon, known especially to non-Protestants as the protocanonical books) and 27 books of the New Testament for a total of 66 books. Some Protestants use Bibles which also include 14...
Old Testament The Old Testament (abbreviated OT) is the first part of Christian Bibles, based primarily upon the Hebrew Bible (or Tanakh), a collection of ancient religious writings by the Israelites believed by most Christians and religious Jews to be the sacred Word of God. The second part of the Christian Bible is the New...
Language Of The New Testament This article covers the answer to the question: “What is the Language of The New Testament?“ The New Testament was written in a form of Koine Greek, which was the common language of the Eastern Mediterranean from the conquests of Alexander the Great (335–323 BC) until the evolution of Byzantine Greek (c. 600). The Hellenistic...
New Testament The New Testament discusses the teachings and person of Jesus, as well as events in first-century Christianity. The New Testament (NT) is the second division of the Christian biblical canon. It discusses the teachings and person of Jesus, as well as events in first-century Christianity. The New Testament’s background, the first division of the Christian...
Poetry And Wisdom It has been said that the proper language of wisdom is poetry. We realize this when we read the classic texts of the world’s great sapiential traditions. The literature of antiquity, indeed, when not merely factual or legislative, lives most often within an aura which is at...
What Is Divine Retribution? Divine retribution is supernatural punishment of a person, a group of people, or everyone by a deity in response to some action. Many cultures have a story about how a deity exacted punishment upon previous inhabitants of their land, causing their doom. An example of divine retribution is the story found in...
Aspects Of Christian Meditation Aspects of Christian meditation were the topic of a 15 October 1989 document of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. The paper is titled “Letter to the Bishops of the Catholic Church on some aspects of Christian meditation” and is formally known by its incipit, Orationis...
What Is Jewish Apocrypha? Jewish apocrypha includes texts written in the Jewish religious tradition either in the Intertestamental period or in the early Christian era, but outside the Christian tradition. It does not include books in the canonical Hebrew Bible, nor those accepted into the canon of some or all...
What Is Apocrypha? Apocrypha are works, usually written, of unknown authorship or of doubtful origin. Biblical apocrypha is a set of texts included in the Latin Vulgate and Septuagint but not in the Hebrew Bible. While Catholic tradition considers some of these texts to be deuterocanonical, Protestants consider them apocryphal. Thus, Protestant bibles do not include...
List Of Major Textual Variants In The New Testament This is a list of major textual variants in the New Testament, with a focus on differences between categories of New Testament manuscripts. The Textus Receptus (“received text”) is the name subsequently given to the succession of printed Greek texts of the New Testament which was first...
The New Testament Verses Not Included In The Bible This article covers the List of New Testament Verses Not Included In the Bible. The New Testament verses not included in modern English translations are verses of the New Testament that existed in older versions of the Bible (primarily the King...
What Does The Bible Say About God? This article covers the answer to the question: “What Does The Bible Say About God?” There is nothing that anyone can know about God’s nature unless He reveals it to humankind. Without divine revelation humanity will be in darkness. Fortunately, the Bible has...
The Gospel Harmony The gospel harmony is an attempt to compile the canonical gospels of the Christian New Testament into a single account. This may take the form either of a single, merged narrative or a tabular format with one column for each gospel, technically known as a synopsis, although the word harmony is often used for...
An Historical Account Of Two Notable Corruptions Of Scripture An Historical Account of Two Notable Corruptions of Scripture is a dissertation by the English mathematician and scholar Isaac Newton. This was sent in a letter to John Locke on 14 November 1690 and built upon the textual work of Richard...
The Holy Quran’s Invitation To Christians This article covers the answer to the question: “What is the Holy Quran‘s Invitation to Christians?“ “Say: “People of the Book! Come now to a word common between us and you, that we serve none but Allah, and that we associate not aught with...
The History Of The Gospel Of Barnabas The Gospel of Barnabas is the only known surviving Gospel written by a disciple of Jesus, that is by a man who spent most of his time in the actual company of Jesus during the three years in which he was delivering his...