Biharia ( Hungarian : Bihar ) is a commune in Bihor County , Crișana , Romania . It is composed of two villages, Biharia and Cauaceu ( Hegyközkovácsi ).
116-408: The village is first mentioned in 1067 as Byhor, later as Bychor in 1213, as Bihar in 1332, and again, in 1349 as Byhor. The Gesta Hungarorum , which is believed to have been written around the time of King Béla III of Hungary (1172–1196), mentions that Duke Árpád (born 845) sent envoys to a castle called Bychor, to Duke Menumorout . Biharia has a complex political history, with periods of
232-590: A prologue and 57 chapters. In the prologue, Anonymus introduced himself and declared that he decided to write his work to put in writing the early history of the Hungarians and their conquest of the Carpathian Basin. In addition, he stated that he wanted to write of the genealogy of the royal Árpád dynasty and of the noble families of the Kingdom of Hungary . The first seven chapters describe
348-415: A " 'toponymic romance' that seeks to explain place-names by reference to imagined events or persons, and vice versa." For instance, Györffy writes that Gelou's story was based on the conquest of Gyula of Transylvania 's realm by Stephen I of Hungary in the early 11th century and Gelou was named after the town Gilău where he was killed in battle, according to Anonymus. Anonymus likewise wrote that
464-647: A century earlier work: The Deeds of the Christian Hungarians instead of Anonymus's work before departing for the ancient homeland of the Magyars in the early 1230s. Later chronicles did not use the Gesta , suggesting that Anonymus's contemporaries knew that he had invented most details of his account of the Hungarian Conquest, according to Gyula Kristó . The Gesta was first published as
580-641: A combined linguistic and historiographical approach, Hendel and Joosten date the oldest parts of the Hebrew Bible (the Song of Deborah in Judges 5 and the Samson story of Judges 16 and 1 Samuel) to having been composed in the premonarchial early Iron Age ( c. 1200 BCE ). The Dead Sea Scrolls , discovered in the caves of Qumran in 1947, are copies that can be dated to between 250 BCE and 100 CE. They are
696-604: A leather book cover, impressed with a double-headed eagle , in the late 18th century. The manuscript, which was transferred to Hungary in 1933 or 1934, is held in the Széchényi National Library in Budapest . The author of the Gesta Hungarorum has been known as Anonymus ever since the publication of the first Hungarian translation of his work in 1790. The author described himself as "P who
812-490: A monography of the Gesta Hungarorum , concluded that the "analysis of several fragments of" the Gesta Hungarorum "has demonstrated that this work is generally credible, even if it ignores important events and characters and even if it makes some chronological mistakes". According to Neagu Djuvara , professor of international law and economic history, the factual accuracy of Anonymus's work is likely high, because it
928-469: A place like Alexandria, Egypt. Moreover, in the early centuries of the church, some locales had better scribes than others. Modern scholars have come to recognize that the scribes in Alexandria – which was a major intellectual center in the ancient world – were particularly scrupulous, even in these early centuries, and that there, in Alexandria, a very pure form of the text of the early Christian writings
1044-435: A population of 4,393; of those, 74.37% were Hungarians, 17.94% Romanians, and 1.18% Roma. This Bihor County location article is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . Gesta Hungarorum Gesta Hungarorum , or The Deeds of the Hungarians , is the earliest book about Hungarian history which has survived for posterity. Its genre is not chronicle, but gesta , meaning "deeds" or "acts", which
1160-408: A profound influence both on Western culture and history and on cultures around the globe. The study of it through biblical criticism has indirectly impacted culture and history as well. The Bible is currently translated or is being translated into about half of the world's languages. Some view biblical texts to be morally problematic, historically inaccurate, or corrupted, although others find it
1276-467: A special two-column form emphasizing their internal parallelism, which was found early in the study of Hebrew poetry. "Stichs" are the lines that make up a verse "the parts of which lie parallel as to form and content". Collectively, these three books are known as Sifrei Emet (an acronym of the titles in Hebrew, איוב, משלי, תהלים yields Emet אמ"ת, which is also the Hebrew for "truth"). Hebrew cantillation
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#17327829983721392-485: A useful historical source for certain people and events or a source of moral and ethical teachings. The Bible neither calls for nor condemns slavery outright, but there are verses that address dealing with it, and these verses have been used to support it, although the Bible has also been used to support abolitionism . Some have written that supersessionism begins in the book of Hebrews where others locate its beginnings in
1508-549: A variety of disparate cultures and backgrounds. British biblical scholar John K. Riches wrote: [T]he biblical texts were produced over a period in which the living conditions of the writers – political, cultural, economic, and ecological – varied enormously. There are texts which reflect a nomadic existence, texts from people with an established monarchy and Temple cult, texts from exile, texts born out of fierce oppression by foreign rulers, courtly texts, texts from wandering charismatic preachers, texts from those who give themselves
1624-603: A variety of hypotheses regarding when and how the Torah was composed , but there is a general consensus that it took its final form during the reign of the Persian Achaemenid Empire (probably 450–350 BCE), or perhaps in the early Hellenistic period (333–164 BCE). The Hebrew names of the books are derived from the first words in the respective texts. The Torah consists of the following five books: The first eleven chapters of Genesis provide accounts of
1740-649: Is a collection of religious texts or scriptures which to a certain degree are held to be sacred in Christianity , Judaism , Samaritanism , Islam , the Baháʼí Faith , and other Abrahamic religions . The Bible is an anthology (a compilation of texts of a variety of forms) originally written in Hebrew , Aramaic , and Koine Greek . The texts include instructions, stories, poetry, prophecies, and other genres. The collection of materials that are accepted as part of
1856-572: Is a medieval entertaining literature. It was written in Latin by an unidentified author who has traditionally been called Anonymus in scholarly works. According to most historians, the work was completed between around 1200 and 1230. The Gesta exists in a sole manuscript from the second part of the 13th century, which was for centuries held in Vienna . It is part of the collection of Széchényi National Library in Budapest . The principal subject of
1972-460: Is also known as the "Five Books of Moses " or the Pentateuch , meaning "five scroll-cases". Traditionally these books were considered to have been dictated to Moses by God himself. Since the 17th century, scholars have viewed the original sources as being the product of multiple anonymous authors while also allowing the possibility that Moses first assembled the separate sources. There are
2088-416: Is any deviation between two texts. Textual critic Daniel B. Wallace explains that "Each deviation counts as one variant, regardless of how many MSS [manuscripts] attest to it." Hebrew scholar Emanuel Tov says the term is not evaluative; it is a recognition that the paths of development of different texts have separated. Medieval handwritten manuscripts of the Hebrew Bible were considered extremely precise:
2204-521: Is called magister, and sometime notary of the most glorious Béla, king of Hungary of fond memory" in the opening sentence of the Gesta . The identification of this King Béla is subject to scholarly debate, because four Hungarian monarchs bore this name. Most historians identify the king with Béla III of Hungary who died in 1196. Anonymus dedicated his work to "the most venerable man N" who had been his schoolmate in an unspecified school. Anonymus mentioned that they had found pleasure in reading
2320-604: Is defined by what we love". Natural law is in the Wisdom literature, the Prophets, Romans 1, Acts 17, and the book of Amos (Amos 1:3–2:5), where nations other than Israel are held accountable for their ethical decisions even though they don't know the Hebrew god. Political theorist Michael Walzer finds politics in the Hebrew Bible in covenant, law, and prophecy, which constitute an early form of almost democratic political ethics. Key elements in biblical criminal justice begin with
2436-500: Is derived from Koinē Greek : τὰ βιβλία , romanized: ta biblia , meaning "the books" (singular βιβλίον , biblion ). The word βιβλίον itself had the literal meaning of " scroll " and came to be used as the ordinary word for "book". It is the diminutive of βύβλος byblos , "Egyptian papyrus", possibly so called from the name of the Phoenician seaport Byblos (also known as Gebal) from whence Egyptian papyrus
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#17327829983722552-520: Is no surprise that different localities developed different kinds of textual tradition. That is to say, the manuscripts in Rome had many of the same errors, because they were for the most part "in-house" documents, copied from one another; they were not influenced much by manuscripts being copied in Palestine; and those in Palestine took on their own characteristics, which were not the same as those found in
2668-617: Is not evidence that he introduced the whole person of Gelou or the presence of Vlachs in Transylvania". Paul Robert Magocsi also regarded the Gesta as an unreliable work. Romanian-British historian Dennis Deletant joins the opinion that it is a debatable chronicle, criticizing how Anonymous has the Hungarians fighting Bulgarians while making no mention of the Moravians, Carinthians, Franks and Bavarians, and also his reliance upon legends and historical tradition than facts, such as in
2784-669: Is not until the Babylonian Talmud ( c. 550 BCE ) that a listing of the contents of these three divisions of scripture are found. The Tanakh was mainly written in Biblical Hebrew , with some small portions (Ezra 4:8–6:18 and 7:12–26, Jeremiah 10:11, Daniel 2:4–7:28) written in Biblical Aramaic , a language which had become the lingua franca for much of the Semitic world. The Torah (תּוֹרָה)
2900-459: Is short for biblia sacra "holy book". It gradually came to be regarded as a feminine singular noun ( biblia , gen. bibliae ) in medieval Latin, and so the word was loaned as singular into the vernaculars of Western Europe. The Bible is not a single book; it is a collection of books whose complex development is not completely understood. The oldest books began as songs and stories orally transmitted from generation to generation. Scholars of
3016-554: Is taken from the masoretic text (called the Leningrad Codex ) which dates from 1008. The Hebrew Bible can therefore sometimes be referred to as the Masoretic Text. The Hebrew Bible is also known by the name Tanakh ( Hebrew : תנ"ך ). This reflects the threefold division of the Hebrew scriptures, Torah ("Teaching"), Nevi'im ("Prophets") and Ketuvim ("Writings") by using the first letters of each word. It
3132-418: Is the earliest preserved Hungarian chronicle and is based on even older Hungarian chronicles. On the other hand, Carlile Aylmer Macartney described Anonymus's work as "the most famous, the most obscure, the most exasperating and most misleading of all the early Hungarian texts" in his book of medieval Hungarian historians. Carlile Aylmer Macartney writes in his critical and analytical guide of Anonymus "this
3248-525: Is the manner of chanting ritual readings as they are written and notated in the Masoretic Text of the Bible. Psalms, Job and Proverbs form a group with a "special system" of accenting used only in these three books. The five relatively short books of Song of Songs , Book of Ruth , the Book of Lamentations , Ecclesiastes , and Book of Esther are collectively known as the Hamesh Megillot . These are
3364-528: Is thought to have occurred before 68 during Nero's reign. Early Christians transported these writings around the Empire, translating them into Old Syriac , Coptic , Ethiopic , and Latin , and other languages. Bart Ehrman explains how these multiple texts later became grouped by scholars into categories: during the early centuries of the church, Christian texts were copied in whatever location they were written or taken to. Since texts were copied locally, it
3480-618: The Bible and Dares Phrygius's Trojan History . He borrowed texts from the latter work and adopted its "overall structure of short but informative accounts naming important protagonists and main events", according to historians Martyn Rady and László Veszprémy. Anonymus also referred to "historians writing of the deeds of the Romans" when narrating the history of the Scythians . According to Kristó, Györffy and Thoroczkay, Anonymus obviously read
3596-682: The Caranthians of the Mura " ( Carinthinorum Moroanensium fines ) instead of the "lands of the Carinthians, Moravians " ( Carantenorum, Marahensium ... fines ) of which he read in Regino of Prüm's Chronicon , which shows that Anonymus did not understand Regino of Prüm's reference to the Moravians. Direct borrowings from Isidore of Seville 's Etymologiae , Hugh of Bologna 's Rationes dictani prosaice , and medieval romances about Alexander
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3712-504: The Gesta is the Hungarian conquest of the Carpathian Basin at the turn of the 9th and 10th centuries, and it writes of the origin of the Hungarians , identifying the Hungarians' ancestors with the ancient Scythians and Huns . Many of its sources—including the Bible , Isidore of Seville 's Etymologiae , the 7th-century Exordia Scythica , the late 9th-century Regino of Prüm 's Chronicon , and early medieval romances of Alexander
3828-577: The Gesta proves the existence of Romanian polities in the territory of present-day Romania at the time of the Hungarian Conquest. The Romanian government even published a full-page advertisement about the reliability of Anonymus's reference to the Romanians in The Times in 1987. The view of modern historians on the Gesta Hungarorum is mixed: some consider it a reliable source; others consider its information doubtful. Alexandru Madgearu, who wrote
3944-757: The Gesta Hungarorum wrote of a battle between the Greeks and the Hungarians at a ford by the River Tisza which was named after this event as "Ford of the Greeks", according to Anonymus, although it received this name after its revenues were granted to the Greek Orthodox monastery of Sremska Mitrovica in the 12th century. Late 9th-century sources mentioned the Avars , the Bavarians, the Bulgarians,
4060-823: The Hebrew Bible : the Septuagint , the Masoretic Text , and the Samaritan Pentateuch (which contains only the first five books). They are related but do not share the same paths of development. The Septuagint, or the LXX, is a translation of the Hebrew scriptures, and some related texts, into Koine Greek, and is believed to have been carried out by approximately seventy or seventy-two scribes and elders who were Hellenic Jews , begun in Alexandria in
4176-538: The Imperial Library in Vienna between 1601 and 1636. In this period, the court librarian Sebastian Tengnagel registered it under the title Historia Hungarica de VII primis ducibus Hungariae auctore Belae regis notario ("Hungarian History of the First Seven Princes of Hungary Written by King Béla's Notary"). Tengnagel added numbers to the folios and the chapters. The codex was bound with
4292-590: The Israelites and other nations, and conflicts among Israelites, specifically, struggles between believers in "the L ORD God" ( Yahweh ) and believers in foreign gods, and the criticism of unethical and unjust behaviour of Israelite elites and rulers; in which prophets played a crucial and leading role. It ends with the conquest of the Kingdom of Israel by the Neo-Assyrian Empire , followed by
4408-602: The Kabars in the Hungarian tribal alliance based on oral tradition of the noble families of Kabar origin, according to Györffy. The existence of a sole manuscript of the Gesta Hungarorum shows that the chronicle "was not very popular during either its author's lifetime or the subsequent centuries", according to historian Florin Curta . For instance, the contemporary 13th century Friar Julian and his Dominican brethren studied
4524-601: The Kingdom of Hungary , Eastern Hungarian Kingdom , and the Principality of Transylvania . With the breakup of Austria-Hungary at the end of World War I and the ensuing Hungarian–Romanian War , the Romanian Army entered the village, and after Treaty of Trianon of 1920, Biharia became part of the Kingdom of Romania . During the interwar period , it became part of plasa Centrală, in Bihor County . In
4640-618: The Mediterranean (fourth century to the founding of the Principate , 27 BCE ), the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple (70 CE), and the extension of Roman rule to parts of Scotland (84 CE). The books of the Bible were initially written and copied by hand on papyrus scrolls. No originals have survived. The age of the original composition of the texts is therefore difficult to determine and heavily debated. Using
4756-670: The Nevi'im ("prophets"), was canonized in the third century BCE. A third collection called the Ketuvim ("writings"), containing psalms, proverbs, and narrative histories, was canonized sometime between the second century BCE and the second century CE. These three collections were written mostly in Biblical Hebrew , with some parts in Aramaic , which together form the Hebrew Bible or "TaNaKh" (an abbreviation of "Torah", "Nevi'im", and "Ketuvim"). There are three major historical versions of
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4872-638: The Trojan History and the romances about Alexander the Great, according to Macartney. Anonymus mentions an alliance between the Rus' people and the "Cumans" against the Hungarians. Macartney, Györffy, Spinei and many other historians agree that he misinterpreted the Hungarian word kun , which originally designated all nomadic Turkic peoples , and wrongly identified the Kuns mentioned in one of his sources with
4988-529: The Trojan History , a work attributed to Dares Phrygius , which enjoyed popularity in the Middle Ages. He also referred to a work of the Trojan War that he had "brought most lovingly together into one volume" upon his masters' instructions. Anonymus stated that he had decided to write of "the genealogy of the kings of Hungary and of their noblemen" because he had no knowledge of any decent account of
5104-588: The Volokhi with the Vlachs, because the Volokhi were actually Franks who occupied Pannonia , but the Hungarians expelled them during the Conquest. But Spinei, Pop and other historians write that Russian Primary Chronicle confirms Anonymus's report of the Hungarians' fight against the Vlachs. Madgearu, who does not associate the Volokhi with the Vlachs, emphasizes that Anonymous "had no interest to invent
5220-411: The creation (or ordering) of the world and the history of God's early relationship with humanity. The remaining thirty-nine chapters of Genesis provide an account of God's covenant with the biblical patriarchs Abraham , Isaac and Jacob (also called Israel ) and Jacob's children, the " Children of Israel ", especially Joseph . It tells of how God commanded Abraham to leave his family and home in
5336-424: The totemistic pre-Christian tradition of the origin of the Árpád dynasty, narrating Emese's dream of the falcon impregnating her before the birth of her son, Álmos . The next section describes Álmos, mentioning that he was "more powerful and wiser than all the princes of Scythia", which may have derived from oral tradition or from the common wording of contemporaneous legal documents. The fifth chapter writes of
5452-563: The 1780s, pointing out that Anonymus failed to mention Great Moravia . . When demanding the emancipation of the Romanians of Transylvania in the late 18th century, the authors of the Supplex Libellus Valachorum referred to Anonymus's work. Anonymus's three heroes—Gelou, Glad and Menumorut—play a preeminent role in Romanian historiography. Romanian historians have presented them as Romanian rulers whose presence in
5568-578: The 17th century; its oldest existing copies date to c. 1100 CE. Samaritans include only the Pentateuch (Torah) in their biblical canon. They do not recognize divine authorship or inspiration in any other book in the Jewish Tanakh. A Samaritan Book of Joshua partly based upon the Tanakh's Book of Joshua exists, but Samaritans regard it as a non-canonical secular historical chronicle. In
5684-463: The Bible "often juxtaposes contradictory ideas, without explanation or apology". The Hebrew Bible contains assumptions about the nature of knowledge, belief, truth, interpretation, understanding and cognitive processes. Ethicist Michael V. Fox writes that the primary axiom of the book of Proverbs is that "the exercise of the human mind is the necessary and sufficient condition of right and successful behavior in all reaches of life". The Bible teaches
5800-404: The Bible by a particular religious tradition or community is called a biblical canon . Believers in the Bible generally consider it to be a product of divine inspiration , but the way they understand what that means and interpret the text varies. The religious texts were compiled by different religious communities into various official collections. The earliest contained the first five books of
5916-510: The Bible, called the Torah in Hebrew and the Pentateuch (meaning five books ) in Greek. The second-oldest part was a collection of narrative histories and prophecies (the Nevi'im ). The third collection (the Ketuvim ) contains psalms, proverbs, and narrative histories. " Tanakh " is an alternate term for the Hebrew Bible composed of the first letters of those three parts of the Hebrew scriptures:
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#17327829983726032-778: The Bible. A number of biblical canons have since evolved. Christian biblical canons range from the 73 books of the Catholic Church canon, and the 66-book canon of most Protestant denominations, to the 81 books of the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church canon, among others. Judaism has long accepted a single authoritative text, whereas Christianity has never had an official version, instead having many different manuscript traditions. All biblical texts were treated with reverence and care by those that copied them, yet there are transmission errors, called variants, in all biblical manuscripts. A variant
6148-705: The Bulgarian Laborec had died at the River Laborec and the Czech Zubur on the Mount Zobor near Nitra . Anonymus did not allude to the Hungarians' decisive victory over the united Bavarian forces in the Battle of Pressburg in 907, but he narrated battles unknown from other works. Anonymus seems to have applied place names when creating these battles, according to Győrffy. For instance,
6264-405: The Cumans of his age. The latter had at least twice supported the Rus' princes against the Hungarian monarchs in the 12th century, which explains Anonymus's mistake. The ninth chapter of the Gesta describes the submission of the Rus' and "Cuman" princes to Álmos. Anonymus also writes how seven Cuman chieftains joined the Hungarians, which may have preserved the memory of the integration of
6380-418: The Danubian Slavs , the Gepids and the Moravians among the peoples inhabiting the Carpathian Basin. Anonymus did not mention the Avars, the Bavarians, the Gepids and the Moravians, but he listed the Czechs , the Greeks , the Khazars, the "Romans" and their shepherds, the Székelys , and the Vlachs besides the Bulgarians and the Slavs. According to Györffy and Madgearu, Anonymus may have based his list of
6496-442: The Former Prophets ( Nevi'im Rishonim נביאים ראשונים , the narrative books of Joshua, Judges, Samuel and Kings) and the Latter Prophets ( Nevi'im Aharonim נביאים אחרונים , the books of Isaiah, Jeremiah and Ezekiel and the Twelve Minor Prophets ). The Nevi'im tell a story of the rise of the Hebrew monarchy and its division into two kingdoms, the Kingdom of Israel and the Kingdom of Judah , focusing on conflicts between
6612-401: The Galilean cities of Tiberias and Jerusalem, and in Babylonia (modern Iraq). Those living in the Jewish community of Tiberias in ancient Galilee ( c. 750 –950), made scribal copies of the Hebrew Bible texts without a standard text, such as the Babylonian tradition had, to work from. The canonical pronunciation of the Hebrew Bible (called Tiberian Hebrew) that they developed, and many of
6728-483: The Great prove that Anonymus also used these works. According to Macartney, textual coincidences show that Anonymus adopted parts of late 12th-century chronicles narrating Frederick Barbarossa 's crusade . For instance, Anonymus' descriptions of tournaments seem to have been taken from Arnold of Lübeck 's Chronicle of the Slavs . Anonymus also used the ancient "Hungarian Chronicle" or its sources. However, there are differences between Anonymus' narration of
6844-403: The Great —have been identified by scholars. Anonymus also used folk songs and ballads when writing his work. He knew a version of the late 11th-century "Hungarian Chronicle" the text of which has partially been preserved in his work and in later chronicles, but his narration of the Hungarian Conquest differs from the version provided by the other chronicles. Anonymus did not mention the opponents of
6960-429: The Hebrew Bible was produced. During the rise of Christianity in the first century CE, new scriptures were written in Koine Greek. Christians eventually called these new scriptures the "New Testament" and began referring to the Septuagint as the "Old Testament". The New Testament has been preserved in more manuscripts than any other ancient work. Most early Christian copyists were not trained scribes. Many copies of
7076-489: The Hebrew Bible was written with spaces between words to aid in reading. By the eighth century CE, the Masoretes added vowel signs. Levites or scribes maintained the texts, and some texts were always treated as more authoritative than others. Scribes preserved and changed the texts by changing the script and updating archaic forms while also making corrections. These Hebrew texts were copied with great care. Considered to be scriptures ( sacred , authoritative religious texts),
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#17327829983727192-414: The Hungarian Conquest and other works preserving texts from the ancient chronicle. For instance, the Illuminated Chronicle wrote of the Hungarians' arrival in Transylvania across the Carpathian Mountains from the east at the beginning of the Conquest, but according to Anonymus the Hungarians invaded Transylvania across the valleys of the Meseş Mountains from the west at a later stage. Sources from
7308-404: The Hungarian Conquest. According to scholars who identify Anonymus as King Béla III's notary, he wrote his Gesta around 1200 or in the first decades of the 13th century. The study of place names mentioned in the Gesta suggests that Anonymus had a detailed knowledge both of the wider region of Óbuda and Csepel Island (in and to the south of present-day Budapest ) and of the lands along
7424-443: The Hungarians , is the first extant Hungarian chronicle. Its principal subject is the conquest of the Carpathian Basin and it narrates the background and the immediate aftermath of the conquest. Many historians—including Carlile Aylmer Macartney and András Róna-Tas —agree that Simon of Kéza 's chronicle, the Illuminated Chronicle and other works composed in the 13th–15th centuries preserved texts which had been written before
7540-497: The Hungarians with the Rus' people and the "Cumans". Anonymus's report of the Hungarians' passing by Kiev was based on the ancient "Hungarian Chronicle", according to Macartney. References to the Hungarians' march by Kiev towards the Carpathian Basin can also be found in the Russian Primary Chronicle , and in Simon of Kéza's and Henry of Mügeln 's chronicles. In an attempt to make his work more entertaining, Anonymus supplemented this information with vivid battle-scenes borrowed from
7656-443: The Hungarians' legendary homeland—mentioned as Scythia or Dentumoger — and their departure from there. According to Macartney, the first chapter was based on the late 11th-century "Hungarian Chronicle", and it contains interpolations from the Exordia Scythica and Regino of Prüm's chronicle. The second chapter explains that the Hungarians were named after "Hunguar" (present-day Uzhhorod in Ukraine ). The third chapter preserved
7772-405: The Septuagint as the basis of the Old Testament . The early Church continued the Jewish tradition of writing and incorporating what it saw as inspired, authoritative religious books. The gospels , Pauline epistles , and other texts quickly coalesced into the New Testament . With estimated total sales of over five billion copies, the Bible is the best-selling publication of all time. It has had
7888-470: The Torah ("Teaching"), the Nevi'im ("Prophets"), and the Ketuvim ("Writings"). The Masoretic Text is the medieval version of the Tanakh, in Hebrew and Aramaic, that is considered the authoritative text of the Hebrew Bible by modern Rabbinic Judaism . The Septuagint is a Koine Greek translation of the Tanakh from the third and second centuries BC; it largely overlaps with the Hebrew Bible. Christianity began as an outgrowth of Second Temple Judaism , using
8004-427: The airs of sophisticated Hellenistic writers. It is a time-span which encompasses the compositions of Homer , Plato , Aristotle , Thucydides , Sophocles , Caesar , Cicero , and Catullus . It is a period which sees the rise and fall of the Assyrian empire (twelfth to seventh century) and of the Persian empire (sixth to fourth century), Alexander 's campaigns (336–326), the rise of Rome and its domination of
8120-456: The belief in God as the source of justice and the judge of all, including those administering justice on earth. Carmy and Schatz say the Bible "depicts the character of God, presents an account of creation, posits a metaphysics of divine providence and divine intervention, suggests a basis for morality, discusses many features of human nature, and frequently poses the notorious conundrum of how God can allow evil." The authoritative Hebrew Bible
8236-421: The books were compiled by different religious communities into various biblical canons (official collections of scriptures). The earliest compilation, containing the first five books of the Bible and called the Torah (meaning "law", "instruction", or "teaching") or Pentateuch ("five books"), was accepted as Jewish canon by the fifth century BCE. A second collection of narrative histories and prophesies, called
8352-470: The city of Ur , eventually to settle in the land of Canaan , and how the Children of Israel later moved to Egypt. The remaining four books of the Torah tell the story of Moses , who lived hundreds of years after the patriarchs. He leads the Children of Israel from slavery in ancient Egypt to the renewal of their covenant with God at Mount Sinai and their wanderings in the desert until a new generation
8468-409: The codex originally contained the beginning of the Gesta . It was blanked because the scribe had made mistakes when writing the text. The work was written in a Gothic minuscule . The style of the letters and decorations, including the elaborate initial on its first page, shows that the manuscript was completed in the middle or in the second part of the 13th century. Scribal errors suggest that
8584-534: The commune became fell in Oradea Raion , within Bihor Region (renamed Oradea Region in 1952 and Crișana Region in 1960). In 1968, the old territorial division into județe was reinstituted, and Biharia reverted to being part of Bihor County. At the 2011 census , the commune had 4,205 inhabitants, of whom 85.87% were Hungarians , 12.12% Romanians , and 1.73% Roma . At the 2021 census , Biharia had
8700-531: The completion of the Gesta . They say that the first " Hungarian Chronicle " was completed in the second half of the 11th century or in the early 12th century. The existence of this ancient chronicle is proven by later sources. One Ricardus's report of a journey of a group of Dominican friars in the early 1230s refers to a chronicle, The Deeds of the Christian Hungarians , which contained information of an eastern Magna Hungaria . The Illuminated Chronicle from 1358 refers to "the ancient books about
8816-412: The confirmation of the hereditary right of Álmos's descendants to rule and the right of his electors and his electors' offspring to hold the highest offices in the realm. In the seventh chapter, Anonymus writes of the Hungarians' departure from Scythia and their route across the river "Etil" and " Russia which is called Suzdal " to Kiev . The next four sections of the Gesta describe the fights of
8932-475: The conquering Hungarians known from sources written around 900, but he wrote of the Hungarians' fight against rulers unknown from other sources. According to a scholarly theory, he used place names when naming the opponents of the Hungarians. Although the Hungarians , or Magyars , seem to have used their own alphabet before adopting Christianity in the 11th century , most information of their early history
9048-594: The conquest of the Kingdom of Judah by the neo-Babylonian Empire and the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem . The Former Prophets are the books Joshua, Judges, Samuel and Kings. They contain narratives that begin immediately after the death of Moses with the divine appointment of Joshua as his successor, who then leads the people of Israel into the Promised Land , and end with the release from imprisonment of
9164-542: The culture of the fourth century Roman empire. The Bible has been used to support the death penalty , patriarchy , sexual intolerance , the violence of total war , and colonialism ; it has also been used to support charity , culture, healthcare and education . The term "Bible" can refer to the Hebrew Bible or the Christian Bible, which contains both the Old and New Testaments . The English word Bible
9280-463: The deeds of the Hungarians" in connection with the pagan uprisings of the 11th century . The earliest "Hungarian Chronicle" was expanded and rewritten several times in the 12th–14th centuries, but its content can only be reconstructed based on 14th-century works. The work exists in a sole manuscript . The codex is 17 by 24 centimetres (0.56 ft × 0.79 ft) in size and contains 24 folios , including two blank pages. The first page of
9396-668: The early Christian church translated its canon into Vulgar Latin (the common Latin spoken by ordinary people), a translation known as the Vulgate . Since then, Catholic Christians have held ecumenical councils to standardize their biblical canon. The Council of Trent (1545–63), held by the Catholic Church in response to the Protestant Reformation , authorized the Vulgate as its official Latin translation of
9512-438: The election of Álmos as "the leader and master" of the Hungarians, mentioning a blood-mingling ceremony . In this section, Anonymus states that the Hungarians "chose to seek for themselves the land of Pannonia that they had heard from rumor had been the land of King Attila " whom Anonymus describes as Álmos's forefather. The next chapter narrates the oath that the leaders of the Hungarians took after Álmos's election, including
9628-466: The end of the Talmudic period ( c. 300 – c. 500 CE ), but the actual date is difficult to determine. In the sixth and seventh centuries, three Jewish communities contributed systems for writing the precise letter-text, with its vocalization and accentuation known as the mas'sora (from which we derive the term "masoretic"). These early Masoretic scholars were based primarily in
9744-534: The extant manuscript is a copy of the original work. For instance, the scribe wrote Cleopatram instead of Neopatram in the text narrating a Hungarian raid in the Byzantine Empire although the context clearly shows that the author of the Gesta referred to Neopatras (now Ypati in Greece ). The history of the manuscript up until the early 17th century is unknown. It became part of the collection of
9860-594: The first century BCE. Fragments of the Septuagint were found among the Dead Sea Scrolls; portions of its text are also found on existing papyrus from Egypt dating to the second and first centuries BCE and to the first century CE. The Masoretes began developing what would become the authoritative Hebrew and Aramaic text of the 24 books of the Hebrew Bible in Rabbinic Judaism near
9976-496: The first volume of the series Scriptures rerum Hungaricarum in 1746 by Johann Georg von Schwandtner . Matthias Bél wrote a preface to this first edition. Professors of the Universities of Halle and Göttingen soon raised their doubts about the reliability of the Gesta , emphasizing, for instance, the anachronistic description of the Rus' principalities. The Slovak scholar Juraj Sklenár dismissed Anonymus's work in
10092-533: The gabbling song of minstrels ". All the same, stylistic elements (including formulaic repetitions which can be found in his text) imply that he occasionally used heroic songs. According to Kristó, the legend of Emese 's dream of the "falcon that seemed to come to her and impregnate her" was one of the motifs that Anonymus borrowed from oral tradition. Anonymus, as Macartney says, claimed to "rely solely on written sources, as alone trustworthy" when writing his work. Among his sources, Anonymus explicitly mentioned
10208-547: The gospels and Paul's letters were made by individual Christians over a relatively short period of time very soon after the originals were written. There is evidence in the Synoptic Gospels, in the writings of the early church fathers , from Marcion , and in the Didache that Christian documents were in circulation before the end of the first century. Paul's letters were circulated during his lifetime, and his death
10324-731: The last king of Judah . Treating Samuel and Kings as single books, they cover: The Latter Prophets are Isaiah , Jeremiah , Ezekiel and the Twelve Minor Prophets , counted as a single book. Ketuvim (in Biblical Hebrew : כְּתוּבִים , romanized: Kəṯūḇīm "writings") is the third and final section of the Tanakh. The Ketuvim are believed to have been written under the inspiration of Ruach HaKodesh (the Holy Spirit) but with one level less authority than that of prophecy . In Masoretic manuscripts (and some printed editions), Psalms, Proverbs and Job are presented in
10440-467: The late third century BCE and completed by 132 BCE. Probably commissioned by Ptolemy II Philadelphus , King of Egypt, it addressed the need of the primarily Greek-speaking Jews of the Graeco-Roman diaspora. Existing complete copies of the Septuagint date from the third to the fifth centuries CE, with fragments dating back to the second century BCE. Revision of its text began as far back as
10556-579: The latest books collected and designated as authoritative in the Jewish canon even though they were not complete until the second century CE. The books of Esther , Daniel , Ezra-Nehemiah and Chronicles share a distinctive style that no other Hebrew literary text, biblical or extra-biblical, shares. They were not written in the normal style of Hebrew of the post-exilic period. The authors of these books must have chosen to write in their own distinctive style for unknown reasons. The following list presents
10672-454: The memory of the most important historical events. The Illuminated Chronicle explicitly stated that the "seven captains" who led the Hungarians during the Conquest "composed lays about themselves and sang them among themselves in order to win worldly renown and to publish their names abroad, so that their posterity might be able to boast and brag to neighbours and friends when these songs were heard". The Gesta Hungarorum , or The Deeds of
10788-452: The most authoritative documents from which to copy other texts. Even so, David Carr asserts that Hebrew texts still contain some variants. The majority of all variants are accidental, such as spelling errors, but some changes were intentional. In the Hebrew text, "memory variants" are generally accidental differences evidenced by such things as the shift in word order found in 1 Chronicles 17:24 and 2 Samuel 10:9 and 13. Variants also include
10904-525: The nature of authority and the sharing of power, animals, trees and nature, money and economics, work, relationships, sorrow and despair and the nature of joy, among others. Philosopher and ethicist Jaco Gericke adds: "The meaning of good and evil, the nature of right and wrong, criteria for moral discernment, valid sources of morality, the origin and acquisition of moral beliefs, the ontological status of moral norms, moral authority, cultural pluralism, [as well as] axiological and aesthetic assumptions about
11020-443: The nature of valid arguments, the nature and power of language, and its relation to reality. According to Mittleman, the Bible provides patterns of moral reasoning that focus on conduct and character. In the biblical metaphysic, humans have free will, but it is a relative and restricted freedom. Beach says that Christian voluntarism points to the will as the core of the self, and that within human nature, "the core of who we are
11136-404: The nature of value and beauty. These are all implicit in the texts." However, discerning the themes of some biblical texts can be problematic. Much of the Bible is in narrative form and in general, biblical narrative refrains from any kind of direct instruction, and in some texts the author's intent is not easy to decipher. It is left to the reader to determine good and bad, right and wrong, and
11252-586: The notes they made, therefore differed from the Babylonian. These differences were resolved into a standard text called the Masoretic text in the ninth century. The oldest complete copy still in existence is the Leningrad Codex dating to c. 1000 CE. The Samaritan Pentateuch is a version of the Torah maintained by the Samaritan community since antiquity, which was rediscovered by European scholars in
11368-407: The oldest existing copies of the books of the Hebrew Bible of any length that are not fragments. The earliest manuscripts were probably written in paleo-Hebrew , a kind of cuneiform pictograph similar to other pictographs of the same period. The exile to Babylon most likely prompted the shift to square script (Aramaic) in the fifth to third centuries BCE. From the time of the Dead Sea Scrolls,
11484-609: The opponents of the conquering Hungarians—for instance, the Bulgarian Salan , the Khazar Menumorut and the Vlach Gelou —were mentioned in other sources. According to Györffy, Engel, and other historians, Anonymus either invented these personalities or listed them anachronistically among the conquering Hungarians' opponents. Martyn Rady and László Veszprémy explicitly describe the Gesta Hungarorum as
11600-454: The parts where he makes the dubious claim that the Hungarian leader Almos was descended from Attila. Deletant further concludes that the cases for and against the existence of Gelou and the Vlachs simply cannot be proven. Martyn Rady , the translator of the first English version of the Gesta, states that "It is at best to project contemporary conditions backwards." Bible The Bible
11716-427: The path to understanding and practice is rarely straightforward. God is sometimes portrayed as having a role in the plot, but more often there is little about God's reaction to events, and no mention at all of approval or disapproval of what the characters have done or failed to do. The writer makes no comment, and the reader is left to infer what they will. Jewish philosophers Shalom Carmy and David Schatz explain that
11832-514: The peoples inhabiting the Carpathian Basin on the local Slavs' oral tradition which was preserved in the early 12th-century Russian Primary Chronicle . The latter source described the Slavs as the first settlers in the Carpathian Basin and mentioned that they were conquered by the "Volokhi" before the Hungarians arrived and expelled the Volokhi . According to Györffy, Kristó and other historians, Anonymus misinterpreted his source when identifying
11948-432: The presence of the [Vlachs] in Transylvania in the 10th century, because if [Vlachs] had indeed arrived there in the 12th century, his readers would not have believed this assertion". Györffy says that the Vlachs, Cumans, Czechs and other peoples whose presence in the late-9th-century Carpathian Basin cannot be proven based on sources from the same period reflects the situation of the late 13th century. The Gesta contains
12064-419: The seventh century, the first codex form of the Hebrew Bible was produced. The codex is the forerunner of the modern book. Popularized by early Christians, it was made by folding a single sheet of papyrus in half, forming "pages". Assembling multiples of these folded pages together created a "book" that was more easily accessible and more portable than scrolls. In 1488, the first complete printed press version of
12180-488: The so-called Exordia Scythica ("Scythian Genesis"), a 7th-century abridgement of a work of the 2nd-century historian, Justin . Anonymus used Regino of Prüm's Chronicon , that he mentioned as "the annals of chronicles" in his Gesta . He accepted Regino of Prüm's view when identifying the Scythians as the Hungarians' ancestors. Sometimes, he misinterpreted his sources. For instance, he wrote of "the boundaries of
12296-404: The spurious tales of peasants who have not forgotten the brave deeds and wars of the Hungarians" even to his time. However, he did not conceal his scorn for oral tradition, stating that it "would be most unworthy and completely unfitting for the so most noble people of Hungary to hear as if in sleep of the beginning of their kind and of their bravery and deeds from the false stories of peasants and
12412-535: The substitution of lexical equivalents, semantic and grammar differences, and larger scale shifts in order, with some major revisions of the Masoretic texts that must have been intentional. Intentional changes in New Testament texts were made to improve grammar, eliminate discrepancies, harmonize parallel passages, combine and simplify multiple variant readings into one, and for theological reasons. Bruce K. Waltke observes that one variant for every ten words
12528-410: The turn of the 9th and 10th centuries mentioned more than a dozen persons who played an important role in the history of the Carpathian Basin at the time of the Hungarian Conquest. Anonymus did not mention any of them; he did not refer, for instance, to Emperor Arnulf of Carinthia , Boris I of Bulgaria , and Svatopluk I of Moravia . On the other hand, none of the persons whom Anonymus listed among
12644-418: The twenty-first century are only in the beginning stages of exploring "the interface between writing, performance, memorization, and the aural dimension" of the texts. Current indications are that writing and orality were not separate so much as ancient writing was learned in a context of communal oral performance. The Bible was written and compiled by many people , who many scholars say are mostly unknown, from
12760-445: The upper courses of the river Tisza . For instance, he mentioned a dozen places—settlements, ferries and streams—in the former region, including "a small river that flows through a stone culvert" to Óbuda. He did not write of the southern and eastern parts of Transylvania . Minstrels and folk-singers reciting heroic songs were well-known figures of the age of Anonymus. He explicitly referred to "the gabbling rhymes of minstrels and
12876-550: The wake of the Second Vienna Award of August 30, 1940, the territory of Northern Transylvania (of which the town of Biharia was part) reverted to the Kingdom of Hungary . Towards the end of World War II , the town was taken back from Hungarian and German troops by Romanian and Soviet forces in October 1944 , during the initial stages of the Battle of Debrecen . Following the administrative reform of 1950,
12992-597: Was exported to Greece. The Greek ta biblia ("the books") was "an expression Hellenistic Jews used to describe their sacred books". The biblical scholar F. F. Bruce notes that John Chrysostom appears to be the first writer (in his Homilies on Matthew , delivered between 386 and 388 CE) to use the Greek phrase ta biblia ("the books") to describe both the Old and New Testaments together. Latin biblia sacra "holy books" translates Greek τὰ βιβλία τὰ ἅγια ( tà biblía tà hágia , "the holy books"). Medieval Latin biblia
13108-686: Was noted in the recent critical edition of the Hebrew Bible, the Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia, leaving 90% of the Hebrew text without variation. The fourth edition of the United Bible Society's Greek New Testament notes variants affecting about 500 out of 6900 words, or about 7% of the text. The narratives, laws, wisdom sayings, parables, and unique genres of the Bible provide opportunity for discussion on most topics of concern to human beings: The role of women, sex, children, marriage, neighbours, friends,
13224-594: Was preserved, decade after decade, by dedicated and relatively skilled Christian scribes. These differing histories produced what modern scholars refer to as recognizable "text types". The four most commonly recognized are Alexandrian , Western , Caesarean , and Byzantine . The list of books included in the Catholic Bible was established as canon by the Council of Rome in 382, followed by those of Hippo in 393 and Carthage in 397. Between 385 and 405 CE,
13340-412: Was ready to enter the land of Canaan. The Torah ends with the death of Moses. The commandments in the Torah provide the basis for Jewish religious law . Tradition states that there are 613 commandments ( taryag mitzvot ). Nevi'im ( Hebrew : נְבִיאִים , romanized : Nəḇī'īm , "Prophets") is the second main division of the Tanakh, between the Torah and Ketuvim. It contains two sub-groups,
13456-464: Was recorded by Muslim , Byzantine and Western European authors. For instance, the Annals of Fulda , Regino of Prüm 's Chronicon , and Emperor Constantine VII 's De administrando imperio contain contemporaneous or nearly contemporaneous reports of their conquest of the Carpathian Basin at the turn of the 9th and 10th centuries. Among the Hungarians, oral tradition—songs and ballads—preserved
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