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111-681: The mountain is mentioned in the Bible as the place where, upon first entering the Promised Land after the Exodus , the Israelites performed ceremonies of blessings, as they had been instructed by Moses . Mount Gerizim is sacred to the Samaritans , who regard it, rather than Jerusalem 's Temple Mount , as the location chosen by God for a holy temple. In Samaritan tradition , it is

222-643: A cistern cut into the bedrock at the northern side. The excavating archaeologist considered "structure B" to be the altar built by the Samaritans in the 5th or 6th century BCE . It is possible that the name of the mountain may mean mountain of the Gerizites , a tribe in the vicinity of the Philistines that, according to the Hebrew Bible, was conquered by David . Another possible meaning

333-589: 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

444-589: A choice of death (by the sword) or having their right eyes gouged out. The population obtained seven days' grace from Nahash, during which they would be allowed to seek help from the Israelites , after which they would have to submit to the terms of surrender. The occupants sought help from the people of Israel, sending messengers throughout the whole territory, and Saul , a herdsman at this time, responded by raising an army which decisively defeated Nahash and his cohorts at Bezek . The strangely cruel terms given by Nahash for surrender were explained by Josephus as being

555-580: 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

666-477: A farewell speech, and set up " a stone as a witness ", placing it "next to the sanctuary of Yahweh , under the oak tree", which indicates that a sanctuary to God existed there. Mount Gerizim was also the site of the first parable in the Bible. Judges 9:7–20 records how Jotham son of Gideon stands on the mountain to proclaim the parable of the trees who wanted to make the bramble king among them, an allusion to

777-546: A large group of Samaritans gathered on Mount Gerizim. Vespasian dispatched Cerialis, who commanded Legio V Macedonica , with a small force of 600 cavalry and 3,000 infantry, probably banking on the Samaritans' lack of defenses and summer water shortages. While some surrendered upon the Romans' arrival, the majority chose to fight. The conflict resulted in significant Samaritan casualties, totaling 11,600, according to Josephus . Eventually, when Christianity became

888-469: 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

999-408: 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

1110-467: 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

1221-433: 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

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1332-549: 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

1443-603: 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

1554-562: Is mountain cut in two . According to the narrative about Jotham in the Book of Judges , Shechem was a site where there was a sanctuary of El-Berith , also known as Baal Berith , meaning "God of the covenant" and "Lord of the covenant", respectively; scholars have suggested that the Joshua story about the site derives from a covenant made there in Canaanite times. In the narrative of Judges,

1665-405: Is a smooth surface, containing a hollow. The excavation, initiated when the site was in the possession of Jordan and continued under Israeli rule , uncovered Corinthian columns , a large rectangular platform 65 m × 44 m (215 ft × 145 ft) surrounded by walls 2 m thick (6 ft) and 9 m high (30 ft), and a staircase 8 m wide (25 ft) leading down from

1776-579: Is again mentioned in the Book of Joshua , when, after the Battle of Ai , Joshua builds an altar of unhewn stones, the Israelites make peace offerings on it, the law of Moses is written onto the stones, and the Israelites split into the two groups specified in Deuteronomy and pronounce blessings on Mount Gerizim and curses on Mount Ebal, as instructed in the law of Moses. Biblical scholars believe that

1887-460: 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

1998-416: 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:

2109-604: 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

2220-500: 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

2331-627: Is from the Jews. But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father seeks such as these to worship him. God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth." In 36 CE , unrest flared in Samaria when a charismatic figure rallied Samaritans to Mount Gerizim, claiming to unearth sacred vessels buried by Moses. Pontius Pilate , Roman governor of Judaea , alarmed by

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2442-502: Is nearly half of a cube (21 m × 20 m in width and length, and 8.5 m high). It has no internal rooms or dividing walls and consists almost entirely of uncut limestone slabs fitted together without any mortar . Structure B was surrounded by a courtyard (60 m × 40 m, with 1.5 m thick walls) similar to the platform above it, and was dated to during or before the Hellenistic period , from ceramics found in

2553-520: 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

2664-669: 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)

2775-459: 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

2886-639: Is somewhat inconsistently specified in the Bible, with Dibon and Aroer being part of Gad according to Numbers 32:34, but part of Reuben according to Joshua 13:15–16. On that basis, the Jewish Encyclopedia (1906) claimed that the territory of Reuben was an enclave in the territory of Gad. The territories described in Joshua 13 depict Gad as being to the north of Reuben, while the description in Numbers 32 and 34 has Reubenites living near Heshbon, surrounded by Gadites. Yohanan Aharoni interpreted

2997-554: 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

3108-475: 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

3219-528: 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

3330-599: The Book of Chronicles , Adina and thirty Reubenites aided David as members of his mighty warriors in conquering the City of David . Also according to Chronicles, during the reign of King Saul Reuben instigated a war with the Hagarites , and was victorious; in another portion of the same text, Reuben is said to have been assisted in this war by Gad and the eastern half of Manasseh . According to 1 Chronicles 5:26, Tiglath-Pileser III of Assyria (ruled 745–727 BC) deported

3441-596: The First Intifada in 1987, many Samaritan families relocated from Nablus to Mount Gerizim to avoid the violence. Today, about half of the remaining Samaritans live in close proximity to Gerizim, mostly in the village of Kiryat Luza. According to the Hebrew Bible , as related in Deuteronomy , when they first entered Canaan the Israelites celebrated the event with ceremonies of blessings and cursings:

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3552-593: The Hebrew Bible , the Tribe of Reuben ( Hebrew : רְאוּבֵן , Modern :   Rəʼūven , Tiberian :   Rəʼūḇēn ) was one of the twelve tribes of Israel . Unlike the majority of the tribes, the land of Reuben, along with that of Gad and half of Manasseh , was on the eastern side of the Jordan and shared a border with Moab . According to the biblical narrative, the Tribe of Reuben descended from Reuben ,

3663-763: 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

3774-532: 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

3885-618: 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

3996-670: 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

4107-593: The New Testament , in his discussion with the Samaritan woman at the well , Jesus reveals his feeling about worshipping in either Mount Gerizim (as the Samaritans did) or Jerusalem (as the Jews then did): Jesus said to her, "Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation

4218-474: The Torah , but diverging on the holiest place on Earth to adore God: Mount Gerizim for the Samaritans, and Jerusalem for the Jews. An adjacent city was built by the Samaritans during the 3rd century BCE , and became the cultural center for the Samaritans. Religious rivalry between Samaritans and Jews led to Mount Gerizim being destroyed by the latter in 112–111 BCE , on orders of John Hyrcanus . Even after

4329-411: 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

4440-625: The state church of the Roman Empire , Samaritans were barred from worshiping on Mount Gerizim. In 475 CE , a Christian church was built on its summit. In 484, during the reign of Emperor Zeno , a martyrium -type octagonal church dedicated to the Theotokos (the God-bearing Virgin Mary) was erected at the site. In 529, Justinian I made Samaritanism illegal and arranged for a protective wall to be constructed around

4551-522: The usual practice of Nahash. A more complete explanation came to light with the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls : although not present in either the Septuagint or masoretic text , an introductory passage, preceding this narrative, was found in a copy of the Books of Samuel among the scrolls found in cave 4 : [N]ahash, king of Ammonites would put hard pressure on the descendants of Gad and

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4662-500: The "pillar that was in Shechem" is seemingly significant enough to have given its name to a nearby plain ( Judges 9:6 ), and this pillar is thought to be likely to have been a baetylus of El-Berith; the Joshua story, of a stone being set up as a witness, simply being an attempt to provide an etiology in accordance with later Israelite theology. Bible The Bible is a collection of religious texts or scriptures which to

4773-578: 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

4884-463: 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

4995-404: 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

5106-499: The Bible were descended from Reuben's sons Hanoch, Pallu, Hazron, and Carmi. Genesis 49 contains the Blessing of Jacob , a series of predictions which the Bible presents as delivered by the patriarch Jacob about the future fate of the tribes descended from his twelve sons. Some textual scholars date it substantially later than these events. Reuben is characterised as fickle, "unstable as water", and condemned to no longer "have . . .

5217-459: 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:

5328-778: 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

5439-698: 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

5550-626: 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

5661-548: 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

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5772-546: 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),

5883-737: The Reubenites, Gadites, and the half-tribe of Manasseh to "Halah, Habor, Hara, and the Gozan River." According to the Moabite Mesha Stele (ca. 840 BCE) the Moabites reclaimed many territories in the second part of the 9th century BCE (only recently conquered by Omri and Ahab according to the Stele). The stele does mention fighting against the tribe of Gad but not the tribe of Reuben, even though taking Nebo and Jahaz which were in

5994-412: The Samaritan temple, not including its gates, measured 96 m × 98 m. Inside the perimeter, thousands of pottery vessels and burned bones of animal sacrifices were found – sheep, goats, cattle, and doves – as well as many stones with inscriptions containing the Tetragrammaton (the name of God ). In 475 CE a Christian church was built on the Mount's summit. As a result of the fortified church and

6105-405: 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

6216-403: The Temple Mount. Mount Gerizim continues to be the centre of Samaritan religion to this day, and Samaritans ascend it three times a year : at Passover , Shavuot and Sukkot . Passover is still celebrated by the Samaritans with a lamb sacrifice on Mount Gerizim. The Samaritan village of Kiryat Luza and an Israeli settlement , Har Brakha , are situated on the ridge of Mount Gerizim. During

6327-470: 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

6438-427: 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

6549-424: The altar , eat there, and write the Mosaic Law in stones there. The Samaritan Pentateuch , as well as an ancient manuscript of the biblical text found in Qumran , both bring the same excerpt as the Masoretic Text, with the only difference being the name "Gerizim", instead of "Ebal", therefore stating that Moses commanded the building of the altar on Mount Gerizim. Recent work on the Dead Sea Scrolls , which include

6660-470: The ancient Song of Deborah , Reuben declined to take part in the war against Sisera , the people instead idly resting among their flocks as if it were a time of peace, though the decision to do so was taken with a heavy heart. Nahash appears abruptly as the attacker of Jabesh-Gilead , which lay outside the territory he laid claim to. Having subjected the occupants to a siege , the population sought terms for surrender , and were told by Nahash that they had

6771-456: 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

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6882-400: The books of Ketuvim in the order they appear in most current printed editions. The Jewish textual tradition never finalized the order of the books in Ketuvim. The Babylonian Talmud ( Bava Batra 14b–15a) gives their order as Ruth, Psalms, Job, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Solomon, Lamentations of Jeremiah, Daniel, Scroll of Esther, Ezra, Chronicles. Tribe of Reuben According to

6993-421: 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

7104-405: The centre in their designated homeland. This would suggest that the tribe of Reuben at this time was no longer recognizable as a separate force in this area. Even if still present at the outbreak of this war, the outcome of this war would have left them without a territory of their own, just like the tribes of Simeon and Levi. This is, according to Richard Elliott Friedman in Who Wrote the Bible? ,

7215-413: The ceremonies of blessings took place on Mount Gerizim, and the cursings on nearby Mount Ebal . The Pulpit Commentary suggests that these mountains were selected probably "because they stand in the center of the Land both from north to south, and from east to west". A commentary in the Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges argues that "the face of Gerizim, the mount of blessing, is the more fertile;

7326-435: The church from raids by the few disgruntled Samaritans left in the area. According to Abu'l-Fath , Continuatio of the Samaritan Chronicle , during Sukkot in the seventh year of Abbasid Caliph al-Mutawakkil 's reign (855), the governor of Nablus forbade Samaritans from praying aloud and blowing the shofar . However, the following Thursday, they ascended the mountain and prayed loudly without interruption. Excavations at

7437-419: The church. As a result, the same year, Julianus ben Sabar led a pro-Samaritan revolt and by 530 had captured most of Samaria , destroying churches and killing the priests and officials. However, in 531, after Justinian enlisted the help of Ghassanids , the revolt was completely quashed, and surviving Samaritans were mostly enslaved or exiled. In 533 Justinian had a castle constructed on Mount Gerizim to protect

7548-414: 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

7659-423: 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

7770-481: The conquest of the land west of the Jordan, Moses accepted their request and granted to them and half of Manasseh land east of the Jordan. Following the death of Moses, Joshua became the leader of the Israelites, and with the help of these eastern tribes including Reuben, conquered some of Canaan and assigned the land of Israel to the various twelve tribes. According to Kenneth Kitchen , this conquest occurred around 1200 BC, but "almost all" scholars have abandoned

7881-429: 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

7992-567: The descendants of Ruben and would gouge everyone's right eye out, but no res(cuer) would be provided for Israel and there was not left anyone among the children of Israel in the Tr(ans Jordan) whose right eye Nahash the king of Ammonites did not gouge out but be(hold) seven thousand men (escaped the power of) Ammonites and they arrived at (Ya)besh Gilead. About a month later Nahash the Ammonite went up and besieged Jabesh-Gilead. According to

8103-455: The description in Numbers as referring to the actual distribution of Reubenites and Gadites around the time of David , and the description in Joshua 13 as reflecting administrative districts set up in the time of Solomon, but not reflecting actual tribal settlement patterns. By 900 BC, some of the territory of Reuben and Gad had been captured by the Moabite kingdom. According to the Torah ,

8214-509: The destruction of their temple by the Jews, Mount Gerizim continued to be the holy place for the Samaritans, as mentioned in the New Testament . Coins produced by a Roman mint situated in Nablus, dated to 138–161 CE , seemingly depict the destroyed Samaritan temple, showing a huge temple complex, statues, and a substantive staircase leading from Nablus to the temple. In the Gospel of John in

8325-668: 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

8436-536: The eldest son of the patriarch Jacob . Reuben, along with nine other tribes, is reckoned by the Bible as part of the northern kingdom of Israel , and disappears from history with the demise of that kingdom in c. 723 BC. The Book of Joshua records that the tribes of Reuben, Gad and half of Manasseh were allocated land by Moses on the eastern side of the Jordan River and the Dead Sea . The Tribe of Reuben

8547-466: 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

8658-574: The excellency" due to Reuben's crime of having sexual relations with his father's concubine Bilhah . The Bible relates that Jacob and his twelve sons, along with their sons, went down into Egypt as a group of about seventy persons, including Reuben and his four sons. According to the account in Exodus, the Israelites stayed in Egypt for 430 years, and their numbers grew to include about 600,000 men, not counting women or children. At this point they left Egypt (see The Exodus ) and wandered for forty years in

8769-535: 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

8880-547: 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

8991-488: The growing assembly, deployed troops to block their ascent. This led to clashes, fatalities, and arrests, prompting Samaritan leaders to accuse Pilate of brutality. In response, Vitellius , the legate of Syria, appointed Marcellus to govern Judaea and recalled Pilate to Rome for investigation by Emperor Tiberius , who died before Pilate's arrival. In the summer of 67 CE , during the First Jewish–Roman War ,

9102-489: The idea that Joshua carried out a conquest of Canaan similar to that described in the Book of Joshua. Israel Finkelstein et al., have claimed that lack of evidence for a systematic conquest or the abrupt appearance of a new culture indicates that the Israelites simply arose as a subculture within Canaanite society. The territory of Reuben encapsulated the territory of the earlier kingdom of Sihon . In this period, according to

9213-659: 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

9324-467: 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

9435-526: 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

9546-452: 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

9657-525: 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

9768-443: 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

9879-404: 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

9990-471: 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

10101-496: The oldest and most central mountain in the world, towering above the Great Flood and providing the first land for Noah ’s disembarkation. It is the location where Abraham almost sacrificed his son Isaac . A Samaritan Temple was located on Mount Gerizim from the 5th century BCE to the 2nd century BCE. Jews, on the other hand, consider the location of the near-sacrifice to be Mount Moriah , traditionally identified by them with

10212-407: 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,

10323-763: The oldest surviving manuscripts of the biblical text, further supports the accuracy of the Samaritan Pentateuch's designation of Mount Gerizim, rather than Mount Ebal, as the first location in the Promised Land where Moses commanded an altar to be built. All versions of the biblical text then have Moses specifying how the Israelites should split between the two groups that were to pronounce blessings from Mount Gerizim and to pronounce curses from Mount Ebal. The tribes of Simeon , Levi , Judah , Issachar , Joseph , and Benjamin were to be sent to Gerizim, while those of Reuben , Gad , Asher , Zebulun , Dan , and Naphtali were to remain on Ebal. The altar to God

10434-530: The opposite face of Ebal, the mount of curse, much the more bare", but the Pulpit Commentary states that both Gerizim and Ebal are "equally barren-looking, though neither is wholly destitute of culture and vegetation". The Masoretic Text says that Moses had also commanded the Israelites to build an altar on Mount Ebal, constructed from natural (rather than cut) stones, to place stones there and whiten them with lime , to make sacrificial offerings on

10545-427: 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

10656-632: The people of Schechem who wanted to make the ungodly and treacherous Abimelech their king. A Samaritan temple dedicated to Yahweh was built on Mount Gerizim during the 5th century BCE . It existed contemporaneously with the Jewish Second Temple in Jerusalem . By that point, the Israelites were divided as " Samaritans " and " Jews ", both claiming descendance from the Biblical Israelites and preaching adherence to

10767-434: The platform to a marbled esplanade . The complex also has a series of cisterns in which ceramics dated to the late Roman period were found. These discoveries are now called "structure A", and have been dated to the time of Hadrian from excavated coins and external literary evidence. Underneath these remains were found a large stone structure built on top of the bedrock. This structure, now known as "structure B",

10878-463: The previous Samaritan temple, extensive ruins still exist at the somewhat plateau-like top of Gerizim. The line of the wall around the church can easily be seen, as can portions of the former castle, and initial archaeological study of the site postulated that the castle built by Justinian had used stones from an earlier structure on the site, probably the Samaritan temple. In the centre of the plateau

10989-625: The reason why these three tribes are passed over in favour of Judah in the J-version of the Jacob's deathbed blessing (composed in Judah before the fall of Israel). The Tribes of Israel had banners described by the Book of Numbers , such the Lion of Judah . Jewish writers have diverged on whether the banner of Reuben bore the symbol of a man or male child (Aben Ezrah), a mandrake , or a child holding

11100-419: 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

11211-409: The site were initiated in 1983 and continued until 2006, and yielded tens of thousands of finds. Remnants found there identified that a Samaritan temple existed atop Mount Gerizim by the mid-5th century BCE and that it was destroyed and rebuilt in the early 2nd century BCE , only to be destroyed again in 111–110 BCE by Jewish forces. The archeological finds have shown that the precincts of

11322-410: The sources of the book of Joshua predate those of Deuteronomy, and hence the order to build the altar and make the inscriptions is likely based on these actions in the sources of Joshua, rather than the other way around, possibly to provide an origin explanation for the events narrated in Joshua. When Joshua was old and dying, he gathered the people together at Shechem (present-day Nablus ) and gave

11433-535: 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

11544-541: The tribe consisted of descendants of Reuben , the first son of Jacob , and a son of Leah, from whom it took its name. Modern scholarship views the events described in Genesis and Exodus, which contain the early stories about Jacob and his immediate descendants, as non-historical. The Bible divides the tribe of Reuben into four clans or families, the Hanochites, Palluites, Hezronites, and Carmites, which according to

11655-418: 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

11766-451: The wilderness between Egypt and the promised land of Canaan. As the tribes prepared to enter Canaan by crossing over to the west side of the Jordan, the Book of Numbers records that the Israelites defeated Sihon and Og, kings east of the Jordan. The tribes of Reuben and Gad requested that they be given land in the territory east of Jordan, because it was suitable for their needs as livestock grazers. In exchange for their promise to help with

11877-506: Was allocated the territory immediately east of the Dead Sea, reaching from the Arnon river in the south, and as far north as the Dead Sea stretched, with an eastern border vaguely defined by the land dissolving into desert ; the territory included the plain of Madaba . The exact border between Reuben and the Tribe of Gad , generally considered to have been situated to the north of Reuben,

11988-597: 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

12099-686: 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,

12210-594: 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,

12321-412: 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,

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