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102-594: The name of town is believed to derive from that of Chesulloth (Chisloth-Tabor), a biblical town mentioned in the Book of Joshua ( Joshua 19:12 ). Iksal was known to Josephus as Xaloth . Archaeological excavations in Iksal revealed artifacts from the period of Roman and Byzantine rule in Palestine . A ring decorated with the image of a lion was found and dates to one of these time periods. In burial caves carved into

204-517: A Christian population in the Byzantine period. In 536 a Council was held in Jerusalem to condemn Severus of Antioch and his followers. Present at that Council were 45 bishops from Palestine, including one Parthenius, bishop of Exalus, which is identified with Iksal. Thus do we know the town had enough Christians in the 6th Century to warrant a bishop. Remains have been excavated dating to

306-641: 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

408-535: A fight. Individuals who had collaborated with Zionist officials prior to Israel's establishment, negotiated the terms of surrender and transition to rule under the new military government. According to the Israel Central Bureau of Statistics , the town had a low ranking (3 out of 10) on the country's socioeconomic index (December 2001). Only 65.3% of students are entitled to a matriculation certificate after Grade 12 (2000). The average salary that year

510-649: A much older structure which had been constructed first in the Abbasid , and then in the Fatimid era. A large cemetery by the village was named Mukbarat el Afranj ("Cemetery of the Franks "). Yaqut al-Hamawi described the place (which he called Aksal ), as "A village in the Jordan Province, lying 5 leagues from Tiberias towards Ar Ramlah. The river Abu Futrus is in the neighbourhood." Building remains from

612-839: A people without a land ," which was to become widely used by advocates of Jewish settlement in Palestine. And, he added: "But let it return into the hands of the Israelites..." In 1878, the Treasurer's statement listed over 130 local associations of the PEF in the United Kingdom (including Ireland). There were also branches in Canada and Australia, and Gaza City and Jerusalem . Expenditure in 1877 amounted to £2,959 14s 11d. Notable persons associated with PEF: The first 21 years of

714-469: 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

816-408: 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

918-467: 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

1020-560: A tax rate of 25% on agricultural products, which included wheat, barley, summer crops, fruit trees, occasional revenues, goats and beehives; a total of 6,633 Akçe . In 1738 Richard Pococke passed by the place, which he called Zal. He noted that near it was "many sepulchres cut in the rock, some of them are like stone coffins above-ground, others are cut into the rock, like graves, some of them have stone covers over them, so that formerly this might be no inconsiderable place." A map from Napoleon's invasion of 1799 by Pierre Jacotin showed

1122-473: A unique insight into the lives of two of the women comprising the PEF workforce. Subsequent directors only referred to the women in their employ as anonymous labourers, sometimes complaining that they brought too much gossip—though in Bliss' journals, he recounts more familial and romantic tension that caused trouble on site among the men. For some years, the fund's office was located north of Wigmore Street in

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1224-485: 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

1326-549: 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

1428-603: 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

1530-743: Is a British society based in London . It was founded in 1865, shortly after the completion of the Ordnance Survey of Jerusalem by Royal Engineers of the War Department. The Fund is the oldest known organization in the world created specifically for the study of the Levant region, also known as Palestine . Often simply known as the PEF , its initial objective was to carry out surveys of the topography and ethnography of Ottoman Palestine – producing

1632-649: 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

1734-460: 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

1836-416: 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:

1938-604: 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

2040-500: 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

2142-574: Is held before an lecture. Each year the Palestine Exploration Fund offers grants for travel and research related to topics connected with its founding aims. "to promote research into the archaeology and history, manners and customs and culture, topography, geology and natural sciences of biblical Palestine and the Levant" The committee welcomes interdisciplinary applications relating to the fund's aims, as well as those relating to

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2244-463: 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

2346-669: 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)

2448-443: Is one woman employed to work on an excavation with Bliss, at Tell el-Hesi . He first writes about her in 1891, noting that she is a capital worker though "a bolder, wilder girl I never saw". He describes her capacity to run all over the site and clear the trenches for excavation with wonder, also commenting on her good looks and marriage prospects. He writes about her cousin, Rizq, as well, and her abilities to haul earth. Bliss provided

2550-459: 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

2652-554: 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

2754-624: Is the land from which comes news of our Redemption. It is the land towards which we turn as the fountain of all our hopes; it is the land to which we may look with as true a patriotism as we do in this dear old England, which we love so much." Speech at the first meeting of the PEF: William Thomson , the Archbishop of York and first President of the PEF Following the completion of the Ordnance Survey of Jerusalem ,

2856-475: 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

2958-528: 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

3060-532: The 1945 statistics the population was 1,110, all Muslims, while the total land area was 16,009 dunams , according to an official land and population survey. Of this, 581 were allocated for plantations and irrigable land, 13,029 for cereals, while 47 dunams were classified as built-up (urban) areas. Like many other Arab towns and villages in the Galilee that were left standing after the 1948 Arab-Israeli War , Iksal surrendered to Israeli forces without putting up

3162-569: The Biblical archaeologists and clergymen who supported the survey financed the creation of the fund. It was founded on 22 June 1865 with initial funding of £300. The most notable of the founders were Arthur P. Stanley , the Dean of Westminster , and George Grove , who later founded the Royal College of Music and was responsible for Grove's Dictionary of Music . Its founders established

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3264-526: The Earl of Shaftesbury , a prominent social reformer, told the Annual General Meeting of the PEF that "We have there a land teeming with fertility and rich in history, but almost without an inhabitant – a country without a people, and look! scattered over the world, a people without a country." It was one of the earliest usages by a prominent politician of the phrase " A land without a people for

3366-823: 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

3468-590: 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

3570-647: The Marylebone section of the City of Westminster , London, but in early 2019, the PEF moved to 5-6 Dreadnought Walk, Greenwich , London. Chief Executive and Curator of the PEF, Felicity Cobbing, told The Jordan Times that the Ottoman's Palestine region included historical Palestine, Jordan, southern Syria, Lebanon, the Sinai Peninsula and the island of Cyprus. The PEF's "goal was – and remains – to study

3672-618: 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

3774-670: 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

3876-467: The PEF Survey of Palestine . Its remit was considered to fall between an expeditionary survey and military intelligence gathering. There was also strong religious interest from Christians; William Thomson , Archbishop of York, was the first president of the PEF. As a result, the PEF had a complex relationship with Corps of Royal Engineers of the War Department. The PEF members sent back reports to

3978-624: The Umayyad period (7th century CE), including pottery and Cream Ware bowls. On December 22, 946, the forces of the Egyptian Ikhshidid dynasty defeated those of Sayf al-Daula at Iksal. The latter retreated to Aleppo , while the Ikshidid forces advanced onto Damascus . During the period of Crusader or Mamluk rule in Palestine, a castle was built in Iksal, the ruins of which remain visible today. The Crusaders probably added to

4080-411: 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

4182-578: 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

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4284-484: The Archbishop of York, publicly read the original prospectus at this meeting; [O]ur object is strictly an inductive inquiry. We are not to be a religious society; we are not about to launch controversy; we are about to apply the rules of science, which are so well understood by us in our branches, to an investigation into the facts concerning the Holy Land. "No country should be of so much interest to us as that in which

4386-463: 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

4488-404: 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

4590-510: 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:

4692-778: 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

4794-760: The British Museum Department of Middle East, the Palestine Exploration Fund hosts free lectures that reflect the diverse interests of their membership. The PEF also co-ordinates joint lectures with the Council for British Research in the Levant, the Anglo-Israel Archaeological Society, the Society for Arabian Studies, and the Egypt Exploration Society. Once a year, an Annual General Meeting (AGM)

4896-698: 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

4998-462: The Fund to carry baskets of soil from the excavations to the dump. These women also cut back brush and dug. The majority of these women remain nameless, as they were hired to perform hard labour on behalf of the trained archaeologists. Bliss took an active interest in the lives of his workers—though not necessarily in their well-being—recording a few names and stories. In his diary, Bliss wrote that most of

5100-626: 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

5202-429: 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

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5304-489: 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),

5406-449: The Mamluk period have also been excavated. One excavation revealed three constructions with pottery remains, all dating from the Mamluk era, 14th and 15th century CE. In 1517, the village was included in the Ottoman empire with the rest of Palestine , and in the 1596 tax-records it appeared as Ksal , located in the Nahiya of Tabariyya of the Safad Sanjak . The population was 17 households and 1 bachelor, all Muslim . They paid

5508-465: The PEF's archival collections. The PEF grants are open to all members of the PEF or someone who is becoming a member. The PEF's offices also house collections of photographs, maps, specimens, manuscripts, and paintings. At their location in London, there are collections over 6,000 artefacts that range in date from 40,000 B.C. to the 19th century. The archives contain over 40,000 photographs of Palestine , Jordan , and Syria . Objects come from sites in

5610-405: 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

5712-429: The South Levant, in particular from Jerusalem, Tell el Hesi, and Samaria. The material comes almost exclusively from PEF excavations carried out between the 1860s to the 1930s. Items on display include artefacts from excavations by Charles Warren , Sir William Flinders Petrie , Frederick Jones Bliss , and John Crowfoot . The PEF also has a collection of casts from original items that now reside in different areas around

5814-470: 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

5916-410: The UK on the need to salvage and modernise the Levant region. "This country of Palestine belongs to you and me, it is essentially ours. It was given to the Father of Israel in the words: "Walk through the land in the length of it, and in the breadth of it, for I will give it unto thee". We mean to walk through Palestine in the length and in the breadth of it, because that land has been given unto us. It

6018-456: The accumulation of rubbish and ruins on which those villages stand ... The PEF conducted many early excavations of biblical and post-biblical sites around the Levant , as well as studies involving natural history, anthropology, history and geography. In 1867, Charles Warren led PEF's biggest expedition. Warren and his team improved the topography of Jerusalem and discovered the ancient water systems that lay beneath this city. The water system

6120-427: 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

6222-456: 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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6324-433: 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. Palestine Exploration Fund The Palestine Exploration Fund

6426-421: 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

6528-414: 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

6630-423: 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

6732-471: The country, its people and its natural, ancient and cultural heritage," she added. The new Greenwich headquarters provides more space for PEF collections and its specialist library. "Now we can welcome many more scholars and we can look forward to developing collaborative projects with other institutions both in the UK and internationally," Cobbing said. The PEF holds regular events and lectures and provides annual grants for various projects. In partnership with

6834-429: 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

6936-405: The different types of stonework he encountered at different levels and other features, such as Robinson's Arch on the western side and the Herodian street below it. ... in 1884 the PEF published a large portfolio of 50 of Warren's maps, plans and drawings titled Plans, Elevations, Sections, etc., Shewing the Results of the Excavations at Jerusalem, 1867–70 (now known as the 'Warren Atlas')." In 1875,

7038-414: The documents of our Faith were written, and the momentous events they describe enacted. At the same time no country more urgently requires illustration ... Even to a casual traveller in the Holy Land the Bible becomes, in its form, and therefore to some extent in its substance, a new book. Much would be gained by ...bringing to light the remains of so many races and generations which must lie concealed under

7140-420: 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

7242-410: 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

7344-674: The excavations of Flinders Petrie and Frederick Jones Bliss at Tell el Hesi (1890–1892), the excavations of R.A.S. Macalister at Gezer (1902–06), Duncan Mackenzie 's excavations at Ain Shems-Beth Shemesh in 1910–1912, C. L. Woolley and T. E. Lawrence on the Wilderness of Zin Survey (1913–14), and many others. In addition to these items, the PEF also maintains a collection of photographs of expeditions, coins, natural history, models, and historic forgeries. The PEF also houses

7446-594: 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

7548-577: The following activities have been reported: The Palestine Exploration Fund was also involved in the foundation of the British School of Archaeology in Jerusalem in 1919. The School worked with the Fund in joint excavations at Jerusalem's Ophel in the 1920s. The school's second director, John Winter Crowfoot , was Chairman of the PEF from 1945 to 1950. Through the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, women were frequently employed by

7650-583: The fund "for the purpose of investigating the Archaeology, Geography, manners, customs and culture, Geology and Natural History of the Holy Land ". The roots of the Palestine Exploration Fund lie in a literary society founded by British Consul James Finn and his wife Elizabeth Anne Finn . Many photographs of Palestine have survived from this period. Frederick J. Bliss wrote of the foundation that "[a]s far as its aims were concerned this organization

7752-567: The fund are summarised in PEF (1886). Its chapters and persons mentioned include the following: In his opening address ( p.8 ), Archbishop Thomson laid down three basic principles for the Society: Regarding the latter, great emphasis was placed upon the nomenclature "Holy Land", so the notion of religion could never have been far away. Also ( p.10 ) stress was laid upon the fact that "The Society numbers among its supporters Christians and Jews". (Muslims were not mentioned.) Elsewhere

7854-547: 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

7956-659: 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

8058-467: 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

8160-526: 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

8262-452: 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

8364-525: 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

8466-443: 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

8568-404: 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

8670-527: 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

8772-407: 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,

8874-427: 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

8976-414: The place, named as Iksad. Edward Robinson , who passed by the village in 1838, repeated Pocockes assertion that Iksal had many sepulchres. In 1863 Henry Baker Tristram saw the remains of a "Crusader" tower in Iksal, while in 1875, Victor Guérin found it to have 400 inhabitants, all Muslim. In 1881, the PEF 's Survey of Western Palestine (SWP) described Iksal as "a large stone village, built in

9078-403: The plains, with a conspicuous square tower, surrounded by gardens and containing about 400 Moslims, many caves and cisterns." A population list from about 1887 showed that Iksal had about 600 Muslim inhabitants. At the time of the 1922 census of Palestine Iksal had a population of 621 Muslims, increasing slightly in the 1931 census to 752, still all Muslims, in a total of 166 houses. In

9180-511: The rock, sarcophagi and ossuaries containing pottery , glass vessels, and jewelry were found. Also dated to the Byzantine period are agricultural installations, carved into the rock and plastered, inside of which were found part of a winepress . Archaeologist Uzi Leibner identifies Iksal as one of several villages in Galilee that had a Jewish population during the Roman period and later had

9282-419: 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

9384-535: 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

9486-418: 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

9588-541: The workers were from Bureir , a village six miles away from the Tell. Most of the men slept at camp, "digging little shallow graves for a bed", but "the women and girls had the long walk both before and after work. Six miles' walk before 6.30a.m., and six miles' walk after 5p.m., with a hard day's work of carrying earth-piled baskets on the head in between". He comments that this does not seem like an easy life, but more women and girls applied for work than he could employ. Heuda

9690-484: The world. Also at the PEF is an archive of maps that is composed mainly of documents, letters, reports, plans and maps compiled by the explorers and scholars who worked for the PEF. These explorers include Charles Warren in Jerusalem and Palestine (1867–1870), Claude Conder and Horatio Kitchener on the Survey of Western Palestine (1872–1878), the Survey of Eastern Palestine (1880–81) and the Wady Arabah (1883–4),

9792-490: Was NIS 3,640 per month, whereas the national average was NIS 6,835. Its population has grown at an annual rate of 2.8%. In Iksal, about 60 percent of the inhabitants are family relations of one another. In 2008 and 2012, archaeological surveys were conducted at the ancient site by Daniel Zohar and Mouqary `Abdallah on behalf of the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA). Bible The Bible

9894-624: Was but a re-institution of a Society formed about the year 1804 under the name of the Palestine Association ... it is interesting to note that the General Committee of the Palestine Exploration Fund recognized an organic connection with the earlier Society." The preliminary meeting of the Society of the Palestine Exploration Fund took place in the Jerusalem Chamber of Westminster Abbey . William Thomson ,

9996-597: 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

10098-488: Was later named Warren's Shaft , after his work. They also made the first excavations of Tell es-Sultan , site of the biblical city of Jericho . A 2013 publication, The Walls of the Temple Mount , provides more specifics about Warren's work, as summarized in a book review: "... he concentrated on excavating shafts down beneath the ground to the level of the lower parts of the external Temple Mount walls, recording

10200-686: 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,

10302-594: 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,

10404-412: 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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