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119-590: Based on the biblical passage which reads that, "For where a testament is, there must also of necessity be the death of the testator. For a testament is of force after men are dead: otherwise it is of no strength at all while the testator liveth", Protestants tend to believe that the New Covenant only came into force with the death of Jesus Christ . The commentary to the Roman Catholic New American Bible also affirms that Christ

238-528: A Righteous Gentile who saved the lives of 1,200 Jews in the Holocaust , is buried. Notable burials in the Protestant cemetery on Mt. Zion include a number of prominent individuals from the 19th and 20th centuries. These include explorers and archaeologists such as: Flinders Petrie , Charles Frederick Tyrwhitt Drake , James Duncan, Clarence Stanley Fisher , Charles Lambert and James Leslie Starkey ;

357-641: 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

476-641: A load of 250 kilograms was designed for this purpose. The cable car was only used at night and lowered into the valley during the day to escape detection; it is still in place at what is now the Mount Zion Hotel. The ride from the Israeli position at the St. John Eye Hospital to Mount Zion took two minutes. Between 1948 and 1967, when the Old City was under Jordanian rule , Israelis were forbidden access to

595-590: A new covenant of sorts with the Christians but they "neglected part of it" and were consequently punished for that. Biblical The Bible 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

714-481: A new covenant, he makes the first one obsolete. And what is becoming obsolete and growing old is ready to vanish away. That full quotation, with partial quotations of the same text in other New Testament passages, reflects that the authors of the New Testament and Christian leaders generally, consider Jeremiah 31:31–34 to be a central Old Testament prophecy of the New Covenant. Here is the key text: Behold,

833-605: A new spirit within you; and I will remove the stony heart out of their flesh, and will give them a heart of flesh; that they may walk in My statutes, and keep Mine ordinances, and do them; and they shall be My people, and I will be their God. A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you; and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you a heart of flesh. And I will put My spirit within you, and cause you to walk in My statutes, and ye shall keep Mine ordinances, and do them. And ye shall dwell in

952-407: 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

1071-469: 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

1190-464: A second. For he finds fault with them when he says: "Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will establish a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah, not like the covenant that I made with their fathers on the day when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt. For they did not continue in my covenant, and so I showed no concern for them, declares

1309-467: A special two-column form emphasizing their internal parallelism, which was found early in the study of Hebrew poetry. "Stichs" are the lines that make up a verse "the parts of which lie parallel as to form and content". Collectively, these three books are known as Sifrei Emet (an acronym of the titles in Hebrew, איוב, משלי, תהלים yields Emet אמ"ת, which is also the Hebrew for "truth"). Hebrew cantillation

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1428-557: 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 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

1547-603: 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

1666-456: Is God. He tells how the prophet Jeremiah complains that Israel is circumcised in body but "uncircumcised in heart" (9:26), that Jeremiah says "wash your heart from wickedness" (4:14). Heschel analyses that, while the prophet can only give Israel a new word, it is God himself who will give man a new heart: The "new covenant" will accomplish the complete transformation of every individual. Compare with: And I will give them one heart, and I will put

1785-680: Is a hill in Jerusalem , located just outside the walls of the Old City to the south. The term Mount Zion has been used in the Hebrew Bible first for the City of David ( 2 Samuel 5:7 , 1 Chronicles 11:5 ; 1 Kings 8:1 , 2 Chronicles 5:2 ) and later for the Temple Mount , but its meaning has shifted and it is now used as the name of ancient Jerusalem's Western Hill. In a wider sense,

1904-460: 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

2023-702: Is also the final resting place for a number of soldiers who fought in the First World War, as well as members of the Palestinian Police who served under the British mandate . Several persons buried here were killed in the bombing of the King David Hotel on the morning of 22 July 1946. In 1874, an Englishman, Henry Maudsley, discovered a large segment of rock scarp and numerous ancient dressed stones on Mount Zion that were believed to be

2142-581: Is an alternate term for the Hebrew Bible composed of the first letters of those three parts of the Hebrew scriptures: 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

2261-416: 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:

2380-504: Is between those who believe that only believers are members of the New Covenant, and (reflecting the idea of the Jewish covenants as national or community covenants) those who believe that believers and their children are members of the New Covenant. These differences give rise to different views on whether children may be baptised: the credobaptist view and the paedobaptist view. Secondarily, there are differences among paedobaptists as to

2499-604: 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

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2618-623: Is expected to happen with the Second Coming of Jesus Christ. Most historic Christian Churches , including the Roman Catholic Church, Methodist Churches and Reformed Churches, have traditionally held that law in the Old Covenant has three components: ceremonial, moral, and civil (cf. covenant theology ). They teach that while the ceremonial and civil (judicial) laws have been abolished, the moral law as contained in

2737-540: Is more complete knowledge, meaning a member of the New Covenant no longer has to be taught anything at all regarding the Christian life (not just that they lack need for exhortation regarding salvific reconciliation with God). This division does not just break down along Jewish v. Christian lines (as the previous difference did). In general, those that are more likely to lean toward the "already view", or "salvific knowledge view", are those Christians that do not believe in

2856-520: 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

2975-669: 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)

3094-517: Is primarily a spiritual nation composed of Jews who claim Jesus as their Messiah , as well as Gentile believers who through the New Covenant have been grafted into the promises made to Israelites . This spiritual Israel is based on the faith of the patriarch Abraham (before he was circumcised ) who was ministered by the Melchizedek priesthood , which is understood to be a type for the Christian faith of believing Jesus to be Christ and Lord in

3213-457: Is suggested by some to mean that it is the "first" mitzvah which is true for the Jewish life cycle . The other use is in relationship to the merit of Ruth being an ancestor to King David , with the name again having same gematria as Brit, linking Davidic covenant with that of all previous, since Ruth was a Moabite by birth, and related to Noah also. The Quran mentions that God has made

3332-554: 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

3451-433: Is the "testator whose death puts his will into effect". Thus, Christians believe that Jesus is the mediator of the New Covenant, and they also believe that the blood of Christ , which was shed during his crucifixion , is the only blood sacrifice which is required by the covenant . There are several Christian eschatologies that further define the New Covenant. For example, an inaugurated eschatology defines and describes

3570-640: Is the fulfillment of the promise that through Abraham 's seed all the nations would be blessed. (Galatians 3:16, 26–29) Christians view the New Covenant as a new relationship between God and humans mediated by Jesus upon sincere declaration that one believes in Jesus Christ as Lord and God. Some Protestant theologians teach that the New Covenant also breaks the generational curse of original sin on all children of Adam if they believe in Jesus Christ, after people are judged for their own sins, which

3689-525: Is the manner of chanting ritual readings as they are written and notated in the Masoretic Text of the Bible. Psalms, Job and Proverbs form a group with a "special system" of accenting used only in these three books. The five relatively short books of Song of Songs , Book of Ruth , the Book of Lamentations , Ecclesiastes , and Book of Esther are collectively known as the Hamesh Megillot . These are

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3808-546: Is the word for Zion in Arabic and Syriac . A valley called Wâdi Sahyûn ( wadi being the Arabic for "valley") seemingly preserves the name and is located approximately one and three-quarter miles (2.8 km) from the Old City of Jerusalem 's Jaffa Gate . The phrase Har Tzion , lit. "Mount Zion", appears nine times in the Tanakh . The name Mount Zion referred successively to three locations, as Jerusalemites preserved

3927-528: 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

4046-473: Is what today is called Mount Zion. In the second half of the First Temple period, the city expanded westward and its defensive walls were extended to include the entire Western Hill behind them. Nebuchadnezzar II destroyed the city almost completely around 586 BCE , severing the continuity of historical memory. A long period of rebuilding followed, ending with Jerusalem's second total destruction at

4165-595: The Book of Psalms , and the First Book of Maccabees (c. 2nd century BCE; 1 Maccabees 4:36–38 ) seems to refer to the top of the hill, generally known as the Temple Mount . The last shift of the name Mount Zion was to the Western Hill, which is more dominant than the Eastern Hill and seemed to first-century CE Jerusalemites the worthier location for the by-then lost palace of King David. The Western Hill

4284-573: The City of David "from the City of David, which is Zion (1 Kings 8:1–2; 2 Chron. 5:2)". 2 Samuel 5:7 also reads, "David took the strong hold of Zion: the same is the city of David," which identifies Mount Tzion as part of the City of David, and not an area outside today's Old City of Jerusalem. Rashi identifies the location as the source of "joy" mentioned in the Psalm as the Temple Courtyard ,

4403-582: The Hebrew Bible or the Christian Bible, which contains both the Old and New Testaments . The English word Bible 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

4522-511: The Hebrew Bible that uses the wording "new covenant" is found in Jeremiah 31:31–34 : Behold, the days come, saith the LORD, that I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel, and with the house of Judah; not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day that I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt; forasmuch as they broke My covenant, although I

4641-763: 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

4760-590: 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

4879-645: The Last Supper ) is disputed. Six forms of the text have been identified; for example, the Western text-type such as Codex Bezae omit verses 19b–20. The Daniel 9:27 commentary found in the 1599 Geneva Bible connects the verse with the New King James Version translation of Matthew 26:28. In this interpretation, the angel Gabriel reveals the coming New Blood Covenant of the Messiah, which

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4998-618: 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

5117-475: The Mosaic covenant as applying only to Jews and any New Covenant merely a strengthening of the already existing one, Jews do not see this phrase as relevant in any way to non-Jews. For non-Jews, Judaism advocates the pre-Sinaitic Seven Laws of Noah . In his 1962 work The Prophets , Abraham Joshua Heschel points out that prophecy is not the only instrument of God to change the hearts of Israel, to know that he

5236-670: 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

5355-473: 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 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

5474-693: The Ten Commandments still continues to bind Christian believers. Dispensationalist theology , taught by certain denominations such as the Plymouth Brethren , present a view of the nature of Israel is that God's promises to Israel are distinct from the Church . The Church, in this present age, is in no way a "spiritual Israel". Some Christians, however, believe that the Church has inherited and absorbed God's promises to Israel, and that Israel

5593-411: 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

5712-546: The "stronghold of Zion" that was conquered by King David , then renamed and partially rebuilt by him as the "City of David", where he erected his palace . Once the First Temple was erected at the top of the Eastern Hill, the name "Mount Zion" migrated there too. After the conquest of the Jebusite city, its built-up area expanded northward towards the uppermost part of the same, Eastern Hill. This highest part became

5831-525: 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

5950-406: The Armenian Monastery of St. Saviour , King David's Tomb and the Room of the Last Supper . Most historians and archeologists today do not regard "David's Tomb" there to be the actual burial place of King David . The Chamber of the Holocaust ( Martef HaShoah ), the precursor of Yad Vashem , is also located on Mount Zion. Another place of interest is the Catholic cemetery where Oskar Schindler ,

6069-463: 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

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6188-471: 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 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

6307-624: 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

6426-442: The Former Prophets ( Nevi'im Rishonim נביאים ראשונים , the narrative books of Joshua, Judges, Samuel and Kings) and the Latter Prophets ( Nevi'im Aharonim נביאים אחרונים , the books of Isaiah, Jeremiah and Ezekiel and the Twelve Minor Prophets ). The Nevi'im tell a story of the rise of the Hebrew monarchy and its division into two kingdoms, the Kingdom of Israel and the Kingdom of Judah , focusing on conflicts between

6545-401: The Galilean cities of Tiberias and Jerusalem, and in Babylonia (modern Iraq). Those living in the Jewish community of Tiberias in ancient Galilee ( c.  750 –950), made scribal copies of the Hebrew Bible texts without a standard text, such as the Babylonian tradition had, to work from. The canonical pronunciation of the Hebrew Bible (called Tiberian Hebrew) that they developed, and many of

6664-451: The Greek New Testament . The King James Version sometimes uses testament for covenant , with the words new covenant together occurring in Hebrews 8:8 , 8:13 and 12:24 while in the New International Version "new covenant" occurs at Luke 22:20 , 1 Corinthians 11:25 , 2 Corinthians 3:6 , Hebrews 8:8 , Hebrews 9:15 and Hebrews 12:24 as a translation of some form of διαθήκη and καινός or νέας . Luke 22:17–20 (part of

6783-404: 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 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

6902-429: 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

7021-489: 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),

7140-404: The Jewish holy places. Mount Zion was a designated no-man's land between Israel and Jordan. Mount Zion was the closest accessible site to the ancient Jewish Temple . Until East Jerusalem was captured by Israel in the Six-Day War , Israelis would climb to the rooftop of David's Tomb to pray. The winding road leading up to Mount Zion is known as Pope's Way ( Derekh Ha'apifyor ). In his Epistle to

7259-401: The Lord GOD, be it known unto you; be ashamed and confounded for your ways, O house of Israel. The Jewish Encyclopedia ' s "New Testament" article states: The idea of the new covenant is based chiefly upon Jeremiah 31:31–34 (comp. Hebrews 8:6–13 , 10:16 ). That the prophet's words do not imply an abrogation of the Law is evidenced by his emphatic declaration of the immutability of

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7378-507: The Lord. For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the Lord: I will put my laws into their minds, and write them on their hearts, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. And they shall not teach, each one his neighbor and each one his brother, saying, 'Know the Lord,' for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest. For I will be merciful toward their iniquities, and I will remember their sins no more." In speaking of

7497-462: The Lord: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts. And I will be their God, and they shall be my people. And no longer shall each one teach his neighbor and each his brother, saying, "Know the Lord," for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, declares the Lord. For I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more. Some Christians claim that there are many other passages that speak about

7616-411: The New Covenant as an ongoing relationship between Christian believers and God that will be in full fruition after the Second Coming of Christ ; that is, it will not only be in full fruition in believing hearts, it will also be in fruition in the future external world . The description of the connection between the blood of Christ and the New Covenant is contained in most modern English translations of

7735-477: The New Covenant is more future reality than present reality. Supersessionism is the view that the New Covenant replaces, fulfills or completes God's prior covenants with the Israelites . The most common alternatives to Supersessionism are abrogation of old covenant laws and dual covenant theology . Writers who reject the notion of supersessionism include Michael J. Vlach, Walter Brueggemann, Roland Edmund Murphy, and Jacques B. Doukhan. The only reference in

7854-483: The New Testament such as the passage which reads: "this cup that is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood". The key New Testament chapter for the Christian concept of the New Covenant is Hebrews 8 , a portion of which is quoted below: But now Jesus has obtained a superior ministry, since the covenant that he mediates is also better and is enacted on better promises. For if that first covenant had been faultless, there would have been no occasion to look for

7973-438: The Romans, Paul noted: “Happy is he whose conscience does not condemn him in that which he allows” (Romans 14:22) It was paved in honor of the historic visit to Jerusalem of Pope Paul VI in 1964. The Tanakh reference to Har Tzion (Mount Tzion) that identifies its location is derived from the Psalm 48 composed by the sons of Korah , i.e. Levites, as "the northern side of the city of the great king", which Radak interprets as

8092-429: 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 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

8211-427: 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

8330-462: The architect Conrad Schick ; and pioneers in the fields of medicine, education, religion, diplomacy and social services such as James Edward Hanauer , Ernest Masterman, John Nicholayson , Paul Palmer, Max Sandreczky , Johann Ludwig Schneller, Horatio G. Spafford , author of the hymn It Is Well With My Soul . Also buried in the cemetery are G. Douglas Young, founder of Jerusalem University College , and his wife Georgina (Snook) Young. The cemetery

8449-426: 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 a variety of disparate cultures and backgrounds. British biblical scholar John K. Riches wrote: [T]he biblical texts were produced over

8568-505: 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

8687-475: 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. Mount Zion Mount Zion ( Hebrew : הַר צִיּוֹן , Har Ṣīyyōn ; Arabic : جبل صهيون , Jabal Sahyoun )

8806-472: 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

8925-432: The children of the flesh, these are not the children of God: but the children of the promise are counted for the seed. Among Christians, there are significant differences on the question of membership in the New Covenant. These differences can be so serious that they form a principal reason for division i.e., denominationalism . Christian denominations exist because of their answer to this question. The first major split

9044-470: The city of Ur , eventually to settle in the land of Canaan , and how the Children of Israel later moved to Egypt. The remaining four books of the Torah tell the story of Moses , who lived hundreds of years after the patriarchs. He leads the Children of Israel from slavery in ancient Egypt to the renewal of their covenant with God at Mount Sinai and their wanderings in the desert until a new generation

9163-594: The conquest of the Kingdom of Judah by the neo-Babylonian Empire and the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem . The Former Prophets are the books Joshua, Judges, Samuel and Kings. They contain narratives that begin immediately after the death of Moses with the divine appointment of Joshua as his successor, who then leads the people of Israel into the Promised Land , and end with the release from imprisonment of

9282-578: The covenant with Israel ( Jeremiah 31:35–36 ; comp. 33:25 ); he obviously looked for a renewal of the Law through a regeneration of the hearts of the people. It is mentioned several times in the Mishna and Talmud , and had been used extensively in kabbalistic literature due to the gematria value of 135 being equal to the word HaSinai (הסיני) in Genesis 10:17 . Brit also has the numeric value of 612, which

9401-423: The days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah, not like the covenant that I made with their fathers on the day when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, my covenant that they broke, though I was their husband, declares the Lord. For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares

9520-668: 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

9639-466: 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

9758-594: 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

9877-544: The future of Israel were to Israel alone, and should not be interpreted as being superimposed on the Church in the present age. God's remaining promises to Israel will come to fruition in the Millennium, the 1,000 year reign of Christ on Earth. Not as though the word of God hath taken none effect. For they are not all Israel, which are of Israel: Neither, because they are the seed of Abraham, are they all children: but, In Isaac shall thy seed be called. That is, They which are

9996-547: 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

10115-488: The hands of the Romans in 70 CE. Josephus , the first-century CE historian who knew the city as it was before this second catastrophic event, identified Mount Zion as being the Western Hill, separated from the lower, Eastern Hill, by what he calls the " Tyropoeon Valley ". It must however be said that Josephus never used the name "Mount Zion" in any of his writings, but described the "Citadel" of King David as being situated on

10234-616: The higher and longer hill, thus pointing at the Western Hill as what the Bible calls Mount Zion. At the end of the Roman period, a synagogue was built at the entrance of the structure known as David's Tomb, probably based on the belief that David brought the Ark of the Covenant here from Beit Shemesh and Kiryat Ye'arim before the construction of the Temple. During the 1948 war , Mount Zion

10353-480: The indivisible Church (the indivisible Church is a belief of Catholics and Orthodox) and Christians that practice believer's baptism , because both believe the New Covenant is more present reality than future reality. Also in general, those that lean toward the "not yet view", or "complete knowledge view", practice infant baptism for covenantal reasons, and dispensationalistic Christians (even though they tend to practice believer's baptism ), because they believe

10472-567: The land that I gave to your fathers; and ye shall be My people, and I will be your God. And I will save you from all your uncleannesses; and I will call for the corn, and will increase it, and lay no famine upon you. And I will multiply the fruit of the tree, and the increase of the field, that ye may receive no more the reproach of famine among the nations. Then shall ye remember your evil ways, and your doings that were not good; and ye shall loathe yourselves in your own sight for your iniquities and for your abominations. Not for your sake do I this, saith

10591-731: The last king of Judah . Treating Samuel and Kings as single books, they cover: The Latter Prophets are Isaiah , Jeremiah , Ezekiel and the Twelve Minor Prophets , counted as a single book. Ketuvim (in Biblical Hebrew : כְּתוּבִים , romanized:  Kəṯūḇīm "writings") is the third and final section of the Tanakh. The Ketuvim are believed to have been written under the inspiration of Ruach HaKodesh (the Holy Spirit) but with one level less authority than that of prophecy . In Masoretic manuscripts (and some printed editions), Psalms, Proverbs and Job are presented in

10710-467: 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

10829-526: 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

10948-558: The least of them unto the greatest of them, saith the LORD; for I will forgive their iniquity, and their sin will I remember no more. This prophet's word refers to the Messianic Age to come (or World to come ), in which the eternal Mosaic covenant with Israel will be confirmed. Of this Mosaic covenant between God and Israel the Shabbat is declared to be the sign forever ( Exodus 31:13–17 ). The Tanakh describes Shabbat as having

11067-524: The location of atonement offerings in the northern part of the Temple complex . In the New Testament, Mount Zion is used metaphorically to refer to the heavenly Jerusalem, God's holy, eternal city. Christians are said to have "come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, to an innumerable company of angels, to the general assembly and church of the firstborn who are registered in heaven" (Hebrews 12:22–23, cf. Revelation 14:1). Important sites on Mount Zion are Dormition Abbey ,

11186-452: 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

11305-523: The name is similar in Arabic and may be connected to the root ṣiyya ("dry land") or the Arabic šanā ("protect" or "citadel"). It might also be related to the Arabic root ṣahî ("ascend to the top") or ṣuhhay ("tower" or "the top of the mountain"). A non-Semitic relationship to the Hurrian word šeya ("river" or "brook") has also been suggested. Sahyun ( Arabic : صهيون , Ṣahyūn or Ṣihyūn )

11424-463: The name of the Phoenician seaport Byblos (also known as Gebal) from whence Egyptian papyrus 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

11543-525: 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

11662-421: The nature of the membership of children in the covenant. Another difference is between those who believe the New Covenant has already substantially arrived ( Preterists ), and that this knowledge of God that the member of the New Covenant has is primarily salvific knowledge; and those that believe that the New Covenant has not yet substantially arrived, but will in the Second Coming , and that this knowledge

11781-443: 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

11900-404: 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

12019-586: The notes they made, therefore differed from the Babylonian. These differences were resolved into a standard text called the Masoretic text in the ninth century. The oldest complete copy still in existence is the Leningrad Codex dating to c. 1000 CE. The Samaritan Pentateuch is a version of the Torah maintained by the Samaritan community since antiquity, which was rediscovered by European scholars in

12138-407: 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,

12257-405: The order of Melchizedek . The Apostle Paul says that it is not "the children of the flesh" who are the children of God , but "the children of the promise". While Christ came as a priest in the order of Melchizedeck, which is to say without precedence, and fulfilled God's promise of a Messiah to the entire world whosoever believes, Dispensationalists believe that the body of God's promises concerning

12376-427: 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

12495-527: The purpose as a "taste" of Olam Haba (the world to come, the Hereafter ) following the Messianic Age (the End of Days ). The Jewish view of the mere wording "new covenant" is no more than a renewed national commitment to abide by God's laws. In this view, the word new does not refer to a new commitment that replaces a previous one, but rather to an additional and greater level of commitment. Because Jews view

12614-476: The same New Covenant without using this exact wording. Some passages speak of a "covenant of peace", others use other constructions; some simply say "covenant", but the context may imply that the New Covenant is at issue; and some claim metaphorical descriptions, for example that " Mount Zion " is really a metaphor for the New Covenant. The occurrence of the phrase "new covenant" varies in English translations of

12733-419: 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

12852-546: The site of Solomon's Temple . The identification of the pre-Israelite (Jebusite) and Israelite towns on the Eastern Hill is based on the existence of only one perennial water source in the area, the Gihon Spring , and on archaeological excavations revealing sections of the Bronze Age and Iron Age city walls and water systems. The "Mount Zion" mentioned in the later parts of the Book of Isaiah ( Isaiah 60:14 ), in

12971-472: 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

13090-484: The term Zion is also used for the entire Land of Israel . The etymology of the word Zion is uncertain. Mentioned in the Bible in the Book of Samuel (2 Samuel 5:7) as the name of the Jebusite fortress conquered by King David , its origin likely predates the Israelites . If Semitic , it may be associated with the Hebrew root ṣiyyôn ("castle"). Though not spoken in Jerusalem until 1,700 years later,

13209-511: The text varies. The religious texts were compiled by different religious communities into various official collections. The earliest contained the first five books of 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 "

13328-422: The time-honoured name, but shifted the location they venerated as the focal point of biblical Jerusalem to the site considered most appropriate in their own time. At first, Mount Zion was the name given to the Jebusite fortified city on the lower part of ancient Jerusalem's Eastern Hill, also known as the City of David . According to the Book of Samuel , Mount Zion was the site of the Jebusite fortress called

13447-432: 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 the twenty-first century are only in the beginning stages of exploring "the interface between writing, performance, memorization, and

13566-408: The world's languages. Some view biblical texts to be morally problematic, historically inaccurate, or corrupted, although others find it 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

13685-408: Was a lord over them, saith the LORD. But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, saith the LORD, I will put My law in their inward parts, and in their heart will I write it; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people; and they shall teach no more every man his neighbour, and every man his brother, saying: 'Know the LORD'; for they shall all know Me, from

13804-571: Was conquered by the Harel Brigade on May 18, 1948, and became the only part of the Old City to stay in Israeli hands until the armistice. At first it was linked to the Jewish neighborhood of Yemin Moshe across the Valley of Hinnom via a narrow tunnel, but eventually an alternative was needed to evacuate the wounded and transport supplies to soldiers on Mount Zion. A cable car capable of carrying

13923-686: 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,

14042-594: 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,

14161-412: 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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