81. The Vulgate was written by Jerome (340-420) in A.D. 382. It was a translation in Latin from the original Old and New Testaments' original languages (Hebrew and Greek). The Vulgate has long been the Roman Catholic Church's authorized version.
82. The Synod of Toulouse in 1229 forbade everyone except priests from possessing a copy of the Scriptures. At that gathering Pope Gregory IX asked Dominican friars to question suspects and prosecute heretics, making the friars a powerful force and keeping the Bible out of the hands of laypeople.
83. John Wycliffe (ca. 1328-1384) was a reformer who wanted to make the Christian Scriptures accessible to common people. In the Middle Ages it was common for only officials in the church to be able to read or even have access to the Scriptures. Wycliffe's work is considered the most historically significant in the effort to make the Bible available to all people.
84. The Wycliffe Bible was translated from the Vulgate Bible into English by John Wycliffe in 1384. The Vulgate Bible was a Latin translation composed by Jerome. The Catholic church denounced Wycliffe as heretical for doing this as it was a forbidden act to translate the Bible into English at the time.
85. The invention of movable type by Johannes Gutenberg was recently hailed as the most important technical advancement of the last millennium. Gutenberg, a printer in Mainz, found a way to make many copies of a page by using letters made of lead. By 1456 he and his fellow printers had created nearly two hundred copies of Jerome's Vulgate Bible. Prior to that time, all books were hand printed on papyrus sheets or animal skin, making them expensive, time-intensive, and rare. Consequently, few people could read, and even fewer owned any books. Within twenty years of Gutenberg's first printed Bible, the printers of Mainz had created more Bibles than had been produced by hand in the previous fourteen hundred years.
86. The printing press not only allowed for the dissemination of the Scriptures but also for the spread of critical, sometimes satirical, examinations of the church's excesses. These writings fit the growing mood in Europe that the Roman church was out of touch with common people's lives.
87. The first copy of the Gutenberg Bible took three years of constant printing to complete. It was finished in 1455. It was done in two volumes, with 1,284 pages total. Nearly two hundred original Gutenberg Bibles were printed, and forty-eight still exist.
88. William Tyndale (ca. 1494-1536) believed the Bible should be read by everyone, not just the few who understood Latin, the language of the church. So he set out to translate the Bible into English.
89. Accused of perverting the scriptures, Tyndale was forced to leave England, and his New Testament was burned as an "untrue translation." Arrested and imprisoned as a heretic, Tyndale was executed in Antwerp by strangling. His body was then burned at the stake in October 1536.William Tyndale is now honored as the "father of the English Bible." The Tyndale New Testament was published in 1526 from the ancient Hebrew and Greek texts. This version, too, was condemned by the church.
90. An English Bible was prepared by Miles Coverdale at the same time the Tyndale Bible was being written. the English Bible was published in 1535, though it was translated by a man who was not versed in Hebrew and Greek. Coverdale drew from the Vulgate, some early German versions, and partly from the Tyndale Bible. This was the first Bible that placed the Apocrypha in a separate section, under the title of "noncanonical."
91. The Matthew Bible was published in 1537 as an English Bible. It claimed to be "truly and purely translated into English by Thomas Matthew." In fact John Rogers wrote the Bible, which was a compilation of the English Bible and the Tyndale Bible.
92. The Taverner Bible was written just two years after Coverdale finished Bible. In reality it was only a revision of the Matthew Bible.
93. The Great Bible (1539) was the first widely popular English translation of the Scriptures to be owned and read by the common people. Produced by Miles Coverdale and John Rogers, it was based on translations from the Latin Vulgate, with additional notes from the writings of Martin Luther and Ulrich Zwingli. It was a significant improvement over the earlier Coverdale and Matthew Bibles due to its readability and understanding of poetry.
94. The Geneva Bible (1560) was a product of the Calvinist movement in Northern Europe. Rather than simply relying on Roman Catholic translations, the English exiles in Geneva created prologues to each book of Scripture, added marginal notes to aid understanding, and spent considerable time recrafting the poetic elements of the various books. One outstanding feature that the translators developed was the numbering of chapters and verses-something that not only made it a popular Bible, but which has been copied by translators ever since.
95. The Bishops' Bible appeared in 1568 at the order of the Archbishop of Canterbury, Matthew Parker. The Geneva Bible was not given official endorsement by Queen Elizabeth. As a result a new edition was started shortly after the Geneva Bible was printed.
Saturday, June 13, 2015
Wednesday, June 10, 2015
Birth Of Computers
The first freely programmable computer was invented in 1936 by Konrad Zuse, a German engineer for the Henschel Aircraft Company in Berlin. It was called the Z1 and was a mechanical binary calculating machine that had a memory and could keep track of intermediate results for use later. Zuse used it to develop key technologies that now form the basis of modern computing, including floating-point arithmetic and the yes/no principle (base 2). He used old movie film to store his data, because paper was scarce. In 1946 he even wrote the first programming language called "Plankalkul" and used it to write the world's first chess-playing program. Unable to secure funding from the Nazi government, he escaped to Switzerland and smuggled his final model-in-progress, the Z4, with him on a horse-drawn cart to Zurich.
While the Z1 was mechanical, the first electronic-digital computer was developed between 1939 and 1942 at Iowa State College by Professor John Atanasoff and graduate engineering student Clifford Berry. It was later named the ABC for the Atanasoff-Berry Computer. It weighed 700 pounds, was the size of a gaming machine, and contained over a mile of wire. It could perform one operation every 15 seconds (modern computers are about 200 billion times faster). Amazingly, while Atanasoff was working with the government on military and defense projects during the war, the computer was dismantled and destroyed by the physics faculty during a spring cleaning. Only a few parts of this important artifact remain.
The next breakthrough was the Mark series of computers, built for the United States Navy by Howard Aiken and Grace Hopper at Harvard University beginning in 1944. The Mark I filled a room-it was 55 feet long, 8 feet high, and weighed 5 tons. The ENIAC (Electrical Numerical Integrator and Calculator) was even bigger-it took up 1,800 square feet, weighed 30 tons, and cost $500,000. It required so much power to operate that when it was switched on, the city of Philadelphia experienced near blackouts. It was a thousand times faster than its contemporaries, but required weeks to program.
The invention of the transistor to replace vacuum tubes revolutionized computers and enabled them to begin shrinking. Then Jack Kilby and Robert Noyce came up with the idea of replacing the hundreds of miles of wiring by replacing all the components on a "chip" made of semiconductor material (germanium or silicon).
Today's computers use microprocessors, which were invented way back in 1971 by Intel Corp., but the next breakthrough will arrive in the form of quantum computers, which for the first time will be able to perform millions of calculations simultaneously, rather than linearly as they do currently.
While the Z1 was mechanical, the first electronic-digital computer was developed between 1939 and 1942 at Iowa State College by Professor John Atanasoff and graduate engineering student Clifford Berry. It was later named the ABC for the Atanasoff-Berry Computer. It weighed 700 pounds, was the size of a gaming machine, and contained over a mile of wire. It could perform one operation every 15 seconds (modern computers are about 200 billion times faster). Amazingly, while Atanasoff was working with the government on military and defense projects during the war, the computer was dismantled and destroyed by the physics faculty during a spring cleaning. Only a few parts of this important artifact remain.
The next breakthrough was the Mark series of computers, built for the United States Navy by Howard Aiken and Grace Hopper at Harvard University beginning in 1944. The Mark I filled a room-it was 55 feet long, 8 feet high, and weighed 5 tons. The ENIAC (Electrical Numerical Integrator and Calculator) was even bigger-it took up 1,800 square feet, weighed 30 tons, and cost $500,000. It required so much power to operate that when it was switched on, the city of Philadelphia experienced near blackouts. It was a thousand times faster than its contemporaries, but required weeks to program.
The invention of the transistor to replace vacuum tubes revolutionized computers and enabled them to begin shrinking. Then Jack Kilby and Robert Noyce came up with the idea of replacing the hundreds of miles of wiring by replacing all the components on a "chip" made of semiconductor material (germanium or silicon).
Today's computers use microprocessors, which were invented way back in 1971 by Intel Corp., but the next breakthrough will arrive in the form of quantum computers, which for the first time will be able to perform millions of calculations simultaneously, rather than linearly as they do currently.
The Missing Part-The Apocrypha ll
74. Additions to Esther may be more authentic than the other books as many scholars regard these passages as true additions to the original Hebrew. Some even consider the real Book of Esther an abbreviated work. The apocryphal version includes much of the same story line as the canonical Book of Esther.
75. Wisdom of Solomon, though named after the wisest man who ever lived, was not written by him or even about him. It is believed to have been composed originally in Greek, and there is evidence of Greek philosophy and Platonic terminology. It is a historical account of how the Jews have been helped by wisdom.
76. Ecclesiasticus was written around 180 B.C. and is held in high esteem by both Jews and early Christians. It contains the sayings of Joshua ben Sira, who recommended observing the law carefully and maintaining a healthy, pious fear of God. The book also gives practical advice for daily living.
77. Baruch may have more than one author, but it is likely that Baruch, a scribe of the prophet Jeremiah, was involved. The book offers encouragement to the Jews in light of their exile to Babylon. It serves as a historical guideline for that time period as well.
78. Additions to Daniel comes out of the Septuagint. The book includes stories regarding falsely accused people and an even more in-depth writing of the three Christians' prayers and praises from the fiery furnace. Daniel is a prominent figure in this apocryphal book.
79. The Prayer of Manasseh is just what the title says it is-King Manasseh's prayer to God while he was in captivity, as described in 2 Chronicles 13. God allowed him to be captured because he had worshiped idols and been an evil king. The book is thought to be Jewish in origin.
80. First and Second Maccabees trace Jewish history between 175 and 134 B.C. The books describe the hero Judas Maccabees and his family, the Maccabees. The first book was translated from a Hebrew work in about 100 B.C. The second book is thought to have been taken from a work by Jason of Cyrene, a man little is known of. The first book is thought to be more accurate, though there are discrepancies between the two.
75. Wisdom of Solomon, though named after the wisest man who ever lived, was not written by him or even about him. It is believed to have been composed originally in Greek, and there is evidence of Greek philosophy and Platonic terminology. It is a historical account of how the Jews have been helped by wisdom.
76. Ecclesiasticus was written around 180 B.C. and is held in high esteem by both Jews and early Christians. It contains the sayings of Joshua ben Sira, who recommended observing the law carefully and maintaining a healthy, pious fear of God. The book also gives practical advice for daily living.
77. Baruch may have more than one author, but it is likely that Baruch, a scribe of the prophet Jeremiah, was involved. The book offers encouragement to the Jews in light of their exile to Babylon. It serves as a historical guideline for that time period as well.
78. Additions to Daniel comes out of the Septuagint. The book includes stories regarding falsely accused people and an even more in-depth writing of the three Christians' prayers and praises from the fiery furnace. Daniel is a prominent figure in this apocryphal book.
79. The Prayer of Manasseh is just what the title says it is-King Manasseh's prayer to God while he was in captivity, as described in 2 Chronicles 13. God allowed him to be captured because he had worshiped idols and been an evil king. The book is thought to be Jewish in origin.
80. First and Second Maccabees trace Jewish history between 175 and 134 B.C. The books describe the hero Judas Maccabees and his family, the Maccabees. The first book was translated from a Hebrew work in about 100 B.C. The second book is thought to have been taken from a work by Jason of Cyrene, a man little is known of. The first book is thought to be more accurate, though there are discrepancies between the two.
Tuesday, June 9, 2015
The Missing Part-The Apocrypha l
66. The word apocrypha originates from a Greek word that means "hidden." There are a number of books of Scripture that were not included in the Protestant Bible because their origins were not believed authentic. The apocrypha includes in particular the Old Testament books that are included in Roman Catholic versions of the Bible.
67. The word apocrypha refers to a small group of ancient writings whose "divinely inspired" status has long been the subject of debate and controversy. Some of these books may have originally been written in Hebrew but were only known to exist in their Greek versions-one of the reasons the rabbis rejected them as part of Hebrew Scripture. They were included in the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible that was used by the early Christian church.
68. The Apocrypha was accepted as part of the Bible by Augustine in the late fourth century. Since much Roman Catholic theology is based on the writings of Augustine, Catholics accept the Apocrypha as part of the Word of God. However, neither the Jews nor Christians in Palestine ever accepted it as Scripture Protestants during the Reformation rejected it as part of the Canon, and it does not appear in Protestant Bibles.
69. Pseudepigrapha is a term for the many other Old and New Testament apocryphal books that have been rejected and are considered of doubtful authenticity. The apocryphal books are considered those "hidden" books of the Old Testament that are found in Roman Catholic versions, but excluded from Protestant Bibles.
The following books are included:
70. First Esdras gives the same historic account as the books of Chronicles, Ezra, and Nehemiah. An additional story is added in, called the "Debate of the Three Youths." The story is Persian and involves King Darius and Zerubbabel, a governor.
71. Second Esdras comes from a Hebrew source, but it has changed and expanded with various Christian additions. The book is called "the Apocalypse of Ezra." The book explains seven different visions involving Ezra speaking on the people's behalf, salvation, Jerusalem and Rome, and a final vision concerning the sacred books Ezra is supposed to restore.
72. Tobit is a blind Jew in captivity in Nineveh. Tobit sends his son, Tobias, to collect a debt. Tobias falls in love with his cousin, Sara, along the way and has to defeat the demon Asmodeus in order to escape death unlike Sara's seven previous bridegrooms. Raphael helps him to do this. Tobias catches a fish in the Tigris River that eventually restores his father's sight.
73. Judith is a book about a beautiful Jewish widow of Bethulia. She plays the heroine of her book by saving her city from Nebuchadnezzar's forces. Beautiful Judith entices the general, Holofernes, into a drunken stupor after going to see him on the pretense of sharing military secrets. When he is asleep, she cuts off his head and brings it back to her city. The people pursue the fleeing enemy.
67. The word apocrypha refers to a small group of ancient writings whose "divinely inspired" status has long been the subject of debate and controversy. Some of these books may have originally been written in Hebrew but were only known to exist in their Greek versions-one of the reasons the rabbis rejected them as part of Hebrew Scripture. They were included in the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible that was used by the early Christian church.
68. The Apocrypha was accepted as part of the Bible by Augustine in the late fourth century. Since much Roman Catholic theology is based on the writings of Augustine, Catholics accept the Apocrypha as part of the Word of God. However, neither the Jews nor Christians in Palestine ever accepted it as Scripture Protestants during the Reformation rejected it as part of the Canon, and it does not appear in Protestant Bibles.
69. Pseudepigrapha is a term for the many other Old and New Testament apocryphal books that have been rejected and are considered of doubtful authenticity. The apocryphal books are considered those "hidden" books of the Old Testament that are found in Roman Catholic versions, but excluded from Protestant Bibles.
The following books are included:
70. First Esdras gives the same historic account as the books of Chronicles, Ezra, and Nehemiah. An additional story is added in, called the "Debate of the Three Youths." The story is Persian and involves King Darius and Zerubbabel, a governor.
71. Second Esdras comes from a Hebrew source, but it has changed and expanded with various Christian additions. The book is called "the Apocalypse of Ezra." The book explains seven different visions involving Ezra speaking on the people's behalf, salvation, Jerusalem and Rome, and a final vision concerning the sacred books Ezra is supposed to restore.
72. Tobit is a blind Jew in captivity in Nineveh. Tobit sends his son, Tobias, to collect a debt. Tobias falls in love with his cousin, Sara, along the way and has to defeat the demon Asmodeus in order to escape death unlike Sara's seven previous bridegrooms. Raphael helps him to do this. Tobias catches a fish in the Tigris River that eventually restores his father's sight.
73. Judith is a book about a beautiful Jewish widow of Bethulia. She plays the heroine of her book by saving her city from Nebuchadnezzar's forces. Beautiful Judith entices the general, Holofernes, into a drunken stupor after going to see him on the pretense of sharing military secrets. When he is asleep, she cuts off his head and brings it back to her city. The people pursue the fleeing enemy.
Saturday, June 6, 2015
Archaeology: A Load Of Old Bones?
The term archaeology is made up from the Greek archaios, which means "ancient," and logos, which means "discourse." This study emerged as a formal discipline in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
Archaeology seeks to understand how past human culture functioned and how humans behaved (as distinct from paleontology, which is the study of fossils of long-extinct animals, such as dinosaurs). Archaeologists do this by examining what they call archaeological record-the material remains of previous human settlements, including fossils (preserved bones), the ruins of buildings, food remains, and human artifacts, such as tools, pottery, and jewelry.
Archaeological digs in Africa uncovered the origins of humanity and the fossil remains of humans up to 4.5 million years ago, archaeology also examines more recent history. One recent research project involves analyzing the garbage of modern humans in cities across the United States.
There are many different branches of archaeology. Prehistoric archaeology examines ancient cultures that had not developed writing, whether it was 5,000 years ago in parts of southwestern Asia or as recently as the nineteenth century A.D. in central Africa. Historical archaeology examines past cultures that did use writing. Geoarchaeology examines the ancient landscape and environment. Ethnoarchaeology is the study of living people in order to deduce how past cultures might have functioned; for example, present-day and ancient hunter-gatherers share common features. Underwater archaeology uses special methods and sophisticated diving techniques to study shipwrecks and other archaeological sites that lie beneath water. Experimental archaeology uses models and reconstruction of sites and artifacts and even the growing of ancient varieties of crops and animals to learn about the past. Archaeological studies have three aims:
chronology (the age of the excavated material), reconstruction (creating models), and explanation (scientific hypotheses).
Increasingly, archaeologists are using less intrusive methods, such as radar and imaging techniques known as remote sensing (from airplanes or spacecraft), which reduce the need for excavation. It's not all about digging up bones anymore.
Archaeology seeks to understand how past human culture functioned and how humans behaved (as distinct from paleontology, which is the study of fossils of long-extinct animals, such as dinosaurs). Archaeologists do this by examining what they call archaeological record-the material remains of previous human settlements, including fossils (preserved bones), the ruins of buildings, food remains, and human artifacts, such as tools, pottery, and jewelry.
Archaeological digs in Africa uncovered the origins of humanity and the fossil remains of humans up to 4.5 million years ago, archaeology also examines more recent history. One recent research project involves analyzing the garbage of modern humans in cities across the United States.
There are many different branches of archaeology. Prehistoric archaeology examines ancient cultures that had not developed writing, whether it was 5,000 years ago in parts of southwestern Asia or as recently as the nineteenth century A.D. in central Africa. Historical archaeology examines past cultures that did use writing. Geoarchaeology examines the ancient landscape and environment. Ethnoarchaeology is the study of living people in order to deduce how past cultures might have functioned; for example, present-day and ancient hunter-gatherers share common features. Underwater archaeology uses special methods and sophisticated diving techniques to study shipwrecks and other archaeological sites that lie beneath water. Experimental archaeology uses models and reconstruction of sites and artifacts and even the growing of ancient varieties of crops and animals to learn about the past. Archaeological studies have three aims:
chronology (the age of the excavated material), reconstruction (creating models), and explanation (scientific hypotheses).
Increasingly, archaeologists are using less intrusive methods, such as radar and imaging techniques known as remote sensing (from airplanes or spacecraft), which reduce the need for excavation. It's not all about digging up bones anymore.
Friday, June 5, 2015
How The Bible Reads ll
56. When The Old Testament writers completed their scrolls, they depended on scribes, men who patiently copied the Scriptures by hand when extra copies were needed and when the original scrolls became too worn to use any longer. By the time Jesus was born, the books of Moses had been copied and recopied over a span of more than fourteen hundred years!
57. Before beginning his work each day, a scribe would test his reed pen by dipping it in ink and writing the word Amalek and then crossing it out (cf. Deut. 25:19). Then he would say, "I am writing the Torah in the name of its sanctity and the name of God in its sanctity."
58. The scribe would read a sentence in the manuscript he was copying, repeat it aloud, and then write it. Each time he came to the name of God, he would say, "I am writing in the name of God for the holiness of His name." If he made an error in writing God's name, the scribe had to destroy the entire sheet of papyrus or vellum that he was using.
59. After the scribe finished copying a particular book, he would count all the words and letters it contained. Then he checked this tally against the count for the manuscript that he was copying. He counted the number of times a particular word occurred in the book, and he noted the middle word and the middle letter in the book, comparing all of these with the original. By making these careful checks, he hoped to avoid any scribal errors.
60. The Bible was written in several languages. Most of the Old Testament books are in Hebrew, but parts of Daniel are in Aramaic. The New Testament books are written in koine ("common") Greek, though they contain Latin, Aramaic, and Hebrew phrases.
61. The Masoretes were a group of Jewish scholars who wanted to ensure that the Old Testament documents would not become corrupted over time. Since the Hebrew language has no vowels, they created a system of inserting "vowel points" into the text to help priests and readers know how to pronounce the words properly. Their careful work has led to almost no changes in Old Testament wording for more than a millennium. Translators today still refer to the "Masoretic" text.
62. The Hebrew language slowly changed, as languages do, throughout the centuries after the Old Testament writers passed away. The language of Moses would seem strange to a modern Israeli, just as the language of Chaucer or even Shakespeare is difficult for us to discern.
63. The Greeks, who borrowed the twenty-two-letter alphabet used in Hebrew and Phoenician, added five new letters at the end of their alphabet. These five additional letters are the reason why the Greeks are credited for inventing the vowel system.
64. Approximately two thousand years of history pass within the Bible's pages. Great empires came and went around the ancient Near East: Sumer, Akkadia, Babylon, Egypt, Assyria, Persia, and Greece. Along with those rising and falling empires and cultures, Hebrew and Aramaic fell into disuse and were eventually replaced by Greek. Sometime around 250 B.C. someone decided to preserve those writings in a complete translation of Hebrew scripture.
65. At least three or four centuries elapsed between the close of the Old Testament writings and the opening of the New Testament . This silent period is called the intertestamental period and was comparable in length to the time that the judges ruled, or about the same number of years kings ruled Israel.
57. Before beginning his work each day, a scribe would test his reed pen by dipping it in ink and writing the word Amalek and then crossing it out (cf. Deut. 25:19). Then he would say, "I am writing the Torah in the name of its sanctity and the name of God in its sanctity."
58. The scribe would read a sentence in the manuscript he was copying, repeat it aloud, and then write it. Each time he came to the name of God, he would say, "I am writing in the name of God for the holiness of His name." If he made an error in writing God's name, the scribe had to destroy the entire sheet of papyrus or vellum that he was using.
59. After the scribe finished copying a particular book, he would count all the words and letters it contained. Then he checked this tally against the count for the manuscript that he was copying. He counted the number of times a particular word occurred in the book, and he noted the middle word and the middle letter in the book, comparing all of these with the original. By making these careful checks, he hoped to avoid any scribal errors.
60. The Bible was written in several languages. Most of the Old Testament books are in Hebrew, but parts of Daniel are in Aramaic. The New Testament books are written in koine ("common") Greek, though they contain Latin, Aramaic, and Hebrew phrases.
61. The Masoretes were a group of Jewish scholars who wanted to ensure that the Old Testament documents would not become corrupted over time. Since the Hebrew language has no vowels, they created a system of inserting "vowel points" into the text to help priests and readers know how to pronounce the words properly. Their careful work has led to almost no changes in Old Testament wording for more than a millennium. Translators today still refer to the "Masoretic" text.
62. The Hebrew language slowly changed, as languages do, throughout the centuries after the Old Testament writers passed away. The language of Moses would seem strange to a modern Israeli, just as the language of Chaucer or even Shakespeare is difficult for us to discern.
63. The Greeks, who borrowed the twenty-two-letter alphabet used in Hebrew and Phoenician, added five new letters at the end of their alphabet. These five additional letters are the reason why the Greeks are credited for inventing the vowel system.
64. Approximately two thousand years of history pass within the Bible's pages. Great empires came and went around the ancient Near East: Sumer, Akkadia, Babylon, Egypt, Assyria, Persia, and Greece. Along with those rising and falling empires and cultures, Hebrew and Aramaic fell into disuse and were eventually replaced by Greek. Sometime around 250 B.C. someone decided to preserve those writings in a complete translation of Hebrew scripture.
65. At least three or four centuries elapsed between the close of the Old Testament writings and the opening of the New Testament . This silent period is called the intertestamental period and was comparable in length to the time that the judges ruled, or about the same number of years kings ruled Israel.
Thursday, June 4, 2015
How The Bible Reads l
46. More than three thousand versions of the entire Bible, or portions of it, exist in English.
47. Chapter and verse divisions in the Bible were not determined by those who wrote the words we read. These divisions were added to the text hundreds of years after the authors died. The original writers neither planned nor anticipated these divisions.
48. Chapter and verse numbers in the apostles' letters, for example, would appear as strange to them as the following does to us:
Dear Aunt Sue,
Chapter One
Last week we went to town and learned that...
49. "Divided on horseback" was the criticism of Robert Estienne, a French publisher and convert to Protestantism who decided to number the verses in the New Testament in order to make it easier to study and memorize. While Stephen Langton had divided the text into chapters, Estienne then broke each chapter into numbered verses. According to his son, he did much of the work while on horseback-leading critics ever since to suggest the reason some verses' divisions are short and others are long was because of the bumpy ride between his office in Paris and his home in southern France.
50. The Bible was designed more for the ear than the eye. In antiquity people passed history and genealogy from generation to generation by oral tradition-through storytelling or by reading aloud. Those who wrote the Bible did so knowing that their words would be read aloud. So puns, acrostics, and cryptograms are all used widely throughout the Hebrew Scriptures.
51. Mgn rdng ths bk wtht vwls. Myb ftr whl y cld fll n sm f th blnks nd fgr t mst f t. Ftr ll, t's smpl nglsh. Bt nw, mgn t s prt f n ncnt lngg tht hs flln nt dss vr svrl cntrs. Tht s hw th Bbl nc pprd. Imagine reading this book without vowels. Maybe after a while you could fill in some of the blanks and figure out most of it. After all, it's English. But now, imagine it as part of an ancient language that has fallen into disuse over several centuries. That is how the Bible once appeared.
52. Hieroglyphics-derived from two Greek words that mean "sacred carvings," since the signs were at first chiseled on stone-were the basic writing system in Egypt
at the time of Moses. Since young Moses was educated in the Egyptian sciences and arts, he no doubt learned to read and write Egyptian hieroglyphics. About 750 pictures were used at first in hieroglyphics. At least twenty-two signs existed for various birds, such as the curved neck of the Egyptian vulture, the flat face of an owl, and the tail feathers of the pintail duck.
53. The alphabet's origin. A few hundred years after the time of Moses, the Phoenicians invented an alphabet. They took the Egyptian syllabic signs and used each to represent a single sound. The Phoenicians and the Hebrews used only twenty-two symbols and had no letters for vowels.
54. The alphabet quickly spread throughout the Mediterranean world colonized by the Phoenicians. About 800 B.C. it was transmitted to the Greeks, who improved it by adding vowels. This is the alphabet that spread to the Romans, who passed it on to us almost in its present form.
55. The Hebrew alphabet has twenty-two letters, all of them consonants. In fact Semitic languages like Hebrew, Aramaic, and Arabic are still generally written without any vowels, although a system of dots and dashes above and below the line of writing has been added in recent times to aid in knowing what vowels are needed. Readers of classical Hebrew were and are versed in its oral traditions and provide the vowel sounds from memory,
47. Chapter and verse divisions in the Bible were not determined by those who wrote the words we read. These divisions were added to the text hundreds of years after the authors died. The original writers neither planned nor anticipated these divisions.
48. Chapter and verse numbers in the apostles' letters, for example, would appear as strange to them as the following does to us:
Dear Aunt Sue,
Chapter One
Last week we went to town and learned that...
49. "Divided on horseback" was the criticism of Robert Estienne, a French publisher and convert to Protestantism who decided to number the verses in the New Testament in order to make it easier to study and memorize. While Stephen Langton had divided the text into chapters, Estienne then broke each chapter into numbered verses. According to his son, he did much of the work while on horseback-leading critics ever since to suggest the reason some verses' divisions are short and others are long was because of the bumpy ride between his office in Paris and his home in southern France.
50. The Bible was designed more for the ear than the eye. In antiquity people passed history and genealogy from generation to generation by oral tradition-through storytelling or by reading aloud. Those who wrote the Bible did so knowing that their words would be read aloud. So puns, acrostics, and cryptograms are all used widely throughout the Hebrew Scriptures.
51. Mgn rdng ths bk wtht vwls. Myb ftr whl y cld fll n sm f th blnks nd fgr t mst f t. Ftr ll, t's smpl nglsh. Bt nw, mgn t s prt f n ncnt lngg tht hs flln nt dss vr svrl cntrs. Tht s hw th Bbl nc pprd. Imagine reading this book without vowels. Maybe after a while you could fill in some of the blanks and figure out most of it. After all, it's English. But now, imagine it as part of an ancient language that has fallen into disuse over several centuries. That is how the Bible once appeared.
52. Hieroglyphics-derived from two Greek words that mean "sacred carvings," since the signs were at first chiseled on stone-were the basic writing system in Egypt
at the time of Moses. Since young Moses was educated in the Egyptian sciences and arts, he no doubt learned to read and write Egyptian hieroglyphics. About 750 pictures were used at first in hieroglyphics. At least twenty-two signs existed for various birds, such as the curved neck of the Egyptian vulture, the flat face of an owl, and the tail feathers of the pintail duck.
53. The alphabet's origin. A few hundred years after the time of Moses, the Phoenicians invented an alphabet. They took the Egyptian syllabic signs and used each to represent a single sound. The Phoenicians and the Hebrews used only twenty-two symbols and had no letters for vowels.
54. The alphabet quickly spread throughout the Mediterranean world colonized by the Phoenicians. About 800 B.C. it was transmitted to the Greeks, who improved it by adding vowels. This is the alphabet that spread to the Romans, who passed it on to us almost in its present form.
55. The Hebrew alphabet has twenty-two letters, all of them consonants. In fact Semitic languages like Hebrew, Aramaic, and Arabic are still generally written without any vowels, although a system of dots and dashes above and below the line of writing has been added in recent times to aid in knowing what vowels are needed. Readers of classical Hebrew were and are versed in its oral traditions and provide the vowel sounds from memory,
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