4、《听说大突破》2册2.Religion and Philosophy压吗听懂练习

Philosophy




























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For other uses, see Philosophy (disambiguation).

The philosopher Socrates about to take poison hemlock.Philosophy considers such general and fundamental questions as the sorts of things that exist, the nature, scope, and limits of knowledge and moral judgments, and the nature of mind and of language. Philosophy is distinguished from other ways of addressing these questions (such as mysticism or mythology) by its critical and generally systematic approach and the use of reasoned argument. The word philosophy is of Ancient Greek origin: φιλοσοφία (philosophía), meaning "love of knowledge", "love of wisdom".[1][2][3]




Contents [hide]
1 Branches of philosophy
2 History
2.1 Ancient philosophy
2.2 Medieval philosophy
2.3 Early modern philosophy (c. 1600 – c. 1800)
2.4 Nineteenth Century Philosophy
2.5 Contemporary philosophy (c. 1900 – present)
3 Eastern philosophy
3.1 Chinese philosophy
3.2 Indian philosophy
3.3 Persian philosophy
3.4 African philosophy
4 Philosophical doctrines
4.1 Realism and nominalism
4.2 Rationalism and empiricism
4.3 Skepticism
4.4 Idealism
4.5 Pragmatism
4.6 Phenomenology
4.7 Existentialism
4.8 Structuralism and post-structuralism
4.9 The analytic tradition
4.10 Ethics and political
4.10.1 Human nature and political legitimacy
4.10.2 Consequentialism, deontology, and the aretaic turn
5 Applied philosophy
6 References
7 Further reading
7.1 Introductions
7.2 Topical introductions
7.3 Anthologies
7.4 Reference works
8 See also
9 External links



[edit] Branches of philosophy
To give an exhaustive list of the main branches of philosophy is difficult, because there have been different, equally acceptable divisions at different times, and the divisions are often relative to the concerns of a particular period. However, the following branches are usually accepted as the main ones.

Metaphysics investigates the nature of being and the world. Traditional branches are cosmology and ontology.
Epistemology is concerned with the nature and scope of knowledge, and whether knowledge is possible. Among its central concerns has been the challenge posed by skepticism and the relationships between truth, belief and justification.
Ethics, or 'moral philosophy', is concerned with questions of how persons ought to act or if such questions are answerable. Plato's early dialogues include a search for definitions of virtue. Metaethics compares and contrasts various systems of ethics, and investigates what ethics is. Ethics is also associated with ideas of morality.
Philosophy of Mind deals with the nature of the mind and its relationship to the body, and is typified by disputes between dualism and materialism. In recent years there is an increasing connection between this branch of philosophy and cognitive science
Logic deals with patterns of thinking that lead from true premises to true conclusions. Beginning in the late 19th century, mathematicians such as Frege began a mathematical treatment of logic, and today the subject of logic has two broad divisions: mathematical logic (formal symbolic logic) and what is now called philosophical logic.
Aesthetics deals with beauty, art, enjoyment, sensory-emotional values, perception, and matters of taste and sentiment.
Political Philosophy is the study of government and the relationship of individuals and communities to the state. It includes questions about law, property, and the rights and obligations of the citizen.
Most academic subjects have a philosophy, for example the philosophy of science, the philosophy of mathematics, and the philosophy of history. In addition a range of academic subjects have emerged to deal with areas which would have historically been the subject of philosophy. These include Psychology, Anthropology and Science.


[edit] History
The introduction of the terms "philosopher" and "philosophy" has been ascribed to the Greek thinker Pythagoras (see Diogenes Laertius: "De vita et moribus philosophorum", I, 12; Cicero: "Tusculanae disputationes", V, 8-9). The ascription is based on a passage in a lost work of Herakleides Pontikos, a disciple of Aristotle. It is considered to be part of the widespread legends of Pythagoras of this time. "Philosopher" replaced the word "sophist" (from sophoi), which was used to describe "wise men," teachers of rhetoric, who were important in Athenian democracy.

The history of philosophy is customarily divided into three periods: Ancient philosophy, Medieval philosophy, and Modern philosophy. For a map with the dates and places of birth of most western philosophers see here.


[edit] Ancient philosophy
Main article: Ancient philosophy
Ancient philosophy is the philosophy of the Graeco-Roman world from the fifth century B.C. to the fourth century A.D. It is usually divided into four periods: the pre-Socratic period, the periods of Plato and Aristotle, and the post-Aristotelian (or Hellenistic) period. Sometimes a fifth period is added that includes the Christian and Neo-Platonist philosophers. The most important of the ancient philosophers (in terms of subsequent influence) are Plato and Aristotle[4].

The themes of ancient philosophy are: understanding the fundamental causes and principles of the universe; explaining it in an economical and uniform way; the epistemological problem of reconciling the diversity and change of the natural universe, with the possibility of obtaining fixed and certain knowledge about it; questions about things which cannot be perceived by the senses, such as numbers, elements, universals, and gods; the analysis of patterns of reasoning and argument; the nature of the good life and the importance of understanding and knowledge in order to pursue it; the explication of the concept of justice, and its relation to various political systems[5].

In this period the crucial features of the philosophical method were established: a critical approach to received or established views, and the appeal to reason and argumentation.


St. Thomas Aquinas
[edit] Medieval philosophy
Main article: Medieval philosophy
Medieval philosophy is the philosophy of Western Europe and the Middle East during what is now known as the medieval era or the Middle Ages, roughly extending from the fall of the Roman Empire to the Renaissance. Medieval philosophy is defined partly by the rediscovery and further development of classical Greek and Hellenistic philosophy, and partly by the need to address theological problems and to integrate sacred doctrine (in Islam, Judaism and Christianity) with secular learning.

Some problems discussed throughout this period are the relation of faith to reason, the existence and unity of God, the object of theology and metaphysics, the problems of knowledge, of universals, and of individuation.

Philosophers from the Middle Ages include the Muslim philosophers Alkindus, Alfarabi, Alhacen, Avicenna, Algazel, Avempace, Abubacer and Averroes; the Jewish philosophers Maimonides and Gersonides; and the Christian philosophers Anselm, Peter Abelard, Roger Bacon, Thomas Aquinas, Duns Scotus, William of Ockham and Jean Buridan.


[edit] Early modern philosophy (c. 1600 – c. 1800)

John LockeMain article: Early modern philosophy
The early modern period begins with the revival of skepticism and with the growth of modern physical science. The main themes of this era are: the problem of how we can know anything about the world outside our own minds; the dispute between rationalists and empiricists, rationalists holding that the ultimate source of knowledge is reason, empiricists, that any genuine knowledge must be justified by experience; the nature of the mind or self, and its relation to the body, and the closely related problem of reconciling our belief in free will with the emerging scientific picture of the physical universe as deterministic; attempts to explain the relationship between God and science, and the rebirth of political philosophy.

Important figures include Montaigne, Descartes, Francis Bacon, Locke, Spinoza, Leibniz, Berkeley, Hume, and Kant.[6] Chronologically, this era spans the 17th and 18th centuries, and is generally considered to end with Kant's systematic attempt to reconcile Newtonian physics with traditional metaphysical topics.[7]


[edit] Nineteenth Century Philosophy
Later modern philosophy is usually considered to begin after the philosophy of Immanuel Kant at the beginning of the 19th-century.[8] German idealists, such as Fichte, Hegel, and Schelling, expanded on the work of Kant by maintaining that the world is constituted by a rational mind-like process, and as such is entirely knowable.[9]

Rejecting idealism, other philosophers, many working from outside the university, initiated lines of thought that would occupy academic philosophy in the early and mid-20th century:

Peirce and William James initiated the school of pragmatism
Husserl initiated the school of phenomenology
Kierkegaard and Nietzsche laid the groundwork for existentialism
Frege's work in logic and Sidgwick's work in ethics provided the tools for early analytic philosophy

[edit] Contemporary philosophy (c. 1900 – present)
In the last hundred years, philosophy has increasingly become an activity practiced within the university, and accordingly it has grown more specialized and more distinct from the natural sciences. Much of philosophy in this period concerns itself with explaining the relation between the theories of the natural sciences and the ideas of the humanities or common sense.

In the Anglophone world, analytic philosophy was the dominant school. In the first half of the century, it formed a cohesive school centered around the notion that philosophical problems should be solved by attention to language. In the latter half of the twentieth century, analytic philosophy saw both a widening of focus and increase in specialization. There has been a revival of interest in the history of philosophy, as well as attempts to integrate philosophical work with scientific results especially in psychology and cognitive science.

Although the distinction has been criticized, it was common during this period to characterize philosophers as either analytic or continental, with the terms marking a rough division into opposing traditions.[10]


[edit] Eastern philosophy
Main article: Eastern philosophy
Many societies have considered philosophical questions and built philosophical traditions based upon each other's works. Eastern and Middle Eastern philosophical traditions have influenced Western philosophers. Russian (which to many people still counts as Western), Jewish, Islamic, African, and recently Latin American philosophical traditions have contributed to, or been influenced by, Western philosophy: yet each has retained a distinctive identity.

The differences between traditions are often well captured by consideration of their favored historical philosophers, and varying stress on ideas, procedural styles, or written language. The subject matter and dialogues of each can be studied using methods derived from the others, and there are significant commonalities and exchanges between them.

Eastern philosophy refers to the broad traditions that originated or were popular in India, Persia, China, Korea, Japan, and to an extent, the Middle East (which overlaps with Western philosophy due to the spread of the Abrahamic religions and the continuing intellectual traffic between these societies and Europe.)





[edit] Chinese philosophy

Confucius, illustrated in Myths & Legends of China, 1922, by E.T.C. Werner.Main article: Chinese philosophy
Philosophy has had a tremendous effect on Chinese civilization, and East Asia as a whole. Many of the great philosophical schools were formulated during the Spring and Autumn Period and Warring States Period, and came to be known as the Hundred Schools of Thought. The four most influential of these were Confucianism, Taoism, Mohism, and Legalism. Later on, during the Tang Dynasty, Buddhism from India also became a prominent philosophical and religious discipline. (It should be noted that Eastern thought, unlike Western philosophy, did not express a clear distinction between philosophy and religion.) Like Western philosophy, Chinese philosophy covers a broad and complex range of thought, possessing a multitude of schools that address every branch and subject area of philosophy.

See also: Yin-Yang, Qi, Tao, Li, I Ching

Related Topics: Korean philosophy, Bushido, Zen, The Art of War, Asian Values


[edit] Indian philosophy

Adi Shankara (centre), 788 to 820, founder of Advaita Vedanta, one of the major schools of Hindu philosophy.Main article: Indian philosophy
Further information: Hindu philosophy, Buddhist philosophy, and Jainism
In the history of the Indian subcontinent, following the establishment of an Aryan–Vedic culture, the development of philosophical and religious thought over a period of two millennia gave rise to what came to be called the six schools of astika, or orthodox, Indian or Hindu philosophy. These schools have come to be synonymous with the greater religion of Hinduism, which was a development of the early Vedic religion.

Hindu philosophy constitutes an integral part of the culture of Southern Asia, and is the first of the Dharmic philosophies which were influential throughout the Far East. The great diversity in thought and practice of Hinduism is nurtured by its liberal universalism.


[edit] Persian philosophy
Main article: Iranian philosophy
Persian philosophy can be traced back as far as Old Iranian philosophical traditions and thoughts, with their ancient Indo-Iranian roots. These were considerably influenced by Zarathustra's teachings. Throughout Iranian history and due to remarkable political and social influences such as the Macedonian, the Arab, and the Mongol invasions of Persia, a wide spectrum of schools of thought arose. These espoused a variety of views on philosophical questions, extending from Old Iranian and mainly Zoroastrianism-influenced traditions to schools appearing in the late pre-Islamic era, such as Manicheism and Mazdakism, as well as various post-Islamic schools. Iranian philosophy after Arab invasion of Persia is characterized by different interactions with the Old Iranian philosophy, the Greek philosophy and with the development of Islamic philosophy. The Illumination school and the Transcendent theosophy are regarded as two of the main philosophical traditions of that era in Persia.


[edit] African philosophy
Main article: African philosophy
Philosophical traditions, such as African philosophy, are rarely studied by foreign academia. Since emphasis is mainly placed on Western philosophy as a reference point, the study, preservation and dissemination of valuable, but lesser known, non-Western philosophical works face many obstacles. Key African philosophers include the Fulani Usman Dan Fodio, founder of the Sokoto Caliphate of Northern Nigeria and Umar Tall of Senegal; both were prolific Islamic scholars. Another African philosopher worthy of note in the pre-colonial period was Anton Wilhelm Amo [2]. In the post-colonial period, different images of what could be argued as "African" Philosophy from the level of epistemology have risen. These could include the thoughts and enquiries of such individuals as Cheik Anta Diop, Francis Ohanyido, CL Momoh, and Chinweizu. [3]

The philosophy of the modern and contemporary African world, including the diaspora, is often known as Africana Philosophy. Key philosophers include Frantz Fanon, Kwasi Wiredu, Paget Henry, Lewis Gordon, Mabogo Percy More and many others.


[edit] Philosophical doctrines

[edit] Realism and nominalism
Main articles: Realism and Nominalism
Realism sometimes means the position opposed to the 18th-century Idealism, namely that some things have real existence outside the mind. Classically, however, realism is the doctrine that abstract entities corresponding to universal terms like 'man' have a real existence. It is opposed to nominalism, the view that abstract or universal terms are words only, or denote mental states such as ideas, beliefs, or intentions. The latter position, famously held by William of Ockham, is conceptualism.


[edit] Rationalism and empiricism

René DescartesMain articles: Rationalism and Empiricism
Rationalism is any view emphasizing the role or importance of human reason. Extreme rationalism tries to base all knowledge on reason alone. Rationalism typically starts from premises that cannot coherently be denied, then attempts by logical steps to deduce every possible object of knowledge.

The first rationalist, in this broad sense, is often held to be Parmenides (fl. 480 BCE), who argued that it is impossible to doubt that thinking actually occurs. But thinking must have an object, therefore something beyond thinking really exists. Parmenides deduced that what really exists must have certain properties – for example, that it cannot come into existence or cease to exist, that it is a coherent whole, that it remains the same eternally (in fact, exists altogether outside time). Zeno of Elea (born c. 489 BCE) was a disciple of Parmenides, and argued that motion is impossible, since the assertion that it exists implies a contradiction.


Plato (427–347 BCE) was also influenced by Parmenides, but combined rationalism with a form of realism. The philosopher's work is to consider being, and the essence of things. But the characteristic of essences is that they are universal. The nature of a man, a triangle, a tree, applies to all men, all triangles, all trees. Plato argued that these essences are mind-independent 'forms', that humans (but particularly philosophers) can come to know by reason, and by ignoring the distractions of sense-perception.

Modern rationalism begins with Descartes. Reflection on the nature of perceptual experience, as well as scientific discoveries in physiology and optics, led Descartes (and also Locke) to the view that we are directly aware of ideas, rather than objects. This view gave rise to three questions:

Is an idea a true copy of the real thing that it represents? Sensation is not a direct interaction between bodily objects and our sense, but is a physiological process involving representation (for example, an image on the retina). Locke thought that a 'secondary quality' such as a sensation of green could in no way resemble the arrangement of particles in matter that go to produce this sensation, although he thought that 'primary qualities' such as shape, size, number, were really in objects.
How can physical objects such as chairs and tables, or even physiological processes in the brain, give rise to mental items such as ideas? This is part of what became known as the mind-body problem.
If all the contents of awareness are ideas, how can we know that anything exists apart from ideas?
Descartes tried to address the last problem by reason. He began, echoing Parmenides, with a principle that he thought could not coherently be denied: I think, therefore I am (often given in his original Latin: Cogito ergo sum). From this principle, Descartes went on to construct a complete system of knowledge (which involves proving the existence of God, using, among other means, a version of the ontological argument). His view that reason alone could yield substantial truths about reality strongly influenced those philosophers usually considered modern rationalists (such as Baruch Spinoza, Gottfried Leibniz, and Christian Wolff), while provoking criticism from other philosophers who have retrospectively come to be grouped together as empiricists.

Empiricism, in contrast to rationalism, downplays or dismisses the ability of reason alone to yield knowledge of the world, preferring to base any knowledge we have on our senses. John Locke propounded the classic empiricist view in An Essay Concerning Human Understanding in 1689, developing a form of naturalism and empiricism on roughly scientific (and Newtonian) principles.

During this era, religious ideas played a mixed role in the struggles that preoccupied secular philosophy. Bishop Berkeley's famous idealist refutation of key tenets of Isaac Newton is a case of an Enlightenment philosopher who drew substantially from religious ideas. Other influential religious thinkers of the time include Blaise Pascal, Joseph Butler, and Jonathan Edwards. Other major writers, such as Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Edmund Burke, took a rather different path. The restricted interests of many of the philosophers of the time foreshadow the separation and specialization of different areas of philosophy that would occur in the 20th century.

[edit] Skepticism
Main article: Skepticism
Skepticism is a philosophical attitude that questions the possibility of obtaining any sort of knowledge. It was first articulated by Pyrrho, who believed that everything could be doubted except appearances. Sextus Empiricus (2nd century CE) describes skepticism as an "ability to place in antithesis, in any manner whatever, appearances and judgments, and thus […] to come first of all to a suspension of judgment and then to mental tranquility."[11] Skepticism so conceived is not merely the use of doubt, but is the use of doubt for a particular end: a calmness of the soul, or ataraxia. Skepticism poses itself as a challenge to dogmatism, whose adherents think they have found the truth.[12]

Sextus noted that the reliability of perception may be questioned, because it is idiosyncratic to the perceiver. The appearance of individual things changes depending on whether they are in a group: for example, the shavings of a goat's horn are white when taken alone, yet the intact horn is black. A pencil, when viewed lengthwise, looks like a stick; but when examined at the tip, it looks merely like a circle.

Skepticism was revived in the early modern period by Michel de Montaigne and Blaise Pascal. Its most extreme exponent, however, was David Hume. Hume argued that there are only two kinds of reasoning: what he called probable and demonstrative (cf Hume's fork). Neither of these two forms of reasoning can lead us to a reasonable belief in the continued existence of an external world. Demonstrative reasoning cannot do this, because demonstration (that is, deductive reasoning from well-founded premises) alone cannot establish the uniformity of nature (as captured by scientific laws and principles, for example). Such reason alone cannot establish that the future will resemble the past. We have certain beliefs about the world (that the sun will rise tomorrow, for example), but these beliefs are the product of habit and custom, and do not depend on any sort of logical inferences from what is already given certain. But probable reasoning (inductive reasoning), which aims to take us from the observed to the unobserved, cannot do this either: it also depends on the uniformity of nature, and this supposed uniformity cannot be proved, without circularity, by any appeal to uniformity. The best that either sort of reasoning can accomplish is conditional truth: if certain assumptions are true, then certain conclusions follow. So nothing about the world can be established with certainty. Hume concludes that there is no solution to the skeptical argument – except, in effect, to ignore it.[13]

Even if these matters were resolved in every case, we would have in turn to justify our standard of justification, leading to an infinite regress (hence the term regress skepticism).[14][15]

Many philosophers have questioned the value of such skeptical arguments. The question of whether we can achieve knowledge of the external world is based on how high a standard we set for the justification of such knowledge. If our standard is absolute certainty, then we cannot progress beyond the existence of mental sensations. We cannot even deduce the existence of a coherent or continuing "I" that experiences these sensations, much less the existence of an external world. On the other hand, if our standard is too low, then we admit follies and illusions into our body of knowledge. This argument against absolute skepticism asserts that the practical philosopher must move beyond solipsism, and accept a standard for knowledge that is high but not absolute.


[edit] Idealism

Immanuel KantMain article: Idealism
Idealism is the epistemological doctrine that nothing can be directly known outside of the minds of thinking beings. Or in an alternative stronger form, it is the metaphysical doctrine that nothing exists apart from minds and the "contents" of minds. In modern Western philosophy, the epistemological doctrine begins as a core tenet of Descartes – that what is in the mind is known more reliably than what is known through the senses. The first prominent modern Western idealist in the metaphysical sense was George Berkeley. Berkeley argued[16] that there is no deep distinction between mental states, such as feeling pain, and the ideas about so-called "external" things, that appear to us through the senses. There is no real distinction, in this view, between certain sensations of heat and light that we experience, which lead us to believe in the external existence of a fire, and the fire itself. Those sensations are all there is to fire. Berkeley expressed this with the Latin formula esse est percipi: to be is to be perceived. In this view the opinion, "strangely prevailing upon men", that houses, mountains, and rivers have an existence independent of their perception by a thinking being is false.

Forms of idealism were prevalent in philosophy from the 18th century to the early 20th century. Transcendental idealism, advocated by Immanuel Kant, is the view that there are limits on what can be understood, since there is much that cannot be brought under the conditions of objective judgment. Kant wrote his Critique of Pure Reason (1781–1787) in an attempt to reconcile the conflicting approaches of rationalism and empiricism, and to establish a new groundwork for studying metaphysics. Kant's intention with this work was to look at what we know and then consider what must be true about it, as a logical consequence of, the way we know it. One major theme was that there are fundamental features of reality that escape our direct knowledge because of the natural limits of the human faculties.[17] Although Kant held that objective knowledge of the world required the mind to impose a conceptual or categorical framework on the stream of pure sensory data – a framework including space and time themselves – he maintained that things-in-themselves existed independently of our perceptions and judgments; he was therefore not an idealist in any simple sense. Indeed, Kant's account of things-in-themselves is both controversial and highly complex. Continuing his work, Johann Gottlieb Fichte and Friedrich Schelling dispensed with belief in the independent existence of the world, and created a thoroughgoing idealist philosophy.

The most notable work of this German idealism was G.W.F. Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit, of 1807. Hegel admitted his ideas weren't new, but that all the previous philosophies had been incomplete. His goal was to correctly finish their job. Hegel asserts that the twin aims of philosophy are to account for the contradictions apparent in human experience (which arise, for instance, out of the supposed contradictions between "being" and "not being" ), and also simultaneously to resolve and preserve these contradictions by showing their compatibility at a higher level of examination ("being" and "not being" are resolved with "becoming") . This program of acceptance and reconciliation of contradictions is known as the "Hegelian dialectic". Philosophers in the Hegelian tradition include Ludwig Andreas Feuerbach, who coined the term projection as pertaining to our inability to recognize anything in the external world without projecting qualities of ourselves upon those things, Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, and the British idealists, notably T.H. Green, J.M.E. McTaggart, and F.H. Bradley.

Few 20th century philosophers have embraced idealism. However, quite a few have embraced Hegelian dialectic. Immanuel Kant's "Copernican Turn" also remains an important philosophical concept today.


[edit] Pragmatism

William JamesMain article: Pragmatism
Main article: Instrumentalism
Pragmatism was founded in the spirit of finding a scientific concept of truth, which is not dependent on either personal insight (or revelation) or reference to some metaphysical realm. The truth of a statement should be judged by the effect it has on our actions and truth should be seen as that which the whole of scientific enquiry will ultimately agree on.[18] This should probably be seen as a guiding principle more than a definition of what it means for something to be true, though the details of how this principle should be interpreted have been subject to discussion since Peirce first conceived it. Like Rorty many seem convinced that Pragmatism holds that the truth of beliefs does not consist in their correspondence with reality, but in their usefulness and efficacy.[19]

The late 19th-century American philosophers Charles Peirce and William James were its co-founders, and it was later developed by John Dewey as instrumentalism. Since the usefulness of any belief at any time might be contingent on circumstance, Peirce and James conceptualised final truth as that which would be established only by the future, final settlement of all opinion.[20] Critics have accused pragmatism of falling victim to a simple fallacy: because something that is true proves useful, that usefulness is the basis for its truth.[21] Thinkers in the pragmatist tradition have included John Dewey, George Santayana, W.V.O. Quine and C.I. Lewis. Pragmatism has more recently been taken in new directions by Richard Rorty, John Lachs, Donald Davidson and Hilary Putnam.


[edit] Phenomenology

Edmund HusserlMain article: Phenomenology
Edmund Husserl's phenomenology was an ambitious attempt to lay the foundations for an account of the structure of conscious experience in general.[22] An important part of Husserl's phenomenological project was to show that all conscious acts are directed at or about objective content, a feature that Husserl called intentionality.[23]

In the first part of his two-volume work, the Logical Investigations (1901), he launched an extended attack on psychologism. In the second part, he began to develop the technique of descriptive phenomenology, with the aim of showing how objective judgments are indeed grounded in conscious experience – not, however, in the first-person experience of particular individuals, but in the properties essential to any experiences of the kind in question.[24]

He also attempted to identify the essential properties of any act of meaning. He developed the method further in Ideas (1913) as transcendental phenomenology, proposing to ground actual experience, and thus all fields of human knowledge, in the structure of consciousness of an ideal, or transcendental, ego. Later, he attempted to reconcile his transcendental standpoint with an acknowledgement of the intersubjective life-world in which real individual subjects interact. Husserl published only a few works in his lifetime, which treat phenomenology mainly in abstract methodological terms; but he left an enormous quantity of unpublished concrete analyses.

Husserl's work was immediately influential in Germany, with the foundation of phenomenological schools in Munich and Göttingen. Phenomenology later achieved international fame through the work of such philosophers as Martin Heidegger (formerly Husserl's research assistant), Maurice Merleau-Ponty, and Jean-Paul Sartre. Indeed, through the work of Heidegger and Sartre, Husserl's focus on subjective experience influenced aspects of existentialism.


[edit] Existentialism
Main articles: Existentialism and Christian existentialism

Søren KierkegaardAlthough they didn't use the term, the nineteenth century philosophers Søren Kierkegaard and Friedrich Nietzsche are widely regarded as the fathers of existentialism. Their influence, however, has extended beyond existentialist thought.[25][26][27]

The main target of Kierkegaard's writings was the idealist philosophical system of Hegel which, he thought, ignored or excluded the inner subjective life of living human beings. Kierkegaard, conversely, held that "truth is subjectivity", arguing that what is most important to an actual human being are questions dealing with an individual's inner relationship to existence. In particular, Kierkegaard, a Christian, believed that the truth of religious faith was a subjective question, and one to be wrestled with passionately.[28][29]

Although Kierkegaard and Nietzsche were among his influences, the extent to which the German philosopher Martin Heidegger should be considered an existentialist is debatable. In Being and Time he presented a method of rooting philosophical explanations in human existence (Dasein) to be analysed in terms of existential categories (existentiale); and this has led many commentators to treat him as an important figure in the existentialist movement. However, in The Letter on Humanism, Heidegger explicitly rejected the existentialism of Jean-Paul Sartre.

Sartre became the best-known proponent of existentialism, exploring it not only in theoretical works such as Being and Nothingness , but also in plays and novels. Sartre, along with Albert Camus and Simone de Beauvoir, represented an avowedly atheistic branch of existentialism, which is now more closely associated with their ideas of nausea, contingency, bad faith, and the absurd than with Kierkegaard's spiritual angst. Nevertheless, the focus on the individual human being, responsible before the universe for the authenticity of his or her existence, is common to all these thinkers.


[edit] Structuralism and post-structuralism
Main articles: Structuralism and Post-structuralism

Ferdinand de SaussureInaugurated by the linguist Ferdinand de Saussure, structuralism sought to ferret out the underlying systems through analysing the discourses they both limit and make possible. Saussure conceived of the sign as being delimited by all the other signs in the system, and ideas as being incapable of existence prior to linguistic structure, which articulates thought. This led continental thought away from humanism, and toward what was termed the decentering of man: language is no longer spoken by man to express a true inner self, but language speaks man.

Structuralism sought the province of a hard science, but its positivism soon came under fire by poststructuralism, a wide field of thinkers, some of whom were once themselves structuralists, but later came to criticize it. Structuralists believed they could analyse systems from an external, objective standing, for example, but the poststructuralists argued that this is incorrect, that one cannot transcend structures and thus analysis is itself determined by what it examines, that systems are ultimately self-referential. Furthermore, while the distinction between the signifier and signified was treated as crystalline by structuralists, poststructuralists asserted that every attempt to grasp the signified would simply result in the proliferation of more signifiers, so meaning is always in a state of being deferred, making an ultimate interpretation impossible.

Structuralism came to dominate continental philosophy from the 1960s onward, encompassing thinkers as diverse as Michel Foucault and Jacques Lacan.


[edit] The analytic tradition
Main article: Analytic philosophy
The term analytic philosophy roughly designates a group of philosophical methods that stress detailed argumentation, attention to semantics, use of classical logic and non-classical logics and clarity of meaning above all other criteria. Michael Dummett in his Origins of Analytical Philosophy makes the case for counting Gottlob Frege The Foundations of Arithmetic as the first analytic work, on the grounds that in that book Frege took the linguistic turn, analysing philosophical problems through language. Bertrand Russell and G.E. Moore are also often counted as founders of analytic philosophy, beginning with their rejection of British idealism, their defense of realism and the emphasis they laid on the legitimacy of analysis. Russell's classic works The Principles of Mathematics,[30] On Denoting and Principia Mathematica, aside from greatly promoting the use of classical first order logic in philosophy, set the ground for much of the research program in the early stages of the analytic tradition, emphasising such problems as: the reference of proper names, whether existence is a property, the meaning of propositions, the analysis of definite descriptions, the discussions on the foundations of mathematics; as well as exploring issues of metaphysical commitment and even metaphysical problems regarding time, the nature of matter, mind, persistence and change, which Russell tackled often with the aid of mathematical logic. The philosophy developed as a critique of Hegel and his followers in particular, and of grand systems of speculative philosophy in general, though by no means all analytic philosophers reject the philosophy of Hegel (see Charles Taylor) nor speculative philosophy. Some schools in the group include logical atomism, logical positivism, and ordinary language. The motivation behind the work of analytic philosophers has been varied. Some have held that philosophical problems arise through misuse of language or because of misunderstandings of the logic of our language, while some maintain that there are genuine philosophical problems and that philosophy is continuous with science.

In 1921, Ludwig Wittgenstein published his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, which gave a rigidly "logical" account of linguistic and philosophical issues. At the time, he understood most of the problems of philosophy as mere puzzles of language, which could be solved by investigating and then minding the logical structure of language. Years later he would reverse a number of the positions he had set out in the Tractatus, in for example his second major work, Philosophical Investigations (1953). Investigations was influential in the development of "ordinary language philosophy", which was promoted by Gilbert Ryle, J.L. Austin, and a few others. In the United States, meanwhile, the philosophy of W. V. O. Quine was having a major influence, with such classics as Two Dogmas of Empiricism. In that paper Quine criticizes the distinction between analytic and synthetic statements, arguing that a clear conception of analyticity is unattainable. He argued for holism, the thesis that language, including scientific language, is a set of interconnected sentences, none of which can be verified on its own, rather, the sentences in the language depend on each other for their meaning and truth conditions. A consequence of Quine's approach is that language as a whole has only a very thin relation to experience, some sentences which refer directly to experience might be somewhat modified by sense impressions, but as the whole of language is theory-laden, for the whole language to be modified, more than this is required. However, most of the linguistic structure can in principle be revised, even logic, in order to better model the world. Notable students of Quine include Donald Davidson and Daniel Dennett. The former devised a program for giving a semantics to natural language and thereby answer the philosophical conundrum 'what is meaning?'. A crucial part of the program was the use of Alfred Tarski's semantic theory of truth. Dummett, among others, argued that truth conditions should be dispensed with in the theory of meaning, and replaced by assertibility conditions. Some propositions, on this view, are neither true nor false, and thus such a theory of meaning entails a rejection of the law of the excluded middle. This, for Dummett, entails antirealism, as Russell himself pointed out in An Inquiry into Meaning and Truth.

By the 1970s there was a renewed interest in many traditional philosophical problems by the younger generations of analytic philosophers. David Lewis, Saul Kripke, Derek Parfit and others took an interest in traditional metaphysical problems, which they began exploring by the use of logic and philosophy of language. Among those problems some distinguished ones were: free will, essentialism, the nature of personal identity, identity over time, the nature of the mind, the nature of causal laws, space-time, the properties of material beings, modality, etc. In those universities where analytic philosophy has spread, these problems are still being discussed passionately. Analytic philosophers are also interested in the methodology of analytic philosophy itself, with Timothy Williamson, Wykeham Professor of Logic at Oxford, publishing recently a book entitled The Philosophy of Philosophy. Some notable figures in contemporary analytic philosophy are: Timothy Williamson, Theodore Sider, John Hawthorne, Alvin Goldman, Peter van Inwagen, Graham Priest, John Searle, Scott Soames, Nathan Salmon and Saul Kripke. Analytic philosophy has sometimes being accused of not contributing to the political debate or to traditional questions in aesthetics, however, with the appearance of A Theory of Justice by John Rawls and Anarchy, State and Utopia by Robert Nozick, analytic political philosophy acquired respectability. Analytic philosophers have also showed depth in their investigations of aesthetics, with Roger Scruton, Richard Wollheim, Jerome Levinson and others developing the subject to its current shape.


[edit] Ethics and political

[edit] Human nature and political legitimacy

Thomas HobbesFrom ancient times, and well beyond them, the roots of justification for political authority were inescapably tied to outlooks on human nature. In The Republic, Plato declared that the ideal society would be run by a council of philosopher-kings, since those best at philosophy are best able to realize the good. Even Plato, however, required philosophers to make their way in the world for many years before beginning their rule at the age of fifty. For Aristotle, humans are political animals (i.e. social animals), and governments are set up in order to pursue good for the community. Aristotle reasoned that, since the state (polis) was the highest form of community, it has the purpose of pursuing the highest good. Aristotle viewed political power as the result of natural inequalities in skill and virtue. Because of these differences, he favored an aristocracy of the able and virtuous. For Aristotle, the person cannot be complete unless he or she lives in a community. His The Nicomachean Ethics and The Politics are meant to be read in that order. The first book addresses virtues (or "excellences") in the person as a citizen; the second addresses the proper form of government to ensure that citizens will be virtuous, and therefore complete. Both books deal with the essential role of justice in civic life.

Nicolas of Cusa rekindled Platonic thought in the early 15th century. He promoted democracy in Medieval Europe, both in his writings and in his organization of the Council of Florence. Unlike Aristotle and the Hobbesian tradition to follow, Cusa saw human beings as equal and divine (that is, made in God's image), so democracy would be the only just form of government. Cusa's views are credited by some as sparking the Italian Renaissance, which gave rise to the notion of "Nation-States".

Later, Niccolò Machiavelli rejected the views of Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas as unrealistic. The ideal sovereign is not the embodiment of the moral virtues; rather the sovereign does whatever is successful and necessary, rather than what is morally praiseworthy. Thomas Hobbes also contested many elements of Aristotle's views. For Hobbes, human nature is essentially anti-social: people are essentially egoistic, and this egoism makes life difficult in the natural state of things. Moreover, Hobbes argued, though people may have natural inequalities, these are trivial, since no particular talents or virtues that people may have will make them safe from harm inflicted by others. For these reasons, Hobbes concluded that the state arises from a common agreement to raise the community out of the state of nature. This can only be done by the establishment of a sovereign, in which (or whom) is vested complete control over the community, and which is able to inspire awe and terror in its subjects.[31]

Many in the Enlightenment were unsatisfied with existing doctrines in political philosophy, which seemed to marginalize or neglect the possibility of a democratic state. David Hume was among the first philosophers to question the existence of God.[citation needed] Jean-Jacques Rousseau was among those who attempted to overturn these doctrines: he responded to Hobbes by claiming that a human is by nature a kind of "noble savage", and that society and social contracts corrupt this nature. Another critic was John Locke. In Second Treatise on Government he agreed with Hobbes that the nation-state was an efficient tool for raising humanity out of a deplorable state, but he argued that the sovereign might become an abominable institution compared to the relatively benign unmodulated state of nature.[32]

Following the doctrine of the fact-value distinction, due in part to the influence of David Hume and his student Adam Smith, appeals to human nature for political justification were weakened. Nevertheless, many political philosophers, especially moral realists, still make use of some essential human nature as a basis for their arguments.


[edit] Consequentialism, deontology, and the aretaic turn

Jeremy BenthamMain articles: Consequentialism, Deontological ethics, and Virtue ethics
One debate that has commanded the attention of ethicists in the modern era has been between consequentialism (actions are to be morally evaluated solely by their consequences) and deontology (actions are to be morally evaluated solely by consideration of agents' duties, the rights of those whom the action concerns, or both).

Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill are famous for propagating utilitarianism, which is the idea that the fundamental moral rule is to strive toward the "greatest happiness for the greatest number". However, in promoting this idea they also necessarily promoted the broader doctrine of consequentialism.

Adopting a position opposed to consequentialism, Immanuel Kant argued that moral principles were simply products of reason. Kant believed that the incorporation of consequences into moral deliberation was a deep mistake, since it would deny the necessity of practical maxims in governing the working of the will. According to Kant, reason requires that we conform our actions to the categorical imperative, which is an absolute duty. An important 20th-century deontologist, W.D. Ross, has argued for weaker forms of duties called prima facie duties.

More recent works have emphasized the role of character in ethics, a movement known as the aretaic turn (that is, the turn towards virtues). One strain of this movement followed the work of Bernard Williams. Williams noted that rigid forms of both consequentialism and deontology demanded that people behave impartially. This, Williams argued, requires that people abandon their personal projects, and hence their personal integrity, in order to be considered moral.

G.E.M. Anscombe, in an influential paper, "Modern Moral Philosophy" (1958), revived virtue ethics as an alternative to what was seen as the entrenched positions of Kantianism and consequentialism. Aretaic perspectives have been inspired in part by research of ancient conceptions of virtue. For example, Aristotle's ethics demands that people follow the Aristotelian mean, or balance between two vices; and Confucian ethics argues that virtue consists largely in striving for harmony with other people. Virtue ethics in general has since gained many adherents, and has been defended by such philosophers as Philippa Foot, Alasdair MacIntyre, and Rosalind Hursthouse.


[edit] Applied philosophy
The thoughts a society thinks have profound repercussions on what it does. The applied study of philosophy yields applications such as those in ethics – applied ethics in particular – and political philosophy. The political and economic philosophies of Confucius, Sun Zi, Ibn Khaldun, Ibn Rushd, Ibn Taimiyyah, Niccolò Machiavelli, Gottfried Leibniz, John Locke, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Karl Marx, John Stuart Mill, Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr. and others – all of these have been used to shape and justify governments and their actions.

In the field of philosophy of education, progressive education as championed by John Dewey has had a profound impact on educational practices in the United States in the 20th century. Descendants of this movement include the current efforts in philosophy for children. Carl von Clausewitz's political philosophy of war has had a profound effect on statecraft, international politics, and military strategy in the 20th century, especially in the years around World War II. Logic has become crucially important in mathematics, linguistics, psychology, computer science, and computer engineering.

Other important applications can be found in epistemology, which aid in understanding the requisites for knowledge, sound evidence, and justified belief (important in law, economics, decision theory, and a number of other disciplines). The philosophy of science discusses the underpinnings of the scientific method and has affected the nature of scientific investigation and argumentation. This has profound impacts. For example, the strictly empirical approach of Skinner's behaviourism affected for decades the approach of the American psychological establishment. Deep ecology and animal rights examine the moral situation of humans as occupants of a world that has non-human occupants to consider also. Aesthetics can help to interpret discussions of music, literature, the plastic arts, and the whole artistic dimension of life. In general, the various philosophies strive to provide practical activities with a deeper understanding of the theoretical or conceptual underpinnings of their fields.

Often philosophy is seen as an investigation into an area not sufficiently well understood to be its own branch of knowledge. What were once philosophical pursuits have evolved into the modern day fields such as psychology, sociology, linguistics, and economics, for example. But as such areas of intellectual endeavour proliferate and expand, so will the broader philosophical questions that they generate.

The New York Times reported an increase in philosophy majors at United States universities in 2008.[33]

Irish Catholic
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Irish Catholics is a term used to describe people of Roman Catholic background who are Irish or of Irish descent.

The term is of note due to Irish immigration to many countries of the English speaking world, particularly as a result of the Irish Famine in the 1840s - 1850s, following which the population declined by over half in the following century (from approx. over 8 million to just over 4 million) due to the pattern of immigration begun then. The term has currency in the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. These nations had, or have, a majority of Protestants; thus, both aspects - being Catholic, and being Irish - at times separated them from the mainstream culture. In the United States, hostility to both these aspects was expressed through the Know-Nothing movement and Nativism in general.

The term can also relate to a period when Catholicism in Ireland was somewhat divergent from the "Roman" church. Though mostly reconciled with the Synod of Cashel in 1172, some elements unique within the practice of Catholicism and Catholic culture remained in Ireland.

'Irish Catholic' is also used to distinguish Catholic inhabitants of Ireland from the Ulster-Scots and the Anglo-Irish, and the North American descendants of Irish Catholic emigrants from the Scots-Irish. It does not necessarily refer to religion, as there are many Irish Catholics who belong to other faiths or, indeed, no faith at all (such as Eamonn McCann).

The Irish Catholic is also the name of a popular newspaper in Ireland published for lay people

Bible
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The Bible is
Part of Category:Judaism
(see The Hebrew Bible below)
Part of a series on Christianity
(see The New Testament below) 
The Bible is the collection of religious writings of Judaism and of Christianity.[1] The exact composition of the Bible is dependent on the religious traditions of specific denominations. Modern Rabbinic Judaism generally recognizes a single set of canonical books that comprise the Tanakh, the Jewish version of the Bible.[2] The Christian Bible includes the same books as the Tanakh (referred to in this context as the Old Testament), but usually in a different order, together with specifically Christian books collectively called the New Testament. Among some Christian traditions, the Bible includes additional Jewish books that were not accepted into the Tanakh.

The Hebrew Bible comprises three parts: the Torah ("Teaching", also known as the Pentateuch or "Five Books of Moses"), the Prophets, and the Writings. It was primarily written in Hebrew with some small portions written in Aramaic.

The Christian Bible includes the twenty-seven books of the New Testament, which were originally written in Greek,[3] preceded by the protocanonical books of the Old Testament and sometimes a number of deuterocanonical books: Eastern Orthodox Churches use all of the books that were incorporated into the Septuagint, the earliest Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible;[4] Roman Catholics include some of these books in their canon; and many Protestant Bibles follow the Jewish canon, excluding the additional books. Some editions of the Christian Bible have a separate Biblical apocrypha section for books not considered canonical.

According to the United Bible Society, as of December 31, 2007, translations of the full Bible were available for 438 languages, translations of one of the two testaments in 1,168 additional languages, and portions of the text existed in 848 additional languages. This means that partial or full translations of the Bible exist in a total of 2,454 languages. [5]

Contents [hide]
1 Etymology
2 Tanakh
2.1 Torah
2.2 Nevi'im
2.3 Ketuvim
2.4 Hebrew Bible translations and editions
2.5 The Torah of Judaism
3 Christian Bible
3.1 Old Testament
3.1.1 Apocryphal or deuterocanonical books
3.2 New Testament
3.2.1 Original language
3.2.2 Historic editions
3.3 Christian theology
4 Canonization
4.1 Hebrew Bible
4.2 Old and New Testaments
4.3 Ethiopian Orthodox canon
5 Bible versions and translations
5.1 Characteristics of early Bible texts
5.2 Differences in Bible translations
5.3 Inclusive language
5.4 Chapters and verses
6 Biblical criticism
6.1 Higher criticism
6.2 Documentary hypothesis
6.3 Modern developments
6.4 Theological responses
6.4.1 Judaism
6.4.2 Christianity
7 Archaeological and historical research
7.1 Nomadist theory
8 See also
8.1 Biblical scholarship and analysis
8.2 Perspectives on the Bible
8.3 Interpretation
8.4 History and the Bible
8.5 Biblical topics
8.6 Bible societies
8.7 Commentaries
8.8 Religious texts
9 Notes
10 References and further reading
11 External links
11.1 Wikis



Etymology

An American family Bible dating to 1859 A.D.According to the Online Etymology Dictionary, the word bible[6] is from Latin biblia, traced from the same word through Medieval Latin and Late Latin, as used in the phrase biblia sacra ("holy book" - "In the Latin of the Middle Ages, the neuter plural for Biblia (gen. bibliorum) gradually came to be regarded as a feminine singular noun (biblia, gen. bibliae, in which singular form the word has passed into the languages of the Western world."[7]). This stemmed from the Greek term τὰ βιβλία τὰ ἅγια (ta biblia ta hagia), "the holy books", which derived from βιβλίον (biblion),[8] "paper" or "scroll," the ordinary word for "book", which was originally a diminutive of βύβλος (byblos, "Egyptian papyrus"), possibly so called from the name of the Phoenician port Byblos from which Egyptian papyrus was exported to Greece.

Biblical scholar Mark Hamilton states that the Greek phrase Ta biblia ("the books") was "an expression Hellenistic Jews used to describe their sacred books several centuries before the time of Jesus,"[9] and would have referred to the Septuagint.[10] The Online Etymology Dictionary states, "The Christian scripture was referred to in Greek as Ta Biblia as early as c.223."


Tanakh
Main article: Tanakh
The Tanakh (Hebrew: תנ"ך) consists of 24 books. Tanakh is an acronym for the three parts of the Hebrew Bible: the Torah ("Teaching/Law" also known as the Pentateuch), Nevi'im ("Prophets"), and Ketuvim ("Writings," or Hagiographa), and is used commonly by Jews but unfamiliar to many English speakers and others (Alexander 1999, p. 17). (See Table of books of Judeo-Christian Scripture).


Torah
Main article: Torah
The Torah, or "Instruction," is also known as the "Five Books" of Moses, thus Chumash from Hebrew meaning "fivesome," and Pentateuch from Greek meaning "five scroll-cases."

The Torah comprises the following five books:

1. Genesis, Ge—Bereshit (בראשית)
2. Exodus, Ex—Shemot (שמות)
3. Leviticus, Le—Vayikra (ויקרא)
4. Numbers, Nu—Bamidbar (במדבר)
5. Deuteronomy, Dt—Devarim (דברים)
The Hebrew book titles come from the first words in the respective texts. The Hebrew title for Numbers, however, comes from the fifth word of that text.

The Torah focuses on three moments in the changing relationship between God and people. The first eleven chapters of Genesis provide accounts of 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 Hebrew 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 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. His story coincides with the story of the liberation of 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 would be ready to enter the land of Canaan. The Torah ends with the death of Moses.

The Torah contains the commandments, of God, revealed at Mount Sinai (although there is some debate amongst Jewish scholars, if this was written down completely in one moment, or if it was spread out during the 40 years in the wandering in the desert). These commandments provide the basis for Halakha (Jewish religious law). Tradition states that the number of these is equal to 613 Mitzvot or 613 commandments. There is some dispute as to how to divide these up (mainly between the Ramban and Rambam). Everyone agrees though that there are 613.

The Torah is divided into fifty-four portions which are read in turn in Jewish liturgy, from the beginning of Genesis to the end of Deuteronomy, each Sabbath. The cycle ends and recommences at the end of Sukkot, which is called Simchat Torah.


Nevi'im
Main article: Nevi'im
The Nevi'im, or "Prophets," tell the story of the rise of the Hebrew monarchy, its division into two kingdoms, and the prophets who, in God's name, warned the kings and the Children of Israel about the punishment of God. It ends with the conquest of the Kingdom of Israel by the Assyrians and the conquest of the Kingdom of Judah by the Babylonians, and the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem. Portions of the prophetic books are read by Jews on the Sabbath (Shabbat). The Book of Jonah is read on Yom Kippur.

According to Jewish tradition, Nevi'im is divided into eight books. Contemporary translations subdivide these into seventeen books.

The Nevi'im comprise the following eight books:

6. Joshua, Js—Yehoshua (יהושע)
7. Judges, Jg—Shoftim (שופטים)
8. Samuel, includes First and Second, 1Sa–2Sa—Shemuel (שמואל)
9. Kings, includes First and Second, 1Ki–2Ki—Melakhim (מלכים)
10. Isaiah, Is—Yeshayahu (ישעיהו)
11. Jeremiah, Je—Yirmiyahu (ירמיהו)
12. Ezekiel, Ez—Yekhezkel (יחזקאל)
13. Twelve, includes all Minor Prophets—Tre Asar (תרי עשר)
a. Hosea, Ho—Hoshea (הושע)
b. Joel, Jl—Yoel (יואל)
c. Amos, Am—Amos (עמוס)
d. Obadiah, Ob—Ovadyah (עבדיה)
e. Jonah, Jh—Yonah (יונה)
f. Micah, Mi—Mikhah (מיכה)
g. Nahum, Na—Nahum (נחום)
h. Habakkuk, Hb—Havakuk (חבקוק)
i. Zephaniah, Zp—Tsefanya (צפניה)
j. Haggai, Hg—Khagay (חגי)
k. Zechariah, Zc—Zekharyah (זכריה)
l. Malachi, Ml—Malakhi (מלאכי)
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Ketuvim
Main article: Ketuvim
The Ketuvim, or "Writings" or "Scriptures," may have been written during or after the Babylonian Exile but no one can be sure. According to Rabbinic tradition, many of the psalms in the book of Psalms are attributed to David; King Solomon is believed to have written Song of Songs in his youth, Proverbs at the prime of his life, and Ecclesiastes at old age; and the prophet Jeremiah is thought to have written Lamentations. The Book of Ruth is the only biblical book that centers entirely on a non-Jew. The book of Ruth tells the story of a non-Jew (specifically, a Moabite) who married a Jew and, upon his death, followed in the ways of the Jews; according to the Bible, she was the great-grandmother of King David. Five of the books, called "The Five Scrolls" (Megilot), are read on Jewish holidays: Song of Songs on Passover; the Book of Ruth on Shavuot; Lamentations on the Ninth of Av; Ecclesiastes on Sukkot; and the Book of Esther on Purim. Collectively, the Ketuvim contain lyrical poetry, philosophical reflections on life, and the stories of the prophets and other Jewish leaders during the Babylonian exile. It ends with the Persian decree allowing Jews to return to Jerusalem to rebuild the Temple.

The Ketuvim comprise the following eleven books:

14. Psalms, Ps—Tehillim (תהלים)
15. Proverbs, Pr—Mishlei (משלי)
16. Job, Jb—Iyyov (איוב)
17. Song of Songs, So—Shir ha-Shirim (שיר השירים)
18. Ruth, Ru—Rut (רות)
19. Lamentations, La—Eikhah (איכה), also called Kinot (קינות)
20. Ecclesiastes, Ec—Kohelet (קהלת)
21. Esther, Es—Ester (אסתר)
22. Daniel, Dn—Daniel (דניאל)
23. Ezra, Ea, includes Nehemiah, Ne—Ezra (עזרא), includes Nehemiah (נחמיה)
24. Chronicles, includes First and Second, 1Ch–2Ch—Divrei ha-Yamim (דברי הימים), also called Divrei (דברי)

Hebrew Bible translations and editions
Main article: Bible translations
The Tanakh was mainly written in Biblical Hebrew, with some portions (notably in Daniel and Ezra) in Biblical Aramaic.[11]

Some time in the 2nd or 3rd century BC, the Torah was translated into Koine Greek, and over the next century, other books were translated (or composed) as well. This translation became known as the Septuagint[12] and was widely used by Greek-speaking Jews, and later by Christians.[13] It differs somewhat from the later standardized Hebrew (Masoretic Text). This translation was promoted by way of a legend (primarily recorded as the Letter of Aristeas) that seventy (or in some sources, seventy-two) separate translators all produced identical texts.[14]

From the 800s to the 1400s, Jewish scholars today known as Masoretes compared the text of all known biblical manuscripts in an effort to create a unified, standardized text. A series of highly similar texts eventually emerged, and any of these texts are known as Masoretic Texts (MT). The Masoretes also added vowel points (called niqqud) to the text, since the original text only contained consonant letters. This sometimes required the selection of an interpretation, since some words differ only in their vowels—their meaning can vary in accordance with the vowels chosen. In antiquity, variant Hebrew readings existed, some of which have survived in the Samaritan Pentateuch, the Dead Sea scrolls, and other ancient fragments, as well as being attested in ancient versions in other languages.[15]

Versions of the Septuagint contain several passages and whole books beyond what was included in the Masoretic texts of the Tanakh. In some cases these additions were originally composed in Greek, while in other cases they are translations of Hebrew books or variants not present in the Masoretic texts. Recent discoveries have shown that more of the Septuagint additions have a Hebrew origin than was once thought. While there are no complete surviving manuscripts of the Hebrew texts on which the Septuagint was based, many scholars believe that they represent a different textual tradition ("Vorlage") from the one that became the basis for the Masoretic texts.[15]

Jews also produced non-literal translations or paraphrases known as targums, primarily in Aramaic. They frequently expanded on the text with additional details taken from Rabbinic oral tradition.


The Torah of Judaism
Orthodox Judaism, as epitomized in the Pharisee sect, rejects any notion that the Written Torah and Oral Torah are distinct entities. The Written Torah (the Five Books of Moses), Prophets and Writings, form the corpus of what is God's word in written form. This body is completely incomprehensible without an Oral Tradition. For example, a Torah scroll contains no vowels, and no punctuation. Were it not for an Oral Tradition, the meaning of words would be unknown, as well as the sentence structure, where to begin and end verses, sections etc. are all reliant on an oral tradition. This is extended into what Orthodox Judaism classifies in the Legal parts of the Oral Tradition, as the rules of Biblical Exegesis, which defines how to interpret the text, which is also transmitted orally. The Oral Tradition, however, is much more broad. It includes Midrash, Halachic and Aggadic, Kabbalah, interpretation, and the legal portions, which are codified to some extent in the Mishnah, Tosefta, Sifre, Sifra, Mechilta, Talmuds (both Babylonian and Jerusalem).

The Sadducees were a minority group, that had some sway during the Hellenistic period, were the inheritors of their leader Zadok who believed that there was only a minimal oral tradition of interpreting the words of the Torah, and did not extend into extended biblical interpretation. They argued against the Rabbis in mostly legal matters, threatening the very existence of Judaism. The Sadducees became corrupted and took over positions in the Priestly service, some becoming the High Priest. Others incited unrest by subverting the Sanhedrin, by providing false testimony in which the new-moon would be declared, and hence the dates of the year for the festivals would be altered.

Masorti and Conservative Judaism state that the Oral Tradition is to some degree Divinely inspired, but disregard its legal elements in varying degrees. Reform Judaism also gives some credence to the Talmud containing the Legal elements of the Oral Torah, but, as with the written Torah, asserts that both were inspired by, but not dictated by, God. Reconstructionist Judaism, denies any connection of the Torah, Written or Oral with God.


Christian Bible
The Christian Bible consists of the Hebrew scriptures, which have been called the Old Testament, and some later writings known as the New Testament. Some groups within Christianity include additional books as part one or both of these sections of their sacred writings – most prominent among which are the biblical apocrypha or deuterocanonical books.

In Judaism, the term Christian Bible is commonly used to identify only those books like the New Testament which have been added by Christians to the Masoretic Text, and excludes any reference to an Old Testament.[16]


Old Testament
The Old Testament is the collection of books written prior to the life of Jesus but accepted by Christians as scripture. Broadly speaking, it is the same as the Hebrew Bible, however it divides and orders them differently, and varies from Judaism in interpretation and emphasis, see for example Isaiah 7:14. Several Christian denominations also incorporate additional books into their canons of the Old Testament. A few groups consider particular translations to be divinely inspired, notably the Greek Septuagint, the Aramaic Peshitta, and the English King James Version.


Apocryphal or deuterocanonical books
The Septuagint (Greek translation, from Alexandria in Egypt under the Ptolemies) was generally abandoned in favour of the Masoretic text as the basis for translations of the Old Testament into Western languages from St. Jerome's Bible (the Vulgate) to the present day. In Eastern Christianity, translations based on the Septuagint still prevail. Some modern Western translations make use of the Septuagint to clarify passages in the Masoretic text, where the Septuagint may preserve a variant reading of the Hebrew text. They also sometimes adopt variants that appear in other texts e.g. those discovered among the Dead Sea Scrolls.

A number of books which are part of the Peshitta or Greek Septuagint but are not found in the Hebrew (Rabbinic) Bible are often referred to as deuterocanonical books by Roman Catholics referring to a later secondary (i.e. deutero) canon. Most Protestants term these books as apocrypha. Evangelicals and those of the Modern Protestant traditions do not accept the deuterocanonical books as canonical, although Protestant Bibles included them in Apocrypha sections until around the 1820s. However, the Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, and Oriental Orthodox Churches include these books as part of their Old Testament.

The Roman Catholic Church recognizes the following books:

Tobit
Judith
1 Maccabees
2 Maccabees
Wisdom of Solomon
Ecclesiasticus
Baruch
Greek Additions to Esther
Greek Additions to Daniel
In addition to those, the Greek and Russian Orthodox Churches recognize the following:

3 Maccabees
1 Esdras i.e. Greek Ezra paraphrase
Prayer of Manasseh
Psalm 151 as part of the Psalter
Some other Eastern Orthodox Churches include a few others, typically:

2 Esdras i.e. Latin Esdras in the Russian and Georgian Bibles
Odes
The Syriac Orthodox Church also has:

The Apocalypse of Baruch 2 Baruch
The Letter of Baruch
The Ethiopian Orthodox Church also has some others such as:

Jubilees
Enoch
The Anglican Church uses some of the Apocryphal books liturgically, but not to establish doctrine. Therefore, editions of the Bible intended for use in the Anglican Church include the Deuterocanonical books accepted by the Catholic church, plus 1 Esdras, 2 Esdras and the Prayer of Manasseh, which were in the Vulgate appendix.

There is also 4 Maccabees which is only accepted as canonical in the Georgian Church, but was included by St. Jerome in an appendix to the Vulgate, and is an appendix to the Greek Orthodox Bible, and it therefore sometimes included in collections of the Apocrypha.


New Testament
Main article: New Testament
The Bible as used by the majority of Christians includes the Rabbinic Hebrew Scripture and the New Testament, which relates the life and teachings of Jesus, the letters of the Apostle Paul and other disciples to the early church and the Book of Revelation.




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The New Testament is a collection of 27 books, of 4 different genres of Christian literature (Gospels, one account of the Acts of the Apostles, Epistles and an Apocalypse). Jesus is its central figure. The New Testament was written primarily in Koine Greek in the early Christian period, though a minority argue for Aramaic primacy. Nearly all Christians recognize the New Testament (as stated below) as canonical scripture. These books can be grouped into:

The Gospels

Synoptic Gospels
Gospel According to Matthew, Mt
Gospel According to Mark, Mk
Gospel According to Luke, Lk
Gospel According to John, Jn
Acts of the Apostles, Ac (continues Luke)
Pauline Epistles

Epistle to the Romans, Ro
First Epistle to the Corinthians, 1Co
Second Epistle to the Corinthians, 2Co
Epistle to the Galatians, Ga
Epistle to the Ephesians, Ep
Epistle to the Philippians, Pp
Epistle to the Colossians, Cl
First Epistle to the Thessalonians, 1Th
Second Epistle to the Thessalonians, 2Th
Pastoral Epistles
First Epistle to Timothy, 1Ti
Second Epistle to Timothy, 2Ti
Epistle to Titus, Tt
Epistle to Philemon, Pm
Epistle to the Hebrews, He
General Epistles, also called Jewish Epistles

Epistle of James, Jm
First Epistle of Peter, 1Pe
Second Epistle of Peter, 2Pe
First Epistle of John, 1Jn
Second Epistle of John, 2Jn
Third Epistle of John, 3Jn
Epistle of Jude, Jd
Revelation, or the Apocalypse Re


The order of these books varies according to Church tradition. The New Testament books are ordered differently in the Catholic/Protestant tradition, the Lutheran tradition, the Slavonic tradition, the Syriac tradition and the Ethiopian tradition.


Original language
The books of the New Testament were likely written in Koine Greek, the language of the earliest extant manuscripts, even though some authors often included translations from Hebrew and Aramaic texts. Certainly the Pauline Epistles were written in Greek for Greek-speaking audiences. See Greek primacy. Some scholars believe that some books of the Greek New Testament (in particular, the Gospel of Matthew) are actually translations of a Hebrew or Aramaic original. Of these, a small number accept the Syriac Peshitta as representative of the original. See Aramaic primacy.


Historic editions
See also: Biblical manuscript and Bible translations

The Codex Gigas from the 13th century, held at the Royal Library in Sweden.When ancient scribes copied earlier books, they wrote notes on the margins of the page (marginal glosses) to correct their text—especially if a scribe accidentally omitted a word or line—and to comment about the text. When later scribes were copying the copy, they were sometimes uncertain if a note was intended to be included as part of the text. See textual criticism. Over time, different regions evolved different versions, each with its own assemblage of omissions and additions.

The autographs, the Greek manuscripts written by the original authors, have not survived. Scholars surmise the original Greek text from the versions that do survive. The three main textual traditions of the Greek New Testament are sometimes called the Alexandrian text-type (generally minimalist), the Byzantine text-type (generally maximalist), and the Western text-type (occasionally wild). Together they comprise most of the ancient manuscripts.

There are also several ancient translations, most important of which are in the Syriac dialect of Aramaic (including the Peshitta and the Diatessaron gospel harmony), in the Ethiopian language of Ge'ez, and in Latin (both the Vetus Latina and the Vulgate).

In 331, the Emperor Constantine commissioned Eusebius to deliver fifty Bibles for the Church of Constantinople. Athanasius (Apol. Const. 4) recorded Alexandrian scribes around 340 preparing Bibles for Constans. Little else is known, though there is plenty of speculation. For example, it is speculated that this may have provided motivation for canon lists, and that Codex Vaticanus, Codex Sinaiticus and Codex Alexandrinus are examples of these Bibles. Together with the Peshitta, these are the earliest extant Christian Bibles.[17]

The earliest surviving complete manuscript of the entire Bible is the Codex Amiatinus, a Latin Vulgate edition produced in eighth century England at the double monastery of Wearmouth-Jarrow.

The earliest printed edition of the Greek New Testament appeared in 1516 from the Froben press, by Desiderius Erasmus, who reconstructed its Greek text from several recent manuscripts of the Byzantine text-type. He occasionally added a Greek translation of the Latin Vulgate for parts that did not exist in the Greek manuscripts. He produced four later editions of this text. Erasmus was Roman Catholic, but his preference for the Byzantine Greek manuscripts rather than the Latin Vulgate led some church authorities to view him with suspicion.

The first printed edition with critical apparatus (noting variant readings among the manuscripts) was produced by the printer Robert Estienne of Paris in 1550. The Greek text of this edition and of those of Erasmus became known as the Textus Receptus (Latin for "received text"), a name given to it in the Elzevier edition of 1633, which termed it as the text nunc ab omnibus receptum ("now received by all").

The churches of the Protestant Reformation translated the Greek of the Textus Receptus to produce vernacular Bibles, such as the German Luther Bible and the English King James Bible.

The discovery of older manuscripts, which belong to the Alexandrian text-type, including the 4th century Codex Vaticanus and Codex Sinaiticus, led scholars to revise their view about the original Greek text. Attempts to reconstruct the original text are called critical editions. Karl Lachmann based his critical edition of 1831 on manuscripts dating from the 4th century and earlier, to demonstrate that the Textus Receptus must be corrected according to these earlier texts.

Later critical editions incorporate ongoing scholarly research, including discoveries of Greek papyrus fragments from near Alexandria, Egypt, that date in some cases within a few decades of the original New Testament writings.[18] Today, most critical editions of the Greek New Testament, such as UBS4 and NA27, consider the Alexandrian text-type corrected by papyri, to be the Greek text that is closest to the original autographs. Their apparatus includes the result of votes among scholars, ranging from certain {A} to doubtful {E}, on which variants best preserve the original Greek text of the New Testament.

Most variants among the manuscripts are minor, such as alternate spelling, alternate word order, the presence or absence of an optional definite article ("the"), and so on. Occasionally, a major variant happens when a portion of a text was accidentally omitted (or perhaps even censored), or was added from a marginal gloss. Fortunately, major variants tend to be easier to correct. Examples of major variants are the endings of Mark, the Pericope Adulteræ, the Comma Johanneum, and the Western version of Acts.

Critical editions that rely primarily on the Alexandrian text-type inform nearly all modern translations (and revisions of older translations).

However for reasons of tradition, especially the doctrine of the inerrancy of the King James Bible, some modern scholars prefer to use the Textus Receptus for the Greek text, or use the Majority Text which is similar to it but is a critical edition that relies on earlier manuscripts of the Byzantine text-type. Among these scholars, some argue that the Byzantine tradition contains scribal additions, but these later interpolations preserve the orthodox interpretations of the biblical text—as part of the ongoing Christian experience—and in this sense are authoritative.

Christian theology
Main article: Christian theology
While individual books within the Christian Bible present narratives set in certain historical periods, most Christian denominations teach that the Bible itself has an overarching message.

There are among Christians wide differences of opinion as to how particular incidents as described in the Bible are to be interpreted and as to what meaning should be attached to various prophecies. However, Christians in general are in agreement as to the Bible's basic message. A general outline, as described by C. S. Lewis, is as follows:[19]


At some point in the past, humanity chose to depart from God's will and began to sin.
Because no one is free from sin, people cannot deal with God directly, so God revealed Himself in ways people could understand.
God called Abraham and his progeny to be the means for saving all of humanity.
To this end, He gave the Law to Moses.
The resulting nation of Israel went through cycles of sin and repentance, yet the prophets show an increasing understanding of the Law as a moral, not just a ceremonial, force.
Jesus brought a perfect understanding of the Mosaic Law, that of love and salvation.
By His death and resurrection, all who believe are saved and reconciled to God.
Many Christians, Muslims, and Jews regard the Bible as inspired by God yet written by a variety of imperfect men over thousands of years. Many others, who identify themselves as Bible-believing Christians, regard both the New and Old Testament as the undiluted Word of God, spoken by God and written down in its perfect form by humans. Still others hold the Biblical infallibility perspective, that the Bible is free from error in spiritual but not scientific matters.

Belief in sacred texts is attested to in Jewish antiquity,[20][21] and this belief can also be seen in the earliest of Christian writings. Various texts of the Bible mention Divine agency in relation to prophetic writings,[22] the most explicit being 2 Tm 3:16: "All scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness."

In their book A General Introduction to the Bible, Norman Geisler and William Nix wrote: "The process of inspiration is a mystery of the providence of God, but the result of this process is a verbal, plenary, inerrant, and authoritative record."[23] Some biblical scholars[24][25][26] associate inspiration with only the original text; for example some American Protestants adhere to the 1978 Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy which asserted that inspiration applied only to the autographic text of Scripture.[27] Others, including some adherents to the King James Only view, attribute inerrancy to particular translations.


Canonization
Main article: Biblical Canon
The word "canon" etymologically means cane or reed. In early Christianity "canon" referred to a list of books approved for public reading. Books not on the list were referred to as "apocryphal" — meaning they were for private reading only. Under Latin usage from the fourth century on, canon came to stand for a closed and authoritative list in the sense of rule or norm.[28]


Hebrew Bible
Main article: Development of the Jewish Bible canon
The New Testament refers to the threefold division of the Hebrew Scriptures: the law, the prophets, and the writings. Luke 24:44 refers to the "law of Moses" (Pentateuch), the "prophets" which include certain historical books in addition to the books now called "prophets," and the psalms (the "writings" designated by its most prominent collection). The Hebrew Bible probably was canonized in these three stages: the law canonized before the Exile, the prophets by the time of the Syrian persecution of the Jews, and the writings shortly after AD 70 (the fall of Jerusalem). About that time, early Christian writings began being accepted by Christians as "scripture." These events, taken together, may have caused the Jews to close their "canon." They listed their own recognized Scriptures and also excluded both Christian and Jewish writings considered by them to be "apocryphal." In this canon the thirty-nine books found in the Old Testament of today's Christian Bibles were grouped together as twenty-two books, equaling the number of letters in the Hebrew alphabet. This canon of Jewish scripture is attested to by Philo, Josephus, the New Testament (Luke 11:51, Luke 24:44), and the Talmud.[28]

The New Testament writers assumed the inspiration of the Old Testament, probably earliest stated in 2 Timothy 3:16 which may be rendered "All Scripture is inspired of God" or "Every God-inspired Scripture is profitable for teaching." Both translations consider inspiration as a fact.[28]


Old and New Testaments
Main articles: Development of the Old Testament canon and Development of the New Testament canon
The Old Testament canon entered into Christian use in the Greek Septuagint translations and original books, and their differing lists of texts. In addition to the Septuagint, Christianity subsequently added various writings that would become the New Testament. Somewhat different lists of accepted works continued to develop in antiquity. In the fourth century a series of synods produced a list of texts equal to the 39-to-46-book canon of the Old Testament and to the 27-book canon of the New Testament that would be subsequently used to today, most notably the Synod of Hippo in AD 393. Also c. 400, Jerome produced a definitive Latin edition of the Bible (see Vulgate), the canon of which, at the insistence of the Pope, was in accord with the earlier Synods. With the benefit of hindsight it can be said that this process effectively set the New Testament canon, although there are examples of other canonical lists in use after this time. A definitive list did not come from an Ecumenical Council until the Council of Trent (1545–63).[29]

During the Protestant Reformation, certain reformers proposed different canonical lists than what was currently in use. Though not without debate, see Antilegomena, the list of New Testament books would come to remain the same; however, the Old Testament texts present in the Septuagint, but not included in the Jewish canon, fell out of favor. In time they would come to be removed from most Protestant canons. Hence, in a Catholic context these texts are referred to as deuterocanonical books, whereas in a Protestant context they are referred to as Apocrypha, the label applied to all texts excluded from the biblical canon which were in the Septuagint. It should also be noted, that Catholics and Protestants both describe certain other books, such as the Acts of Peter, as apocryphal.

Thus, the Protestant Old Testament of today has a 39-book canon—the number varies from that of the books in the Tanakh (though not in content) because of a different method of division—while the Roman Catholic Church recognizes 46 books as part of the canonical Old Testament. The term "Hebrew Scriptures" is only synonymous with the Protestant Old Testament, not the Catholic, which contains the Hebrew Scriptures and additional texts. Both Catholics and Protestants have the same 27-book New Testament Canon.


Ethiopian Orthodox canon
The Canon of the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church is wider than for most other Christian groups. The Ethiopian Old Testament Canon includes the books found in the Septuagint accepted by other Orthodox Christians, in addition to Enoch and Jubilees which are ancient Jewish books that only survived in Ge'ez but are quoted in the New Testament, also Greek Ezra First and the Apocalypse of Ezra, 3 books of Meqabyan, and Psalm 151 at the end of the Psalter. The three books of Meqabyan are not be confused with the books of Maccabees. The order of the other books is somewhat different from other groups', as well. The Old Testament follows the Septuagint order for the Minor Prophets rather than the Jewish order.


Bible versions and translations
Further information: Bible translations

A Bible handwritten in Latin, on display in Malmesbury Abbey, Wiltshire, England. This Bible was transcribed in Belgium in 1407 for reading aloud in a monastery.In scholarly writing, ancient translations are frequently referred to as "versions," with the term "translation" being reserved for medieval or modern translations.[citation needed] Bible versions are discussed below, while Bible translations can be found on a separate page.

The original texts of the Tanakh were in Hebrew, although some portions were in Aramaic. In addition to the authoritative Masoretic Text, Jews still refer to the Septuagint, the translation of the Hebrew Bible into Greek, and the Targum Onkelos, an Aramaic version of the Bible. There are several different ancient versions of the Tanakh in Hebrew, mostly differing by spelling, and the traditional Jewish version is based on the version known as Aleppo Codex. Even in this version by itself, there are words which are traditionally read differently than written (sometimes one word is written and another is read), because the oral tradition is considered more fundamental than the written one, and presumably mistakes had been made in copying the text over the generations.

The primary biblical text for early Christians was the Septuagint or (LXX). In addition they translated the Hebrew Bible into several other languages. Translations were made into Syriac, Coptic, Ge'ez and Latin, among other languages. The Latin translations were historically the most important for the Church in the West, while the Greek-speaking East continued to use the Septuagint translations of the Old Testament and had no need to translate the New Testament.

The earliest Latin translation was the Old Latin text, or Vetus Latina, which, from internal evidence, seems to have been made by several authors over a period of time. It was based on the Septuagint, and thus included books not in the Hebrew Bible.

Pope Damasus I assembled the first list of books of the Bible at the Council of Rome in 382 AD. He commissioned Saint Jerome to produce a reliable and consistent text by translating the original Greek and Hebrew texts into Latin. This translation became known as the Latin Vulgate Bible and in 1546 at the Council of Trent was declared by the Church to be the only authentic and official Bible in the Latin rite.

Bible translations for many languages have been made through the various influences of Catholicism, Orthodox, Protestant, etc especially since the Protestant Reformation. The Bible has seen a notably large number of English language translations.

The work of Bible translation continues, including by Christian organisations such as Wycliffe Bible Translators (wycliffe.net), New Tribes Missions (ntm.org) and the Bible Societies (biblesociety.org). Of the world's 6,900 languages, 2,400 have some or all of the Bible, 1,600 (spoken by more than a billion people) have translation underway, and some 2,500 (spoken by 270 million people) are judged as needing translation to begin.[30]


Characteristics of early Bible texts
See also: Chapters and verses of the Bible
The use of numbered chapters and verses was not introduced until the Middle Ages and later. The system used in English was developed by Stephanus (Robert Estienne of Paris) (as noted below)
Early manuscripts of the letters of Paul and other New Testament writings show no punctuation whatsoever. [1] The punctuation was added later by other editors, according to their own understanding of the text.

Differences in Bible translations

This Gutenberg Bible is displayed by the United States Library of Congress.See also: Bible translations: Approaches.
As Hebrew and Greek, the original languages of the Bible, have idioms and concepts not easily translated, there is an on going critical tension about whether it is better to give a word for word translation or to give a translation that gives a parallel idiom in the target language. For instance, in the English language Catholic translation, the New American Bible, as well as the Protestant translations of the Christian Bible, translations like the King James Version, the New Revised Standard Version, and the New American Standard Bible are seen as fairly literal translations (or "word for word"), whereas translations like the New International Version and New Living Translation attempt to give relevant parallel idioms. The Living Bible and The Message are two paraphrases of the Bible that try to convey the original meaning in contemporary language. The further away one gets from word to word translation, the text becomes easier to read while relying more on the theological, linguistic or cultural understanding of the translator, which one would not normally expect a lay reader to require.

One translation of the Bible, the New World Translation, used mainly by Jehovah's Witnesses, is seen as controversial by some because of the renderings of key verses. However, this Bible also takes a "word for word" translation stance.


Inclusive language
Traditionally, English masculine pronouns have been used interchangeably to refer to the male gender and to all people. For instance, "All men are mortal" is not intended to imply that males are mortal but females are immortal. English language readers and hearers have had to interpret masculine pronouns (and such words as "man" and "mankind") based on context. Further, both Hebrew and Greek, like some of the Latin-origin languages, use the male gender of nouns and pronouns to refer to groups that contain both sexes. This creates some difficulty in determining whether a noun or pronoun should be translated using terms that refer to men only, or generically to men and women inclusively. Context sometimes, but not always, helps determine whether to decode them in a gender-insensitive or gender-specific way.

Contemporary language has changed in many cases to reflect criticism of the use of the masculine gender, which has been characterized as discriminatory. Current style guides, such as APA, MLA, NCTE, and others, have published statements encouraging, and in some cases requiring, the use of inclusive language, which avoids language this approach regards as sexist or class-distinctive.

Until recently, virtually all English translations of the Bible have used masculine nouns and pronouns both specifically (to refer to males) and generically (when the reference is not necessarily gender-specific). Recent examples of translations which incorporate gender-inclusive language include the New Revised Standard Version, the Revised English Bible, and Today's New International Version.

Comparison of Traditional vs Gender-Inclusive Translations of Rom. 12:6-8 Original New International Version Today's New International Version
We have different gifts, according to the grace given us. If a man's gift is prophesying, let him use it in proportion to his faith. If it is serving, let him serve; if it is teaching, let him teach; if it is encouraging, let him encourage; if it is contributing to the needs of others, let him give generously; if it is leadership, let him govern diligently; if it is showing mercy, let him do it cheerfully. We have different gifts, according to the grace given to each of us. If your gift is prophesying, then prophesy in accordance with your faith; if it is serving, then serve; if it is teaching, then teach; if it is to encourage, then give encouragement; if it is giving, then give generously; if it is to lead, do it diligently; if it is to show mercy, do it cheerfully.


Chapters and verses
Main article: Chapters and verses of the Bible
See Tanakh for the Jewish textual tradition.
The Hebrew Masoretic text contains verse endings as an important feature. According to the Talmudic tradition, the verse endings are of ancient origin. The Masoretic textual tradition also contains section endings called parashiyot, which are indicated by a space within a line (a "closed" section") or a new line beginning (an "open" section). The division of the text reflected in the parashiyot is usually thematic. The parashiyot are not numbered.

In early manuscripts (most importantly in Tiberian Masoretic manuscripts, such as the Aleppo codex) an "open" section may also be represented by a blank line, and a "closed" section by a new line that is slightly indented (the preceding line may also not be full). These latter conventions are no longer used in Torah scrolls and printed Hebrew Bibles. In this system the one rule differentiating "open" and "closed" sections is that "open" sections must always begin at the beginning of a new line, while "closed" sections never start at the beginning of a new line.

Another related feature of the Masoretic text is the division of the sedarim. This division is not thematic, but is almost entirely based upon the quantity of text.

The Byzantines also introduced a chapter division of sorts, called Kephalaia. It is not identical to the present chapters.

The current division of the Bible into chapters and the verse numbers within the chapters has no basis in any ancient textual tradition. Rather, they are medieval Christian inventions. They were later adopted by many Jews as well, as technical references within the Hebrew text. Such technical references became crucial to medieval rabbis in the historical context of forced debates with Christian clergy (who used the chapter and verse numbers), especially in late medieval Spain.[31] Chapter divisions were first used by Jews in a 1330 manuscript and for a printed edition in 1516. However, for the past generation, most Jewish editions of the complete Hebrew Bible have made a systematic effort to relegate chapter and verse numbers to the margins of the text.

The division of the Bible into chapters and verses has often elicited severe criticism from traditionalists and modern scholars alike. Critics charge that the text is often divided into chapters in an incoherent way, or at inappropriate rhetorical points, and that it encourages citing passages out of context, in effect turning the Bible into a kind of textual quarry for clerical citations. Nevertheless, the chapter divisions and verse numbers have become indispensable as technical references for Bible study.

Stephen Langton is reputed to have been the first to put the chapter divisions into a Vulgate edition of the Bible, in 1205. They were then inserted into Greek manuscripts of the New Testament in the 1400s. Robert Estienne (Robert Stephanus) was the first to number the verses within each chapter, his verse numbers entering printed editions in 1551 (New Testament) and 1571 (Hebrew Bible).[32][33]


Biblical criticism
Main articles: Biblical criticism and Criticism of the Bible
Biblical criticism refers to the investigation of the Bible as a text, and addresses questions such as authorship, dates of composition, and authorial intention. It is not the same as Criticism of the Bible, which is an assertion against the Bible being a source of information or ethical guidance.


Higher criticism
Main articles: Higher criticism and Lower criticism
The traditional view of the Mosaic authorship of the Torah came under sporadic criticism from medieval scholars including Isaac ibn Yashush, Abraham ibn Ezra, Bonfils of Damascus and bishop Tostatus of Avila, who pointed to passages such as the description of the death of Moses in Deuteronomy as evidence that some portions, at least, could not have been written by Moses. In the 17th century Thomas Hobbes collected the current evidence and became the first scholar to conclude outright that Moses could not have written the bulk of the Torah. Shortly afterwards the philosopher Baruch Spinoza published a unified critical analysis, demonstrating that the problematic passages were not isolated cases that could be explained away one by one, but pervasive throughout the five books, concluding that it was "clearer than the sun at noon that the Pentateuch was not written by Moses…." Despite determined opposition from the Church, both Catholic and Protestant, the views of Hobbes and Spinoza gained increasing acceptance amongst scholars.


Documentary hypothesis
Main article: Documentary hypothesis
Scholars intrigued by the hypothesis that Moses had not written the Pentateuch considered other authors. Independent but nearly simultaneous proposals by H. B. Witter, Jean Astruc, and Johann Gottfried Eichhorn separated the Pentateuch into two original documentary components, both dating from after the time of Moses. Others hypothesized the presence of two additional sources. The four documents were given working titles: J (or Yahwist), E (Elohist), P (Priestly), and D (Deuteronomist), each was discernible by its own characteristic language, and each, when read in isolation, presented a unified, coherent narrative.

Subsequent scholars, notably Eduard Reuss, Karl Heinrich Graf and Wilhelm Vatke, turned their attention to the order in which the documents had been composed (which they deduced from internal clues) and placed them in the context of a theory of the development of ancient Israelite religion, suggesting that much of the Laws and the narrative of the Pentateuch were unknown to the Israelites in the time of Moses. These were synthesized by Julius Wellhausen (1844-1918), who suggested a historical framework for the composition of the documents and their redaction (combination) into the final document known as the Pentateuch. This hypothesis was challenged by William Henry Green in his The Mosaic Origins of the Pentateuchal Codes (available online). Nonetheless, according to contemporary Torah scholar Richard Elliott Friedman, Wellhausen's model of the documentary hypothesis continues to dominate the field of biblical scholarship: "To this day, if you want to disagree, you disagree with Wellhausen. If you want to pose a new model, you compare its merits with those of Wellhausen's model."[34]

The documentary hypothesis is important in the field of biblical studies not only because it claims that the Torah was written by different people at different times—generally long after the events it describes—[35] but it also proposed what was at the time a radically new way of reading the Bible. Many proponents of the documentary hypothesis view the Bible more as a body of literature than a work of history, believing that the historical value of the text lies not in its account of the events that it describes, but in what critics can infer about the times in which the authors lived (as critics may read Hamlet to learn about seventeenth-century England, but will not read it to learn about seventh-century Denmark).


Modern developments
The critical analysis of authorship now encompasses every book of the Bible. Every book in turn has been hypothesized to bear traces of multiple authorship[citation needed], even the book of Obadiah[citation needed], which is only a single page. In some cases the traditional view on authorship has been overturned; in others, additional support, at least in part has been found.

The development of the hypothesis has not stopped with Wellhausen. Wellhausen's hypothesis, for example, proposed that the four documents were composed in the order J-E-D-P, with P, containing the bulk of the Jewish law, dating from the post-Exilic Second Temple period (i.e., after 515 BC);[36] but the contemporary view is that P is earlier than D, and that all four books date from the First Temple period (i.e., prior to 587 BC).[37] The documentary hypothesis has more recently been refined by later scholars such as Martin Noth (who in 1943 provided evidence that Deuteronomy plus the following six books make a unified history from the hand of a single editor), Harold Bloom, Frank Moore Cross and Richard Elliot Friedman.

The documentary hypothesis, at least in the four-document version advanced by Wellhausen, has been controversial since its formulation. The direction of this criticism is to question the existence of separate, identifiable documents, positing instead that the biblical text is made up of almost innumerable strands so interwoven as to be hardly untangleable—the J document, in particular, has been subjected to such intense dissection that it seems in danger of disappearing.

Although biblical archaeology has confirmed the existence of many people, places, and events mentioned in the Bible, many critical scholars have argued that the Bible be read not as an accurate historical document, but rather as a work of literature and theology that often draws on historical events—as well as upon non-Hebrew mythology—as primary source material(see The Bible and history). For these scholars, the Bible reveals much about the lives and times of its authors and compilers. The relevance of these ideas to contemporary religious life is left to clerics and adherents of contemporary religions to decide.


Theological responses

Judaism
The claim that the Torah—"the Five Books of Moses"—were not written by Moses, but by many authors long after Moses was said to have lived, directly challenged Jewish orthodoxy. For most, this claim implies that the Torah itself—especially its account of God's revelation at Mt. Sinai—is not historically reliable. Although many Orthodox scholars have rejected this "Higher Criticism", most Conservative and virtually all Reform Jewish scholars have accepted it. Consequently, there has been considerable debate among Jewish scholars as to the nature of revelation and the divine nature of the Torah. Conservative Jewish philosopher Elliot Dorff has categorized five distinct major Jewish positions in these debates within Conservative Judaism in the 20th century:[38]

Orthodox (characterized by Eliezer Berkovitz and Norman Lamm): "Verbal Revelation: The Torah, including both the Written and Oral Traditions, consists of the exact words of God. He gave it all as one piece at Sinai."*
Conservative I (characterized by Isaac Lesser, Alexander Kohut, Abraham Joshua Heschel, and David Novak): "Continuous Revelation:God dictated His will at Sinai and other times. It was written down by human beings, however, and hence the diverse traditions in the Bible."
Conservative II (characterized by Ben Zion Bokser, Robert Gordis, Max Routtenberg and Emil Fackenheim): "Continuous Revelation: Human beings wrote the Torah, but they were divinely inspired."
Conservative III (characterized by Louis Jacobs, Seymour Seigel, Jacob Agus, David Lieber and Elliot Dorff): "Continuous Revelation: The Torah is the human record of the concounter between God and the People Israel at Sinai. Since it was written by human beings, it contains some laws and ideas which we find repugnant today."
Conservative IV/Reconstructionist (characterized by Mordecai Kaplan, Ira Eisenstein and Harold Schulweis): "No Revelation: Human beings wrote the Torah. No claim for divinity of the product."
In addition to the 5 categories described by Elliott, other positions have been adopted:

Traditional Rabbi David Weiss HaLivni, the founder of the Union for Traditional Judaism, adapted a position he describes as chatu yisrael ("Israel sinned"), that God revealed the Torah to Moses on Mount Sinai but it subsequently became corrupted and lost, and Ezra restored it by redacting it from multiple manuscripts reflecting disparate traditions. Under this view, the Torah is the best available record of the Divine will, has prophetic commendation, and is binding on the Jewish people, but is not necessarily entirely free of disparaties.[39]
Reform (characterized by the Movement's 1937 Guiding Principles): "Progressive revelation: The Torah is God's will written by human beings. As time goes on, we get to understand his will better and better (="progressive revelation").
Reconstructionist Reconstructionist Judaism generally adapts the textual critical approach in toto and regards the Torah as either inspired rather than revealed, or an entirely human product rather than the product of an external God.

Christianity
In 1943 Pope Pius XII's encyclical Divino Afflante Spiritu gave the Vatican's imprimatur to textual criticism.


Archaeological and historical research
Main article: Biblical Archaeology
According to recent theories, linguistic as well as archaeological, the global structure of the texts in the Hebrew Bible were compiled during the reign of King Josiah in the 7th century BC. Even though the components are derived from more ancient writings, the final form of the books is believed to have been set somewhere between the 1st century BC and the 4th century AD.

With regard to the Exodus and the 40-year sojourn in the desert, archaeological digs in possible Biblical locations have been unsuccessful so far. There is also no archaeological evidence of a conquest of the land and cities of Canaan of the kind recounted in the Book of Joshua.

However, after the split of the Kingdom of Israel in the second half of the 9th century BC, archaeological findings fit the Biblical chronology.


Nomadist theory
The ancestors of the Hebrews and the Jews are believed to be either nomads who have become sedentary, or people from the plains of Canaan, who fled to the highlands to escape the control of the cities. These positions are held by Israel Finkelstein and Neil Silberman in The Bible Unearthed, by the American archaeologist William Dever in Who Were the Early Israelites and Where Did They Come from?, and by Jean-Marie Husser, professor at Marc Bloch University in Strasbourg, France.


See also
Biblical scholarship and analysis
Dating the Bible
Textual criticism
Historical criticism
Documentary hypothesis
Synoptic problem
Biblical manuscripts
Internal consistency and the Bible
Mosaic authorship
Authorship of the Johannine works
Authorship of the Pauline epistles
Non-canonical books referenced in the Bible
Apocrypha
Dead sea scrolls
Nag hammadi library
Biblical archaeology
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New Testament view on Jesus' life
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Ritual Decalogue
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Summary of Christian eschatological differences
Bibliomancy is the use of random readings from a book for divination. When practiced in Jewish and Christian cultures, the Bible is often used.
Bible conspiracy theory
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The Skeptic's Annotated Bible

Interpretation
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Bible societies
See Bible society for a list.
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See Biblical exegesis.
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This article is about the Jewish religion. For consideration of ethnic, historic, and cultural aspects of the Jewish identity, see Jew.

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v • d • e
Judaism (from the Greek Ioudaïsmos, derived from the Hebrew יהודה, Yehudah, "Judah";[1] in Hebrew: יַהֲדוּת, Yahedut, the distinctive characteristics of the Judean eáqnov[2]) is the religion of the Jews, based on principles and ethics embodied in the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh), as further explored and explained in the Talmud. In 2007, the world Jewish population was estimated at 13.2 million people—41% of whom live in Israel and 59% in the diaspora.[3] Judaism is among the oldest religious traditions still being practiced today. Jewish history and doctrines have influenced other religions such as Christianity, Islam and the Bahá'í Faith.

In modern Judaism, central authority is not vested in any single person or body, but in sacred texts, traditions, and learned Rabbis who interpret those texts and laws. According to Jewish tradition, Judaism begins with the Covenant between God and Abraham (ca. 2000 BCE), the patriarch and progenitor of the Jewish people. Throughout the ages, Judaism has adhered to a number of religious principles, the most important of which is the belief in a single, omniscient, omnipotent, benevolent, transcendent God, who created the universe and continues to govern it. According to Jewish tradition, the God who created the world established a covenant with the Israelites, and revealed his laws and commandments to Moses on Mount Sinai in the form of both the Written and Oral Torah, and the Jewish people are the descendants of the Israelites. The traditional practice of Judaism revolves around study and the observance of God's laws and commandments as written in the Torah and expounded in the Talmud.

Contents [hide]
1 Religious doctrine and principles of faith
2 Jewish religious texts
2.1 Rabbinic literature
2.2 Jewish legal literature
2.3 Jewish philosophy
3 Jewish identity
3.1 Distinction between Jews and Judaism
3.2 What makes a person Jewish?
3.3 Jewish demographics
4 Jewish denominations
4.1 Jewish denominations in Israel
4.2 Alternative Judaism
5 Jewish observances
5.1 Religious clothing
5.2 Prayers
5.3 Jewish holidays
5.3.1 Shabbat
5.3.2 Three pilgrimage festivals
5.3.3 High Holy Days
5.3.4 Other holidays
5.4 Torah readings
5.5 Synagogues and Religious Buildings
5.6 Dietary laws: Kashrut
5.7 Family purity
5.8 Life-cycle events
6 Community leadership
6.1 Classical priesthood
6.2 Prayer leaders
6.3 Specialized religious roles
7 History
7.1 Origins
7.1.1 Traditional view
7.1.2 Critical historical view
7.2 Canaanite Religious Heritage
7.3 Antiquity
7.4 Historical Jewish groupings (to 1700)
7.5 Persecutions
7.6 Hasidism
7.7 The Enlightenment and Reform Judaism
7.8 The Holocaust
7.9 Judaism today
8 Judaism and other religions
8.1 Christianity and Judaism
8.2 Islam and Judaism
8.3 Judaism and Zoroastrianism
8.4 Syncretic movements incorporating Judaism
9 See also
9.1 Jews and Judaism
9.2 Jewish law and religion
9.3 Comparative
10 References
11 Bibliography
12 External links
12.1 General
12.2 Orthodox/Haredi
12.3 Traditional/Conservadox
12.4 Conservative
12.5 Reform/Progressive
12.6 Reconstructionist
12.7 Humanistic
12.8 Karaite
12.9 Jewish religious literature and texts
12.10 Wikimedia Torah study projects



Religious doctrine and principles of faith
Main article: Jewish principles of faith
The Hebrew Bible or Tanakh records that Judaism's Patriarch Abraham was called out by God from among the Chaldeans, and God then established His special covenant with Abraham. Yet the Hebrew Bible dates the belief in a single God to the very beginning, as reported in Genesis Chapter 1, and portrays near-universal awareness of Abraham's God among older societies, and worship of that same God by others.

While Judaism has seldom, if ever, been monolithic in practice, it has always been fiercely monotheistic in theology -- although the Bible or Tanakh records significant periods of apostasy among many Israelites from Judaism's beliefs.

Some note that similar beliefs including good and evil were prevalent among the followers of the ancient religion of Zoroaster, to which the Israelites may have been exposed during their slavery under the Medes. Judaism and Zoroaster may have derived their views of God from a still-earlier, common source. That is how the Jewish and Christian Bibles report the creation of humans much earlier in history, who all had full knowledge of God from their beginning in the Garden of Eden. Yet some scholars advocating for Zoroaster's influence claim credit for that religion having influenced Judaism. Judaism, however, asserts that there are no other religions -- there are only Jews and non-Jewish gentiles.[4]

Historically, Judaism has considered belief in the divine revelation and acceptance of the Written and Oral Torah as its fundamental core belief, but Judaism does not have a centralized authority dictating religious dogma. This gave rise to many different formulations as to the specific theological beliefs inherent in the Torah and Talmud. While some rabbis have at times agreed upon a firm formulation, others have disagreed, many criticizing any such attempt as minimizing acceptance of the entire Torah.[5] Notably, in the Talmud some principles of faith (e.g., the Divine origin of the Torah) are considered important enough that rejection of them can put one in the category of "apikoros" (heretic).[6]

Over the centuries, a number of clear formulations of Jewish principles of faith have appeared, and though they differ with respect to certain details, they demonstrate a commonality of core ideology. Of these, the one most widely considered authoritative is Maimonides' thirteen principles of faith. These principles were controversial when first proposed, evoking criticism by Hasdai Crescas and Joseph Albo. The thirteen principles were ignored by much of the Jewish community for the next few centuries. (Dogma in Medieval Jewish Thought, Menachem Kellner). Over time two poetic restatements of these principles ("Ani Ma'amin" and "Yigdal") became canonized in the Jewish prayer book, and eventually became widely held. Today most Orthodox authorities hold that these beliefs are obligatory, and that Jews who do not fully accept each one of them are potentially heretical:

I know with complete conviction[7] that the Creator, blessed be His Name, is the Creator and Guide of everything that has been created; He alone has made, does make, and will make all things.
I know with complete conviction that the Creator, blessed be His Name, is One, and that there is no unity in any manner like His, and that He alone is our God, who was, and is, and will be.
I know with complete conviction that the Creator, blessed be His Name, is not a body, and that He is free from all the properties of matter, and that there can be no (physical) comparison to Him whatsoever.
I know with complete conviction that the Creator, blessed be His Name, is the first and the last.
I know with complete conviction that to the Creator, blessed be His Name, and to Him alone, it is right to pray, and that it is not right to pray to any being besides Him.
I know with complete conviction that all the works of the prophets are true.
I know with complete conviction that the prophecy of Moses, our teacher, peace be upon him, was true, and that he was the chief of the prophets, both of those who preceded him and of those who followed him.
I know with complete conviction that the entire Torah that is now in our possession is the same that was given to Moses, our teacher, peace be upon him.
I know with complete conviction that this Torah will not be changed, and that there will never be any other Law from the Creator, blessed be His name.
I know with complete conviction that the Creator, blessed be His name, knows all the deeds of human beings, and all their thoughts, as it is said: “[He] that fashioned the hearts of them all, [He] that comprehends all their actions.”
I know with complete conviction that the Creator, blessed be His Name, rewards those that keep His commandments and punishes those that transgress them.
I know with complete conviction in the coming of the Messiah; and even though he may tarry, with all this I wait every day for his coming.
I know with complete conviction that there will be a revival of the dead at the time when it shall please the Creator, blessed be His name, and exalted be His Name forever and ever.
Some, such as Rabbi Joseph Albo and the Raavad, criticized Maimonides' list as containing too many items that, while true, were not fundamentals of the faith, and thus placed too many Jews in the category of "heretic", rather than those who were simply in error. Many others criticized any such formulation as minimizing acceptance of the entire Torah (see above). As noted however, neither Maimonides nor his contemporaries viewed these principles as encompassing all of Jewish belief, but rather as the core theological underpinnings of the acceptance of Judaism. Along these lines, the ancient historian Josephus emphasized practices and observances rather than religious beliefs, associating apostasy with a failure to observe Jewish law and maintaining that the requirements for conversion to Judaism included circumcision and adherence to traditional customs.


Jewish religious texts

Rabbinic literature
Jews are often called the "People of the Book," and with good reason: Judaism has an age-old intellectual tradition of text-based Torah study. The following is a basic, structured list of the central works of Jewish practice and thought. For more detail, see Rabbinic literature.

Tanakh[8] (Hebrew Bible) and commentaries
Mesorah
Targum
Jewish Biblical exegesis (also see Midrash below)
Works of the Talmudic Era (classic rabbinic literature)
Mishnah and commentaries
Tosefta and the minor tractates
Talmud:
The Babylonian Talmud and commentaries
Jerusalem Talmud and commentaries
Midrashic literature:
Halakhic Midrash
Aggadic Midrash
Halakhic literature
Major Codes of Jewish Law and Custom
Mishneh Torah and commentaries
Tur and commentaries
Shulchan Aruch and commentaries
Responsa literature
Jewish Thought and Ethics
Jewish philosophy
Kabbalah
Hasidic works
Jewish ethics and the Mussar Movement
Siddur and Jewish liturgy
Piyyut (Classical Jewish poetry)

Jewish legal literature
Main article: Halakha
The basis of Jewish law and tradition ("halakha") is the Torah (also known as the Pentateuch or the Five Books of Moses). According to rabbinic tradition there are 613 commandments in the Torah. Some of these laws are directed only to men or to women, some only to the ancient priestly groups, the Kohanim and Leviyim (members of the tribe of Levi), some only to farmers within the land of Israel. Many laws were only applicable when the Temple in Jerusalem existed, and fewer than 300 of these commandments are still applicable today.

While there have been Jewish groups whose beliefs were claimed to be based on the written text of the Torah alone (e.g., the Sadducees, and the Karaites), most Jews believed in what they call the oral law. These oral traditions were transmitted by the Pharisee sect of ancient Judaism, and were later recorded in written form and expanded upon by the rabbis.

Rabbinic Judaism has always held that the books of the Torah (called the written law) have always been transmitted in parallel with an oral tradition. To justify this viewpoint, Jews point to the text of the Torah, where many words are left undefined, and many procedures mentioned without explanation or instructions; this, they argue, means that the reader is assumed to be familiar with the details from other, i.e., oral, sources. This parallel set of material was originally transmitted orally, and came to be known as "the oral law".

By the time of Rabbi Judah haNasi (200 CE), after the destruction of Jerusalem, much of this material was edited together into the Mishnah. Over the next four centuries this law underwent discussion and debate in both of the world's major Jewish communities (in Israel and Babylonia), and the commentaries on the Mishnah from each of these communities eventually came to be edited together into compilations known as the two Talmuds. These have been expounded by commentaries of various Torah scholars during the ages.

Halakha, the rabbinic Jewish way of life, then, is based on a combined reading of the Torah, and the oral tradition - the Mishnah, the halakhic Midrash, the Talmud and its commentaries. The Halakha has developed slowly, through a precedent-based system. The literature of questions to rabbis, and their considered answers, is referred to as responsa (in Hebrew, Sheelot U-Teshuvot.) Over time, as practices develop, codes of Jewish law are written that are based on the responsa; the most important code, the Shulchan Aruch, largely determines Orthodox religious practice today.


Jewish philosophy
Main article: Jewish philosophy
Jewish philosophy refers to the conjunction between serious study of philosophy and Jewish theology. Major Jewish philosophers include Solomon ibn Gabirol, Saadia Gaon, Maimonides, and Gersonides. Major changes occurred in response to the Enlightenment (late 1700s to early 1800s) leading to the post-Enlightenment Jewish philosophers. Modern Jewish philosophy consists of both Orthodox and non-Orthodox oriented philosophy. Notable among Orthodox Jewish philosophers are Eliyahu Eliezer Dessler, Joseph B. Soloveitchik, and Yitzchok Hutner. Well-known non-Orthodox Jewish philosophers include Martin Buber, Franz Rosenzweig, Mordecai Kaplan, Abraham Joshua Heschel, and Emmanuel Lévinas.

Related Topics

Torah databases (electronic versions of the Traditional Jewish Bookshelf)
List of Jewish prayers and blessings

Jewish identity

Distinction between Jews and Judaism
According to Daniel Boyarin, the underlying distinction between religion and ethnicity is foreign to Judaism itself, and is one form of the dualism between spirit and flesh that has its origin in Platonic philosophy and that permeated Hellenistic Judaism.[9] Consequently, in his view, Judaism does not fit easily into conventional Western categories, such as religion, ethnicity, or culture. Boyarin suggests that this in part reflects the fact that most of Judaism's 4,000-year history predates the rise of Western culture and occurred outside the West. During this time, Jews have experienced slavery, anarchic and theocratic self-government, conquest, occupation, and exile; in the Diasporas, they have been in contact with and have been influenced by ancient Egyptian, Babylonian, Persian, and Hellenic cultures, as well as modern movements such as the Enlightenment (see Haskalah) and the rise of nationalism, which would bear fruit in the form of a Jewish state in the Levant. They also saw an elite convert to Judaism (the Khazars), only to disappear as the centers of power in the lands once occupied by that elite fell to the people of Rus and then the Mongols. Thus, Boyarin has argued that "Jewishness disrupts the very categories of identity, because it is not national, not genealogical, not religious, but all of these, in dialectical tension."[10]

In contrast to this point of view, practices such as Humanistic Judaism reject the religious aspects of Judaism, while retaining certain cultural traditions. Jewish law also recognizes converts who are not ethnically Jewish.


What makes a person Jewish?
Main article: Who is a Jew?
According to traditional Jewish Law, a Jew is anyone born of a Jewish mother or converted to Judaism in accord with Jewish Law. American Reform Judaism and British Liberal Judaism accept the child of one Jewish parent (father or mother) as Jewish if the parents raise the child with a Jewish identity. All mainstream forms of Judaism today are open to sincere converts. The conversion process is evaluated by an authority, and the convert is examined on his sincerity and knowledge.[11]

Traditional Judaism maintains that a Jew, whether by birth or conversion, is a Jew forever. Thus a Jew who claims to be an atheist or converts to another religion is still considered by traditional Judaism to be Jewish. However, the Reform movement maintains that a Jew who has converted to another religion is no longer a Jew,[12][13] and the Israeli Government has also taken that stance after Supreme Court cases and statutes.[14]

The question of what determines Jewish identity in the State of Israel was given new impetus when, in the 1950s, David Ben-Gurion requested opinions on mihu Yehudi ("who is a Jew") from Jewish religious authorities and intellectuals worldwide in order to settle citizenship questions. This is far from settled, and occasionally resurfaces in Israeli politics.


Jewish demographics
Main article: Jewish population
The total number of Jews worldwide is difficult to assess because the definition of "who is a Jew" is problematic as not all Jews identify themselves as Jewish, and some who identify as Jewish are not considered so by other Jews. According to the Jewish Year Book (1901), the global Jewish population in 1900 was around 11 million. The latest available data is from the World Jewish Population Survey of 2002 and the Jewish Year Calendar (2005). In 2002, according to the Jewish Population Survey, there were 13.3 million Jews around the world. The Jewish Year Calendar cites 14.6 million. Jewish population growth is currently near zero percent, with 0.3% growth from 2000 to 2001. Intermarriage and the declining birthrate have influenced Jewish population figures, although conversion to Judaism may help to offset this slightly.

It has been noted by some writers that the apparent prominence of Jews is disproportionate to the size of their population. One example, Mark Twain comments:

If statistics are right, the Jews constitute but one percent of the human race. It suggests a nebulous dim puff of stardust lost in the blaze of the Milky Way. Properly, the Jew ought hardly to be heard of, but he is heard of, has always been heard of. He is as prominent on the planet as any other people, and his commercial importance is extravagantly out of proportion to the smallness of his bulk. His contributions to the world's list of great names in literature, science, art, music, finance, medicine, and abstruse learning are also away out of proportion to the weakness of his numbers. He has made a marvelous fight in this world, in all the ages; and had done it with his hands tied behind him. He could be vain of himself, and be excused for it. The Egyptian, the Babylonian, and the Persian rose, filled the planet with sound and splendor, then faded to dream-stuff and passed away; the Greek and the Roman followed; and made a vast noise, and they are gone; other people have sprung up and held their torch high for a time, but it burned out, and they sit in twilight now, or have vanished. The Jew saw them all, beat them all, and is now what he always was, exhibiting no decadence, no infirmities of age, no weakening of his parts, no slowing of his energies, no dulling of his alert and aggressive mind. All things are mortal but the Jew; all other forces pass, but he remains. What is the secret of his immortality?[15]


Jewish denominations
Main article: Jewish denominations
In the late Middle Ages, when Europe and western Asia were divided into Christian and Islamic countries, the Jewish people also found themselves divided into two main groups. Jews in Central and Eastern Europe, namely in Germany and Poland, were called Ashkenazi. Sephardic Jews can trace their tradition back to the Mediterranean countries, particularly Spain and Portugal under Muslim rule. When they were expelled in 1492, they settled in North Africa, the eastern Mediterranean, the Far East, and northern Europe. The two traditions differ in a number of ritual and cultural details, but their theology and basic Jewish practice are the same.

Over the past two centuries the Ashkenazi Jewish community has divided into a number of Jewish denominations; each has a different understanding of what principles of belief a Jew should hold, (although belief plays a lesser role than practice and observance in Judaism) and how one should live as a Jew. To some degree, these doctrinal differences have created schisms between the Jewish denominations. Nonetheless, there is some level of Jewish unity. For example, it would not be unusual for a Conservative Jew to attend either an Orthodox or Reform synagogue. The article on Relationships between Jewish religious movements discusses how different Jewish denominations view each other. Many non-Ashkenazi Jews, especially in the United States, are members of congregations affiliated with the various movements, although they may not specifically identify themselves as members of that denomination. They frequently do so out of convenience, and are likely to describe their religious practice as "traditional" or "observant", as opposed to "Orthodox" or "Conservative".

Orthodox Judaism holds that both the Written and Oral Torah were divinely revealed to Moses, and that the laws within it are binding and unchanging. Orthodox Jews generally consider commentaries on the Shulchan Aruch (a condensed codification of halakha that largely favored Sephardic traditions) such as the Moses Isserlis's HaMappah and the Mishnah Berurah, to be the definitive codification of Jewish law, and assert a continuity between the Judaism of the Temple in Jerusalem, pre-Enlightenment Rabbinic Judaism, and modern-day Orthodox Judaism. Most of Orthodox Judaism holds to one particular form of Jewish theology, based on Maimonides' 13 principles of Jewish faith. Orthodox Judaism broadly (and informally) shades into two main styles, Modern Orthodox Judaism and Haredi Judaism. The philosophical distinction is generally around accommodation to modernity and weight placed on non-Jewish disciplines, though in practical terms the differences are often reflected in styles of dress and rigor in practice. According to most Orthodox Jews, Jewish people who do not keep the laws of Shabbat and Yom Tov (the holidays), kashrut, and family purity are considered non-religious. Any Jew who keeps at least those laws would be considered observant and religious. 
Hasidic Jews wearing black frock coats and fur shtreimelsModern Orthodox Judaism emphasizes strict observance of religious laws and commandments but with a broad, liberal approach to modernity and living in a non-Jewish or secular environment. Modern Orthodox women are gradually assuming a greater role in Jewish ritual practice, which is not acceptable in the Haredi community.
Haredi Judaism (also known as "ultra-Orthodox Judaism," although some find this term offensive) is a very conservative form of Judaism. The Haredi world revolves around study, prayer and meticulous religious observance. Some Haredi Jews are more open to the modern world, perhaps most notably the Lubavitch Hasidim, but their acceptance of modernity is more a tool for enhancing Jewish faith than an end in itself.
Hasidic Judaism is a stream of Haredi Judaism based on the teachings of Rabbi Yisroel ben Eliezer (The Ba'al Shem Tov). Hasidic philosophy is rooted in the Kabbalah, and Hasidic Jews accept the Kabbalah as sacred scripture. They are distinguished both by a variety of special customs and practices including reliance on a Rebbe or supreme religious leader, and a special dress code particular to each Hasidic group.
Conservative Judaism, known as Masorti Judaism outside of the United States and Canada, developed in Europe and the United States in the 1800s as Jews reacted to the changes brought about by the Enlightenment and Jewish emancipation. It is characterized by a comittment to following traditional Jewish laws and customs, including observance of Shabbat and kashrut, a deliberately non-fundamentalist teaching of Jewish principles of faith, a positive attitude toward modern culture, and an acceptance of both traditional rabbinic modes of study along with modern scholarship and critical text study when considering Jewish religious texts. Conservative Judaism teaches that Jewish law is not static, but has always developed in response to changing conditions. It holds that the Torah is a divine document written by prophets inspired by God, but rejects the Orthodox position that it was dictated by God to Moses.[citation needed] Similarly, Conservative Judaism holds that Judaism's Oral Law is divine and normative, but rejects some Orthodox interpretations of the Oral Law. Accordingly, Conservative Judaism holds that both the Written and Oral Law may be interpreted by the rabbis to reflect modern sensibilities and suit modern conditions, although great caution should be exercised in doing so. There is no absolute uniformity within Conservative Judaism and the communities that retain more traditional practices are sometimes called Conservadox.
Reform Judaism, called Liberal or Progressive in many countries, originally formed in Germany in response to the Enlightenment. (Note that in the United Kingdom, there are two distinct congregational unions, Reform and Liberal. The former is significantly more traditional than the latter, but both hold to similar theoretical positions.) Its defining characteristic with respect to the other movements is its rejection of the binding nature of Jewish ceremonial law as such and belief instead that individual Jews should exercise an informed autonomy about what to observe. Reform Judaism initially defined Judaism as a religion, rather than as a race or culture, rejected most of the ritual ceremonial laws of the Torah while observing moral laws, and emphasized the ethical call of the Prophets. Reform Judaism developed an egalitarian prayer service in the vernacular (along with Hebrew in many cases) and emphasized personal connection to Jewish tradition over specific forms of observance. Today, many Reform congregations encourage the study of Hebrew and traditional observances, while a smaller number continue to espouse the liberal ethos of the classical reformers of the nineteenth century.

A Reform synagogue with mixed seating and equal participation of men and womenReconstructionist Judaism started as a stream of philosophy by Mordechai Kaplan, a Conservative rabbi, and later became an independent movement emphasizing reinterpreting Judaism for modern times. Like Reform Judaism, Reconstructionist Judaism does not hold that Jewish law, as such, requires observance, but unlike Reform, Reconstructionist thought emphasizes the role of the community in deciding what observances to follow.
Jewish Renewal, a recent North American movement, was begun by Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi, a Hassidic rabbi, in the 1960s. Jewish Renewal focuses on spirtuality and social justice, but does not address issues of Jewish law. Men and women participate equally in prayer.
Humanistic Judaism. A small nontheistic movement that emphasizes Jewish culture and history as the sources of Jewish identity. Founded by Rabbi Sherwin Wine, it is centered in North America and Israel but also has affiliated groups in Europe and Latin America.

Jewish denominations in Israel
Main article: Religion in Israel
Even though all of these denominations exist in Israel, Israelis tend to classify Jewish identity in ways that are different than diaspora Jewry. Most Jewish Israelis classify themselves as "secular" (hiloni), "traditional" (masorti), "religious" (dati) or Haredi. The term "secular" is more popular as a self-description among Israeli families of western (European) origin, whose Jewish identity may be a very powerful force in their lives, but who see it as largely independent of traditional religious belief and practice. This portion of the population largely ignores organized religious life, be it of the official Israeli rabbinate (Orthodox) or of the liberal movements common to diaspora Judaism (Reform, Conservative).

The term "traditional" (masorti) is most common as a self-description among Israeli families of "eastern" origin (i.e., the Middle East, Central Asia, and North Africa). This term, as commonly used, has nothing to do with the official Masorti (Conservative) movement.

There is a great deal of ambiguity in the ways "secular" and "traditional" are used in Israel. They often overlap, and they cover an extremely wide range in terms of ideology and religious observance.

The term "Orthodox" is not popular in Israeli discourse, although the percentage of Jews who come under that category in Israel is far greater than in the diaspora. Various methods of measuring this percentage, each with its pros and cons, are the proportion of religiously observant Knesset members, the proportion of Jewish children enrolled in religious schools, and statistical studies on "identity."

What would be called "Orthodox" in the diaspora includes what is commonly called dati (religious) or haredi (ultra-Orthodox) in Israel. The former term includes what is called "Religious Zionism" or the "National Religious" community, as well as what has become known over the past decade or so as haredi-leumi (nationalist haredi), or "Hardal," which combines a largely haredi lifestyle with nationalist ideology.

Haredi applies to a populace that can be roughly divided into three separate groups along both ethnic and ideological lines: (1) "Lithuanian" (non-hasidic) haredim of Ashkenazic origin; (2) Hasidic haredim of Ashkenazic origin; and (3) Sephardic haredim. The third group is the largest, and has been the most politically active since the early 1990s.

Alternative Judaism
Other expressions of Jewish identity fall outside of this conservative-liberal continuum.

Unlike the above denominations, which were ideological reactions that resulted from the exposure of traditional rabbinic Judaism to the radical changes of modern times, Karaite Judaism did not begin as a modern Jewish movement. The followers of Karaism believe they are the remnants of the non-Rabbinic Jewish sects of the Second Temple period, such as the Sadducees, though others contend they are a sect started in the 8th and 9th centuries. The Karaites (or "Scripturalists") accept only the Hebrew Bible and what they view as the Peshat: "Plain or Simple Meaning"; and do not accept non-biblical writings as authoritative. Some European Karaites do not see themselves as part of the Jewish community, while most do. It is interesting to note that the Nazis often did not associate Karaites with Jews, and therefore several Karaite communities were spared in WWII and exist to this day even in places such as Lithuania where Jewish communities were completely devastated. In other areas, such as Greece, the Nazis deemed Karaites as belonging to a greater Jewish tradition and abused them accordingly.

Another historical division among ethnic Jews are the Samaritans, who maintain a distinct cultural and religious identity from mainstream Judaism, and are located entirely around Mount Gerizim in the Nablus/Shechem region of the West Bank and in Holon, near Tel Aviv in Israel.


Jewish observances

Religious clothing
A kippah (Hebrew: כִּפָּה, plural kippot; Yiddish: יאַרמלקע, yarmulke) is a slightly-rounded brimless skullcap worn by many Jewish men while praying, eating, reciting blessings, or studying Jewish religious texts, and at all times by some Jewish men. In non-Orthodox communities, some women have also begun to wear kippot. Kippot range in size from a small round beanie that covers only the back of the head, to a large, snug cap that covers the whole crown.

Tzitzit (Hebrew: צִיציִת) (Ashkenazi pronunciation: tzitzis) are special knotted "fringes" or "tassels" found on the four corners of the tallit (Hebrew: טַלִּית) (Ashkenazi pronunciation: tallis), or prayer shawl. The tallit is worn by Jewish men and some Jewish women during the prayer service. Customs vary regarding when a Jew begins wearing a tallit. In the Sephardi community, boys wear a tallit from bar mitzvah age. In some Ashkenazi communities it is customary to wear one only after marriage. A tallit katan (small tallit) is a fringed garment worn under the clothing throughout the day. In some Orthodox circles, the fringes are allowed to hang freely outside the clothing.

Tefillin (Hebrew: תְפִלִּין), known in English as phylacteries (from the Greek word φιλακτέριον, meaning fortress or protection), are two square leather boxes containing biblical verses, attached to the forehead and wound around the left arm by leather straps. They are worn during weekday morning prayer by observant Jewish men and some Jewish women.[16]

A kittel (Yiddish: קיטל), a white knee-length overgarment, is worn by prayer leaders and some observant traditional Jews on the High Holidays. It is traditional for the head of the household to wear a kittel at the Passover seder, and some grooms wear one under the wedding canopy. Jewish males are buried in a tallit and sometimes also a kittel which are part of the tachrichim (burial garments).


Prayers
Main article: Jewish services

A Yemenite Jew at morning prayers, wearing a kippah skullcap, prayer shawl and tefillin.Traditionally, Jews recite prayers three times daily, with a fourth prayer added on Shabbat and holidays. At the heart of each service is the Amidah or Shemoneh Esrei. Another key prayer in many services is the declaration of faith, the Shema Yisrael (or Shema). The Shema is the recitation of a verse from the Torah (Deuteronomy 6:4): Shema Yisrael Adonai Eloheinu Adonai Echad — "Hear, O Israel! The Lord is our God! The Lord is One!"

Most of the prayers in a traditional Jewish service can be said in solitary prayer, although communal prayer is preferred. Communal prayer requires a quorum of ten adult Jews, called a minyan. In nearly all Orthodox and a few Conservative circles, only male Jews are counted toward a minyan; most Conservative Jews and members of other Jewish denominations count female Jews as well.

In addition to prayer services, observant traditional Jews recite prayers and benedictions throughout the day when performing various acts. Prayers are recited upon waking up in the morning, before eating or drinking different foods, after eating a meal, and so on.

The approach to prayer varies among the Jewish denominations. Differences can include the texts of prayers, the frequency of prayer, the number of prayers recited at various religious events, the use of musical instruments and choral music, and whether prayers are recited in the traditional liturgical languages or the vernacular. In general, Orthodox and Conservative congregations adhere most closely to tradition, and Reform and Reconstructionist synagogues are more likely to incorporate translations and contemporary writings in their services. Also, in most Conservative synagogues, and all Reform and Reconstructionist congregations, women participate in prayer services on an equal basis with men, including roles traditionally filled only by men, such as reading from the Torah. In addition, many Reform temples use musical accompaniment such as organs and mixed choirs.


Jewish holidays
Main article: Jewish holiday

Jews praying in a synagogue on Yom Kippur, from an 1878 painting by Maurice GottliebJewish holidays celebrate central themes in the relationship between God and the world, such as creation, revelation, and redemption.


Shabbat
Main article: Shabbat
Shabbat, the weekly day of rest lasting from shortly before sundown on Friday night to shortly after sundown Saturday night, commemorates God's day of rest after six days of creation.[17] It plays a pivotal role in Jewish practice and is governed by a large corpus of religious law. At sundown on Friday, the woman of the house welcomes the Shabbat by lighting two or more candles and reciting a blessing. The evening meal begins with the Kiddush, a blessing recited aloud over a cup of wine, and the Mohtzi, a blessing recited over the bread. It is customary to have challah, two braided loaves of bread, on the table. During Shabbat Jews are forbidden to engage in any activity that falls under 39 categories of melakhah, translated literally as "work." In fact the activities banned on the Sabbath are not "work" in the usual sense: They include such actions as lighting a fire, writing, using money and carrying in the public domain. The prohibition of lighting a fire has been extended in the modern era to driving a car, which involves burning fuel, and using electricity.


Three pilgrimage festivals
Main article: Shalosh regalim
Jewish holy days (haggim), celebrate landmark events in Jewish history, such as the Exodus from Egypt and the giving of the Torah, and sometimes mark the change of seasons and transitions in the agricultural cycle. The three major festivals, Sukkot, Passover and Shavuot, are called "regalim" (derived from the Hebrew word "regel," or foot). On the three regalim, it was customary for the Israelites to make pilgrimages to Jerusalem to offer sacrifices in the Temple.

Passover (Pesach) is a week-long holiday beginning on the evening of the 14th day of Nisan (the first month in the Hebrew calendar), that commemorates the Exodus from Egypt. Outside Israel, Passover is celebrated for eight days. In ancient times, it coincided with the barley harvest. It is the only holiday that centers on home-service, the Seder. Leavened products (chametz) are removed from the house prior to the holiday, and are not consumed throughout the week. Homes are thoroughly cleaned to ensure no bread or bread by-products remain, and a symbolic burning of the last vestiges of chametz is conducted on the morning of the Seder. Matzo is eaten instead of bread.
Shavuot ("Pentecost" or "Feast of Weeks") celebrates the revelation of the Torah to the Israelites on Mount Sinai. Also known as the Festival of Bikurim, or first fruits, it coincided in biblical times with the wheat harvest. Shavuot customs include all-night study marathons known as Tikkun Leil Shavuot, eating dairy foods (cheesecake and blintzes are special favorites), reading the Book of Ruth, decorating homes and synagogues with greenery, and wearing white clothing, symbolizing purity.
Sukkot ("Tabernacles" or "The Festival of Booths") commemorates the Israelites' forty years of wandering through the desert on their way to the Promised Land. It is celebrated through the construction of temporary booths called sukkot (sing. sukkah) that represent the temporary shelters of the Israelites during their wandering. It coincides with the fruit harvest, and marks the end of the agricultural cycle. Jews around the world eat in sukkot for seven days and nights. Sukkot concludes with Shemini Atzeret, where Jews begin to pray for rain and Simchat Torah, "Rejoicing of the Torah," a holiday which marks reaching the end of the Torah reading cycle and beginning all over again. The occasion is celebrated with singing and dancing with the Torah scrolls.

High Holy Days
Main article: High Holidays
The High Holidays (Yamim Noraim or "Days of Awe") revolve around judgment and forgiveness.

Rosh Hashanah, (also Yom Ha-Zikkaron or "Day of Remembrance," and Yom Teruah, or "Day of the Sounding of the Shofar"). Rosh Hashanah is the Jewish New Year (literally, "head of the year"), although it falls on the first day of the seventh month of the Hebrew calendar, Tishri. Rosh Hashanah marks the beginning of the 10-day period of atonement leading up to Yom Kippur, during which Jews are commanded to search their souls and make amends for sins committed, intentionally or not, throughout the year. Holiday customs include blowing the shofar, or ram's horn, in the synagogue, eating apples and honey, and saying blessings over a variety of symbolic foods, such as pomegranates.
Yom Kippur, ("Day of Atonement") is the most solemn day of the Jewish year. It is a day of communal fasting and praying for forgiveness for one's sins. Observant Jews spend the entire day in the synagogue, sometimes with a short break in the afternoon, reciting prayers from a special holiday prayerbook called a "Mahzor." Many non-religious Jews make a point of attending synagogue services and fasting on Yom Kippur. On the eve of Yom Kippur, before candles are lit, a prefast meal, the "seuda mafseket," is eaten. Synagogue services on the eve of Yom Kippur begin with the Kol Nidre prayer. It is customary to wear white on Yom Kippur, especially for Kol Nidre, and leather shoes are not worn. The following day, prayers are held from morning to evening. The final prayer service, called "Ne'ilah," ends with a long blast of the shofar.

Other holidays
Hanukkah

Hanukkah, חנוכה, also known as the Festival of Lights, is an eight day Jewish holiday that starts on the 25th day of Kislev (Hebrew calendar). The festival is observed in Jewish homes by the kindling of lights on each of the festival's eight nights, one on the first night, two on the second night and so on.

The holiday was called Hanukkah meaning "dedication" because it marks the re-dedication of the Temple after its desecration by Antiochus IV Epiphanes. Spiritually, Hanukkah commemorates the "Miracle of the Oil". According to the Talmud, at the re-dedication of the Temple in Jerusalem following the victory of the Maccabees over the Seleucid Empire, there was only enough consecrated oil to fuel the eternal flame in the Temple for one day. Miraculously, the oil burned for eight days - which was the length of time it took to press, prepare and consecrate new oil.

Hanukkah is not mentioned in the Bible and was never considered a major holiday in Judaism, but it has become much more visible and widely celebrated in modern times, mainly because it falls around the same time as Christmas and has national Jewish overtones that have been emphasized since the establishment of the State of Israel.

Purim

Purim (Hebrew: פורים Pûrîm English: "Lots") is a joyous Jewish holiday that commemorates the deliverance of the Persian Jews from the plot of the evil Haman, who sought to exterminate them, as recorded in the biblical Book of Esther. It is characterized by public recitation of the Book of Esther, mutual gifts of food and drink, charity to the poor, and a celebratory meal (Esther 9:22). Other customs include drinking wine, eating special pastries called hamantashen, dressing up in masks and costumes, and organizing carnivals and parties.

Purim is celebrated annually on the 14th of the Hebrew month of Adar, which comes out in February-March.


Torah readings
Main article: Torah reading
The core of festival and Shabbat prayer services is the public reading of the Torah, along with connected readings from the other books of the Tanakh, called Haftarah. Over the course of a year, the whole Torah is read, with the cycle starting over in the autumn, on Simchat Torah.


Synagogues and Religious Buildings
Main article: Synagogue

Interior of the Esnoga synagogue in AmsterdamSynagogues are Jewish houses of prayer and study. They usually contain separate rooms for prayer (the main sanctuary), smaller rooms for study, and often an area for community or educational use. There is no set blueprint for synagogues and the architectural shapes and interior designs of synagogues vary greatly. The Reform movement mostly refer to their synagogues as temples. Some traditional features of a synagogue are:

The ark (called aron ha-kodesh by Ashkenazim and hekhal by Sephardim) where the Torah scrolls are kept (the ark is often closed with an ornate curtain (parochet) outside or inside the ark doors);
The elevated reader's platform (called bimah by Ashkenazim and tebah by Sephardim), where the Torah is read (and services are conducted in Sephardi synagogues);
The eternal light (ner tamid), a continually-lit lamp or lantern used as a reminder of the constantly lit menorah of the Temple in Jerusalem
The pulpit, or amud (Hebrew, a lecturn facing the Ark where the hazzan or prayer leader stands while praying.
In addition to synagogues, other buildings of significance in Judaism include yeshivas, or institutions of Jewish learning, and mikvahs, which are ritual baths.


Dietary laws: Kashrut
Main article: Kashrut
The laws of kashrut ("keeping kosher") are the Jewish dietary laws. Food in accord with Jewish law is termed kosher, and food not in accord with Jewish law is termed treifah or treif. The Torah cites no reason for the laws of kashrut, but the rabbis have offered various explanations, including ritual purity, teaching people to control their urges, and health benefits. Kashrut involves the abstention from consuming birds and beasts that prey on other animals, and creatures that roam the sea floor eating the excretions of other animals. Major prohibitions exist on eating pork, which is considered an unclean animal, and seafood. Meat is ritually slaughtered, and meat and milk are not eaten together, based on the biblical injunction against cooking a kid in its mother's milk.

Although hygiene may have been a factor, the deeper purpose of kashrut is to lend a spiritual dimension to the physical act of eating. The idea is that Jews should not put anything into their mouths that involves spiritual "negatives" such as pain, sickness, uncleanliness, or cruelty to animals.


Family purity
Main article: Niddah
The laws of niddah ("menstruant", often referred to euphemistically as "family purity") and various other laws regulating the interaction between men and women (e.g., tzniut, modesty in dress) are perceived, especially by Orthodox Jews, as vital factors in Jewish life, though they are rarely followed by Reform or Conservative Jews. The laws of niddah dictate that sexual intercourse cannot take place while the woman is having a menstrual flow, and she has to count seven "clean" days and immerse in a mikvah (ritual bath) following menstruation.


Life-cycle events
Life-cycle events, or rites of passage, occur throughout a Jew's life that serve to strengthen Jewish identity and bind him/her to the entire community.

Brit milah - Welcoming male babies into the covenant through the rite of circumcision on their eighth day of life. The baby boy is also given his Hebrew name in the ceremony. A naming ceremony intended as a parallel ritual for girls, named zeved habat, enjoys limited popularity.
Bar mitzvah and Bat mitzvah - This passage from childhood to adulthood takes place when a female Jew is twelve and a male Jew is thirteen years old among Orthodox and some Conservative congregations. In the Reform movement, both girls and boys have their bat/bar mitzvah at age thirteen. This is often commemorated by having the new adults, male only in the Orthodox tradition, lead the congregation in prayer and publicly read a "portion" of the Torah.
Marriage - Marriage is an extremely important lifecycle event. A wedding takes place under a chupah, or wedding canopy, which symbolizes a happy house. At the end of the ceremony, the groom breaks a glass with his foot, symbolizing the continuous mourning for the destruction of the Temple, and the scattering of the Jewish people.
Death and Mourning - Judaism has a multi-staged mourning practice. The first stage is called the shiva (literally "seven", observed for one week) during which it is traditional to sit at home and be comforted by friends and family, the second is the shloshim (observed for one month) and for those who have lost one of their parents, there is a third stage, avelut yud bet chodesh, which is observed for eleven months.
See also:-Yetzer harah


Community leadership

Classical priesthood
The role of the priesthood in Judaism has significantly diminished since the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE, when priests attended to the Temple and sacrifices. The priesthood is an inherited position, and although priests no longer have any but ceremonial duties, they are still honored in many Jewish communities. Many Orthodox Jewish communities believe that they will be needed again for a future Third Temple and need to remain in readiness for future duty.

Kohen (priest) - patrilineal descendant of Aaron, brother of Moses. In the Temple, the kohanim were charged with performing the sacrifices. Today, a Kohen is the first one called up at the reading of the Torah, performs the Priestly Blessing, as well as complying with other unique laws and ceremonies, including the ceremony of redemption of the first-born.
Levi (Levite) - Patrilineal descendant of Levi the son of Jacob. In the Temple in Jerusalem, the levites sang Psalms, performed construction, maintenance, janitorial, and guard duties, assisted the priests, and sometimes interpreted the law and Temple ritual to the public. Today, a Levite is called up second to the reading of the Torah.

Prayer leaders
From the time of the Mishnah and Talmud to the present, Judaism has required specialists or authorities for the practice of very few rituals or ceremonies. A Jew can fulfill most requirements for prayer by himself. Some activities — reading the Torah and haftarah (a supplementary portion from the Prophets or Writings), the prayer for mourners, the blessings for bridegroom and bride, the complete grace after meals — require a minyan, the presence of ten adults (Orthodox Jews and some Conservative Jews require ten adult men; some Conservative Jews and Reform Jews include women in the minyan).

The most common professional clergy in a synagogue are:

Rabbi of a congregation - Jewish scholar who is charged with answering the legal questions of a congregation. This role requires ordination by the congregation's preferred authority (i.e. from a respected Orthodox rabbi or, if the congregation is Conservative or Reform, from academic seminaries). A congregation does not necessarily require a rabbi. Some congregations have a rabbi but also allow members of the congregation to act as shatz or baal kriyah (see below).
Hassidic Rebbe - rabbi who is the head of a Hasidic dynasty.
Hazzan (note: the "h" denotes voiceless pharyngeal fricative) (cantor) - a trained vocalist who acts as shatz. Chosen for a good voice, knowledge of traditional tunes, understanding of the meaning of the prayers and sincerity in reciting them. A congregation does not need to have a dedicated hazzan.
Jewish prayer services do involve two specified roles, which are sometimes, but not always, filled by a rabbi and/or hazzan in many congregations. In other congregations these roles are filled on an ad-hoc basis by members of the congregation who lead portions of services on a rotating basis:

Shaliach tzibur or Shatz (leader — literally "agent" or "representative" — of the congregation) leads those assembled in prayer, and sometimes prays on behalf of the community. When a shatz recites a prayer on behalf of the congregation, he is not acting as an intermediary but rather as a facilitator. The entire congregation participates in the recital of such prayers by saying amen at their conclusion; it is with this act that the shatz's prayer becomes the prayer of the congregation. Any adult capable of reciting the prayers clearly may act as shatz. In Orthodox congregations and some Conservative congregations, only men can be prayer leaders, but the Conservative and Reform movements now allow women to serve in this function.
The Baal kriyah or baal koreh (master of the reading) reads the weekly Torah portion. The requirements for being the baal kriyah are the same as those for the shatz. These roles are not mutually exclusive. The same person is often qualified to fill more than one role, and often does. Often there are several people capable of filling these roles and different services (or parts of services) will be led by each.
Many congregations, especially larger ones, also rely on a:

Gabbai (sexton) - Calls people up to the Torah, appoints the shatz for each prayer session if there is no standard shatz, and makes certain that the synagogue is kept clean and supplied.
The three preceding positions are usually voluntary and considered an honor. Since the Enlightenment large synagogues have often adopted the practice of hiring rabbis and hazzans to act as shatz and baal kriyah, and this is still typically the case in many Conservative and Reform congregations. However, in most Orthodox synagogues these positions are filled by laypeople on a rotating or ad-hoc basis. Although most congregations hire one or more Rabbis, the use of a professional hazzan is generally declining in American congregations, and the use of professionals for other offices is rarer still.


Specialized religious roles
Dayan (judge) - An ordained rabbi with special legal training who belongs to a beth din (rabbinical court). In Israel, religious courts handle marriage and divorce cases, conversion and financial disputes in the Jewish community.
Mohel - Ritual circumciser who performs the brit milah (circumcision). An expert in the laws of circumcision who has received training from a qualified mohel.
Shochet (ritual slaughterer) - In order for meat to be kosher, it must be slaughtered by a shochet who is an expert in the laws of kashrut and has been trained by another shochet.
Sofer (scribe) - Torah scrolls, tefillin (phylacteries), mezuzot (scrolls put on doorposts), and gittin (bills of divorce) must be written by a sofer who is an expert in Hebrew calligraphy and has undergone rigorous training in the laws of writing sacred texts.
Rosh yeshiva - A Torah scholar who runs a yeshiva.
Mashgiach of a yeshiva - Supervises the emotional and spiritual welfare of students in a yeshiva, and gives lectures on mussar (Jewish ethics).
Mashgiach - Supervises manufacturers of kosher food, importers, caterers and restaurants to ensure that the food is kosher. Must be an expert in the laws of kashrut and trained by a rabbi, if not a rabbi himself.

History
Main article: Jewish history

Origins

Traditional view
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Scenes from the Book of Esther decorate the Dura-Europos synagogue dating from 244 CEAt its core, the Bible is an account of the Israelites' relationship with God from their earliest history until the building of the Second Temple (c. 350 BCE). This relationship is often a contentious one, as the Israelites struggle with their faith in God and attraction to other gods. Among the larger-than-life figures we meet in the Bible are the Patriarchs — Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, who wrestled with their beliefs —- and Moses, who led the Israelites out of Egypt.

Abraham, hailed as the first Hebrew and the father of the Jewish people, rejected the idolatry that he saw around him and embraced monotheism. As a reward for this act of faith in one God, he was promised many offspring: "Look now toward heaven and count the stars/So shall be your progeny." (Genesis 15:5) Abraham's first child was Ishmael and his second son was Isaac, whom God said would continue Abraham's work and inherit the Land of Israel (then called Canaan), after having been exiled and redeemed. God sent the patriarch Jacob and his children to Egypt, where after many generations they became enslaved. God later commanded Moses to redeem the Israelites from slavery, leading to the Exodus from Egypt. The Israelites gathered at Mount Sinai in 1313 BCE (Jewish Year 2448) and received the Torah - the five books of Moses: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. These books, together with Nevi'im and Ketuvim are known as Torah Shebikhtav: literally the "Written Torah," as opposed to the Oral Torah, which refers to the Mishna and the Talmud. Eventually, God led them to the land of Israel.

God designated the descendants of Aaron, Moses' brother, to be a priestly class within the Israelite community. They first officiated in the tabernacle (a portable house of worship), and later their descendants were in charge of worship in the Temple in Jerusalem.

Once the Israelites had settled in the land of Israel, the tabernacle was planted in the city of Shiloh for over 300 years during which time God provided great men, and occasionally women, to rally the nation against attacking enemies, some of which were sent by God as a punishment for the sins of the people. This is described in the Book of Joshua and the Book of Judges. As time went on, the spiritual level of the nation declined to the point that God allowed the Philistines to capture the tabernacle in Shiloh.

The people of Israel then told Samuel the prophet that they had reached the point where they needed to be governed by a permanent king, as were other nations, as described in the Books of Samuel. Samuel grudgingly acceded to this request and appointed Saul, a great but very humble man, to be their King. When the people pressured Saul into going against a command conveyed to him by Samuel, God told Samuel to appoint David in his stead.

Once King David was established, he told the prophet Nathan that he would like to build a permanent temple, and as a reward for his actions, God promised David that he would allow his son to build the temple and the throne would never depart from his children (David himself was not allowed to build the temple because he had been involved in many wars, making it inappropriate for him to build a temple representing peace). As a result, it was David's son Solomon who built the first permanent temple according to God's will, in Jerusalem, as described in the Books of Kings.


The Western Wall in Jerusalem is a remnant of the wall encircling the Second Temple. The Temple Mount is the holiest site in Judaism.Rabbinic tradition holds that the details and interpretation of the law, which are called the Oral Torah or oral law, were originally an unwritten tradition based upon what God told Moses on Mount Sinai. However, as the persecutions of the Jews increased and the details were in danger of being forgotten, these oral laws were recorded by Rabbi Judah haNasi (Judah the Prince) in the Mishnah, redacted circa 200 CE. The Talmud was a compilation of both the Mishnah and the Gemara, rabbinic commentaries redacted over the next three centuries. The Gemara originated in two major centers of Jewish scholarship, Palestine and Babylonia. Correspondingly, two bodies of analysis developed, and two works of Talmud were created. The older compilation is called the Jerusalem Talmud. It was compiled sometime during the fourth century in Israel. The Babylonian Talmud was compiled from discussions in the houses of study by the scholars Ravina I, Ravina II, and Rav Ashi by 500 C.E., although it continued to be edited later.


Critical historical view
Critical scholars (who may or may not be observant Jews), reject the claim that sacred texts, including the Hebrew Bible were either dictated by God or divinely inspired. Instead, they see these texts as authored by humans and meaningful in specific historical and cultural contexts. Many of these scholars accept the general principles of the documentary hypothesis and suggest that the Torah consists of a variety of inconsistent texts edited together in a way that calls attention to divergent accounts.[18][19][20]


A Torah scroll.These scholars have various theories concerning the origins of the Israelites and Israelite religion. Most agree that the people who formed the nation of Israel during the First Temple era had origins in Mesopotamia and in Egypt, although some question whether any or all of their ancestors had been slaves in Egypt. Many suggest that during the First Temple period, the people of Israel were henotheists, that is, they believed that each nation had its own god, but that their god was superior to other gods.[21][22] Some suggest that strict monotheism developed during the Babylonian Exile, perhaps in reaction to Zoroastrian dualism.[23]

In this view, it was only by the Hellenic period that most Jews came to believe that their God was the only God (and thus, the God of everyone), and that the record of His revelation (the Torah) contained within it universal truths. This attitude reflected a growing Gentile interest in Judaism (some Greeks and Romans considered the Jews a most "philosophical" people because of their belief in a God that cannot be represented visually), and growing Jewish interest in Greek philosophy, which sought to establish universal truths, thus leading - potentially - to the idea of monotheism, at least in the sense that "all gods are One." It was also at this time that the notion of a clearly bounded Jewish nation identical with the Jewish religion formed.[24] According to one scholar, the clash between the early Christians and Pharisees that ultimately led to the birth of the Christian religion and Rabbinic Judaism reflected the struggle by Jews to reconcile their claims to national particularism and theological universalism.[25]

According to Prof. Ze'ev Herzog of Tel Aviv University, monotheism, as a state religion, is likely "an innovation of the period of the Kingdom of Judea, following the destruction of the Kingdom of Israel." Herzog states that "The question about the date at which monotheism was adopted by the kingdoms of Israel and Judea arose with the discovery of inscriptions in ancient Hebrew that mention a pair of gods: Jehovah and his Asherah. At two sites, Kuntiliet Ajrud in the southwestern part of the Negev hill region, and at Khirbet el-Kom in the Judea piedmont, Hebrew inscriptions have been found that mention "Jehovah and his Asherah," "Jehovah Shomron and his Asherah, "Jehovah Teman and his Asherah." The authors were familiar with a pair of gods, Jehovah and his consort Asherah, and send blessings in the couple's name." [26]


Canaanite Religious Heritage
The origins of Yahweh himself may be rooted in earlier Canaanite religion, which was centered on a pantheon of gods much like the Greek pantheon. Ba’al is the most recognized of this pantheon, mentioned over sixty times in the Bible.[27] Ba’al was the storm-god and the god of fertility to who worship is repeatedly forbidden in the Old Testament.[28] In a society focused on survival, fertility represented the ultimate good. He was not, however, the head of the pantheon. That title belonged to El, the Compassionate. According to a theory originally posited by Mendenhall, a group of oppressed and self-marginalized people, the ‘apiru (a term for people who stood outside the established order, also possibly the origin of the word Hebrew) began to worship El as their primary deity.

The worship of the god known as Yahweh, not originally a Canaanite god, was probably developed in south of the Levantine region, in Midian[29] and brought to the region of the Levant by a group of nomads from the south (slaves from Egypt, according to biblical tradition). The foreign god Yahweh is believed to have become amalgamated with the native god El and taken on many of his characteristics: an aged god; a wise god; even the creator god.[30] As further evidence for the amalgamation, the Old Testament uses the word “El” for God. Notably, the Priestly source uses the term “El-Shaddai” for God. El-Shaddai most likely means “El, the mountain one,” in reference to El’s terrestrial dwelling.[31]

Israel as a new, established ethnic group is generally thought to have consolidated in the twelfth century B.C.,[32] although some archaeologists, notably Israel Finkelstein, refute the claim that Israel was a coalition of oppressed peoples, arguing that the emergence of the Jewish people as a distinct ethnos did not occur until the ninth or eighth century B.C..[33]

Eventually, Judaism dropped all associations with other gods and goddesses of the Canaanite pantheon and become monotheistic. When exactly this occurred, however, is also debated. Plausible cases have been made for the continued worship, or veneration, of Asherah by the Israelites, as Yahweh’s consort, well after the amalgamation of Yahweh and El and the official orthodoxy of that preached Yahweh-alone. Asherah, El’s consort in the Canaanite pantheon, is mentioned over forty times in the Old Testament,[34] usually within the context of a condemnation of the worship of her or the use of her cult symbol, believed to be that of a stylized tree.[35] Not quite a graven image, it is believed to have been generally-tolerated (amongst the people if not the official orthodoxy) as a common tool of worship among Israelite women.[36]

Inscriptions from Kuntillet‘Ajurd and Khirbet el-Qom refer to “Yahweh and his Asherah”.[37] It is debated whether the inscriptions refer to Asherah the goddess or “the Asherah,” a symbol of Asherah’s cult. In either case, Yahweh is undoubtedly associated with Asherah. Just as Yahweh took up many traits of El’s; it is perceived as likely that he also took up El’s consort.

A likely influence on the final purge of Asherah and all Canaanite gods from Israelite religion was Josiah’s reformation, believed to have taken place in 621 B.C..[38]


Antiquity
Further information: Canaanite religion
The United Monarchy was established under Saul and continued under King David and Solomon with its capital in Jerusalem. After Solomon's reign the nation split into two kingdoms, the Kingdom of Israel (in the north) and the Kingdom of Judah (in the south). The Kingdom of Israel was conquered by the Assyrian ruler Sargon II in the late 8th century BCE with many people from the capital Samaria being taken captive to Media and the Habor valley. The Kingdom of Judah continued as an independent state until it was conquered by a Babylonian army in the early 6th century BCE, destroying the First Temple that was at the center of ancient Jewish worship. The Judean elite were exiled to Babylonia and this is regarded as the first Jewish Diaspora. During this captivity the Jews in Babylon wrote what is known as the "Babylonian Talmud" while the remaining Jews in Judea wrote what is called the "Palestinian Talmud". These are the first written forms of the Torah and the Babylonian Talmud is the Talmud used to this day. Later many of them returned to their homeland after the subsequent conquest of Babylonia by the Persians seventy years later, a period known as the Babylonian Captivity. A new Second Temple was constructed, and old religious practices were resumed.

During the early years of the Second Temple, the highest religious authority was a council known as the Great Assembly, led by Ezra of the Book of Ezra. Among other accomplishments of the Great Assembly, the last books of the Bible were written at this time and the canon sealed. Hellenistic Judaism spreads to Ptolemaic Egypt from the 3rd century BC, and becomes a notable religio licita throughout the Roman Empire, until its decline in the 3rd century parallel to the rise of Gnosticism and Early Christianity.

After a Jewish revolt against Roman rule in 66 CE, the Romans all but destroyed Jerusalem. Following a second revolt, Jews were not allowed to enter the city of Jerusalem and most Jewish worship was forbidden by Rome. Following the destruction of Jerusalem and the expulsion of the Jews, Jewish worship stopped being centrally organized around the Temple, prayer took the place of sacrifice, and worship was rebuilt around rabbis who acted as teachers and leaders of individual communities (see Jewish diaspora).


Historical Jewish groupings (to 1700)
Around the first century CE there were several small Jewish sects: the Pharisees, Sadducees, Zealots, Essenes, and Christians. After the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE, these sects vanished. Christianity survived, but by breaking with Judaism and becoming a separate religion; the Pharisees survived but in the form of Rabbinic Judaism (today, known simply as "Judaism"). The Sadducees rejected the divine inspiration of the Prophets and the Writings, relying only on the Torah as divinely inspired. Consequently, a number of other core tenets of the Pharisees' belief system (which became the basis for modern Judaism), were also dismissed by the Sadducees.

Like the Sadducees who relied only on the Torah, some Jews in the 8th and 9th centuries rejected the authority and divine inspiration of the Oral Law as recorded in the Mishnah (and developed by later rabbis in the two Talmuds), relying instead only upon the Tanakh. These included the Isunians, the Yudganites, the Malikites, and others. They soon developed oral traditions of their own, which differed from the rabbinic traditions, and eventually formed the Karaite sect. Karaites exist in small numbers today, mostly living in Israel. Rabbinical and Karaite Jews each hold that the others are Jews, but that the other faith is erroneous.

Over time Jews developed into distinct ethnic groups — amongst others, the Ashkenazi Jews (of central and Eastern Europe), the Sephardi Jews (of Spain, Portugal, and North Africa), the Beta Israel of Ethiopia and the Yemenite Jews, from the southern tip of the Arabian Peninsula. This split is cultural, and is not based on any doctrinal dispute, although the distance did result in minor differences in practice and prayers.


Persecutions
Main articles: Persecution of Jews, Antisemitism, and History of antisemitism
Antisemitism arose during the Middle Ages, in the form of persecutions, pogroms, forced conversion, expulsions, social restrictions and ghettoization.

This was different in quality to any repressions of Jews in ancient times. Ancient repression was politically motivated and Jews were treated no differently than any other ethnic group would have been. With the rise of the Churches, attacks on Jews became motivated instead by theological considerations specifically deriving from Christian views about Jews and Judaism Langmuir, Gavin (1993). History, religion, and antisemitism. University of California Press. ISBN 0520077288. .


Hasidism
Main article: Hasidic Judaism
Hasidic Judaism was founded by Yisroel ben Eliezer (1700-1760), also known as the Ba'al Shem Tov (or Besht). It originated in a time of persecution of the Jewish people, when European Jews had turned inward to Talmud study; many felt that most expressions of Jewish life had become too "academic", and that they no longer had any emphasis on spirituality or joy. His disciples attracted many followers; they themselves established numerous Hasidic sects across Europe. Hasidic Judaism eventually became the way of life for many Jews in Europe. Waves of Jewish immigration in the 1880s carried it to the United States.

Early on, there was a serious schism between Hasidic and non-Hasidic Jews. European Jews who rejected the Hasidic movement were dubbed by the Hasidim as Misnagdim, (lit. "opponents"). Some of the reasons for the rejection of Hasidic Judaism were the overwhelming exuberance of Hasidic worship, its untraditional ascriptions of infallibility and alleged miracle-working to their leaders, and the concern that it might become a messianic sect. Since then differences between the Hasidim and their opponents have slowly diminished and both groups are now considered part of Haredi Judaism.


The Enlightenment and Reform Judaism
Main articles: Haskalah and Reform Judaism
In the late 18th century CE, Europe was swept by a group of intellectual, social and political movements known as the Enlightenment. The Enlightenment led to reductions in the European laws that prohibited Jews to interact with the wider secular world, thus allowing Jews access to secular education and experience. A parallel Jewish movement, Haskalah or the "Jewish Enlightenment," began, especially in Central Europe, in response to both the Enlightenment and these new freedoms. It placed an emphasis on integration with secular society and a pursuit of non-religious knowledge such as reason. The thrust and counter-thrust between supporters of Haskalah and more traditional Jewish concepts eventually led to the formation of a number of different branches of Judaism: Haskalah supporters founded Reform Judaism and Liberal Judaism, while traditionalists founded what is called Orthodox Judaism, and Jews seeking a balance between the two sides founded Masorti and Conservative Judaism. A number of smaller groups came into being as well.


The Holocaust
Main article: The Holocaust
The Holocaust was the genocide of six million Jews under Nazi Germany in World War II[39] The state-led systematic persecution and genocide of the Jews (and other minority groups) of Europe and European Colonial North Africa during World War II by Nazi Germany and its collaborators[40] The persecution and genocide were accomplished in stages. Legislation to remove the Jews from civil society was enacted years before the outbreak of World War II. Concentration camps were established in which inmates were used as slave labour until they died of exhaustion or disease. Where the Third Reich conquered new territory in eastern Europe, specialized units called Einsatzgruppen murdered Jews and political opponents in mass shootings.[41] Jews and Roma were crammed into ghettos before being transported hundreds of miles by freight train to extermination camps where, if they survived the journey, the majority of them were killed in gas chambers. Every arm of Germany's bureaucracy was involved in the logistics of the mass murder, turning the country into what one Holocaust scholar has called "a genocidal nation."[42]


Judaism today
In most industrialized nations with modern economies, such as the United States, Israel, Canada, United Kingdom, Argentina and South Africa, a wide variety of Jewish practices exist, along with a growing plurality of secular and non-practicing Jews. For example, in the world's second largest Jewish community, that of the United States, according to the 2001 edition of the National Jewish Population Survey, 4.3 million out of 5.1 million Jews had some sort of connection to the religion. Of that population of connected Jews, 80% participated in some sort of Jewish religious observance, but only 48% belonged to a synagogue.

Religious (and secular) Jewish movements in the USA and Canada perceive this as a crisis situation, and have grave concern over rising rates of intermarriage and assimilation in the Jewish community. Since American Jews are marrying later in life, and are having fewer children, the birth rate for American Jews has dropped from over 2.0 to 1.7 (the replacement rate is 2.1). (This is My Beloved, This is My Friend: A Rabbinic Letter on Intimate relations, p. 27, Elliot N. Dorff, The Rabbinical Assembly, 1996). Intermarriage rates range from 40-50% in the US, and only about a third of children of intermarried couples are raised as Jews. Due to intermarriage and low birth rates, the Jewish population in the US shrank from 5.5 million in 1990 to 5.1 million in 2001. This is indicative of the general population trends among the Jewish community in the Diaspora, but a focus on total population obscures growth trends in some denominations and communities, such as Haredi Judaism.

The Baal teshuva movement is a movement of Jews who have "returned" to religion or become more observant.


Judaism and other religions

Christianity and Judaism
Main article: Christianity and Judaism
See also: Judeo-Christian, Christianity and antisemitism, Jewish view of Jesus, Cultural and historical background of Jesus, and Christian-Jewish reconciliation
Historians and theologians regularly review the changing relationship between some Christian groups and the Jewish people; the article on Christian-Jewish reconciliation studies one recent issue.

Please help improve this section by expanding it.
Further information might be found on the talk page or at requests for expansion.

A Brief History of Time






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A Brief History of Time

Cover
Author Stephen Hawking
Language English
Genre(s) Popular science
Publisher Bantam Books
Publication date 1988
A Brief History of Time is a popular science book written by Stephen Hawking and first published in 1988. It rapidly became a best-seller, and had sold 9 million copies by 2002.[citation needed] It was also on the London Sunday Times best-seller list for a record-breaking 237 weeks.[citation needed]

There is also a documentary by the same name, directed by Errol Morris and released in 1991. Unlike the book, the documentary is primarily a biography of Stephen Hawking.

Contents [hide]
1 Book contents
2 Editions
3 Film
4 In pop culture
5 References
6 See also
7 External links



[edit] Book contents
A Brief History of Time attempts to explain a range of subjects in cosmology, including the Big Bang, black holes, light cones and superstring theory, to the nonspecialist reader. Its main goal is to give an overview of the subject but, unusual for a popular science book, it also attempts to explain some complex mathematics. The author notes that an editor warned him that for every equation in the book the readership would be halved, hence it includes only a single equation: E = mc². In addition to Hawking's abstinence from equations, the book also simplifies matters by means of illustrations throughout the text, depicting complex models and diagrams.

The book is considered by many to be an "unread bestseller"[1] which is a book many people own but few have finished.


[edit] Editions
1988. First Edition. This edition included a foreword by Carl Sagan that tells the following story: Sagan was in London in 1974, and between sessions wandered into a different room, where a larger meeting was taking place. "At the front of the room, a young man in a wheelchair was signing his name very slowly in a very large book, which bore on an earlier page the name of Isaac Newton. I realised that I was watching an ancient ceremony: the induction of a new Fellow into the Royal Society." The young man was, of course, Hawking, already famous in his field but not famous worldwide until the publication of this improbable bestseller by this improbable author.
The foreword disappeared after the first edition. It was copyrighted by Sagan, rather than by Hawking or the publisher, and the publisher did not have the right to reprint it forever. Hawking wrote his own introduction for later editions.

1996—Illustrated, updated and expanded edition. This hardcover edition contained full color illustrations and photographs to help further explain the text, as well as the addition of topics that were not included in the original book.
1998—The Tenth Anniversary Edition—Is the same text as the one published in 1996, but was also released in paperback and has only a few diagrams included.
September of 2005 saw the release of A Briefer History of Time (a collaboration with Leonard Mlodinow), which is an abridged version of the original book. It was updated again to address new issues that have arisen due to further scientific development.


[edit] Film
Main article: A Brief History of Time (film)
In 1991, Errol Morris directed a documentary film about Hawking, but although they share a title, the film is a biographical study of Hawking, not a filmed version of the book.


[edit] In pop culture
This book has made its mark on American pop culture. In the film Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, Ian Brown (lead singer of the Stone Roses) is seen sitting in the Leaky Cauldron reading this book, a reference to the time travel employed later in the film. The book makes an appearance in the film Donnie Darko when Donnie's teacher shows him the book during a conversation about time travel. In the 2001 comedy film Legally Blonde, starring Reese Witherspoon, one of the Harvard students on Elle Woods' first day claims, "It has been suggested that Stephen Hawking stole his Brief History of Time from my fourth-grade paper."

MC Hawking, a nerdcore hip hop artist who parodies Stephen, named his album A Brief History of Rhyme.
This book is featured in and is part of the mythology of the T.V. show Lost.
In the episode What We Did On Our Summer Vacation of the TV show The Adventures of Pete & Pete, the character Ellen is seen reading the book.
In the film Addams Family Values, Joel Glicker is briefly shown holding it after stating why he is in the Harmony Hut.
In "Weird Al" Yankovic's music clip of his song "White & Nerdy", where "Weird Al" claims that he has Stephen Hawking in his library, while holding this book.
In "Weird Al" Yankovic's American Library Association Celebrity "READ" Poster.
In the episode "Not in Portland" of the TV show Lost, one of the Others is seen reading the book while on guard duty. Additionally, the book was seen on Ben Linus's kitchen table in The Man from Tallahassee.
In an episode of The Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy Billy was assigned to write a report according to a book called "A Not So Brief History of Time" which he confused with a horror story.
In John Safran vs. God, John Safran comments on the book being an "unread bestseller," saying that readers left their "bookmarks exactly where they [had] left it nine years ago, on page 3."
The book has been featured in the Megadeth Documentary, by Frederic Wallace, in a poster in Dave Mustaine's Living Room
The book is frequently cited by Oskar Schell, the nine-year-old protagonist in Jonathan Safran Foer's novel, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close.
In the movie Phenomenon, starring John Travolta, in which the character George Malley gains incredible intelligence, Malley owns this book as part of his everyday reading.
In The Simpsons episode Treehouse of Horror VI, upon seeing the dimension he accidentally entered begin to destroy itself, Homer says "Oh, there's so much I don't know about astrophysics. I wish I'd read that book by that wheelchair guy.", an allusion to A Brief History of Time.
In Futurama: Bender's Big Score, one of the naked aliens is seen reading a book called "A Brief History of Time Travel", a parody of A Brief History of Time.
In the movie Donnie Darko, Donnie has in his possession a copy of Hawking's book, this is implied to be the source of Donnie's time travel knowledge in the film.

[edit] References
^ Opinion Journal

[edit] See also
A Briefer History of Time (Hawking and Mlodinow book)
Turtles all the way down

[edit] External links
Photos of the first edition of A Brief History of Time
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Brief_History_of_Time"


The true first edition is the UK issue. The copyright page says Published 1988 by Bantam Press, and has no statement of reprints. The ISBN is 0-593-01518-5. The dust jacket is silver and has a price of £14.95 on the bottom of the front flap.

The first state of the U.S. first edition was withdrawn and destroyed; then redesigned and reprinted. A few copies escaped. This first state entirely lacks the table of contents and dedication statement. It has a full number line (0 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1) on the copyright page. Its ISBN (0-553-05243-8) is different than the ISBN of second state. The first state dust jacket is silver and has a price of $18.95 on the top of the front flap. The first state of the U.S. first edition and the UK first edition tend to have similar value on the market.

The second state of the U.S. first edition also has a full number line (0 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1) on the copyright page. But it has a dedication on the copyright page, and it has a table of contents. The second state ISBN is 0-553-05340-X. It has a blue dust jacket and a price of $18.95 on the top of the front flap. The second state is much less valuable than either the first state U.S. edition or the UK first edition.

A Brief History of Time is classified in the following category: Science


To find the market value for this book, click on the pre-filled eBay, AbeBooks, or Biblio links to the right and look for comparable listings that have all of these first edition points.

God







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This article is about the term "God" in the context of monotheism and henotheism. See deity or god (male deity) for details on polytheistic usages. For other uses, see God (disambiguation).
Part of a series on
God

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Theistic approaches
Deism · Henotheism
Monotheism · Panentheism
Pantheism · Monolatrism



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Specific conceptions
Names · "God" · Existence · Gender
Creator · Architect · Demiurge · Sustainer
Lord · Father · Monad · Oneness
Supreme Being · The All · Personal
Unitarianism · Ditheism · Trinity
Omniscience · Omnipotence
Omnipresence · Omnibenevolence
in Bahá'í · in Buddhism · in Christianity
in Hinduism · in Islam · in Judaism
in Sikhism


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Experience and practices
Faith · Prayer · Belief · Revelation
Fideism · Gnosis · Metaphysics
Mysticism · Hermeticism · Esotericism


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Related topics
Philosophy · Religion · Ontology
God complex · Neurotheology
Euthyphro dilemma · Problem of evil (Theodicy)



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God is the principal or sole deity in religions and other belief systems that worship one deity.[1]

God is most often conceived of as the creator and overseer of the universe. Theologians have ascribed a variety of attributes to the many different conceptions of God. The most common among these include omniscience, omnipotence, omnipresence, omnibenevolence (perfect goodness), divine simplicity, jealousy, and eternal and necessary existence. God has also been conceived as being incorporeal, a personal being, the source of all moral obligation, and the "greatest conceivable existent".[1] These attributes were all supported to varying degrees by the early Jewish, Christian and Muslim theologian philosophers, including Augustine of Hippo,[2] Al-Ghazali,[3] and Maimonides.[2] Many notable medieval philosophers developed arguments for the existence of God,[4] attempting to wrestle with the apparent contradictions implied by many of these attributes.

Contents [hide]
1 Etymology and usage
2 Names of God
3 Conceptions of God
4 Existence of God
5 Theological approaches
5.1 Theism and Deism
6 History of monotheism
6.1 Monotheism and pantheism
6.2 Dystheism and nontheism
7 Scientific positions regarding God
8 Distribution of belief in God
9 References
10 Notes
11 External links



Etymology and usage
Main article: God (word)
The earliest written form of the Germanic word god comes from the 6th century Christian Codex Argenteus. The English word itself is derived from the Proto-Germanic * ǥuđan. Most linguists agree that the reconstructed Proto-Indo-European form * ǵhu-tó-m was based on the root * ǵhau(ə)-, which meant either "to call" or "to invoke".[5]

The capitalized form God was first used in Wulfila's Gothic translation of the New Testament, to represent the Greek Theos. In the English language, the capitalization continues to represent a distinction between monotheistic "God" and "gods" in polytheism.[6][7] In spite of significant differences between religions such as Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, the Bahá'í Faith, and Judaism, the term "God" remains an English translation common to all. The name may signify any related or similar monotheistic deities, such as the early monotheism of Akhenaten and Zoroastrianism.


Names of God
Main article: Names of God
Conceptions of God can vary widely, but the word God in English—and its counterparts in other languages, such as Latinate Deus, Greek Θεός, Slavic Bog, Sanskrit Ishvara, or Arabic Allah—are normally used for any and all conceptions. The same holds for Hebrew El, but in Judaism, God is also given a proper name, Yahweh, harking back to the religion's henotheistic origins.[8] God may also be given a proper name in monotheistic currents of Hinduism which emphasize the personal nature of God, with early references to his name as Krishna-Vasudeva in Bhagavata or later Vishnu and Hari,[9] or recently Shakti. In the Bible, when the word "Lord" is in all capitals, it signifies that the word represents the personal Hebrew name of god, Yahweh.

It is difficult to draw a line between proper names and epitheta of God, such as the names and titles of Jesus in the New Testament, the names of God in the Qur'an, and the various lists of thousand names of God and List of titles and names of Krishna in Vaishnavism.


Conceptions of God
Main article: Conceptions of God

Detail of Sistine Chapel fresco Creation of the Sun and Moon by Michelangelo (completed in 1512).Conceptions of God vary widely. Theologians and philosophers have studied countless conceptions of God since the dawn of civilization. The Abrahamic conceptions of God include the trinitarian view of Christians, the Kabbalistic definition of Jewish mysticism, and the Islamic concept of God. The dharmic religions differ in their view of the divine: views of God in Hinduism vary by region, sect, and caste, ranging from monotheistic to polytheistic; the view of God in Buddhism is almost non-theist. In modern times, some more abstract concepts have been developed, such as process theology and open theism. Conceptions of God held by individual believers vary so widely that there is no clear consensus on the nature of God.[10] The contemporaneous French philosopher Michel Henry has however proposed a phenomenological approach and definition of God as phenomenological essence of Life.[citation needed]


Existence of God
Main article: Existence of God
Many arguments for and against the existence of God have been proposed and rejected by philosophers, theologians, and other thinkers. In philosophical terminology, such arguments concern schools of thought on the epistemology of the ontology of God.

There are many philosophical issues concerning the existence of God. Some definitions of God are sometimes nonspecific, while other definitions can be self-contradictory. Arguments for the existence of God typically include metaphysical, empirical, inductive, and subjective types, while others revolve around holes in evolutionary theory and order and complexety in the world. Arguments against the existence of God typically include empirical, deductive, and inductive types. Conclusions reached include: "God exists and this can be proven"; "God exists, but this cannot be proven or disproven" (theism in both cases); "God does not exist" (strong atheism); "God almost certainly does not exist"[11] (de facto atheism); and "no one knows whether God exists" (agnosticism). There are numerous variations on these positions.

A recent argument for the existence of God is intelligent design, which asserts that "certain features of the universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause, not an undirected process such as natural selection."[12][13][14] It is a modern form of the traditional argument from design, modified to avoid specifying the nature or identity of the designer. Its primary proponents, all of whom are associated with the Discovery Institute,[15][16][17][18][19][20][21] believe the designer to be the Abrahamic God.[22]


Theological approaches
Main article: Theology
Theologians and philosophers have ascribed a number of attributes to God, including omniscience, omnipotence, omnipresence, perfect goodness, divine simplicity, and eternal and necessary existence. God has been described as incorporeal, a personal being, the source of all moral obligation, and the greatest conceivable being existent.[1] These attributes were all claimed to varying degrees by the early Jewish, Christian and Muslim scholars, including St Augustine,[2] Al-Ghazali,[4] and Maimonides.[2]

Many medieval philosophers developed arguments for the existence of God,[4] while attempting to comprehend the precise implications of God's attributes. Reconciling some of those attributes generated important philosophical problems and debates. For example, God's omniscience implies that God knows how free agents will choose to act. If God does know this, their apparent free will might be illusory, or foreknowledge does not imply predestination; and if God does not know it, God is not omniscient.[23]

The last centuries of philosophy have seen vigorous questions regarding the arguments for God's existence raised by such philosophers as Immanuel Kant, David Hume and Antony Flew, although Kant held that the argument from morality was valid. The theist response has been either to contend, like Alvin Plantinga, that faith is "properly basic"; or to take, like Richard Swinburne, the evidentialist position.[24] Some theists agree that none of the arguments for God's existence are compelling, but argue that faith is not a product of reason, but requires risk. There would be no risk, they say, if the arguments for God's existence were as solid as the laws of logic, a position summed up by Pascal as: "The heart has reasons which reason knows not of."[25]

Most major religions hold God not as a metaphor, but a being that influences our day-to-day existences. Many believers allow for the existence of other, less powerful spiritual beings, and give them names such as angels, saints, djinni, demons, and devas.


Theism and Deism
Theism holds that God exists realistically, objectively, and independently of human thought; that God created and sustains everything; that God is omnipotent and eternal, and is personal, interested, and answers prayer.[citation needed] It holds that God is both transcendent and immanent; thus, God is simultaneously infinite and in some way present in the affairs of the world.[citation needed] Catholic theology holds that God is infinitely simple and is not involuntarily subject to time. Most theists hold that God is omnipotent, omniscient, and benevolent, although this belief raises questions about God's responsibility for evil and suffering in the world. Some theists ascribe to God a self-conscious or purposeful limiting of omnipotence, omniscience, or benevolence. Open Theism, by contrast, asserts that, due to the nature of time, God's omniscience does not mean the deity can predict the future. "Theism" is sometimes used to refer in general to any belief in a god or gods, i.e., monotheism or polytheism[citation needed].

Deism holds that God is wholly transcendent: God exists, but does not intervene in the world beyond what was necessary to create it. In this view, God is not anthropomorphic, and does not literally answer prayers or cause miracles to occur. Common in Deism is a belief that God has no interest in humanity and may not even be aware of humanity. Pandeism and Panendeism, respectively, combine Deism with the Pantheistic or Panentheistic beliefs discussed below.


History of monotheism
Main article: Monotheism

16th century depiction of Genesis (Michelangelo, Sistine Chapel): God creates Adam. The concept of God as a singular patriarchal "Father [of all creation]" is common in Western culture (Abrahamic) monotheism.The concept of monotheism sees a gradual development out of notions of henotheism and monolatrism. In the Ancient Near East, each city had a local patron deity, such as Shamash at Larsa or Sin at Ur. The first claims of global supremacy of a specific god date to the Late Bronze Age, with Akhenaten's Great Hymn to the Aten (connected to Judaism by Sigmund Freud in his Moses and Monotheism), and, depending on dating issues, Zoroaster's Gathas to Ahura Mazda. Currents of monism or monotheism emerge in Vedic India in the same period, with e.g. the Nasadiya Sukta. Philosophical monotheism and the associated concept of absolute good and evil emerges in Classical Antiquity, notably with Plato (c.f. Euthyphro dilemma), elaborated into the idea of The One in Neoplatonism.

According to The Oxford Companion To World Mythology (David Leeming, Oxford University Press, 2005, page 153), "The lack of cohesion among early Hebrews made monotheism - even monolatry, the exclusive worship of one god among many - an impossibility...And even then it can be argued that the firm establishment of monotheism in Judaism required the rabbinical or Talmudic process of the first century B.C.E. to the sixth century C.E.". In Islamic theology, a person who spontaneously "discovers" monotheism is called a ḥanīf, the original ḥanīf being Abraham.

Austrian anthropologist Wilhelm Schmidt in the 1910s postulated an Urmonotheismus, "original" or "primitive monotheism", a thesis now widely rejected in comparative religion but still occasionally defended in creationist circles.


Monotheism and pantheism
Monotheists hold that there is only one god, and may claim that the one true god is worshiped in different religions under different names. The view that all theists actually worship the same god, whether they know it or not, is especially emphasized in Hinduism[26] and Sikhism[27] with more orthodox Vaishnava view being that Krishna as svayam bhagavan is a true form.[28] Adherents of different religions, however, generally disagree as to how to best worship God and what is God's plan for mankind, if there is one. There are different approaches to reconciling the contradictory claims of monotheistic religions. One view is taken by exclusivists, who believe they are the chosen people or have exclusive access to absolute truth, generally through revelation or encounter with the Divine, which adherents of other religions do not. Another view is religious pluralism. A pluralist typically believes that his religion is the right one, but does not deny the partial truth of other religions. An example of a pluralist view in Christianity is supersessionism, i.e., the belief that one's religion is the fulfillment of previous religions. A third approach is relativistic inclusivism, where everybody is seen as equally right; an example in Christianity is universalism: the doctrine that salvation is eventually available for everyone. A fourth approach is syncretism, mixing different elements from different religion. An example of syncretism is the New Age movement.

Pantheism holds that God is the universe and the universe is God. Panentheism holds that God contains, but is not identical to, the Universe. The distinctions between the two are subtle, and some consider them unhelpful. It is also the view of the Liberal Catholic Church, Theosophy, Hinduism, Sikhism, some divisions of Buddhism, some divisions of Neopaganism and Taoism, along with many varying denominations and individuals within denominations. Kabbalah, Jewish mysticism, paints a pantheistic/panentheistic view of God — which has wide acceptance in Hasidic Judaism, particularly from their founder The Baal Shem Tov — but only as an addition to the Jewish view of a personal god, not in the original pantheistic sense that denies or limits persona to God.


Dystheism and nontheism
Dystheism, related to theodicy is a form of theism which holds that God is either not wholly-good or is fully malevolent as a consequence of the problem of evil. One such example would be Satanism or the Devil. There is no known community of practicing dystheists.[citation needed]

Nontheism holds that the universe can be explained without any reference to the supernatural, or to a supernatural being. Some non-theists avoid the concept of God, whilst accepting that it is significant to many; other non-theists understand God as a symbol of human values and aspirations. Many schools of Buddhism may be considered non-theistic.


Scientific positions regarding God
Stephen Jay Gould proposed an approach dividing the world of philosophy into what he called "non-overlapping magisteria" (NOMA). In this view, questions of the supernatural, such as those relating to the existence and nature of God, are non-empirical and are the proper domain of theology. The methods of science should then be used to answer any empirical question about the natural world, and theology should be used to answer questions about ultimate meaning and moral value. In this view, the perceived lack of any empirical footprint from the magisterium of the supernatural onto natural events makes science the sole player in the natural world.[29] Another view, advanced by Richard Dawkins, is that the existence of God is an empirical question, on the grounds that "a universe with a god would be a completely different kind of universe from one without, and it would be a scientific difference."[30] A third view is that of scientism or logical positivism: any question which cannot be defined cannot be answered by science and is therefore either nonsensical or is not worth asking, on the grounds that only empirically answerable questions make sense and are worth attention.[citation needed]


Distribution of belief in God
Main article: List of religious populations

The percentage of people in European countries who said in 2005 that they "believe there is a God". Countries with Eastern Orthodox (ie:Greece, Romania, etc.) or Muslim (Turkey) majorities tend to poll highest.As of 2000, approximately 53% of the world's population identifies with one of the three Abrahamic religions (33% Christian, 20% Islam, <1% Judaism), 6% with Buddhism, 13% with Hinduism, 6% with traditional Chinese religion, 7% with various other religions, and less than 15% as non-religious. Most of these religious beliefs involve a god or gods.[31]

第四部分分拆语音的修改文本练习的新的体会：
  想通过练习记忆语音的文本表情语调，全面消化吸收英语，修改听说大突破的原文错误和一个很好的学习途径。
    因为每遍练习都回发现大量原文教材错误，进行修改，一次可以纠正几十处，还是不能穷尽，只好多修改几次，一个15分钟的语音，竟然有182处错误，所以原文严重地影响了完全消化吸收原声磁带的语气、情调。修改几次，语音就深深地在大脑留下了烙印。你在看文本的时候，看到的语音就和磁带一样了也别是语流。这时候自己看着文本说口语，就具备了和磁带一样的英语思维过程，非常容易。
    当阅读原来的压码听清以后的压码听懂中文日记的时候，大脑中的听说大突破的说话方式就完全表现出来了。不是将中文翻译成英文而是以思考的方式产生大量的英语高速意识流，阅读中文用英语的方式进行，比原来中文速度还要快很多倍。一气阅读了整个帖子9页内容。
  由于是采用听说大突破的口气，采用大量碎句子进行思考，句子全部不需要进行构思，即可脱口而出，这样的思维方式是不存在语法错误的，因为他的复杂句子是分拆合成进行的。遇到当时想不起来的贴切单词，最好的办法就是大量的连接词与就产生派上了用场。同时使用了大量的语气词，更加富有语气感情。同时一个句子反复用不同的方式进行解释，而没有解释的痕迹。这种自己说口语的方式以后也可以作为一种练习的方式来使用。把压码法的操作方法用英语进行讲解，讨论，进行高级英语口语的专题交流。必要时还可以进行录音压码法学习体会日记的形式进行。这个练习以前翁宇就经常使用，每天学习压码法以后，说一个小时压码学习体会日记语音录音，效果很好。
  进行练习听说大突破修改错误文本的过程，由于采用了大量的语音引导下的英语思维，同时大脑浮想出来场景的图像，每次练习的日内容，同样的文字，看到的却是不同的英语场景图像，就像科幻电影的图像一样，文字和灰色的，但是联想出来的英语图像场景却是彩色的、丰富多彩。大概应该应该是英文的文字产生了压码信息的缘故，与相关的信息进行了直接的沟通。令人奇怪不解的是怎么西方的宗教怎么会有中国传统文化的痕迹，西方极了世界的藐视怎么和中国的神话传说类似？同时宗教迷信为什么可以和科学练习在一起，就是将人死亡以后的生态轮回问题，也就是动物、植物和人之间的转化过程的英语文字。
    特别是课文中的因果关系方面，上学时为了升高中，高中时为了生大学，大学是为了工作，工作是为了赚钱，专线是为了养活后代。这一段英语藐视很有意思。同时人死后如天堂（极乐世界）、地域，竟然和和西方的科学生物物种变换结合起来，和中国的喝了梦婆堂而以往的传说而练习的一切，这样不同宗教的讨论，会促使联想。特别是《时间简史》是属于科学的范畴，介绍宇宙观广义相对论的，与宗教应该是格格不入的，几遍练习下来，竟然产生了联系。对于对话的形式，一般意识思考应该不是完整的过程，因为会有其他人中间打断而发生引导变化，但是多次练习听懂竟然可以将中间的确实部分内容补充成完整逻辑关系的联想图像。
    但是听下来看看英语原文，确实文字是简单的并没有这样的内在联系，而且四个人的观点也是不同的，这是他们不同观点的讨论，引发了图像思维的好奇。平时没有看这类网站的兴趣，由于在学习短短的一篇讨论的1/4语音，联想出来了大量以前未之和不相信的东西，这次搜索以下网站，昨天已经传到论坛，竟然很快就能理解记忆，而且是一些峰马牛不相干的东西。
    对于遇到生词，大家不要着急查英英字典，现自己理解产生英语图像思维，再顺着思维的过程进行搜索关键词网页，经过里面具体网页内容理解了，实际上你会有很强烈的学习冲动和学习效率。很多网页看完了，比他们讨论的内容更为深刻，所以以后我们以后进行专题讨论英语对话的时候，就可以采用着这种方式进行练习。谁相信他们那些各自自以为是的宗教知识，但是我们学会了听说大突破的交流方式才是最重要的。看到一篇中文的马克思主义的观点教育西方宗教的讨论，以后如果遇到西方人说英语，我们不妨和他们辩论一下，联系一下英语的口才。对于英语文化和东方文化冲突问题，讨论技巧问题还很值得研究，这也是学习听说大突破要解决的问题。