Talk:Old Testament

Neutrality

"Neutrality" has a specific meaning, here at Wikipedia. My two cents are that the neutral POV is what they teach at the Ivy League. tgeorgescu (talk) 03:05, 1 July 2023 (UTC)

Edit war

Wikipedia isn't interested in the POV of the true believer, it is interested in WP:CHOPSY WP:SCHOLARSHIP. So, I find replacing two Bible professors with a link to an online Bible risible.

Besides, this is an article about the Old Testament. Jesus does not appear in the Old Testament. There are many Bible professors, who are Christians, and agree with this.

So, this isn't a match of everybody else against Christians. It is a match of everybody else against fundamentalists and fanatics. At least speaking of scholars, it is so.

Why in a section about Christian theology? It is Christian theology, just not of the gullible or fundamentalist sort. Bible scholars who are Christians are under no obligation to kowtow to traditional dogma, but often call a spade a spade.

Ehrman, Bart (2010). "A Historical Assault on Faith". Jesus, Interrupted: Revealing the Hidden Contradictions in the Bible (And Why We Don't Know About Them). HarperCollins e-books. pp. 3–4. ISBN 9780061173943. My hunch is that the majority of students coming into their first year of seminary training do not know what to expect from courses on the Bible. ... Most students expect these courses to be taught from a more or less pious perspective, showing them how, as future pastors, to take the Bible and make it applicable to people's lives in their weekly sermons.
Such students are in for a rude awakening. Mainline Protestant seminaries in this country are notorious for challenging students' cherished beliefs about the Bible—even if these cherished beliefs are simply a warm and fuzzy sense that the Bible is a wonderful guide to faith and practice, to be treated with reverence and piety. These seminaries teach serious, hard-core Bible scholarship. They don't pander to piety. They are taught by scholars who are familiar with what German- and English-speaking scholarship has been saying about the Bible over the past three hundred years. ...
The approach taken to the Bible in almost all Protestant (and now Catholic) mainline seminaries is what is called the "historical-critical" method. It is completely different from the "devotional" approach to the Bible one learns in church.

Stop with infantilizing and dumbing down Wikipedia! tgeorgescu (talk) 20:22, 2 August 2023 (UTC)

"So, I find replacing two Bible professors with a link to an online Bible risible." That is just vandalism. The Bible is not a reliable source. Dimadick (talk) 23:35, 4 August 2023 (UTC)

"fundamentalists and fanatics" Is there any difference between Tweedledum and Tweedledee? Fundamentalists are fanatics by nature. Dimadick (talk) 23:37, 4 August 2023 (UTC)

OT Template

I'm wondering why neither Template:Tanakh OT nor Template:Old Testament are featured on the page, despite their obvious relevancy. Not sure if there's a reason for this that I am unaware of, but if not I feel at least one of them should be linked, especially considering the current inclusion of Template:Bible sidebar and Template:Christianity sidebar. SwensonJ (talk) 17:43, 28 January 2024 (UTC)

Misleading early scholarship

Under early scholarship, the claim that "American science writer Homer W. Smith points out similarities between the Genesis creation narrative and that of the Sumerian Epic of Gilgamesh, such as the inclusion of the creation of the first man (Adam/Enkidu) in the Garden of Eden, a tree of knowledge, a tree of life, and a deceptive serpent" is made. For a reader who has not actually read the Epic of Gilgamesh, this statement may be misleading.

1. "the creation of the first man (Adam/Enkidu) in the Garden of Eden."
The Epic of Gilgamesh does not claim that Enkidu was the first man or that he was in a "Garden of Eden." The epic states that Enkidu was created as a counterpart to kill the King of Uruk, Gilgamesh. Having been created after Gilgamesh and the people of his city, Enkidu could not have been the first man created.
While Enkidu was created in the wilderness, at peace with all the beasts of the land, he was not placed in a "special garden" without death, as we can observe by the presence of a trapper.

2. "a tree of knowledge"
In the Epic of Gilgamesh, there is no real tree of knowledge. The trapper sends in a harlot to "tame" wild Enkidu. When Enkidu sleeps with the harlot, the beasts of the wild reject him, because he was given wisdom by sleeping with the woman. The presence of the harlot could be interpreted as a "fruit of the tree of knowledge," but the wording is misleading. It would be better to present this as a "revelation of knowledge."

3. "a tree of life"
The final tablets of the Epic of Gilgamesh center around gaining eternal life. When Gilgamesh reaches Utnapishtim after a long journey, Utnapishtim tells Gilgamesh that if he remains awake for 6 days, he will become immortal. Gilgamesh fails and does not achieve immortality, but Utnapishtim tells him about a herb that can restore his youth. While there is the common theme of being given a chance for immortality, calling this quest simply "a tree of life" is misleading. Rewording would be good.

4. "and a deceptive serpent"
I'm not sure what this is referring to. It may be referring to the snake that steals Gilgamesh's herb of youth. This is a good example of how a snake steals Gilgamesh's last shot at becoming eternally young (as long as the herb does not run out), however this serpent does not deceive Gilgamesh. It simply takes the herb.

Some of the interpretations presented are valid, but simplifying these complex events into Biblical allegories is misleading to an unknowing reader.[1] 173.198.129.18 (talk) 16:35, 27 February 2024 (UTC)

Greek

Septugint which is the oldest form of the manuscript is in greek why is it on there 93.106.183.243 (talk) 06:11, 16 April 2024 (UTC)