Episode Highlights

Highlights

• As discoveries at Jericho and other sites show, the Bible is not a history of social and political events, but a history of belief.

• The traditions of ancient Canaanites—including Philistines, whom the Bible casts as Israel’s enemies—deeply influenced the Bible.

• In ancient Canaan, belief in Jehovah (the God of gods) unified the Israelite tribes once scattered among the hilltops; for them, straying from that belief would spell disunity, defeat, or worse.

• Written over a period of hundreds of years, the Hebrew Bible explainsthe history of Jehovah’s people in terms of their religious identity and their faithfulness to the covenant with their God.

Questions to Consider

1. Do the excavations at Jericho and elsewhere influence your understanding of the Bible?
2. In what concepts do nations or peoples find unity for survival today?
3. How did the Babylonian exile create a crisis of faith for the Judeans? How did it force them to reassess their identity as a people?

Highlights

• During and after the Babylonian exile, the Jewish people venerated their scriptures as the sacred heart of their faith.

• Jewish laws and customs existed in tension with Hellenistic influences until the Maccabees established a Jewish state, roughly 100 years before the Roman conquest.

• Archaeological evidence surrounding the Dead Sea Scrolls suggests that Jewish scholars moved caches of manuscripts out of Jerusalem before the Roman siege, indicating that the Hebrew Bible existed in different versions as late as 70 CE.

• For hundreds of years after the destruction of Jerusalem, rabbis assembled, copied, and codified the Hebrew Bible; Jewish printers in Soncino, Italy, produced the first typeset version in the 15th century.

Questions to Consider

1. Why did the written word become so central to Judaism? How central is it to other faith traditions?
2. Based on what you’ve learned in this episode, how did the Jewish conception of God differ from those of other ancient cultures?
3. How do the Dead Sea Scrolls and the discoveries at Qumran change your attitude toward the Bible as we know it today?

Highlights

• No contemporary accounts of Jesus exist in Roman or Jewish records. However, historians agree that Jesus of Nazareth was raised in Galilee, preached, healed, argued with temple authorities, and was executed.

• The first Gospels were written decades after Jesus’s death; Christianity became an international movement thanks largely to oral tradition and the letters of Paul.

• In the 1st and 2nd centuries CE, Christianity had no officially codified scriptures. The remarkably diverse movement included mystical sects known as the Gnostics.

• Irenaeus, bishop of Lyon in the 2nd century, was instrumental in the development of the biblical canon as we know it today, beginning with his acceptance of the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, as well as Hebrew Scripture.

Questions to Consider

1. What parts of the Gospel accounts of Jesus of Nazareth do you accept as history?
2. How do you explain the relatively rapid spread of Christianity within the first 200 years of Jesus’s death?
3. As portrayed in this episode, does early Christianity seem more or less theologically diverse than today’s Christian denominations?

Highlights

• Besides mandating vigorous persecutions of Christians, the emperor Diocletian reorganized the Roman Empire to consolidate his power.

• When Constantine became emperor and adopted Christianity, the once-persecuted sect became the official religion of Rome and took on imperial trappings.

• Constantine also convened the Council of Nicaea in 325 CE, which formulated the first basic statement of Christian beliefs.

• In the late 4th century, Jerome spent 20 years translating the original Hebrew and Greek texts into Latin; his work became the basis for the Latin Vulgate, the Roman Catholic Church’s definitive translation.

Questions to Consider

1. In what sense did Constantine need Christianity politically? How did he use it politically?
2. In your experience, what role does ritual play in religious observance? What effect do such things as the incense and vestments of a Roman Catholic Mass create for you?
3. Why do you think Jerome’s translation of the Bible provoked such passionate reactions among the faithful?

Highlights

• After the fall of Rome, the Bible and its images were used not only as spiritual resources, but also as means to buttress political, social, and economic power.

• Until succumbing to the Turks in 1453, Constantinople served as the capital of the Eastern Empire, the focal point of Christianity, and a center for scholarship.

• During the Early Middle Ages, monasteries in Scotland, Ireland, and other outposts copied and preserved the works of the ancient world, and helped to spread Christianity throughout Western Europe.

• Charlemagne, the first Holy Roman Emperor, established Bible-copying monasteries and used the Bible as the basis for his laws.

Questions to Consider

1. Romer suggests thinking of the Church of Divine Wisdom (Hagia Sophia) as “a vast imperial theatre.” Do you think the comparison is apt? What similarities and differences do you see between religious ceremonies and theatrical performances?
2. The Holy Roman Empire fused religious and moral authority with political authority. What advantages did this bring to Charlemagne’s subjects? What disadvantages do you imagine?
3. How do political leaders attempt to exercise moral authority today?

Highlights

• Renaissance ideas (including intense aestheticism), combined with rising nationalism, threatened the social and political order that medieval monarchies and the church had used the Bible to sanction.

• Martin Luther’s interpretation of the Bible and the doctrine of salvation touched off a religious dispute that grew into a political revolution.

• New translations and advances in printing put the Bible in the hands of people who could never have read the church-sanctioned Latin Vulgate.

• In modern life, science and other forces have further undermined the power and influence of the Bible.

Questions to Consider

1. Do you agree with Romer’s assessment that Renaissance aestheticism has contributed to modern humanity’s sense of alienation?
2. What are your favorite or most memorable movies based on Bible stories? How much did they shape your thinking and belief?
3. How has your conception of the Bible changed over the course of this series?