Bible Quiz—it's fun and challenging

[xpastor]

I felt one question misrepresented the Bible. Extra kudos for anyone who can tell me which one it is and why I thought so.

Is it number eleven?

Some translations say "calamity" or "disaster" rather than "evil".
(I don't remember my score, I took it a few days ago. It was somewhere in mid-passing range)

No, not #11. I have no problem with the comment in the answers that the NIV and other versions soften the meaning unduly by substituting calamity for evil.

The one I had in mind does not even remotely support the interpretation placed on it by the quiz, if you read the verse carefully.

[Minimalist]

substituting calamity for evil.

G-C tries to do that too. Of course, everyone ignores that fool. I'm sure the distinction is lost on the poor bastards in the Philippines, anyway.

[Aractus]

In our culture we recognize the idea of emotions coming from the heart as a metaphor or if you will, a linguistic fossil from an earlier era of language. However, everyone knows that it is really the brain which is the physical seat of all our feelings.

I don't see this bit of incorrect science as a major flaw in the Bible, but it is true that the ancient Israelites seemed to have little interest in investigating or analyzing the natural world as compared to the Greeks. This is seen, for instance, in their ridiculous distinction between clean and unclean animals. Those which fell into the category of their traditional herd animals (cow, sheep, goat) eating grass and having a cloven hoof were considered clean. Those which differed on one point were considered unclean, rabbits and camels as they ate grass but lacked the cloven hoof and pigs as they had the cloven hoof but did not eat grass.

I will repeat, there is one other question in which the very verse which the quiz cites to "prove" its answer in fact shows that it is about another subject entirely.

What about Question 1 and claiming that Ex 34 is the 10 commandments, and then in their explanation claiming "Don't boil a young goat in the milk of its mother" is a commandment, when it's actually taken out of context for one, and for another no serious scholar - no matter how sceptical - thinks that Ex 34 is the first 10 commandments. This is because of Ex 34:1:

The Lord said to Moses, “Cut for yourself two tablets of stone like the first, and I will write on the tablets the words that were on the first tablets, which you broke.

And Ex 34:27:

And the Lord said to Moses, “Write these words, for in accordance with these words I have made a covenant with you and with Israel.”

So within the narrative itself it's clear that this covenant that renews the broken relationship between God and his people is written down by Moses - not by God on the stone tablets that Moses cut.

[Aractus]

Question 2 misrepresents the Bible for not mentioning Exodus 31:14-15: "You shall keep the Sabbath, because it is holy for you. Everyone who profanes it shall be put to death. Whoever does any work on it, that soul shall be cut off from among his people. Six days shall work be done, but the seventh day is a Sabbath of solemn rest, holy to the Lord. Whoever does any work on the Sabbath day shall be put to death." It's not as if God decided to put the man to death then and there (for the crime of profaning the Sabbath), it was already given as a commandment.

Q3.

• 'The name "Jehovah" is a Christian mistake. It was forbidden to pronounce the name "YHWH" (Yahweh), and readers of the Hebrew scriptures were supposed to say "Adonai" in its place. "In written texts the vowels of Adonai were combined with the consonants YHWH to remind readers to pronounce Adonai instead of Yahweh. The incorrect hybrid, 'Jehovah,' arose from Christian misunderstanding in the late Middle Ages."(Harper's Bible Dictionary)'

Well, no, that's total rubbish. A second ago they were claiming that Ex34 is the 10 commandments in defiance of modern scholarship, and now they're claiming that the Tetragrammaton has the vowels from "Adonai"??

Um, 1. the vowels do NOT match Adonai, here's the proof:



And 2. the vowels match YHDWH perfectly, as proven above. So whatever, but YHDWH is transliterated into Greek: Ἰούδας and I'm sick of hearing the same bullshit repeated over and over and over, it's the closest name in the Bible to YHWH and it has exactly the same vowels, as you can see. The view that the vowels are borrowed from any other word is conjecture.

[max-greece]

Aractus,

Are you sure you have the right word "Ἰούδας"?

That actually reads as ee-ou-thas with the th pronounced as it is in "that"

That would be transliterated as Judas in English. Doesn't bear any resemblance to YHDWH.

[Aractus]

That would be transliterated as Judas in English. Doesn't bear any resemblance to YHDWH.

Yeah it does actually - Judah (YHDWH), Judas, both pretty similar...

---

Q4. How should parents treat a stubborn and rebellious son?

In context it is obvious this law relates to adult children, not adolescents.

Q5. Premarital sex is a sin. But what the quiz fails to recognize is the fact that women had far more rights and recognition under the ancient Israelites than in other cultures:

• And yet this is the evidence of my daughter's virginity.’ And they shall spread the cloak before the elders of the city. Then the elders of that city shall take the man and whip him, and they shall fine him a hundred shekels of silver and give them to the father of the young woman, because he has brought a bad name upon a virgin of Israel. And she shall be his wife. He may not divorce her all his days.

No other contemporary culture afforded these rights to women!

[Zazzy]

Q5. Premarital sex is a sin. But what the quiz fails to recognize is the fact that women had far more rights and recognition under the ancient Israelites than in other cultures:

• And yet this is the evidence of my daughter's virginity.’ And they shall spread the cloak before the elders of the city. Then the elders of that city shall take the man and whip him, and they shall fine him a hundred shekels of silver and give them to the father of the young woman, because he has brought a bad name upon a virgin of Israel. And she shall be his wife. He may not divorce her all his days.

No other contemporary culture afforded these rights to women!

Umm.. this looks a lot like having to marry your rapist. Terrific example of women's rights.

[xpastor]

Aractus, you are clutching at straws.

What about Question 1 and claiming that Ex 34 is the 10 commandments, and then in their explanation claiming "Don't boil a young goat in the milk of its mother" is a commandment, when it's actually taken out of context for one, and for another no serious scholar - no matter how sceptical - thinks that Ex 34 is the first 10 commandments. This is because of Ex 34:1:

The Lord said to Moses, “Cut for yourself two tablets of stone like the first, and I will write on the tablets the words that were on the first tablets, which you broke.

And Ex 34:27:

And the Lord said to Moses, “Write these words, for in accordance with these words I have made a covenant with you and with Israel.”

So within the narrative itself it's clear that this covenant that renews the broken relationship between God and his people is written down by Moses - not by God on the stone tablets that Moses cut.

Of course, I also got tricked by this question. I've taught the 10 commandments in confirmation classes, and so I automatically assumed it referred to the one s I know, ending with Don't covet your neighbor's wife.

Peake's Commentary calls this the Ritual Decalogue as opposed to the Ethical Decalogue given earlier. As the quiz notes, this is the only place where the Bible itself uses the phrase the ten commandments, and it does so barely a sentence after listing these commandments. I have no idea what you mean by saying that the last one is taken out of context, it occurs in a list of largely ritualistic commandments: observe the feast of weeks, don't offer the blood of sacrifice with leaven, blah, blah, blah. The fact is that primitive peoples, and certainly the Israelites, were largely preoccupied with ritual that seems meaningless to us today.

Just who is writing what on stone is far from clear. First God says, I will write on the tablets (34:1) then tells Moses, Write these words down, then we are told that Moses hung out with God another 40 days, and then he (unspecified antecedent, could be God, could be Moses) wrote on the tablets. More likely God. Stone work is a deity kind of thing.

The confusion in the narrative is probably because we are here dealing with the dreaded documentary theory. The Ethical Decalogue comes from the later Elohist writer, and the Ritual Decalogue comes from the more primitive Jahwist. It's clumsily stitched in as a story that the broken tablets are being replaced.

And remember we are never told the content of those first tablets. They are given to Moses at the end of Chapter 31 after the Lord with his usual verbosity has delivered dozens and dozens of commandments both ethical and ritual, and then Moses breaks them in Chapter 32.

---

application[/b] of this law, see Numbers 15:32 - 36, thereby implying that the law was actually in existence before, and the man was condemned under it. In this the quiz is far too generous. The passage in Numbers indeed reads as if the matter was decided on the spot rather than applying a pre-existent law.

32 Once, while the Israelites were still in the wilderness, a man was found gathering firewood on the Sabbath. 33 He was taken to Moses, Aaron, and the whole community, 34 and was put under guard, because it was not clear what should be done with him. 35 Then the Lord said to Moses, “The man must be put to death; the whole community is to stone him to death outside the camp.” 36 So the whole community took him outside the camp and stoned him to death, as the Lord had commanded.

Anyway, NOTHING would make a law like this OK.
[quote='Aractus' pid='551863' dateline='1385710823']
Q3.

• 'The name "Jehovah" is a Christian mistake. It was forbidden to pronounce the name "YHWH" (Yahweh), and readers of the Hebrew scriptures were supposed to say "Adonai" in its place. "In written texts the vowels of Adonai were combined with the consonants YHWH to remind readers to pronounce Adonai instead of Yahweh. The incorrect hybrid, 'Jehovah,' arose from Christian misunderstanding in the late Middle Ages."(Harper's Bible Dictionary)'

Well, no, that's total rubbish. A second ago they were claiming that Ex34 is the 10 commandments in defiance of modern scholarship, and now they're claiming that the Tetragrammaton has the vowels from "Adonai"??

Um, 1. the vowels do NOT match Adonai, here's the proof:



And 2. the vowels match YHDWH perfectly, as proven above. So whatever, but YHDWH is transliterated into Greek: Ἰούδας and I'm sick of hearing the same bullshit repeated over and over and over, it's the closest name in the Bible to YHWH and it has exactly the same vowels, as you can see. The view that the vowels are borrowed from any other word is conjecture.

You're very free with terms like "total rubbish" or "no sound scholar" when you really mean "in my opinion."

The idea that the vowels of Adonai were written above the consonants of JHWH is of long standing and it is still upheld by sound scholars. It's the theory espoused in Catholic Answers, a very scholarly looking website, and it is also the position of Wikipedia which is presumably aware of current scholarship.

The consensus among scholars is that the historical vocalization of the Tetragrammaton at the time of the redaction of the Torah (6th century BCE) is most likely Yahweh, however there is disagreement. The historical vocalization was lost because in Second Temple Judaism, during the 3rd to 2nd centuries BCE, the pronunciation of the Tetragrammaton came to be avoided, being substituted with Adonai ("my Lord"). ... the vowel points used when YHWH is intended to be pronounced as Adonai are slightly different to those used in Adonai itself.

[CleanShavenJesus]

I'm much too lazy to be bothered with this.

I'll predict I'd get a 30 out of 50 and leave it at that.

[Aractus]

Well first off it's not the only place where the bible uses the phrase "ten commandments":

Deuteronomy 10:1-5
“At that time the Lord said to me, ‘Cut for yourself two tablets of stone like the first, and come up to me on the mountain and make an ark of wood. And I will write on the tablets the words that were on the first tablets that you broke, and you shall put them in the ark.’ So I made an ark of acacia wood, and cut two tablets of stone like the first, and went up the mountain with the two tablets in my hand. And he wrote on the tablets, in the same writing as before, the Ten Commandments that the Lord had spoken to you on the mountain out of the midst of the fire on the day of the assembly. And the Lord gave them to me. Then I turned and came down from the mountain and put the tablets in the ark that I had made. And there they are, as the Lord commanded me.”

Deuteronomy 4:13
And he declared to you his covenant, which he commanded you to perform, that is, the Ten Commandments, and he wrote them on two tablets of stone.

That one appears before the Ten Commandments given in Deuteronomy 5.