Bible Review

Most biblical scholars attribute chapters 40–55 of the Book of Isaiah to an anonymous prophet active within the Jewish community during the Babylonian Exile (586–538 B.C.)

Postmodernism refutes the claim that reality can be determined by scientific methods and insists that knowledge is the creation of interpreting communities or individuals.

Developed in the 18th century, positivism limits sources for acquiring knowledge to data accessible through empirical observation and experimentation.

One often hears that the turn of the first millennium, that is, the year 999 C.E., caused widespread apocalyptic foreboding that the end of the world was near. Although we can find some isolated examples of such expectations, this new calendar, with its revised way of counting years, was just coming into vogue.

Seder Olam is a post-talmudic work that sets forth the details of an official rabbinic chronology and forms the basis for determining the starting “Year of Creation” for the standard Jewish calendar, still used today.

The Greek system is very similar to the Hebrew. The Greek alphabet has 26 letters. But in determining the numerical value of the letters, the symbol stigma, which is not a letter, was (for unknown reasons) inserted in the sixth position. In the Greek alphabet the first nine letters (including stigma) equal one through nine. The next nine rise by 10s, and the last nine rise by 100s.

This is a reference to the biblical law regarding the sabbatical year: “Every seventh year you shall grant a remission of debts” (Deuteronomy 15:1).

Since the early days of the church, the author of Revelation has been identified as the apostle John and/or as the evangelist John, but scholars generally remain unconvinced.

As we collected the parallels, we were not concerned about how many go back to the “historical Buddha” and the “historical Jesus.” Making that distinction would have been difficult and impractical. There has been no quest for the historical Buddha comparable to the quest for the historical Jesus; and Jesus scholars themselves disagree about how much of the gospel tradition goes back to Jesus. Thus we have drawn the parallels from the developing traditions of both Buddhism and Christianity as found in their scriptures.