Summary RELI 104 MIDTERM EXAM IDENTIFICATIONS

......................CHAPTER ONE • Adoptionists o Textbook Definition ▪ The view that Jesus was not divine, but a flesh-and-blood human being who had been adopted at his baptism to be God’s son. • Apocalypse o Textbook Definition ▪ A literary genre in which the author, usually pseudonymous, reports symbolic dreams of visions, given or interpreted through an angelic mediator, which reveal the heavenly mysteries that can make sense of earthly realities. • Apocrypha o Textbook Definition ▪ The Greek term meaning, literally, “hidden things”, used for the books on the fringe of the Jewish or Christian canons of scripture. The Jewish Apocrypha comprise books found in the Septuagint but not in the Hebrew Bible, including 1 and 2 Maccabees and 4 Ezra. • Apostle o Textbook Definition ▪ Generally, one who is commissioned to perform a task, from a Greek word meaning “sent”; in early Christianity the term was used to designate special emissaries of the faith who were understood to be representatives of Christ. • Apostolic Fathers o Textbook Definition ▪ A collection of noncanonical writings penned by proto- orthodox Christians in the second century who were traditionally thought to have been followers of the apostles; some of those works were considered Scripture in the parts of the early church. • Athanasius o Textbook Definition ▪ An influential fourth-century Church Father and bishop of the large and important church in Alexandria, Egypt. Athanasius was the first church writer to list our twenty- seven New Testament books (and only those books) as forming the canon. • B.C.E. o Textbook Definition • Canon ▪ Abbreviation for “before the Common Era”, respectfully used as exact equivalents of the Christian designation “before Christ”. o Textbook Definition ▪ For a Greek word meaning “ruler” or “straight edge”. The term came to designate any recognized collection of texts; the canon of the New Testament is thus the collection of books that Christians accept as authoritative. • C.E. o Textbook Definition ▪ Abbreviation for “common era”, respectfully used as exact equivalents of the Christian designation “anno domini” (A.D. a Latin phrase meaning “year of our Lord”. • Ebionites o Textbook Definition ▪ A group of second-century adoptionalists who maintained who maintained Jewish practices and Jewish forms of worship. • Epistle o Textbook Definition ▪ Another designation for a private letter. Some scholars have differentiated between “epistles” as literary writings in the form of a letter, which are meant or general distribution, rather than for an individual recipient, and “letters”, which nonliterary form of personal correspondence. This differentiation between epistles and letters is not widely held today, however, so that the terms tend to be used synonymously. • Gentile o Textbook Definition ▪ A Jewish designation for a non-Jew. • Gnostics o Textbook Definition ▪ A group of ancient religions, some of them closely tied to Christianity, that maintained the elements of the divine had become entrapped in this evil world of matter and could be released only when they acquired the secret gnosis (Greed for “knowledge”) of who they were and of how they could escape. Gnosis was generally thought to be brought by emissary of the divine realm. • Gospel o Textbook Definition • Heretic ▪ When the word is capitalized, it refers to a literary genre: a written account of the “good news” brought by Jesus Christ, including episodes involving his words and/or deeds. ▪ When the word is not capitalized, it refers not to a book, but to the proclamation of the “good news” (from the Greek word euaggelion) of Christ’s salvation (eg. The gospel of Paul in his message, not a book that he used). o Textbook Definition ▪ A person believing and/or practicing heresy. Heresy is a worldview or set of beliefs deemed by those in power to be deviant, from a Greek word meaning “choice” (because “heretics” have “chosen” to deviate from the “truth”). • Law o Textbook Definition ▪ Translated to Hebrew, law is Torah. The Torah is a Hebrew word also known to be translated to “guidance” or “direction”. As a technical term it designates either the Law of God given to Moses or the first five books of the Jewish Bible that Moses was traditionally though to to have written-Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. • Manuscripts o Textbook Definition ▪ Any handwritten copy of a literary text. • Marcion o Textbook Definition ▪ A second-century Christian scholar and evangelist, later labeled as a heretic for his docetic Christianity and his belief of two Gods-the harsh logistic God of the Jews and the merciful loving God of Jesus-views that he claimed to have found in the writings of Paul. • Nag Hammadi o Textbook Definition ▪ Village in upper (southern) Egypt, near the place where a collection of Gnostic writings were discovered in 1945. • Proto-Orthodox Christians o Textbook Definitions ▪ A form of Christianity endorsed by some Christians of the second and third centuries (including the Apostolic Fathers), which promoted doctrines that were declared “orthodox” in the fourth and later centuries by the victorious Christian party, in opposition to such groups as the Ebionites, the Marcionites, and the Gnostics. • Torah o Textbook Definition ,,,,,................