The Cradle, the Cross, and the Crown (210 page)

John Wycliffe (1330-1384):
produced an English translation of the Bible from the Lat. Vulgate (s.v.)

Josephus (AD 37—100):
Jewish historian; author of
Jewish Wars, Jewish Antiquities
, and
Against Apion

Judaizers:
first-century Jewish movement that wanted to require Gentiles to submit to circumcision as a condition for allowing them into the Christian church (see especially the book of Galatians)

Julian calendar:
a reform of the Roman calendar implemented by Julius Caesar (hence the name “Julian”) in 45 BC; the Julian calendar has now largely been replaced by the Gregorian calendar

Julius Africanus:
early third-century AD Christian traveler and historian who wrote a history of the world

Justin Martyr (c. AD 100-165):
early Christian apologist; best known for his works
Dialogue with Trypho
and
First Apology

Juvenal:
late first- and early second-century AD Roman poet; author of the
Satires

Kabiros:
ancient Greek god

kerygma
, the:
Gk. term used in a technical sense for the core content of NT preaching

King James Version (KJV):
Bible published in 1611; also known as the Authorized Version (AV)

lacuna
(pl.
lacunae):
gap in a manuscript, inscription, or text

Lapis Tiburtinus Inscription:
a first-century tombstone found in the eighteenth century recording the career of a distinguished Roman official, possibly Quirinius

Latinism:
a Latin term or phrase

Law:
God-given requirements for Israel centered on the Decalogue (the Ten Commandments); the code given through Moses at Mount Sinai

legalism:
a pejorative term denoting the improper fixation on laws or codes of conduct

Leningrad Codex:
OT manuscript (AD 916)

lex talionis:
the OT principle of “eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth” (see Exod 21:22—25)

libertinism:
indulgence of bodily passions, involving immoral behavior

lingua franca:
universal language

literary integrity:
authorship of a given piece of writing by one author, denoting its authenticity, cohesion, and coherence

litotes:
affirming a truth by denying its opposite (e.g., Rom 1:16: “I am not ashamed of the gospel,” indicating that Paul is proud of the gospel; cf. John 6:37)

logion
(plural
Logia):
saying or oracle

logos:
Gk.
logos
(“word”), the designation for the preexistent Lord Jesus Christ in John 1:1,14 in keeping with passages such as Isa 55:11—12

Lord's Prayer, the:
s.v. Model Prayer

Lost Gospels:
general reference to apocryphal Gospels, that is, Gospels falsely attributed to an apostle or another figure mentioned in the NT (such as Mary Magdalene) that were written subsequent to the apostolic era; while referred to as “Lost Gospels,” most of these documents are actually extant, though often in late copies and often fragmentary (s.v. also Gospel of Mary, Peter, Thomas, etc.)

Lucian of Samosata:
second-century AD satirist writing in Greek; author of
The Passing of Peregrinus

LXX:
s.v. Septuagint

Maccabean martyrs:
Jews who lost their lives during the Maccabean uprising against the Seleucids in the second century BC (see 2 Maccabees)

Maccabees:
a Jewish family that led the second-century BC revolt against the Seleucids issuing in a period of Jewish independence

“man of lawlessness”:
the Antichrist (see 2 Thess 2:1—12)

manuscript
(ms.; pl. mss.): anything written by hand (a text or document)

manuscript tradition:
history of the transmission of (biblical) manuscripts

Marcion of Sinope (died c. AD 160):
heretic best known for his truncated canon of the NT consisting of an edited version of Luke's Gospel and 10 letters of Paul (he rejected the Pastoral Epistles)

Mar Saba manuscript:
a forged epistle attributed to Clement of Alexandria and “discovered” by Morton Smith in 1958, containing the only known references to the Secret Gospel of Mark

Markan priority:
the view that Mark wrote first and was used by the other two Synoptic writers (Matthew and Luke)

Masoretes:
Jewish scribes responsible for the preservation of the OT text

Masoretic text (MT):
s.v. Masoretes

Matthean priority:
the view that Matthew was the first among the Synoptic Gospel writers to write his Gospel and that Mark and Luke used Matthew

Matthew's Bible:
translation of the entire Bible in the wake of John Wycliffe's translation and produced under the pseudonym “Thomas Matthew” in 1537

Melito of Sardis (died c. AD 190):
bishop of Sardis near Smyrna in Asia Minor

merkabah
mysticism:
from Hb.
merkabah
(“chariot,” see Ezek 1:4—26); an ancient Jewish tradition of interpretation that holds that the biblical images of God are analogies for the basic ways in which God reveals himself in the world

Messiah:
from Hb.
meshshiach
(“anointed”); promised deliverer sent by God to save his people; identified in the NT as the Lord Jesus Christ (e.g., John 20:30-31)

messianic secret:
term conventionally used to describe Jesus' reluctance to identify himself publicly as the Messiah, possibly due to the prevailing misunderstanding associated with the term (at least in part)

Middle Ages:
period of time commonly dated from the fall of the Western Roman Empire in the fifth century AD to the rise of nation states and the Christian Reformation in the sixteenth century

Middle Platonism:
a set of philosophical tenets associated with Plato that developed from c. 130 BC until the late second century AD

midrash:
ancient Jewish commentary, including interpretation of selected passages of Scripture, with a view toward pointing out their contemporary relevance

millennium:
thousand-year reign of Christ (see Revelation 20)

minuscules:
ancient manuscripts written in small cursive-like script

Mishnah:
collection of Jewish rabbinic traditions compiled c. AD 200

Model Prayer:
also called “The Lord's Prayer” (see Matt 6:9-11; Luke
11:24)

Monarchian Prologues:
short introductions prefixed in many Vulgate (s.v.) mss. to the four Gospels, probably written in the fourth or fifth century AD

monism:
philosophical view positing one underlying unifying principle, blurring the distinction between the Creator and the created universe

monotheism:
belief in one God characteristic of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam

Montanism:
mid-second century AD sect named after its founder, Montanus, who claimed to have received a series of special divine revelations and who claimed to be the
Paraclete
mentioned in John's Gospel ms(s).: abbreviation for manuscript(s)

Muratorian Canon:
an early canonical list probably dating to the later second century AD

mystery religions:
Greco-Roman cults conceiving of religion primarily in terms of mystical union with the divine

mysticism:
various approaches to spirituality focusing on human union with the divine, as in
merkabah
mysticism (s.v.) or mystery religions (s.v.)

myth:
sacred story, particularly of human origins, that is of human fabrication rather than being rooted in actual history

Nag Hammadi Library:
collection of gnostic writings found in Nag Hammadi in Upper Egypt in 1945

narratio:
presentation of essential facts explaining the nature of a matter

narrative criticism:
study of the literary aspects of a given piece of narrative writing (e.g., the canonical Gospels)

Nazarene:
an inhabitant of Nazareth, the town where Jesus was raised; hence Jesus was called a “Nazarene” in fulfillment of prophecy (Matt 2:23)

Nero:
Roman emperor (AD 54-68); responsible for the fire of Rome (AD
64)
and the martyrdom of many Christians, including the apostles Peter and Paul (AD 65 or 66)

“Nero
redivivus
myth”:
the belief that the Roman emperor Nero had not actually died but was going to return to Rome with the Parthian army (a.k.a. Nero
redux)

New American Bible (NAB):
Bible translation published in 1966

New American Standard Bible (NASB):
Bible translation published in 1970

New Century Version (NCV):
Bible translation published in 1987

New English Bible (NEB):
Bible translation published in 1966

New International Version (NIV):
Bible translation published in 1978

New King James Version (NKJV):
revision of the King James Version published in 1982

New Living Translation (NLT):
revision of the Living Bible (a paraphrase) published in 1996

New Perspective, the:
challenge to the traditional view of Paul as opposing Jewish legalism in his day first articulated by E. P. Sanders in
Paul and Palestinian Judaism

New Revised Standard Version (NRSV):
revision of the Revised Standard Version published in 1989

New Testament Apocrypha:
s.v. NT Apocrypha

nomina sacra:
standardized abbreviations for the names of God in early Christian manuscripts, typically consisting of the first and the last letter of a given name with a horizontal bar over the abbreviation (e.g.,
ΘΣ
for
Θεος
, “God”)

nomism:
term coined by E. P Sanders referring to Jewish adherence to the Law
(nomos)
as the path of righteousness; s.v. also covenantal nomism

NT Apocrypha:
various writings produced during the subapostolic period (s.v.) that imitate the canonical Gospels, Acts, Epistles, and Revelation (e.g., the Gospel of Thomas, the Acts of Thecla, or the Apocalypse of Peter)

Old Testament Apocrypha:
s.v. OT Apocrypha

Olivet Discourse:
Jesus' teaching on the end time recorded in Matthew 24—25 with parallels in Mark 13 and Luke 21

oracle:
vision

ordinance:
church observance commanded by Christ, in particular baptism (Matt 28:18-20) and the Lord's Supper (1 Cor 11:23-26; see Matt 26:26-30 and parallels)

Origen (c. AD 185-c. 254):
early church father, noted scholar, and member of the Alexandrian school of interpretation

Orosius (c. AD 385—420):
disciple of Augustine best known for his
Seven Books of History against the Romans

orthodoxy:
conformity of a given document with apostolic teaching (see Acts 2:42)

orthopraxy:
right practice (s.v. also orthodoxy)

Ostian Way:
a famous road that connected Rome with the port city of Ostia; traditional site of Paul's tomb

ostraca:
potsherds with inscriptions

OT Apocrypha:
body of literature included in the canon by Roman Catholics but not Protestants; contains 1 and 2 Esdras, Tobit, Judith, Additions to Esther, Wisdom of Solomon, Sirach, Baruch, Letter of Jeremiah, Prayer of Azariah and the Song of the Three Young Men, Susanna, Bel and the Dragon, Prayer of Manasseh, 1 and 2 Maccabees

Otho:
Roman emperor during part of AD 68

overseer:
church office designated by the word
episkopos
(e.g., 1 Tim 3:2), a NT term used synonymously with
presbyteros
(“elder”; see Titus 1:5,7) and
poimēn
(“shepherd” or “pastor”; see Eph 4:11)

Oxyrhynchus papyri:
artifacts found at an archeological site in Egypt where a large collection of ancient papyri was discovered, including fragments of several Christian texts

paganism:
a variety of animistic or other non-Christian religious beliefs and practices

Pantaenus:
a Christian theologian from Alexandria (died c. AD 190) mentioned by Eusebius

Papias of Hierapolis (c. AD 60—130):
church father whose
Expositions of the Lord's Sayings
are cited by Eusebius (s.v.) in his
Ecclesiastical History

papyrus:
ancient writing material or scroll on which some of the earliest NT manuscripts are found (e.g., P
⁵²
, a fragment of John's Gospel dating to c. AD 125)

Paraclete:
from Gk.
paraklētos;
Jesus' title for the Holy Spirit (“Counselor,” John 14:16, 26; 15:26; 16:7); John used it for Jesus Christ (“advocate,” 1 John 2:1)

paraenesis:
exhortation

parallelomania:
the almost compulsive tendency to find parallels even where such are not present

parataxis:
the juxtaposition of two phrases

parchment:
ancient scroll made from animal skins (s.v. vellum)

paronomasia:
from Gk.
para
(“beside”) and
onoma
(“name”); play on words exploiting confusion between similar-sounding words

parousia:
from
Gk.parousia
(“presence”); technical term for Jesus' second coming

partitio:
in Greek rhetoric, section following the
narratio
(s.v.) that outlines what will follow

passion narrative:
account of events surrounding Jesus' crucifixion in the four Gospels

passion, the:
the events surrounding Jesus' crucifixion

Passover:
Jewish religious festival instituted on the eve of Israel's exodus from Egypt (see Exodus 12)

Pastoral Epistles:
conventional designation for Paul's letters to Timothy and Titus (1-2 Timothy, Titus)

Patmos, Isle of:
place of exile where the apostle John received the visions recorded in the book of Revelation (see Rev 1:9)