Stephen Ofori Tuffuor WCU ID: 874618 Professor Ayan Gangopadhyay January 27th 2016 Week Two Journal Entry January 27th, today we began reading the classical Greek tragedy Oedipus Rex by Sophocles. This story really has an interesting plot; it unfolds as Oedipus becomes king of Thebes, a king whose hubris and hamartia makes him more ignorant and blind to the truth about his fate the gods had sealed for him. In this pagan and ancient tragedy, the city of Thebes is besieged with a plague, king Oedipus whose entire life is shrouded by darkness seeks the path of light and truth to purge the city he once redeemed from the singing sphinx.…
This paper analyzes a genre known as the “creation myths,” as told by a quartet of eastern Mediterranean cultures. These stories’ share a common outline and contain similar facets; especially, when looking at the mythology that explains the creation and establishment of the human race. The stories examined in this paper include, Sumerian/Babylonian’s When on High “Creation and Marduk” (composed circa 2000 BC), Greek poet Hesiod’s Theogony and the Works and Days (composed circa 700 BC), Judaism and Christianity’s Genesis “Creation” (composed circa 700-400 BC), and Roman poet Ovid’s Metamorphoses (composed circa 43 BC).…
Biblical Story Assignment As Christian story comes to close, it is now time to look back and reflect on all I’ve learned, especially from Bernhard W. Anderson in his book The Unfolding Drama of the Bible. In this book, Anderson explains that the drama occurs in three main acts. Act 1 The Formation of God’s people, Act 2 The Re-formation of God’s people, and Act 3 The transformation of God’s people. For this paper, I have chosen to talk about Act 3 and highlight some key events that take place.…
The civilization of the ancient Hebrews is one of the most fascinating to study, if only due to its longevity in the face of countless trials faced throughout history. Their imagined community, formulated by their religious practices and their devotion to scripture as the center of their beliefs, kept their culture mostly separate from others, allowing them to retain many customs and practices to which they still adhere to this day. The Book of Job in the Hebrew Bible, written circa 580-400 BC, is an excellent indicator of the importance of religious text in their society. It tells the story of a man named Job, the godliest man on earth, of whom God boasts and protects, though Satan, referred to as “the Adversary,” challenges Job’s righteousness,…
Introduction The author, John N. Oswalt, book The Bible Among the Myths begins with the assertion of how unique the Christian-biblical worldview of ancient stories is a myth and that Jesus Christ is not real no more than Zeus or Osiris being real. Oswalt write that there is a lack of understanding about what constitutes a myth, as some people think it is simply a stories that are false. Oswalt also stated that the book primarily because of the changes between the characteristics of Ancient Israelite way of thought was so different from that of their neighbors West Semitic religions, today’s society, that are naive and the unique features of the Old Testament view of reality are thought to be explicable “on the basis of evolutionary change.” As…
Essay Two One could argue that many, if not all, of Corinth's problems stemmed from a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of the resurrection. Discuss how the Corinthians misinterpreted Paul's teachings on the resurrection and how that misunderstanding led to the various problems in that community. One of the big issues was that the people of Corinth did not understand the resurrection. The people of Corinth believed that they were already living as the exalted and they were reaping the benefits because that they already lived better than other generations. The people of Corinth began to think they were above each other and began to fight with each other and divide themselves into groups depending on who taught them about Christianity.…
First Corinthians and Porter, one of the healthiest couples in “Song of Solomon,” are represented differently. They are similar to the sky god Nut and the earth god Geb in ancient egyptian mythology. Geb is generally rendered male, and Nut female. The two gods were in love, and in a constant embrace, this angered their grandfather, the sun god Ra, and he had them separated. Corinthians and Porter fell in love against all odds, “The result was a pair of middle-aged lovers who behaved like teen-agers-afraid to be caught by their parents in a love relationship they were too young for.…
In order to glean from the articles the best knowledge one would need to compare and contrast the author’s perspectives, tone and audience, and Biblical relation. The perspectives of the various authors significantly…
I thoroughly enjoyed reading through all seven chapters of Philip Yancey’s book “The Bible Jesus Read.” It felt as though I was sitting across form the writer just soaking in all he had to say. After reading commentaries and Bible dictionaries, this book gave a fresh perspective on the Old Testament. Yancey was not interested in the nitty gritty details of the Old Testament like date and author of books, but rather focusing on the point and the big picture.…
These two great heroes’ are quite similar to one another by being imperfect heroes, they are different in a cultural sense and both overcome personal transformations. Hebrew and Greek culture greatly differ from one another, but their heroes are almost one in the same. Our heroes aren’t the most perfect specimens they are actually quite flawed; they lie and commit things that question their morals. Although married,…
Snorri’s Prologue in the Prose Edda uses a Christian perspective to examine the violence in God’s creation from a more Christian perspective and uses the Norse viewpoint of that same violence and creation in the Gylfaginning, making religion and beliefs tangible. Specifically, the Prologue gives its readers the underlying understanding to the creation stories by using Snorri’s Christian background and Biblical stories and the Gylfaginning offers a look on how the observations of nature created the Norse’s beliefs and beginnings. Snorri also provides his reader’s with the foundation of Christian beliefs as a way to create a way to recognize the relationship between Christianity and the Norse cosmology Snorri’s Prologue explains the Norse had…
History The place of Corinth has a reputation for corruption in every way. The Apostle Paul wrote extensive and detailed letters to correct the church he founded. Corinth was a small territory and capital of Greece, by the gulf of Saron and the upper part of the isthmus and bay of Corinth. Corinth had rich (but uneven) plains, and the soil of an indifferent quality. It was a place of trade and was a bridge place of two seas; therefore, making trade and imports heavy within the area.…
Throughout many artistic works we see the good suffer, and in the Iliad by Homer and The Book of Job in the Bible, the suffering of the good is a prominent theme. These literary works are similar in the way they present the suffering of the good, but they are also very different in how the good cope with their troubles. The Iliad uses divine intervention and fate to exemplify how the good suffer, whereas The Book of Job uses divine influence and God’s will to illustrate suffering. Similarly, the Greek gods (the Iliad) and God (The Book of Job) have different conducts in helping the good cope with their distress. Although both the Iliad and The Book of Job explore the same idea of the suffering of the good, those who suffer in these stories…
The portrayal of the Greek gods in Riordan’s series examined in this essay as compared to the Greek myths is reasonably accurate. Riordan does not make many changes in his portrayal of the Greek gods, choosing to only alter the physical appearance of the gods to keep them in line with the idea of ancient gods coexisting in the modern world and he otherwise makes minimal changes to their actual personalities. Riordan chose not to make any outright changes to the gods’ personalities, instead choosing to emphasize certain elements of their personalities from the myths. Due to the fact that Riordan only made a few changes to the gods in his series, there would not be that great of an impact if his portrayal of the gods were altered to better match…
While one observes the background of believers in Corinth and the key verse of 1 Corinthians (1:10), it is vivid that there was division among the believers. There was division concerning to leadership (1:12), moral standards (5:1-8), between people who have knowledge and weak, higher class members and lower class members, rich and poor, accusers and accused (6:1-8) and so on. One of the controversial, cultural, ethical and the religious issues which brought division among the believers was the issue of food which was sacrificed to idols. Regarding to eat idol meat in 1 Corinthian 8:1-11:1, there are different views among the scholars. Some scholars say that Paul had given permission for Christians to eat idol meat in their private houses.…