Glossary

Documentary Hypothesis

A theory about the text of the first five books of the Bible that states that these books were assembled from multiple earlier sources.

Itacism

In Koine Greek [certain vowels and diphthongs] came to be pronounced all alike, all of the them sounding like ee in English 'feet'. It is not surprising that one of the commonest kinds of scribal confusion involves the substitution of these seven vowels and diphthongs for one another. This kind of error, which is commonly called itacism, accounts for several extremely odd mistakes present in otherwise good manuscripts.

Jesus Seminar

The Jesus Seminar is a group of Jesus scholars who meet to discuss aspects of the historical Jesus. Their most well-known work is The Five Gospels which is a translation of the Gospels (plus the Gospel of Thomas) which is color coded to indicate their conclusions as to how confident they are that the text is authentically from Jesus.

Miniscule

A Greek manuscript written in what we would call "lower case" script. Earlier manuscript were in all capital letters.

Moffatt Translation

A New Translation of the Bible Containing the Old and New Testaments by James Moffatt, Harper and Row Publishers, 1935. The Moffatt translation illustrates the Documentary Hypothesis by marking sections of the text as to source.

NRSV

New Revised Standard Version. This is a translation of the Bible copyright The National Council of Churches of Christ in the U. S. A. This translation is used by many churches for instruction and in public reading. Citations from the NSRV on this web site used by Permission.

Synoptic Gospels

Synoptic comes from the Greek meaning "same eye". It refers to the New Testament gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke which all have a similar view.

Synoptic Problem

The "synoptic problem" deals with the explanation of why the three Synoptic Gospels are similar in some respects and different in others.

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