Belief
Practice
Community (and what defines community?)
What is permeable or negotiable?
What is the relationship between religion and culture?
Changes beginning with the Babylonian Exile
Ethnic group → Ethnic group
Sovereign nation → political subjects
Geographically unified → diaspora
National culture → minority religion
Everything is absolutely true, God wrote every word
The Bible is a reliable guide in matters of faith and morals, God inspired the main ideas, human authors and editors chose the words (Catholic view)
The Bible is an important and influential human literary achievement, but no more inspired than other great works of literature
Beyond the textbook, which picks up from the existence of the tribes and nation of Israel
The Israelites told stories of their origins from one family (Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob), slavery in Egypt, Exodus to Mount Sinai, and conquest of the land of Canaan
Legend, not history in the modern sense of the word
Scholars today believe that Israelite identity emerged gradually out of Canaanite society