Guided Reading for The Western Traditions.

Find the answer to each of these questions as it is given in the textbook before moving on to the next question. Some answers, drawn from the textbook alone, will be rather simplistic. They can, and should, be elaborated upon as your knowledge of the subject grows.

The symbol (*) after a question indicates that these might be used for longer essays in your quizzes.

Pages 33 - 43:

  1. What does it mean to claim that "Judaism is a quintessentially historical religion?" (*)

    2.  

  2. What does Bar (and Bat) Mitzvah mean?

    3.  

  3. What is the minyan?

    4.  

  4. What is the tallith?

    5.  

  5. What is the Torah?

    6.  

  6. In what way does Segal suggest that Jews are different from anyone else?

    7.  

  7. What did the Jewish people give to both Christianity and Islam?

    8.  

  8. Is it possible to be Jewish without participating in the religious tradition?

    9.  

  9. Is Judaism a racial or biological class?

    10.  

  10. How many Jews are there in the world today?

    11.  

  11. How many Jews are there in the Americas?

    12.  

  12. How many Jews are there in Asia?

    13.  

  13. How many Jews are there in Europe?

    14.  

  14. What are the three major groupings of Judaism in the US? (*)

    15.  

  15. On what are the major divisions within Judaism based? (*)

    16.  

  16. How does this differ from Christianity? (*)

    17.  

  17. How does the liberal wing of Judaism differ from the traditional in their attitude to the biblical text? (*)

    18.  

  18. What do BCE and CE stand for?

    19.  

  19. About when do the narratives of ancient Israel "come into focus" as historical accounts? Why is this? (*)

    20.  

  20. Why might the author of Isaiah have needed to emphasize that God is the creator of both light and darkness?

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  21. How does modern biblical scholarship take contradictory details in the text?

    22.  

  22. About what does the Genesis narrative of Adam and Eve purport to tell us?

    23.  

  23. What does an "etiological" narrative offer? Give an example.

    24.  

  24. There is a discrepancy between Segal’s sections "Creation in Genesis" and "Myth and the Israelite Narratives." What is this?

    25.  

  25. What occurs with the call of Abraham in Genesis with respect to the downward fall of humanity?

    26.  

  26. What is the relationship of the primeval history of Israel and the major action of the Hebrew Bible?

    27.  

  27. How did Israelite culture "demythologize nature?"

    28.  

  28. What evidence is there outside of the Bible for the existence of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, and Moses?

    29.  

  29. From where did Abraham first move? Where did he go?

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  30. What does the story of Abraham’s near-sacrifice of Isaac do?

    31.  

  31. What is a "covenant?"

    32.  

  32. What was promised to the Israelites? In return for what?

    33.  

  33. What do biblical accounts of the patriarchal covenants express?

 

Additional Notes: