BETHEL SEMINARY

Glossary for Biblical Studies

allegorize	In Gal. 4, Paul "allegorizes" actual history without denying that history. What the Apostle did, claiming divine inspiration is risky for a modern interpreter.
allegory	a metaphor (representation) turned into a story. Allegory indicates that one thing is the other, as in John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress. Allegory is always in past tense. For example, Judg 9:7-15; Prov. 5:15-23; Isa. 5:1-6.
allegorical method	Seeks meanings in a text beyond the normal, historical sense of the text. Origen provides many examples of this approach to a text.
allomorph	One of the phonological presentations of a morpheme. E.g., the -s in books, the -es in boxes and the -en in oxen are allomorphs of the English plural morpheme.
'am ha'arez	Heb. "people of the land." Until the fall of Jerusalem it referred to the covenant people of Israel. In the post-Exilic period it referred to those who remained in the land and intermarried with foreign peoples (Ezra 10:2, 11; Neh. 10:30-31).
analogy of faith	An approach to interpreting a given text in terms of dogmatic theology on the grounds that Scripture is unified. The risk is that any category of dogmatic theology is larger than what any given text will say about the topic and thus the reader is tempted to "read into" the text more than what it is actually teaching. See analogy of Scripture
analogy of Scripture	An approach to interpreting a given text in light of the progress of revelation. It looks to antecedent texts, previously revealed theology, to inform the text under study. See analogy of faith
ANET	abbr. Ancient Near Eastern Texts ed. by J.B. Pritchard which contains English translation of a large number of primary sources from the historical-geographical context of the Hebrew Bible.
antilegomena	lit. "spoken against." Five canonical texts which later disputed by some rabbis: Song of Songs, Ecclesiastes, Esther, Ezekiel, Proverbs.
antithetic parallelism	Lines of poetry where the second line is antithetical to the first. E.g., "For the LORD knows the way of the righteous,      but the way of the wicked will perish." –Ps 1:6
aphorism	a maxim, proverb; a pithy statement of principle.
apocalyptic	Visionary writing concerning the catastorphic "end of the age " and of the glorious "age to come."
apocrypha	Gk. "hidden; spurious." Non-canonical Hebrew tests translated into Greek Septuagint. Jerome translated the Hebrew Bible into Latin (Vulgate) and distinguished between the "canonical" books of the Palestinian Canon and the "ecclesiastical texts" found in the Alexandrian Canon which he called "Apocrypha."
apodictic law	Unconditional; incontestable law. E.g. "You shall not murder." See casuistic law.
apodosis	The main clause in a conditional sentence that states the result of the condition or supposition stated by the protasis (see below). E.g., If an ox gores a man or a woman to death [protasis], the ox shall surely be stoned and its flesh shall not be eaten [apodosis]. –Ex 21:28
Aquila	Second cent. Christian convert to Judaism translated the Hebrew Bible into Greek c. 140. Aquila's rather literal version was the standard Greek Bible for Jews until the 7th cent.
aspect	Heb. grammar, ref. to notion of verbs as completed/incompleted – perfective/imperfective.
asyndetic	Gk. "not joined." A phrase or clause that lacks an expected coordinating conjunction or particle. E.g., Ex. 15:9-10.
authorial intent	The goal of interpreting by analyzing the terms and expressions the author chose to use and the way he or she put them together to form the literature to convey meaning. An author will determine whether a term should be understood literally or idiomatically / figuratively; to what a term refers. E.D. Hirsch argues convincingly that "meaning is that which is represented by a text; it is what the author meant by his use of a particular sign sequence; it is what the signs represent. Significance, on the other hand, names a relationship between that meaning and a person, or a conception, or a situation, or indeed anything imaginable." [Validity in Interpretation, (New Haven: Yale, 1967), p.8] "The important feature of meaning as distinct from significance is that meaning is the determinate representation of a text for an interpreter.... Significance is meaning-as-related-to-something-else." [The Aims of Interpretation, (Chgo.: Univ. Chgo, 1976) pp79-80]
autograph	Refers to the original manuscript whether penned by a named author, an amanuensis (e.g. Baruch for Jeremiah), or an unamed author. The term is used in discussions of revelation and inspiration.
Babylonian Talmud	The Babylonian Talmud (T. Bavli) is roughly four times larger than the Palestinian Talmud.
B.C.E.	"Before the Common Era" -- p.c. circumlocution for B.C. "Before Christ"
Ben Sirach	A piece of intertestamental wisdom literature (c. 180-175 B.C.) called Sirach, The Wisdom of Jesus ben Sirach or by Christian writers, Ecclesiasticus.
bicolon	A line of poetry containing two clauses. See colon.
binyan	A conjugation of a Hebrew verb, e.g., QAL, NIFAL, PIEL, etc. (lit. "building")
BDB	Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament based on Gesenius' Lexicon edited and updated by Francis Brown, S.R. Driver and Chas. Briggs.
canon	Gk. "standard, rule." The collection books recognized as Scripture and, as such, authoritative for faith and practice. There are indications that this recognition occured as the texts were recorded (Dt 4:2; 12:32; Josh. 1:7-8; 24:25-28; Jer. 26:2; etc.
casuistic law	Case law stating the case and then the consequences, often characterized by the "if...then" construct. E.g., Dt. 22:22
C.E.	"Common Era" -- p.c. circumlocution for A.D. "anno Domini" ("In the Year of the Lord")
chiasm	fr. Gk. letter chi. A rhetorical device with a structure a-b-c-d-c'-b'-a'. It is most common in poetry (e.g., Isa 6:10), although it is used in prose.
codex	pl.: codices. An ancient book with parchment or vellum pages. The book format made intertextual access easier than the scroll.
Codex Alexandrinus	sign: A. 5th cent. MS of the LXX, presently kept at the British Museum.
Codex Sinaiticus	sign: ℵ 4th cent. MS of the LXX discovered at St. Catherine's monastery in the trash in 1859 by Tischendorf. Portions of the MS are housed in the British Museum, St. Petersurg Library, Leipzig University Library and St. Catherine's Monastery.
Codex Vaticanus	sign: B. 4th cent. MS of the LXX, presently housed in the Vatican library
colon	pl.: cola. A line of poetry containing a single clause.
colophon	An inscription at or near the end of a book containing publication information. E.g., Lev. 26:46; Ps. 72:20.
context	fr. Lat. part. "interwoven, connected, united." In many respects, context is "king" in the interpretive process. Taken alone words may have a wide semantic range or be ambiguous. What, e.g., does the word "bear" mean? Context will tell the reader if it is a noun or a verb and indicate its referrent. In interpreting a text literary context, historical context, geographical context all help the reader understand what the author meant to say.
covenant form	Form-critical studies of ANE treaties between a zuzerain (great king/emporer) and vassal (subservient) suggest a typical structure: preamble; historical prologue; stipulations; document provisions (custodial & public reading); witnesses; ratification (incl. blessings & curses). The covenant-treaty form, particularly that found in the 2nd millenium Hittite treaties, is remarkably similar to the form of Deuteronomy and, to a lesser degree, Exodus 20-24. See treaty form
covenant lawsuit	See riv form
critical apparatus	Technical editions of the Hebrew Bible & Greek N.T. contain text-critical footnotes. (See "textual criticism") The Hebrew Bible contains footnotes provided by the Masoretes (see Masoretic text.) as well as evidence supplied by more recent scholars. These notes may also include conjectured alternative readings which lack the benefit of hard evidence.
critical text	The result of an effort to reconstruct what an "original" text may have read based on comparative MS evidence.
cuneiform	System of writing using (alphabetic or syllabic) characters composed of wedge-shaped marking impressed into soft clay or chiselled into stone. Sumerian, Akkadian, Assyrian, Babylonian, Persian and Ugaritic use cuneiform characters.
D	Deuteronomist document or Deuteronomic Code. D refers to the core instructions preserved in Dt. 12-26 which many scholars conclude was the document found by Hilkiah which spurred the revival during Josiah's reign. Some scholars in the 19th-early 20th cent. suggested that the document was composed for the purpose of sparking the Josianic reforms.
daughter translation	A translation of a translation. E.g., a translation of the Hebrew Bible, not from Hebrew but from the Greek LXX into Latin or Coptic. A modern example woudl be the translation of either Testament from English into another language.
Dead Sea Scrolls	DSS. Refers to scrolls and, more often, fragments of scrolls discovered in various caves near the ruins of Khirbet Qumran just off the NW shore of the Dead Sea. These discoveries occurred between 1947 and 1956. The caves gave up texts from every book of the Hebrew Bible with the exception of Esther. The MSS have been dated from c. 250 B.C. to A.D. 68. See "Qumran"
decalogue	Gk. "ten words." appears in the LXX in Ex. 34:28, Dt. 4:13, etc. in reference to the ten instructions given in Ex. 20 and Dt 5.
Deutero-Isaiah	Gk. "second" + Isaiah used to refer to the supposed author of Isaiah 40-66. J. Döderlein published a theory that Isa 40-66 must have been written from Babylonia c. 540 B.C. since it is not rational to conclude that an 8th cent. prophet living in Jerusalem could have forseen the things written about in these chapters. See Trito-Isaiah.
Deuteronomist	The hypothetical sources of the book of Deuteronomy, hence the name, along with the books of Joshua, Judges, Samuel and Kings. Some scholars argue the Deuteronomist was responsible for Jeremiah as well.
diachronic	Gk. "through time. May refer to the evolution of a language over time. Or it may refer to the development of a theme or teaching in the progress of revelation. As applied to the exegetical project, it means to interpret the meaning of a text in the context of meaning that has accumulated through prior texts. Diachronic analysis recognizes that a given biblical author did not speak or write in a theological or conceptual vacuum, but rather in a real context.
discourse	A semantic term referring to units of language larger than a sentence. It looks at speeches, conversations, arguments, etc., paying attention both to form and function.
dittography	A scribal error by which an item (letter, syllable, word, etc.) which should have occurred only once was written twice. E.g., Mediterrannean.
doublet	A tech. term of literary criticism referring to a parallel story that developed out of or parallel to another "original" story and taken to indicate multiple oral traditions or literary sources. E.g., the "wife-sister stories" in Gen 12:10-13; 20:1-18; 26:6-11.
DSS	see Dead Sea Scrolls
eisegesis	Gk. "lead into; introduce into." An approach to interpreting texts by which the reader introduces ideas into the text; reading into a text what one wants to find there. See exegesis.
epistemology	Philosophical investigation of the origin and nature of knowing/knowledge.
eschatology	Theological investigation of "last things."
ethnohermeneutics	deals with the "three horizons" of cross-cultural interpretation: the biblical culture, the interpreter's culture, and the recipient culture. Attentio must be given to not letting the latter two horizons to determine the message of the text.
etymology	Linguistic investigation of the origin & development of a word.
exegesis	Gk. "lead out." An approach to interpreting texts by which ideally the reader engages in critical analysis of the genre, setting and language of the text to draw the author's meaning out of the text.
exposition	The explanation of the meaning of a text and suggestion of the significance of that meaning to contemporary situations. E.g., cp. Ezra 7:10 and Neh. 8:1-8.
extra-canonical	Documents which, although they may have significance, are not received by the faith community as authoritative Scripture. E.g., 1 & 2 Maccabees have great religious and social significance in Second Temple Judaism and on to this day. The Jewish holy days called Hanukkah - "Festival of Lights" find their textual basis in 1&2 Maccabees but these books have never been considered Scripture by the Jewish community.
form criticism	The analytical effort to isolate and study paricular literary types or genres found in a given document.
Former Prophets	A sub-section of the Prophets, the Nevi'im, in the Hebrew Bible composed of Joshua, Judges, Samuel and Kings. Joshua prophetically calls the community to live in light of the covenant and Yahweh's righteous expectations. The following texts include prophets such as Deborah, Elijah, Elisha, Micaiah in their narrative. This section provides a bridge between the Torah and the Latter Prophets.
Gattung	Ger. "form, genre, type."
Gemara	The work of the Amoraim (expositors), some of it is directly related to Mishna, some vaguely related. The Gemara preserves some two to three centuries of Jewish scholarly analysis of the Mishna. See Talmud
genre	A literary "type" distinguished by a variety of features including content, form and style. E.g., legal code (Ex 20:1-17), civil record (Num. 26:4-65), prophetic speech (Jer. 2), lament (Lamentations), etc.
gloss	A definition or explanation. Collected glosses compose a glossary.
hagiographa	The third section of the Hebrew Bible, Tanak, composed of poetry/wisdom books (Psalms, Proverbs, Job), scrolls (megillot = Song of Songs, Ruth, Lamentations, Ecclesiastes, Esther) and historical books (Daniel, Ezra-Nehemiah, Chronicles). See Writings; Kethuvim
halakah	Heb. "walk." Rabbinic literature dealing with daily conduct; the authoritative rabbinic interpretation of the written or oral Torah. Halakah is preserved both as Midrash and Mishna.
hapax legomenon	Gk. "said only once." A word that is found only once in the Hebrew Bible or in the Greek N.T.
haplography	A scribal error by which an item (letter, syllable, word, etc.) which should have occurred twice was written only once. E.g., "buter" is a haplography of "butter."
hendiadys	Gk. "one by two." A figure of speech by which two words (identicle parts of speech) are used to express a single idea. The E.g, Jer. 22:3 "do justice and righteousness" = carry out righteous judgment; Gen. 2:9 "tree of the knowledge of good and evil" = of evil enjoyment.
higher criticism	see lower criticism
homoioarchton	Gk. "similar beginning." A scribal error by which a phrase or line is omitted because the scribes eye picked up a subsequent phrase or line that began similarly.
homoioteleuton	Gk. "similar ending." A scribal error by which a phrase or line is omitted because the scribes eye picked up a subsequent phrase or line that ended similarly.
hymn	Gk. "hymn, ode, praise song."
idiomatic expression	Gk. "peculiarity." Words and phrases with special (peculiar) meaning. "The meaning of the whole is not the meaning of the sum of its parts." (Nida, Exploring, 126) Idiomatic usage generally breaks convention so that the classical rules of grammar and the standard meanings of words are bent. However, idiomatic expressions, unlike most words in the lexicon, have only one meaning.
illocution	What a speaker does when speaking. E.g., instructing, informing, greeting, etc.
inclusio	A literary device to mark off or frame a composition by "bookending" it with identical or parallel expressions. E.g., Ps. 118.
Itala	The Old Latin version ot the Hebrew Bible translated from the LXX c. A.D. 200. (See daughter translation)
Kethuvim	Heb. "writings." The last of the three sections of the Hebrew Bible, the Tanak. The Kethuvim is composed of poetry/wisdom books (Psalms, Proverbs, Job), scrolls (megillot = Song of Songs, Ruth, Lamentations, Ecclesiastes, Esther) and historical books (Daniel, Ezra-Nehemiah, Chronicles). See hagiographa.
lament	A poem composed to express grief and complaint over some perceived calamity which had befallen or was immanent and to appeal to God for deliverance. A subset of lament is the funeral dirge.
Latter Prophets	The classical or writing prophets comprised of Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel and the Book of the Twelve. The Book of the Twelve is composed of the books of the so-called Minor Prophets.
Law	"Law" is a common translation of the Heb. torah. Essentially torah denotes "teaching" or "instruction." The term is used to refer to the "Torah of Moses" (Josh. 8:31) or the "Book of Moses" (Ezra 6:18) as well as to specific teachings within it. The written Torah is sacred scripture to the covenant community of Israel. By the second temple period Torah referred to the whole of the Hebrew Scriptures (E.g., Sirach 24:23; 2 Ezdr 14:21 cp vv.44-46; Jos. Antiq., Pref., pt.3; Jn. 10:34; 1 Cor. 14:21).
legend	Lat. "what is read." As used in biblical form-critical or literary-critical studies it denotes a story about a human hero which highlights some virtue to be emulated. The form-critic may assume that the story is built around a core truth.
lexeme	A minimal piece of language which has a semantic interpretation and encompasses a distinct cultural concept. E.g.,
lexicon	A dictionary. A catalogue of the morphemes of a language.
locution	Utterance, spoken word
LXX	see Septuagint
meaning	In semantics, meaning is composed of reference (denotation) and sense (connotation in context). See authorial intent; significance
Megillah	pl. Megilloth
metanarrative	n. fr. Gk meta, “after, beyond” +narrative, “story or description of events.” In some circles, “metanarrative” is used to refer to a grand, comprehensive story that helps to shape one’s epistemology and provide meaning to one’s experience. The term is problematic, however. For example, Webster’s defines it as “any story told to justify another story, esp., involving artifice. In other circles it refers to stories used to validate social control, thus making them anathema to the post-modern.
metaphor	Gk. "transfer. A figure of speech by which a term is transferred to an object it does not normally denote thereby suggesting a comparison. E.g., Ps 23, "Yahweh is shepherd"; Ps 84:11(12) "Yahweh God is a sun and shield."
Mishna	The Mishna is the codification of oral halakic traditions of pharisaic and rabbinic Judaism. It is comprised of six sedarim (orders) each of which contains a number (7-12) treatises.
modal	Grammatical function expressing a wish, potential or obligation. E.g., Eng. "may, let, might, should, ought, etc."
morpheme	The smallest grammatical piece of language that carries meaning. E.g., unbreakable is composed of three morphemes but four syllables.
MS	abbr. of "manuscript." pl. MSS.
MT	abbr. of "Masoretic Text,"
myth	fr. Gk "speech, narrative." Although in contemporary vernacular "myth" is a synonym for "fairy tale," in the academic discipline of history of religions the term refers to a "real" story about the god or gods in a given culture. M. Eliade argued that "myth is thought to express the absolute truth, because it narrates a sacred history; that is, a transhuman revelation which took place at the dawn of the Great Time, in the holy time of beginnings….Being real and sacred, the myth becomes exemplary, and consequently repeatable, for it serves as a model, and by the same token as a justification, for all human actions" (Myths, Dreams and Mysteries, 23)
Nevi'im	"Prophets," the second section of the Hebrew Bible composed of the Former Prophets (Josh., Judg., Sam., Kings.) and the Latter Prophets (Isa., Jer., Exek., The Twelve).
onomatopoeia	A word which denotes a sound suggested by the phonetics of the word or thing that produces such a sound. E.g., buzz, gong.
paranesis	Discursive moral exhortation.
Palestinian Talmud	Codification of oral tradition at Tiberius in the third and fourth centuries A.D., it came to be called the "Jerusalem Talmud" (T. Yerushalmi)
pericope	Gk. "cut around." A self contained unit if text such as a paragraph of prose or a strophe of poetry.
perlocution	What a speaker accomplishes in speaking. E.g., persuades, entertains, startles, etc.
pesher	Heb. "interpretation" (occurs only in Eccl 8:1). Became a tech. term for "commentary" in the second temple period, e.g., the Qumran Habakkuk Pesher, 1QpHb. By extension, pesher refers to a hermeneutic by which a short passage was cited and then directly, arbitrarily applied, this-is-that, to the contemporary situation. So, e.g., the "righteous" of Hab 1:4 = the leader of the sect, the "Teacher of Righteousness." The "wicked" of 1:4 = the "man of lies" and "wicked priest" who persecuted the sect's founder. The "Chaldeans: of 1:6 = the Romans, etc.
Peshitta	The recognized (late 4th - early 5th cent) Bible of the Syrian church.
phoneme	The smallest contrastive unit of sound in a language
polyglot	Gk. "many tongues." An edition of the Bible in which the parallel texts from multiple languages are presented. The earliest example is the Complutum published in Spain in 1520 containing Heb., Gk. and Lat. versions of the Hebrew Bible and Gk. and Lat. versions of the N.T.
polysemy, polysemous	Having a wide semantic range, many meanings.
protasis	see apodosis
protoevangelium	Gk. "first-goodnews." Refers to the announcement in Gen. 3:15 that although there will be conflict between good and evil, the offspring of the woman would bring victory (crush the head of the serpent) though it would cost the woman's offspring (the enemy would bruise his heel). In that the announcement indicated that God was not abandoning humanity to the power of sin and death but would provide a way to victory, it is "good news."
qinah meter	3+2 pattern so named because of its prevalence in the first three poems of Lamentations (Heb. Qinah). It is possible that the off-beat meter simulates orally a limping gait affected by professional keeners (Jer. 9:17 (16), 20 (19))
Qumran	Khirbet Qumran: monastic village situated at the base of the Judean escarpment just off the NW corner of the Dead Sea. Scrolls of biblical and some other texts were discovered in various caves located in the area.
redaction criticism	The analysis of the development of a document through early, intermediate and on to final form.
riv form	A form of prophetic discourse borrowed from the law court. It is quite similar to the prophetic judgment-speech. See, e.g., Isa. 1; 3; Hos.; Mic. 3
saga	fr. Ger. sage, Nor. saga, "what is said, tale." As used in biblical form-critical or literary-critical studies it denotes a series of legendary stories, usually focussed on one hero. Form-critical scholars refer to Gen. 12-25 as the "Abraham saga."
sensus plenior	Lat. "fuller meaning, deeper meaning" A subjective hermeneutic extrapolated from the dual authorship of Scripture (human and divine) on the assumption that since the divine Author knows more than the human author it is appropriate to derive a "deeper" meaning from the author's words. In fact, it assumes, a text may have meanings intended by God but not intended at all by the human author. In other words, God had a double meaning in mind. One he disclosed to the earlier writer and the second meaning he revealed to a later writer. E.g., Matthew's use (in 2:15) of Hos 11:1.
Septuagint	Lat. "seventy," sign: LXX. The name of the oldest translation of the Torah into Greek. In time the LXX included all of the Heb. Bible as well as the Apocrypha. The LXX (250-150 B.C.) has great value for textual criticism. The earliest mention of the LXX is in a letter from Aristeas to his brother in which he claims the project was undertaken under the commission of pharaoh Ptolemy II who established the Hellenic library at Alexandria.
Shema'	The name applied to the creedal declaration of Dt. 6:4-9; 11:13-21; Num 15:37-41.
shoresh	Heb. "root" used in Heb. grammar to ref. to the most basic, usually tr-literal, verb form
significance	see meaning
simile	Lat. "like." A rather literal figure of speech by which resemblance is explicitly claimed. E.g., Jer. 17:6 "he will be like a bush in the desert."
Sitz-im-Leben	Ger. "psycho-socio-cultural setting" (which is why it is generally left untranslated) The expression is used in biblical studies to refer to typical setting of a literary genre..
source criticism	The analytical effort to identify the various documents used by the final author/editor. The documentary hypothesis is an example of source critism.
speech-act	An act by a speaker delivering a complete unit of talk marked off by silence. A speech act involves a general (illocutionary) act by which the speaker speaks, making reference and predicating (propositional acts-"I nominate...," etc. ) having a specific intention in speaking (illocutionary force) and producing a specific effect upon the hearer (perlocutionary act-persuaded, inspired, etc.). Speech-act theory looks at "saying something" as "doing something."
synecdoche	Fig. of speech using a less inclusive word for a more inclusive one and vice versa. E.g., "Washington" stands for "the U.S." and "Ottawa" stand for "Canada" or "Chicago" stands for the "Bears" or "Edmonton" stands for the "Oilers" and "soul" stands for the whole "person."
Talmud	fr. Heb. "doctrine, teaching." A corpus of doctrine codified from the body of traditional law (halakah) which was transmitted orally in the aftermath of the destruction of Jerusalem and the temple in 586 B.C. The faith community faced new circumstances that called for adapting Torah to these new situations. The Talmud is comprised of the Mishna which teaches Halaka and the Gemara which is a collection of discussions and explanations of the Mishna.
telic	having a purpose or goal
terminus ad quem	Lat. "limit to which." Goal or finish point.
terminus a quo	Lat. "limit from which." Origin or starting point.
theodicy	fr. Gk. "justification of God." First used by Liebnitz (1710), theodicy is concerned to prove the existence of God by appeal to nature and to inquire into God's attributes. In particular, theodicy is concerned with the tension between God's holiness, goodness and justice on the one hand and the presence of evil and suffering in the world on the other hand.
Theodotion	Gk version of the Heb. Bible considered by some to be a revision of the LXX to bring it more into line with the Heb. text.
Torah	Commonly translated as "law." Essentially torah denotes "teaching" or "instruction." The term is used to refer to the "Torah of Moses" (Josh. 8:31) or the "Book of Moses" (Ezra 6:18) as well as to specific teachings within it. The written Torah is sacred scripture to the covenant community of Israel. By the second temple period Torah referred to the whole of the Hebrew Scriptures (E.g., Sirach 24:23; 2 Ezdr 14:21 cp vv.44-46; Jos. Antiq., Pref., pt.3; Jn. 10:34; 1 Cor. 14:21).
tradition criticism	The analysis of the history of oral traditions and their relationship with literature. An approah to the (oral) history of Israel prior to its being written.
transliteration	Converting a text from one alphabet to another.
treaty form	See covenant form
Trito-Isaiah	see Deutero-Isaiah
tropology	fr. Gk. "turn." An archaic hermeneutic that insisted on finding a moral sense behind the literal sense of the text.
typology	fr. Gk. "pattern." Approach to interpretation which sees historical persons, events, or objects in the Hebrew Bible as foreshadowings of persons, events or objects in the N.T. E.g., Exodus event foreshadows baptism (1 Cor. 10:1-6); Adam is a "type" of Jesus (Rom 5:14).
variant	A different reading. It could involve spelling, syntax, word-order, lacunae, etc.
vaticinium ex eventu	Lat. "prophecy after the event." Used in biblical criticism to refer to purported predictions but which in fact was already known. The underlying naturalistic assumption disallows the supernatural. E.g., Isaiah could not have known in the 8th cent. about the Medo-Persian king Cyrus (c. 558-529 B.C.) so, it is argued, this must be a case of vaticinium ex eventu -written in the post-exilic period by someone other than Isaiah of Jerusalem.
verbal inspiration	The claim that Divine inspiration of revelation applies not merely to the concepts but to the very words of Scripture. This is not a claim that every word is a "direct quote" (e.g. "thus says the LORD"). It is a claim that the concept of being "God-breathed" (2 Tim 3:16) applies to the words. That inspiration is claimed for all of Scripture is expressed by the addition of "plenary" to phrase "verbal inspiration."
vorlage	Ger. "model, copy." Used as a technical term to refer to the MS source for a particular copy. E.g., the Hebrew MS Lenigrad B19a, A.D. 1010 is known to be copied from an A.D. 980 vorlage.
Vulgate	Latin revision of the Itala version by Jerome (A.D. 390-404). The Vulgate represents the LXX more closely than the Itala.
wisdom literature	A body of literature found in the several cultures of the ancient Near East which are reflections on life.
Writings	Heb. kethuvim. The third section of the Hebrew Bible, Tanak, composed of poetry/wisdom books (Psalms, Proverbs, Job), scrolls (megillot = Song of Songs, Ruth, Lamentations, Ecclesiastes, Esther) and historical books (Daniel, Ezra-Nehemiah, Chronicles). See hagiographa.
Yahwist	Designation