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The Bible is a collection of religious texts or scriptures, some, all, or a variant of which are held to be sacred in Christianity, Judaism, Samaritanism, Islam, the Baha'i Faith, and other Abrahamic religions. The Bible is an anthology originally written in Hebrew, Aramaic, and Koine Greek. These texts include instructions, stories, poetry, and prophecies, among other genres. The collection of materials that are accepted as part of the Bible by a particular religious tradition or community is called a biblical canon. Believers in the Bible generally consider it to be a product of divine inspiration, but the way they understand what that means and interpret the text varies.
The King James Version (KJV), also the King James Bible (KJB) and the Authorized Version (AV), is an Early Modern English translation of the Christian Bible for the Church of England, which was commissioned in 1604 and published in 1611, by sponsorship of King James VI and I. The 80 books of the King James Version include 39 books of the Old Testament, 14 books of Apocrypha, and the 27 books of the New Testament.
The Old Testament (OT) is the first division of the Christian biblical canon, which is based primarily upon the 24 books of the Hebrew Bible, or Tanakh, a collection of ancient religious Hebrew and occasionally Aramaic writings by the Israelites. The second division of Christian Bibles is the New Testament, written in Koine Greek.
The Oxfordian theory of Shakespeare authorship contends that Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford, wrote the plays and poems of William Shakespeare. While historians and literary scholars overwhelmingly reject alternative authorship candidates, including Oxford, public interest in the Oxfordian theory continues. Since the 1920s, the Oxfordian theory has been the most popular alternative Shakespeare authorship theory.
William Tyndale was an English biblical scholar and linguist who became a leading figure in the Protestant Reformation in the years leading up to his execution. He is well known as a translator of most of the Bible into English, and was influenced by the works of prominent Protestant Reformers such as Martin Luther.
The Geneva Bible is one of the most historically significant translations of the Bible into English, preceding the King James Version by 51 years. It was the primary Bible of 16th-century English Protestantism and was used by William Shakespeare, Oliver Cromwell, John Knox, John Donne and others. It was one of the Bibles taken to America on the Mayflower, and its frontispiece inspired Benjamin Franklin's design for the first Great Seal of the United States.
A sermon is a religious discourse or oration by a preacher, usually a member of clergy. Sermons address a scriptural, theological, or moral topic, usually expounding on a type of belief, law, or behavior within both past and present contexts. Elements of the sermon often include exposition, exhortation, and practical application. The act of delivering a sermon is called preaching. In secular usage, the word sermon may refer, often disparagingly, to a lecture on morals.
Partial Bible translations into languages of the English people can be traced back to the late 7th century, including translations into Old and Middle English. More than 100 complete translations into English have been produced. A number of translations have been prepared of parts of the Bible, some deliberately limited to certain books and some projects that have been abandoned before the planned completion.
The Book of Judith is a deuterocanonical book included in the Septuagint and the Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Christian Old Testament of the Bible but excluded from the Hebrew canon and assigned by Protestants to the apocrypha. It tells of a Jewish widow, Judith, who uses her beauty and charm to kill an Assyrian general who has besieged her city, Bethulia. With this act, she saves nearby Jerusalem from total destruction. The name Judith, meaning "praised" or "Jewess", is the feminine form of Judah.
The Douay–Rheims Bible, also known as the Douay–Rheims Version, Rheims–Douai Bible or Douai Bible, and abbreviated as D–R, DRB, and DRV, is a translation of the Bible from the Latin Vulgate into English made by members of the English College, Douai, in the service of the Catholic Church. The New Testament portion was published in Reims, France, in 1582, in one volume with extensive commentary and notes. The Old Testament portion was published in two volumes twenty-seven years later in 1609 and 1610 by the University of Douai. The first volume, covering Genesis to Job, was published in 1609; the second, covering the Book of Psalms to 2 Maccabees plus the three apocryphal books of the Vulgate appendix following the Old Testament, was published in 1610. Marginal notes took up the bulk of the volumes and offered insights on issues of translation, and on the Hebrew and Greek source texts of the Vulgate.
Early Modern English Bible translations are those translations of the Bible which were made between about 1500 and 1800, the period of Early Modern English. This was the first major period of Bible translation into the English language including the King James Version and Douai Bibles. The Reformation and Counter-Reformation led to the need for Bibles in the vernacular with competing groups each producing their own versions.
Wycliffe's Bible or Wycliffite Bibles or Wycliffian Bibles (WYC) are names given for a sequence of Middle English Bible translations believed to have been made under the direction or instigation of English theologian John Wycliffe of the University of Oxford. They are the earliest known literal translations of the entire Bible into English. They appeared over a period from approximately 1382 to 1395.
Sonnet 29 is one of 154 sonnets written by the English playwright and poet William Shakespeare. It is part of the Fair Youth sequence. In the sonnet, the speaker bemoans his status as an outcast and failure but feels better upon thinking of his beloved. Sonnet 29 is written in the typical Shakespearean sonnet form, having 14 lines of iambic pentameter ending in a rhymed couplet.
The Tyndale Bible (TYN) generally refers to the body of biblical translations by William Tyndale into Early Modern English, made c. 1522–1535. Tyndale's biblical text is credited with being the first Anglophone Biblical translation to work directly from Hebrew and Greek texts, although it relied heavily upon the Latin Vulgate and Luther's German New Testament. Furthermore, it was the first English biblical translation that was mass-produced as a result of new advances in the art of printing.
The religious views of William Shakespeare are the subject of an ongoing scholarly debate dating back more than 150 years. The general assumption about William Shakespeare's religious affiliation is that he was a conforming member of the established Church of England. However, many scholars have speculated about his personal religious beliefs, based on analysis of the historical record and of his published work, with claims that Shakespeare's family may have had Catholic sympathies and that he himself was a secret Catholic.
The Dark Lady Players is a New York-based Shakespeare company who perform what they regard as the religious allegories in the Shakespearean plays. In 2007, they performed an allegorical production of A Midsummer Night's Dream at the Abingdon Theater in New York. In 2008, they performed As You Like It: The Big Flush, directed by Stephen Wisker, at the Midtown International Theatre Festival with an entirely female cast interspersing Shakespeare's As You Like It with "cultural and literary references" believed to be included by Emilia Bassano Lanier. On December 15, 2009, they produced a festival at Manhattan Theater Source of short plays written about Lanier by nine New York City playwrights. In September 2011, they presented "nine scenes from Shakespeare, divided into three thematic groups and casts" in the West-Park Presbyterian Church in Upper West Side.
Father Peter Milward, SJ was a Jesuit priest and literary scholar. He was emeritus professor of English Literature at Sophia University in Tokyo and a leading figure in scholarship on English Renaissance literature. He was chair of the Renaissance Institute at Sophia University from its inception in 1974 until it was closed down in 2014 and director of the Renaissance Centre from its start in 1984 until it was closed down in 2002. He primarily published on the works of William Shakespeare and Gerard Manley Hopkins.
A biblical canon is a set of texts which a particular Jewish or Christian religious community regards as part of the Bible.
Roger A. Stritmatter is a Professor of Humanities at Coppin State University and the former general editor of Brief Chronicles, a delayed open access journal covering the Shakespeare authorship question from 2009 to 2016, now the Brief Chronicles Book series (2019-present). He was a founder of the modern Shakespeare Fellowship, an organization that promotes Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford, as the true author of the works of William Shakespeare. He is one of the leading modern-day advocates of the Oxfordian theory of Shakespeare authorship, and has been called the “first professional Oxfordian scholar”.
Naseeb Azeez Shaheen was an American scholar who specialized in Biblical allusions in the work of Shakespeare.
References
- ↑ Shaheen, Naseeb (2011) [1999]. Biblical References in Shakespeare's Plays. Newark: University of Delaware Press. p. 90.
- ↑ Battenhouse, Roy (1986). "Shakespeare's Augustinian Artistry". In Roy Battenhouse (ed.). Shakespeare's Christian Dimension: An Anthology of Commentary. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994.
- ↑ Milward, Peter (1973). Shakespeare's Religious Background . Chicago: Loyola University Press. p. 102. ISBN 9780253352002.
- ↑ Milward, Peter (1987). Biblical Influences in Shakespeare's Great Tragedies. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. p. 207.
- ↑ Marx, Steven (2000). Shakespeare and the Bible, Oxford University Press, p. 13
- ↑ Marx, Steven (2000). Shakespeare and the Bible, Oxford University Press, pp. 12–13
- ↑ DeCook, Travis and Alan Galey, eds. Shakespeare, the Bible, and the Form of the Book. New York: Routledge (2011) p. 9.
- ↑ Shaheen, Naseeb (1999, 2011). Biblical References in Shakespeare's Plays, Newark: University of Delaware Press, p. 301.
- ↑ Shaheen, Naseeb (1999, 2011). Biblical References in Shakespeare's Plays, Newark: University of Delaware Press, pp. 324, 328–9.
- ↑ Shaheen, Naseeb (1999, 2011). Biblical References in Shakespeare's Plays, Newark: University of Delaware Press, p. 449.
- ↑ Shaheen, Naseeb (1999, 2011). Biblical References in Shakespeare's Plays, Newark: University of Delaware Press, p. 644.
- ↑ Shaheen, Naseeb (1999, 2011). Biblical References in Shakespeare's Plays, Newark: University of Delaware Press, pp. 670, 671.
- ↑ Burnet, R. A. L. (April 1979). "Shakespeare and the Marginalia of the Geneva Bible," Notes and Queries 26(2), p. 113.
- ↑ Beauregard, David. "Shakespeare and the Rheims New Testament (1582): Old Claims and New Evidence" Renascence XLVII.2 (2015), 107-26.
