Assignment

1.How did the Egyptian "Instruction of Amenemopet" influence the Israelite book of Proverbs?

2.What is the role of Satan in Job 1 and 2?

3.Why is Ecclesiastes called skeptical wisdom?

4.What evidence suggests that the book of Psalms is a collection of songs produced over a long period of time?

5.What are the various ways readers might understand the designation Qoheleth?

6.Identify Ptolemies, the Seleucids, Antiochus the Great, and Antiochus Epiphanes.

7.What position concerning Jewish ethnicity does the book of Esther support?

8.Why do some interpreters view the book of Ruth as a response the marriage policies in Ezra and Nehemiah?

9.What were the viewpoints of the universalists and the particularists in post-Exilic Judaism? What conditions gave rise to these opposing views?

10.What are the two major divisions of the book of Daniel?

11How were the Samaritans related to Judaism?

12Why is the Dead Sea Scrolls set identified as an apocalyptic group?

13Why is it not completely accurate to speak of the Apocrypha as extrabiblical literature?

14.Why does the Protestant Old Testament not include the books of the Apocrypha?

15.What do the Dead Sea Scrolls contribute to our knowledge of the Bible and first-century B.C.E. Judaism?