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No doubt several, from time to time, have charismatic leaders long remembered by their descendants. Many tribes move with their flocks among the settled cities of Mesopotamia and Phoenicia. The story has him moving through Mesopotamia (from Ur to Harran) and then down into Canaan – a land which, God promises, his descendants will inherit. In Genesis Abraham is the patriarch of a nomadic tribe. With the entry of Abraham, Genesis reaches the story of the Bible’s own people, the Hebrews. Genesis, the first book of the Torah, begins with a resolutely monotheistic story of the creation and goes on to provide a series of myths which can be echoed in other religions – the fall of man into a state of sin through disobedience (Adam and Eve eating the apple), a great flood which sweeps away the whole of sinful mankind except for one small group of survivors (Noah and his family), and the emergence of different languages (God’s punishment for man’s presumption in building the mighty tower of Babel, which almost reaches to heaven). In non-Jewish sources these books are sometimes called the Pentateuch (‘five scrolls’ in Greek, from a translation done in Alexandria). The holiest part of the Bible for Jews is the first five books, known as the Torah (‘instruction’ or ‘law’ in Hebrew). It is thought that some of the events described may go back as far as the 18th century BC. But in many parts the scribes are writing down a much older oral tradition.

The books of the Jewish Bible are believed to have been written over several centuries, beginning in the 10th century BC – by which time the Hebrews are settled in Canaan, or Palestine. Yet in the Bible the early Jews and Christians provide an account of themselves which is unparalleled, among religious groups of those times, in its wealth of detail. The conventional sources of historical evidence (archaeological remains, written documents) provide few traces of the Old Testament story and none at all of the events described in the New Testament. In doing so it also explains their beliefs. In each case it brings together a group of documents to tell the story of the founders and early followers of the religion. The Bible (from biblos, Greek for ‘book’) is the basis of two great religions, Judaism in the Old Testament and Christianity in the New Testament.

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