For the Discussion Boards, and other writing assignments, you will focus your analysis on primary sources, to which you have already been introduced. When you are reading a primary source, there are a few basic questions you need to ask:
What kind of document is it?
Who wrote it, for whom, and why?
Where and when was it composed?
Knowing the answers to these questions will help you put the source in its proper historical context, and to get a better sense of the author’s bias (which is a sometimes unfair, but usually unexamined prejudice, predisposition, or sensibility, usually in favor or against a thing, person, group, or idea. You might have to “read between the lines” to get at someone’s bias.
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Important: These sources will be the focus of your DB posts, with other sources (textbook, videos, etc.) providing the historical context.
For this Discussion Board, You will read two excerpts from the Hebrew Bible (the Tanakh), known by Christians as the Old Testament, to see what they reveal about developments in the Jewish religion within the historical context.
The first excerpt from the Book of Jeremiah, Chapter 7, written some time in the 7th or 6th century BCE (when). Jeremiah, one of the major prophets of the Hebrew Bible (who), is condemning the people of Israel (for whom and where it was written) for their sins, warning them that catastrophe would befall them (and sure enough, the Babylonia Captivity occurred at around the time this Old Testament book was written). This is a time when Hebrew culture is endangered and needs to be defended by the righteous (why it was composed).
The second excerpt is from the second half of the Book of Isaiah, Chapter 45. The first part of the book is attributed to the prophet Isaiah, who lived in eighth-century Kingdom of Judah. The second half of this book was written sometime after Persian Emperor Cyrus the Great has liberated the Jews from the Babylonian Captivity to rebuild the temple in Jerusalem. It is probable this second half was written by the priests who oversaw the reconstruction of the temple in Jerusalem and assumed a leadership role in the Province of Judah, under the control of the Persian Empire.=
Write one paragraph, approximately 4-6 sentences long, in which you answer the following question: Why do you think the second excerpt form Isaiah seems to exude so much more confidence than the excerpt from Jeremiah, possibly written about two hundred years previously?
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