This chapter centres on Edward Banister, an Elizabethanscribe and recusant Catholic who used printed booksas the exemplars for his early modern manuscripts ofMiddle English romance. Banister’s manuscripts,which include copies of Sir Degore, Sir Eglamour,Sir Isumbras, The Jest of Sir Gawain and Robert theDevil, have received little critical attention, andsince the identification of the scribe in 1978,questions about how Banister’s biography andCatholic identity relate to his romance manuscriptshave yet to be asked. This chapter, thus,interrogates the connections between the scribe’srecusant identity and his interest in the romancegenre and manuscript medium. The metaphor of the‘collage’ allows us to more fully comprehend theinterplay of time and technology, creation anddestruction in Banister’s history and manuscripts.We see technological collage in the ways Banistercombines the aesthetics of print and manuscript, andwe see cultural collage when we consider Banister’sposition as a practising Catholic in the midst of achanging religious world.

This chapter centres the metaphor of the ‘museum’ toexplore one of the most popular Middle Englishromances to persist across the Reformation divide:Guy of Warwick. It compares the presentation ofGuy’s artefacts in John Lydgate’s Guy of Warwickwith Samuel Rowlands’s 1609 Famous History of Guy,Earl of Warwick. Both Lydgate’s and Rowlands’s Guynarratives present textual representations ofartefacts associated with Guy’s romance. Objectslike Guy’s sword, the axe of the giant Colbrond andthe rib of the Dun Cow that Guy was supposed to havekilled in Coventry become central to the longevityof Guy’s romance and to some authors’ conceptions ofthe material pre-conquest past. While Lydgate’snarrative positions these objects as relics,signalling the triumphs of Christianity over time,Rowlands’s text ‘musealises’ the artefacts, makingthem portals to and preservers of the distant,tenth-century past. Guy’s objects, in Rowlands’stext, become tourist sites and museum pieces. Inboth Lydgate’s poem and Rowlands’s, though, theartefacts feed off of the narratives that describethem; books become virtual museums or virtualreliquaries. The chapter ends with a comparisonbetween Guy’s artefacts and those associated withthe legends of King Arthur, demonstrating thedifferent perspectives on the role of the romancepast in the world of the present.

Extra Help gives you the logic behind the noun endings, vastly reducing the number of endings you need to learn. Extra Material introduces some of the different jobs that the Greek genitive case can do.

In the Extra Help we invite you to think about ‘reading Greek with understanding’ rather than translating. In the Extra Material you will meet the major contexts in which the accusative case can appear.

In this chapter, we will examine the Old Testament’s role in religious communities as an authoritative revelation from God – the concept of “scripture” common to the three monotheistic religions: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. These texts hardly began as the books that now comprise the Bible; rather, what we will discover is a lengthy, complex development of authoritative texts from oral to written to canon.

This chapter will take us inside the ancient world of the Old Testament’s formation. Words, considered powerful, were painstakingly preserved through centuries in the hands of anonymous authors and editors, scribes and scholars. Texts were collected into books and went through a process of use and standardization by the ancient Israelites, beginning as early as the tenth century bceand lasting through the Babylonian exile and beyond – emerging finally in the canonical form we know today as the Old Testament.

In the books of Joshua and Judges, God’s gift of land to Israel takes center stage. The first book recounts Israel’s conquest and division of the land under the leadership of Moses’ successor, Joshua. Judges highlights governance in the land by a succession of twelve leaders. Connected by a recurring cycle – Israel’s disobedience to Yahweh, foreign oppression, repentance, and deliverance – the Judges stories narrate the end of one era in Israel’s history and serve as introduction to the next.

Alongside these Primary History accounts, we will consider archaeological evidence for a significant population increase in Canaan during Iron Age I and look at three theories that attempt to explain the appearance of new populations in the region at that time. In addition to observing the nature of religion during Israel’s early history in the land, we will address the difficult subject of the land today. Jewish, Christian, and Muslim readers all have varying responses. Joshua and Judges should not and need not be used in the debate, but they remind us how very ancient is the issue of land.

The first eleven chapters of Genesis – and of the Old Testament – constitute the Primeval History. This carefully arranged collection of traditions detail God’s good creation of the cosmos, the nature of humanity in the created order of the universe, and God’s relationship with humans. In this chapter, we will explore various genres such as cosmogony, theogony, myth, and history, all of which will help to demonstrate ways in which Israel’s Primeval History resembled the traditions of its ancient neighbors and ways in which Israel’s form and content were unique.

Importantly, Genesis 1–11 prepare the reader for the rest of the Bible. They also function as an explanation for Israelite readers of why things are the way they are. Furthermore, they introduce themes that will be important throughout the remainder of the Old Testament: the concept of creation, the unchallenged sovereignty of God, the central importance of humanity, and the first mention of covenant.

The three major sections of Genesis 12–50 focus on the ancestral narratives of Abraham, Jacob, and Joseph. We know little of the historical details, although archaeological data suggests a plausible context for these stories in the Middle Bronze Age. We will see that the narratives themselves hint at even earlier traditions, suggestive of oral traditions preserved and woven into the texts. In these narratives we will also encounter the social structure of kinship-based tribal societies. The “father’s house” and the larger clan formed the subunits of the geographically based organization of the tribe.

This portion of Genesis narrates Yahweh’s provision of hope for the divine–human relationship so tragically marred by human rebellion (Genesis 1–11). Moreover, God chooses an individual, Abraham, to partner in a covenant. This covenant, shaped by God’s promises of land, descendants, and worldwide blessing, is the lasting hallmark of Israelite religion. Abraham’s descendants include not only those named in the Old Testament but those in the three monotheistic religions for which Abraham is acknowledged as the “father of faith.”