In Extra Help we will see how nouns and adjectives are formed when their consonant stems end in a contract vowel. In the Extra Material you will meet the very few contexts for the nominative, and use them to think about when sense overrules strict grammar.

In this final chapter, we will summarize the Old Testament and explore its lasting contributions to world history, society in general, and the monotheistic religions of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Specifically, we will explore four particular aspects of the Old Testament and examine how each functions to create a cohesive and living whole.

This overview in turn will remind us that the Old Testament’s central message communicates, in a host of ways, what it perceives as Israel’s life in covenant relationship with God, obeying God’s Torah, and living morally and ethically in right relationship with other human beings. Within this overarching concern of the Old Testament, we have already observed the continual thread of a monotheistic worldview in process. The development toward the Old Testament’s conviction of the singularity of God is indeed among the most enduring contributions to human history.

Similarly, the Old Testament’s contribution to civil society cannot be underestimated. Thus, in conclusion, we will explore three core values in particular that are rooted, not in secularization as often is assumed, but in the rich and enduring legacy of the Old Testament.

In Extra Help you will find some optional notes to help you with the final topics of ENTG. As we have reached the end of ENTG, we offer an extended passage from an early Christian text, completely unedited.

In Extra Help, you will meet different Greek verb ‘moods’. In the Extra Material we’ll examine the contexts for the aorist tense.

In the Extra Help, you will see how relative clauses are similar to the ‘branches’ we have met, and find some help with morphology. In the Extra Material you will meet other ways of expressing indirect speech and some patterns that help us to learn a lot of these ‘little words’.

This chapter examines bipartite systems, focusing on residual uncertainty and the role of conditional entropy.

The significance of the Old Testament for human history and culture is undeniable. Whatever our personal convictions regarding its content, the Old Testament contains the origins of nearly everything we think about God. Variously labeled as the Hebrew Bible, the Tanak, the First Testament, and the Old Testament, among others, this library of texts from ancient Israel has been preserved for more than two thousand years.

Emerging from the polytheistic context of the ancient world, the enduring significance of the Old Testament is to be found in the concept of monotheism. Indeed, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam share in this unique religious legacy. We will discover in this chapter what lies behind the terminology we use when we speak of monotheism, and how the Old Testament perceives and develops the understanding of a singular God. Known to ancient Israel as Yahweh, Israel’s God came to be understood as Creator, source of all, and sovereign over all. Only in time would Israel come to believe that Yahweh was not only its God, and the God Israelites were called to worship, but the one and only God.

This chapter examines the three foundational strands that shaped early Christianity and, in turn, western thought: Judaism, Hellenistic philosophy, and Roman culture. It begins with Judaism, emphasizing its monotheism, prophetic self-criticism, and teleological view of history – features that deeply influenced Christian theology. The Book of Isaiah is central, offering themes of justice, suffering, and messianic hope later interpreted as prefiguring Christ. The chapter then turns to Hellenistic philosophy – especially, Stoicism, Skepticism, and Epicureanism – which informed Christian ideas about the soul, virtue, and the good life. These schools stressed moral discipline and the pursuit of wisdom, values that Christianity absorbed and reinterpreted theologically. The Roman contribution centered on imperial power, civic virtue, and especially the Latin language, which became Christianity’s primary medium in the West. Roman thinkers like Cicero and Virgil helped transmit Greek ideas, emphasizing duty, eloquence, and destiny. These strands – Jewish, Greek, and Roman – were not seamlessly integrated, but their dynamic interaction laid the groundwork for a western intellectual tradition rooted in moral inquiry, historical depth, and a universalizing spiritual vision.

This chapter addresses the role of oxytocin and vasopressin in shaping social behavior, reviewing both human and animal studies. The chapter critiques the early optimism around oxytocin’s ability to foster trust and emotional understanding, providing evidence from failed replication studies and highlighting the effects of sex, context, and brain region-specific interactions. It also assesses clinical research on oxytocin as a potential treatment for autism spectrum disorder, pointing out the limitations of current approaches and the complexity of translating animal research into human applications.

This chapter explores the genetic and cellular foundations of biopsychology, focusing on the diversity that exists at the molecular and cellular levels within the brain. It explains the key processes of gene expression, including DNA transcription and translation, emphasizing how variation in these processes contributes to neuronal diversity. Moreover, this chapter provides a high-level overview of advanced techniques, such as transcriptomics, describing how these techniques are informing the process of classifying neuron types. The chapter also explores cellular anatomy by analyzing the wide range of neuronal shapes and the complexity of their connections. This foundation sets the stage for future discussions of neurotechnologies, for which an understanding of genetic constructs will enable students to better grasp the capabilities of tools like optogenetics and calcium imaging.

In this chapter, we will explore Israel’s book of worship – Psalms. These “songs,” collected over hundreds of years, nevertheless convey timeless expressions of Israel’s faith. This Old Testament collection has been organized into five books, and many of the individual psalms have titles, musical notations, or historical details.

Scholarship in the discipline of form criticism has furthered our understanding of how the original materials (sources behind the present texts) may have functioned in Israel’s life situations (German, Sitz im Leben). In general, we can identify larger categories of praise and lament, and of individual and corporate psalms. Specific forms include hymns, communal and individual laments, thanksgiving songs, and royal psalms. Thus, for example, the form of lament corresponds to a crisis situation; a royal psalm form is situated in events surrounding the king. These forms, preserved and presented as the collected psalms, represent an overview of Israel’s religious worldview. We will not necessarily observe statements of strict monotheism, but we will hear Israel “sing” of Yahweh, who alone is worthy of praise.