First and Second Samuel narrate Israel’s transition from a tribal confederation to a dynastic monarchy, beginning with the leadership of the prophet Samuel. Saul is anointed Israel’s first king, and although eventually rejected, his reign functions to define kingship under Yahweh, including submission to Torah and to the authority of Yahweh’s prophets. David becomes Israel’s second king and eventually the “ideal” for all kings in the Old Testament. We will also observe during David’s leadership an emerging understanding of Yahweh as “God of Israel.”

Since early Israel was a theocracy under Yahweh, we will explore the issues surrounding Israel’s need for and the legitimacy of a human king, the person and role of a suitable king, and finally, the importance of the prophet in assessing the king. Although Israel’s transition to statehood is somewhat difficult to reconstruct historically (ca. 1050–970 bce), we will examine evidence for similar transitions in other cultures. Archaeological evidence from Hazor, Megiddo, and Gezer suggests the notion of a state and its correlating centralized administration.

With this chapter, we arrive at five final books in our Old Testament collection. They have been brought together in the Jewish canon as the “five scrolls,” related to each other by their use in the Jewish liturgical calendar.

Our survey will begin with the Song of Songs, a collection of Israel’s love poetry. We have numerous ancient parallels, but we will note in these the particular imagery drawn from everyday life in Syria–Palestine. Second, Ruth is an exquisite narrative about ordinary Israelites. Their uncommonness is on display in their exemplary characters and their genealogical connection to Israel’s beloved King David. A third book, Lamentations, is a collection of five poems presented in acrostic form. Recounting the tragedies incurred in Jerusalem’s destruction, the poetry nevertheless exhibits some of the Old Testament’s most glorious expressions of Yahweh’s mercy. Ecclesiastes, another unique poetry collection with ancient Near Eastern parallels, offers reflections on the human experience. Finally, we will examine Esther. God is never mentioned in the book of Esther, yet this story merited inclusion in the canon, and we will note its subtle but important contribution to Old Testament theology.

Here we review how the formal methods approach was “lost” to the general programming population, in spite of its initial promise. But also we look at all the progress that has nevertheless been made, and by whom. Suggestions are made for teaching on the basis of this text, and pointers are given for those who –once they have “tasted” what informal methods can do– would like to get into the meat of what is possible if they are studied more intensively. Many programmers “out there” would have done that, if only they knew that formal methods existed and what they can do. This text tells them that, and we can hope to collect more “real” formal methods experts as a result. Finally, a brief history of the development of formal methods is given, with references to many of the principal texts published over the years since 1970.

In this chapter we turn from the Primary and Chronistic Histories to the books that make up roughly the second half of the Old Testament. We will observe a dramatic shift in content from historical narrative to largely poetry. Furthermore, these books are much less linked editorially to one another. Rather, we will discover that superscriptions and content help us to group them literarily and, in most cases, to relate them chronologically to one another and to the Primary History.

Because of the preponderance of poetry, we will spend time in this chapter on the nature and characteristics of ancient Hebrew poetry. There are certain aspects that we do not know, such as original pronunciation or meter. However, we will readily observe one major feature – that of parallelism. This “symmetry of thought” is recognizable in three primary types: synonymous, antithetical, and synthesizing parallelisms. We will explore plenty of examples and discover along the way that ancient Hebrew poetry is rich in content and artistic skill.

Extra Help introduces you to the remaining two variations on the -ω verbs, and the -μι verbs. In the Extra Material you’ll meet the few contexts in which the future tense can be found.

In Extra Help you will see that we can save a lot of effort in understanding the middle and passive voices, because of the way that we have understood the Greek verb so far. In the Extra Material you’ll think further about the middle voice.

This chapter explores quantifying uncertainty through prediction, introducing Tsallis and Rényi entropy alongside Shannon entropy.

The final three chapters of ENTG cover slightly more disjointed topics than previous chapters, filling in various gaps which would have been overwhelming earlier. If you have followed along with me on how to understand and memorise the verb, you will again reap a reward in this chapter.

This chapter focuses on the foundations of study design and statistical analysis in psychological research. It explores strategies for ensuring internal validity, such as randomization, control groups, and large sample sizes. Additionally, it addresses the complexity of human behavior by exploring multivariate experiments and the use of artificial intelligence and machine learning in neuroscience. The chapter also discusses the replication crisis and the emergence of open science practices, encouraging students to think critically about isolated scientific findings and offering tools for identifying credible research. Lastly, it critiques null hypothesis significance testing and p-values while providing an overview of key statistical topics like correlation coefficients, standardized mean differences, and regression.

The Old Testament book of Daniel will be the focus of our attention in this chapter, and thus we will consider the literary genre of apocalyptic writing. In general, there are two subcategories of apocalyptic writing: historical and otherworldly. The latter is characterized by the transcendence of space and a celestial setting.

We have many apocalyptic compositions dating from the mid second century bcethrough the second century ce. As we examine the style and characteristics of this unique form of communication, we will observe that the concept of apocalyptic writing manifests a marked distinction between the spiritual and the physical worlds. Reading such literature appropriately, we will observe its primary purpose of encouraging the reader in faithful endurance and patience, assured that God will ultimately triumph and care for his righteous followers. Although monotheism is not explicitly stated in Daniel’s apocalypse, we will note that his God is the sole deity of the universe.

In Extra Help we will see how nouns and adjectives are formed when their stems do not end in α or ο (consonant stems, or 3rd declension). The Extra Material in this chapter is a just a trivial pointer about accents.

Here a (long) list is given of useful logical equalities and implications, saying simply “what” but not “why”. It’s analogous to a table of integrals as an appendix to a text book on calculus, or to a list of trigonometric identities. In both cases, its utility is either to check a reasoning step you’ve taken (“Is this implication the right way around?” or to search for a simplification step you might be able to apply to make further progress.

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.