Michael D. Coogan > Quotes

“A tranquil mind gives life to the flesh,
but passion makes the bones rot.”
― Michael D. Coogan, The New Oxford Annotated Bible with Apocrypha: New Revised Standard Version

“They die for lack of discipline, and because of their great folly they are lost.”
― Michael D. Coogan, The New Oxford Annotated Bible with the Apocrypha: New Revised Standard Version

“12Do not invite death by the error of your life, or bring on destruction by the works of your hands; 13because God did not make death, and he does not delight in the death of the living. 14For he created all things so that they might exist; the generative forcesb of the world are wholesome, and there is no destructive poison in them, and the dominionc of Hades is not on earth.”
― Michael D. Coogan, The New Oxford Annotated Bible with the Apocrypha: New Revised Standard Version

“All fat is the Lord’s. 17It shall be a perpetual statute throughout your generations, in all your settlements: you must not eat any fat or any blood.”
― Michael D. Coogan, The New Oxford Annotated Bible with the Apocrypha: New Revised Standard Version

“the man knew his wife Eve, and she conceived and bore Cain, saying, “I have producedc a man with the help of the Lord.”
― Michael D. Coogan, The New Oxford Annotated Bible with the Apocrypha: New Revised Standard Version

“2When the righteous are in authority, the people rejoice;”
― Michael D. Coogan, The New Oxford Annotated Bible with the Apocrypha: New Revised Standard Version

“Yet “law” is not the only possible translation of torah, and the Pentateuch is not a book of law. Torah also means “instruction” or “teaching,” as in Prov 1.8: “Hear, my child, your father’s istruction, and do not reject your mother’s teaching (torah).” Teaching”
― Michael D. Coogan, The New Oxford Annotated Bible with the Apocrypha: New Revised Standard Version

“Where it was deemed appropriate to do so, information is supplied in footnotes from subsidiary Jewish traditions concerning other textual readings (the Tiqqune Sopherim, “emendations of the scribes”). These are identified in the footnotes as “Ancient Heb tradition.”
― Michael D. Coogan, The New Oxford Annotated Bible with the Apocrypha: New Revised Standard Version

“Then I put everything out to the four winds, and I made a sacrifice … The gods smelt the fragrance, The gods smelt the pleasant fragrance, The gods like flies gathered over the sacrifice.2 Likewise, in Genesis, after the Flood Noah released a raven once and a dove three times, and offered a sacrifice to Yahweh, who “smelled the pleasing odor” (Gen. 8:21).”
― Michael D. Coogan, The Old Testament: A Very Short Introduction

“6The Lord God appointed a bush, a and made it come up over Jonah, to give shade over his head, to save him from his discomfort; so Jonah was very happy about the bush. 7But when dawn came up the next day, God appointed a worm that attacked the bush, so that it withered.”
― Michael D. Coogan, The New Oxford Annotated Bible with the Apocrypha: New Revised Standard Version

“Slowly, with the rise of rationalism, particularly as associated with figures such as Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679) and Benedict (Baruch) Spinoza (1632–1677), the view that the Torah was a unified whole, written by Moses, began to be questioned. (For additional information on this development, see the essays on “The Interpretation of the Bible,” pp. 2254–2280.)”
― Michael D. Coogan, The New Oxford Annotated Bible with the Apocrypha: New Revised Standard Version

“And he will destroy on this mountain the shroud that is cast over all peoples, the sheet that is spread over all nations; 8he will swallow up death forever. Then the Lord God will wipe away the tears from all faces, and the disgrace of his people he will take away from all the earth,”
― Michael D. Coogan, The New Oxford Annotated Bible with the Apocrypha: New Revised Standard Version

“25When Methuselah had lived one hundred eighty‐ seven years, he became the father of Lamech. 26Methuselah lived after the birth of Lamech seven hundred eighty‐ two years, and had other sons and daughters. 27Thus”
― Michael D. Coogan, The New Oxford Annotated Bible with the Apocrypha: New Revised Standard Version

“16Oppressing the poor in order to enrich oneself, and giving to the rich, will lead only to loss.”
― Michael D. Coogan, The New Oxford Annotated Bible with the Apocrypha: New Revised Standard Version

“An early form of the books of Samuel and Kings triggered an interpretative rewriting, namely the books of Chronicles, which offers an alternative account of the Judean monarchy. It omits almost everything of the story of the Northern Kingdom, and ends with the decree of the Persian king Cyrus in 538, allowing the Judeans to return from exile and to rebuild the Jerusalem Temple.”
― Michael D. Coogan, The New Oxford Annotated Bible with the Apocrypha: New Revised Standard Version

“Yet the King James Version has serious defects. By the middle of the nineteenth century, the development of biblical studies and the discovery of many biblical manuscripts more ancient than those on which the King James Version was based made it apparent that these defects were so many as to call for revision. The task was begun, by authority of the Church of England, in 1870.”
― Michael D. Coogan, The New Oxford Annotated Bible with the Apocrypha: New Revised Standard Version

“The Revised Standard Version Bible Committee is a continuing body, comprising about thirty members, both men and women. Ecumenical in representation, it includes scholars affiliated with various Protestant denominations, as well as several Roman Catholic members, an Eastern Orthodox member, and a Jewish member who serves in the Old Testament section. For a period of time the Committee included several members from Canada and from England.”
― Michael D. Coogan, The New Oxford Annotated Bible with the Apocrypha: New Revised Standard Version

“The transfer of power from an older sky god to a younger storm god is attested in other contemporaneous eastern Mediterranean cultures. Cronus was imprisoned and succeeded by his son Zeus, Yahweh succeeded El as the god of Israel, the Hurrian god Teshub assumed kingship in heaven after having defeated his father Kumarbi, and Baal replaced El as the effective head of the Ugaritic pantheon. A more remote and hence less exact parallel is the replacement of Dyaus by Indra in early Hinduism. These similar developments can be accurately dated to the second half of the second millennium BCE, a time of prosperity and extraordinary artistic development but also of political upheaval and natural disasters that ended in the collapse or destruction of many civilizations, including the Mycenaean, Minoan, Hittite, and Ugaritic. This was the period of the Trojan War, of the invasion of Egypt and the southeastern Mediterranean coast by the Sea Peoples, of the international unrest related in the Amarna letters.”
― Michael D. Coogan, Stories from Ancient Canaan

“The pyramid, the familiar element of Egyptian architecture, found not only in the tombs of the early dynasties but also as the top of every obelisk, is the stylized representation of the primeval mound of earth left behind by the receding Nile waters.”
― Michael D. Coogan, The Oxford History of the Biblical World

“17Anyone, then, who knows the right thing to do and fails to do it, commits sin.”
― Michael D. Coogan, The New Oxford Annotated Bible with the Apocrypha: New Revised Standard Version

“Documentary Hypothesis in the nineteenth century, according to which the Pentateuch (or Hexateuch) is composed of four main sources or documents that were edited or redacted together: J, E, P, and D.”
― Michael D. Coogan, The New Oxford Annotated Bible with the Apocrypha: New Revised Standard Version

“When the seventh day arrived,
I put out and released a dove.
The dove went; it came back,
For no perching place was visible to it, and it turned round.
I put out and released a swallow.
The swallow went; it came back,
For no perching place was visible to it, and it turned round.
I put out, and released a raven.
The raven went, and saw the waters receding.
And it ate, preened, lifted its tail and did not turn round.”
― Michael D. Coogan, The Old Testament: A Very Short Introduction

“For the Committee, bruce m. metzger”
― Michael D. Coogan, The New Oxford Annotated Bible with the Apocrypha: New Revised Standard Version

“21I hate, I despise your festivals, and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies. 22Even though you offer me your burnt offerings and grain offerings, I will not accept them; and the offerings of well-being of your fatted animals I will not look upon. 23Take away from me the noise of your songs; I will not listen to the melody of your harps. 24But let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.”
― Michael D. Coogan, The New Oxford Annotated Bible with the Apocrypha: New Revised Standard Version

“3For the time is coming when people will not put up with sound doctrine, but having itching ears, they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own desires, 4and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander away to myths.”
― Michael D. Coogan, The New Oxford Annotated Bible with the Apocrypha: New Revised Standard Version

“1In the beginning when God createda the heavens and the earth, 2the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from Godb swept over the face of the waters. 3Then God said, “Let there be light”; and there was light. 4And God saw that the light was good; and God separated the light from the darkness. 5God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And there was evening and there was morning, the first day.”
― Michael D. Coogan, The New Oxford Annotated Bible with the Apocrypha: New Revised Standard Version

“The term torat moshe and its variants, in several late biblical books such as Ezra, Nehemiah, and Chronicles, refers to the Pentateuch more or less as it now exists, but it is not found in the Pentateuch.”
― Michael D. Coogan, The New Oxford Annotated Bible with the Apocrypha: New Revised Standard Version

“Perhaps the major issue for the interpretation of the book of Samuel (both 1 and 2) is the relationship of its account to history. There are at least three reasons for doubting that the book is a narrative of history.”
― Michael D. Coogan, The New Oxford Annotated Bible with the Apocrypha: New Revised Standard Version

“Using these kinds of guides, we can outline Genesis as follows: I. The primeval history 1.1–11.26 A. Creation and violence before the flood 1.1–6.4 B. Re‐ creation through flood and multiplication of humanity 6.5–11.9 II. Transitional genealogy bridging from Shem (the Primeval History) to Abraham (Ancestral History) 11.10–26 III. The ancestral history 11.27–50.26 A. Gift of the divine promise to Abraham and his descendants 11.27–25.11 B. The divergent destinies of the descendants of Ishmael and Isaac (Jacob/ Esau) 25.12–35.29 C. The divergent destinies of the descendants of Esau and Jacob/ Israel 36.1–50.26 By the end of the book, the lens of the narrative camera has moved from a wide‐ angle overview of all the peoples of the world to a narrow focus on one small group, the sons of Jacob (also named “Israel”).”
― Michael D. Coogan, The New Oxford Annotated Bible with the Apocrypha: New Revised Standard Version

“Come, let us return to the Lord; “for it is he who has torn, and he will heal us; he has struck down, and he will bind us up. 2After two days he will revive us; on the third day he will raise us up, that we may live before him. 3Let us know, let us press on to know the Lord; his appearing is as sure as the dawn; he will come to us like the showers, like the spring rains that water the earth.”
― Michael D. Coogan, The New Oxford Annotated Bible with the Apocrypha: New Revised Standard Version