Journal Article Review

Title of the Article: “The Sea of Galilee: Development of an Early Christian Toponym”

About the Author: Dr. R. Steven Notley lives in New York with his wife, Sunya, and their children. They lived in Jerusalem for 16 years where Notley earned his Ph.D. in Comparative Religions at the Hebrew University (1993). He studied under the direction of the late professor David Flusser, writing his dissertation on "The Concept of the Holy Spirit in Jewish Literature of the Second Commonwealth and Pre-Pauline Christianity." He has recently completed his English translation of Eusebius' Onomasticon that will be published together with Ze'ev Safrai's (Bar Ilan University) topographical commentary by Brill Academic Publishers. Also recently published is a collaborative work in Historical Geography with Dr. Anson F. Rainey called the Sacred Bridge. During his years in Israel Notley was extensively involved in directing travel and field study for students and laity in Israel, Greece and Turkey. He continues to direct study trips through Emmaus Educational Services He served as the chairman of the department for New Testament studies at the Jerusalem University College from 1996 to 2001. Currently he is a professor of Biblical Studies at the New York City campus of Nyack College.

Bibliographic Data: “Journal of Biblical Literature,” vol. 128, no. 1, (2009): 183-188.

Outline of the Article:
1. Recognizing Toponym
2. The Writer Julius Honorius
3. Joshephus and the body of Water
4. The Word Talasa in Gospels (Matthew, Mark, and John)
5. Conclussions

The Article all about

The toponym mentions two times in the New Testament. A place that mentioned in the book of Matthew (26:36), and Mark (14:32). These vocabulary illustrate direct been given to another place-name of equal unusual object. This toponym is point to in the Fourth Gospel by the evangelist’s could do with to describe it extra with and additional genitive more well-known to the readers: After this Jesus went to the other side of the sea of Galilee of Tiberias. Tiberias city was built by Herod Antipas on the lakeshore; this was appeared in the end of Gospel to identify the lake. We can see in John 21:1.

The writer Julius Honorius distinguishes the water of body in the city of Teberias. But other Latin authors used the word mare rather than lacus to describe the lake. There is some question whether Julius was a pagan or a Christian. Julius’s rare combination of “sea” with Tiberias, which occurs elsewhere only in the Fourth Gospel, suggest that the Roman author ay have at least been familiar with thee Christian. The term that mentioned above by solinus identified the lake with Tiberias, as well as a place called sara. This is certainly a reference to Gennesar.
There is Greek term that indicating in Matthew, Mark, And John to the Lake of Gennesar, and the connected problem of the origin for the Christian toponym. And Talasa can find also in Hebrew scripture. Which can assign either lake or sea? Some scholars recommend that Matthew, Mark, and John have derived their use of “Talasa” directly from the Septuagint description.

The place-name was not the making of any of evangelists. In its place, the Gospels are a repository of a pre-Synoptic expansion. Additionally, as the mark holds the Christian homonym, he also hints that he was well-known with the position of Isaiah’s previous topographical points of indication. The evangelist’s of tyre, and went throughout Sidon to Sea of Galilee, from first to last the region of the Decapolis. It seems that the verse from Isaiah provided the narrative structure for Mark’s presentation of Jesus’ unusual journey.

In briefly what I learned in this Gospel is the growth if an early Christian Place name. The purpose for the early church’s exegetical creativity was to depict Jesus’ ministry in the vicinity of the Lake Genneesar as a fulfillment of Isaiah 8:23.