Biblical studies in the context of Parallel passage

Gospel originally meant the Christian message ("the gospel"), but in the second century AD the term euangélion (Koine Greek: εὐαγγέλιον, lit. 'good news', from which the English word originated as a calque) came to be used also for the books in which the message was reported. In this sense a gospel can be defined as a loose-knit, episodic narrative of the words and deeds of Jesus, culminating in his trial and death, and concluding with various reports of his post-resurrection appearances.

The Gospels are commonly seen as literature that is based on oral traditions, Christian preaching, and Old Testament exegesis with the consensus being that they are a variation of Greco-Roman biography; similar to other ancient works such as Xenophon's Memoirs of Socrates. They are meant to convince people that Jesus was a charismatic miracle-working holy man, providing examples for readers to emulate. As such, they present the Christian message of the second half of the first century AD, Modern biblical scholars are therefore cautious of relying on the gospels uncritically as historical documents, and although they afford a good idea of Jesus' public career, critical study has largely failed to distinguish his original ideas from those of the later Christian authors, and the focus of research has therefore shifted to Jesus as remembered by his followers, and understanding the Gospels themselves.

Mount Sinai (Hebrew: הַר סִינַי‬‎, Har Sīnay) is the mountain at which the Ten Commandments were given to the Hebrew prophet Moses by God, according to the Book of Exodus in the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament. In the Book of Deuteronomy, these events are described as having transpired at Mount Horeb. "Sinai" and "Horeb" are generally considered by biblical scholars to refer to the same place. Mount Sinai is considered one of the most sacred locations by the three major Abrahamic religions: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.

The exact geographical position of Mount Sinai described in the Hebrew Bible remains disputed. The high point of the dispute was in the mid-19th century. Biblical texts describe the theophany at Mount Sinai, in terms which a minority of scholars, following Charles Beke (1873), have suggested may literally describe the mountain as a volcano.

The historicity of Jesus is the debate "on the fringes of scholarship" and in popular culture regarding whether Jesus historically existed or was a purely mythological figure. Mainstream New Testament scholarship ignores the non-existence hypothesis and its arguments, as the question of historicity was generally settled in scholarship in the early 20th century, and the general consensus among modern scholars is that a Jewish man named Jesus of Nazareth existed in the Herodian Kingdom of Judea and the subsequent Herodian tetrarchy in the 1st century AD, upon whose life and teachings Christianity was later constructed. However, scholars distinguish between the 'Christ of faith' as presented in the New Testament and the subsequent Christian theology, and a minimal 'Jesus of history', of whom almost nothing can be known.

There is no scholarly consensus concerning the historicity of most elements of Jesus's life as described in the Bible, and only two key events of the biblical story of Jesus's life are widely accepted as historical, based on the criterion of embarrassment, namely his baptism by John the Baptist and his crucifixion by the order of Pontius Pilate. Furthermore, the historicity of supernatural elements like his purported miracles and resurrection are deemed to be solely a matter of 'faith' or of 'theology', or lack thereof.

The baptism of Jesus, the ritual purification of Jesus with water by John the Baptist, was a major event described in the three synoptic Gospels of the New Testament (Matthew, Mark, and Luke). It is considered to have taken place at Al-Maghtas (also called Bethany Beyond the Jordan), today located in Jordan.

Modern biblical scholars view the baptism of Jesus as a historical event to which a high degree of certainty can be assigned. Along with the crucifixion of Jesus, biblical scholars view it as one of the two historically certain facts about him, and often use it as the starting point for the study of the historical Jesus.

A pseudepigraph (also anglicized as "pseudepigraphon") is a falsely attributed work, a text whose claimed author is not the true author, or a work whose real author attributed it to a figure of the past. The name of the author to whom the work is falsely attributed is often prefixed with the particle "pseudo-", such as "pseudo-Aristotle" or "pseudo-Dionysius." These terms refer to the anonymous authors of works falsely attributed to Aristotle and Dionysius the Areopagite, respectively.

In biblical studies, the term pseudepigrapha can refer to an assorted collection of Jewish religious works thought to be written c. 300 BCE to 300 CE. They are distinguished by Protestants from the deuterocanonical books (Catholic and Orthodox) or Apocrypha (Protestant), the books that appear in extant copies of the Septuagint in the fourth century or later and the Vulgate, but not in the Hebrew Bible or in Protestant Bibles. In Catholic usage, the Old Testament books accepted by the Catholic Church are referred to as the deuterocanonical books, and Catholic writers commonly reserve the word apocrypha for spurious or noncanonical writings rather than for the deuterocanon. In addition, two books considered canonical in the Orthodox Tewahedo churches, the Book of Enoch and Book of Jubilees, are noncanonical in Catholic and Eastern Orthodox canons and are classified by most scholars among the Old Testament pseudepigrapha.

Quranic studies is the academic study of the Quran, the central religious text of Islam. Like in biblical studies, the field uses and applies a diverse set of disciplines and methods, such as philology, textual criticism, lexicography, codicology, literary criticism, comparative religion, and historical criticism. The beginning of modern Quranic studies began among German scholars from the 19th century.

Quranic studies has three primary goals. The first goal is to understand the original meaning, sources, history of revelation, and the history of the recording and transmission, of the Quran. The second is to trace how the Quran was received by people, including how it was understood and interpreted (exegesis), throughout the centuries. The third is a study and appreciation of the Quran as literature independently of the other two goals. (See also: Corpus Coranicum)

Historical criticism (also known as the historical-critical method (HCM) or higher criticism, in contrast to lower criticism or textual criticism) is a branch of criticism that investigates the origins of ancient texts to understand "the world behind the text" and emphasizes a process that "delays any assessment of scripture's truth and relevance until after the act of interpretation has been carried out". While often discussed in terms of ancient Jewish, Christian, and increasingly Islamic writings, historical criticism has also been applied to other religious and secular writings from various parts of the world and periods of history.

The historian applying historical criticism has several goals in mind. One is to understand what the text itself is saying in the context of its own time and place, and as it would have been intended to and received by its original audience (sometimes called the sensus literalis sive historicus, i.e. the "historical sense" or the "intended sense" of the meaning of the text). The historian also seeks to understand the credibility and reliability of the sources in question, understanding sources as akin to witnesses to the past as opposed to straightforward narrations of it. In this process, it is important to understand the intentions, motivations, biases, prejudices, internal consistency, and even the truthfulness of the sources being studied. Involuntary witnesses that did not intend to transmit a piece of information or present it to an external audience, but end up doing so nonetheless, are considered greatly valuable. All possible explanations must be considered by the historian, and data and argumentation must be used in order to rule out various options. In the context of biblical studies, an appeal to canonical texts is insufficient to settle what actually happened in biblical history. A critical inspection of the canon, as well as extra-biblical literature, archaeology, and all other available sources, is also needed. Likewise, a "hermeneutical autonomy" of the text must be respected, insofar as the meaning of the text should be found within it as opposed to being imported into it, whether that is from one's conclusions, presuppositions, or something else.

In biblical studies, the Urtext is the theorized original, uniform text of the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh), preceding both the Septuagint (LXX) and the Masoretic Text (MT). Since the 19th century there has been much scholarly work to regain this Urtext. The theory that there was an Urtext was advocated by Paul de Lagarde. Today it is disputed that there ever was such a uniform text.

Licentiate is the second cycle of ecclesiastical academic degrees conferred by pontifical universities and ecclesiastical faculties under the authority of the Holy See. Positioned between the Baccalaureate and Doctorate, the Licentiate serves both academic and canonical functions within the Roman Catholic Church, preparing graduates for teaching and specialized roles in biblical studies, theology, canon law, and philosophy. The typical duration of coursework for a licentiate degree is three to four years, culminating in the completion of a thesis.