title: Germany women's national football team

text: The German team has qualified for all Women's Olympic Football Tournaments until 2008. However, they failed to qualify for the 2012 tournament as UEFA used the 2011 World Cup for qualification, and Germany ended below France and Sweden. The German team beat Sweden in the Olympics final in Rio in 2016 to obtain their first Olympic gold medal.


title: Germany women's national football team

text: Germany failed to qualify for the first two UEFA European Championships in 1984 and 1987. Since 1989, the German team has participated in every tournament and is the record European champion with eight titles. Germany has won six consecutive championships from 1995 to 2013 and has an overall 31–6–3 win–draw–loss record. The worst German result at the European championship finals was finishing fifth in 2017.


title: Kang Seung-yoon

text: Kang Seung-yoon (Korean: 강승윤; born ), also known mononymously as Seungyoon or Yoon, is a South Korean singer-songwriter, actor, and leader of boy band Winner. His appearance on the reality television singing contest "Superstar K2" (2010) rose him to prominence after finishing in fourth place. The digital single "Instinctively", became his first number-one single as a soloist and neared 2 million digital copies in sales. On January 12, 2011 he signed with South Korean label YG Entertainment and officially debuted as a solo artist on July 16, 2013 with the digital single "It Rains" (비가 온다) and as the leader of Winner on August 17, 2014.


title: Kang Seung-yoon

text: Kang ventured into acting through the sitcom, "" (2011). His first lead role with the web series, "We Broke Up" (2015) earned his first award in the field with "Best Male Actor" awarded by the K-web Fest Awards. His roles in "Prison Playbook" (2017) and "Kairos" (2020) further solidified his career as an actor. Kang also served as the "122nd Masked King" on MBC's "King of Mask Singer" under the alias "Chow Yun-fat". He achieved a record-breaking six consecutive wins, earning him the titles: "The First 6-Time Idol Champion" and "The Youngest Champion" at the time.


title: Kang Seung-yoon

text: Kang Seung-yoon was born in Haeundae District, Busan, South Korea, on January 21, 1994, as a Catholic with the baptismal name Don Bosco and as an only child. Raised by his single mother, his parents divorced within the early portion of his childhood and was no longer in contact with his father who chose to depart from their lives until news of his death was relayed long after his passing. His mother owned a business but suffered financially from balancing out the accumulated debt. It resulted in her entire profits being allocated towards the debt and so, was in need to borrow more money for additional costs which in turn, resulted in both further liabilities and a bad credit rating and brought more hardship.


title: Kang Seung-yoon

text: In school, he excelled in mathematics with an IQ of 141; however, in his second year of middle school, he became a victim of bullying by those he considered "friends" and dropped out of middle school after he developed social anxiety. In this period of time, he learned to play the classical guitar from an academy and briefly took classes for billiards where he encountered a man 5–6 years older than him who later helped with his anxiety. He then decided to pursue a career as a classical guitarist juxtaposed to his choices as a child which included to delve into politics, become a scientist, a comic book writer or a billiards player – which he became the eventual regional youth representative of and actively played until first year of high school. He took the GED examination for middle school and enrolled at Busan High School of Arts with a major in classic guitar but later considered to be a singer. Kang graduated in 2012.


title: Kang Seung-yoon

text: 17-year-old Kang (Korean age) attended the regional preliminary audition for "Superstar K2" (2010). Initially reluctant due to conflict in perception of using mass media to gain fame opposed to becoming successful without it, he yielded at his friend's request when asked to audition with him, and so, took guitar lessons to further hone his skills three months prior to it. Kang passed the preliminaries with "This Time" by Jonathan Rhys Meyers and overall placed fourth behind Huh Gak, John Park and Jang Jae-in amongst over 1,350,000 applicants. His rendition of "Instinctively" (본능적으로; "bonneungjeog-eulo") by Yoon Jong-shin in his last stage received praise by both judges and audience alike. Its digital release led Kang to his first number-one single as a solo artist and neared 2 million digital copies in sales. Its success won him, "Rookie of the Year" at the "Gaon Chart Awards" and "Rookie of the Month (October)" at the "Cyworld Digital Music Awards". CEO Yang Hyun-suk of YG Entertainment and Psy invited Kang to a meeting to propose an offer to join them under a trainee status. Kang signed with them on January 12, 2011 and began training on March 9. He explained: "Since "Superstar K2" ended, there were a lot of offers. Some said they would make me a star of Asia, and some offered a great amount of money for a contract. I chose YG Entertainment because this agency evaluated me objectively, unlike others I was viewed as an actual trainee."


title: Kang Seung-yoon

text: In the midst of his trainee period, Kang participated as the fourth artist to release the original soundtrack for "Midas" (2011). "You Are Heaven" (니가 천국이다; niga cheongug-ida) topped both real-time and daily South Korean music streaming platforms, which include Genie, and peaked at number 11 on the Gaon Digital Chart. That same year, he received an offer to audition for "" (2011), which hundreds of individuals lined up for. With no prior experience in acting, Kang auditioned in his Busan dialect and later met with the writers. Although they did not have a place for him amongst the current roles, a new role was specifically curated for him in spurt of the moment. Kang starred alongside Lee Jong-suk and Krystal Jung. In correlation to its soundtrack he collaborated with Lee Juck on "Smile, My Love" (웃어라 그대; "useola geudae") which entered the Gaon Digital Chart at number 79. The of the "High Kick" series aired from September 19, 2011, to March 29, 2012.


title: Kang Seung-yoon

text: On June 20, 2013, Yang Hyun-suk announced 19-year-old Kang would debut as a solo artist with the digital single, "Wild and Young", composed by Teddy Park. On July 15, it was revealed to be postponed and instead the next day another digital single in the format of a pre-release entitled "It Rains" (비가 온다; "biga onda") was released. The single achieved an "all-kill" which placed number-one on all music streaming platforms in South Korea, including Melon and Mnet, and debuted at number two on the Gaon Digital Chart. His second digital single, "Wild and Young" was released on July 31, with the accompaniment of a music video and appeared on the Gaon Digital Chart at number 18. Live promotions for the single commenced on August 4 from "Inkigayo". Kang released his third digital single "Stealer" (맘도둑; "mamdodug") ten days later with his second music video which starred rookie actress Yoon Jin-yi. Promotions were not carried out to prevent disruption in promotion of "Wild and Young". "Stealer" debuted at thirteenth on the Gaon Digital Chart.


title: Kang Seung-yoon

text: In the Mnet survival reality broadcast "WIN: Who Is Next" (2013) Kang participated as a contestant. The program involved two assembles consisting of male trainees under YG Entertainment (A and B) that would compete for the chance to debut by the end of the series after embarking on a 100 day journey. Kang was allocated in "Team A" with Kim Jin-woo, Lee Seung-hoon, Song Min-ho and Nam Tae-hyun in accordance to the label. In the seventh episode of the television broadcast, he temporarily replaced Song as its leader, after he sustained an ankle injury. He became its eventual permanent leader through the appointment of Yang Hyun-suk, ensuing he witnessed growth. On October 25, "Team A" were revealed as victors of the series and would subsequently begin preparations and debut as Winner. Kang made his official debut with the five-piece band, Winner, on August 17, 2014. The band's success upon debut was recorded as "unprecedented" by media outlets, having made their mark in the industry that early on in its career. Kang also participated in "Superstar K2" judge panelist Yoon Jong-shin's "Monthly" project with Song for the digital single, "Wild Boy".


title: Kang Seung-yoon

text: The singer-turned-thespian returned to acting since his last project "High Kick: Revenge of the Short Legged" (2011), with the web drama "We Broke Up" (2015). He starred as its male lead with label-mate Sandara Park as his counterpart. The series was aired from June 29, 2015 to July 17 via Naver TV and found success by becoming the fourth most watched web drama on the platform within that year with 11.45 million views and 16 million views collectively as of October 2015. The series were invited to the Geneva International Film Festival in Switzerland, a first amongst all Korean web dramas. Its positive receptions led the main cast to hold a surprise "mini-concert" in Seoul with exclusivity to 200 attendees. His performance in the series accredited to his award for "Best Male Actor" by the "K Web Fest Awards". For his second web drama, he starred in "Love for a Thousand More" (2016) as its male lead and opposite to actress Hwang Seung-eon. The series included band-mate, Kim Jin-woo, and is a joint production of CJ E&M, YG Entertainment, and YG KPlus. While it did not reach the same level of popularity as his prior project, the series exceeded 5 million views as of December 2016 and was cited a success. Kang released a soundtrack for the drama, titled "You" (너; "neo") and served as its only release.


title: Kang Seung-yoon

text: In continuation of his acting career, he starred in "Prison Playbook" (2017–2018). He was cast with a supporting role through an audition in which required him to read a portion from the script using his regional dialect on the spot. Shin Won-ho — the director of the television series — revealed while he initially did not have high expectations as it had been long since he was seen in 'High Kick', he found his portrayal fun and believed he brought the character to life. Shin elaborated: " [...] my generation doesn't really know him as a Winner [member] [...] I didn't have any bias because of the group he was in, he just fit well with us." The series also served as an on-screen reunion for he and Krystal since five years and six months in "High Kick: Revenge of the Short Legged" (2011–2012). Kang and band-mate Mino released its soundtrack titled "Door" (문; "mun"). In 2018, he lent his voice for the Korean film Golden Slumber (2018) and its eponymous soundtrack originally by The Beatles. Paul McCartney received $200,000 for its usage, highest for a Korean production.


title: Kang Seung-yoon

text: In March 2020, Kang was invited by the MBC singing competition program, "King of Mask Singer", for the second time and subsequently won, earning the title as the "122nd Mask King" during his appearance as "Chow Yun-fat" after defeating South Korean singer, So Chan-whee. He pulled off six consecutive wins and was named "The First 6-Time Idol Champion" and “The Youngest Champion” at the time. "Chow Yun-fat" was credited for its rise in viewership ratings in which recorded 10% since his first stage. His appearance maintained double digits in rating which placed the show on top within its time slot for five consecutive weeks. Kang's performances placed number-one and two respectively every week on the Naver TV Top 100 Popular Video Chart while his alias topped real-time on search portal site Naver in the entirety of his reign of 14 weeks hence created a buzz.


title: Kang Seung-yoon

text: Kang returned as an actor after three years since "Prison Playbook" (2017–2018) with "Kairos" (2020). He joined its main cast as "Im Gun-wook", and was often filmed with Lee Se-young and Lee Joo-myung. His persona earned a nomination at the "2020 MBC Drama Awards" for "Best New Actor". He joined the fourth season of "Voice" (2021), a thriller-procedural series, and acted as "Han Woo-joo", the 4D patrol officer that was specially recruited in the cyber team. In request by the series', he sang the soundtracks "Can You Hear Me" and "Your Voice" for both aforementioned projects.


title: Kang Seung-yoon

text: Kang released his first full-length album on March 29, 2021 — ten years into his career as a musician — entitled "Page" and its lead single "Iyah" (아이야; aiya). The album debuted at number three on the Gaon Album Chart and sold 122,202 copies in South Korea as of April 2021. The titular amassed 10 million views within the second week of its release on YouTube. In conjunction of it, Kang held his first-ever solo concert titled "Passage" on November 21, 2021. The event were simultaneously held in-person at Olympic Hall in Seoul and online as an integral of "YG Palm Stage 2021" while adhering COVID-19 guidelines and limits. On March 14, 2022, he released his fourth digital single "Born to Love You" and its music video.


title: Kang Seung-yoon

text: Since "King of Mask Singer", KBS2 singing competition program, "", had sought for Kang to appear on the show; however, he declined their invitations due to his unavailability, until he was requested to compete on the "Lee Juck Special" to which he accepted with Lee personally scouting its participants. Kang performed "Rain" by Lee Juck in its latter half and was crowned the winner against veteran artists Forte di Quattro, Kwak Jin-eon, Choi Jung-in, and Jung Dong-ha. His title as the winner earned him the privilege to compete in the show's "King of Kings Special" and performed "Around 30" (서른 즈음에; "seoleun jeueum-e") by Kim Kwang-seok, while competing with a flu against singers Lee Eun-mi and Seodo Band, Lee Young-hyun and Park Min-hye of Big Mama, La Poem and Forestella in its second part of the special. It recorded a rating of 7.7% nationwide and 8.0% in the metropolitan area in July 2022 — ranking first among all entertainment programs on Saturdays and it's time slot.


title: Kang Seung-yoon

text: On June 2, 2019, while he carried out promotions with his band for the lead single, "Ah Yeah" (아예; "aye"), Kang experienced symptoms of a spinal disc herniation in his neck while he was stand-by for rehearsals at "Inkigayo". He was transported to the emergency room in a nearby hospital for examination and received treatment for the said diagnosis. He was discharged from the hospital three days later after completing his treatment for herniated disc per the recommendation of his doctor and instruction to rest. Kang chose to carry out scheduled activities to the point it did not cause strain on his body to minimize any burden inflicted on his band in result of his absence.


title: Kang Seung-yoon

text: Kang has since been a registered associate member of the Korea Music Copyright Association and was one of twenty-five with band-mate Mino, to be promoted to the status of "full member" in January 2021. The requirements for the promotion include to maintain an associate membership for three years or more, receive a "certain amount" in royalties from copyrighted property each year, and also be selected by the board of directors. They are also given the right to vote at their general meetings.


title: Kang Seung-yoon

text: Kang revealed he was born with weak vocal cords and when not kept in check, he can entirely lose his voice for a whole week. His ENT doctor however, cited he does well in producing sounds with his condition in such that does not hurt nor affect him.


title: Kang Seung-yoon

text: In photography, Kang cited Henri Cartier-Bresson as his main inspiration towards the art and so refers to him as the "master of black and white photography", his favorite medium.


title: Kang Seung-yoon

text: Kang became known and rose to prominence at age 16 after he competed in "Superstar K2". He is often identified for his powerful baritone voice and usage of guitar and so he was often dubbed as a "rocker kid".


title: Kang Seung-yoon

text: Within South Korea, Rubin of 1Team stated Kang as his role model and inspiration towards music from the day he viewed his performance of "Black or White" by Michael Jackson on "Superstar K2" in the midst of travelling to an academy. Changbin of Stray Kids cited him as an inspiration since his appearance on an audition program and also desired to work on an "emotional hip hop" single with him. South Korean veteran actress, Kim Hee-sun, also cited herself as a fan of both Kang's voice and his band.


title: Kang Seung-yoon

text: Since 2010, Kang appeared as an endorsement model for LG U+ and its "International Call 002" range, CJ Group and the new corporate campaign in six years, "Different ideas that change the world", with Superstar K2 contestants Huh Gak, John Park, Jang Jae-in and YG Family artists Big Bang, 2NE1 and Psy, and also for the Samsung Galaxy Tab. In the years after, he endorsed Grand Chase of KOG Studios, Team Polham of Asian Fashion, Fanta with Lee Kwang-soo and Baek Jin-hee, Yogiyo with label-mates Cha Seung-won, Choi Ji-woo, Yoo In-na and AKMU. as well as J.One Cosmetics.


title: Kang Seung-yoon

text: Under the alias "Yooyeon" — a persona exclusive to photography that translates to "flexible" from Korean in correlation to his mindset — 27-year-old Kang first exhibited his work at the Saatchi Gallery located in West London as part of StART, an international contemporary art fair. He showcased black and white photographs taken amidst various trips.


title: Kang Seung-yoon

text: In the midst of the "Ice Bucket Challenge" — initiated by senior label-mate Sean of Jinusean within South Korea in 2018 — Sean disclosed in addition to Kang's earlier participation and donation, he quietly donated an extra ₩30 million to the Seungil Hope Foundation.


title: Kang Seung-yoon

text: Following the cancellation of contemporary casual clothing brand PLAC's 'by YOU' collection in collaboration with Seungyoon and bandmate Mino showcase event, scheduled on February 28, 2020, due to safety issues in relation to the recent coronavirus pandemic, the funds they raised towards the showcase was used to donate 10,000 masks for low-income children.


title: Kang Seung-yoon

text: In December 2021, Kang participated in a recording of an audio guide for an exhibition at the Korea National Maritime Museum in Busan entitled "Wonderworld Maps: Connecting Longingness Beyond the Horizon." It was created to help individuals with vision impairment enjoy the exhibition while listening to the explanations of each piece. Kang donated the entire earning he received from recording the audio guide to fund the education of children whose families are part of the Siloam Center for the Blind.


title: Kang Seung-yoon

text: On August 11, 2022, Kang donated to help those affected by the 2022 South Korean floods through the Hope Bridge Korea Disaster Relief Association.


title: Kang Seung-yoon

text: All song credits are adapted from the Korea Music Copyright Association's database, unless otherwise noted.


title: Sajid–Wajid

text: Sajid–Wajid was an Indian Bollywood Hindi film music director duo consisting of brothers Sajid Khan and Wajid Khan, the sons of Sharafat Ali Khan, a tabla player.


title: Sajid–Wajid

text: Wajid Khan, the younger of the two brothers, died on June 1, 2020. Since then, Sajid Khan has continued as a solo music director.


title: Sajid–Wajid

text: Sajid Ali Khan (date of birth unknown), also known by the mononym Sajid, is the elder son oftabla player Ustad Sharafat Ali Khan and his wife, Razina Khan. He is married to Lubna Khan and the couple has two daughters, Muskaan and Mehek.


title: Sajid–Wajid

text: Sajid studied at the Academy of Asiatic Cinema and Television. He trained under various artists, including his father as well as Allahrakha Khan and Das Babu. His paternal grandfather was Ustad Abdel Latif, an influential Indian artist. His maternal grandfather was Ustad Faiyyaz Ahmed Khan, a Padma Shri awardee.


title: Sajid–Wajid

text: Prior to making a career in music, he worked in import-export business. After encouragement from his parents and friends, he concentrated himself exclusively to music as a solo artist. He was also a music director releasing music under his own name. He later encouraged his younger brother, Wajid, to also take up music, with the two working as a duo under the name Sajid–Wajid. After the death of his brother on 1 June 2020, Sajid has been continuing as a solo artist.


title: Sajid–Wajid

text: Wajid Ali Khan was the younger son of artist and tabla player Sharafat Ali Khan and Razina Khan. He joined to his elder brother Sajid Khan to form the artistic duo Sajid–Wajid. He also had a separate singing career as a solo act and was nominated for a number of awards as a playback artist.


title: Sajid–Wajid

text: Wajid studied at Mithibai College where he met his college sweetheart Kamalrukh. The two dated for almost 10 years while Wajid was heavily involved in tours and in the musical formation. Family restrictions also postponed the marriage as Kamalrukh Khan, of Zoroastrian (Parsi) faith, refused to convert to Wajid's Sunni Muslim faith. Eventually, they married each other under the Special Marriages Act that allowed her to keep her religion and marry without conversion despite the opposition of Wajid's family. The couple had two children, Arshi, a daughter (born ) and Hrehaan, a son (born ).


title: Sajid–Wajid

text: In 2014, Wajid filed separation papers because of continuing religious and parental pressure and the couples divorced. Kamalrukh did not receive alimony since the case was pending in the court when Wajid died. Their children, however, received maintenance amount from their father "pendente lite" as per the Court's Order, according to Kamalrukh's interview to Sri Iyer of PGuris. Kamalrukh continues working as a clinical hypnotherapist and wellness coach. She also writes a regular fortnightly column for "Hindustan Times" titled "Weekend Fix for the Soul".


title: Sajid–Wajid

text: Wajid's health gradually deteriorated with him undergoing a kidney transplant in 2019 that was considered successful. He also developed subsequent throat infections. On 31 May 2020, he was urgently transferred to hospital with serious complications of COVID-19 and died one day later on 1 June 2020 following a heart attack.


title: Sajid–Wajid

text: Sajid–Wajid first scored music for Salman Khan's "Pyar Kiya To Darna Kya" in 1998. In 1999, they scored music for Sonu Nigam's album "Deewaana". They composed music for several films further. The music duo has also composed music for several films starring Salman Khan. They were mentors on the reality shows "Sa Re Ga Ma Pa Singing Superstar", "Sa Re Ga Ma Pa 2012" and composed title track for television reality shows "Bigg Boss 4" and "Bigg Boss 6". Sajid–Wajid also the composed IPL 4 theme song "Dhoom Dhoom Dhoom Dhadaka", with Wajid singing the title track.


title: Sajid–Wajid

text: After the death of Wajid Khan on 1 June 2020, his older brother Sajid Ali Khan is continuing as a solo artist but Sajid khan continues the title of Sajid–Wajid. He participated in IPML as captain of Delhi Jammers as Sajid–Wajid.


title: Historicity of the Bible

text: The historicity of the Bible is the question of the Bible's relationship to history—covering not just the Bible's acceptability as history but also the ability to understand the literary forms of biblical narrative. One can extend biblical historicity to the evaluation of whether or not the Christian New Testament is an accurate record of the historical Jesus and of the Apostolic Age. This tends to vary depending upon the opinion of the scholar.


title: Historicity of the Bible

text: When studying the books of the Bible, scholars examine the historical context of passages, the importance ascribed to events by the authors, and the contrast between the descriptions of these events and other historical evidence. Being a collaborative work composed and redacted over the course of several centuries, the historicity of the Bible is not consistent throughout the entirety of its contents.


title: Historicity of the Bible

text: According to theologian Thomas L. Thompson, a representative of the Copenhagen School, the archaeological record lends sparse and indirect evidence for the Old Testament's narratives as history. Others, like archeologist William G. Dever, feel that biblical archaeology has both confirmed and challenged the Old Testament stories. While Dever has criticized the Copenhagen School for its more radical approach, he is far from being a biblical literalist, and thinks that the purpose of biblical archaeology is not to simply support or discredit the biblical narrative, but to be a field of study in its own right.


title: Historicity of the Bible

text: The Bible exists in multiple manuscripts, none of them an autograph, and multiple biblical canons, which do not completely agree on which books have sufficient authority to be included or their order. The early discussions about the exclusion or integration of various apocrypha involve an early idea about the historicity of the core. The Ionian Enlightenment influenced early patrons like Justin Martyr and Tertullian—both saw the biblical texts as being different from (and having more historicity than) the myths of other religions. Augustine was aware of the difference between science and scripture and defended the historicity of the biblical texts, e.g., against claims of Faustus of Mileve.


title: Historicity of the Bible

text: Historians hold that the Bible should not be treated differently from other historical (or literary) sources from the ancient world. One may compare doubts about the historicity of, for example, Herodotus; the consequence of these discussions is not that historians shall have to stop using ancient sources for historical reconstruction, but need to be aware of the problems involved when doing so.


title: Historicity of the Bible

text: Very few texts survive directly from antiquity: most have been copied—some, many times. To determine the accuracy of a copied manuscript, textual critics examine the way the transcripts have passed through history to their extant forms. The higher the consistency of the earliest texts, the greater their textual reliability, and the less chance that the content has been changed over the years. Multiple copies may also be grouped into text types, with some types judged closer to the hypothetical original than others.


title: Historicity of the Bible

text: The meaning of the term "history" is itself dependent on social and historical context. Paula McNutt, for instance, notes that the Old Testament narratives


title: Historicity of the Bible

text: Even from the earliest times, students of religious texts had an awareness that parts of the scriptures could not be interpreted as a strictly consistent sequence of events. The Talmud cites a dictum ascribed to the third-century teacher Abba Arika that "there is no chronological order in the Torah". Examples were often presented and discussed in later Jewish exegesis with, according to Abraham Joshua Heschel (1907-1972), an ongoing discourse between those who would follow the views of Rabbi Ishmael (born 90 CE) that "the Torah speaks in human language", compared to the more mystical approach of Rabbi Akiva ( 50 – 135 CE) that any such deviations should signpost some deeper order or purpose, to be divined.


title: Historicity of the Bible

text: During the modern era, the focus of biblical history has also diversified. The project of biblical archaeology associated with W.F. Albright (1891-1971), which sought to validate the historicity of the events narrated in the Bible through the ancient texts and material remains of the Near East, has a more specific focus compared to the more expansive view of history described by archaeologist William Dever (1933- ). In discussing the role of his discipline in interpreting the biblical record, Dever has pointed to multiple histories within the Bible, including the history of theology (the relationship between God and believers), political history (usually the account of "Great Men"), narrative history (the chronology of events), intellectual history (treating ideas and their development, context and evolution), socio-cultural history (institutions, including their social underpinnings in family, clan, tribe and social class and the state), cultural history (overall cultural evolution, demography, socio-economic and political structure and ethnicity), technological history (the techniques by which humans adapt to, exploit and make use of the resources of their environment), natural history (how humans discover and adapt to the ecological facts of their natural environment), and material history (artifacts as correlates of changes in human behaviour).


title: Historicity of the Bible

text: Sharply differing perspectives on the relationship between narrative history and theological meaning present a special challenge for assessing the historicity of the Bible. Supporters of biblical literalism "deny that Biblical infallibility and inerrancy are limited to spiritual, religious, or redemptive themes, exclusive of assertions in the fields of history and science. We further deny that scientific hypotheses about earth history may properly be used to overturn the teaching of Scripture on creation and the flood." "History", or specifically biblical history, in this context appears to mean a definitive and finalized framework of events and actions—comfortingly familiar shared facts—like an omniscient medieval chronicle, shorn of alternative accounts, psychological interpretations, or literary pretensions. But prominent scholars have expressed diametrically opposing views:


title: Historicity of the Bible

text: [T]he stories about the promise given to the patriarchs in Genesis are not historical, nor do they intend to be historical; they are rather historically determined expressions about Israel and Israel's relationship to its God, given in forms legitimate to their time, and their truth lies not in their facticity, nor in the historicity, but their ability to express the reality that Israel experienced.


title: Historicity of the Bible

text: Modern professional historians, familiar with the phenomenon of on-going historical revisionism, allow new findings and ideas into their interpretations of "what happened", and scholars versed in the study of texts (however sacred) see all narrators as potentially unreliable


title: Historicity of the Bible

text: and all accounts—especially edited accounts—as potentially historically incomplete, biased by times and circumstances.


title: Historicity of the Bible

text: A central pillar of the Bible's historical authority was the tradition that it had been composed by the principal actors or eyewitnesses to the events described—the Pentateuch was the work of Moses, the Book of Joshua was by Joshua, and so on. However, the Protestant Reformation had brought the actual texts to a much wider audience, which combined with the growing climate of intellectual ferment in the 17th century that was the start of the Age of Enlightenment. This threw a harsh, sceptical spotlight on these traditional claims. In Protestant England, the philosopher Thomas Hobbes in his major work "Leviathan" (1651) denied Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch, and identified Joshua, Judges, Samuel, Kings, and Chronicles as having been written long after the events they purported to describe. His conclusions rested on internal textual evidence, but in an argument that resonates with modern debates, he noted: "Who were the original writers of the several Books of Holy Scripture, has not been made evident by any sufficient testimony of other History, which is the only proof of matter of fact."


title: Historicity of the Bible

text: The Jewish philosopher and pantheist Baruch Spinoza echoed Hobbes's doubts about the provenance of the historical books in his "Tractatus Theologico-Politicus" (published in 1670), and elaborated on the suggestion that the final redaction of these texts was post-exilic under the auspices of Ezra (Chapter IX). He had earlier been effectively excommunicated by the rabbinical council of Amsterdam for his perceived heresies. The French priest Richard Simon brought these critical perspectives to the Catholic tradition in 1678, observing "the most part of the Holy Scriptures that are come to us, are but Abridgments and as Summaries of ancient Acts which were kept in the Registries of the Hebrews," in what was probably the first work of biblical textual criticism in the modern sense.


title: Historicity of the Bible

text: In response Jean Astruc, applying to the Pentateuch source criticism methods common in the analysis of classical secular texts, believed he could detect four different manuscript traditions, which he claimed Moses himself had redacted (p. 62–64). His 1753 book initiated the school known as higher criticism that culminated in Julius Wellhausen formalising the documentary hypothesis in the 1870s, which identifies these narratives as the Jahwist, Elohist, Deuteronomist, and the Priestly source. While versions of the documentary hypothesis vary in the order in which they were composed, the circumstances of their composition, and the date of their redaction(s), their shared terminology continues to provide the framework for modern theories on the composite nature and origins of the Torah.


title: Historicity of the Bible

text: By the end of the 19th century the scholarly consensus was that the Pentateuch was the work of many authors writing from 1000 BCE (the time of David) to 500 BCE (the time of Ezra) and redacted c. 450, and as a consequence whatever history it contained was more often polemical than strictly factual—a conclusion reinforced by the then fresh scientific refutations of what were at the time widely classed as biblical mythologies.


title: Historicity of the Bible

text: There is a Christian tradition of criticism of the creation narratives in Genesis dating back to at least St Augustine of Hippo (354–430), and Jewish tradition has also maintained a critical thread in its approach to biblical primeval history. The influential medieval philosopher Maimonides maintained a skeptical ambiguity toward creation "ex nihilo" and considered the stories about Adam more as "philosophical anthropology, rather than as historical stories whose protagonist is the 'first man'." Greek philosophers Aristotle, Critolaus and Proclus held that the world was eternal. Such interpretations are inconsistent with what was after the Protestant Reformation to be "commonly perceived in evangelicalism as traditional views of Genesis".


title: Historicity of the Bible

text: The publication of James Hutton's "Theory of the Earth" in 1788 was an important development in the scientific revolution that would dethrone Genesis as the ultimate authority on primeval earth and prehistory. The first casualty was the Creation story itself, and by the early 19th century "no responsible scientist contended for the literal credibility of the Mosaic account of creation." The battle between uniformitarianism and catastrophism kept the flood alive in the emerging discipline, until Adam Sedgwick, the president of the Geological Society, publicly recanted his previous support in his 1831 presidential address:


title: Historicity of the Bible

text: We ought indeed to have paused before we first adopted the diluvian theory, and referred all our old superficial gravel to the action of the Mosaic Flood. For of man, and the works of his hands, we have not yet found a single trace among the remnants of the former world entombed in those deposits.


title: Historicity of the Bible

text: All of which left the "first man" and his putative descendants in the awkward position of being stripped of all historical context, until Charles Darwin naturalized the Garden of Eden with the publication of "On the Origin of Species" in 1859. Public acceptance of this scientific revolution was, at the time, uneven, but has since grown significantly. The mainstream scholarly community soon arrived at a consensus, which holds today, that Genesis 1–11 is a highly schematic literary work representing theology/symbolic mythology rather than actual history or science.


title: Historicity of the Bible

text: In the following decades Hermann Gunkel drew attention to the mythic aspects of the Pentateuch, and Albrecht Alt, Martin Noth and the tradition history school argued that although its core traditions had genuinely ancient roots, the narratives were fictional framing devices and were not intended as history in the modern sense. Though doubts have been cast on the historiographic reconstructions of this school (particularly the notion of oral traditions as a primary ancient source), much of its critique of biblical historicity found wide acceptance. Gunkel's position is that


title: Historicity of the Bible

text: In the United States the biblical archaeology movement, under the influence of Albright, counterattacked, arguing that the broad outline within the framing narratives was also true, so that while scholars could not realistically expect to prove or disprove individual episodes from the life of Abraham and the other patriarchs, these were real individuals who could be placed in a context proven from the archaeological record. But as more discoveries were made, and anticipated finds failed to materialise, it became apparent that archaeology did not in fact support the claims made by Albright and his followers.


title: Historicity of the Bible

text: Following Albright's death, his interpretation of the patriarchal age came under increasing criticism: such dissatisfaction marked its culmination with the publication of "The Historicity of the Patriarchal Narratives" by Thomas L. Thompson and "Abraham in History and Tradition" by John Van Seters. Thompson, a literary scholar, argued on the lack of compelling evidence that the patriarchs lived in the 2nd millennium BCE, and noted how certain biblical texts reflected first millennium conditions and concerns, while Van Seters examined the patriarchal stories and argued that their names, social milieu, and messages strongly suggested that they were Iron Age creations. Van Seter and Thompson's works were a paradigm shift in biblical scholarship and archaeology, which gradually led scholars to no longer consider the patriarchal narratives as historical. Some conservative scholars attempted to defend the patriarchal narratives in the following years, but this position has not found acceptance among scholars.


title: Historicity of the Bible

text: Today, only a minority of scholars continue to work within this framework, mainly for reasons of religious conviction. William Dever stated in 1993 that


title: Historicity of the Bible

text: Mainstream scholarship no longer accepts the biblical Exodus account as history for a number of reasons. Most scholars agree that the Exodus stories reached the current form centuries after the apparent setting of the stories. The Book of Exodus itself attempts to ground the event firmly in history, dating the exodus to the 2666th year after creation (Exodus 12:40-41), the construction of the tabernacle to year 2667 (Exodus 40:1-2, 17), stating that the Israelites dwelled in Egypt for 430 years (Exodus 12:40-41), and including place names such as Goshen (Gen. 46:28), Pithom and Ramesses (Exod. 1:11), as well as stating that 600,000 Israelite men were involved (Exodus 12:37). The Book of Numbers further states that the number of Israelites in the desert during the wandering were 603,550, including 22,273 first-borns, which modern estimates put at 2.5-3 million total Israelites, a clearly fanciful number that could never have been supported by the Sinai Desert. The geography is vague with regions such as Goshen unidentified, and there are internal problems with dating in the Pentateuch. No modern attempt to identify a historical Egyptian prototype for Moses has found wide acceptance, and no period in Egyptian history matches the biblical accounts of the Exodus. Some elements of the story are miraculous and defy rational explanation, such as the Plagues of Egypt and the Crossing of the Red Sea. The Bible also fails to mention the names of any of the pharaohs involved in the Exodus narrative.


title: Historicity of the Bible

text: While ancient Egyptian texts from the New Kingdom mention "Asiatics" living in Egypt as slaves and workers, these people cannot be securely connected to the Israelites, and no contemporary Egyptian text mentions a large-scale exodus of slaves like that described in the Bible. The earliest surviving historical mention of the Israelites, the Egyptian Merneptah Stele (c. 1207 BCE), appears to place them in or around Canaan and gives no indication of any exodus.


title: Historicity of the Bible

text: Despite the absence of any archaeological evidence, a majority of scholars agree that the Exodus probably has some historical basis, with Kenton Sparks referring to it as "mythologized history." Scholars posit that small groups of people of Egyptian origin may have joined the early Israelites, and then contributed their own Egyptian Exodus story to all of Israel. William G. Dever cautiously identifies this group with the Tribe of Joseph, while Richard Elliott Friedman identifies it with the Tribe of Levi. Most scholars who accept a historical core of the exodus date this possible exodus group to the thirteenth century BCE at the time of Ramses II, with some instead dating it to the twelfth century BCE at the time of Ramses III. Evidence in favor of historical traditions forming a background to the Exodus narrative include the documented movements of small groups of Ancient Semitic-speaking peoples into and out of Egypt during the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Dynasties, some elements of Egyptian folklore and culture in the Exodus narrative, and the names Moses, Aaron and Phinehas, which seem to have an Egyptian origin. Scholarly estimates for how many people could have been involved in such an exodus range from a few hundred to a few thousand people.


title: Historicity of the Bible

text: Many scholars believe that the Deuteronomistic history preserved elements of ancient texts and oral tradition, including geo-political and socio-economic realities and certain information about historical figures and events. However, large portions of it are legendary and it contains many anachronisms.


title: Historicity of the Bible

text: A major issue in the historicity debate was the narrative of the Israelite conquest of Canaan, described in Joshua and Judges. The American Albright school asserted that the biblical narrative of conquest would be affirmed by archaeological record; and indeed for much of the 20th century archaeology appeared to support the biblical narrative, including excavations at Beitin (identified as Bethel), Tel ed-Duweir, (identified as Lachish), Hazor, and Jericho.


title: Historicity of the Bible

text: However, flaws in the conquest narrative appeared. The most high-profile example was the "fall of Jericho", excavated by John Garstang in the 1930s. Garstang originally announced that he had found fallen walls dating to the time of the biblical Battle of Jericho, but later revised the destruction to a much earlier period. Kathleen Kenyon dated the destruction of the walled city to the middle of the 16th century ( 1550 BCE), too early to match the usual dating of the Exodus to Pharaoh Ramses, on the basis of her excavations in the early 1950s. The same conclusion, based on an analysis of all the excavation findings, was reached by Piotr Bienkowski. By the 1960s it had become clear that the archaeological record did not, in fact, support the account of the conquest given in Joshua: the cities which the Bible records as having been destroyed by the Israelites were either uninhabited at the time, or, if destroyed, were destroyed at widely different times, not in one brief period.


title: Historicity of the Bible

text: "Peake's Commentary on the Bible" argues that the Book of Joshua conflates several independent battles between disparate groups over the centuries, and artificially attributes them to a single leader, Joshua. However, there are a few cases where the biblical record is not contradicted by the archaeological record. For example, stratum in Tel Hazor, found in a destruction layer from around 1200 BCE, shows signs of catastrophic fire, and cuneiform tablets found at the site refer to monarchs named "Ibni Addi", where "Ibni" may be the etymological origin of "Yavin" ("Jabin"), the Canaanite leader referred to in the Hebrew Bible. The city also shows signs of having been a magnificent Canaanite city prior to its destruction, with great temples and opulent palaces, split into an upper acropolis and lower city; the town evidently had been a major Canaanite city. Israel Finkelstein theorized that the destruction of Hazor was the result of civil strife, attacks by the Sea Peoples, and/or a result of the general collapse of civilization across the whole eastern Mediterranean in the Late Bronze Age, rather than being caused by the Israelites.


title: Historicity of the Bible

text: Amnon Ben-Tor (Hebrew University of Jerusalem) believes that recently unearthed evidence of violent destruction by burning verifies the biblical account. In 2012, a team led by Ben-Tor and Sharon Zuckerman discovered a scorched palace from the 13th century BC in whose storerooms they found 3,400-year-old ewers holding burned crops; however, Sharon Zuckerman did not agree with Ben-Tor's theory, and claimed that the burning was the result of the city's numerous factions opposing each other with excessive force. Biblical scholar Richard Elliot Friedman (University of Georgia) argues that the Israelites did destroy Hazor, but that such destruction fits better with the account of the Book of Judges, in which the prophetess Deborah defeats the king of Hazor.


title: Historicity of the Bible

text: The Books of Samuel are considered to be based on both historical and legendary sources, primarily serving to fill the gap in Israelite history after the events described in Deuteronomy. The battles involving the destruction of the Canaanites are not supported by archaeological record, and it is now widely believed that the Israelites themselves originated as a sub-group of Canaanites. The Books of Samuel exhibit too many anachronisms to have been compiled in the 11th century BCE. For example, there is mention of later armor (1 Samuel 17:4–7, 38–39; 25:13), use of camels (1 Samuel 30:17), and cavalry (as distinct from chariotry) (1 Samuel 13:5, 2 Samuel 1:6), iron picks and axes (as though they were common) (2 Samuel 12:31), sophisticated siege techniques (2 Samuel 20:15). There is a gargantuan troop called up (2 Samuel 17:1), a battle with 20,000 casualties (2 Samuel 18:7), and a reference to Kushite paramilitary and servants, clearly giving evidence of a date in which Kushites were common, after the 26th Dynasty of Egypt, the period of the last quarter of the 8th century BCE.


title: Historicity of the Bible

text: Much of the focus of modern criticism has been the historicity of the United Monarchy of Israel, which according to the Hebrew Bible ruled over both Judea and Samaria around the 10th century BCE.


title: Historicity of the Bible

text: In Iron Age IIa (corresponding to the Monarchal period) Judah seems to have been limited to small, mostly rural and unfortified settlements in the Judean hills. This contrasts to the upper Samaria which was becoming urbanized. This archaeological evidence as well as textual criticism has led many modern historians to treat Israel/Samaria and Judah as arising separately as distinct albeit related entities centered at Shechem and Jerusalem, respectively, and not as a united kingdom with a capital in Jerusalem.


title: Historicity of the Bible

text: Excavations at Khirbet Qeiyafa, an Iron Age site located in Judah, support the biblical account of a United Monarchy. The Israel Antiquities Authority stated: "The excavations at Khirbat Qeiyafa clearly reveal an urban society that existed in Judah already in the late eleventh century BCE. It can no longer be argued that the Kingdom of Judah developed only in the late eighth century BCE or at some other later date."


title: Historicity of the Bible

text: The status of Jerusalem in the 10th century BCE is a major subject of debate. The oldest part of Jerusalem and its original urban core is the City of David, which does not show evidence of significant Judean residential activity until the 9th century. However, unique administrative structures such as the Stepped Stone Structure and the Large Stone Structure, which originally formed one structure, contain material culture dated to Iron I. On account of the apparent lack of settlement activity in the 10th century BCE, Israel Finkelstein argues that Jerusalem in the century was a small country village in the Judean hills, not a national capital, and Ussishkin argues that the city was entirely uninhabited. Amihai Mazar contends that if the Iron I/Iron IIa dating of administrative structures in the City of David are correct (as he believes), "Jerusalem was a rather small town with a mighty citadel, which could have been a center of a substantial regional polity."


title: Historicity of the Bible

text: Since Jerusalem has been destroyed and then subsequently rebuilt approximately 15 to 20 times since the time of David and Solomon, some argue much of the evidence of 10th century habitation could easily have been eliminated. However, Israel Finkelstein notes that significant architecture from later in the Iron Age (Iron IIb) has been found.


title: Historicity of the Bible

text: Since the discovery of the Tel Dan Stele dated to the 9th or 8th century BCE containing "bytdwd", interpreted by some as a reference to the "House of David" as a monarchic dynasty in Judah (another possible reference occurs in the Mesha Stele), the majority of scholars accept the existence of a polity ruled by David and Solomon, albeit on a more modest scale than described in the Bible. Most scholars believe that David and Solomon reigned over large sections of Cisjordan and probably parts of Transjordan. William G. Dever argues that David only reigned over the current territories of Israel and West Bank and that he did defeat the invading Philistines, but that the other conquests are fictitious.


title: Historicity of the Bible

text: The majority of modern scholars of antiquity agree that Jesus existed historically, that he was baptized by John the Baptist and crucified by order of Roman prefect Pontius Pilate. The "quest for the historical Jesus" began as early as the 18th century, and has continued to this day. The most notable recent scholarship came in the 1980s and 1990s, with the work of J. D. Crossan, James D. G. Dunn, John P. Meier, E. P. Sanders and N. T. Wright being the most widely read and discussed. Other works on the matter were published by Dale Allison, Bart D. Ehrman, Richard Bauckham and Maurice Casey.


title: Historicity of the Bible

text: The earliest New Testament texts which refer to Jesus, the Pauline epistles, are usually dated in the 50s CE. Since Paul records very little of Jesus' life and activities, these are of little help in determining facts about the life of Jesus, although they may contain references to information given to Paul from the eyewitnesses of Jesus.


title: Historicity of the Bible

text: The discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls has shed light into the context of 1st century Judea, noting the diversity of Jewish belief as well as shared expectations and teachings. For example, the expectation of the coming messiah, the beatitudes of the Sermon on the Mount and much else of the early Christian movement are found to have existed within apocalyptic Judaism of the period. This has had the effect of centering Early Christianity much more within its Jewish roots than was previously the case. It is now recognised that Rabbinic Judaism and Early Christianity are only two of the many strands which survived until the Jewish revolt of 66 to 70 CE.


title: Historicity of the Bible

text: Most historical critics agree that a historical figure named Jesus taught throughout the Galilean countryside c. 30 CE, was believed by his followers to have performed supernatural acts, and was sentenced to death by the Romans, possibly for insurrection.


title: Historicity of the Bible

text: Most modern scholars hold that the canonical gospel accounts were written between 70 and 100, four to eight decades after the crucifixion, although based on earlier traditions and texts, such as "Q", Logia or "sayings gospels", the passion account or other earlier literature (See List of Gospels). Some scholars argue that these accounts were compiled by witnesses although this view is disputed by other scholars.


title: Historicity of the Bible

text: Some scholars believe that the Gospel of Mark shows signs of a lack of knowledge of geographical, political and religious matters in Judea in the time of Jesus. Thus, today the most common opinion is that the author is unknown and both geographically and historically at a distance from the narrated events; however, opinion varies, and scholars such as Craig Blomberg accept the more traditional view. The use of expressions that may be described as awkward and rustic cause the Gospel of Mark to appear somewhat unlettered or even crude. This may be attributed to the influence that Saint Peter, a fisherman, is suggested to have on the writing of Mark. It is commonly thought that the writers of the Gospel of Matthew and Gospel of Luke used Mark as a source, with changes and improvement to peculiarities and crudities in Mark.


title: Historicity of the Bible

text: Archaeological inscriptions and other independent sources show that Acts contains some accurate details of 1st century society with regard to titles of officials, administrative divisions, town assemblies, and rules of the Jewish temple in Jerusalem. However, the historicity of the depiction of Paul the Apostle in Acts is contested. Acts describes Paul differently from how Paul describes himself, both factually and theologically. Acts differs from Paul's letters on important issues, such as the Law, Paul's own apostleship, and his relation to the Jerusalem church. Scholars generally prefer Paul's account over that in Acts.


title: Historicity of the Bible

text: According to Spencer Mizen of "BBC History Magazine", "The origins of the Bible are still cloaked in mystery. When was it written? Who wrote it? And how reliable is it as an historical record?"


title: Historicity of the Bible

text: An educated reading of the biblical text requires knowledge of when it was written, by whom, and for what purpose. For example, many academics would agree that the Pentateuch was in existence some time shortly after the 6th century BCE, but they disagree about when it was written. Proposed dates vary from the 15th century BCE to the 6th century BCE. One popular hypothesis points to the reign of Josiah (7th century BCE). In this hypothesis, the events of, for example, Exodus would have happened centuries before they were finally edited.


title: Historicity of the Bible

text: The documentary hypothesis claims, using the biblical evidence itself, to demonstrate that the current version of the Bible is based on older written sources that are lost. It has been modified heavily over the years, and some scholars accept some form of this hypothesis. There have also been and are a number of scholars who reject it, for example Egyptologist Kenneth Kitchen and Old Testament scholar Walter Kaiser, Jr., as well as R. N. Whybray, Umberto Cassuto, O. T. Allis, Gleason Archer, John Sailhamer, Bruce Waltke, and Joshua Berman.


title: Historicity of the Bible

text: There is great scholarly controversy on the historicity of events recounted in the biblical narratives prior to the Babylonian captivity in the 6th century BCE. There is a split between scholars who reject the biblical account of Ancient Israel as fundamentally ahistorical, and those who accept it as a largely reliable source of history—termed biblical minimalists and biblical maximalists, respectively. The major split of biblical scholarship into two opposing schools is strongly disapproved by non-fundamentalist biblical scholars, as being an attempt by conservative Christians to portray the field as a bipolar argument, of which only one side is correct.


title: Historicity of the Bible

text: Recently the difference between the Maximalist and Minimalist has reduced, and a new school started with a work, "The Quest for the Historical Israel: Debating Archaeology and the History of Early Israel" by Israel Finkelstein, Amihai Mazar, and Brian B. Schmidt. This school argues that post-processual archaeology enables us to recognize the existence of a middle ground between minimalism and maximalism, and that both these extremes need to be rejected. Archaeology offers both confirmation of parts of the biblical record and also poses challenges to the interpretations made by some. The careful examination of the evidence demonstrates that the historical accuracy of the first part of the Old Testament is greatest during the reign of Josiah. Some feel that the accuracy diminishes the further backwards one proceeds from this date. This, they claim, would confirm that a major redaction of the texts seems to have occurred at about that date.


title: Historicity of the Bible

text: The viewpoint sometimes called biblical minimalism generally holds that the Bible is principally a theological and apologetic work, and all stories within it are of an aetiological character. The early stories are held to have a historical basis that was reconstructed centuries later, and the stories possess at most only a few tiny fragments of genuine historical memory, which by their definition are only those points which are supported by archaeological discoveries. In this view, all of the stories about the biblical patriarchs are fictional, and the patriarchs mere legendary eponyms to describe later historical realities. Further, biblical minimalists hold that the twelve tribes of Israel were a later construction, the stories of King David and King Saul were modeled upon later Irano-Hellenistic examples, and that there is no archaeological evidence that the united Kingdom of Israel—where the Bible says that David and Solomon ruled over an empire from the Euphrates to Eilath—ever existed. Archaeological evidence suggesting otherwise, such as the Mesha Stele, is often rejected as allegorical.


title: Historicity of the Bible

text: It is hard to pinpoint when the movement started but 1968 seems to be a reasonable date. During this year, two prize-winning essays were written in Copenhagen; one by Niels Peter Lemche, the other by Heike Friis, which advocated a complete rethinking of the way we approach the Bible and attempt to draw historical conclusions from it.


title: Historicity of the Bible

text: In published books, one of the early advocates of the current school of thought known as biblical minimalism is Giovanni Garbini, (1986), translated into English as "History and Ideology in Ancient Israel" (1988). In his footsteps followed Thomas L. Thompson with his lengthy "Early History of the Israelite People: From the Written & Archaeological Sources" (1992) and, building explicitly on Thompson's book, P. R. Davies' shorter work, "In Search of 'Ancient Israel"' (1992). In the latter, Davies finds historical Israel only in archaeological remains, biblical Israel only in scripture, and recent reconstructions of "ancient Israel" to be an unacceptable amalgam of the two. Thompson and Davies see the entire Hebrew Bible (Old Testament) as the imaginative creation of a small community of Jews at Jerusalem during the period which the Bible assigns to after the return from the Babylonian exile, from 539 BCE onward. Niels Peter Lemche, Thompson's fellow faculty member at the University of Copenhagen, also followed with several titles that show Thompson's influence, including "The Israelites in history and tradition" (1998). The presence of both Thompson and Lemche at the same institution has led to the use of the term "Copenhagen school". The effect of biblical minimalism from 1992 onward was debate with more than two points of view.


title: Historicity of the Bible

text: There is great scholarly controversy on the historicity particularly of those events recounted in the biblical narratives prior to the Babylonian captivity in the 6th century BCE. Regarding the debate over the historicity of ancient Israel, the maximalist position holds that the accounts of the United Monarchy and the early kings of Israel, David and Saul, are to be taken as largely historical.


title: Historicity of the Bible

text: In 2001, Israel Finkelstein and Neil Asher Silberman published "The Bible Unearthed: Archaeology's New Vision of Ancient Israel and the Origin of Its Sacred Texts" which advocated a view midway toward biblical minimalism and caused an uproar among many conservatives. In the 25th anniversary issue of "Biblical Archaeology Review" (March/April 2001 edition), editor Hershel Shanks quoted several biblical scholars who insisted that minimalism was dying, although leading minimalists deny this and a claim has been made "We are all minimalists now" (an allusion to "We are all Keynesians now").


title: Historicity of the Bible

text: In 2003, Kenneth Kitchen, a scholar who adopts a more maximalist point of view, authored the book "On the Reliability of the Old Testament". Kitchen advocated the reliability of many (although not all) parts of the Torah and in no uncertain terms criticizes the work of Finkelstein and Silberman, to which Finkelstein has since responded.


title: Historicity of the Bible

text: Jennifer Wallace describes archaeologist Israel Finkelstein's view in her article "Shifting Ground in the Holy Land", appearing in "Smithsonian Magazine", May 2006:


title: Historicity of the Bible

text: However, despite problems with the archaeological record, some maximalists place Joshua in the mid-second millennium, at about the time the Egyptian Empire came to rule over Canaan, and not the 13th century as Finkelstein or Kitchen claim, and view the destruction layers of the period as corroboration of the biblical account. The destruction of Hazor in the mid-13th century is seen as corroboration of the biblical account of the later destruction carried out by Deborah and Barak as recorded in the Book of Judges. The location that Finkelstein refers to as "Ai" is generally dismissed as the location of the biblical Ai, since it was destroyed and buried in the 3rd millennium. The prominent site has been known by that name since at least Hellenistic times, if not before. Minimalists all hold that dating these events as contemporary are etiological explanations written centuries after the events they claim to report.


title: Historicity of the Bible

text: Both Finkelstein and Silberman do accept that David and Solomon were really existing persons (not kings but bandit leaders or hill country chieftains) from Judah about the 10th century BCE, but they do not assume that there was such a thing as United Monarchy with a capital in Jerusalem.


title: Historicity of the Bible

text: Others, such as David Ussishkin, argue that those who follow the biblical depiction of a United Monarchy do so on the basis of limited evidence while hoping to uncover real archaeological proof in the future. Gunnar Lehmann suggests that there is still a possibility that David and Solomon were able to become local chieftains of some importance and claims that Jerusalem at the time was at best a small town in a sparsely populated area in which alliances of tribal kinship groups formed the basis of society. He goes on further to claim that it was at best a small regional centre, one of three to four in the territory of Judah and neither David nor Solomon had the manpower or the requisite social/political/administrative structure to rule the kind of empire described in the Bible.


title: Historicity of the Bible

text: These views are strongly criticized by William G. Dever, Helga Weippert, Amihai Mazar and Amnon Ben-Tor.


title: Historicity of the Bible

text: André Lemaire states in "Ancient Israel: From Abraham to the Roman Destruction of the Temple" that the principal points of the biblical tradition with Solomon are generally trustworthy. Kenneth Kitchen shares this view, arguing that Solomon ruled over a comparatively wealthy "mini-empire", rather than a small city-state.


title: Historicity of the Bible

text: Recently, Finkelstein has joined with the more conservative Amihai Mazar to explore the areas of agreement and disagreement and there are signs the intensity of the debate between the so-called minimalist and maximalist scholars is diminishing. This view is also taken by Richard S. Hess, which shows there is in fact a plurality of views between maximalists and minimalists. Jack Cargill has shown that popular textbooks not only fail to give readers up-to-date archaeological evidence, but that they also fail to correctly represent the diversity of views present on the subject. Megan Bishop Moore and Brad E. Kelle provide an overview of the respective evolving approaches and attendant controversies, especially during the period from the mid-1980s through 2011, in their book "Biblical History and Israel's Past".


title: Battle of Adrianople

text: The Battle of Adrianople (9 August 378), sometimes known as the Battle of Hadrianopolis, was fought between an Eastern Roman army led by the Eastern Roman Emperor Valens and Gothic rebels (largely Thervings as well as Greutungs, non-Gothic Alans, and various local rebels) led by Fritigern. The battle took place in the vicinity of Adrianople, in the Roman province of Thracia (modern Edirne in European Turkey). It ended with an overwhelming victory for the Goths and the death of Emperor Valens.


title: Battle of Adrianople

text: As part of the Gothic War (376–382), the battle is often considered the start of the events which led to the fall of the Western Roman Empire in the 5th century.


title: Battle of Adrianople

text: A detailed contemporary account of the lead-up to the battle from the Roman perspective was written by Ammianus Marcellinus and forms the culminating point at the end of his history.


title: Battle of Adrianople

text: In 376, the Goths, led by Alavivus and Fritigern, asked to be allowed to settle in the Eastern Roman Empire after being displaced by the invasions of the Huns. Hoping that they would become farmers and soldiers, the Eastern Roman emperor Valentinian allowed them to establish themselves in the Empire as allies ("foederati"). Once across the Danube and into Roman territory, however, the dishonesty of the Roman provincial commanders Lupicinus and Maximus led the newcomers to revolt after suffering many hardships. Valentinian then drove the Goths back over the Danube.


title: Battle of Adrianople

text: Valens left Antioch for Constantinople, and arrived on 30 May. He appointed Sebastianus, newly arrived from Italy, to reorganize the Roman armies already in Thrace. Sebastianus picked 2,000 of his legionaries and marched towards Adrianople. Along the way, they came upon and ambushed small detachments of Goths. Fritigern as the leader of the Goths assembled his forces at Nicopolis and Beroe (now Stara Zagora) in order to deal with the Roman threat.


title: Battle of Adrianople

text: At the time, much of Gratian's army was in Pannonia where they were in the interm attacked across the Rhine by the Lentienses (part of the Alamanni). After the Romans regrouped and defeated the Lentienses near Argentaria (near modern-day Colmar, France), Gratian's army traveled east partly by sea and partly overland.


title: Battle of Adrianople

text: Upon learning of Sebastian's success against the Goths and of Gratian's victory over the Lentienses, Valens was more than ready for a victory of his own. To link up with Sebastian's forces before confronting the Goths, Valens moved his army from Melantias to Adrianople. On 6 August, reconnaissance informed Valens that approximately 10,000 Goths were advancing toward Adrianople from a position 25 kilometers to the north. In preparation at Adrianople, Valens fortified his camp with both ditches and ramparts.


title: Battle of Adrianople

text: Richomeres, sent in advance to Adrianople by Gratian, carried a letter asking Valens to wait for his arrival with reinforcements before engaging in battle. Valens' officers also recommended that he wait for Gratian, but Valens decided to fight without waiting, ready to claim the ultimate prize.


title: Battle of Adrianople

text: The Goths were also watching the Romans, and on 8 August, Fritigern sent an emissary to propose peace and an alliance in exchange for Roman territory. Sure that he would be victorious due to his supposed numerical superiority, Valens rejected these proposals. Valens' estimates of manpower, however, neglected to take into consideration part of the Gothic cavalry that had gone extended distances to forage.


title: Battle of Adrianople

text: Valens' army may have included troops from three Roman field armies: the Army of Thrace, based in the eastern Balkans, which may have sustained heavy losses in 376–377; the 1st Army in the Emperor's Presence; and the 2nd Army in the Emperor's Presence. Both armies in the Emperor's Presence were normally based at Constantinople in peacetime but had been committed to the Persian frontier in 376 and sent west in 377–378.


title: Battle of Adrianople

text: Valens' army included units of veterans, men accustomed to war. The entire force consisted of seven legions – among which were the Legio I "Maximiana" and imperial auxiliaries – of 700 to 1000 men each. The cavalry was composed of mounted archers ("sagittarii") and "Scholae" (the imperial guard). These forces, however, attacked precipitately, while peace negotiations were being conducted, and ultimately fled. There were also squadrons of Arab cavalry, but they were more suited to skirmishes than to pitched battle.


title: Battle of Adrianople

text: Warren Treadgold estimates that, by 395, the Army of Thrace had 24,500 soldiers, while the 1st and 2nd Armies in Emperor's Presence had 21,000 each. However, all three armies include units either formed (several units of "Theodosiani" among them) or redeployed (various legions in Thrace) after Adrianople. Moreover, troops were needed to protect Marcianopolis and other threatened cities, so it is unlikely that all three armies fought together.


title: Battle of Adrianople

text: However, some modern historians estimated the real number of Roman troops to be as many as 15,000 men, 10,000 infantry and 5,000 cavalry.


title: Battle of Adrianople

text: It is not possible to precisely list the units of the Roman army at Adrianople. The only sources are Ammianus, who describes the battle but mentions few units by name, and the eastern "Notitia Dignitatum", which lists Roman army units in the late 4th to early 5th century, after Theodosius. Many units listed in the Balkans were formed after Adrianople; others were transferred from other parts of the Empire, before or after Adrianople; others are listed in two or more sectors. Some units at Adrianople may have been merged or disbanded due to their losses. The Roman forces consisted of heavy infantry, various archers and cavalry.


title: Battle of Adrianople

text: There were probably two main Gothic armies south of the Danube. Fritigern led one army, largely recruited from the Therving exiles, while Alatheus and Saphrax led another army, largely recruited from the Greuthung exiles.


title: Battle of Adrianople

text: Fritigern brought most if not all of his fighters to the battle and appears to have led the force the Romans first encountered. Alatheus and Saphrax brought their cavalry into action "descending like a thunderbolt" against the Romans. These forces included Alans.


title: Battle of Adrianople

text: The Gothic armies were mostly infantry, with some cavalry, which was significant in the battle of Adrianople.


title: Battle of Adrianople

text: Some older works attribute the Gothic victory to overwhelming Gothic numbers, to Gothic cavalry, and sometimes to Gothic use of stirrups.


title: Battle of Adrianople

text: More recent scholarly works mostly agree that the armies were similarly sized, that the Gothic infantry was more decisive than their cavalry and that neither the Romans nor the Goths used stirrups until the 6th century, probably brought by the Avars.


title: Battle of Adrianople

text: Ammianus records that the Roman scouts estimated 10,000 Gothic troops, but Ammianus dismissed this as an underestimate. This appears to be due to Alatheus and Saphrax's forces being away when the Roman scouts estimated the Goths' numbers before battle. Several modern historians have estimated the strength of the Gothic armies at 12,000–15,000.


title: Battle of Adrianople

text: Ammianus notes the important role of the Gothic cavalry. Charles Oman, believing that the cavalry were the majority of the Gothic force, interpreted the Battle of Adrianople as the beginning of the dominance of cavalry over infantry for the next thousand years. Some other historians have taken the same view. Burns and other recent historians argue that the infantry were the vast majority of the Gothic force, and that the battle had little effect on the relationship between infantry and cavalry.


title: Battle of Adrianople

text: The battle took place within a few hours' march of the city of Adrianopolis, but its precise location is uncertain.


title: Battle of Adrianople

text: On the morning of 9 August, Valens decamped from Adrianople, where he left the imperial treasury and administration under guard. The reconnaissance of the preceding days informed him of the location of the Gothic camp north of the city. Valens arrived there around noon after marching for eight miles over difficult terrain.


title: Battle of Adrianople

text: The Roman troops arrived tired and dehydrated, facing the Gothic camp that had been set up on the top of a hill. The Goths, except for their cavalry, defended their wagon circle, inside of which were their families and possessions. Fritigern's objective was to delay the Romans, in order to give enough time for the Gothic cavalry to return. The fields were burnt by the Goths to delay and harass the Romans with smoke, and negotiations began for an exchange of hostages. The negotiations exasperated the Roman soldiers who seemed to hold the stronger position, but they gained precious time for Fritigern.


title: Battle of Adrianople

text: Some Roman units began the battle without orders to do so, believing they would have an easy victory, and perhaps over-eager to exact revenge on the Goths after two years of unchecked devastation throughout the Balkans. The imperial scholae of shield-archers under the command of the Iberian prince Bacurius attacked, but lacking support they were easily pushed back. Then the Roman left wing reached the circle of wagons, but it was too late. At that moment, the Gothic cavalry, returning from a foraging expedition, arrived to support the infantry. The cavalry surrounded the Roman troops, who were already in disarray after the failure of the first assault. The Romans retreated to the base of the hill where they were unable to maneuver, encumbered by their heavy armor and long shields. The casualties, exhaustion, and psychological pressure led to a rout of the Roman army. The cavalry continued their attack, and the killing continued until nightfall.


title: Battle of Adrianople

text: In the rout, the Emperor himself was abandoned by his guards. Some tried to retrieve him, but the majority of the cavalry fled. Valens' final fate is unknown; he may have died anonymously on the field. His body was never found. An alternative story circulated after the battle that Valens had escaped the field with a bodyguard and some eunuchs and hid in a peasant's cottage. The enemy attempted to pillage the cottage, apparently unaware Valens was inside. Valens' men shot arrows from the second floor to defend the cottage and in response the Goths set the cottage on fire. The bodyguard leaped out the window and told the Goths who was inside, but it was too late. Valens perished in the flames.


title: Battle of Adrianople

text: According to the historian Ammianus Marcellinus, the Goths immediately marched to the city of Adrianople and attempted to take it; Ammianus gives a detailed account of their failure. Ammianus refers to a great number of Roman soldiers who had not been let into the city and who fought the besieging Goths below the walls. A third of the Roman army succeeded in retreating, but the losses were uncountable. Many officers, among them the general Sebastian, were killed in the worst Roman defeat since the Battle of Edessa, the low point of the Crisis of the Third Century. The battle was a crushing blow for the late Empire, resulting in the destruction of the East Roman army's core, the deaths of valuable administrators, and the destruction of nearly all armories on the Danubian provinces following the battle. The lack of reserves for the army worsened the recruitment crisis. Despite the losses, the battle of Adrianople did not mark the end of the Roman Empire because the imperial military power was only temporarily crippled.


title: Battle of Adrianople

text: The defeat at Adrianople signified that the barbarians, fighting for or against the Romans, had become powerful adversaries. The Goths, though partly tamed by Valens' successor Theodosius I (who accepted them once more as allied tribes), were never expelled, exterminated, or assimilated; they remained as a distinct entity within its frontiers, for a few years allies, later semi or fully independent or often hostile.


title: Battle of Adrianople

text: The long-term implications of the battle of Adrianople for the art of war have often been overstated, with many 20th-century writers repeating Sir Charles Oman's idea that the battle represented a turning point in military history, with heavy cavalry triumphing over Roman infantry and ushering in the age of the medieval knight. This idea was disputed by T. S. Burns in 1973. According to Burns, the Gothic army's cavalry arm was fairly small, that Valens would actually have had more cavalry and that while the role of Fritigern's cavalry was critical to his victory, the battle was a mainly infantry versus infantry affair. The medieval knight was not to rise for several centuries after Adrianople.


title: Lillian Disney

text: Lillian Marie Disney ( Bounds; February 15, 1899December 16, 1997) was an American ink artist at the Disney Studios and the wife of Walt Disney from 1925 until his death in 1966. Born in Spalding, Idaho, Disney graduated from high school in Lapwai before moving to Lewiston to attend college. She left Idaho in 1923 to move to southern California, where she would meet future husband Walt while working as a secretary at Walt Disney Animation Studios.


title: Lillian Disney

text: Lillian and Walt married on July 13, 1925, and had two daughters, Diane Marie Disney (1933–2013), their only biological child, and Sharon Mae Disney (1936–1993), who was adopted. Lillian and Walt had ten grandchildren, including seven by Diane and three by Sharon. During a train ride in 1928, Walt revealed to his wife a new animated character, whom he called "Mortimer Mouse". Lillian suggested that he rename his character "Mickey Mouse", a name which has since become synonymous with the Disney brand.


title: Lillian Disney

text: Walt Disney died from lung cancer on December 15, 1966, after which Lillian remarried John L. Truyens (a Southern California real estate developer) from 1969 until his death in 1981. On December 15, 1997, Lillian Disney suffered a stroke and died the following morning in Los Angeles at age 98.


title: Lillian Disney

text: Born Lillian Marie Bounds in Spalding, Idaho, she grew up in nearby Lapwai on the Nez Perce Indian Reservation, where her father Willard worked as a blacksmith and federal marshal. She was the youngest of ten children, and the family struggled financially; her father died when she was seventeen. After graduation from Lapwai High School, Bounds and her mother moved down to Lewiston; she attended a year of business college then moved to southern California in 1923 to live with her sister She was working at the Disney Studio in "ink and paint" as a secretary when she met Walt.


title: Lillian Disney

text: Lillian Bounds and Walt Disney married on July 13, 1925, in Idaho at her brother's home. The wedding was officiated by the rector of Lewiston's Episcopal Church of the Nativity. Walt Disney's parents did not attend. As Bounds's father was deceased, her uncle, who was chief of the Lewiston Fire Department, gave the bride away. She wore a dress that she had made herself. The couple had two daughters, Diane Marie Disney and Sharon Mae Disney the latter of whom was adopted. Disney had ten grandchildren: seven by Diane and her husband (Ron W. Miller), and three by Sharon and her two husbands, Robert Brown and William Lund.


title: Lillian Disney

text: Her film career includes work as an ink artist on the film "Plane Crazy". Disney is credited with having named her husband's most famous character, Mickey Mouse, during a train trip from New York to California in 1928. Walt showed a drawing of the cartoon mouse to his wife and told her that he was going to name it "Mortimer Mouse". Lillian replied that the name sounded "too depressing" and she was very proud to have suggested the name "Mickey Mouse" instead of Mortimer.


title: Lillian Disney

text: At the Carolwood Pacific Railroad, Walt Disney named his 1:8-scale live steam locomotive the "Lilly Belle" in his wife's honor. Additionally, Walt named one of the Disneyland Railroad cars the "Lilly Belle" in her honor, and the Walt Disney World Railroad has a locomotive named "Lilly Belle", where each locomotive is named for someone who greatly contributed to the Walt Disney Company. Walt Disney Imagineering created "The Empress Lilly", a paddle steamer replica, at Walt Disney World in Disney Springs and Disney christened it on May 1, 1977. Disney was inducted into the Disney Legends in 2003.


title: Lillian Disney

text: Walt Disney died of lung cancer on December 15, 1966, aged 65, and Lillian was married to John L. Truyens from May 1969 until his death on February 24, 1981, aged 73.


title: Lillian Disney

text: In 1987, she pledged a $50 million gift towards the construction of a new concert hall in Los Angeles. After several delays, the Walt Disney Concert Hall opened in 2003, six years after her death. She also helped fund the founding of The California Institute of the Arts.


title: Lillian Disney

text: In the 1990s, reflecting on her 41-year marriage to Walt Disney, she said, "We shared a wonderful, exciting life, and we loved every minute of it. He was a wonderful husband to me, and wonderful and joyful father and grandfather."


title: Lillian Disney

text: Disney suffered a stroke on December 15, 1997, which was exactly 31 years after the death of her first husband, Walt. She died the following morning at her home in West Los Angeles at the age of 98. She was interred at Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale, California.


title: Bagger 288

text: Bagger 288 (Excavator 288), built by the German company Krupp for the energy and mining firm Rheinbraun, is a bucket-wheel excavator or mobile strip mining machine.


title: Bagger 288

text: When its construction was completed in 1978, Bagger 288 superseded Big Muskie as the heaviest land vehicle in the world, at 13,500 tons. It took five years to design and manufacture and five years to assemble, with total cost reaching $100 million. In 1995, it was itself superseded by the slightly heavier Bagger 293 (14,200 tons). NASA's Crawler-Transporter remains the largest self-propelled land vehicle in the world, since bucket-wheel excavators are powered by an external power source, and the Overburden Conveyor Bridge F60s hold the title of largest land vehicle of any type by physical dimensions.


title: Bagger 288

text: The Bagger 288 was built for the job of removing overburden before coal mining at the Hambach surface mine in Germany. It can excavate 240,000 tons of coal or 240,000 cubic metres of overburden daily – the equivalent of a soccer field dug to deep. The coal produced in one day fills 2400 coal wagons. The excavator is up to 220 m (721 ft) long (slightly shorter than Baggers 287 and 293) and approximately 96 m (315 feet) high. The Bagger's operation requires 16.56 megawatts of externally supplied electricity. It can travel per minute (0.1 to 0.6 km/h). The chassis of the main section is wide and sits on 3 rows of 4 caterpillar track assemblies, each wide. The large surface area of the tracks means the ground pressure of the Bagger 288 is very small (1.71 bar or 24.8 psi); this allows the excavator to travel over gravel, earth and even grass without leaving a significant track. It has a minimum turning radius of approximately 50 metres, and can climb a maximum gradient of 1:18 (5° incline).


title: Bagger 288

text: By February 2001, the excavator had completely exposed the coal source at the Tagebau Hambach mine and was no longer needed there. In three weeks it made a trip to the Tagebau Garzweiler, traveling across Autobahn 61, the river Erft, a railroad line, and several roads. The move cost nearly 15 million German marks and required a team of seventy workers. Rivers were crossed by placing large steel pipes for the water to flow through and providing a smooth surface over the pipes with rocks and gravel. Special grass was seeded to smooth its passage over valuable terrain. Moving Bagger 288 in one piece was more economical than disassembling the excavator and moving it piece by piece.


title: Bagger 288

text: The Bagger 288 is one of a group of similar sized and built vehicles, such as Bagger 281 (built in 1958), Bagger 285 (1975), Bagger 287 (1976), Bagger 293 (1995), etc.


title: Roh Tae-woo

text: Roh Tae-woo (; ; 4 December 1932 – 26 October 2021) was a South Korean politician and army general who served as the sixth president of South Korea from 1988 to 1993.


title: Roh Tae-woo

text: Roh was a close ally and friend of Chun Doo-hwan, the predecessor leader of the country who ruled as an unelected military dictator from 1980 to 1988, and unofficially since 1979. In 1996, both leaders were sentenced for their roles in orchestrating coups as well as their subsequent human rights abuses such as the Gwangju Massacre, but was pardoned the following year by Kim Young-sam on advice of president-elect Kim Dae-jung.


title: Roh Tae-woo

text: He was a leader of the Democratic Justice Party from 1987 to 1990 and was known for having passed the June 29 Declaration in 1987 as the leader of the party. Roh died on 26 October 2021, at the age of 88.


title: Roh Tae-woo

text: Roh was born on 4 December 1932 in Daegu. His ancestry could be traced from Jinan, Shandong. He is the 16th generation descendant of No Sa-sin () who was a civil minister and scholar during early Joseon period. No Sa-sin is 6th generation descendant of the late Goryeo period bureaucrat Noh Jin (). His father, a low-echelon civil officer in the district, died in a car accident when Roh was seven years old. With his uncle's help, Roh first enrolled at the Taegu Technical School but transferred to the local Kyongbuk High School where he was an above-average student. Roh befriended Chun Doo-hwan while in high school in Taikyū.


title: Roh Tae-woo

text: During the Korean War (1950–1953), Roh joined the South Korean army as an enlisted conscript in an artillery unit, he joins singer Song Hae. He was promoted to Sergeant Cannoneer of an M114 155 mm howitzer gun line.


title: Roh Tae-woo

text: He later entered the Korean Military Academy, completing it in the first class of the four-year program, he graduated in February 1954 with a Bachelor of Science degree and a commission as an Army 2nd Lieutenant in the 11th class of the Korea Military Academy (KMA).


title: Roh Tae-woo

text: A commissioned officer in the infantry from 1954, Roh rose steadily through the ranks and fought in the Vietnam War, first in 1968 as a lieutenant colonel and battalion commander, later was promoted to major general and the commander of White Horse Division in 1979. A member of the Hanahoe, a secret military group, he gave critical support to a coup later that year in which Chun became the "de facto" ruler of South Korea. Roh was a military general when he helped Chun lead troops to the Gwangju Democratization Movement in 1980.


title: Roh Tae-woo

text: Roh held several key army posts such as Commander of the Capital Security Command in 1979 and Commander of the Defense Security Command in 1980.


title: Roh Tae-woo

text: When Roh first joined the military, his surname was transcribed in English as "No." He later changed it to "Roh" to avoid the negative connotations of "No" in English.


title: Roh Tae-woo

text: Following his retirement from the Korean Army in July 1981, Roh accepted President Chun's offer of the post of Minister of State for National Security and Foreign Affairs. Later, he served as Sports Minister, Home Affairs Minister, President of the Seoul Olympics Organizing Committee, and in 1985, chairman of the ruling Democratic Justice Party. Most notably, he oversaw preparations for the 1988 Summer Olympics in Seoul, which he officially declared open.


title: Roh Tae-woo

text: Despite his involvement in the 12 December 1979 coup d'état against then-President Choi Kyu-hah and the bloody military crackdown of dissidents in the Gwangju Uprising of 18–27 May 1980 and with an eye on the Blue House in the upcoming 1987 presidential elections, Roh began working to distance himself from the unpopular Chun government. The reason was that Roh worked to carry out his own agenda for democratic reform. By agreeing to meeting the demands of the political opposition in terms of political reforms with his eight-point proposal including direct election of the President, Roh successfully upstaged Chun and boosted his own image as a reformer.


title: Roh Tae-woo

text: In June 1987, Chun named Roh as the presidential candidate of the ruling Democratic Justice Party. This was widely perceived as handing Roh the presidency, and triggered large pro-democracy rallies in Seoul and other cities in the 1987 June Democracy Movement.


title: Roh Tae-woo

text: In response, Roh made a speech on 29 June promising a wide program of reforms. Chief among them were a new, more democratic constitution and popular election of the president. In the election, the two leading opposition figures, Kim Young-sam and Kim Dae-jung (both of whom later became presidents), were unable to overcome their differences and split the vote, in spite of the first female presidential candidate, Hong Sook-ja in South Korean electoral history history withdrawing from the race to support Kim Young-sam against Roh. This enabled Roh to win by a narrow margin with 36.6% of the vote and become the country's first cleanly elected president on 16 December 1987.


title: Roh Tae-woo

text: Roh was inaugurated as president on 25 February 1988. For the first time, the ceremony was held outside the National Assembly. Subsequent presidents have been inaugurated at the same location.


title: Roh Tae-woo

text: Roh's rule was notable for hosting the Seoul Olympics in 1988 and for his foreign policy of Nordpolitik, which represented a major break from previous administrations. True to his word, he remained committed to democratic reforms and was steadfast in the push toward political and socio-economic reforms at home. Democratization of politics, economic "growth with equity," and national reunification were the three policy goals publicly stated by the Roh administration.


title: Roh Tae-woo

text: However, in 1992, Roh's government sealed up a cave on Mount Halla where the remains of the Jeju uprising massacre victims had been discovered, continuing a series of coverups by successive administrations on the truth of the uprising.


title: Roh Tae-woo

text: In order to overcome the paralysis of governing due to lack of majority support in the National Assembly, the Roh government sought to attain "a grand compromise" in partisan politics. A party merger was announced on 22 January 1990 in an attempt to accomplish this political objective. The ruling Democratic Justice Party merged with two opposition parties, Kim Young-sam's Reunification and Democracy Party and Kim Jong-pil's New Democratic Republican Party. The new established Democratic Liberal Party, which commanded a more than two-thirds majority in the legislature, sought to establish political stability so as to enable socio-economic progress. However, the merger was fraught with factional infighting, undermining his administration's handling on national affairs.


title: Roh Tae-woo

text: He met with President Corazon Aquino for a series of talks between the Philippines and South Korea for economic, social, and cultural ties, supporting the Filipino boxer Leopoldo Serantes in the Olympics, and to discuss unification talks to end North Korea's hostilities after the Korean War.


title: Roh Tae-woo

text: During his administration, Roh's stance as President was very active in diplomacy. Successfully hosting the 24th Summer Olympics in Seoul in his first year in office was a major accomplishment, followed by his active diplomacy, including his address before the United Nations General Assembly in October 1988, his meeting with U.S. President George H. W. Bush, and delivering a speech before a joint session of the U.S. Congress. He also conducted a five-nation European visit in December 1989.


title: Roh Tae-woo

text: On 7 July 1988, he launched an aggressive foreign policy initiative called the Northern Diplomacy, or Nordpolitik, which brought about benefits and rewards to his government. In 1989, Seoul established diplomatic relations with Hungary and Poland, followed by diplomatic ties with Yugoslavia, Romania, Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria, and Mongolia in 1990. South Korea's trade with the People's Republic of China steadily increased, reaching the $3.1 billion mark at the same time South Korea's trade with the Eastern Bloc nations and the Soviet Union increased to $800 million. Seoul and Moscow exchanged full consular general's offices in 1990. Roh's moves left North Korea more isolated and was a dramatic and historic turning point of South Korea’s diplomatic goals.


title: Roh Tae-woo

text: On 4 June 1990, Roh met with Mikhail Gorbachev, President of the Soviet Union, during a visit to the United States. The meeting ended 42 years of official silence between the two countries and paved the way for improved diplomatic relations. Roh later visited Soviet Union in 1991.


title: Roh Tae-woo

text: Roh also established diplomatic relations with the People's Republic of China on 24 August 1992, which ended 43 years of diplomatic relations between Taiwan and South Korea.


title: Roh Tae-woo

text: The Nordpolitik policy also proposed the interim development of a "Korean Community", which was similar to a North Korean proposal for a confederation.


title: Roh Tae-woo

text: From 4 to 7 September 1990, high-level talks were held in Seoul, at the same time that the North was protesting about the Soviet Union normalizing relations with the South. In December 1991 both states made an accord, the Agreement on Reconciliation, Non-Aggression, Exchange and Cooperation, pledging non-aggression and cultural and economic exchanges. They also agreed on prior notification of major military movements and established a military hotline, and working on replacing the armistice with a "peace regime". Today, the agreement has been praised for forming a foundation for cross-border exchanges and cooperation.


title: Roh Tae-woo

text: In January 1992, North and South Korea also signed the Joint Declaration of the Denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula, although the North subsequently reneged and pursued its own nuclear weapons program. This coincided with the admission of both North and South Korea into the United Nations. Meanwhile, on 25 March 1991, a unified Korean team, for the first time, used the Korean Unification Flag at the World Table Tennis Competition in Japan, and on 6 May 1991, a unified team competed at the World Youth Football Competition in Portugal.


title: Roh Tae-woo

text: Roh's emphasis on "economic growth with equity," although well received by the public, led to the dwindling in the annual economic growth rate from the high of 12.3 percent in 1988 to 6.7 percent in 1989. As labor strikes and demands for higher wages intensified, the Roh government imposed an austerity plan to keep South Korea's export-oriented economy more competitive internationally. However, pursuit of higher wages in the wake of the strikes and the appreciation of the South Korean won in value against the U.S. dollar made South Korean products less competitive internationally.


title: Roh Tae-woo

text: However, among his positive legacies were the cancellation of debt in rural areas, the construction of 2 million new houses and establishing public land ownership for the public interest. Among his lasting legacies is the building of large-scale national projects such as Incheon International Airport which opened in 2001 (and is now one of the largest and busiest airports in the world) and the Korea Train Express (KTX) high speed rail system which opened in 2004, both of which began construction under his administration in 1992.


title: Roh Tae-woo

text: Barred from running for a second term in 1992 (the 1987 constitution retained the previous ban on reelection), Roh left office on 24 February 1993.


title: Roh Tae-woo

text: In 1993, Roh's successor Kim Young-sam led an anti-corruption campaign that investigated Roh and Chun Doo-hwan. Kim had previously merged his party with Roh's in a deal that enabled him to win the election. Kim's administration also officially recognised the 12 December incident as a coup.


title: Roh Tae-woo

text: In October 1995, Roh, in a tearful televised speech, publicly apologized for having illegally amassed hundreds of millions of dollars in secret political donations during his term as president. Roh was arrested in November 1995 on charges of bribery. The two former presidents were also later separately charged with mutiny and treason for their roles in the 1979 coup and the 1980 Gwangju massacre.