title: New Testament

text: The author of the Book of Revelation identifies himself several times as "John". and states that he was on Patmos when he received his first vision. As a result, the author is sometimes referred to as John of Patmos. The author has traditionally been identified with John the Apostle to whom the Gospel and the epistles of John were attributed. It was believed that he was exiled to the island of Patmos during the reign of the Roman emperor Domitian, and there wrote Revelation. Justin Martyr (c. 100–165 AD) who was acquainted with Polycarp, who had been mentored by John, makes a possible allusion to this book, and credits John as the source. Irenaeus (c. 115–202) assumes it as a conceded point. According to the "Zondervan Pictorial Encyclopedia of the Bible", modern scholars are divided between the apostolic view and several alternative hypotheses put forth in the last hundred years or so. Ben Witherington points out that linguistic evidence makes it unlikely that the books were written by the same person.


title: New Testament

text: The earliest manuscripts of New Testament books date from the late second to early third centuries (although see Papyrus 52 for a possible exception). These manuscripts place a clear upper limit on the dating of New Testament texts. Explicit references to NT books in extra-biblical documents can push this upper limit down a bit further. Irenaeus of Lyon names and quotes from most of the books in the New Testament in his book "Against Heresies", written around 180 AD. The Epistle of Polycarp to the Philippians, written some time between 110 and Polycarp's death in 155–167 AD, quotes or alludes to most New Testament texts. Ignatius of Antioch wrote letters referencing much of the New Testament. He lived from about 35 AD to 107 AD and is rumored to have been a disciple of the Apostle John. His writings reference the Gospels of John, Matthew, and Luke, as well as Peter, James, and Paul's Epistles. His writing is usually attributed to the end of his lifetime, which places the Gospels as first century writings.


title: New Testament

text: Literary analysis of the New Testament texts themselves can be used to date many of the books of the New Testament to the mid-to-late first century. The earliest works of the New Testament are the letters of the Apostle Paul. It can be determined that 1 Thessalonians is likely the earliest of these letters, written around 52 AD.


title: New Testament

text: The major languages spoken by both Jews and Greeks in the Holy Land at the time of Jesus were Aramaic and Koine Greek, and also a colloquial dialect of Mishnaic Hebrew. It is generally agreed by most scholars that the historical Jesus primarily spoke Aramaic, perhaps also some Hebrew and Koine Greek. The majority view is that all of the books that would eventually form the New Testament were written in the Koine Greek language.


title: New Testament

text: As Christianity spread, these books were later translated into other languages, most notably, Latin, Syriac, and Egyptian Coptic. Some of the Church Fathers imply or claim that Matthew was originally written in Hebrew or Aramaic, and then soon after was written in Koine Greek. Nevertheless, some scholars believe the Gospel of Matthew known today was composed in Greek and is neither directly dependent upon nor a translation of a text in a Semitic language.


title: New Testament

text: The style of Koine Greek in which the New Testament is written differs from the general Koine Greek used by Greek writers of the same era, a difference that some scholars have explained by the fact that the authors of the New Testament, nearly all Jews and deeply familiar with the Septuagint, wrote in a Jewish-Greek dialect strongly influenced by Aramaic and Hebrew (see Jewish Koine Greek, related to the Greek of the Septuagint). But other scholars note that this view is arrived at by comparing the linguistic style of the New Testament to the preserved writings of the literary men of the era, who imitated the style of the great Attic texts and as a result did not reflect the everyday spoken language, so that this difference in style could be explained by the New Testament being written, unlike other preserved literary material of the era, in the Koine Greek spoken in every day life, in order to appeal to the common people, a style which has also been found in contemporary non-Jewish texts such as private letters, receipts and petitions discovered in Egypt (where the dry air has preserved these documents which, as everyday material not deemed of literary importance, had not been copied by subsequent generations).


title: New Testament

text: The process of canonization of the New Testament was complex and lengthy. In the initial centuries of early Christianity, there were many books widely considered by the church to be inspired, but there was no single formally recognized New Testament canon. The process was characterized by a compilation of books that apostolic tradition considered authoritative in worship and teaching, relevant to the historical situations in which they lived, and consonant with the Old Testament. Writings attributed to the apostles circulated among the earliest Christian communities and the Pauline epistles were circulating, perhaps in collected forms, by the end of the 1st century AD.


title: New Testament

text: One of the earliest attempts at solidifying a canon was made by Marcion, AD, who accepted only a modified version of Luke (the Gospel of Marcion) and ten of Paul's letters, while rejecting the Old Testament entirely. His canon was largely rejected by other groups of Christians, notably the proto-orthodox Christians, as was his theology, Marcionism. Adolf von Harnack, John Knox, and David Trobisch, among other scholars, have argued that the church formulated its New Testament canon partially in response to the challenge posed by Marcion.


title: New Testament

text: Polycarp, Irenaeus and Tertullian held the epistles of Paul to be divinely inspired "scripture." Other books were held in high esteem but were gradually relegated to the status of New Testament apocrypha. Justin Martyr, in the mid 2nd century, mentions "memoirs of the apostles" as being read on Sunday alongside the "writings of the prophets".


title: New Testament

text: The Muratorian fragment, dated at between 170 and as late as the end of the 4th century (according to the "Anchor Bible Dictionary"), may be the earliest known New Testament canon attributed to mainstream Christianity. It is similar, but not identical, to the modern New Testament canon.


title: New Testament

text: The oldest clear endorsement of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John being the only legitimate gospels was written AD. A four gospel canon (the "Tetramorph") was asserted by Irenaeus, who refers to it directly in his polemic "Against Heresies":


title: New Testament

text: The books considered to be authoritative by Irenaeus included the four gospels and many of the letters of Paul, although, based on the arguments Irenaeus made in support of only four authentic gospels, some interpreters deduce that the fourfold Gospel must have still been a novelty in Irenaeus's time.


title: New Testament

text: By the early 200s, Origen may have been using the same twenty-seven books as in the Catholic New Testament canon, though there were still disputes over the canonicity of the Letter to the Hebrews, Epistle of James, II Peter, II John and III John and the Book of Revelation, known as the Antilegomena. Likewise, the Muratorian fragment is evidence that, perhaps as early as 200, there existed a set of Christian writings somewhat similar to the twenty-seven book NT canon, which included four gospels and argued against objections to them. Thus, while there was a good measure of debate in the Early Church over the New Testament canon, the major writings are claimed to have been accepted by almost all Christians by the middle of the 3rd century.


title: New Testament

text: Origen was largely responsible for the collection of usage information regarding the texts that became the New Testament. The information used to create the late-4th-century Easter Letter, which declared accepted Christian writings, was probably based on the "Ecclesiastical History" (HE) of Eusebius of Caesarea, wherein he uses the information passed on to him by Origen to create both his list at HE 3:25 and Origen's list at HE 6:25. Eusebius got his information about what texts were then accepted and what were then disputed, by the third-century churches throughout the known world, a great deal of which Origen knew of firsthand from his extensive travels, from the library and writings of Origen.


title: New Testament

text: In fact, Origen would have possibly included in his list of "inspired writings" other texts kept out by the likes of Eusebius—including the Epistle of Barnabas, Shepherd of Hermas, and 1 Clement. Notwithstanding these facts, "Origen is not the originator of the idea of biblical canon, but he certainly gives the philosophical and literary-interpretative underpinnings for the whole notion."


title: New Testament

text: Eusebius, , gave a detailed list of New Testament writings in his "Ecclesiastical History" Book 3, Chapter XXV:


title: New Testament

text: The Book of Revelation is counted as both accepted (Kirsopp Lake translation: "recognized") and disputed, which has caused some confusion over what exactly Eusebius meant by doing so. From other writings of the church fathers, it was disputed with several canon lists rejecting its canonicity. EH 3.3.5 adds further detail on Paul: "Paul's fourteen epistles are well known and undisputed. It is not indeed right to overlook the fact that some have rejected the Epistle to the Hebrews, saying that it is disputed by the church of Rome, on the ground that it was not written by Paul." EH 4.29.6 mentions the Diatessaron: "But their original founder, Tatian, formed a certain combination and collection of the gospels, I know not how, to which he gave the title Diatessaron, and which is still in the hands of some. But they say that he ventured to paraphrase certain words of the apostle Paul, in order to improve their style."


title: New Testament

text: In his Easter letter of 367, Athanasius, Bishop of Alexandria, gave a list of the books that would become the twenty-seven-book NT canon, and he used the word "canonized" ("kanonizomena") in regards to them. The first council that accepted the present canon of the New Testament may have been the Synod of Hippo Regius in North Africa (393 AD). The acts of this council are lost. A brief summary of the acts was read at and accepted by the Council of Carthage (397) and the Council of Carthage (419). These councils were under the authority of St. Augustine, who regarded the canon as already closed.


title: New Testament

text: Pope Damasus I's Council of Rome in 382, if the "Decretum Gelasianum" is correctly associated with it, issued a biblical canon identical to that mentioned above, or, if not, the list is at least a 6th-century compilation. Likewise, Damasus' commissioning of the Latin Vulgate edition of the Bible, c. 383, was instrumental in the fixation of the canon in the West. In c. 405, Pope Innocent I sent a list of the sacred books to a Gallic bishop, Exsuperius of Toulouse. Christian scholars assert that, when these bishops and councils spoke on the matter, they were not defining something new but instead "were ratifying what had already become the mind of the Church."


title: New Testament

text: The New Testament canon as it is now was first listed by St. Athanasius, Bishop of Alexandria, in 367, in a letter written to his churches in Egypt, Festal Letter 39. Also cited is the Council of Rome, but not without controversy. That canon gained wider and wider recognition until it was accepted at the Third Council of Carthage in 397 and 419. The Book of Revelation was not added till the Council of Carthage (419).


title: New Testament

text: Even this council did not settle the matter. Certain books, referred to as Antilegomena, continued to be questioned, especially James and Revelation. Even as late as the 16th century, the Reformer Martin Luther questioned (but in the end did not reject) the Epistle of James, the Epistle of Jude, the Epistle to the Hebrews and the Book of Revelation. To this day, German-language Luther Bibles are printed with these four books at the end of the canon, rather than in their traditional order as in other editions of the Bible.


title: New Testament

text: In light of this questioning of the canon of Scripture by Protestants in the 16th century, the (Roman Catholic) Council of Trent reaffirmed the traditional western canon (i.e., the canon accepted at the 4th-century Council of Rome and Council of Carthage), thus making the Canon of Trent and the Vulgate Bible dogma in the Catholic Church. Later, Pope Pius XI on 2 June 1927 decreed the Comma Johanneum was open to dispute and Pope Pius XII on 3 September 1943 issued the encyclical "Divino afflante Spiritu", which allowed translations based on other versions than just the Latin Vulgate, notably in English the New American Bible.


title: New Testament

text: Thus, some claim that, from the 4th century, there existed unanimity in the West concerning the New Testament canon (as it is today), and that, by the 5th century, the Eastern Church, with a few exceptions, had come to accept the Book of Revelation and thus had come into harmony on the matter of the canon. Nonetheless, full dogmatic articulations of the canon were not made until the Canon of Trent of 1546 for Roman Catholicism, the Thirty-Nine Articles of 1563 for the Church of England, the Westminster Confession of Faith of 1647 for Calvinism, and the Synod of Jerusalem of 1672 for the Greek Orthodox.


title: New Testament

text: On the question of NT Canon formation generally, New Testament scholar Lee Martin McDonald has written that:


title: New Testament

text: According to the "Catholic Encyclopedia" article on the Canon of the New Testament: "The idea of a complete and clear-cut canon of the New Testament existing from the beginning, that is from Apostolic times, has no foundation in history. The Canon of the New Testament, like that of the Old, is the result of a development, of a process at once stimulated by disputes with doubters, both within and without the Church, and retarded by certain obscurities and natural hesitations, and which did not reach its final term until the dogmatic definition of the Tridentine Council."


title: New Testament

text: In 331, Constantine I commissioned Eusebius to deliver fifty Bibles for the Church of Constantinople. Athanasius ("Apol. Const. 4") recorded Alexandrian scribes around 340 preparing Bibles for Constans. Little else is known, though there is plenty of speculation. For example, it is speculated that this may have provided motivation for canon lists, and that Codex Vaticanus and Codex Sinaiticus may be examples of these Bibles. Together with the Peshitta and Codex Alexandrinus, these are the earliest extant Christian Bibles. There is no evidence among the canons of the First Council of Nicaea of any determination on the canon.


title: New Testament

text: Like other literature from antiquity, the text of the New Testament was (prior to the advent of the printing press) preserved and transmitted in manuscripts. Manuscripts containing at least a part of the New Testament number in the thousands. The earliest of these (like manuscripts containing other literature) are often very fragmentarily preserved. Some of these fragments have even been thought to date as early as the 2nd century (i.e., Papyrus 90, Papyrus 98, Papyrus 104, and famously Rylands Library Papyrus P52, though the early date of the latter has recently been called into question).


title: New Testament

text: For each subsequent century, more and more manuscripts survive that contain a portion or all of the books that were held to be part of the New Testament at that time (for example, the New Testament of the 4th-century Codex Sinaiticus, once a complete Bible, contains the Epistle of Barnabas and the Shepherd of Hermas), though occasionally these manuscripts contain other works as well (e.g., Papyrus 72 and the Crosby-Schøyen Codex). The date when a manuscript was written does not necessarily reflect the date of the form of text it contains. That is, later manuscripts can, and occasionally do, contain older forms of text or older readings.


title: New Testament

text: Textual criticism deals with the identification and removal of transcription errors in the texts of manuscripts. Ancient scribes made errors or alterations (such as including non-authentic additions). The New Testament has been preserved in more than 5,800 Greek manuscripts, 10,000 Latin manuscripts and 9,300 manuscripts in various other ancient languages including Syriac, Slavic, Ethiopic and Armenian. Even if the original Greek versions were lost, the entire New Testament could still be assembled from the translations.


title: New Testament

text: In addition, there are so many quotes from the New Testament in early church documents and commentaries that the entire New Testament could also be assembled from these alone. Not all biblical manuscripts come from orthodox Christian writers. For example, the Gnostic writings of Valentinus come from the 2nd century AD, and these Christians were regarded as heretics by the mainstream church. The sheer number of witnesses presents unique difficulties, but it also gives scholars a better idea of how close modern Bibles are to the original versions.


title: New Testament

text: On noting the large number of surviving ancient manuscripts, Bruce Metzger sums up the view on the issue by saying "The more often you have copies that agree with each other, especially if they emerge from different geographical areas, the more you can cross-check them to figure out what the original document was like. The only way they'd agree would be where they went back genealogically in a family tree that represents the descent of the manuscripts.


title: New Testament

text: In attempting to determine the original text of the New Testament books, some modern textual critics have identified sections as additions of material, centuries after the gospel was written. These are called interpolations. In modern translations of the Bible, the results of textual criticism have led to certain verses, words and phrases being left out or marked as not original. According to Bart D. Ehrman, "These scribal additions are often found in late medieval manuscripts of the New Testament, but not in the manuscripts of the earlier centuries."


title: New Testament

text: Most modern Bibles have footnotes to indicate passages that have disputed source documents. Bible commentaries also discuss these, sometimes in great detail. While many variations have been discovered between early copies of biblical texts, almost all have no importance, as they are variations in spelling, punctuation, or grammar. Also, many of these variants are so particular to the Greek language that they would not appear in translations into other languages. For example, order of words (i.e. "man bites dog" versus "dog bites man") often does not matter in Greek, so textual variants that flip the order of words often have no consequences.


title: New Testament

text: Outside of these unimportant variants, there are a couple variants of some importance. The two most commonly cited examples are the last verses of the Gospel of Mark and the story of the adulterous woman in the Gospel of John. Many scholars and critics also believe that the Comma Johanneum reference supporting the Trinity doctrine in 1 John to have been a later addition. According to Norman Geisler and William Nix, "The New Testament, then, has not only survived in more manuscripts than any other book from antiquity, but it has survived in a purer form than any other great book—a form that is 99.5% pure".


title: New Testament

text: The often referred to "Interpreter's Dictionary of the Bible", a book written to prove the validity of the New Testament, says: "A study of 150 Greek [manuscripts] of the Gospel of Luke has revealed more than 30,000 different readings... It is safe to say that there is not one sentence in the New Testament in which the [manuscript] is wholly uniform." Most of the variation took place within the first three Christian centuries.


title: New Testament

text: By the 4th century, textual "families" or types of text become discernible among New Testament manuscripts. A "text-type" is the name given to a family of texts with similar readings due to common ancestors and mutual correction. Many early manuscripts contain individual readings from several different earlier forms of text. Modern textual critics have identified the following text-types among textual witnesses to the New Testament: The Alexandrian text-type is usually considered to generally preserve many early readings. It is represented, e.g., by Codex Vaticanus, Codex Sinaiticus and the Bodmer Papyri.


title: New Testament

text: The Western text-type is generally longer and can be paraphrastic, but can also preserve early readings. The Western version of the Acts of the Apostles is, notably, 8.5% longer than the Alexandrian form of the text. Examples of the Western text are found in Codex Bezae, Codex Claromontanus, Codex Washingtonianus, the Old Latin (i.e., Latin translations made prior to the Vulgate), as well as in quotations by Marcion, Tatian, Irenaeus, Tertullian and Cyprian.


title: New Testament

text: A text-type referred to as the "Caesarean text-type" and thought to have included witnesses such as Codex Koridethi and minuscule 565, can today be described neither as "Caesarean" nor as a text-type as was previously thought. The Gospel of Mark in Papyrus 45, Codex Washingtonianus and in Family 13 reflects a distinct type of text.


title: New Testament

text: Increasing standardization of distinct (and once local) text-types eventually gave rise to the Byzantine text-type. Since most manuscripts of the New Testament do not derive from the first several centuries, that is, they were copied after the rise of the Byzantine text-type, this form of text is found the majority of extant manuscripts and is therefore often called the "Majority Text." As with all of the other (earlier) text-types, the Byzantine can also occasionally preserve early readings.


title: New Testament

text: Biblical criticism is the scholarly "study and investigation of biblical writings that seeks to make discerning judgments about these writings." Viewing biblical texts as having human rather than supernatural origins, it asks when and where a particular text originated; how, why, by whom, for whom, and in what circumstances it was produced; what influences were at work in its production; what sources were used in its composition; and what message it was intended to convey.


title: New Testament

text: It will vary slightly depending on whether the focus is on the Old Testament, the letters of the New Testament, or the Canonical Gospels. It also plays an important role in the quest for the historical Jesus. It also addresses the physical text, including the meaning of the words and the way in which they are used, its preservation, history, and integrity. Biblical criticism draws upon a wide range of scholarly disciplines including archaeology, anthropology, folklore, linguistics, narrative criticism, Oral Tradition studies, history, and religious studies.


title: New Testament

text: The textual variation among manuscript copies of books in the New Testament prompted attempts to discern the earliest form of text already in antiquity (e.g., by the 3rd-century Christian author Origen). The efforts began in earnest again during the Renaissance, which saw a revival of the study of ancient Greek texts. During this period, modern textual criticism was born. In this context, Christian humanists such as Lorenzo Valla and Erasmus promoted a return to the original Greek of the New Testament. This was the beginning of modern New Testament textual criticism, which over subsequent centuries would increasingly incorporate more and more manuscripts, in more languages (i.e., versions of the New Testament), as well as citations of the New Testament by ancient authors and the New Testament text in lectionaries in order to reconstruct the earliest recoverable form of the New Testament text and the history of changes to it.


title: New Testament

text: Books that later formed the New Testament, like other Christian literature of the period, originated in a literary context that reveals relationships not only to other Christian writings, but also to Graeco-Roman and Jewish works. Of singular importance is the extensive use of and interaction with the Jewish Bible and what would become the Christian Old Testament. Both implicit and explicit citations, as well as countless allusions, appear throughout the books of the New Testament, from the Gospels and Acts, to the Epistles, to the Apocalypse.


title: New Testament

text: The first translations (usually called "versions") of the New Testament were made beginning already at the end of 2nd century. The earliest versions of the New Testament are the translations into the Syriac, Latin, and Coptic languages. These three versions were made directly from the Greek, and are frequently cited in the apparatuses of modern critical editions.


title: New Testament

text: Syriac was spoken in Syria, and Mesopotamia, and with dialect in Roman and Byzantine Palestine where it was known as Jewish Palestinian Aramaic. Several Syriac translations were made and have come to us. Most of the Old Syriac, as well as the Philoxonian version have been lost.


title: New Testament

text: Tatian, the Assyrian, created the Diatessaron, a gospel harmony written in Syriac around 170 AD and the earliest form of the gospel not only in Syriac but probably also in Armenian.


title: New Testament

text: In the 19th century, manuscript evidence was discovered for an "Old Syriac" version of the four distinct (i.e., not harmonized) gospels. These "separated" (Syriac: "da-Mepharreshe") gospels, though old, have been shown to be later than the Diatessaron. The Old Syriac gospels are fragmentarily preserved in two manuscripts: the 5th-century Curetonian Syriac and the Sinaitic Syriac from the 4th or 5th century.


title: New Testament

text: No Old Syriac manuscripts of other portions of the New Testament survive, though Old Syriac readings, e.g. from the Pauline Epistles, can be discerned in citations made by Eastern fathers and in later Syriac versions. The Old Syriac version is a representative of the Western text-type. The Peshitta version was prepared in the beginning of the 5th century. It contains only 22 books (neither the Minor Catholic Epistles of 2 Peter, 2 and 3 John, and Jude, nor the Book of Revelation were part of this translation).


title: New Testament

text: The Gospels were likely translated into Latin as early as the last quarter of the 2nd century in North Africa ("Afra"). Not much later, there were also European Latin translations ("Itala"). There are about 80 Old Latin manuscripts. The Vetus Latina ("Old Latin") versions often contain readings with a Western type of text. (For the avoidance of confusion, these texts were written in Late Latin, not the early version of the Latin language known as Old Latin, pre 75 BC.)


title: New Testament

text: The bewildering diversity of the Old Latin versions prompted Jerome to prepare another translation into Latin—the Vulgate. In many respects it was merely a revision of the Old Latin. There are currently around 8,000 manuscripts of the Vulgate.


title: New Testament

text: There are several dialects of the Coptic language: Bohairic (northern dialect), Fayyumic, Sahidic (southern dialect), Akhmimic, and others. The first translation was made by at least the 3rd century into the Sahidic dialect (cop). This translation represents a mixed text, mostly Alexandrian, though also with Western readings.


title: New Testament

text: A Bohairic translation was made later, but existed already in the 4th century. Though the translation makes less use of Greek words than the Sahidic, it does employ some Greek grammar (e.g., in word-order and the use of particles such as the syntactic construction μεν—δε). For this reason, the Bohairic translation can be helpful in the reconstruction of the early Greek text of the New Testament.


title: New Testament

text: The continued spread of Christianity, and the foundation of national churches, led to the translation of the Bible—often beginning with books from the New Testament—into a variety of other languages at a relatively early date: Armenian, Georgian, Ethiopic, Persian, Sogdian, and eventually Gothic, Old Church Slavonic, Arabic, and Nubian.


title: New Testament

text: Historically, throughout the Christian world and in the context of Christian missionary activity, the New Testament (or portions thereof) has been that part of the Christian Bible first translated into the vernacular. The production of such translations grew out of the insertion of vernacular glosses in biblical texts, as well as out of the production of biblical paraphrases and poetic renditions of stories from the life of Christ (e.g., the Heliand).


title: New Testament

text: The 16th century saw the rise of Protestantism and an explosion of translations of the New (and Old) Testament into the vernacular. Notable are those of Martin Luther (1522), Jacques Lefèvre d'Étaples (1523), the Froschau Bible (1525–1529, revised in 1574), William Tyndale (1526, revised in 1534, 1535 and 1536), the Brest Bible (1563), and the Authorized Version (also called the "King James Version") (1611).


title: New Testament

text: Most of these translations relied (though not always exclusively) upon one of the printed editions of the Greek New Testament edited by Erasmus, the "Novum Instrumentum omne"; a form of this Greek text emerged as the standard and is known as the Textus Receptus. This text, based on the majority of manuscripts is also used in the majority of translations that were made in the years 100 to 400 AD.


title: New Testament

text: Translations of the New Testament made since the appearance of critical editions of the Greek text (notably those of Tischendorf, Westcott and Hort, and von Soden) have largely used them as their base text. Unlike the Textus Receptus, these have a pronounced Alexandrian character. Standard critical editions are those of Nestle-Åland (the text, though not the full critical apparatus of which is reproduced in the United Bible Societies' "Greek New Testament"), Souter, Vogels, Bover and Merk.


title: New Testament

text: Notable translations of the New Testament based on these most recent critical editions include the Revised Standard Version (1946, revised in 1971), (1961, revised in 1973 and 2000), the Einheitsübersetzung (1970, final edition 1979), the New American Bible (1970, revised in 1986 and 2011), the New International Version (1973, revised in 1984 and 2011), the Traduction Oecuménique de la Bible (1988, revised in 2004), the New Revised Standard Version (1989) and the English Standard Version (2001, revised in 2007, 2011 and 2016).


title: New Testament

text: Though all Christian churches accept the New Testament as scripture, they differ in their understanding of the nature, extent, and relevance of its authority. Views of the authoritativeness of the New Testament often depend on the concept of "inspiration", which relates to the role of God in the formation of the New Testament. Generally, the greater the role of God in one's doctrine of inspiration, the more one accepts the doctrine of biblical inerrancy or authoritativeness of the Bible. One possible source of confusion is that these terms are difficult to define, because many people use them interchangeably or with very different meanings. This article will use the terms in the following manner:


title: New Testament

text: All of these concepts depend for their meaning on the supposition that the text of Bible has been properly interpreted, with consideration for the intention of the text, whether literal history, allegory or poetry, etc. Especially the doctrine of inerrancy is variously understood according to the weight given by the interpreter to scientific investigations of the world.


title: New Testament

text: The notion of unity in diversity of Scripture claims that the Bible presents a noncontradictory and consistent message concerning God and redemptive history. The fact of diversity is observed in comparing the diversity of time, culture, authors' perspectives, literary genre, and the theological themes.


title: New Testament

text: Studies from many theologians considering the "unity in diversity" to be found in the New Testament (and the Bible as a whole) have been collected and summarized by New Testament theologian Frank Stagg. He describes them as some basic presuppositions, tenets, and concerns common among the New Testament writers, giving to the New Testament its "unity in diversity":


title: New Testament

text: For the Roman Catholic Church, there are two modes of Revelation: Scripture and Tradition. Both of them are interpreted by the teachings of the Church. The Roman Catholic view is expressed clearly in the Catechism of the Catholic Church (1997):


title: New Testament

text: § 82: As a result the Church, to whom the transmission and interpretation of Revelation is entrusted, does not derive her certainty about all revealed truths from the holy Scriptures alone. Both Scripture and Tradition must be accepted and honoured with equal sentiments of devotion and reverence.


title: New Testament

text: § 107: The inspired books teach the truth. Since therefore all that the inspired authors or sacred writers affirm should be regarded as affirmed by the Holy Spirit, we must acknowledge that the books of Scripture firmly, faithfully, and without error teach that truth which God, for the sake of our salvation, wished to see confided to the Sacred Scriptures.


title: New Testament

text: In Catholic terminology the teaching office is called the Magisterium. The Catholic view should not be confused with the two-source theory. As the Catechism states in §§ 80 and 81, Revelation has "one common source ... two distinct modes of transmission."


title: New Testament

text: While many Eastern Orthodox writers distinguish between Scripture and Tradition, Bishop Kallistos Ware says that for the Orthodox there is only one source of the Christian faith, Holy Tradition, within which Scripture exists.


title: New Testament

text: Traditional Anglicans believe that "Holy Scripture containeth all things necessary to salvation", (Article VI), but also that the Catholic Creeds "ought thoroughly to be received and believed" (Article VIII), and that the Church "hath authority in Controversies of Faith" and is "a witness and keeper of Holy Writ" (Article XX). Classical Anglicanism, therefore, like Orthodoxy, holds that Holy Tradition is the only safe guardian against perversion and innovation in the interpretation of Scripture.


title: New Testament

text: In the famous words of Thomas Ken, Bishop of Bath and Wells: "As for my religion, I dye in the holy catholic and apostolic faith professed by the whole Church before the disunion of East and West, more particularly in the communion of the Church of England, as it stands distinguished from all Papal and Puritan innovations, and as it adheres to the doctrine of the Cross."


title: New Testament

text: Following the doctrine of "sola scriptura", Protestants believe that their traditions of faith, practice and interpretations carry forward what the scriptures teach, and so tradition is not a source of authority in itself. Their traditions derive authority from the Bible, and are therefore always open to reevaluation. This openness to doctrinal revision has extended in Liberal Protestant traditions even to the reevaluation of the doctrine of Scripture upon which the Reformation was founded, and members of these traditions may even question whether the Bible is infallible in doctrine, inerrant in historical and other factual statements, and whether it has uniquely divine authority. The adjustments made by modern Protestants to their doctrine of scripture vary widely.


title: New Testament

text: Within the US, the Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy (1978) articulates evangelical views on this issue. Paragraph four of its summary states: "Being wholly and verbally God-given, Scripture is without error or fault in all its teaching, no less in what it states about God's acts in creation, about the events of world history, and about its own literary origins under God, than in its witness to God's saving grace in individual lives."


title: New Testament

text: Mainline American Protestant denominations, including the United Methodist Church, Presbyterian Church USA, The Episcopal Church, and Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, do not teach the doctrine of inerrancy as set forth in the Chicago Statement. All of these churches have more ancient doctrinal statements asserting the authority of scripture, but may interpret these statements in such a way as to allow for a very broad range of teaching—from evangelicalism to skepticism. It is not an impediment to ordination in these denominations to teach that the scriptures contain errors, or that the authors follow a more or less unenlightened ethics that, however appropriate it may have seemed in the authors' time, moderns would be very wrong to follow blindly.


title: New Testament

text: For example, ordination of women is universally accepted in the mainline churches, abortion is condemned as a grievous social tragedy but not always a personal sin or a crime against an unborn person, and homosexuality is sometimes recognized as a genetic propensity or morally neutral preference that should be neither encouraged nor condemned. In North America, the most contentious of these issues among these churches at the present time is how far the ordination of gay men and lesbians should be accepted.


title: New Testament

text: Officials of the Presbyterian Church USA report: "We acknowledge the role of scriptural authority in the Presbyterian Church, but Presbyterians generally do not believe in biblical inerrancy. Presbyterians do not insist that every detail of chronology or sequence or prescientific description in scripture be true in literal form. Our confessions do teach biblical infallibility. Infallibility affirms the entire truthfulness of scripture without depending on every exact detail."


title: New Testament

text: Those who hold a more liberal view of the Bible as a human witness to the glory of God, the work of fallible humans who wrote from a limited experience unusual only for the insight they have gained through their inspired struggle to know God in the midst of a troubled world. Therefore, they tend not to accept such doctrines as inerrancy. These churches also tend to retain the social activism of their evangelical forebears of the 19th century, placing particular emphasis on those teachings of scripture that teach compassion for the poor and concern for social justice.


title: New Testament

text: The message of personal salvation is, generally speaking, of the good that comes to oneself and the world through following the New Testament's Golden Rule admonition to love others without hypocrisy or prejudice. Toward these ends, the "spirit" of the New Testament, more than the letter, is infallible and authoritative.


title: New Testament

text: There are some movements that believe the Bible contains the teachings of Jesus but who reject the churches that were formed following its publication. These people believe all individuals can communicate directly with God and therefore do not need guidance or doctrines from a church. These people are known as Christian anarchists.


title: New Testament

text: Messianic Judaism generally holds the same view of New Testament authority as evangelical Protestants. According to the view of some Messianic Jewish congregations, Jesus did not annul the Torah, but that its interpretation is revised and ultimately explained through the Apostolic Scriptures.


title: New Testament

text: Jehovah's Witnesses accept the New Testament as divinely inspired Scripture, and as infallible in every detail, with equal authority as the Hebrew Scriptures. They view it as the written revelation and good news of the Messiah, the ransom sacrifice of Jesus, and the Kingdom of God, explaining and expounding the Hebrew Bible, not replacing but vitally supplementing it. They also view the New Testament as the primary instruction guide for Christian living, and church discipline. They generally call the New Testament the "Christian Greek Scriptures", and see only the "covenants" as "old" or "new", but not any part of the actual Scriptures themselves.


title: New Testament

text: Oneness Pentecostalism subscribes to the common Protestant doctrine of "sola scriptura". They view the Bible as the inspired Word of God, and as absolutely inerrant in its contents (though not necessarily in every translation). They regard the New Testament as perfect and inerrant in every way, revealing the Lord Jesus Christ in the Flesh, and his Atonement, and which also explains and illuminates the Old Testament perfectly, and is part of the Bible canon, not because church councils or decrees claimed it so, but by witness of the Holy Spirit.


title: New Testament

text: The Seventh-day Adventist Church holds the New Testament as the inspired Word of God, with God influencing the "thoughts" of the Apostles in the writing, not necessarily every word though. The first fundamental belief of the Seventh-Day Adventist church stated that "The Holy Scriptures are the infallible revelation of [God's] will." Adventist theologians generally reject the "verbal inspiration" position on Scripture held by many conservative evangelical Christians. They believe instead that God inspired the thoughts of the biblical authors and apostles, and that the writers then expressed these thoughts in their own words. This view is popularly known as "thought inspiration", and most Adventist members hold to that view. According to Ed Christian, former "JATS" editor, "few if any ATS members believe in verbal inerrancy".


title: New Testament

text: Regarding the teachings of the New Testament compared to the Old, and the application in the New Covenant, Adventists have traditionally taught that the Decalogue is part of the moral law of God, which was not abrogated by the ministry and death of Jesus Christ. Therefore, the fourth commandment concerning the Sabbath is as applicable to Christian believers as the other nine. Adventists have often taught a distinction between "moral law" and "ceremonial law". According to Adventist beliefs, the moral law continues into the "New Testament era", but the ceremonial law was done away with by Jesus.


title: New Testament

text: How the Mosaic Law should be applied came up at Adventist conferences in the past, and Adventist theologians such as A. T. Jones and E. J. Waggoner looked at the problem addressed by Paul in Galatians as not the ceremonial law, but rather the wrong use of the law (legalism). They were opposed by Uriah Smith and George Butler at the 1888 Conference. Smith in particular thought the Galatians issue had been settled by Ellen White already, yet in 1890 she claimed that justification by faith is "the third angel's message in verity." White interpreted Colossians 2:14 as saying that the ceremonial law was nailed to the cross.


title: New Testament

text: Members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church) believe that the New Testament, as part of the Christian biblical canon, is accurate "as far as it is translated correctly". They believe the Bible as originally revealed is the word of God, but that the processes of transcription and translation have introduced errors into the texts as currently available, and therefore they cannot be regarded as completely inerrant. In addition to the Old and New Testaments, the , the Doctrine and Covenants and the Pearl of Great Price are considered part of their scriptural canon.


title: New Testament

text: Despite the wide variety among Christian liturgies, texts from the New Testament play a role in almost all forms of Christian worship. In addition to some language derived from the New Testament in the liturgy itself (e.g., the Trisagion may be based on Apocalypse 4:8, and the beginning of the "Hymn of Praise" draws upon Luke 2:14), the reading of extended passages from the New Testament is a practice common to almost all Christian worship, liturgical or not.


title: New Testament

text: These readings are most often part of an established lectionary (i.e., selected texts to be read at church services on specific days), and (together with an Old Testament reading and a Psalm) include a non-gospel reading from the New Testament and culminate with a Gospel reading. No readings from the Book of Revelation are included in the standard lectionary of the Eastern Orthodox Churches.


title: New Testament

text: Central to the Christian liturgy is the celebration of the Eucharist or "Holy Communion". The Words of Institution that begin this rite are drawn directly from 1 Corinthians 11:23–26. In addition, the communal recitation of the Lord's Prayer (in the form found in the Gospel of Matthew 6:9–13) is also a standard feature of Christian worship.


title: New Testament

text: Most of the influence of the New Testament upon the arts has come from the Gospels and the Book of Revelation. Literary expansion of the Nativity of Jesus found in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke began already in the 2nd century, and the portrayal of the Nativity has continued in various art forms to this day. The earliest Christian art would often depict scenes from the New Testament such as the raising of Lazarus, the baptism of Jesus or the motif of the Good Shepherd.


title: New Testament

text: Biblical paraphrases and poetic renditions of stories from the life of Christ (e.g., the Heliand) became popular in the Middle Ages, as did the portrayal of the arrest, trial and execution of Jesus in Passion plays. Indeed, the Passion became a central theme in Christian art and music. The and Passion of Jesus, as portrayed in one or more of the , has also been a theme in film, almost since the inception of the medium (e.g., "La Passion", France, 1903).


title: Geologic time scale

text: The geologic time scale, or geological time scale, (GTS) is a representation of time based on the rock record of Earth. It is a system of chronological dating that uses chronostratigraphy (the process of relating strata to time) and geochronology (scientific branch of geology that aims to determine the age of rocks). It is used primarily by Earth scientists (including geologists, paleontologists, geophysicists, geochemists, and paleoclimatologists) to describe the timing and relationships of events in geologic history. The time scale has been developed through the study of rock layers and the observation of their relationships and identifying features such as lithologies, paleomagnetic properties, and fossils. The definition of standardized international units of geologic time is the responsibility of the International Commission on Stratigraphy (ICS), a constituent body of the International Union of Geological Sciences (IUGS), whose primary objective is to precisely define global chronostratigraphic units of the International Chronostratigraphic Chart (ICC) that are used to define divisions of geologic time. The chronostratigraphic divisions are in turn used to define geochronologic units.


title: Geologic time scale

text: While some regional terms are still in use, the table of geologic time presented in this article conforms to the nomenclature, ages, and color codes set forth by the ICS as this is the standard, reference global geologic time scale – the International Geological Time Scale.


title: Geologic time scale

text: The geologic time scale is a way of representing deep time based on events that have occurred throughout Earth's history, a time span of about 4.54 ± 0.05 Ga (4.54 billion years). It chronologically organizes strata, and subsequently time, by observing fundamental changes in stratigraphy that correspond to major geological or paleontological events. For example, the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event, marks the lower boundary of the Paleogene System/Period and thus the boundary between the Cretaceous and Paleogene Systems/Periods. For divisions prior to the Cryogenian, arbitrary numeric boundary definitions (Global Standard Stratigraphic Ages, GSSAs) are used to divide geologic time. Proposals have been made to better reconcile these divisions with the rock record.


title: Geologic time scale

text: Historically, regional geologic time scales were used due to the litho- and biostratigraphic differences around the world in time equivalent rocks. The ICS has long worked to reconcile conflicting terminology by standardizing globally significant and identifiable stratigraphic horizons that can be used to define the lower boundaries of chronostratigraphic units. Defining chronostratigraphic units in such a manner allows for the use of global, standardised nomenclature. The ICC represents this ongoing effort.


title: Geologic time scale

text: The relative relationships of rocks for determining their chronostratigraphic positions use the overriding principles of:


title: Geologic time scale

text: The GTS is divided into chronostratigraphic units and their corresponding geochronologic units. These are represented on the ICC published by the ICS; however, regional terms are still in use in some areas.


title: Geologic time scale

text: A is a body of rock, layered or unlayered, that is defined between specified stratigraphic horizons which represent specified intervals of geologic time. They include all rocks representative of a specific interval of geologic time, and only this time span.


title: Geologic time scale

text: Eonothem, erathem, system, series, subseries, stage, and substage are the hierarchical chronostratigraphic units.


title: Geologic time scale

text: A is a subdivision of geologic time. It is a numeric representation of an intangible property (time). Eon, era, period, epoch, subepoch, age, and subage are the hierarchical geochronologic units. is the field of geochronology that numerically quantifies geologic time.


title: Geologic time scale

text: A (GSSP) is an internationally agreed upon reference point on a stratigraphic section which defines the lower boundaries of stages on the geologic time scale. (Recently this has been used to define the base of a system)


title: Geologic time scale

text: A (GSSA) is a numeric only, chronologic reference point used to define the base of geochronologic units prior to the Cryogenian. These points are arbitrarily defined. They are used where GSSPs have not yet been established. Research is ongoing to define GSSPs for the base of all units that are currently defined by GSSAs.


title: Geologic time scale

text: The numeric (geochronometric) representation of a geochronologic unit can, and is more frequently subject to, change when geochronology refines the geochronometry, while the equivalent chronostratigraphic unit remains the same, and their revision is less common. For example, in early 2022 the boundary between the Ediacaran and Cambrian Periods (geochronologic units) was revised from 541 Ma to 538.8 Ma but the rock definition of the boundary (GSSP) at the base of the Cambrian, and thus the boundary between the Ediacaran and Cambrian Systems (chronostratigraphic units) has not changed, merely the geochronometry has been refined.


title: Geologic time scale

text: The numeric values on the ICC are represented by the unit Ma (megaannum) meaning "million years", i.e., Ma, the lower boundary of the Jurassic Period, is defined as 201,300,000 years old with an uncertainty of 200,000 years. Other SI prefix units commonly used by geologists are Ga (gigaannum, billion years), and ka (kiloannum, thousand years), with the latter often represented in calibrated units (before present).


title: Geologic time scale

text: An is the largest (formal) geochronologic time unit and is the equivalent of a chronostratigraphic eonothem. there are three formally defined eons/eonothems: the Archean, Proterozoic, and Phanerozoic. The Hadean is an informal eon/eonothem, but is commonly used.


title: Geologic time scale

text: An is the second largest geochronologic time unit and is the equivalent of a chronostratigraphic erathem. there are currently ten defined eras/erathems.


title: Geologic time scale

text: A is a major rank below an "era" and above an "epoch". It is the geochronologic equivalent of a chronostratigraphic system. there are currently 22 defined periods/systems. As an exception two subperiods/subsystems are used for the Carboniferous Period/System.


title: Geologic time scale

text: An is the second smallest geochronologic unit, between a "period" and an "age". It is the equivalent of a chronostratigraphic series. there are currently 37 defined and one informal "epochs/series". There are also 11 subepochs/subseries which are all within the Neogene and Quaternary. The use of subseries/subepochs as formal ranks/units in international chronostratigraphy was ratified in 2022.


title: Geologic time scale

text: An is the smallest hierarchical geochronologic unit and is the equivalent of a chronostratigraphic stage. there are currently 96 formal and five informal "ages/stages".


title: Geologic time scale

text: A is a non-hierarchical formal geochronology unit of unspecified rank and is the equivalent of a chronostratigraphic chronozone. These correlate with magnetostratigraphic, lithostratigraphic, or biostratigraphic units as they are based on previously defined stratigraphic units or geologic features.


title: Geologic time scale

text: The and subdivisions are used as the geochronologic equivalents of the chronostratigraphic and , e.g., Early Triassic Period (geochronologic unit) is used in place of Lower Triassic Series (chronostratigraphic unit).


title: Geologic time scale

text: In essence, it is true to say that rocks representing a given chronostratigraphic unit are that chronostratigraphic unit, and the time they were laid down in is the geochronologic unit, i.e., the rocks that represent the Silurian Series the Silurian Series and they were deposited the Silurian Period.


title: Geologic time scale

text: The names of geologic time units are defined for chronostratigraphic units with the corresponding geochronologic unit sharing the same name with a change to the latter (e.g. Phanerozoic Eonothem becomes the Phanerozoic Eon). Names of erathems in the Phanerozoic were chosen to reflect major changes of the history of life on Earth: Paleozoic (old life), Mesozoic (middle life), and Cenozoic (new life). Names of systems are diverse in origin, with some indicating chronologic position (e.g., Paleogene), while others are named for lithology (e.g., Cretaceous), geography (e.g., Permian), or are tribal (e.g., Ordovician) in origin. Most currently recognised series and subseries are named for their position within a system/series (early/middle/late); however, the ICS advocates for all new series and subseries to be named for a geographic feature in the vicinity of its stratotype or type locality. The name of stages should also be derived from a geographic feature in the locality of its stratotype or type locality.


title: Geologic time scale

text: Informally, the time before the Cambrian is often referred to as the Precambrian or pre-Cambrian (Supereon).


title: Geologic time scale

text: While a modern geological time scale was not formulated until 1911 by Arthur Holmes, the broader concept that rocks and time are related can be traced back to (at least) the philosophers of Ancient Greece. Xenophanes of Colophon (c. 570–487 BCE) observed rock beds with fossils of shells located above the sea-level, viewed them as once living organisms, and used this to imply an unstable relationship in which the sea had at times transgressed over the land and at other times had regressed. This view was shared by a few of Xenophanes' contemporaries and those that followed, including Aristotle (384–322 BCE) who (with additional observations) reasoned that the positions of land and sea had changed over long periods of time. The concept of deep time was also recognised by Chinese naturalist Shen Kuo (1031–1095) and Islamic scientist-philosophers, notably the Brothers of Purity, who wrote on the processes of stratification over the passage of time in their treatises. Their work likely inspired that of the 11th-century Persian polymath Avicenna (Ibn Sînâ, 980–1037) who wrote in "The Book of Healing" (1027) on the concept of stratification and superposition, pre-dating Nicolas Steno by more than six centuries. Avicenna also recognised fossils as "petrifications of the bodies of plants and animals", with the 13th-century Dominican bishop Albertus Magnus (c. 1200–1280) extending this into a theory of a petrifying fluid. These works appeared to have little influence on scholars in Medieval Europe who looked to the Bible to explain the origins of fossils and sea-level changes, often attributing these to the 'Deluge', including Ristoro d'Arezzo in 1282. It was not until the Italian Renaissance when Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519) would reinvigorate the relationships between stratification, relative sea-level change, and time, denouncing attribution of fossils to the 'Deluge':


title: Geologic time scale

text: These views of da Vinci remained unpublished, and thus lacked influence at the time; however, questions of fossils and their significance were pursued and, while views against Genesis were not readily accepted and dissent from religious doctrine was in some places unwise, scholars such as Girolamo Fracastoro shared da Vinci's views, and found the attribution of fossils to the 'Deluge' absurd.


title: Geologic time scale

text: Niels Stensen, more commonly known as Nicolas Steno (1638–1686), is credited with establishing four of the guiding principles of stratigraphy. In "De solido intra solidum naturaliter contento dissertationis prodromus" Steno states:


title: Geologic time scale

text: Respectively, these are the principles of superposition, original horizontality, lateral continuity, and cross-cutting relationships. From this Steno reasoned that strata were laid down in succession and inferred relative time (in Steno's belief, time from Creation). While Steno's principles were simple and attracted much attention, applying them proved challenging. These basic principles, albeit with improved and more nuanced interpretations, still form the foundational principles of determining correlation of strata relative geologic time.


title: Geologic time scale

text: The apparent, earliest formal division of the geologic record with respect to time was introduced by Thomas Burnet who applied a two-fold terminology to mountains by identifying ""montes primarii"" for rock formed at the time of the 'Deluge', and younger ""monticulos secundarios"" formed later from the debris of the ""primarii"". This attribution to the 'Deluge', while questioned earlier by the likes of da Vinci, was the foundation of Abraham Gottlob Werner's (1749–1817) Neptunism theory in which all rocks precipitated out of a single flood. A competing theory, Plutonism, was developed by Anton Moro (1687–1784) and also used primary and secondary divisions for rock units. In this early version of the Plutonism theory, the interior of Earth was seen as hot, and this drove the creation of primary igneous and metamorphic rocks and secondary rocks formed contorted and fossiliferous sediments. These primary and secondary divisions were expanded on by Giovanni Targioni Tozzetti (1712–1783) and Giovanni Arduino (1713–1795) to include tertiary and quaternary divisions. These divisions were used to describe both the time during which the rocks were laid down, and the collection of rocks themselves (i.e., it was correct to say Tertiary rocks, and Tertiary Period). Only the Quaternary division is retained in the modern geologic time scale, while the Tertiary division was in use until the early 21st century. The Neputism and Plutonism theories would compete into the early 19th century with a key driver for resolution of this debate being the work of James Hutton (1726–1797), in particular his "Theory of the Earth", first presented before the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 1785. Hutton's theory would later become known as uniformitarianism, popularised by John Playfair (1748–1819) and later Charles Lyell (1797–1875) in his "Principles of Geology". Their theories strongly contested the 6,000 year age of the Earth as suggested determined by James Ussher via Biblical chronology that was accepted at the time by western religion. Instead, using geological evidence, they contested Earth to be much older, cementing the concept of deep time.


title: Geologic time scale

text: During the early 19th century William Smith, Georges Cuvier, Jean d'Omalius d'Halloy, and Alexandre Brongniart pioneered the systematic division of rocks by stratigraphy and fossil assemblages. These geologists began to use the local names given to rock units in a wider sense, correlating strata across national and continental boundaries based on their similarity to each other. Many of the names below erathem/era rank in use on the modern ICC/GTS were determined during the early to mid-19th century.


title: Geologic time scale

text: During the 19th century, the debate regarding Earth's age was renewed, with geologists estimating ages based on denudation rates and sedimentary thicknesses or ocean chemistry, and physicists determining ages for the cooling of the Earth or the Sun using basic thermodynamics or orbital physics. These estimations varied from 15,000 million years to 0.075 million years depending on method and author, but the estimations of Lord Kelvin and Clarence King were held in high regard at the time due to their pre-eminence in physics and geology. All of these early geochronometric determinations would later prove to be incorrect.


title: Geologic time scale

text: The discovery of radioactive decay by Henri Becquerel, Marie Curie, and Pierre Curie laid the ground work for radiometric dating, but the knowledge and tools required for accurate determination of radiometric ages would not be in place until the mid-1950s. Early attempts at determining ages of uranium minerals and rocks by Ernest Rutherford, Bertram Boltwood, Robert Strutt, and Arthur Holmes, would culminate in what are considered the first international geological time scales by Holmes in 1911 and 1913. The discovery of isotopes in 1913 by Frederick Soddy, and the developments in mass spectrometry pioneered by Francis William Aston, Arthur Jeffrey Dempster, and Alfred O. C. Nier during the early to mid-20th century would finally allow for the accurate determination of radiometric ages, with Holmes publishing several revisions to his "geological time-scale" with his final version in 1960.


title: Geologic time scale

text: The establishment of the IUGS in 1961 and acceptance of the Commission on Stratigraphy (applied in 1965) to become a member commission of IUGS led to the founding of the ICS. One of the primary objectives of the ICS is "the establishment, publication and revision of the ICS International Chronostratigraphic Chart which is the standard, reference global Geological Time Scale to include the ratified Commission decisions".


title: Geologic time scale

text: Following on from Holmes, several "A Geological Time Scale" books were published in 1982, 1989, 2004, 2008, 2012, 2016, and 2020. However, since 2013, the ICS has taken responsibility for producing and distributing the ICC citing the commercial nature, independent creation, and lack of oversight by the ICS on the prior published GTS versions (GTS books prior to 2013) although these versions were published in close association with the ICS. Subsequent "Geologic Time Scale" books (2016 and 2020) are commercial publications with no oversight from the ICS, and do not entirely conform to the chart produced by the ICS. The ICS produced GTS charts are versioned (year/month) beginning at v2013/01. At least one new version is published each year incorporating any changes ratified by the ICS since the prior version.


title: Geologic time scale

text: First suggested in 2000, the "Anthropocene" is a proposed epoch/series for the most recent time in Earth's history. While still informal, it is a widely used term to denote the present geologic time interval, in which many conditions and processes on Earth are profoundly altered by human impact. the Anthropocene has not been ratified by the ICS; however, in May 2019 the Anthropocene Working Group voted in favour of submitting a formal proposal to the ICS for the establishment of the Anthropocene Series/Epoch. Nevertheless, the definition of the Anthropocene as a geologic time period rather than a geologic event remains controversial and difficult.


title: Geologic time scale

text: An international working group of the ICS on pre-Cryogenian chronostratigraphic subdivision have outlined a template to improve the pre-Cyrogenian geologic time scale based on the rock record to bring it in line with the post-Tonian geologic time scale. This work assessed the geologic history of the currently defined eons and eras of the pre-Cambrian, and the proposals in the "Geological Time Scale" books "2004," "2012," and "2020." Their recommend revisions of the pre-Cryogenian geologic time scale were (changes from the current scale [v2022/02] are italicised):


title: Geologic time scale

text: Proposed pre-Cambrian timeline (Shield et al. 2021, ICS working group on pre-Cryogenian chronostratigraphy), shown to scale:


title: Geologic time scale

text: The book, "Geologic Time Scale 2012," was the last commercial publication of an international chronostratigraphic chart that was closely associated with the ICS. It included a proposal to substantially revise the pre-Cryogenian time scale to reflect important events such as the formation of the solar system and the Great Oxidation Event, among others, while at the same time maintaining most of the previous chronostratigraphic nomenclature for the pertinent time span. these proposed changes have not been accepted by the ICS. The proposed changes were (changes from the current scale [v2022/02] are italicised):


title: Geologic time scale

text: The following table summarises the major events and characteristics of the divisions making up the geologic time scale of Earth. This table is arranged with the most recent geologic periods at the top, and the oldest at the bottom. The height of each table entry does not correspond to the duration of each subdivision of time. As such, this table is not to scale and does not accurately represent the relative time-spans of each geochronologic unit. While the Phanerozoic Eon looks longer than the rest, it merely spans ~539 million years (~12% of Earth's history), whilst the previous three eons collectively span ~3,461 million years (~76% of Earth's history). This bias toward the most recent eon is in part due to the relative lack of information about events that occurred during the first three eons compared to the current eon (the Phanerozoic). The use of subseries/subepochs has been ratified by the ICS.


title: Geologic time scale

text: The content of the table is based on the official ICC produced and maintained by the ICS who also provide an online interactive version of this chart. The interactive version is based on a service delivering a machine-readable Resource Description Framework/Web Ontology Language representation of the time scale, which is available through the Commission for the Management and Application of Geoscience Information GeoSciML project as a service and at a SPARQL end-point.


title: Geologic time scale

text: Some other planets and satellites in the Solar System have sufficiently rigid structures to have preserved records of their own histories, for example, Venus, Mars and the Earth's Moon. Dominantly fluid planets, such as the gas giants, do not comparably preserve their history. Apart from the Late Heavy Bombardment, events on other planets probably had little direct influence on the Earth, and events on Earth had correspondingly little effect on those planets. Construction of a time scale that links the planets is, therefore, of only limited relevance to the Earth's time scale, except in a Solar System context. The existence, timing, and terrestrial effects of the Late Heavy Bombardment are still a matter of debate.


title: Geologic time scale

text: The geologic history of Earth's Moon has been divided into a time scale based on geomorphological markers, namely impact cratering, volcanism, and erosion. This process of dividing the Moon's history in this manner means that the time scale boundaries do not imply fundamental changes in geological processes, unlike Earth's geologic time scale. Five geologic systems/periods (Pre-Nectarian, Nectarian, Imbrian, Eratosthenian, Copernican), with the Imbrian divided into two series/epochs (Early and Late) were defined in the latest Lunar geologic time scale. The Moon is unique in the Solar System that is the only other body which we have rock samples with a known geological context.


title: Geologic time scale

text: The geological history of Mars has been divided into two alternate time scales. The first time scale for Mars was developed by studying the impact crater densities on the Martian surface. Through this method four periods have been defined, the Pre-Noachian (~4,500–4,100 Ma), Noachian (~4,100–3,700 Ma), Hesperian (~3,700–3,000 Ma), and Amazonian (~3,000 Ma to present).


title: Geologic time scale

text: A second time scale based on mineral alteration observed by the OMEGA spectrometer on-board the Mars Express. Using this method, three periods were defined, the Phyllocian (~4,500–4,000 Ma), Theiikian (~4,000–3,500 Ma), and Siderikian (~3,500 Ma to present).


title: Bob Hope

text: Leslie Townes "Bob" Hope (May 29, 1903 – July 27, 2003) was a British-American comedian, vaudevillian, actor, singer and dancer. With a career that spanned nearly 80 years, Hope appeared in more than 70 short and feature films, with 54 feature films with Hope as star, including a series of seven "Road to ..." musical comedy films with Bing Crosby as Hope's top-billed partner.


title: Bob Hope

text: In addition to hosting the Academy Awards show 19 times, more than any other host, Hope appeared in many stage productions and television roles and wrote 14 books. The song "Thanks for the Memory" was his signature tune.


title: Bob Hope

text: Hope was born in the Eltham district of southeast London, he arrived in the United States with his family at the age of four, and grew up near Cleveland, Ohio. After a brief career as a boxer in the late 1910s, Hope began his career in show business in the early 1920s, initially as a comedian and dancer on the vaudeville circuit, before acting on Broadway. Hope began appearing on radio and in films starting in 1934. He was praised for his comedic timing, specializing in one-liners and rapid-fire delivery of jokes that were often self-deprecating. He helped establish modern American stand-up comedy.


title: Bob Hope

text: Between 1941 and 1991, Hope made 57 tours for the United Service Organizations, entertaining active duty U.S. military personnel around the world. In 1997, the United States Congress passed a bill that made Hope an honorary veteran of the U.S. Armed Forces. He also appeared in numerous television specials for NBC during his career and was one of the first users of cue cards.


title: Bob Hope

text: Hope retired from public life in 1998 and died on July 27, 2003, at the age of 100, in his Toluca Lake home.


title: Bob Hope

text: Leslie Townes Hope was born on May 29, 1903, in Eltham, County of London (now part of the Royal Borough of Greenwich), in a terraced house on Craigton Road in Well Hall, where there is now a blue plaque in his memory. He was the fifth of seven sons of an English father, William Henry Hope, a stonemason from Weston-super-Mare, Somerset, and a Welsh mother, Avis (née Townes), a light opera singer from Barry, Vale of Glamorgan, who later worked as a cleaner. William and Avis married in April 1891 and lived at 12 Greenwood Street in Barry before moving to Whitehall, Bristol, and then to St George, Bristol. After a brief period living in Southend Road, Weston-Super-Mare, in 1908, the family immigrated to the United States, sailing aboard the SS "Philadelphia". They passed through Ellis Island, New York on March 30, 1908, before moving on to Cleveland, Ohio.


title: Bob Hope

text: From age 12, Hope earned pocket money by busking (frequently on the streetcar to Luna Park), singing, dancing, and performing comedy. He entered numerous dancing and amateur talent contests as Lester Hope, and won a prize in 1915 for his impersonation of Charlie Chaplin. For a time, he attended the Boys' Industrial School in Lancaster, Ohio, and as an adult donated sizable sums of money to the institution. Hope had a brief career as a boxer in 1919, fighting under the name Packy East. He had three wins and one loss, and he participated in a few staged charity bouts later in life.


title: Bob Hope

text: Hope worked as a butcher's assistant and a lineman in his teens and early 20s. He also had a brief stint at Chandler Motor Car Company. In 1921, while assisting his brother Jim in clearing trees for a power company, he was sitting atop a tree that crashed to the ground, crushing his face; the accident required Hope to undergo reconstructive surgery, which contributed to his later distinctive appearance.


title: Bob Hope

text: After deciding on a show business career, Hope and his girlfriend signed up for dancing lessons. Encouraged after they performed in a three-day engagement at a club, Hope formed a partnership with Lloyd Durbin, a friend from the dancing school. Silent film comedian Fatty Arbuckle saw them perform in 1925 and found them work with a touring troupe called Hurley's Jolly Follies. Within a year, Hope had formed an act called the "Dancemedians" with George Byrne and the Hilton Sisters, conjoined twins who performed a tap-dancing routine on the vaudeville circuit. Hope and Byrne also had an act as Siamese twins; they sang and danced while wearing blackface until friends advised Hope he was funnier as himself.


title: Bob Hope

text: In 1929, Hope informally changed his first name to "Bob". In one version of the story, he named himself after racecar driver Bob Burman. In another, he said he chose the name because he wanted a name with a "friendly 'Hiya, fellas!' sound" to it. In a 1942 legal document, his legal name appears as Lester Townes Hope; it is unknown if this reflects a legal name change from Leslie. After five years on the vaudeville circuit, Hope was "surprised and humbled" when he failed a 1930 screen test for the French film production company Pathé at Culver City, California.


title: Bob Hope

text: In the early days, Hope's career included appearances on stage in vaudeville shows and Broadway productions. He began performing on the radio in 1934 mostly with NBC radio, and switched to television when that medium became popular in the 1950s. He started hosting regular TV specials in 1954, and hosted the Academy Awards nineteen times from 1939 through 1977. Overlapping with this was his movie career, spanning 1934 to 1972, and his USO tours, which he conducted from 1941 to 1991.


title: Bob Hope

text: Hope signed a contract with Educational Pictures of New York for six short films. The first was a comedy, "Going Spanish" (1934). He was not happy with it, and told newspaper gossip columnist Walter Winchell, "When they catch [bank robber] Dillinger, they're going to make him sit through it twice." Although Educational Pictures dropped his contract, he soon signed with Warner Brothers, making movies during the day and performing in Broadway shows in the evenings.


title: Bob Hope

text: Hope moved to Hollywood when Paramount Pictures signed him for the 1938 film "The Big Broadcast of 1938", also starring W. C. Fields. The song "Thanks for the Memory", which later became his trademark, was introduced in the film as a duet with Shirley Ross, accompanied by Shep Fields and his orchestra. The sentimental, fluid nature of the music allowed Hope's writers—he depended heavily upon joke writers throughout his career—to later create variations of the song to fit specific circumstances, such as bidding farewell to troops while on tour or mentioning the names of towns in which he was performing.


title: Bob Hope

text: As a film star, Hope was best known for such comedies as "My Favorite Brunette" and the highly successful "Road" movies in which he starred with Bing Crosby and Dorothy Lamour. The series consists of seven films made between 1940 and 1962: "Road to Singapore" (1940), "Road to Zanzibar" (1941), "Road to Morocco" (1942), "Road to Utopia" (1946), "Road to Rio" (1947), "Road to Bali" (1952), and "The Road to Hong Kong" (1962). Hope had seen Lamour performing as a nightclub singer in New York, and invited her to work on his United Service Organizations (USO) tours of military facilities. Lamour sometimes arrived for filming prepared with her lines, only to be baffled by completely rewritten scripts or ad lib dialogue between Hope and Crosby. Hope and Lamour were lifelong friends, and she remains the actress most associated with his film career although he made movies with dozens of leading ladies, including Katharine Hepburn, Paulette Goddard, Hedy Lamarr, Lucille Ball, Rosemary Clooney, Jane Russell, and Elke Sommer.


title: Bob Hope

text: From their first meeting in 1932, Hope and Crosby teamed not only for the "Road" pictures, but for many stage, radio, and television appearances and many brief movie appearances together over the decades until Crosby died in 1977. Although the two invested together in oil leases and other business ventures, worked together frequently, and lived near each other, they rarely saw each other socially.


title: Bob Hope

text: After the release of "Road to Singapore" (1940), Hope's screen career took off, and he had a long and successful run. After an 11-year hiatus from the "Road" genre, he and Crosby reteamed for "The Road to Hong Kong" (1962), starring the 28-year-old Joan Collins in place of Lamour, whom Crosby thought was too old for the part. They had planned one more movie together in 1977, "The Road to the Fountain of Youth", but filming was postponed when Crosby was injured in a fall, and the production was cancelled when he suddenly died of heart failure that October.


title: Bob Hope

text: Hope starred in 54 theatrical features between 1938 and 1972, as well as cameos and short films. Most of his later movies failed to match the success of his 1940s efforts. He was disappointed with his appearance in "Cancel My Reservation" (1972), his last starring film; critics and filmgoers panned the movie. Though his career as a film star effectively ended in 1972, he did make a few cameo film appearances into the 1980s.


title: Bob Hope

text: Hope was host of the Academy Awards ceremony 19 times between 1939 and 1977. His supposedly-feigned desire for an Oscar became part of his act. While introducing the 1968 telecast, he quipped, "Welcome to the Academy Awards, or, as it's known at my house, Passover." Although he was never nominated for an Oscar, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences honored him with four honorary awards, and in 1960 presented him with the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award, given each year as part of the Oscars ceremony.


title: Bob Hope

text: Hope's career in broadcasting began on radio in 1934. His first regular series for NBC Radio was the "Woodbury Soap Hour" in 1937, on a 26-week contract. Serving as the master of ceremonies for these "Rippling Rhythm Revue" radio broadcasts, Hope collaborated with the big band leader Shep Fields during this period of transition from vaudeville to radio. A year later, "The Pepsodent Show Starring Bob Hope" began, and Hope signed a ten-year contract with the show's sponsor, Lever Brothers. He hired eight writers and paid them out of his salary of $2,500 a week. The original staff included Mel Shavelson, Norman Panama, Jack Rose, Sherwood Schwartz, and Schwartz's brother Al. The writing staff eventually grew to fifteen. The show became the top radio program in the country. Regulars on the series included Jerry Colonna and Barbara Jo Allen as spinster Vera Vague. Hope continued his lucrative career in radio into the 1950s, when radio's popularity began being overshadowed by the upstart television medium.


title: Bob Hope

text: Hope did many specials for the NBC television network in the following decades, beginning in April 1950. He was one of the first people to use cue cards. The shows often were sponsored by Frigidaire (early 1950s), General Motors (1955–61), Chrysler (1963–73), and Texaco (1975–85). Hope's Christmas specials were popular favorites and often featured a performance of "Silver Bells"—from his 1951 film "The Lemon Drop Kid"—done as a duet with an often much younger female guest star such as Barbara Mandrell, Olivia Newton-John, Barbara Eden, and Brooke Shields, or with his wife Dolores, a former singer with whom he dueted on two specials.


title: Bob Hope

text: On April 26, 1970, CBS released the Raquel Welch television special "Raquel!", in it Hope appears as a guest.


title: Bob Hope

text: Hope's 1970 and 1971 Christmas specials for NBC—filmed in Vietnam in front of military audiences at the height of the war—are on the list of the Top 46 U.S. network prime-time telecasts. Both were seen by more than 60 percent of the U.S. households watching television.


title: Bob Hope

text: Beginning in early 1950, Hope licensed rights to publish a celebrity comic book titled "The Adventures of Bob Hope" to National Periodical Publications, alias DC Comics. The comic, originally featuring publicity stills of Hope on the cover, was entirely made up of fictional stories, eventually including fictitious relatives, a high school taught by movie monsters, and a superhero called Super-Hip. It was published intermittently, and continued publication through issue #109 in 1969. Illustrators included Bob Oksner and (for the last four issues) Neal Adams.


title: Bob Hope

text: While aboard the RMS "Queen Mary" when World War II began in September 1939, Hope volunteered to perform a special show for the passengers, during which he sang "Thanks for the Memory" with rewritten lyrics. He performed his first USO show on May 6, 1941, at March Field in California, and continued to travel and entertain troops for the rest of World War II, later during the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the third phase of the Lebanon Civil War, the latter years of the Iran–Iraq War, and the 1990–91 Persian Gulf War. His USO career lasted a half-century during which he headlined 57 times.


title: Bob Hope

text: He had a deep respect for the men and women who served in the armed forces, and this was reflected in his willingness to go anywhere to entertain them. However, during the highly controversial Vietnam War, Hope had trouble convincing some performers to join him on tour, but he was accompanied on at least one USO tour by Ann-Margret. Anti-war sentiment was high, and his pro-troop stance made him a target of criticism from some quarters. Some shows were drowned out by boos, others were listened to in silence.


title: Bob Hope

text: The tours were funded by the U.S. Department of Defense, Hope's television sponsors, and by NBC, the network that broadcast the television specials created after each tour from footage shot on location. However, the footage and shows were owned by Hope's own production company, which made them very lucrative ventures for him, as outlined by writer Richard Zoglin in his 2014 biography "Hope: Entertainer of the Century".


title: Bob Hope

text: Hope sometimes recruited his own family members for USO travel. His wife, Dolores, sang from atop an armored vehicle during the Desert Storm tour, and granddaughter Miranda appeared alongside him on an aircraft carrier in the Indian Ocean. Of Hope's USO shows in World War II, novelist John Steinbeck, who then was working as a war correspondent, wrote in 1943:


title: Bob Hope

text: Along with his best friend Bing Crosby, Hope was offered a commission in the United States Navy as lieutenant commander during World War II, but FDR intervened, believing it would be better for troop morale if they kept doing what they were doing by playing for "all" branches of military service.


title: Bob Hope

text: For his service to his nation through the USO, he was awarded the Sylvanus Thayer Award by the United States Military Academy at West Point in 1968, the first entertainer to receive the award. A 1997 act of Congress signed by President Bill Clinton named Hope an "Honorary Veteran". He remarked, "I've been given many awards in my lifetime, but to be numbered among the men and women I admire most is the greatest honor I have ever received." In an homage to Hope, comedian/TV host Stephen Colbert carried a golf club on stage during the week of USO performances he taped for his TV show "The Colbert Report" during the 2009 season.


title: Bob Hope

text: "Dear Bob... Bob Hope's Wartime Correspondence with the G.I.s of WW2," written by Martha Bolton (first woman staff writer for Bob Hope) and Linda Hope (eldest daughter of Bob Hope), reveals the heart of the entertainer who became a best friend to the troops.


title: Bob Hope

text: Hope's first Broadway appearances, in 1927's "The Sidewalks of New York" and 1928's "Ups-a-Daisy", were minor walk-on parts. He returned to Broadway in 1933 to star as Huckleberry Haines in the Jerome Kern / Dorothy Fields musical "Roberta". Stints in the musicals "Say When", the 1936 Ziegfeld Follies with Fanny Brice, and "Red, Hot and Blue" with Ethel Merman and Jimmy Durante followed. Hope reprised his role as Huck Haines in a 1958 production of "Roberta" at The Muny Theater in Forest Park in St. Louis, Missouri.


title: Bob Hope

text: Additionally, Hope rescued the Eltham Little Theatre in England from closure by providing funds to buy the property. He continued his interest and support, and regularly visited the facility when in London. The theater was renamed in his honor in 1982.


title: Bob Hope

text: During a short stint in 1960, Hope became a part owner of the Riverside International Raceway in Moreno Valley, California, along with Los Angeles Rams co-owner Fred Levy Jr. and oil tycoon Ed Pauley for $800,000 (adjusted to $6,951,567.57 in 2020). Les Richter was made president of the raceway.


title: Bob Hope

text: Hope made a guest appearance on "The Golden Girls", season 4, episode 17 (aired February 25, 1989) called "You Gotta Have Hope" in which Rose is convinced Bob Hope is her father. In 1992, Hope made a guest appearance as himself on the animated Fox series "The Simpsons" in the episode "Lisa the Beauty Queen" (season 4, episode 4). His 90th birthday television celebration in May 1993, "Bob Hope: The First 90 Years", won an Emmy Award for Outstanding Variety, Music Or Comedy Special. Toward the end of his career, worsening vision problems rendered him unable to read his cue cards. In October 1996, he announced he was ending his 60-year contract with NBC, joking that he "decided to become a free agent". His final television special, "Laughing with the Presidents", was broadcast in November 1996, with host Tony Danza helping him present a personal retrospective of presidents of the United States known to Hope, a frequent White House visitor over the years. The special, though different from his usual specials, received high praise from "Variety", as well as other reviews. Following a brief appearance at the 50th Primetime Emmy Awards in 1997, Hope made his last TV appearance in a 1997 commercial about the introduction of Big Kmart, directed by Penny Marshall.


title: Bob Hope

text: Hope was widely praised for his comedic timing and his specialization in the use of one-liners and rapid-fire delivery of jokes. He was known for his style of self-deprecating jokes, first building himself up and then tearing himself down. He performed hundreds of times per year. Such early films as "The Cat and the Canary" (1939) and "The Paleface" (1948) were financially successful and praised by critics, and by the mid-1940s, with his radio program getting good ratings as well, he was one of the most popular entertainers in the United States. When Paramount threatened to stop production of the "Road" pictures in 1945, they received 75,000 letters of protest.


title: Bob Hope

text: Hope had no faith in his skills as a dramatic actor, and his performances of that type were not as well received. He had been well known in radio until the late 1940s; however, as his ratings began to slip in the 1950s, he switched to television and became an early pioneer of that medium. He published several books, notably dictating to ghostwriters about his wartime experiences.


title: Bob Hope

text: Although Hope made an effort to keep his material up to date, he never adapted his comic persona or his routines to any great degree. As Hollywood began to transition to the "New Hollywood" era in the 1960s, he reacted negatively, such as when he hosted the 40th Academy Awards in 1968 and voiced his contempt by mocking the show's delay because of the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. and condescendingly greeted attending younger actors on stage—such as Dustin Hoffman, who was 30 at the time—as children. By the 1970s, his popularity was beginning to wane with military personnel and with the movie-going public in general. However, he continued doing USO tours into the 1980s, and continued to appear on television into the 1990s. Former First Lady Nancy Reagan, a close friend and frequent host to him at the White House, called Hope "America's most honored citizen and our favorite clown".


title: Bob Hope

text: Hope was well known as an avid golfer, playing in as many as 150 charity tournaments a year. Introduced to the game in the 1930s while performing in Winnipeg, Canada, he eventually played to a four handicap. His love for the game—and the humor he could find in it—made him a sought-after foursome member. He once remarked that President Dwight D. Eisenhower gave up golf for painting: "Fewer strokes, you know." He also was quoted as saying, "It's wonderful how you can start out with three strangers in the morning, play 18 holes, and by the time the day is over you have three solid enemies."


title: Bob Hope

text: A golf club became an integral prop for Hope during the standup segments of his television specials and USO shows. In 1978 he putted against the then-two-year-old Tiger Woods in a television appearance with the actor Jimmy Stewart on "The Mike Douglas Show".


title: Bob Hope

text: The Bob Hope Classic, founded in 1960, made history in 1995 when Hope teed up for the opening round in a foursome that included Presidents Gerald Ford, George H. W. Bush, and Bill Clinton, the only time three U.S. presidents played in the same golf foursome. The event, now known as the CareerBuilder Challenge, was one of the few PGA Tour tournaments that took place over five rounds, until the 2012 tournament when it was cut back to the conventional four.


title: Bob Hope

text: Hope had a heavy interest in sports beyond golf and his brief fling as a professional boxer in his youth. In 1946, he bought a small stake in the Cleveland Indians professional baseball team and held it for most of the rest of his life. He appeared on the June 3, 1963, cover of "Sports Illustrated" magazine wearing an Indians uniform, and sang a special version of "Thanks for the Memory" after the Indians' last game at Cleveland Stadium on October 3, 1993. He also bought a share with Bing Crosby of the Los Angeles Rams football team in 1947, but sold it in 1962. He frequently used his television specials to promote the annual AP College Football All-America Team. The players would come onstage one by one and introduce themselves, then Hope, often dressed in a football uniform, would give a one-liner about the player or his school.


title: Bob Hope

text: Hope was briefly married to vaudeville partner Grace Louise Troxell (1912–1992), a secretary from Chicago, Illinois, who was the daughter of Edward and Mary (McGinnes) Troxell. They were married on January 25, 1933, in Erie, Pennsylvania. They divorced in November 1934.


title: Bob Hope

text: The couple had shared headliner status with Joe Howard at the Palace Theatre in April 1931, performing "Keep Smiling" and the "Antics of 1931". They worked together at the RKO Albee, performing the "Antics of 1933" along with Ann Gillens and Johnny Peters in June of that year. The following month, singer Dolores Reade joined Hope's vaudeville troupe and was performing with him at Loew's Metropolitan Theater. She was described as a "former Ziegfeld beauty and one of society's favorite nightclub entertainers, having appeared at many private social functions at New York, Palm Beach, and Southampton".


title: Bob Hope

text: His long-alleged marriage to Reade was fraught with ambiguities. As Richard Zoglin wrote in his 2014 biography "Hope: Entertainer of the Century",


title: Bob Hope

text: Dolores had been one of Hope's co-stars on Broadway in "Roberta". The couple adopted four children: Linda (in 1939), Tony (1940), Kelly (1946), and Eleanora, known as Nora (1946). Bob and Dolores were also the legal guardians of Tracey, the youngest daughter of famous New York City bar owner Bernard "Toots" Shor and his wife, Marion "Baby" Shor.


title: Bob Hope

text: In 1935, the couple lived in Manhattan. In 1937, they moved to 10346 Moorpark Street in the Toluca Lake neighborhood of Los Angeles, where they would reside until their respective deaths.


title: Bob Hope

text: Hope had a reputation as a womanizer and continued to see other women throughout his marriage. Zoglin wrote, "Bob Hope had affairs with chorus girls, beauty queens, singers and showbiz wannabes through his 70s; he had a different girl on his arm every night. He was still having affairs into his 80s..."


title: Bob Hope

text: As just one example among many, in 1949 while Hope was in Dallas on a publicity tour for his radio show, he met Barbara Payton, a contract player at Universal Studios, who at the time was on her own public relations jaunt. Shortly thereafter, Hope set up Payton in an apartment in Hollywood. The arrangement soured as Hope was not able to satisfy Payton's definition of generosity and her need for attention. Hope paid her off to end the affair quietly. Payton later revealed the affair in an article printed in July 1956 in the tell-all magazine "Confidential". "Hope was ... at times a mean-spirited individual with the ability to respond with a ruthless vengeance when sufficiently provoked." His advisors counseled him to avoid further publicity by ignoring the "Confidential" exposé. "Barbara's ... revelations caused a minor ripple ... and then quickly sank without causing any appreciable damage to Bob Hope's legendary career."


title: Bob Hope

text: According to Arthur Marx's 1993 Hope biography, "The Secret Life of Bob Hope", Hope's subsequent long-term affair with actress Marilyn Maxwell was so open that the Hollywood community routinely referred to her as "Mrs. Bob Hope".


title: Bob Hope

text: Rosemarie Frankland was a beauty queen (Miss World 1961) who, according to Zoglin, took part in a 30-year affair with Hope. He said she was "the great love of his life".


title: Bob Hope

text: Hope's infidelities are a part of the plot of the 2020 film "Misbehaviour", which follows the Women's Liberation protests at the Miss World 1970 competition that Hope hosted; Greg Kinnear plays Hope.


title: Bob Hope

text: Hope, who suffered from vision problems for much of his adult life, served as an active honorary chairman on the board of Fight for Sight, a nonprofit organization in the United States which funds medical research in vision and ophthalmology. He hosted its "Lights On" telecast in 1960 and donated $100,000 to establish the Bob Hope Fight for Sight Fund. Hope recruited numerous top celebrities for the annual "Lights On" fundraiser. As an example, he hosted boxing champion Joe Frazier, actress Yvonne De Carlo, and singer-actor Sergio Franchi as headliners for the April 25, 1971, show at Philharmonic Hall in Milwaukee.


title: Bob Hope

text: Hope continued an active entertainment career past his 90th birthday, concentrating on his television specials and USO tours.


title: Bob Hope

text: Although he had given up starring in feature films after "Cancel My Reservation", he made several cameos in various films and co-starred with Don Ameche in the 1986 television film "A Masterpiece of Murder". A television special created for his 80th birthday in 1983 at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., featured President Ronald Reagan, actress Lucille Ball, comedian-actor-writer George Burns (a fellow centenarian), and many others. In 1985 he was presented with the Life Achievement Award at the Kennedy Center Honors, and in 1998 he was appointed an honorary Knight Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (KBE) by Queen Elizabeth II. Upon accepting the appointment, Hope quipped, "I'm speechless. 70 years of ad lib material and I'm speechless."


title: Bob Hope

text: In July 1997 at age 94, he attended the funeral of Jimmy Stewart, where many pointed out his frail appearance. At the age of 95, Hope made an appearance at the 50th anniversary of the Primetime Emmy Awards with Milton Berle and Sid Caesar. Contemporaries Fay Wray and Gloria Stuart were also present. Two years later, he was present at the opening of the Bob Hope Gallery of American Entertainment at the Library of Congress. The Library of Congress has presented two major exhibitions about Hope's life: "Hope for America: Performers, Politics and Pop Culture" and "Bob Hope and American Variety". He last made an appearance at the Hope Classic in 2000, where he hugged Swedish golfer Jesper Parnevik.


title: Bob Hope

text: Hope celebrated his 100th birthday on May 29, 2003. He is among a small group of notable centenarians in the field of entertainment. To mark this event, the intersection of Hollywood and Vine in Los Angeles was named "Bob Hope Square" and his centennial was declared "Bob Hope Day" in 35 states. Even at 100, Hope maintained his self-deprecating sense of humor, quipping, "I'm so old, they've canceled my blood type."