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Most populous towns without rail services.
This is a list of towns in England that do not have any sort of rail service. Services taken into account include National Rail, tram and metro services such as the Manchester Metrolink or the Tyne and Wear Metro. The first list is of separate towns. The second is of towns that form part of larger conurbations.
Links with adjacent countries.
Rail-ferry-rail services.
There are no train ferries in operation, but some rail services are integrated with ferries: |
British Rail
British Railways (BR), which from 1965 traded as British Rail, was a state-owned company that operated most rail transport in Great Britain from 1948 to 1997. Originally a trading brand of the Railway Executive of the British Transport Commission, it became an independent statutory corporation in January 1963, when it was formally renamed the British Railways Board.
British Railways was formed on 1 January 1948 as a result of the Transport Act 1947, which nationalised the Big Four British railway companies along with some other (but not all) smaller railways. Profitability of the railways became a pressing concern during the 1950s, leading to multiple efforts to bolster performance, including some line closures. The 1955 Modernisation Plan formally directed a process of dieselisation and electrification to take place; accordingly, steam locomotives had been entirely replaced by diesel and electric traction (except for the narrow-gauge Vale of Rheidol Railway tourist line) by 1968. On 1 January 1963, the British Railways Board was created to manage the railways as a successor to the British Transport Commission.
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It was during the 1960s that perhaps the most substantial changes were made. Seeking to reduce rail subsidies, one-third of the network and over half of all stations were permanently closed under the Beeching cuts. Trunk routes were considered to be the most important, and so electrification of the Great Eastern Main Line from London to Norwich was completed between 1976 and 1986 and on the East Coast Main Line from London to Edinburgh between 1985 and 1990. Train manufacturer British Rail Engineering Limited (BREL) produced the capable InterCity 125 and Sprinter sets, the introduction of which improved intercity and regional railways, respectively, as well as the unsuccessful Advanced Passenger Train (APT). Gradually, passengers replaced freight as the main source of business. From 1982, under sectorisation, the regions were gradually replaced by "business sectors", which were originally responsible for marketing and other commercial matters when they were first created but had taken over entirely by 1990.
During the 1980s and 1990s, the British Government directed the privatisation of British Rail. Following completion of the privatisation process in 1997, responsibility for track, signalling and stations was transferred to Railtrack (later brought under public control as Network Rail) while services were run by a variety of train operating companies. At the end of the process, any remaining obligations of British Rail were transferred to BRB (Residuary) Limited. Great British Railways, a planned publicly owned body, is expected to manage railway infrastructure and passenger railway services in the future, with remaining privatised franchises to be brought into public control under the provisions of the Passenger Railway Services (Public Ownership) Act 2024. GBR will use an updated form of the British Rail Double Arrow as its logo, which is now owned by the Secretary of State for Transport, and which remains employed as a generic symbol on street signs in Great Britain denoting railway stations.
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History.
Nationalisation in 1948.
The rail transport system in Great Britain developed during the 19th century. After the grouping of 1923 under the Railways Act 1921, there were four large railway companies, each dominating its own geographic area: the Great Western Railway (GWR), the London, Midland and Scottish Railway (LMS), the London and North Eastern Railway (LNER) and the Southern Railway (SR). During World War I, the railways were under state control, which continued until 1921. Complete nationalisation had been considered, and the Railways Act 1921 is sometimes considered as a precursor to that, but the concept was rejected. Nationalisation was subsequently carried out after World War II, under the Transport Act 1947. This Act made provision for the nationalisation of the network as part of a policy of nationalising public services by Clement Attlee's Labour Government. British Railways came into existence as the business name of the Railway Executive of the British Transport Commission (BTC) on 1 January 1948 when it took over the assets of the Big Four.
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There were also joint railways between the Big Four and a few light railways to consider (see list of constituents of British Railways). Excluded from nationalisation were industrial lines like the Oxfordshire Ironstone Railway. The London Underground also became publicly owned, becoming the London Transport Executive of the British Transport Commission. The Bicester Military Railway was already run by the government. The electric Liverpool Overhead Railway was also excluded from nationalisation.
The Railway Executive was conscious that some lines on the (then very dense) network were unprofitable and hard to justify socially, and a programme of closures began almost immediately after nationalisation. However, the general financial position of BR became gradually poorer until an operating loss was recorded in 1955. The Executive itself had been abolished in 1953 by the Conservative government, and control of BR transferred to the parent Commission. Other changes to the British Transport Commission at the same time included the return of road haulage to the private sector; however, BR retained its own (smaller) in-house road haulage service.
1955 Modernisation Plan.
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The report, latterly known as the "Modernisation Plan", was published in January 1955. It was intended to bring the railway system into the 20th century. A government White Paper produced in 1956 stated that modernisation would help eliminate BR's financial deficit by 1962, but the figures in both this and the original plan were produced for political reasons and not based on detailed analysis. The aim was to increase speed, reliability, safety, and line capacity through a series of measures that would make services more attractive to passengers and freight operators, thus recovering traffic lost to the roads. Important areas included:
The government appeared to endorse the 1955 programme (costing £1.2 billion), but did so largely for political reasons. This included the withdrawal of steam traction and its replacement by diesel (and some electric) locomotives. Not all modernisations would be effective at reducing costs. The dieselisation programme gave contracts primarily to British suppliers, who had limited experience of diesel locomotive manufacture, and rushed commissioning based on an expectation of rapid electrification; this resulted in numbers of locomotives with poor designs and a lack of standardisation. At the same time, containerised freight was being developed. The marshalling yard building programme was a failure, being based on a belief in the continued viability of wagon-load traffic in the face of increasingly effective road competition, and lacking effective forward planning or realistic assessments of future freight. A 2002 documentary broadcast on BBC Radio 4 blamed the 1950s decisions for the "beleaguered" condition of the railway system at that time.
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The Beeching reports.
During the late 1950s, railway finances continued to worsen; whilst passenger numbers grew after restoring many services reduced during the war, and in 1959 the government stepped in, limiting the amount the BTC could spend without ministerial authority. A White Paper proposing reorganisation was published in the following year, and a new structure was brought into effect by the Transport Act 1962. This abolished the commission and replaced it by several separate boards. These included a British Railways Board, which took over on 1 January 1963.
Following semi-secret discussions on railway finances by the government-appointed Stedeford Committee in 1961, one of its members, Dr Richard Beeching, was offered the post of chairing the BTC while it lasted and then became the first Chairman of the British Railways Board.
A major traffic census in April 1961, which lasted one week, was used in the compilation of a report on the future of the network. This report – "The Reshaping of British Railways" – was published by the BRB in March 1963. The proposals, which became known as the Beeching cuts, were dramatic. A third of all passenger services and more than 4,000 of the 7,000 stations would close. Beeching, who is thought to have been the author of most of the report, set out some dire figures. One third of the network was carrying just 1% of the traffic. Of the 18,000 passenger coaches, 6,000 were said to be used only 18 times a year or less. Although maintaining them cost between £3million and £4million a year, they earned only about £0.5million.
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Most of the closures were carried out between 1963 and 1970 (including some which were not listed in the report), while other suggested closures were not carried out. The closures were heavily criticised at the time. A small number of stations and lines closed under the Beeching programme have been reopened, with further reopenings proposed.
A second Beeching report, "The Development of the Major Trunk Routes", followed in 1965. This did not recommend closures as such but outlined a "network for development"; the fate of the rest of the network was not discussed in the report.
Post-Beeching.
The basis for calculating passenger fares changed in 1964. In future, fares on some routes—such as rural, holiday and commuter services—would be set at a higher level than on other routes; previously, fares had been calculated using a simple rate for the distance travelled, which at the time was 3d per mile second class, and 4½d per mile first class (equivalent to £ and £ respectively, in ).
In 1966, a "Whites only" recruitment policy for guards at Euston station agreed between the local union branch and station management was dropped after the case of Asquith Xavier, a migrant from Dominica, who had been refused promotion on those grounds, was raised in Parliament and taken up by the then Secretary of State for Transport, Barbara Castle.
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Passenger levels decreased steadily from 1962 to the late 1970s, and reached a low in 1982. Network improvements included completing electrification of the Great Eastern Main Line from London to Norwich between 1976 and 1986 and the East Coast Main Line from London to Edinburgh between 1985 and 1990. A mainline route closure during this period of relative network stability was the -electrified Woodhead line between Manchester and Sheffield: passenger service ceased in 1970 and goods in 1981.
A further British Rail report from a committee chaired by Sir David Serpell was published in 1983. The Serpell Report made no recommendations as such but did set out various options for the network, including, at their most extreme, a skeletal system of less than 2,000routekm (1,240miles). The report was received with hostility within several circles, which included figures within the government, as well as amongst the public. The reaction was so strong that Margaret Thatcher, Prime Minister at that time, stated that decisions on the report would not immediately be taken. The Serpell report was quietly shelved, although the British Government was periodically accused by its opponents of implementing the report via stealth for some years thereafter.
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The 1980s and 1990s saw the closure of some railways which had survived the Beeching cuts a generation earlier but which had seen passenger services withdrawn. This included the bulk of the Chester and Connah's Quay Railway in 1992, the Brierley Hill to Walsall section of the South Staffordshire line in 1993, while the Birmingham to Wolverhampton section of the Great Western Railway was closed in three phases between 1972 and 1992.
Transport Act 1968.
Following the election of Labour in 1964, on a platform of revising many of the cuts, Tom Fraser instead authorised the closure 1,071 mi of railway lines, following the recommendations from the "Beeching Report" even lines not considered closing. After he resigned in 1967, his replacement Barbara Castle continued the line and station closures but introduced the first Government rail subsidies for socially necessary but unprofitable railways in the Transport Act 1968. Part of these provisions was the creation of a passenger transport executive or PTE within larger metropolitan areas. Prior to this, public transport was run by individual local authorities and private companies, with little co-ordination. The PTEs took over the responsibility (but not ownership) of managing local rail networks.
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The 1968 Act created five new bodies. These were:
This was the first real subdivision of BR since its inception in 1949, and likely saved many lines earmarked for closure, notably the Liverpool, Crosby and Southport Railway, which now forms part of the Merseyrail network.
Sectorisation.
Upon sectorisation in 1982, three passenger sectors were created: InterCity, operating principal express services; London & South East (renamed Network SouthEast in 1986) operating commuter services in the London area; Provincial (renamed Regional Railways in 1989) responsible for all other passenger services. In the metropolitan counties local services were managed by the Passenger Transport Executives. Provincial was the most subsidised (per passenger km) of the three sectors; upon formation, its costs were four times its revenue. During the 1980s British Rail ran the Rail Riders membership club aimed at 5- to 15-year-olds.
Because British Railways was such a large operation, running not just railways but also ferries, steamships and hotels, it has been considered difficult to analyse the effects of nationalisation.
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Prices rose quickly in this period, rising 108% in real terms from 1979 to 1994, as prices rose by 262% but RPI only increased by 154% in the same time.
Branding.
Pre-1960s.
Following nationalisation in 1948, British Railways began to adapt the corporate liveries on the rolling stock it had inherited from its predecessor railway companies. Initially, an express blue (followed by GWR-style Brunswick green in 1952) was used on passenger locomotives, and LNWR-style lined black for mixed-traffic locomotives, but later green was more widely adopted.
Development of a corporate identity for the organisation was hampered by the competing ambitions of the British Transport Commission and the Railway Executive. The Executive attempted to introduce a modern Art Deco-style curved logo, which could also serve as the standard for station signage totems. BR eventually adopted the common branding of the BTC as its first corporate logo, a lion astride a spoked wheel, designed for the BTC by Cecil Thomas; on the bar overlaid across the wheel, the BTC's name was replaced with the words "British Railways". This logo, nicknamed the "Cycling Lion", was applied from 1948 to 1956 to the sides of locomotives, while the ‘hot dog’ design was adopted for smaller station name signs, known officially as ‘lamp tablets’ and coloured for the appropriate BR region, using Gill Sans lettering first adopted by the LNER from 1929.
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In 1956, the BTC was granted a heraldic achievement by the College of Arms and the Lord Lyon, and then BTC chairman Brian Robertson wanted a grander logo for the railways. BR's second corporate logo (1956–1965), designed in consultation with Charles Franklyn and inspired by the much more detailed BTC crest, depicted a rampant lion emerging from a heraldic crown and holding a spoked wheel, all enclosed in a roundel with the "British Railways" name displayed across a bar on either side. This emblem soon acquired the nickname of the "Ferret and Dartboard". A variant of the logo with the name in a circle was also used on locomotives.
1960s.
The zeal for modernisation in the Beeching era drove the next rebranding exercise, and BR management wished to divest the organisation of anachronistic, heraldic motifs and develop a corporate identity to rival that of London Transport. BR's design panel set up a working party led by Milner Gray of the Design Research Unit. |
The zeal for modernisation in the Beeching era drove the next rebranding exercise, and BR management wished to divest the organisation of anachronistic, heraldic motifs and develop a corporate identity to rival that of London Transport. BR's design panel set up a working party led by Milner Gray of the Design Research Unit. Designed by Gerald Barney (also of the DRU), this arrow device was formed of two interlocked arrows across two parallel lines, symbolising a double-track railway. It was likened to a bolt of lightning or barbed wire, and also acquired a nickname: "the arrow of indecision". A mirror image of the double arrow was used on the port side of BR-owned Sealink ferry funnels. The new BR corporate identity and double arrow were displayed at the Design Centre in London in early 1965, and the brand name of the organisation was shortened to "British Rail". It is now employed as a generic symbol on street signs in Great Britain denoting railway stations, and is still printed on railway tickets as part of the Rail Delivery Group's jointly managed National Rail brand.
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Post-1960s.
The uniformity of BR branding continued until the process of sectorisation was introduced in the 1980s. Certain BR operations such as Inter-City, Network SouthEast, Regional Railways or Rail Express Systems began to adopt their own identities, introducing logos and colour schemes which were essentially variants of the British Rail brand. Eventually, as sectorisation developed into a prelude to privatisation, the unified British Rail brand disappeared, with the notable exception of the Double Arrow symbol, which has survived to this day and serves as a generic trademark to denote railway services across Great Britain. The BR Corporate Identity Manual is noted as a piece of British design history and there are plans for it to be re-published.
Network.
Regions.
With its creation in 1948, British Railways was divided into regions which were initially based on the areas the former Big Four operated in; later, several lines were transferred between regions. Notably, these included the former Great Central lines from the Eastern Region to the London Midland Region, and the West of England Main Line from the Southern Region to Western Region
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The North Eastern Region was merged with the Eastern Region in 1967.
Sectorisation.
In 1982, the regions were abolished as the service provider (but retained for administration) and replaced by "business sectors", a process known as sectorisation.
The passenger sectors were (by the early 1990s):
In addition, the non-passenger sectors were:
The maintenance and remaining engineering works were split off into a new company, British Rail Maintenance Limited. The new sectors were further subdivided into divisions.
This ended the BR blue period as new liveries were adopted gradually. Infrastructure remained the responsibility of the regions until the "Organisation for Quality" initiative in 1991 when this too was transferred to the sectors. The Anglia Region was created in late 1987, its first General Manager being John Edmonds, who began his appointment on 19 October 1987. Full separation from the Eastern Region – apart from engineering design needs – occurred on 29 April 1988. It handled the services from and , its western boundary being , and .
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The former BR network, with the trunk routes of the West Coast Main Line, East Coast Main Line, Great Western Main Line, Great Eastern Main Line and Midland Main Line, and other lines.
Security.
Policing on (and within) the network was carried out British Transport Police (BTP). In 1947 the Transport Act created the British Transport Commission (BTC), which unified the railway system. On 1 January 1949, the British Transport Commission Police (BTCP) were created, formed from the four old railway police forces, the London Transport Police, canal police and several minor dock forces. In 1957 the Maxwell-Johnson enquiry found that policing requirements for the railway could not be met by civil forces and that it was essential that a specialist police force be retained. On 1 January 1962, the British Transport Commission Police ceased to cover British Waterways property and exactly a year later when the BTC was abolished the name of the force was amended to the British Transport Police. This name and its role within policing on the rail network was continued post-1994.
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Finances.
Despite its nationalisation in 1947 "as one of the 'commanding heights' of the economy", according to some sources British Rail was not profitable for most (if not all) of its history. Newspapers reported that as recently as the 1990s, public rail subsidy was counted as profit; as early as 1961, British Railways were losing £300,000 a day.
Although the company was considered the sole public-transport option in many rural areas, the Beeching cuts made buses the only public transport available in some rural areas. Despite increases in traffic congestion and road fuel prices beginning to rise in the 1990s, British Rail remained unprofitable. Following sectorisation, InterCity became profitable. InterCity became one of Britain's top 150 companies, providing city centre to city centre travel across the nation from Aberdeen and Inverness in the north to Poole and Penzance in the south.
Investment.
In 1979, the incoming Conservative Government led by Margaret Thatcher was viewed as anti-railway, and did not want to commit public money to the railways. However, British Rail was allowed to spend its own money with government approval. This led to a number of electrification projects being given the go-ahead, including the East Coast Main Line, the spur from Doncaster to Leeds, and the lines in East Anglia out of London Liverpool Street to Norwich and King's Lynn. The list with approximate completion dates includes:
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In the Southwest, the South West Main Line from Bournemouth to Weymouth was electrified along with other infill third rail electrification in the south. In 1988, the line to Aberdare was reopened. A British Rail advertisement ("Britain's Railway", directed by Hugh Hudson) featured some of the best-known railway structures in Britain, including the Forth Rail Bridge, Royal Albert Bridge, Glenfinnan Viaduct and London Paddington station. London Liverpool Street station was rebuilt, opened by Queen Elizabeth II, and a new station was constructed at Stansted Airport in 1991. The following year, the Maesteg line was reopened. In 1988, the Windsor Link Line, Manchester was constructed and has proven to be an important piece of infrastructure.
APTIS ticket.
Before the introduction of APTIS (Accountancy and Passenger Ticket Issuing System), British Rail used the Edmondson railway ticket, first introduced in the 1840s and phased out in the early 1970s. Tickets issued from British Rail's APTIS system had a considerable amount of information presented in a consistent, standard format. The design for all tickets was created by Colin Goodall. This format has formed the basis for all subsequent ticket issuing systems introduced on the railway network – ticket-office-based, self-service and conductor-operated machines alike. APTIS survived in widespread use for twenty years but, in the early 2000s, was largely replaced by more modern PC-based ticketing systems. Some APTIS machines in the Greater London area were modified as APTIS-ANT (with no obvious difference to the ticket issued) to make them Oyster card compatible. The last APTIS machines were removed at the end of 2006 as there was no option to upgrade them to accept Chip and PIN credit card payments. The last APTIS-ANT ticket to be issued in the UK using one of the machines was at Upminster station on 21 March 2007.
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Before the rail network was privatised, British Rail introduced several discount cards through the APTIS that were available to certain demographics, issued either by National or Regional schemes:
Preserved lines.
The narrow-gauge Vale of Rheidol Railway in Ceredigion, Wales, became part of British Railways at nationalisation. Although built as a working railway, in 1948 the line was principally a tourist attraction. British Rail operated the line using steam locomotives long after the withdrawal of standard-gauge steam. The line's three steam locomotives were the only ones to receive TOPS serial numbers and be painted in BR Rail Blue livery with the double arrow logo. The Vale of Rheidol Railway was privatised in 1989 and continues to operate as a private heritage railway.
Other preserved lines, or heritage railways, have reopened lines previously closed by British Rail. These range from picturesque rural branch lines like the Keighley and Worth Valley Railway to sections of mainline such as the Great Central Railway. Many have links to the National Rail network, both at station interchanges, for example, the Severn Valley Railway between and Kidderminster Town, and physical rail connections like the Watercress Line at .
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Although most are operated solely as leisure amenities, some also provide educational resources, and a few have ambitions to restore commercial services over routes abandoned by the nationalised industry.
Night trains.
When the railways came into public ownership in 1948, British Railways inherited a number of night train services from the Big Four. Sleeping car services were operated on the West and East coast routes and GWR mainlines to several destinations. Routes included to , to , to and the Night Ferry sleeper from to Brussels and Paris. On Privatisation saw the services broken up in February 1996 and the rolling stock repainted into the new liveries, with the last ever BR service being a Scottish sleeper from Euston in 1997.
Marine services.
Ships.
British Railways operated ships from its formation in 1948 on several routes. Many ships were acquired on nationalisation, and others were built for operation by British Railways or its later subsidiary, Sealink. Those ships capable of carrying rail vehicles were classed under TOPS as Class 99.
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Sealink.
Sealink was originally the brand name for the ferry services of British Rail in the United Kingdom and Ireland. Services to France, Belgium, and the Netherlands were run by Sealink UK as part of the Sealink consortium, which also used ferries owned by French national railways (SNCF), the Belgian Maritime Transport Authority Regie voor Maritiem Transport/Regie des transports maritimes (RMT/RTM) and the Dutch Stoomvaart Maatschappij Zeeland (Zeeland Steamship Company).
Historically, the shipping services were exclusively an extension of the railways across the English Channel and the Irish Sea in order to provide through, integrated services to mainland Europe and Ireland. As international travel became more popular in the late 1960s and before air travel became generally affordable, the responsibility for shipping services was taken away from the British Rail Regions and, in 1969, centralised in a new division – British Rail Shipping and International Services Division.
With the advent of car ferry services, the old passenger-only ferries were gradually replaced by roll-on/roll-off ships, catering for motorists and rail passengers as well as road freight. However, given that there was now competition in the form of other ferry companies offering crossings to motorists, it became necessary to market the services in a normal business fashion (as opposed to the previous almost monopolistic situation). Thus, with the other partners mentioned above, the brand name Sealink was introduced for the consortium.
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In the late 1960s, as demand for international rail travel declined and the shipping business became almost exclusively dependent on passenger and freight vehicle traffic, the ferry business was incorporated as Sealink UK Limited on 1 January 1979, a wholly owned subsidiary of the British Railways Board, but still part of the Sealink consortium. In 1979, Sealink acquired Manx Line, which offered services to the Isle of Man from Heysham.
On 27 July 1984, the UK Government sold Sealink UK to Sea Containers for £66million. The company was renamed Sealink British Ferries. The sale excluded the operations of Hoverspeed, the Isle of Wight services and the share in the Isle of Man Steam Packet Company, as well as the Port of Heysham. In 1996, the Sealink name disappeared when the UK services, by then owned by Stena, were re-branded as Stena Line. The agreement with the SNCF on the Dover to Calais route also ended at this time, and the French-run Sealink services were rebranded as SeaFrance.
Hovercraft.
The joint hovercraft services of British Rail in association with the French SNCF. British Rail Hovercraft Limited was established in 1965, under authority given to it by the British Railways Act 1967 and started its first service in 1966. Seaspeed started cross-Channel services from Dover to Calais and Boulogne-sur-Mer, France using SR-N4 hovercraft in August 1968. During 1981, Seaspeed merged with rival cross-channel hovercraft operator Hoverlloyd to create the combined Hoverspeed.
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British Rail Engineering Limited.
Incorporated on 31 October 1969, British Rail Engineering Limited (BREL) was a wholly owned railway systems engineering subsidiary of the British Railways Board. Created through the Transport Act 1968, to manage BR's thirteen workshops, it replaced the British Rail Workshops Division, which had existed since 1948. The works managed by BREL were Ashford, Crewe, Derby Locomotive Works, Derby Litchurch Lane, Doncaster, Eastleigh, Glasgow, Horwich Foundry, Shildon, Swindon, Temple Mills, Wolverton and York. BREL began trading in January 1970. During 1989, BREL was sold to a consortium of Asea Brown Boveri and Trafalgar House.
Mark 2 carriages.
A family of railway carriages designed and built by British Rail workshops (from 1969 British Rail Engineering Limited) between 1964 and 1975. They were of steel construction.
Advanced Passenger Train.
In the 1970s, British Rail developed tilting train technology in the Advanced Passenger Train; there had been earlier experiments and prototypes in other countries, notably Italy. The objective of the tilt was to minimise the discomfort to passengers caused by taking the curves of the West Coast Main Line at high speed. The APT also had hydrokinetic brakes, which enabled the train to stop from 150 mph within existing signal spacings.
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The introduction into service of the APT was to be a three-stage project. Phase 1, the development of an experimental APT (APT-E), was completed. This used a gas turbine-electric locomotive, the only multiple unit so powered that was used by British Rail. It was formed of two power cars (numbers PC1 and PC2), initially with nothing between them and later, two trailer cars (TC1 and TC2). The cars were made of aluminium to reduce the weight of the unit and were articulated. The gas turbine was dropped from development due to excessive noise and the high fuel costs of the late 1970s. The APT-E first ran on 25 July 1971. The train drivers' union, ASLEF, black-listed the train due to its use of a single driver. The train was moved to Derby (with the aid of a locomotive inspector). This triggered a one-day strike by ASLEF that cost BR more than the research budget for the entire year.
Phase 2, the introduction of three prototype trains (APT-P) into revenue service on the Glasgow – London Euston route, did occur. Originally, there were to have been eight APT-P sets running, with minimal differences between them and the main fleet. However, financial constraints led to only three being authorised after two years of discussion by the British Railways Board. The cost was split equally between the Board and the Ministry of Transport. After these delays, considerable pressure grew to put the APT-P into revenue-service before they were fully ready. This inevitably led to high-profile failures as a result of technical problems.
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These failures led to the trains being withdrawn from service while the problems were ironed out. However, by this time, managerial and political support had evaporated by 1982. Although the APT never properly entered service, the experience gained enabled the construction of other high-speed trains. The APT powercar technology was imported without the tilt into the design of the Class 91 locomotives, and the tilting technology was incorporated into Italian State Railway's "Pendolino" trains, which first entered service in 1987.
InterCity 125.
The InterCity 125, or High-Speed Train, was a diesel-powered passenger train built by BREL between 1975 and 1982 that was credited with saving British Rail. Each set is made up of two Class 43 power cars, one at each end and four to nine Mark 3 carriages. The name is derived from its top operational speed of . Key features of the Intercity 125 over predecessors include the high power-to-weight ratio of the locomotives (1678 kW per ~70-tonne loco), high performance disc brake system (in place of the clasp brakes traditionally used), improved crashworthiness, and bi-directional running avoiding the need to perform any run arounds at terminating stations.
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By 1970, the setbacks of the APT project had led the British Railways Board (BRB) to conclude that a stopgap solution would be desirably to reduce journey times in order to compete effectively with other modes of transport. At the instigation of Terry Miller, Chief Engineer (Traction & Rolling Stock), the BRB authorised the development of a high-speed diesel train using tried and tested conventional technology, intended for short-term use until the APT was available. Within two years, a prototype trainset had been completed by BREL; it performed extensive trial runs between 1972 and 1976.
Encouraged by the prototype's performance, British Rail chose to put the type into production. The production version had a substantially redesigned forward section; this change was primarily made by the British industrial designer Kenneth Grange who, after being approached by British Rail to design the livery, decided to redesign the body in coordination with an aerodynamic engineer and guided by wind tunnel testing. A total of 95 Intercity 125 trainsets were ultimately brought into service. British Rail enjoyed a boom in patronage on the routes operated by the HSTs and InterCity's revenues noticeably increased.
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Prior to the HST's introduction, the speed of British diesel-powered trains was limited to . The prototype InterCity 125 (power cars 43000 and 43001) set the world speed record for diesel traction at on 12 June 1973. This was succeeded by a production set reaching in November 1987.
Sprinters.
By the early 1980s British Rail operated a large fleet of first generation DMUs, which had been constructed in prior decades to various designs. While formulating its long-term strategy for this sector of its operations, British Rail planners recognised that there would be considerable costs incurred by undertaking refurbishment programmes necessary for the continued use of these ageing multiple units, particularly due to the necessity of handling and removing hazardous materials such as asbestos. In light of the high costs involved in retention, planners examined the prospects for the development and introduction of a new generation of DMUs to succeed the first generation.
In 1984/1985, two experimental DMU designs were put into service: the BREL-built Class 150 and Metro-Cammell-built Class 151. Both of these used hydraulic transmission and were less bus-like than the Pacers. After trials, the Class 150 was selected for production. Starting in 1987, production standard units entered service. Reliability was much improved by the new units, with depot visits being reduced from two or three times per week to fortnightly.
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The late 1980s and early 1990s also saw the development of secondary express services that complemented the mainline Intercity routes. Class 155 and Class 156 Sprinters were developed to replace locomotive-hauled trains on these services, their interiors being designed with longer distance journeys in mind. Key Scottish and Trans-Pennine routes were upgraded with new Class 158 Express Sprinters, while a network of 'Alphaline' services was introduced elsewhere in the country.
By the end of the 1980s, passenger numbers had increased and costs had been reduced to two-and-a-half times revenue. Specific areas for this cost reduction include the lower fuel consumption of Sprinters in comparison to traditional locomotive-hauled trains as well as their reduced maintenance costs.
Privatisation.
In 1989, the narrow-gauge Vale of Rheidol Railway was preserved, becoming the first part of British Rail to be privatised. Between 1994 and 1997, in accordance with the Railways Act 1993, the core activities of British Rail were privatised. Ownership of the track and infrastructure passed to Railtrack on 1 April 1994. Passenger operations were later franchised to 25 private-sector operators. Of the six freight companies, five were sold to Wisconsin Central to form EWS while Freightliner was sold in a management buyout.
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The Waterloo & City line, part of Network SouthEast, was not included in the privatisation and was transferred to London Underground in April 1994. The remaining obligations of British Rail were transferred to BRB (Residuary) Limited.
The privatisation, proposed by the Conservative government in 1992, was opposed by the Labour Party and the rail unions. Although Labour initially proposed to reverse privatisation, the New Labour manifesto of 1997 instead opposed Conservative plans to privatise the London Underground. Rail unions have historically opposed privatisation, but former Associated Society of Locomotive Engineers and Firemen general secretary Lew Adams moved to work for Virgin Rail Group, and said on a 2004 radio phone-in programme: "All the time it was in the public sector, all we got were cuts, cuts, cuts. And today, there are more members in the trade union, more train drivers, and more trains running. The reality is that it worked, we’ve protected jobs, and we got more jobs."
The privatisation process began in 1994 when BR's passenger sectors were divided into 25 shadow franchises. These were publicly owned TOCs operating in the planned franchise areas, prior to the actual franchises being put to tender.
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In advance of the opening of the Channel Tunnel in 1994, European Passenger Services was created as the BR division responsible for the UK component of Eurostar international services.
Successor companies.
Under the process of British Rail's privatisation, operations were split into 125 companies between 1994 and 1997. The ownership and operation of the infrastructure of the railway system was taken over by Railtrack. The telecommunications infrastructure and British Rail Telecommunications was sold to Racal, which in turn was sold to Global Crossing and merged with Thales Group. The rolling stock was transferred to three private rolling stock companies (ROSCOs); Angel Trains, Eversholt Rail Group and Porterbrook. Passenger services were divided into 25 operating companies, which were let on a franchise basis for a set period, whilst freight services were sold off completely. Dozens of smaller engineering and maintenance companies were also created and sold off.
British Rail's passenger services came to an end upon the franchising of ScotRail with the last service being a "Caledonian Sleeper" service from Glasgow and Edinburgh to London on 31 March 1997. The final service it operated was a Railfreight Distribution freight train from Dollands Moor to Wembley on 20 November 1997. The British Railways Board continued in existence as a corporation until early 2001, when it was replaced by the Strategic Rail Authority as part of the implementation of the Transport Act 2000.
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The original passenger franchisees were:
Future.
Since privatisation, many groups have campaigned for the renationalisation of UK Rail services, most notably 'Bring Back British Rail'. Various interested parties also have views on the privatisation of British Rail.
The renationalisation of the railways of Britain continues to have popular support. Polls in 2012 and 2013 showed 70% and 66% support for renationalisation, respectively.
Due to rail franchises sometimes lasting over a decade, full renationalisation would take years unless compensation was paid to terminate contracts early.
When the infrastructure-owning company Railtrack ceased trading in 2002, the Labour government set up the not-for-dividend company Network Rail to take over the duties rather than renationalise this part of the network. However, in September 2014, Network Rail was reclassified as a central government body, adding around £34 billion to public sector net debt. This reclassification had been requested by the Office for Budget Responsibility to comply with pan-European accounting standard ESA10.
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The Green party has committed to bringing the railways 'back into public ownership' and has maintained this impetus when other parties argued to maintain the status quo. In 2016, Green MP, Caroline Lucas, put forward a Bill that would have seen the rail network fall back into public ownership step by step, as franchises come up for expiry.
Under Jeremy Corbyn (2015–2020), the Labour Party pledged to gradually renationalise British Rail franchises if elected, as and when their private contracts expire, creating a "People's Railway". In a pledge during his successful leadership campaign to succeed Corbyn, Keir Starmer said that renationalising rail would remain as Labour Party policy under his leadership. This was further outlined in April 2024 when the party announced that a Labour government would transfer passenger rail networks to public ownership within its first term. After Labour's victory in the 2024 general election, the incoming government began the process of bringing all remaining privatised railway franchises into public ownership at the earliest opportunity as contracts expire with the Passenger Railway Services (Public Ownership) Act 2024.
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Following the COVID-19 pandemic decimating franchise revenues and making them unviable, in 2021 the government announced it would take back responsibility for the operations of passenger services through Great British Railways with service provision to be contracted to private operators. In 2024, the government announced that management of publicly owned passenger rail services would be integrated into GBR.
Parodies.
In 1989, the ITV sketch show "Spitting Image" parodied Hugh Hudson's 1988 "British Rail, Britain's Railway" advert on the plans of the then Conservative British Government to privatise the railways featuring many of the show's puppets (including the show's portrayal of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher), numerous BR trains and landmarks and even a cardboard cutout of Thomas the Tank Engine. |
Book of Job
The Book of Job ( ; ), or simply Job, is a book found in the Ketuvim ("Writings") section of the Hebrew Bible and the first of the Poetic Books in the Old Testament of the Christian Bible. The language of the Book of Job, combining post-Babylonian Hebrew and Aramaic influences, indicates it was composed during the Persian period (540-330 BCE), with the poet using Hebrew in a learned, literary manner. It addresses the problem of evil, providing a theodicy through the experiences of the eponymous protagonist. Job is a wealthy God-fearing man with a comfortable life and a large family. God discusses with Satan () of Job's piety. Satan rebukes God, stating that Job would turn away from God if he were to lose everything within his possession. God decides to test that theory by allowing Satan to inflict pain on Job. The rest of the book deals with Job's suffering and him successfully defending himself against his unsympathetic friends, whom God admonishes, and God's sovereignty over nature.
Structure.
The Book of Job consists of a prose prologue and epilogue narrative framing poetic dialogues and monologues. It is common to view the narrative frame as the original core of the book, enlarged later by the poetic dialogues and discourses, and sections of the book such as the Elihu speeches and the wisdom poem of chapter 28 as late insertions, but recent trends have tended to concentrate on the book's underlying editorial unity.
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Contents.
Prologue on Earth and in Heaven.
In chapter 1, the prologue on Earth introduces Job as a righteous man, blessed with wealth, sons, and daughters, who lives in the land of Uz. The scene then shifts to Heaven, where God asks Satan () for his opinion of Job's piety. Satan accuses Job of being pious only because he believes God is responsible for his happiness; if God were to take away everything that Job has, then he would surely curse God.
God gives Satan permission to strip Job of his wealth and kill his children and servants, but Job nonetheless praises God:
In chapter 2, God further allows Satan to afflict Job's body with disfiguring and painful boils. As Job sits in the ashes of his former estate, his wife prompts him to "curse God, and die", but Job answers:
Job's opening monologue and dialogues between Job and his three friends.
In chapter 3, "instead of cursing God", Job laments the night of his conception and the day of his birth; he longs for death, "but it does not come".
His three friends, Eliphaz the Temanite, Bildad the Shuhite, and Zophar the Naamathite, visit him, accuse him of sinning, and tell him that his suffering was deserved. Job responds with scorn, calling his visitors "miserable comforters". Job asserts that since a "just" God would not treat him so harshly, patience in suffering is impossible, and the Creator should not take his creatures so lightly, to come against them with such force.
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Job's responses represent one of the most radical restatements of Israelite theology in the Hebrew Bible. He moves away from the pious attitude shown in the prologue and begins to berate God for the disproportionate wrath against him. He sees God as, among others,
Job then shifts his focus from the injustice that he himself suffers to God's governance of the world. He suggests that God does nothing to punish the wicked, who have taken advantage of the needy and the helpless, who, in turn, have been left to suffer the significant hardships inflicted on them.
Three monologues: Poem to Wisdom, Job's closing monologue.
The dialogues of Job and his friends are followed by a poem (the "hymn to wisdom") on the inaccessibility of wisdom: "Where is wisdom to be found?" it asks; it concludes in chapter 28 that wisdom has been hidden from humankind. Job contrasts his previous fortune with his present plight as an outcast, mocked and in pain. He protests his innocence, lists the principles he has lived by, and demands that God answer him.
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Elihu's speeches.
A character not previously mentioned, Elihu, intrudes into the story and occupies chapters 32–37. The narrative describes him as stepping out of a crowd of bystanders irate. He intervenes to state that wisdom comes from God, who reveals it through dreams and visions to those who will then declare their knowledge.
Two speeches by God.
From chapter 38, God speaks from a whirlwind. God's speeches do not explain Job's suffering, defend divine justice, enter into the courtroom of confrontation that Job has demanded, or respond to his oath of innocence of which the narrative prologue shows God is well aware.
Instead, God changes the subject to human frailty and contrasts Job's weakness with divine wisdom and omnipotence: "Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth?" Job responds briefly, but God's monologue resumes, never addressing Job directly.
In Job 42:1–6, Job makes his final response, confessing God's power and his own lack of knowledge "of things beyond me which I did not know". Previously, he has only heard God, but now his eyes have seen God, and therefore, he declares, "I retract and repent in dust and ashes".
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Epilogue.
God tells Eliphaz that he and the two other friends
The three are told to make a burnt offering with Job as their intercessor, "for only to him will I show favour". Elihu, the critic of Job and his friends, is notably omitted from this part of the narrative.
The epilogue describes Job's health being restored, his riches and family being remade, and Job living to see the new children born into his family produce grandchildren up to the fourth generation.
Composition.
Authorship, language, texts.
The character Job appears in the 6th-century BCE Book of Ezekiel as an exemplary righteous man of antiquity, and the author of the Book of Job has apparently chosen this legendary hero for his parable. The language of the Book of Job, combining post-Babylonian Hebrew and Aramaic influences, indicates it was composed during the Persian period (540–330 BCE), with the poet using Hebrew in a learned, literary manner. The anonymous author was almost certainly an Israelite—although the story is set outside Israel, in southern Edom or northern Arabia—and alludes to places as far apart as Mesopotamia and Egypt. Despite the Israelite origins, it appears that the Book of Job was composed in a time in which wisdom literature was common but not acceptable to Judean sensibilities (i.e., during the Babylonian exile and shortly thereafter).
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The language of Job stands out for its conservative spelling and exceptionally large number of words and word forms not found elsewhere in the Bible. Many later scholars, down to the 20th century, have looked for an Aramaic, Arabic, or Edomite origin, but a close analysis suggests that the foreign words and foreign-looking forms are literary affectations designed to lend authenticity to the book's distant setting and give it a foreign flavor.
Modern revisions.
Job exists in a number of forms: the Hebrew Masoretic Text, which underlies many modern Bible translations; the Greek Septuagint made in Egypt in the last centuries BCE; and Aramaic and Hebrew manuscripts found among the Dead Sea Scrolls.
In the Latin Vulgate, the New Revised Standard Version, and in Protestant Bibles, it is placed after the Book of Esther as the first of the poetic books. In the Hebrew Bible, it is located within the Ketuvim. John Hartley notes that in Sephardic manuscripts, the texts are ordered as Psalms, Job, and Proverbs, but in Ashkenazic texts, the order is Psalms, Proverbs, and then Job. In the Catholic Jerusalem Bible, it is described as the first of the "wisdom books" and follows the two books of the Maccabees.
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Job and the wisdom tradition.
Job, Ecclesiastes, and the Book of Proverbs belong to the genre of wisdom literature, sharing a perspective that they themselves call the "way of wisdom". "Wisdom" means both a way of thinking and a body of knowledge gained through such thinking, as well as the ability to apply it to life. In its Biblical application in wisdom literature, it is seen as attainable in part through human effort and in part as a gift from God, but never in its entirety—except by God.
The three books of wisdom literature share attitudes and assumptions but differ in their conclusions: Proverbs makes confident statements about the world and its workings that Job and Ecclesiastes flatly contradict. Wisdom literature from Sumeria and Babylonia can be dated to the third millennium BCE. Several texts from ancient Mesopotamia and Egypt offer parallels to Job, and while it is impossible to tell whether any of them influenced the author of Job, their existence suggests that the author was the recipient of a long tradition of reflection on the existence of inexplicable suffering.
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Themes.
The Book of Job is an investigation of the problem of divine justice. This problem, known in theology as the problem of evil or theodicy, can be rephrased as a question: "Why do the righteous suffer?" The conventional answer in ancient Israel was that God rewards virtue and punishes sin (the principle known as "retributive justice"). According to this view the moral status of human choices and actions is consequential, but experience demonstrates that suffering is experienced by those who are good.
The biblical concept of righteousness was rooted in the covenant-making God who had ordered creation for communal well-being, and the righteous were those who invested in the community, showing special concern for the poor and needy (see Job's description of his life in chapter 31). Their antithesis were the wicked, who were selfish and greedy. The Satan (or the Adversary) raises the question of whether there is such a thing as disinterested righteousness: if God rewards righteousness with prosperity, will men not act righteously from selfish motives? He asks God to test this by removing the prosperity of Job, the most righteous of all God's servants.
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The book begins with the frame narrative, giving the reader an omniscient "God's eye perspective" which introduces Job as a man of exemplary faith and piety, "blameless and upright", who "fears God" and "shuns evil". The contrast between the frame and the poetic dialogues and monologues, in which Job never learns of the opening scenes in heaven or of the reason for his suffering, creates a sense of dramatic irony between the divine view of the Adversary's wager, and the human view of Job's suffering "without any reason" (2:3).
In the poetic dialogues Job's friends see his suffering and assume he must be guilty, since God is just. Job, knowing he is innocent, concludes that God must be unjust. He retains his piety throughout the story (contradicting the Adversary's suspicion that his righteousness is due to the expectation of reward), but makes clear from his first speech that he agrees with his friends that God should and does reward righteousness.
The intruder, Elihu, rejects the arguments of both parties:
That is, suffering can make those afflicted more amenable to revelation – literally, "open their ears" (Job 36:15).
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Chapter 28, the Poem (or Hymn) to Wisdom, introduces another theme: Divine wisdom. The hymn does not place any emphasis on retributive justice, stressing instead the inaccessibility of wisdom. Wisdom cannot be invented or purchased, it says; God alone knows the meaning of the world, and he grants it only to those who live in reverence before him. God possesses wisdom because he grasps the complexities of the world (Job 28:24–26) – a theme which anticipates God's speech in chapters 38–41, with its repeated refrain "Where were you when ...?"
When God finally speaks he neither explains the reason for Job's suffering (known to the reader to be unjust, from the prologue set in heaven) nor defends his justice. The first speech focuses on his role in maintaining order in the universe: The list of things that God does and Job cannot do demonstrates divine wisdom because order is the heart of wisdom. Job then confesses his lack of wisdom, meaning his lack of understanding of the workings of the cosmos and of the ability to maintain it. The second speech concerns God's role in controlling the formidable 'behemoth' and 'leviathan'.
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Job's reply to God's final speech is longer than his first and more complicated. The usual view is that he admits to being wrong to challenge God and now repents "in dust and ashes" (Job 42:6), but the Hebrew is difficult: An alternative reading is that Job says he was wrong to repent and mourn, and does "not" retract any of his arguments.
In the concluding part of the frame narrative God restores and increases Job's prosperity, indicating that the divine policy on retributive justice remains unchanged.
Influence and interpretation.
History of interpretation.
In the Second Temple period (500 BCE–70 CE), the character of Job began to be transformed into something more patient and steadfast, with his suffering a test of virtue and a vindication of righteousness for the glory of God. The process of "sanctifying" Job began with the Greek Septuagint translation () and was furthered in the apocryphal Testament of Job (1st century BCE–1st century CE), which makes him the hero of patience. This reading pays little attention to the Job of the dialogue sections of the book, but it was the tradition taken up by the Epistle of James in the New Testament, which presents Job as one whose patience and endurance should be emulated by believers (James 5:7–11).
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When Christians began interpreting Job 19:23–29 (verses concerning a "redeemer" who Job hopes can save him from God) as a prophecy of Christ, the predominant Jewish view became "Job the blasphemer", with some rabbis even saying that he was rightly punished by God because he had stood by while Pharaoh massacred the innocent Jewish infants.
Augustine of Hippo recorded that Job had prophesied the coming of Christ, and Pope Gregory I offered him as a model of right living worthy of respect. The medieval Jewish scholar Maimonides declared his story a parable, and the medieval Christian Thomas Aquinas wrote a detailed commentary declaring it true history. In the Protestant Reformation, Martin Luther explained how Job's confession of sinfulness and worthlessness underlay his saintliness, and John Calvin's interpretation of Job demonstrated the doctrine of the resurrection and the ultimate certainty of divine justice.
The contemporary movement known as creation theology, an ecological theology valuing the needs of all creation, interprets God's speeches in Job 38–41 to imply that his interests and actions are not exclusively focused on humankind.
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Liturgical use.
Jewish liturgy does not use readings from the Book of Job in the manner of the Pentateuch, Prophets, or Five Megillot, although it is quoted at funerals and times of mourning. However, there are some Jews, particularly the Spanish and Portuguese Jews, who do hold public readings of Job on the Tisha B'Av fast (a day of mourning over the destruction of the First and Second Temples and other tragedies). The cantillation signs for the large poetic section in the middle of the Book of Job differ from those of most of the biblical books, using a system shared with it only by Psalms and Proverbs.
The Eastern Orthodox Church reads from Job and Exodus during Holy Week. Exodus prepares for the understanding of Christ's exodus to his Father, of his fulfillment of the whole history of salvation; Job, the sufferer, is the Old Testament icon of Christ.
The Roman Catholic Church reads from Job during Matins in the first two weeks of September and in the Office of the Dead, and in the revised Liturgy of the Hours Job is read during the Fifth, Twelfth, and Twenty Sixth Week in Ordinary Time.
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In the modern Roman Rite, the Book of Job is read during:
In music, art, literature, and film.
The Book of Job has been deeply influential in Western culture, to such an extent that no list could be more than representative. Musical settings from Job include Orlande de Lassus's 1565 cycle of motets, the , and George Frideric Handel's use of Job 19:25 ("I know that my redeemer liveth") as an aria in his 1741 oratorio "Messiah".
Modern works based on the book include Ralph Vaughan Williams's ""; French composer Darius Milhaud's "Cantata From Job"; and Joseph Stein's Broadway interpretation "Fiddler on the Roof", based on the Tevye the Dairyman stories by Sholem Aleichem. Neil Simon wrote "God's Favorite", which is a modern retelling of the Book of Job. Breughel and Georges de La Tour depicted Job visited by his wife. William Blake produced an entire cycle of illustrations for the book. It was adapted for Australian radio in 1939.
Writers Job has inspired or influenced include John Milton ("Samson Agonistes"); Dostoevsky ("The Brothers Karamazov"); Alfred Döblin ("Berlin Alexanderplatz"); Franz Kafka ("The Trial"); Carl Jung ("Answer to Job"); Joseph Roth ("Job"); Bernard Malamud; and Elizabeth Brewster, whose book "Footnotes to the Book of Job" was a finalist for the 1996 Governor General's Award for poetry in Canada. Archibald MacLeish's drama "JB", one of the most prominent uses of the Book of Job in modern literature, was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1959. Verses from the Book of Job figure prominently in the plot of the film "" (1996). Job's influence can also be seen in the Coen brothers' 2009 film, "A Serious Man", which was nominated for two Academy Awards.
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Terrence Malick's 2011 film "The Tree of Life", which won the Palme d'Or, is heavily influenced by the themes of the Book of Job, with the film starting with a quote from the beginning of God's speech to Job.
The Russian film "Leviathan" also draws themes from the Book of Job.
The 2014 Indian Malayalam-language film "Iyobinte Pusthakam" () by Amal Neerad tells the story of a man who is losing everything in his life.
"The Sire of Sorrow (Job's Sad Song)" is the final track on Joni Mitchell's 15th studio album, "Turbulent Indigo".
In 2015 two Ukrainian composers Roman Grygoriv and Illia Razumeiko created the opera-requiem "IYOV". The premiere of the opera was held on 21 September 2015 on the main stage of the international multidisciplinary festival Gogolfest.
In the 3rd episode of the 15th season of "ER", the lines of Job 3:23 are quoted by doctor Abby Lockhart shortly before she and her husband (Dr. Luka Covac) leave the series forever.
In season two of "Good Omens", the tale of Job and his struggles with good and evil are demonstrated and debated as the demon Crowley is sent to plague Job and his family by destroying his property and children, and the angel Aziraphale struggles with the implications of the actions of God.
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In the "South Park" episode "Cartmanland", Kyle Broflovski, who is Jewish, experiences a major crisis of faith. His parents try to cheer him up by reading from the Book of Job, which only serves to demoralize Kyle even more, who despairs at Job's horrific trials by God to prove a point to Satan.
In a series of (now deleted) cryptic tweets detailing the story of an unconfirmed meeting with Bob Dylan, comedian Norm Macdonald makes allusions and references to The Book of Job, calling it his favorite book of the Bible. Dylan allegedly preferred Ecclesiastes.
In Islam and Arab folk tradition.
Job () is one of the 25 prophets mentioned by name in the Quran, where he is lauded as a steadfast and upright worshipper (). His story has the same basic outline as in the Bible, although the three friends are replaced by his brothers, and his wife stays by his side.
In Lebanon the Muwahideen (or Druze) community have a shrine built in the Shouf area that allegedly contains Job's tomb. In Turkey, Job is known as , and he is supposed to have lived in Şanlıurfa. There is also a tomb of Job outside the city of Salalah in Oman. |
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Book of Proverbs
The Book of Proverbs (, ; ; , "Proverbs (of Solomon)") is a book in the third section (called Ketuvim) of the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh) / the Christian Old Testament. It is traditionally ascribed to King Solomon and his students. When translated into Greek and Latin, the title took on different forms: in the Greek Septuagint (LXX), it became (, "Proverbs"); in the Latin Vulgate, the title was —from which the English name is derived.
Proverbs is not merely an anthology but a "collection of collections" relating to a pattern of life that lasted for more than a millennium. It is an example of Biblical wisdom literature and raises questions about values, moral behavior, the meaning of human life, and right conduct, and its theological foundation is that "the fear of God is the beginning of wisdom." Wisdom is personified and praised for her role in creation; God created her before all else and gave order to chaos through her. As humans have life and prosperity by conforming to the order of creation, seeking wisdom is the essence and goal of life.
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The book of Proverbs is divided into sections: the initial invitation to acquire wisdom, another section focused mainly on contrasting the wise and the fool, and the third being moral discourses on various topics. Chapters 25–29 discuss justice, the wicked, and the rich and poor; chapter 30 introduces the "sayings of Agur" on creation and divine power.
Recent research on the book of Proverbs has taken two main approaches. Some scholars argue that different sections of the book originate from various periods, with chapters 1-9 and (30-)31 being the latest and final redaction dated to the late Persian or Hellenistic periods, while others focus on the book’s received form, analyzing its overall meaning first.
Structure.
The superscriptions divide the collections as follows:
Contents.
"Proverb" is a translation of the Hebrew word "mashal", but "mashal" has a wider range of meanings than the short, catchy saying implied by the English word. Thus, roughly half the book is made up of "sayings" of this type, while the other half consists of longer poetic units of various types. These include "instructions" formulated as advice from a teacher or parent addressed to a student or child, dramatic personifications of both Wisdom and Folly, and the "words of the wise" sayings, which are longer than the Solomonic "sayings" but shorter and more diverse than the "instructions."
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The first section (chapters 1–9) comprises an initial invitation to young men to take up the course of wisdom, ten "instructions", and five poems on personified Woman Wisdom. Verses 1:1-7 constitute an introduction to the whole of this section. Proverbs 10:1–22:16, with 375 sayings, consists of two parts, the first part (10–14) contrasting the wise man and the fool (or the righteous and the wicked), the second (15–22:16) addressing wise and foolish speech. Verse 22:17 opens ‘the words of the wise’, until verse 24:22, with short moral discourses on various subjects. An additional section of sayings which "also belong to the wise" follows in verses 24:23-34. Chapters 25–29, attributed to the editorial activity of "the men of Hezekiah", contrast the just and the wicked and broach the topic of rich and poor. Chapter 30:1-4, the "sayings of Agur", introduces creation, divine power, and human ignorance. Chapter 31, "the sayings of King Lemuel — an inspired utterance his mother taught him", describes a virtuous woman, a wife of noble character.
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Composition.
It is impossible to offer precise dates for the sayings in Proverbs, a "collection of collections" relating to a pattern of life that lasted for more than a millennium. The title is traditionally derived from chapter 1:1, "mishley Shelomoh" ("Proverbs of Solomon"). This phrase is repeated in 10:1 and 25:1, indicating a focus on categorizing the content rather than attributing authorship.
The book is an anthology made up of six discrete units. The "Proverbs of Solomon" section, chapters 1–9, was probably the last to be composed in the Persian or Hellenistic periods. This section has parallels to prior cuneiform writings. The second, chapters 10–22:16, carries the superscription "the proverbs of Solomon", which may have encouraged its inclusion in the Hebrew canon. The third unit, 22:17–24:22, is headed "bend your ear and hear the words of the wise". A large part of this section is a recasting of a second-millennium BCE Egyptian work, the "Instruction of Amenemope," and may have reached the Hebrew author(s) through an Aramaic translation. Chapter 24:23 begins a new section and source with the declaration, "These too are from the wise". The next section, at chapter 25:1, has a superscription that the following proverbs were transcribed "by the men of Hezekiah", indicating at face value that they were collected in the reign of Hezekiah in the late 8th century BCE. Chapters 30 and 31 (the "words of Agur," the "words of Lemuel," and the description of the "ideal" woman and wife) are a set of appendices, quite different in style and emphasis from the previous chapters.
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The ”wisdom” genre was widespread throughout the ancient Near East, and reading Proverbs alongside the examples recovered from Egypt and Mesopotamia reveals the common ground shared by international wisdom. The wisdom literature of Israel may have been developed in the family, the royal court, and houses of learning and instruction; nevertheless, the overwhelming impression is of instruction within the family in small villages.
Themes.
Along with the other examples of the biblical wisdom tradition – Job and Ecclesiastes and some other writings – Proverbs raises questions of values, moral behavior, the meaning of human life, and righteous conduct. The three retain an ongoing relevance for both religious and secular readers, Job and Ecclesiastes through the boldness of their dissent from received tradition, Proverbs in its worldliness and satiric shrewdness. Wisdom is as close as biblical literature comes to Greek philosophy, of which it was a contemporary; it shares with the Greeks an inquiry into values and reflections on the human condition, although there is no discussion of ontology, epistemology, metaphysics, and the other abstract issues raised by the Greeks.
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The rabbinic college almost excluded the Book of Proverbs from the Bible in the late first century. They did this because of its contradictions (the result of the book's origins as not just an anthology but an anthology of anthologies). The reader is told, for example, both to "not answer a fool according to his folly," according to 26:4, and to "answer a fool according to his folly", as 26:5 advises. More pervasively, the recurring theme of the initial unit (chapters 1–9) is that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, but the following units are much less theological, presenting wisdom as a transmissible human craft, until with 30:1–14, the "words of Agur," we return once more to the idea that God alone possesses wisdom.
"The fear of God is the beginning of wisdom" (Proverbs 9:10 – the phrase implies submission to God's will). Wisdom is praised for her role in creation ("God by wisdom founded the earth; by understanding, he established the heavens" – Proverbs 3:19). God created her before all else, and through her, he gave order to chaos ("When [God] established the heavens… when he drew a circle on the face of the Deeps… when he marked out the foundations of the earth, then I was beside him" – Proverbs 8:27–31). Since humans have life and prosperity by conforming to the order of creation, seeking wisdom is the essence and goal of the religious life. Wisdom, or the wise person, is compared and contrasted with foolishness or the fool, meaning one who is lacking in wisdom and uninterested in instruction, not one who is merely silly or playful (though see the words of Agur for a "fool" who has wisdom and could be seen as playful).
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For the most part, Proverbs offers a simplistic view of life with few grey areas: a life lived according to the rules brings reward, and life in violation of them is certain to bring disaster. In contrast, Job and Ecclesiastes appear to be direct contradictions of the simplicities of Proverbs, each in its own way all but dismissing the assumptions of the "wise". Noteworthy also is the fact that the "mighty acts of God" (the Exodus, the giving of the Torah at Sinai, the Covenant between God and Israel, etc.) which make up Israel's history are completely or almost completely absent from Proverbs and the other Wisdom books: in contrast to the other books of the Hebrew Bible, which appeal to divine revelation for their authority ("Thus says the Lord!"), wisdom appeals to human reason and observation.
Later interpretation and influence.
Pre-Exilic (i.e., pre-586 BCE) Israelite religion worshipped YHWH as the supreme deity despite the continued existence of subordinate servant-deities. The post-Exilic writers of the Wisdom tradition developed the idea that Wisdom existed before creation and was used by God to create the universe: "Present from the beginning, Wisdom assumes the role of master builder while God establishes the heavens, restricts the chaotic waters, and shapes the mountains and fields." Borrowing ideas from Greek philosophers who held that Reason bound the universe together, the Wisdom tradition taught that God's Wisdom, Word, and Spirit were the ground of cosmic unity. Christianity, in turn adopted these ideas and applied them to Jesus: the Epistle to the Colossians calls Jesus "...image of the invisible God, first-born of all creation...", while the Gospel of John identifies him with the creative Word ("In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God").
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In the 4th century, when Christianity was caught up in heresies and still developing the creeds that would define its beliefs, Proverbs 8:22 was used both to support and refute the claims of the Arians. The Arians, assuming that Jesus could be equated with the "Wisdom of God" (1 Corinthians 1:24), argued that the Son, like Wisdom, was "created" and therefore subordinate to the Creator. Their opponents, who argued that the relevant Hebrew word should be translated as "begot", won the debate, and the Nicene Creed declared that the Son was "begotten, not made"—meaning that God and Jesus were consubstantial.
External links.
Online translations of the Book of Proverbs |
Book of Lamentations
The Book of Lamentations (, , from its incipit meaning "how") is a collection of poetic laments for the destruction of Jerusalem in 586 BCE. In the Hebrew Bible, it appears in the Ketuvim ("Writings") as one of the Five Megillot ("Five Scrolls") alongside the Song of Songs, Book of Ruth, Ecclesiastes, and the Book of Esther. In the Christian Old Testament, it follows the Book of Jeremiah, for the prophet Jeremiah is traditionally understood to have been its author. By the mid-19th century, German scholars doubted Jeremiah's authorship, a view that has since become the prevailing scholarly consensus. Most scholars also agree that the Book of Lamentations was composed shortly after Jerusalem's fall in 586 BCE.
Some motifs of a traditional Mesopotamian "city lament" are evident in the book, such as mourning the desertion of the city by God, its destruction, and the ultimate return of the deity; others "parallel the funeral dirge in which the bereaved bewails... and... addresses the [dead]". The tone is bleak: God does not speak, the degree of suffering is presented as overwhelming, and expectations of future redemption are minimal. Nonetheless, the author repeatedly makes clear that the city—and even the author himself—has profusely sinned against God, thus justifying God's wrath. In doing so, the author does not blame God but rather presents God as righteous, just, and sometimes even merciful.
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Summary.
The book consists of five separate poems. In the first chapter, the city sits as a desolate weeping widow overcome with miseries. In chapter 2, these miseries are described in connection with national sins and acts of God. Chapter 3 speaks of hope for the people of God: that the chastisement would only be for their good; a better day would dawn for them. Chapter 4 laments the ruin and desolation of the city and temple but traces it to the people's sins. Some of chapter 5 is a prayer that Zion's reproach may be taken away in the repentance and recovery of the people. In some Greek copies, and in the Latin Vulgate, Syriac, and Arabic versions, the last chapter is headed "The Prayer of Jeremiah".
Themes.
Lamentations combines elements of the "kinah", a funeral dirge for the loss of the city, and the "communal lament" pleading for the restoration of its people. It reflects the view, traceable to Sumerian literature of a thousand years earlier, that the destruction of the holy city was a punishment by God for the communal sin of its people. However, while Lamentations is generically similar to the Sumerian laments of the early 2nd millennium BCE (e.g., "Lamentation over the Destruction of Ur," "Lament for Sumer and Ur," and the "Nippur Lament"), the Sumerian laments were recited on the occasion of the rebuilding of a temple and, therefore, have optimistic endings. In contrast, the book of Lamentations was written before the return/rebuilding and thus contains only lamentations and pleas to God with no response or resolution.
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Beginning with the reality of disaster, Lamentations concludes with the bitter possibility that God may have finally rejected Israel. Sufferers in the face of grief are not urged to have confidence in the goodness of God; in fact, God is accountable for the disaster. The poet acknowledges that this suffering is a just punishment. Still, God is held to have had a choice over whether to act in this way and at this time. Hope arises from a recollection of God's past goodness, but although this justifies a cry to God to act in deliverance, there is no guarantee that he will. Repentance will not persuade God to be gracious since he can give or withhold grace as he chooses. In the end, the possibility is that God has finally rejected his people and may not again deliver them. Nevertheless, it also affirms confidence that the mercies of Yahweh (the God of Israel) never end but are new every morning.
Structure.
Lamentations consists of five distinct (and non-chronological) poems, corresponding to its five chapters. Two of its defining characteristic features are the alphabetic acrostic and its qinah meter. However, few English translations capture either; even fewer attempt to capture both.
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Acrostic.
The first four chapters are written as acrostics. Chapters 1, 2, and 4 each have 22 verses, corresponding to the 22 letters of the Hebrew alphabet, the first lines beginning with the first letter of the alphabet, the second with the second letter, and so on. Chapter 3 has 66 verses, so that each alphabet letter begins three lines.
The fifth poem, corresponding to the fifth chapter, is not acrostic but still has 22 lines.
Although some claim that purpose or function of the acrostic form is unknown, it is frequently thought that a complete alphabetical order expresses a principle of completeness, from (first letter) to (22nd letter); the English equivalent would be "from A to Z".
English translations that attempt to capture this acrostic nature are few in number. They include those by Ronald Knox and by David R. Slavitt. In both cases their mapping of the 22 Hebrew letters into the Latin alphabet's 26 uses 'A' to 'V' (omitting W, X, Y and Z), thus lacking the "A to Z" sense of completeness.
Acrostic ordering.
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Unlike standard alphabetical order, in the middle chapters of Lamentations, the letter (the 17th letter) comes before (the 16th). In the first chapter, the Masoretic text uses the standard modern alphabetical order; however, in the Dead Sea Scrolls version of the text (4QLam/4Q111, ), even the first chapter uses the order found in chapters 2, 3, and 4.
The book's first four chapters have a well-defined "qinah" rhythm of three stresses followed by two, although the fifth chapter lacks this. Dobbs-Allsopp describes this meter as "the rhythmic dominance of unbalanced and enjambed lines". Again, few English translations attempt to capture this. Exceptions include Robert Alter's "Hebrew Bible" and the "New American Bible Revised Edition".
Composition.
The traditional ascription of authorship to Jeremiah derives from the impetus to ascribe all biblical books to inspired biblical authors. Jeremiah, a prophet who prophesied its demise at the time, was an obvious choice. In 2 Chronicles 35:25 Jeremiah is said to have composed a lament for the death of King Josiah, but there is no reference to Josiah in the book of Lamentations and no reason to connect it to Jeremiah. However, the modern consensus amongst scholars is that Jeremiah did not write Lamentations; like most ancient literary texts, the author or authors remain anonymous.
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Scholars are divided over whether the book is the work of one or multiple authors. According to the latter position, a different poet wrote each of the book's chapters and then joined to form the book. One clue pointing to multiple authors is that the gender and situation of the first-person witness changes—the narration is feminine in the first and second lamentations, but masculine in the third, while the fourth and fifth are eyewitness reports of Jerusalem's destruction. Conversely, the similarities of style, vocabulary, and theological outlook and the uniform historical setting are arguments for one author.
The book's language fits an Exilic date (586–520 BCE), and the poems probably originated from Judeans who remained in the land. The fact that the acrostics of chapters 2–4 follow the order of the pre-Exilic Paleo-Hebrew alphabet further supports the position that they are not postexilic compositions. However, the sequence of the chapters is not chronological, and the poems were not necessarily written by eyewitnesses to the events. The book was compiled between 586 BCE and the end of the 6th century BCE, when the Temple was rebuilt. Because Second Isaiah, whose work is dated to 550–538 BCE, seems to have known at least parts of Lamentations, the book was probably in circulation by the mid-6th century, but the exact time, place, and reason for its composition are unknown.
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In liturgy.
Lamentations is recited annually by Jews on the fast day of Tisha B'Av (the Ninth of Av) (July–August), mourning the destructions of both the First Temple (by the Babylonians in 586 BCE) and the Second Temple (by the Romans in 70 CE). In many manuscripts and for synagogue liturgical use, Lamentations 5:21 is repeated after verse 22, so that the reading does not end with a painful statement—a practice also performed for the last verse of Isaiah, Ecclesiastes, and Malachi, "so that the reading in the Synagogue might close with words of comfort".
In Christian tradition, readings from Lamentations are part of the Holy Week liturgies.
In Western Christianity, readings (often chanted) and choral settings of extracts from the book are used in the Lenten religious service known as (Latin for 'darkness'). In the Church of England, readings are used at Morning and Evening Prayer on the Monday and Tuesday of Holy Week, and at Evening Prayer on Good Friday.
In the Coptic Orthodox Church, the book's third chapter is chanted on the 12th hour of the Good Friday service, which commemorates the burial of Jesus.
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Surviving manuscripts.
Many of the oldest surviving manuscripts are from centuries after the period of authorship. In Hebrew, the Leningrad Codex (1008) is a Masoretic Text version. Since 1947, the whole book is missing from the Aleppo Codex. Fragments containing parts of the book in Hebrew were found among the Dead Sea Scrolls: 4Q111 (30–1 BCE), 3Q3 (30 BCE–50 CE), 5Q6 (50 CE), and 5Q7 (30 BCE–50 CE).
There is also a translation into Koine Greek known as the Septuagint, made in the last few centuries BCE. The Septuagint translation added an introductory line before the first stanza:
Extant ancient manuscripts of the Septuagint version include Codex Vaticanus (4th century), Codex Sinaiticus (4th century), Codex Alexandrinus (5th century) and Codex Marchalianus (6th century).
External links.
Jewish translations
Christian translations
Translations maintaining acrostic structure
Translations maintaining metrical rhythm (qinah)
Translations maintaining both acrostics and qinah |
Book of Ezekiel
The Book of Ezekiel is the third of the Latter Prophets in the Tanakh (Hebrew Bible) and one of the major prophetic books in the Christian Bible, where it follows Isaiah and Jeremiah. According to the book itself, it records six visions of the prophet Ezekiel, exiled in Babylon, during the 22 years from 593 to 571 BC. It is the product of a long and complex history and does not necessarily preserve the words of the prophet.
The visions and the book are structured around three themes: (1) judgment on Israel (chapters 1–24); (2) judgment on the nations (chapters 25–32); and (3) future blessings for Israel (chapters 33–48). Its themes include the concepts of the presence of God, purity, Israel as a divine community, and individual responsibility to God. Its later influence has included the development of mystical and apocalyptic traditions in Second Temple Judaism, Rabbinic Judaism, and Christianity.
Structure.
Ezekiel has a broad threefold structure:
Summary.
The book opens with a vision of YHWH (). The book moves on to anticipate the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple, explains this as God's punishment, and closes with the promise of a new beginning and a new Temple.
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Some of the highlights include:
Composition.
Life and times of Ezekiel.
The Book of Ezekiel is described as the words of Ezekiel ben-Buzi, a priest living in exile in the city of Babylon between 593 and 571 BC. Most scholars today accept the basic authenticity of the book, but see in it significant additions by a school of later followers of the original prophet. According to Jewish tradition, the Men of the Great Assembly wrote the Book of Ezekiel, based on the prophet's words. While the book exhibits considerable unity and probably reflects much of the historic Ezekiel, it is the product of a long and complex history and does not necessarily preserve the very words of the prophet.
According to the book that bears his name, Ezekiel ben-Buzi was born into a priestly family of Jerusalem c.623 BC, during the reign of the reforming king Josiah. Prior to this time, Judah had been a vassal of the Assyrian empire, but the rapid decline of Assyria after c. 630 led Josiah to assert his independence and institute a religious reform stressing loyalty to Yahweh, the God of Israel. Josiah was killed in 609 and Judah became a vassal of the new regional power, the Neo-Babylonian empire. In 597, following a rebellion against Babylon, Ezekiel was among the large group of Judeans taken into captivity by the Babylonians. He appears to have spent the rest of his life in Mesopotamia. A further deportation of Jews from Jerusalem to Babylon occurred in 586 when a second unsuccessful rebellion resulted in the destruction of the city and its Temple and the exile of the remaining elements of the royal court, including the last scribes and priests. The various dates given in the book suggest that Ezekiel was 25 when he went into exile, 30 when he received his prophetic call, and 52 at the time of the last vision .
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Textual history.
The Jewish scriptures, mostly in Hebrew, were translated into Greek in the two centuries prior to the Common Era — a version known as the Septuagint. The Hebrew version was later formalised into the Masoretic Text. The Greek (Septuagint) version of Ezekiel differs slightly from the Hebrew (Masoretic) version – it is about 8 verses shorter (out of 1,272) and possibly represents an earlier transmission of the book we have today (according to the Masoretic tradition) – while other ancient manuscript fragments differ from both.
Critical history.
During the first half of the 20th century, scholars such as C. C. Torrey (1863–1956) and Morton Smith placed its authorship and later redaction variously in the 3rd century BC and in the 8th/7th. The pendulum swung back in the post-war period, with an increasing acceptance of the book's essential unity and historical placement in the Exile. Walther Zimmerli's two-volume commentary appeared in German in 1969 and in English in 1979 and 1983, and traces the process by which Ezekiel's oracles were delivered orally and transformed into a written text by the prophet and his followers through a process of ongoing re-writing and re-interpretation. He isolates the oracles and speeches behind the present text, and traces Ezekiel's interaction with a mass of mythological, legendary and literary material as he developed his insights into Yahweh's purposes during the period of destruction and exile.
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Themes.
As a priest, Ezekiel is fundamentally concerned with the "Kavod YHWH", a technical phrase meaning the presence (shekhinah) of YHWH (i.e., one of the Names of God) among the people, in the Tabernacle, and in the Temple, and normally translated as "glory of God". In Ezekiel the phrase describes God mounted on His throne-chariot as he departs from the Temple in chapters 1–11 and returns to what Marvin Sweeney describes as a portrayal of "the establishment of the new temple in Zion as YHWH returns to the temple, which then serves as the center for a new creation with the tribes of Israel arrayed around it" in chapters 40–48. The vision in chapters 1:4–28 reflects common Biblical themes and the imagery of the Temple: God appears in a cloud from the north – the north being the usual home of God in Biblical literature – with four living creatures corresponding to the two cherubim above the Mercy Seat of the Ark of the Covenant and the two in the Holy of Holies, the innermost chamber of the Temple; the burning coals of fire between the creatures perhaps represents the fire on the sacrificial altar, and the famous "wheel within a wheel" may represent the rings by which the Levites carried the Ark, or the wheels of the cart.
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Ezekiel depicts the destruction of Jerusalem as a purificatory sacrifice upon the altar, made necessary by the abominations in the Temple (the presence of idols and the worship of the god Tammuz) described in chapter 8. The process of purification begins, God prepares to leave, and a priest lights the sacrificial fire to the city. Nevertheless, the prophet announces that a small remnant will remain true to Yahweh in exile, and will return to the purified city. The image of the valley of dry bones returning to life in chapter 37 signifies the restoration of the purified Israel.
Previous prophets had used "Israel" to mean the northern kingdom and its tribes; when Ezekiel speaks of Israel he is addressing the deported remnant of Judah; at the same time, however, he can use this term to mean the glorious future destiny of a truly comprehensive "Israel". In sum, the book describes God's promise that the people of Israel will maintain their covenant with God when they are purified and receive a "new heart" (another of the book's images) which will enable them to observe God's commandments and live in the land in a proper relationship with Yahweh.
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The theology of Ezekiel is notable for its contribution to the emerging notion of individual responsibility to God – each man would be held responsible only for his own sins. This is in marked contrast to the Deuteronomistic writers, who held that the sins of the nation would be held against all, without regard for an individual's personal guilt. Nonetheless, Ezekiel shared many ideas in common with the Deuteronomists, notably the notion that God works according to the principle of retributive justice and an ambivalence towards kingship (although the Deuteronomists reserved their scorn for individual kings rather than for the office itself). As a priest, Ezekiel praises the Zadokites over the Levites (lower level temple functionaries), whom he largely blames for the destruction and exile. He is clearly connected with the Holiness Code and its vision of a future dependent on keeping the Laws of God and maintaining ritual purity. Notably, Ezekiel blames the Babylonian exile not on the people's failure to keep the Law, but on their worship of gods other than Yahweh and their injustice: these, says Ezekiel in chapters 8–11, are the reasons God's Shekhinah left his city and his people.
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Later interpretation and influence.
Second Temple and rabbinic Judaism (c. 515 BC – 500 AD).
Ezekiel's imagery provided much of the basis for the Second Temple mystical tradition in which the visionary ascended through the Seven Heavens in order to experience the presence of God and understand His actions and intentions. The book's literary influence can be seen in the later apocalyptic writings of Daniel and Zechariah. He is specifically mentioned by Ben Sirah (a writer of the Hellenistic period who listed the "great sages" of Israel) and 4 Maccabees (1st century). In the 1st century the historian Josephus said that the prophet wrote two books: he may have had in mind the Apocryphon of Ezekiel, a 1st-century text that expands on the doctrine of resurrection. Ezekiel appears only briefly in the Dead Sea Scrolls, but his influence there was profound, most notably in the Temple Scroll with its temple plans, and the defence of the Zadokite priesthood in the Damascus Document. There was apparently some question concerning the inclusion of Ezekiel in the canon of scripture, since it is frequently at odds with the Torah (the five "Books of Moses" which are foundational to Judaism).
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Christianity.
Ezekiel is referenced more in the Book of Revelation than in any other New Testament writing. To take just two well-known passages, the famous Gog and Magog prophecy in Revelation 20:8 refers back to Ezekiel 38–39, and in Revelation 21–22, as in the closing visions of Ezekiel, the prophet is transported to a high mountain where a heavenly messenger measures the symmetrical new Jerusalem, complete with high walls and twelve gates, the dwelling-place of God where His people will enjoy a state of perfect well-being. Apart from Revelation, however, where Ezekiel is a major source, there is very little allusion to the prophet in the New Testament; the reasons for this are unclear, but it cannot be assumed that every Christian or Hellenistic Jewish community in the 1st century would have had a complete set of (Hebrew) scripture scrolls, and in any case Ezekiel was under suspicion of encouraging dangerous mystical speculation, as well as being sometimes obscure, incoherent, and pornographic.
In popular culture.
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• The angelic creatures and accompanying wheels seen by Ezekiel in Chapter 1 are referred to by the spiritual song "Ezekiel Saw the Wheel".
In the "Command & Conquer" video game series, the Nod Stealth Tank is sometimes referred to as the "Ezekiel Wheel", referring to the same passage.
• The imagery in Ezekiel 37:1–14 of the Valley of Dry Bones, which Ezekiel prophesies will be resurrected, is referred to in the 1928 spiritual song "Dem Dry Bones", the folk song Dry Bones and the song "Black Cowboys" by Bruce Springsteen on his 2005 album Devils & Dust.
• A heavily modified version of one passage of the book appears in the Sonny Chiba movie "Karate Kiba" ("The Bodyguard"; 1976), where it is both shown as a scrolling text and read by an offscreen narrator and claimed to be Ezekiel 25:17. Quentin Tarantino lifted this version almost verbatim for a speech by a character in his movie "Pulp Fiction".
External links.
Online translations |
Big Brother (franchise)
Big Brother is a reality competition television franchise created by John de Mol Jr., first broadcast in the Netherlands in 1999 and subsequently syndicated internationally. The show features contestants called "housemates" or "HouseGuests" who live together in a specially constructed house that is isolated from the outside world. The name is inspired by Big Brother from George Orwell's novel "Nineteen Eighty-Four", and the housemates are continuously monitored during their stay in the house by live television cameras as well as personal audio microphones. Throughout the course of the competition, they are voted out of the house (usually on a weekly basis) until only one remains and wins the cash prize.
, there have been 508 seasons of "Big Brother" in over 63 franchise countries and regions. English-language editions of the program are often referred to by its initials "BB".
Premise.
At regular intervals, the housemates privately nominate a number of their fellow housemates whom they wish to be evicted from the house. The housemates with the most nominations are then announced, and viewers are given the opportunity to vote via telephone for the nominee they wish to be evicted or saved from eviction. The last person remaining is declared the winner.
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Some more recent editions have since included additional methods of voting, such as voting through social media and smartphone applications. Occasionally, non-standard votes occur, where two houseguests are evicted at once or no one is voted out. In the earlier series of "Big Brother", there were 10 contestants with evictions every two weeks. However, the British version introduced a larger number of contestants with weekly evictions. Most versions of "Big Brother" follow the weekly eviction format, broadcast over approximately three months for 16 contestants.
The contestants are required to do housework and are assigned tasks by the producers of the show (who communicate with the housemates via the omnipresent authority figure known to them only as "Big Brother"). The tasks are designed to test their teamwork abilities and community spirit. In some countries, the housemates' shopping budget or weekly allowance (to buy food and other essentials) depends on the outcome of assigned tasks.
History.
Name.
The term "Big Brother" originates from George Orwell's novel "Nineteen Eighty-Four," with its theme of continuous oppressive surveillance. The program also relies on other techniques, such as a stripped back-to-basic environment, evictions, weekly tasks and competitions set by "Big Brother", and the "Diary Room" (or "Confession Room") where housemates convey their private thoughts to the camera and reveal their nominees for eviction.
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Creation.
The first version of "Big Brother" was broadcast in 1999 on Veronica in the Netherlands. In the first season of "Big Brother", the house was very basic. Although essential amenities such as running water, furniture, and a limited ration of food were provided, luxury items were often forbidden. This added a survivalist element to the show, increasing the potential for social tension. Nearly all later series provide a modern house for the contest with a Jacuzzi, sauna, VIP suite, loft, and other luxuries.
International expansion.
The format has become an international TV franchise. While each country or region has its own variation, the common theme is that the contestants are confined to the house and have their every action recorded by cameras and microphones and that no contact with the outside world is permitted.
Most international versions of the show remain quite similar: their main format remains true to the original fly on the wall observational style with an emphasis on human relationships, to the extent that contestants are usually forbidden from discussing nominations or voting strategy. In 2001, the American version adopted a different format since the second season, where the contestants are encouraged to strategize to advance in the game; in this format, the contestants themselves vote to evict each other and a Jury of Evicted contestants vote for the winner. Occasionally, individual game twists and format changes may allow for some viewer voting, usually to give a game advantage to the Housemates selected by the viewer vote. "Big Brother Canada", introduced in 2013, also follows the American format, while the Australian series also used an American-styled format when the series was rebooted in 2020, with the winner being decided by Australia's vote among the Finalist.
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Other international versions have included aspects of the American format. In 2011, the British version controversially adopted the discussion of nominations before reversing this rule after a poll by "Big Brother" broadcaster Channel 5.
Reception.
Overview.
From a sociological and demographic perspective, "Big Brother" allows an analysis of how people react when forced into close confinement with people outside of their comfort zone (having different opinions or ideals, or from a different socioeconomic group). The viewer has the opportunity to see how a person reacts from the outside (through the constant recording of their actions) and the inside (in the Diary or Confession Room). The Diary Room is where contestants can privately express their feelings about the game, strategy and the other contestants. The results range from violent or angry confrontations to genuine and tender connections (often including romantic interludes).
In 2011, Brazilian sociologist Silvia Viana Rodrigues wrote a thesis at the University of São Paulo analyzing reality shows as spectacles that proliferate rituals of suffering. She analyzes such rituals in various cultural products from Hollywood and Brazilian television, with special attention to "Big Brother Brasil". When investigating the openly eliminatory and cruel face of the game, Silvia Viana points out that such characteristics are liable to be entertainment with great and crucial public engagement because such processes of elimination, competition, exclusion, the affirmation of the war of all against all, of self-management and personal self-control through socio-emotional skills, entrepreneurship, the banality of evil, the naturalization of torture, the "battle for survival" logic and the incorporation of Nazi language and elements are already part of contemporary social life, especially in the context of work under neoliberalism. The thesis was later published as a book.
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The show is notable for involving the Internet. Although the show typically broadcasts daily updates during the evening (sometimes criticized by viewers and former contestants for heavy editing by producers), viewers can also watch a continuous feed from multiple cameras on the Web in most countries. These websites were successful, even after some national series began charging for access to the video stream. In some countries, Internet broadcasting was supplemented by updates via email, WAP and SMS. The house is shown live on satellite television, although in some countries there is a 10–15 minutes delay to allow libelous or unacceptable content (such as references to people not participating in the program who have not consented to have personal information broadcast) to be removed.
Contestants occasionally develop sexual relationships; the level of sexual explicitness allowed to be shown in broadcast and Internet-feed varies according to the country's broadcasting standards.
Isolation.
"Big Brother" contestants are isolated in the house, without access to television, radio, or the Internet. They are not permitted routine communication with the outside world. This was an important issue for most earlier series of the show. In more-recent series, contestants are occasionally allowed to view televised events (usually as a reward for winning at a task). In most versions of the program, books and writing materials are also forbidden, although exceptions are sometimes made for religious materials such as the Bible, Tanakh or the Qur'an. Some versions ban all writing implements, even items that can be used to write (such as lipstick or eyeliner). Despite the housemates' isolation, some contestants are occasionally allowed to leave the house as part of tasks. Contestants are permitted to leave the house in an emergency.
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News from the outside world may occasionally be given as a reward. Additionally, news of extraordinary events from the outside world may be given to the Housemates if such information is considered important, such notable past examples include that of national election results, (along with Housemates being able participate in said elections, for countries with compulsory voting) the September 11 attacks, and the COVID-19 pandemic.
Contestants have regularly scheduled interactions with the show's host on eviction nights. Throughout each day, the program's producer, in the "Big Brother" voice, issues directives and commands to contestants. Some versions of the show allow private counselling sessions with a psychologist. These are allowed at any time and are often conducted by telephone from the Diary Room.
Format changes and twists.
Regional versions.
Due to the intelligibility of certain languages across several nations, it has been possible to make regional versions of "Big Brother". All of these follow the normal "Big Brother" rules, except that contestants must come from each of the countries in the region where it airs: "Big Brother Albania" of Albania and Kosovo, "Big Brother Angola e Moçambique" of Angola and Mozambique, "Big Brother Africa" of Africa (includes Angola, Botswana, Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Liberia, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, Nigeria, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, South Africa, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe), of the Middle East (includes Bahrain, Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Oman, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Syria and Tunisia), "Gran Hermano del Pacífico" of South America (includes Chile, Ecuador and Peru), "Big Brother" of Scandinavia (includes Norway and Sweden) and "Veliki brat" of the Balkans (includes Serbia, Montenegro, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina and North Macedonia). The British version of the show previously accepted Irish applicants, however the terms and conditions of ITV2's reboot state you must reside in the UK.
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On the other hand, some countries have multiple franchises based on language. "Bigg Boss" of India has the most regional-based versions Hindi, Marathi, Tamil, Bengali, Telugu, Kannada and Malayalam language versions; Canada has French- and English-language versions; and the United States has English- and Spanish-language versions of the show.
The Pakistani television program "Tamasha" recently became a part of the franchise. Initially produced by ARY Digital, a Pakistani TV channel, the reality show's first season garnered significant success and audience engagement, with its different twists and tasks being the main concept of the show. During its second season, the show officially adopted the original format of "Big Brother". As of 2023, it stands as the sole franchise of the "Big Brother" format in Pakistan, with the show being conducted exclusively in the Urdu language.
Twists involving single franchises.
Multiple areas and houses.
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In 2011–12, the seventh Argentine series added "La Casa de al Lado" ("The House Next Door"), a smaller, more luxurious house which served multiple functions. The first week it hosted 4 potential housemates, and the public voted for two of them to enter the main house. The second week, two pairs of twins competed in the same fashion, with only one pair allowed in. Later, the 3rd, 4th and 5th evicted contestants were given the choice of staying on their way out and they competed for the public's vote to reenter the house. Months later, after one of the contestants left the house voluntarily, the House Next Door reopened for four contestants who wanted to reenter and had not been in such a playoff before. The House Next Door was also used in other occasions to accommodate contestants from the main house for limited periods of time, especially to have more privacy (which of course could be seen by the public).
The ninth Brazilian season featured the "Bubble": a glass house in a shopping mall in Rio de Janeiro where four potential housemates lived for a week. Later in the season, a bubble was built inside the Big Brother house, with another two housemates living in it for a week until they were voted in and the glass house dismantled. The Glass House was reused in the eleventh season, featuring five evicted housemates competing for a chance to join the house again, and in the thirteenth season, with six potential housemates competing for two places in the main house. A dividing wall from the ninth season was reused in the fourteenth Brazilian season, when mothers and aunts of the housemates entered for International Women's Day and stayed in the house for 6 days, though they could not be seen by the housemates. Every season brings back the glass house. Some editions also featured an all-white panic room, where contestants were held until one of them decided to quit the show.
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In the fourth English-Canadian season, two house guests were evicted and moved into a special suite where they were able to watch the remaining house guests. A week later, the houseguests were required to unanimously decide which of them to bring back into the house.
Evil Big Brother.
In 2004, the fifth British series introduced a villainous "Big Brother" with harsher punishments, such as taking away prize money, more difficult tasks and secret tricks. This concept has also been used in Australia, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Finland, Germany, Greece, Italy, the Netherlands, South America, Scandinavia, Serbia, Spain, Thailand, Philippines and Mexico.
Twin or triplet housemates.
In 2004, the fifth American season introduced twins who were tasked with secretly switching back and forth in the house; they were allowed to play the game as individual house guests after succeeding at the deception for four weeks. This twist was reused in the seventeenth American season without the deception element – the pair simply needed to survive five weeks without being "evicted". HouseGuests who discovered this twist could use the twins to their strategic advantage.
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This twin or triplet twist was used in several countries. Some made modifications to this twist; others have had twins in the house together without this element of secrecy. The following are the countries that have featured twins or triplets: Australia (in 2005), Germany (in 2005–06), Brazil (in 2006 and 2015), Bulgaria (in 2006, 2012 and VIP 2017), United Kingdom (in 2007, Celebrity 2011, Celebrity 2012, 2013, 2015, 2016 and Celebrity 2017), France (in 2007, 2011, 2013, 2015 and 2016), Spain (in 2007 and 2013), Poland (in 2007 and 2019), India (in 2008), Africa (in 2009), Balkan Region (in 2009 and 2013), Philippines (in , and ), Portugal (in 2010 and 2012), Israel (in 2011), Ukraine (in 2011), Argentina (in 2011 and 2016), Albania (in 2013, 2017, Celebrity 2021–22 and Celebrity 2022–23), Greece (in 2020) and Kosovo (in Celebrity 2022–23).
Pairs competitions.
Several versions of the program feature variations of the housemates competing in pairs:
Secret missions.
Secret missions are a common element of the show since their introduction during the sixth British series. During these missions, one or more housemates are set a task from "Big Brother" with the reward of luxuries for the household and/or a personal reward if the task is successful. Some versions of "Big Brother" have secret tasks presented by another character who lives in plain sight of the housemate. Such characters include Marsha the Moose (from "BB Canada") and Surly the Fish (from "BB Australia").
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The third Belgian season introduced a mole. This housemate was given secret missions by "Big Brother".
The eighth American season introduced "America's Player", where a selected house guest must complete various tasks (determined by public vote) in secret for the duration of their stay in the house in exchange for a cash reward. It was repeated in the tenth American season for a week. The eleventh American season featured Pandora's Box, in which the winning head of household was tempted to open a box, with unintended consequences for the house. The twelfth American season featured a saboteur, who entered the house to wreak havoc with tasks suggested by viewers. The sixteenth American season featured "Team America", in which 3 houseguests were selected to work as a team to complete tasks (determined by public voting) for a cash reward; this continued for the entire season despite the eviction of a team member.
The fourth Argentine series added a telephone in the living room. This telephone rang once a week for ten seconds, and the person to pick up the receiver was given an order or news from Big Brother (which typically no other housemate could hear). The order could be beneficial or detrimental, but a refused order resulted in the nomination for eviction. If nobody picked up the call, the whole house would be nominated for eviction.
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Opening night twists.
Since "Big Brother 2", the British series has opened with a twist. This has included having potential Housemates being voted upon by the public for one to enter the house ("Big Brother 2" & "Big Brother 13"); public voting for least-favourite housemates, with the housemates choosing between two nominees to evict ("Big Brother 3"); first-night nominations ("Big Brother 4" & "Big Brother 13"); suitcase nominations ("Big Brother 5"); Unlucky Housemate 13 ("Big Brother 6"); Big Brother Hood ("Big Brother 7"); an all-female house and a set of twins as contestants ("Big Brother 8"); a couple entering as housemates, who must hide their relationship ("Big Brother 9"); housemates having to earn housemate status ("Big Brother 10", with an altered version of the twist appearing in "Big Brother 21"); a mole entering the house with an impossible task ("Big Brother 11"); Pamela Anderson entering as a guest for 5 days ("Big Brother 12"); a professional actor posing as a housemate and a mother and daughter as contestants ("Big Brother 14"); one contestant gets a pass to the final ("Big Brother 15"); first night eviction ("Big Brother 16"); two houses with "the other house" featuring enemies from the main house housemates past ("Big Brother 17"); Jackie Stallone entering a house containing her son's ex-wife Brigitte Nielsen ("Celebrity Big Brother 3"); a "fake celebrity" (a civilian contestant pretending to be a celebrity) in a celebrity edition ("Celebrity Big Brother 4"); a visit from Jade Goody's family ("Celebrity Big Brother 5") and unlocked bedrooms allowing housemates to immediately claim beds with the last housemate becoming the Head of House ("Celebrity Big Brother 6").
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A common opening twist is to introduce only a cast of a single sex on the premiere of the show while having members of the opposite sex introduced over the next few days. The eighth British series first used this twist with an initial all-female house, adding a male housemate two days later. The same twist was used in the fourth Bulgarian series, and an all-male premiere was used on "Big Brother Africa 4". The second Belgian season was used a similar twist in 2001, where eleven male housemates and one female housemate entered the house on launch night and the second female housemate entered the house on the third day.
Fake evictions.
The fifth British series introduced fake evictions, where Big Brother misleads housemates that eviction has taken place, only for the "evicted" housemate to reenter the house sometime later.
In the eighth British series, one housemate was evicted, interviewed and sent back into the house.
In the , four housemates were fake-evicted and stayed in a place called "bodega". In the second batch of the , four housemates were fake-evicted due to losing their duel challenge and temporarily stayed in a secret room. In the adult edition of the , two housemates, and later three more, were fake evicted after failing in two different "Ligtask" challenges and temporarily stayed in the task room until the end of their weekly task.
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The concept of the fake-eviction was incorporated into the Australian series for the first time in the sixth Australian season, when housemates Camilla Severi and Anna Lind-Hansen were both fake-evicted in Day 8 and were moved into a secret room in the house, the Revenge Room. Severi and Lind-Hansen could see who nominated them for eviction and were given the opportunity to wreak havoc upon the house and those who nominated them by constructing extravagant tasks for the housemates to complete and for making mess in the house when they were not looking. Severi and Lind-Hansen returned to the house in a live special on Day 10. In the tenth Australian season, Benjamin Zabel was fake evicted for 24 hours before being returned to the house with immunity from eviction for that week. In the eleventh Australian season Travis Lunardi was fake-evicted and received advice from Benjamin Zabel for 24 hours; Travis returned to the house after a 3-day absence with immunity from eviction for that week.
In the thirteenth Brazilian series, Anamara Barreira was fake evicted. She was removed and put into a small private apartment without the other housemates knowing she was still in the house. After 24 hours, she returned to the house as Head of Household and with immunity from eviction that week. In the sixteenth Brazilian series, Ana Paula Renault was similarly fake evicted, put into a small private apartment, and returned after 48 hours with immunity from eviction that week. In the eighteen Brazilian series, Gleici Damasceno was similarly fake evicted, put into a small private apartment, and returned after 72 hours with immunity from eviction and with the power to put someone to eviction.
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In the first Turkish series, there is a fake eviction in week 10.
The Indian version "Bigg Boss" sees frequent fake evictions. In "Bigg Boss Kannada" season 4, winner Pratham and co-contestant Malavika were kept in secret room after fake eviction for one week and they were both allowed in the Bigg Boss house.
Similarly, in "Bigg Boss Kannada" season 5, firstly Jaya Srinivasan and Sameer Acharya were put into the secret room after fake eviction for one week and then Sameer Acharya was allowed into the house, but Jaya Srinivasan was evicted from the secret room itself. In the same season, the runner up Divakar was put into the secret room after fake eviction for one week.
Coaches.
The fourteenth American season had four house guests from past seasons return to coach twelve new house guests, playing for a separate prize of $100,000. However, in a reset twist, they opted to join the normal game alongside the other house guests.
Red button.
The seventh Argentine series incorporated a red button into the Confession Room, which would sound an alarm throughout the house. This button was to be used when a contestant wanted to leave the house voluntarily, and the contestant would be given five minutes to leave the house. A red button is also used in "Secret Story" series, however, in this case whoever presses the button will try to guess someone's secret.
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Legacy rewards or penalties.
In "", evicted housemates were given the opportunity to choose if a "ninja" delivered good or bad gifts to the house. Later that year, the eighth Australian series introduced the Housemate Hand Grenade, where an evicted housemate decided which, remaining housemate received a penalty. A similar punishment used on "Big Brother Africa" was called the Molotov Cocktail, Dagger or Fuse.
Most valuable player.
The fifteenth American season allowed viewers to vote for a house guest to be made M.V.P., who then secretly nominates a third houseguest for eviction (in addition to the two selected by the Head of Household).
In a further twist introduced part-way through the MVP twist, the viewers themselves decided who the third nominee would be, with the HouseGuests still thinking one of their own is the MVP. Like many such twists, this was ended halfway into the season as the pool of contestants shrank.
Multiple heads of household.
The sixteenth and seventeenth American seasons featured two Heads of Household every week and had four houseguests nominated for eviction. There was also a "Battle of the Block" competition where the two sets of nominees competed to save themselves; the winning pair not only saved themselves but dethroned the Head of Household who nominated them, who was then vulnerable as a replacement nominee if a veto was used. It is also used in specific weeks in Brazil since "Big Brother Brasil 16" where the HOH's have to choose which HoH will get R$10,000 and who is the one that will win immunity.
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America's Favorite HouseGuest.
In the American version, each season there are three cash prizes: $750,000 for the winner, $75,000 for second, and $50,000 for who was voted by the viewers to be America's Favorite HouseGuest.
Multiple winners.
In 2011, "Big Brother Africa" season 6 was the first season of "Big Brother" to have two winners, each getting US$200,000.
In 2012, the four finalists from "Gran Hermano 12+1" (Spain) were given the chance to choose a formerly evicted housemate to be their partner. The companion of the winner became the "+1 winner" and received a secondary prize of €20,000.
In 2015, the , also had two winners; one from the and one from the . Each of which received PHP1,000,000.
"Bigg Boss 8" (India) ended with a twist, where the top five contestants were crowned 'champions'. The season was extended by 35 days (total 135) as a spin-off called "Bigg Boss Halla Bol", where ex-contestants from previous seasons entered the house to compete with the five champions.
Reserve housemates.
The introduced the concept of having reserved housemates, those of whom are short-listed auditioners who were given a chance to be a housemate by completing tasks assigned by Big Brother. It was eventually done also in the where the reserved housemates were placed in a camp (a separate House but is just adjacent to the Main House) and that reserved housemate must compete amongst other reserved housemates while gaining points by participating in various tasks, including those that required the participation of doing such tasks outside of the Big Brother House premises. As the eviction was done weekly, once an official housemate is evicted from the Main House, the with the most points earned for that particular week crossovers to the Main House and becomes an official housemate.
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These reserved housemates twist was also used in Argentina's seventh season and Brazil's ninth season.
Big Brother Zoom.
In 2020, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the "Big Brother Portugal" revival started with a twist, where all the contestants were isolated in different apartments for 14 days, in line with World Health Organisation (WHO) recommendations. Cameras were filming them 24 hours a day as usual, and they were able to communicate with each other and host Cláudio Ramos using tablets.
Twists involving multiple franchises.
Housemate exchanges.
In 2002, the Mexican and Spanish editions (BBM1 and GH3) made temporary housemate exchanges. Mexico's Eduardo Orozco swapped with Spain's Andrés Barreiro for 7 days. In 2010, the first 2-housemate exchange was held by Spain and Italy (GH11 and GF10). Gerardo Prager and Saray Pereira from Spain were swapped with Carmela Gualtieri and Massimo Scattarella of Italy for 7 days.
In later years, several housemate exchanges were done around the world: Argentina (GH3) and Spain (GH4), Ecuador (GH1) and Mexico (BBM2), and Africa (BBA1) and United Kingdom (BB4) in 2003; Scandinavia (BB2) and Thailand (BBT2) in 2006; Philippines (PBB2) and Slovenia (BB1), and Argentina (GH5) and Spain (GH9) in 2007; Africa (BBA3) and Finland (BB4) in 2008; Finland (BB5) and Philippines () in 2009; Finland (BB6) and Slovenia (BBS1) in 2010; Spain (GH12) and Israel (HH3) in 2010–11; Finland (BB7) and Norway (BB4) in 2011; Argentina (GH7) and Israel (HH4) in 2012; Mexico (BB4) and Spain (GH16) in 2015; and Spain (GHVIP5) and Brazil (BBB17) in 2017.
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Evicted housemate exchanges.
In 2003, Mexico's Isabel Madow (BB VIP2) and Spain's Aída Nízar (GH5) were swapped for 7 days. This twist was also done between Russia (BBR1) and Pacific (GHP1) in 2005, and Argentina (GH4) and Brazil (BBB7) in 2007.
Other exchanges.
In 2009, as part of the casting process for Italy's GF9, Doroti Polito and Leonia Coccia visited Spain's GH10.
In 2012, four contestants from Denmark's BB4 visited Sweden's BB6 and competed in a Viking-themed challenge. The Danish team won and 'kidnapped' Swedish contestant Annica Englund to the Denmark house for the following week.
In 2012, evicted housemate Laisa Portella of Brazil (from BBB12) was a guest on Spain's "Gran Hermano 13" for a week; the following week, non-evicted Noemí Merino of GH13 stayed in the Brazilian Big Brother house for 5 days.
In 2016, "Big Brother UK" housemate Nikki Grahame and "Big Brother Australia" housemate Tim Dormer were voted in by Canada to be houseguests on the 4th season of "Big Brother Canada". Similarly, "Big Brother UK" housemate Jade Goody appeared as a housemate on the 2nd season of "Bigg Boss Hindi".
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"Big Brother Australia" (2015) contestant Priya Malik joined "Bigg Boss 9" (India) the same year as a wild card.
In 2017, GHVIP5 contestant Elettra Lamborghini visited Brazil's BBB17.
In 2019, the winner of Italy's GF15, Alberto Mezzetti visited Brazil's BBB19.
In 2022, Bindhu Madhavi, 4th Runner-up of "Bigg Boss Tamil 2017" made her entry as a contestant in a Telugu back to win spin-off named "Bigg Boss Non-Stop" and emerged as the winner of that show respectively.
After winning the debut season of "Bigg Boss Marathi" (regional version of "Big Brother"), winner Megha Dhade made her entry in "Bigg Boss" season 12 as a wild card contestant.
After winning season 2 of "Bigg Boss Marathi" (regional version of "Big Brother"), winner Shiv Thakare made her entry in "Bigg Boss 16".
Evicted housemate visits.
Anouska Golebiewski, an evicted housemate from the United Kingdom (housemate from BB4) visited Australia (BB3) in 2003. In 2005, United Kingdom (Nadia Almada of BB5) visited Australia (BB5) again. In 2006, United Kingdom (Chantelle Houghton of CBB4) visited Germany (BBG6). This twist was used in later years by other countries: Africa (Ricardo Ferreira of BBA3) visited Brazil (BBB9) in 2009; Germany (Annina Ucatis and Sascha Schwan of BBG9) visited the Philippines (), and Italy (George Leonard and Veronica Ciardi of GF10) visited Albania (BB3) in 2010; Sweden (Martin Granetoft and Peter OrrmyrSara Jonsson of BB5) visited Norway (BB4) in 2011; Brazil (Rafael Cordeiro of BBB12) visited Spain (GH12), and Argentina (Agustín Belforte of GH4) visited Colombia (GH2) in 2012; United States (Dan Gheesling of BB10/BB14) visited Canada (BB1 and the BB2 Jury) in 2013; Canada (Emmett Blois of BB1) visited South Africa (BBM3) in 2014; and Spain (Paula Gonzalez of GH15) visited Mexico (BBM4) in 2015.
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A similar event took place between the United States and Canada in 2014 wherein Rachel Reilly (from BB12/BB13) made a video chat to Canada (BB2). Rachel Reilly also appeared on "Big Brother Canada"s side show, which airs after the eviction episode.
Housemates competing in another country.
There were occasions that a former housemate from one franchise participated and competed in a different franchise: Daniela Martins of France (SS3) competed in Portugal (SS1); Daniel Mkongo of France (SS5) competed in Italy (GF12); Brigitte Nielsen of Denmark (BB VIP) competed in the United Kingdom (CBB3); Jade Goody of the United Kingdom (BB3, BB Panto, and CBB5) competed in India (BB2); Sava Radović of Germany (BB4) competed in the Balkan States (VB1); Nikola Nasteski of the Balkan States (VB4) competed in Bulgaria (BB All-Stars 1); Žarko Stojanović of France (SS5) competed in the Balkan States (VB VIP5); Željko Stojanović of France (SS5) competed in the Balkan States (VB VIP5); Kelly Baron of Brazil (BBB13) competed in Portugal (BB VIP); |
Željko Stojanović of France (SS5) competed in the Balkan States (VB VIP5); Kelly Baron of Brazil (BBB13) competed in Portugal (BB VIP); Lucy Diakovska of Bulgaria (VIP B4) competed in Germany (PBB1); Leila Ben Khalifa of Italy (GF6) competed in France (SS8); Priya Malik of Australia (BB11) competed in India (BB9); Tim Dormer of Australia (BB10) and Nikki Grahame of the United Kingdom (BB7, UBB) competed in Canada (BB4) after beating Jase Wirey of the United States (BB5, BB7) and Veronica Graf of Italy (GF13) in a public vote; Leonel Estevão-Luto of Africa (BB4) competed in Angola & Mozambique (BB3); Frankie Grande of the United States (BB16) competed in the United Kingdom (CBB18); Fanny Rodrigues of Portugal (SS2) competed in France (SS10); and Tucha Anita of Angola (BB3); Amor Romeira of Spain (GH9) competed in Portugal (SS6) and Alain Rochette of Spain (GH17) competed in France (SS11); Despite being American, Brandi Glanville competed first in the United Kingdom (CBB20) then later competed in first Celebrity series in the United States (CBB1); |
Despite being American, Brandi Glanville competed first in the United Kingdom (CBB20) then later competed in first Celebrity series in the United States (CBB1); Aída Nizar of Spain (GH5 and GHVIP5) competed in Italy (GF15); Ivana Icardi of Argentina (GH9) competed in Italy (GF16); Gianmarco Onestini of Italy (GF16) competed in Spain (GHVIP7); Michael Terlizzi of Italy (GF16) competed in Spain (GHVIP8); Heidi Baci of Italy (GF17) competed in Albania (BBVIP3).
Special editions.
"Celebrity" and "VIP" "Big Brother".
The "Big Brother" format has been adopted in some countries; the housemates are local celebrities, and the shows are called "Celebrity Big Brother" or "Big Brother VIP". In some countries, the prize money normally awarded to the winning housemate is donated to a charity, and all celebrities are paid to appear in the show as long as they do not voluntarily leave before their eviction or the end of the series. The rest of the rules are nearly the same as those of the original version.
Variations.
The 2006 Netherlands series was entitled "Hotel Big Brother". This variation introduced a group of celebrity hoteliers and a Big Boss, who run a hotel and collect money for charity without nominations, evictions or a winner.
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Another variation appeared in the UK in early 2008, entitled "". Instead of being housemates the celebrities became Big Brother himself, creating tasks and holding nominations with the help of Big Brother. The housemates were considered by the producers "Britain's most exceptional and extraordinary" 18- to 21-year-olds. The prize for the winner of the series was £50,000.
In 2009, "VIP Brother 3 Bulgaria" introduced the concept of celebrities competing for charitable causes, which changed each week. Housemates were sometimes allowed to leave the house to raise money for the charity. Ten out of Thirteen seasons of "Bigg Boss" (the Indian version of "Big Brother") have been celebrity-only seasons. The 10th season of "Big Boss" had celebrities put up against commoners, where a commoner ultimately won.
American format.
The American and Canadian versions of "Big Brother" differ from most global versions of the series. The American series began in 2000 with the original Dutch format—i.e., housemates, or HouseGuests, as they are styled in the US, nominating each other for eviction and the public voting on evictions and the eventual winner. But due to both poor ratings and the concurrent popularity of "Survivor", a gameplay-oriented format was introduced in the second season, with HouseGuests allowed to strategize, politic and collude to survive eviction, with the entire nomination and eviction process being determined by the HouseGuest themselves.
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