Split (1)

train · 367k rows

text stringlengths 9 2.4k
The city's main arteries include Diagonal Avenue, which crosses it diagonally, Meridiana Avenue which leads to Glòries and connects with Diagonal Avenue and Gran Via de les Corts Catalanes, which crosses the city from east to west, passing through its centre. The famous boulevard of La Rambla, whilst no longer an important vehicular route, remains an important pedestrian route. Main sights. The "Barri Gòtic" (Catalan for "Gothic Quarter") is the centre of the old city of Barcelona. Many of the buildings date from medieval times, some from as far back as the Roman settlement of Barcelona. Catalan "modernista" architecture (related to the movement known as Art Nouveau in the rest of Europe) developed between 1885 and 1950 and left an important legacy in Barcelona. Several of these buildings are World Heritage Sites. Especially remarkable is the work of architect Antoni Gaudí, which can be seen throughout the city. His best-known work is the immense but still unfinished church of the Sagrada Família, which has been under construction since 1882 and is still financed by private donations. , completion is planned for 2026.
Barcelona was also home to Mies van der Rohe's Barcelona Pavilion. Designed in 1929 for the International Exposition for Germany, it was an iconic building that came to symbolize modern architecture as the embodiment of van der Rohe's aphorisms "less is more" and "God is in the details". The Barcelona pavilion was intended as a temporary structure and was torn down in 1930 less than a year after it was constructed. A modern re-creation by Spanish architects now stands in Barcelona, however, constructed in 1986. Barcelona won the 1999 RIBA Royal Gold Medal for its architecture, the first (and , only) time that the winner has been a city rather than an individual architect. Barcelona is the home of many points of interest declared World Heritage Sites by UNESCO: Museums. Barcelona has a great number of museums, which cover different areas and eras. The National Museum of Art of Catalonia possesses a well-known collection of Romanesque art, while the Barcelona Museum of Contemporary Art focuses on post-1945 Catalan and Spanish art. The Fundació Joan Miró, Picasso Museum, and Fundació Antoni Tàpies hold important collections of these world-renowned artists, as well as the Can Framis Museum, focused on post-1960 Catalan Art owned by Fundació Vila Casas. Several museums cover the fields of history and archaeology, like the Barcelona City History Museum (MUHBA), the Museum of the History of Catalonia, the Archeology Museum of Catalonia, the Maritime Museum of Barcelona, the Music Museum of Barcelona and the privately owned Egyptian Museum of Barcelona. The Erotic museum of Barcelona is among the most peculiar ones, while CosmoCaixa is a science museum that received the European Museum of the Year Award in 2006.
The Museum of Natural Sciences of Barcelona was founded in 1882 under the name of "Museo Martorell de Arqueología y Ciencias Naturales" (Spanish for "Martorell Museum of Archaeology and Natural Sciences"). In 2011 the Museum of Natural Sciences ended up with a merge of five institutions: the Museum of Natural Sciences of Barcelona (the main site, at the Forum Building), the Martorell Museum (the historical seat of the Museum, opened to the public from 1924 to 2010 as a geology museum), the "Laboratori de Natura", at the Castle of the Three Dragons (from 1920 to 2010: the Zoology Museum), the Historical Botanical Garden of Barcelona, founded 1930, and the Botanical garden of Barcelona, founded 1999. Those two gardens are a part of the Botanical Institute of Barcelona too. The FC Barcelona Museum is the third most popular tourist attraction in Catalonia, with 1,51 million visitors in 2013. Parks. Barcelona contains sixty municipal parks, twelve of which are historic, five of which are thematic (botanical), forty-five of which are urban, and six of which are forest. They range from vest-pocket parks to large recreation areas. The urban parks alone cover 10% of the city (). The total park surface grows about per year, with a proportion of of park area per inhabitant.
Of Barcelona's parks, Montjuïc is the largest, with 203 ha located on the mountain of the same name, and includes the Botanical Garden of Barcelona, the Mossèn Costa i Llobera Gardens, and more. It is followed by Parc de la Ciutadella (which occupies the site of the old citadel and which houses the Parliament building, the Barcelona Zoo, and several museums); including the zoo), the Guinardó Park (), Park Güell (designed by Antoni Gaudí; ), Oreneta Castle Park (also ), Diagonal Mar Park (, inaugurated in 2002), Nou Barris Central Park (), Can Dragó Sports Park and Poblenou Park (both ), the Labyrinth Park (), named after the garden maze it contains. There are also several smaller parks, for example, the Parc de Les Aigües (). A part of the Collserola Park is also within the city limits. PortAventura World, one of the largest resort in Europe, with 5,837,509 visitors per year, is located one hour's drive from Barcelona. Also, within the city lies Tibidabo Amusement Park, a smaller amusement park in Plaza del Tibidabo, with the Muntanya Russa amusement ride.
Beaches. Barcelona beach was listed as number one in a list of the top ten city beaches in the world according to "National Geographic" and "Discovery Channel". Barcelona contains seven beaches, totalling of coastline. Sant Sebastià, Barceloneta and Somorrostro beaches, both in length, are the largest, oldest and the most-frequented beaches in Barcelona. The Olympic Harbour separates them from the other city beaches: Nova Icària, Bogatell, Mar Bella, Nova Mar Bella and Llevant. These beaches (ranging from were opened as a result of the city restructuring to host the 1992 Summer Olympics, when a great number of industrial buildings were demolished. At present, the beach sand is artificially replenished given that storms regularly remove large quantities of material. The 2004 Universal Forum of Cultures left the city a large concrete bathing zone on the eastmost part of the city's coastline. Most recently, Llevant is the first beach to allow dogs access during summer season. International relations. Twin towns – sister cities. Barcelona is twinned with: Partnership and friendship. Barcelona also cooperates with:
Bandy Bandy is a winter sport and ball sport played by two teams wearing ice skates on a large ice surface (either indoors or outdoors) while using sticks to direct a ball into the opposing team's goal. The playing surface, called a bandy field or bandy rink, is a sheet of ice which measures by , about the size of a football pitch. The field is considerably larger than the ice rinks commonly used for ice hockey. The sport has a common background with association football, ice hockey, shinty, and field hockey. Bandy's origins are debatable, but its first rules were organized and published in England in 1882. Internationally, bandy's strongest nations in both men's and women's competitions have long been Sweden and Russia; both countries have established professional men's bandy leagues. In Russia, it is estimated that more than one million people play bandy. The sport also has organized league play and fans in other countries, including Finland, Norway, and Kazakhstan. The premier international bandy competition for men is the Bandy World Championship and for women it is the Women's Bandy World Championship.
Organized bandy started in the late 19th century; however, until 1955, there was no established international governing body for the sport. The international governing body for bandy today is the Federation of International Bandy (FIB) which formed in February 1955. In 2001, bandy was recognized as a sport by the International Olympic Committee (IOC). Both traditional eleven-a-side bandy and rink bandy (which is played on a smaller rink) are recognized by the IOC. Based on the number of participating athletes, the FIB has claimed bandy is the world's second-most participated winter sport after ice hockey, but it is not recorded how many of these participants are male and how many are female. History. Background. The earliest origin of the sport is debated. Though many Russians see their old countrymen as the creators of the sport – reflected by the unofficial title for bandy, "Russian hockey" (русский хоккей) – Russia, Sweden, medieval Iceland, the Netherlands, England, and Wales each had pastimes, such as bando, which can be seen as forerunners of bandy. The mid-eighteenth-century "Devonshire Dialogue" collection lists Bandy as "a game, like that of Golf, in which the adverse parties endeavour to beat a ball (generally a knob or gnarl from the trunk of a tree,) opposite ways... the stick with which the game is played is crook'd at the end".
The sport's first published set of organized rules was codified in 1882 by Charles Goodman Tebbutt of the Bury Fen Bandy Club. When the international federation was founded in 1955, it came about after a compromise between Russian and English rules, in which more of the English rules prevailed. Since association football was already popular in England, the codified bandy rules took after much of the football rules. Like association football, games are normally two 45 minute halves and there are 11 players per side. Players sticks are curved like large field hockey sticks and the bandy ball is roughly the size of a tennis ball with a cork core and hard plastic coating. Bandy balls were originally usually red but are now either orange or more commonly cerise. Early days. Bandy as an ice skating sport first developed in Britain. It developed as a winter sport in the Fens of East Anglia. Large expanses of ice would form on the flooded meadows or shallow washes in cold winters where fen skating, which has been a tradition dating back to at least medieval times, took place. Bandy's early recorded modernization period can be traced back to 1813.
Members of the Bury Fen Bandy Club published rules of the game in 1882, and introduced it into other European countries. A variety of stick and ball games involving ice skating were introduced to North America by the 1800s but failed to organize and develop popular rules codes. However, these stick and ball games became one of the eventual antecedents of the modern sport of ice hockey, whose first rules were codified in Canada in 1875, almost a decade before the rules of modern bandy were established in Britain. The first international bandy match took place in 1891 between Bury Fen and the Haarlemsche Hockey & Bandy Club from the Netherlands (a club which after a couple of club fusions now is named HC Bloemendaal). The same year, the National Bandy Association was established as a governing body for the sport in England. National governing federations for bandy were also founded in the 1890s in the Netherlands and Russia and in the following decade in Finland (then part of the Russian Empire), Sweden, and Norway.
The match later dubbed "the original bandy match", was actually held in 1875 at The Crystal Palace in London. However, at the time, the game was called "hockey on the ice", probably as it was considered an ice variant of field hockey. An early maker of bandy sticks was the firm of Gray's, Cambridge. One such stick, now in the collections of the Museum of Cambridge, has a length of rope twisted round the handle to rescue any player who might fall through the ice, as the game was played on frozen lakes back then. An 1899 photo of two players demonstrating the game shows the sticks being held single-handed. Historically, bandy was a popular sport in some central and western European countries until the First World War, and from 1901 to 1926 it was played in the Scandinavian Nordic Games, the first international multi-sport event focused on winter sports. Etymology. The sport's English name comes from the verb "to bandy", from the Middle French ("to strike back and forth"), and originally referred to a seventeenth-century Irish game similar to field hockey. The curved stick was also called a "bandy". The etymological connection to the similarly named Welsh hockey game of bando is not clear.
An old name for bandy is "hockey on the ice"; in the first rule books from England at the turn of the century 1900, the sport is literally called "bandy or hockey on the ice". Since the early 20th century, the term bandy is usually preferred to prevent confusion with ice hockey. The sport is known as bandy in many languages, with a few exceptions. In Russia, bandy is called "Russian hockey" () or more frequently, and officially, "hockey with a ball" () while ice hockey is called "hockey with a puck" () or more frequently just "hockey". If the context makes it clear that bandy is the subject, it as well can be called just "hockey". In Belarusian, Ukrainian and Bulgarian it is also called "hockey with a ball" (, and respectively). In Slovak "bandy hockey" () is the name. In Armenian, Kazakh, Kyrgyz, Mongol and Uzbek, bandy is known as "ball hockey" (, , , and respectively). In Finnish the two sports are distinguished as "ice ball" () and "ice puck" (), as well as in Hungarian (), although in Hungarian it is more often called "bandy" nowadays. In Estonian and Lithuanian bandy is also called "ice ball" (; ). In Mandarin Chinese it is "bandy ball" (). In Scottish Gaelic the name is "ice shinty" (). In old times shinty or shinney were also sometimes used in English for bandy.
Because of its similarities with association football, bandy is also nicknamed "winter football" (). Historical relationship with other sports. Bandy and association football. With association football and "hockey on ice" or bandy both being popular sports in parts of Europe around 1900, bandy was highly influenced by football and taking after its main rules: having a field approximately the same size, having the same number of players on each team and having the same game time (2×45 minutes). It is natural that bandy got the nickname 'winter football'. It was common for sports clubs to have both a bandy and a football section, with athletes playing both sports but at different times of the year. Some examples are "Nottingham Forest Football and Bandy Club" in England (today known just as Nottingham Forest F.C.) and Norwegian Strømsgodset IF and Mjøndalen IF, with both having an active bandy section. In Sweden, most football clubs that were active during the first half of the 20th century also played bandy. Swedish player Orvar Bergmark earned silver medals in the world championships of both sports in the 1950s. Later, as the season for each sport increased in time, it was not as easy for the players to engage in both sports, so some clubs came to concentrate on one or the other. Many old clubs still have both sports on their program. Sten-Ove Ramberg is the last Swedish male player in both national teams (1978 in bandy, 1979–1984 in football).
Bandy and ice hockey. No clear distinction between bandy and ice hockey was made before the 1920s. As bandy in a way can be seen as a precursor to ice hockey, bandy has influenced the development and history of ice hockey, mainly in European and former Soviet countries. While modern ice hockey was created in Canada, a variety of games which bore a closer resemblance to bandy were initially played there after British soldiers introduced the game of bandy in the late 19th century. At the same time as modern ice hockey rules were formalized in British North America (present-day Canada), bandy rules were decided upon in Europe. A cross between English and Russian bandy rules eventually developed with the football-inspired English rules ("cf" the passage above about bandy and Association football) becoming dominant, together with the Russian low-border along most of the two sidelines, an addition to the sport which has maintained its presence since the 1950s. Before Canadians introduced ice hockey into Europe in the early 20th century, "hockey" was another name for bandy, and still is in parts of Russia and Kazakhstan.
Both bandy and ice hockey were played in Europe during the 20th century, especially in Sweden, Finland, and Norway. Ice hockey became more popular than bandy in most of Europe, mostly because it had become an Olympic sport, while bandy had not. Athletes in Europe who had played bandy switched to ice hockey in the 1920s to compete in the Olympics. The smaller ice fields needed for ice hockey also made its rinks easier to maintain, especially in countries with short winters. On the other hand, ice hockey was not played in the Soviet Union until the 1950s, when the USSR wanted to compete internationally. The typical European style of ice hockey, with flowing, less physical play, represents a heritage of bandy. Modern development. First national bandy league. The first national bandy league in modern history was started in Sweden in 1902. Bandy in the Nordic Games. Bandy was played at the Nordic Games in both Stockholm and Kristiania (present day Oslo) in 1901, 1903, 1905, 1909, 1913, 1917, 1922 and 1926, and between Swedish, Finnish and Russian teams at similar games in Helsinki in 1907. Bandy appeared as a sport in all eight editions of the Nordic Games from 1901 to 1926.
European Bandy Championships. Some sources describe a 1913 European Bandy Championships as having been held in February 1913, in St. Moritz, Switzerland, at the same time as the bandy tournament at the 1913 Nordic Games. However, this European Championship tournament likely never happened, or is a conflation of titles, since no contemporary sources have been found. Still, in 2014, a Four Nation Bandy tournament was held in Davos, Switzerland, as a centenary celebration of the alleged 1913 European Bandy Championships. Highest altitude. The highest altitude where bandy has been played is in Khorugh, the capital of the Tajik autonomous province of Gorno-Badakhshan. Khorugh is situated above sea level in the Pamir Mountains. World Championships and Russian performance. Since the 1950s, when the Soviet Union ended its isolation and started to take part in international sports events, there has been a reason to play world championships. The International Bandy Federation was founded in 1955 and the first world championships were played in 1957 with the Soviet Union and then Russia (as its successor country in 1993) almost consistently in a top position in the sport of bandy alongside Sweden. Finland has won once, in 2004.
In a similar fashion, Russia, along with Sweden, has emerged as one of the two dominant women's bandy nations internationally in the Women's Bandy World Championship. Women's bandy. Women's bandy uses the exact same rules as men, but the women's game is played separately. Women have been playing bandy since the sport was originally developed. Although there were several attempts in the early part of the 19th century to organize bandy leagues for women's teams, regular leagues only started in the 1970s in Sweden and Finland and then later in the 1980s in Norway and the Soviet Union. Bandy moving indoors. Starting in the 1980s and increasingly since the turn of the millennium, more and more indoor arenas for bandy have been built (often as joint arenas to be used also for football or speed skating). The use of indoor arenas makes the effects of the weather on a game virtually insignificant, something which earlier always have been a factor to consider for the teams and the audiences. However, unlike some other sports, bandy is still the same game with the same rules indoors or outdoors and no changes are made to the rules depending on whether there's a roof overhead or not. Many games, even in the highest leagues, are still played outdoors. In Sweden there are more indoor arenas than in all other countries combined.
Overview. Bandy is played on ice, using a single round bandy ball. Two teams of 11 players each compete to get the ball into the other team's goal using bandy sticks, thereby scoring a goal. The team that has scored more goals at the end of the game is the winner. If both teams have scored an equal number of goals, then, with some exceptions, the game is a draw. The game is designed to be played on a rectangular sheet of ice, called a bandy field, which is the same size as a football (soccer) field. In a typical game, players attempt to propel the ball toward their opponents' goal through individual control of the ball, such as by dribbling, passing the ball to a teammate, and taking shots at the goal, which is guarded by the opposing goalkeeper. Opposing players may try to regain control of the ball by intercepting a pass or tackling the opponent who controls the ball. However, physical contact between opponents is limited. Bandy is generally a free-flowing game, with play stopping only when the ball has left the field of play, or when play is stopped by the referee. After a stoppage, play can recommence with a free stroke, a penalty shot or a corner stroke. If the ball has left the field along the sidelines, the referee must decide which team touched the ball last, and award a restart stroke to the opposing team, just like football's throw-in.
In terms of rules, bandy has several rules that are similar to football. Each team has 11 players, one of whom is a goalkeeper. Goalkeepers use gloves made specifically for their position and wear them on both hands but do not use any type of stick. The offside rule, which in general is similar to the one used in football, is also employed. A goal cannot be scored from a goal throw, but unlike football, a goal can be scored from a stroke-in or a corner stroke. All free strokes are "direct" and allow a goal to be scored without another player touching the ball. A primary rule is that players (other than the goalkeepers) may not intentionally touch the ball with their heads, hands or arms during play. Although players usually use their sticks to move the ball around, they may use any part of their bodies other than their heads, hands or arms and may use their skates in a limited manner. The rules do not specify any player positions other than goalkeeper, but a number of player specialisations have evolved. Broadly, these include three main categories:
Players in these positions are referred to as outfield players, to discern them from the single goalkeeper. These positions are further differentiated by which side of the field the player spends most time in. For example, there are central defenders, and left and right midfielders. The ten outfield players may be arranged in these positions in any combination (for example, there may be three defenders, five midfielders, and two forwards), and the number of players in each position determines the style of the team's play; more forwards and fewer defenders would create a more aggressive and offensive-minded game, while the reverse would create a slower, more defensive style of play. While players may spend most of the game in a specific position, there are few restrictions on player movement, and players can switch positions at any time. The layout of the players on the pitch is called the team's formation, and defining the team's formation and tactics is usually the prerogative of the team's manager(s). Formation in bandy is often comparable to the formation in association football.
Shouldering is allowed in checking situations and body contact therefore does occur, but body checking and fighting are illegal. Bandy is a swift game. Elite players have a mean skating velocity of over 16 km/h and the skating velocity can in some cases reach 37 km/h. Rules. There are eighteen rules in official play, designed to apply to all levels of bandy, although certain modifications for groups such as juniors, veterans or women are permitted. The rules are often framed in broad terms, which allow flexibility in their application depending on the nature of the game. A game is officiated by a referee, the authority and enforcer of the rules, whose decisions are final. The referee may have one or two assistant referees. A secretary outside of the field often takes care of the match protocol. The Bandy Playing Rules can be found on the official website of the Federation of International Bandy, and are overseen by the Rules and Referee Committee. Players. Each team consists of a maximum of 11 players (excluding substitutes), one of whom must be the goalkeeper. A team of fewer than eight players may not start a game. Goalkeepers are the only players allowed to play the ball with their hands or arms, and they are only allowed to do so within the penalty area in front of their own goal.
Though there are a variety of positions in which the outfield (non-goalkeeper) players are strategically placed by a coach, these positions are not defined or required by the rules of the game. The positions and formations of the players in bandy are virtually the same as the common association football positions and the same terms are used for the different positions of the players. A team usually consists of defenders, midfielders and forwards. The defenders can play in the form of centre-backs, full-backs and sometimes wing-backs, midfielders playing in the centre, attacking or defensive, and forwards in the form of centre forward, second strikers and sometimes a winger. Sometimes one player is also taking up the role of a libero. Any number of players may be replaced by substitutes during the course of the game. Substitutions can be performed without notifying the referee and can be performed while the ball is in play. However, the substitute must leave the ice before the teammate enters it. A team can bring at the most four substitutes to the game, five if one of these is an extra goalkeeper.
Formation. Formation in bandy describes how the players in a team generally position themselves on the rink and is often comparable to the formation in association football. The team's manager(s) define the team's formation while tactics are usually their prerogative as well. Bandy is a fluid and fast-moving game, and (with the exception of the goalkeeper) a player's position in a formation defines their role less rigidly than — for instance — for a rugby player, nor are there episodes in play where players must expressly line up in formation (as in gridiron football). The bandy games are more similar to association football in this regard. Nevertheless, a player's position in a formation generally defines whether a player has a mostly defensive or attacking role, and whether they tend to play towards one side of the pitch or centrally. Duration and tie-breaking measures. A standard adult bandy match consists of two periods of 45 minutes each, known as halves. Each half runs continuously, meaning the clock is not stopped when the ball is out of play; the referee can, however, make allowance for time lost through significant stoppages as described below. There is usually a 15-minute half-time break. The end of the match is known as full-time.
The referee is the official timekeeper for the match and may make an allowance for time lost through substitutions, injured players requiring attention, or other stoppages. This added time is commonly referred to as "stoppage time" or "injury-time", and must be reported to the match secretary and the two captains. The referee alone signals the end of the match. If it is very cold or if it is snowing, the match can be broken into thirds of 30 minutes each. At the extremely cold 1999 World Championship some matches were played in four periods of 15 minutes each and with extra long breaks in between. In the World Championships the two halves can be 30 minutes each for the nations in the B division. In league competitions, games may end in a draw, but in some knockout competitions if a game is tied at the end of regulation time it may go into extra time, which usually consists of two further 10-minute periods. If the score is still tied after extra time, the game will be decided on penalties. The teams shoot five penalties each and if this doesn't settle the game, the teams shoot one more penalty each until one of them misses and the other scores.
Ball in and out of play. Under the rules, the two basic states of play during a game are "ball in play" and "ball out of play". From the beginning of each playing period with a stroke-off (a set strike from the centre-spot by one team) until the end of the playing period, the ball is in play at all times, except when either the ball leaves the field of play, or play is stopped by the referee. When the ball becomes out of play, play is restarted by one of six restart methods depending on how it went out of play: If the time runs out while a team is preparing for a free-stroke or penalty, the strike should still be made but it must go into the goal by one shot to count as a goal. Similarly, a goal made via a corner stroke should be allowed, but it must be executed using only one shot in addition to the strike needed to put the ball in play. Free-strokes and penalty shots. Free-strokes can be awarded to a team if a player of the opposite team breaks any rule, for example, by hitting with the stick against the opponent's stick or skates. Free-strokes can also be awarded upon incorrect execution of corner-strikes, free-strikes, goal-throws, and so on, or the use of incorrect equipment, such as a broken stick.
Rather than stopping play, the referee may allow play to continue when its continuation will benefit the team against which an offence has been committed. This is known as "playing an advantage". The referee may "call back" play and penalise the original offence if the anticipated advantage does not ensue within a short period of time, typically taken to be four to five seconds. Even if an offence is not penalised because the referee plays an advantage, the offender may still be sanctioned (see below) for any associated misconduct at the next stoppage of play. If a defender violently attacks an opponent within the penalty area, a penalty shot is awarded. Certain other offences, when carried out within the penalty area, for instance a defender holding or hooking an attacker, or blocking a goal situation with a lifted skate, thrown stick or glove and so on result in a penalty shot. Also, the defenders (with the exception of the goal-keeper) are not allowed to kneel or lie on the ice. The final offences that might mandate a penalty shot are those of hitting or blocking an opponent's stick or touching the ball with the hands, arms, stick or head. A 10-minute penalty or a red card may be issued to the offending player as well.
Warnings and penalties. A yellow card indicates a warning given to an entire team for technical fouls such as errors in the execution of goal-throws or free strokes, or the obstruction of a player without ball. Subsequent technical fouls by the same team result in a five-minute penalty indicated by a white card. A five-minute penalty is indicated through the use of a white card, which is half of the time of the blue card and can be caused by trying to hinder opponents from executing a free-stroke, illegal substitution or repeated illegal but non-violent attacks on an opponent. A ten-minute penalty is indicated by use of a blue card and can be caused by protesting or behaving incorrectly, attacking an opponent violently or stopping the ball incorrectly to get an advantage. The third time a player receives a time penalty, it will be a personal penalty, meaning he or she will miss the remainder of the match. A substitute can enter the field after five or ten minutes, depending on the type of time penalty received. A full game penalty can be received upon using abusive language or directly attacking an opponent and means that the player can neither play nor be substituted for the remainder of the game. A match penalty is indicated through the use of a red card.
Offside. The offside rule effectively limits the ability to attack players to remain forward (i.e. closer to the opponent's goal-line) of the ball, the second-to-last defending player (which can include the goalkeeper), and the half-way line. This rule is in general similar to that of soccer. Equipment. The basic equipment players are required to wear includes a pair of bandy skates, a helmet, a mouthguard and, in the case of the goalkeeper, a faceguard. The teams must wear uniforms that make it easy to distinguish the two teams. The goalkeeper wears distinct colours to be singled out from his or her teammates, just as in football. The ice skates, sticks and any tape on the stick must be of another colour than the bandy ball, which is orange or cerise. In addition to the aforementioned items, various pieces of gear are used to protect the knees, elbows, genitals and throat. The pants and gloves may contain padding. Bandy stick. The stick used in bandy is an essential part of the sport. It should be made of an approved material such as wood or a similar material and should not contain any metal or sharp parts which can hurt the surrounding players.
Sticks are crooked and are available in five angles, where 1 has the smallest bend and 5 has the most. Bend 4 is the most common size in professional bandy. The bandy stick should not have similar colours to the ball, such as orange or pink; it should be no longer than , and no wider than . Bandy field. A bandy field is by , a total of , or about the same size as a football pitch and considerably larger than an ice hockey rink, which is by . Along the sidelines a high border (vant, sarg, wand, wall) is placed to prevent the ball from leaving the ice. It should not be attached to the ice, to glide upon collisions, and should end away from the corners. Centered at each shortline is a wide and high goal cage and in front of the cage is a half-circular penalty area with a radius. A penalty spot is located in front of the goal and there are two free-stroke spots at the penalty area line, each surrounded by a circle. A centre spot with a circle of radius denotes the center of the field. A centre-line is drawn through the centre spot parallel with the shortlines.
At each of the corners, a radius quarter-circle is drawn, and a dotted line is painted parallel to the shortline and away from it without extending into the penalty area. The dotted line can be replaced with a long line starting at the edge of the penalty area and extending towards the sideline, from the shortline. The goal cage used in bandy is wide and high and is the largest one used by any organized winter team sport. Protective equipment. Bandy players require protective equipment, some of which is designed specifically for the sport such as the bandy chinguard. Equipment is similar to that worn in ice hockey but is typically smaller, lighter, and more flexible, and more closely resembles the equipment worn in the modern sport of ringette. All players are required to wear helmets. While some bandy players are required to wear facemasks such as young players, some outfield players only wear a helmet with a bandy chin guard. Goaltenders are the exception and must wear a helmet and facemask at all times. International.
International games in the early years. The first international games were played by club teams in the 1890s. Starting in the first decade of the 20th century, friendlies were played between national teams of some European countries. While games like this did not take place in central and western Europe after the 1910s, the Nordic countries of Estonia, Finland, Norway, and Sweden continued, doing it more regularly during the 1920s and 1930s with annually or semi-annually recurring friendlies between some of them. Sweden tried to play friendly games against the Soviet Union in the 1940s, but it did not come to be until the mid 1950s. Nordic Games. Bandy was played as one of the sports at the Nordic Games, international winter sports events held during the first few decades of the 20th century. International federation. The Fédération internationale de hockey sur glace, or International Ice Hockey Federation as it is more well known as today, was founded in 1908 and was governing some bandy competitions in its early years, before only concentrating on ice hockey.
The Federation of International Bandy (FIB) was formed as "International Bandy Federation" in 1955 and has had 33 members at most, each representing a country where bandy is played. Currently, there are 27 members of the federation. The name of the federation was changed to the present one in 2001 after the International Olympic Committee approved it as a so-called "recognized sport". The abbreviation "IBF" was at the time already used by another recognized sports federation, and IOC considers it important that the official abbreviations of sports federations are unique, so that the federations are not mistaken for one another. In 2004, FIB was fully accepted by IOC. FIB is now a member of Association of IOC Recognised International Sports Federations. World Championships. Men. The Bandy World Championship for men is arranged by the FIB and was first held in 1957. It was held every two years starting in 1961, and every year since 2003. Currently, the record number of countries participating in the World Championships is twenty (2019). Since the number of countries playing bandy is not large, every country which can set up a team is welcome to take part in the World Championship. The quality of the teams varies; however, with only six nations, Sweden, the Soviet Union, Russia, Finland, Norway, and Kazakhstan, having won medals (allowing for the fact that Russia's team took over from the Soviet Union in 1993). Finland won the 2004 world championship in Västerås, Sweden, while all other championships have been won by Sweden, the Soviet Union and Russia.
The Soviet Union won all championships until 1981, when Sweden managed to break the streak of eleven straight gold medals. Sweden won again in the next tournament in 1983, but Soviet again seized the victory in 1985. The Soviet Union also won at its last two appearances, and then Sweden won in 1993, 1995 and 1997. Russia, having taken over after the Soviet Union, and Sweden have kept on winning all championships between them except for 2004, when Finland managed to claim the win. In 2020, the B division of the World Championship was played, but the A division – which was to be played about a month later – was first postponed a couple of times due to the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic and later moved to the next year as the pandemic did not end. The championship tournament could however not be played in 2021 either. In 2022, the championship was finally to be held, but since it was scheduled to be played in Russia, many national federations said they did not want to participate because of the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine and it was cancelled by the FIB since this meant there would have been too few competing teams.
Women. The first World Championship for women took place in February 2004 in Lappeenranta, Finland. Sweden won the championship without conceding a goal. In the 2014 women's World Championship Russia won for the first time, defeating Sweden, making it the first time Sweden did not win the world title. In 2016 Sweden took the title back. The 2018 women's tournament was played in a country situated completely in Asia for the first time, when it was hosted in Chengde, China. It was the same for the men's tournament that same year (the area north and west of the Ural River is located in Europe, thus Kazakhstan, which had hosted a world championship before, is a transcontinental country), when Harbin hosted the 2018 Division B tournament. The 2020 championship saw China withdraw its participation due to the COVID-19 pandemic, but the tournament was held in Norway in February and the pandemic had not yet reached Europe. In 2022 when the championship was played in Sweden, China did not yet return, while Russia and Ukraine both withdrew because of the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Youth. There are also Youth Bandy World Championships in different age groups for boys and young men and in one age group for girls. The oldest group is the under 23 championship, Bandy World Championship Y-23. Olympic Movement. During most of the 20th century, a host nation for Olympic Games had the right to arrange demonstration games for almost any sport of its own choosing. In 1952, the Winter Olympic Games were arranged in Oslo, Norway, and the Norwegians presented bandy as a demonstration sport. The tournament of bandy at the 1952 Winter Olympics was played by three countries, Norway, Finland and Sweden. This is the only time bandy has been played at Olympic Games. Bandy was officially recognized by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) under the Association of IOC Recognised International Sports Federations (ARISF) in 2004, and was played as a demonstration sport at the 1952 Winter Olympics in Oslo. However, it has yet to officially be played at the Olympics. According to the FIB, bandy is the world's second-most participated winter sport after ice hockey based on the number of participating athletes. It is unclear how many of the players participate in the male category and how many in the female category. The FIB has also recorded bandy (men's) as having ranked as the number two winter sport in terms of tickets sold per day of competitions at the sport's world championship.
However, compared with the seven Winter Olympic sports, bandy's popularity among other winter sports across the globe is considered by the International Olympic Committee to have a, "gap between popularity and participation and global audiences", which is a roadblock to future Olympic inclusion. In addition, the Olympic Charter requires a sport to be widely practiced by men in at least 75 countries and on four continents, and by women in no fewer than 40 countries and on three continents in order to be accepted. FIB president Boris Skrynnik lobbied for bandy to be included in the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, given Russia's prominence in the sport. Members of the Chinese Olympic Committee were present at the 2017 world championships to meet with Skrynnik about the possibility of considering the sport for the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing. However, in 2018 it was announced no new sports would be added for 2022. Asian Winter Games. At the 2011 Asian Winter Games, open to members of the Olympic Council of Asia, men's bandy was included for the first time. Three teams contested the inaugural competition, and Kazakhstan won the gold medal. The President of Kazakhstan, Nursultan Nazarbayev, attended the final.
There was no bandy competition at the next Games, the 2017 Asian Winter Games held in Japan. Winter Universiade/Winter World University Games. Bandy made its debut at the Winter Universiade during the 2019 Games in Krasonyarsk, Russia. Originally a six-team tournament for men and a four-team tournament for women were planned to be held. However, later China withdrew from the men's tournament and was supposed to be replaced by Belarus. Since that did not happen either, participating teams among women were Russia, Sweden, Norway and the United States, while among men Russia, Sweden, Norway, Finland and Kazakhstan. In 2019, the International University Sports Federation expected bandy to be a part of the 2023 Winter World University Games (Winter World University Games being the new name of the Winter Universiade) too, however, this did not turn out to be so, as the hosts in Lake Placid, USA, did not included it in its schedules and no bandy teams were invited to the games. World Cup. The World Championships should not be confused with the annual Bandy World Cup competitions. The World Cup is for club teams.
Men. The Bandy World Cup for men in Ljusdal, Sweden, has been played annually since the 1970s and is the biggest bandy tournament for elite-level club teams. It is played indoors in Sandviken since 2009 because Ljusdal has no indoor arena. It is expected to return to Ljusdal once an indoor arena has been built. World Cup matches are played day and night, and the tournament is played in four days in late October. The teams participating are mostly, and some years exclusively, from Sweden and Russia, which has the two best leagues in the world. The COVID-19 pandemic led to the Cup being cancelled in 2020 and 2021. Women. There is also a club competition for women's bandy teams called Bandy World Cup Women. Its inaugural year was in 2007. European Cup. The European Cup was first played in 1974 and was a competition featuring the national men's champion team from any European country which had a national bandy championship. This meant, at the time, that only four teams competed every year, which were the men's champions from Finland, Norway, the Soviet Union, and Sweden. After the Soviet Union had been dissolved in 1991, the Russian champions took part instead. The cup is not formally defunct, but the last installment was played in 2009. 4 Nations Tournament.
The Federation of International Bandy usually arranges a four nations tournament every year between national teams from Norway, Finland, Russia and Sweden. The 2022 tournament was originally set for 21–23 January, but was cancelled after the Swedish Bandy Association announced they would not be hosting it for that season. Rossiya Tournament (Russian Government Cup). During the period 1972–1990, the Rossiya Tournament was held semi-annually for national teams in the years when there was no world championship. This tournament was always played in the Soviet Union and arranged by the newspaper "Sovetskaya Rossiya". It was affectionately called "the small world championship". From 1992 the tournament was renamed Russian Government Cup. The last instalment was played in 2012. Overview of international competitions. There are several existing international bandy competitions with events varying based upon age, competitive level, and sex. Variants of bandy and sports developed from bandy. 7-a-side bandy. Varieties of bandy exist, utilising the same rules only with slight differences, like seven-a-side bandy with regulation sized goal cages but without corner strokes and often on a smaller sized rink. Seven-a-side bandy was popular in central Europe and in England in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, while eleven-a-side bandy was preferred in the Nordic countries and in Russia. Seven-a-side bandy rules were applied at the Davos Cup in 2016.
Rink bandy. Rink bandy is a bandy variant played on an ice hockey-size rink. It was originally conceived as a way of practicing bandy in the summertime, when there were no bandy sized indoor rinks but ice hockey rinks had started to be built indoors. Rink bandy is played by basically the same rules as regular bandy but on a playing surface the size of an ice hockey rink with ice hockey goal cages and six players on each team (or five in the case of the USA Rink Bandy League). There have been international competitions for rink bandy played by the best bandy players in the 1980s and 1990s, both for club teams and for national teams, there were world championships in rink bandy in those days and the Hofors World Cup for clubs was played annually from 1984 to 1998. When more indoor bandy rinks have been built, rink bandy has more become a sport for lower league teams and recreational play. Rink bandy was played in the 2012 European Company Sports Games program. Some member nations of the Federation of International Bandy, which is the international governing body for rink bandy as well as bandy, do not have regulation sized bandy surfaces which are larger than the more common ice hockey ice rink and therefore only play rink bandy at home; this includes most of the World Championships Group B participants.
Short bandy. In Czechia, the national federation has developed its own version of rink bandy with somewhat different rules, which is meant to help the players transition to playing on a full-sized bandy rink. This is called short bandy. Read more in the section on Czechia below. Rinkball. Rink bandy has in turn led to the creation of the sport of rinkball. The sport of rinkball has at times been referred to as a variant of bandy, however it organized by the 1980s and has since become an established organized sport with its own governing body and differs considerably from both bandy and ice hockey, the sport's two major influences. Floorball. Bandy is also the predecessor of floorball, which was invented when people started playing with plastic bandy shaped sticks and lightweight balls when running on the floors of indoor gym halls.⁣ Landbandy. In Sweden, informal games played like bandy but on ice-free ground (usually on gravel or asphalt concrete) are called "landbandy" (see ). The term should not be confused with "landhockey", the Swedish term for field hockey.
No roller or parasport variants exist. There is no formal roller sport companion to bandy involving either inline skates or parallel wheel roller skates, even if rink hockey can be considered to have some similarities with bandy. There is also no formally organized skateless ice variant of bandy, and bandy does not have any parasport variant. Countries. Canada. Bandy has been played in Canada since the 1980s, but is not nearly as popular as ice hockey in this country. Friendlies are played against the United States. The Canadian bandy federation is called Canada Bandy. China. The China Bandy Federation was set up in 2014. Since them, China has since participated in a number of world championship tournaments, with men's, women's and youth teams. China Bandy is mainly financed by private resources. The development of the sport in China is supported by the Harbin Sport University. Czechia. A team from Prague in present-day Czechia became Austrian national bandy champions in 1911. Czechia has been playing in the World Championship since 2016. As a way of preparing as well as possible for international matches, the Czechs have invented modified rules for games on ice hockey rinks, a variety called short bandy, which differs from rink bandy. The Czech (former rink bandy) national league is now called "Liga českého národního bandy".
Estonia. Bandy as an organized sport was played in Estonia in the 1910s to 1930s and the country had a national championship for some years. The national team played friendlies against Finland in the 1920s and 1930s. The sport was played sporadically during the Soviet occupation 1944–1991. It has since then become more organized again, partly through exchange with Finnish clubs and enthusiasts. As of 2018, Estonia takes part in both the Bandy World Championship for men, and the Women's Bandy World Championship. Finland. Bandy as an organized sport was introduced to Finland from Russia in the 1890s. Finland has been playing bandy friendlies against Sweden and Estonia since its independence in 1917. The first men's Finnish national championships were held in 1908 and was the first national Finnish championship held in any team sport. National champions have been named every year except for three years in the first half of the 20th century when Finland was at war. The top national league is called Bandyliiga and is semi-professional. The best players turn fully professional by being recruited by clubs in Sweden or Russia. As of the 2020–21 season, Bandyliiga consisted of the following teams: Akilles, Botnia-69, HIFK, JPS, Kampparit, Narukerä, OLS, Veiterä and WP 35.
Finland was an original member of the Federation of International Bandy and is the only country besides Russia/Soviet Union and Sweden to have won a Bandy World Championship, which it did in 2004. The Federation of International Bandy (FIB) is planning for a major premiere for indoor bandy in Finland in 2023 with the venue taking place at an indoor arena in Lappeenranta. When the arena is ready, an international inauguration is to take place with a 4-nation bandy tournament. Participants will include teams from Russia, Sweden, Norway and Finland. The tournament is scheduled for 20–22 January 2023. Germany. Bandy was played in Germany in the early 20th century, including by Crown Prince Wilhelm, but the interest died out in favour of ice hockey. The Leipziger Sportclub, which arguably had the best team, was also the last club to give bandy up. The sport was reintroduced to Germany in the 2010s, with the German Bandy Federation being founded in 2013. Germany has been participating in the Bandy World Championship, a competition for male competitors, since 2014.
India. Bandy is being played in northern parts of India close to the Himalayas, where there is usually cold weather and snow in the winter time. A national championship is contested every year, but India has yet to send a national team to the World Championships or any other international competition. Kazakhstan. Bandy has a long history in many parts of Kazakhstan and it used to be one of the most popular sports in Soviet times. However, after independence it suffered a rapid decline in popularity and only remained in Oral (often called by the Russian name, "Uralsk"), where the country's only professional club Akzhaiyk is located. They presently compete in the Russian second tier division, the Russian Bandy Supreme League. Recently bandy has started to gain popularity again outside of Oral, most notably in Petropavl and Khromtau. Those were for example the three Kazakh cities which had players in the team at the Youth-17, Youth Bandy World Championship for boys in 2016. The capital Astana has hosted national youth championships in rink bandy as well as championships in traditional eleven-a-side bandy.
In recent years the former capital Almaty has hosted both the Asian Winter Games (with bandy on the program) as well as the Bandy World Championship for men in which Kazakhstan finished 3rd. Plans are being made to reinvigorate the bandy section of the club Dynamo Almaty, who won the Soviet Championships in 1977 and 1990 as well as the European Cup in 1978. Almaty is also the home of the headquarters of the Asian Bandy Federation. Since bandy began regaining popularity and acceptance, the state has begun supporting bandy. Medeu in Almaty is the only arena with artificial ice. A second arena in Almaty was built for the World Championship 2012, but it was taken down afterwards. Stadion Yunost in Oral was supposed to get artificial ice for the 2017–18 season. It got delayed but in 2018 it was officially ready for use. Mongolia. The national team took a silver medal at the 2011 Asian Winter Games, which led to being chosen as the best Mongolian sport team of 2011. Mongolia was proud to win the bronze medal of the B division at the 2017 Bandy World Championship after which the President of Mongolia, Tsakhiagiin Elbegdorj, held a reception for the team.
Netherlands. Bandy as an organized sport was introduced to the Netherlands in the 1890s by Pim Mulier and the sport became popular. However, in the 1920s, the interest turned to ice hockey, but in contrast to other countries in central and western Europe, the sport has been continuously played in the Netherlands and since the 1970s, the country has become a member of FIB and games have been more formalised again. The national team started to compete at the WCS in 1991. However, without a proper venue, only rink bandy is played within the country. The national governing body is the Bandy Bond Nederland. Norway. Bandy as an organized sport was introduced to Norway in the 1910s. The Swedes contributed largely and clubs sprang up around the capital of Kristiania (present day Oslo). Oslo, including neighbouring towns, is in the twenty-first century still the region where bandy enjoys most popularity in Norway. In 1912 the Norwegians played their first National Championship, which was played annually up to 1940. During World War II, when Norway was occupied by Germany, illegal bandy was played in hidden places in forests, on ponds and lakes. In 1943, 1944 and 1945, illegal championships were held. In 1946 legal play resumed and still goes on in form of the Norwegian Bandy Premier League ("Eliteserien"). After World War II the number of teams rose, as well as attendance which regularly were in the thousands, but mild winters in the 1970s and 1980s shrunk the league, and in 2003 only five clubs (teams) fought out the 1st division with low attendance numbers and little media coverage. As of 2021 there are 10 teams in the Norwegian Bandy Premier League.
Norway's best result in the World Championship is a second place in 1965. Norwegian Championship. The Norwegian bandy champion is decided each year by a play-off among the best teams in the Norwegian Bandy Premier League. The first Norwegian bandy champions was decided in 1912 and the championship has been held almost every year since. Until 1928, the championship was played as 7-a-side bandy. Russia. In Russia bandy is known as hockey with a ball or simply Russian hockey. A similar game became popular among the Russian nobility in the early 1700s, with the imperial court of Peter the Great playing a predecessor of modern bandy on Saint Petersburg's frozen Neva river. Russians initially played this game using ordinary footwear with sticks made out of juniper wood, but it wasn't until later that ice skates were introduced. Bandy did not become popular among the masses throughout the Russian Empire until the second half of the 19th century. The predecessor of the current Russian Bandy Federation was founded in 1898. Bandy is considered a national sport in Russia and is the only discipline to have official support of the Russian Orthodox Church.
Traditionally the Russians used a longer skate blade than other nations, giving them the advantage of skating faster. However, they would find it more difficult to turn quickly. A bandy skate has a longer blade than an ice hockey skate, and the "Russian skate" is even longer. Though bandy was still played in the Soviet Union after the Russian Revolution, they did not partake in any international games for many decades. While agreements had previously been made to play friendlies against Sweden in the late 1940s, these plans had not come to fruition. The bandy event at the 1952 Winter Olympics in Oslo, Norway where men's bandy featured as a demonstration sport, was played without any Soviet team. However, the Soviets reconsidered their position following this competition. When the Federation of International Bandy was formed in 1955, with the Soviet Union as one of its founding members, the Russians largely adopted the international rules of the game developed in England in the 19th century, with one notable exception. The other countries adopted the border which until then had only been used in Russia.
Since the 1950s, when the Soviet Union ended its isolation and started to take part in international sports events, the Soviet Union and then Russia (as its successor country in 1991) has consistently held a top position in the sport of bandy, both as a founding nation of the International Federation in 1955, and fielding the most successful team in the Bandy World Championship, the premiere international competition for men, (when counting the previous Soviet Union team and Russia together). The men's Russian professional bandy league is called the Russian Bandy Super League. The Russian Bandy Supreme League is the second tier of men's Russian bandy, below the Russian Bandy Super League. In Sweden, the Elitserien (literally, the "Elite League") is the highest bandy league in the country for men, while Bandyallsvenskan is the second division. In Finland, the highest bandy league for men is the Bandyliiga. In a similar fashion, Russia, along with Sweden, has emerged as one of the two dominant women's bandy nations internationally, regularly placing first or second at the premier international bandy competition for women, the Women's Bandy World Championship.
After the victory in the 2016 World Championship, the fourth in a row, President Vladimir Putin received four players of the national team, Head Coach and Vice-President of the Russian Bandy Federation Sergey Myaus, the Russian Bandy Federation as well as Federation of International Bandy President Boris Skrynnik in The Kremlin. He talked, among other things, about the need to give more support to Russian bandy. It was the first time a head of state had accepted a meeting to talk about Russian bandy. Attending the meeting were also Minister of Sport, Tourism and Youth policy Vitaly Mutko and presidential adviser Igor Levitin. The month after, Igor Levitin held a follow-up meeting. Russian Championship. The men's Russian professional bandy league is called the Russian Bandy Super League. The Russian Bandy Supreme League is the second tier of men's Russian bandy, below the Russian Bandy Super League. The Russian Bandy Super League is the top tier of the Russian bandy league system. It is professional and played every year. The winner in the final becomes Russian champion. It is considered a continuation of the Soviet Union championship, which was played annually until the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991.
Russian Cup. The Russian Cup has been played annually most years since 1937, originally called the Soviet Cup. Sweden. Bandy as an organized sport was introduced to Sweden in 1895. The Swedish royal family, noblemen and diplomats were among the first players. While the original inspiration mainly came from England, there also were early exchanges with Germany and Russia. Bandy was taken up as one of the sports at the international Nordic Games held in Sweden semi-annually from 1901. Swedish championships for men have been played annually since 1907 and Sweden was the first country to have an annual bandy league. In the 1920s students played the game, then it spread across the country and became a largely middle-class sport. The games could attract huge crowds of spectators in those days. After Slottsbrons IF won the Swedish championship in 1934 it became popular amongst workers in many smaller industrial towns and villages. Where there was a bandy club the local factory corporation also usually sponsored the club to mutual benefit as a successful team led to good PR for the company. Bandy remains the main sport in many of these places.
In the mid-20th Century, bandy was the most popular spectator sport in Sweden, drawing huge crowds for most events and having bigger audiencess than football or ice hockey. Bandy in Sweden is famous for its "culture" where both playing bandy and being a spectator requires great fortitude and dedication. A "" is the classic accessory for spectating and is typically made of brown leather, well worn, and contains a warm drink in a thermos and/or a bottle of liquor. Bandy is most often played at outdoor arenas during winter time, so the need for spectators to carry flasks or thermoses of 'warming' liquid like glögg is a natural effect. With the sport moving indoors in recent decades and the arenas urging for non-alcoholic policies for the audiences, this tradition has partly changed, though not without opposition. A notable tradition is "annandagsbandy", bandy games played on Saint Stephen's Day ("annandagen" = ’the second day [of Christmas]’), which for many Swedes is an important Christmas season tradition and always draws bigger crowds than usual. Games traditionally begin at 1:15 pm.
Swedish Championship. In Sweden, the Elitserien (literally, the "Elite League") is the highest bandy league in the country for men, while Bandyallsvenskan is the second division. The Elite League is the top tier of Swedish bandy and is fully professional. At the end of the season, a play-off is made to make out the two teams playing the final match for the Swedish Championship. The Final is played every year on the third Saturday of March. From 1991 to 2012, it was played at Studenternas Idrottsplats in Uppsala, often drawing crowds in excess of 20,000. One reason the play-off match was set in Uppsala is because of IFK Uppsala's success at the beginning of the 20th century. IFK Uppsala won 11 titles in the Swedish Championships between 1907 and 1920, which made them the most successful bandy club in the entire country (now, however, the record is held by Västerås SK). A contributing factor was also the poor quality of the ice at Söderstadion, where the finals were held from 1967 to 1989. In 2013 and 2014 the final was played indoors in Friends Arena, the national stadium for football in Solna, Stockholm, with a retractable roof and a capacity of 50,000. The first final at Friends Arena in 2013 drew a record crowd of 38,474 when Hammarby IF Bandy, after ending up in second place in six finals during the 2000s, won their second title. Due to declining attendance from 2015 through 2017 Tele2 Arena in southern Stockholm was chosen as a new venue. However, the new indoor venue failed to attract much more than half of the total capacity. In May 2017 it was announced that the finals will again be held at Studenternas IP in Uppsala from 2018 through at least 2021.
Svenska Cupen (The Swedish Cup). The "Svenska Cupen" (), "Svenska Cupen i bandy", takes place exclusively in Sweden. It is a single-elimination tournament competition in Swedish bandy and the second-most prominent bandy competition which is open only to domestic Swedish teams, after the national championship. Its inaugural year was 2005. The first women's competition was played in 2019. Switzerland. In the late nineteenth and early 20th century, Switzerland had become a popular place for winter vacations and people went there from all over Europe. Winter sports like skiing, sledding and bandy was played in Geneva and other towns. Students from Oxford and Cambridge went to Switzerland to play each other – the predecessor of the recurring Ice Hockey Varsity Match was a bandy match played in St. Moritz in 1885. This popularity for Swiss venues of winter sport may have been a reason, the European Championship was held there in 1913. Bandy has mainly been played as a recreational sport in Switzerland in the 2000s and 2010s. A Swiss men's national team was finally started up in 2017 and a Swiss women's national team made its international début in the 2018 Women's Bandy World Championship.
Ukraine. Bandy was played in Ukraine when it was part of the Soviet Union. After independence in 1991, it took some years before organized bandy formed again, but Ukrainian champions have been named annually since 2012. United Kingdom. The first recorded games of what may be considered bandy on ice took place in The Fens during the great frost of 1813–1814, although it is probable that the game had already been played there in the previous century. Bury Fen Bandy Club from Bluntisham-cum-Earith, near St Ives, was the most successful team, said to have remained unbeaten for a hundred years until the winter of 1890–1891. Charles Goodman Tebbutt of the Bury Fen Bandy Club was responsible for the first published rules of bandy in 1882, and also for introducing the game into the Netherlands and Sweden, as well as elsewhere in England where it became popular with cricket, rowing, and hockey clubs. Tebbutt's homemade bandy stick can be seen in the Norris Museum in St Ives. The first Ice Hockey Varsity Matches between Oxford University and Cambridge University were played to bandy rules, even if it was called hockey on the ice at the time.
It is sometimes claimed that a national team for England won the European Bandy Championships in 1913, but that tournament likely never took place. While bandy is often thought to have been a popular sport in England in the decades around 1900, few records seem to have been kept. A statue of a bandy player, designed by Peter Baker, was erected at the village pond of Earith to commemorate the 200th anniversary of the first documented game in 2013. In March 2004, Norwegian ex-player Edgar Malman invited two big clubs to play a rink bandy exhibition game in Streatham, London. Russian Champions and World Cup Winner Vodnik met Swedish Champions Edsbyns IF in a match that ended 10–10. In 2010 England became a Federation of International Bandy member. The national federation is based in Cambridgeshire, the historical heartland. The England Bandy Federation, was set up on 2 January 2017 at a meeting held in the historic old skaters public house, the Lamb and Flag in Welney in Norfolk, England, replacing the Bandy Federation of England which had been founded in 2010 but had had dwindling activity. In September 2017, the federation decided to widen its territory to all of the United Kingdom and changed its name to Great Britain Bandy Association. Great Britain entered a national team in the 2019 World Championships Group B in January and undefeated up to the final, won the silver medal in their final match against Estonia. They were set to return to the 2020 World Championships, but were refused visas to Russia. Since then they have not participated. However, the comeback will come in 2025.
In 2022, Great Britain premiered its national women's bandy team at the 2022 Women's Bandy World Championship. United States. Bandy in its original, informal manner disappeared from the North American continent entirely once it and elements from the early game had become absorbed into a new sport of ice hockey. While ice hockey was growing and organizing in the United States, bandy was doing the same, but only in Europe and Scandinavia. It would not arrive in its organized format in the United States until the 1970s, almost a century after its initial development. Bandy has been played in the United States since around the 1970s, after its promotion by Russians, Swedes and Finns in an exchange with softball, a sport which was promoted by Americans during the same time in the Soviet Union, Sweden and Finland. A key-person in the establishment of the sport in America was Bob Kojetin of Minnesota Softball. The sport is centered in Minnesota, with very few teams based elsewhere. The United States national bandy team has participated in the Bandy World Championships since 1985 and is also regularly playing friendly matches against Canada. The leading organization for bandy in the US is USA Bandy. The US has a men's national bandy team and a women's national bandy team.
The first bandy game in the US was played in December 1979 at the Lewis Park Bandy Rink in Edina, Minnesota. It was a friendly game between the Swedish junior national team and Swedish club team Brobergs IF. United States bandy championships have been played annually since the early 1980s, but the sport is not widely covered by American sports media. The championship trophy is called the Gunnar Cup, named after Gunnar Fast, a Swedish army captain who helped introduce bandy to the United States around 1980. Playing surfaces. While North American ice hockey rinks can be used for playing the bandy variant of rink bandy, places where the traditional game of bandy can be played require a larger sized playing surface, a bandy field, and are almost non-existent in North America. Minnesota is home to the only regulation sized bandy "rink" in North America, the Guidant John Rose Minnesota Oval, commonly referred to as, "The Oval", and is also the largest outdoor refrigerated skating rink in North America. The rink is 10,219 square meters with more than 800 tons of refrigeration and 135 km of pipes underneath the ice. The ice can be maintained in temperatures up to +10 degrees Celsius. The Oval can hold up to 300 spectators and has hosted World Cup Speedskating, the 2016 Women's Bandy World Championship, and Aggressive Skating/Biking competitions. The Oval is used mostly for inline hockey during the summer. National bandy federations. The following associations are the governing bodies for bandy in different countries and are member organizations of the Federation of International Bandy.
Bob Frankston Robert M. Frankston (born June 14, 1949) is an American software engineer and businessman who co-created, with Dan Bricklin, the VisiCalc spreadsheet program. Frankston is also the co-founder of Software Arts. Early life and education. Frankston was born and raised in Brooklyn, New York. He graduated from Stuyvesant High School in New York City in 1966. He earned a S.B degree in computer science and mathematics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, followed by a Master of Engineering degree in computer science, also from MIT. Career. Following his work with Dan Bricklin, Frankston later worked at Lotus Development Corporation and Microsoft. Frankston became an outspoken advocate for reducing the role of telecommunications companies in the evolution of the Internet, particularly with respect to broadband and mobile communications. He coined the term "Regulatorium" to describe what he considers collusion between telecommunication companies and their regulators that prevents change.
Booker Prize The Booker Prize, formerly the Booker Prize for Fiction (1969–2001) and the Man Booker Prize (2002–2019), is a prestigious literary award conferred each year for the best single work of sustained fiction written in the English language, which was published in the United Kingdom or Ireland. The winner of the Booker Prize receives , as well as international publicity that usually leads to a significant sales boost. When the prize was created, only novels written by Commonwealth, Irish, and South African (and later Zimbabwean) citizens were eligible to receive the prize; in 2014, eligibility was widened to any English-language novel—a change that proved controversial. A five-person panel consisting of authors, publishers and journalists, as well as politicians, actors, artists and musicians, is appointed by the Booker Prize Foundation each year to choose the winning book. Gaby Wood has been the chief executive of the Booker Prize Foundation since 2015. A high-profile literary award in British culture, the Booker Prize is greeted with anticipation and fanfare around the world. Literary critics have noted that it is a mark of distinction for authors to be selected for inclusion in the shortlist or to be nominated for the "longlist".
A sister prize, the International Booker Prize, is awarded for a work of fiction translated into English and published in the United Kingdom or Ireland. Unlike the Booker Prize, short story collections are eligible for the International Booker Prize. The £50,000 prize money is split evenly between the author and translator of the winning novel. History and administration. The prize was established as the "Booker Prize for Fiction" after the company Booker, McConnell Ltd began sponsoring the event in 1969; it became commonly known as the "Booker Prize" or the "Booker". Jock Campbell, Charles Tyrrell and Tom Maschler were instrumental in establishing the prize. When administration of the prize was transferred to the Booker Prize Foundation in 2002, the title sponsor became the investment company Man Group, which opted to retain "Booker" as part of the official title of the prize. The foundation is an independent registered charity funded by the entire profits of Booker Prize Trading Ltd, of which it is the sole shareholder. The prize money awarded with the Booker Prize was originally £5,000. It doubled in 1978 to £10,000 and was subsequently raised to £50,000 in 2002 under the sponsorship of the Man Group, making it one of the world's richest literary prizes. Each of the shortlisted authors receives £2,500 and a specially bound edition of their book.
The original Booker Prize trophy was designed by the artist Jan Pieńkowski and the design was revived for the 2023 prize. 1969–1979. The first winner of the Booker Prize was P. H. Newby in 1969 for his novel "Something to Answer For". W. L. Webb, "The Guardian"s Literary Editor, was chair of the inaugural set of judges, which included Rebecca West, Stephen Spender, Frank Kermode and David Farrer. In 1970, the prize's second year, Bernice Rubens became the first woman to win the Booker Prize, for "The Elected Member". The rules of the Booker changed in 1971; previously, it had been given retrospectively, to books published in the year prior to each award. In 1971, eligibility was changed to make the year of a novel's publication the same as the year of the award, which was made in November; in effect, this meant that books published in 1970 were not considered for the Booker in either year. Forty years later, the Booker Prize Foundation announced in January 2010 the creation of a special award called the "Lost Man Booker Prize", with the winner chosen from a longlist of 22 novels published in 1970. The prize was won by J. G. Farrell for "Troubles", though the author had died in 1979.
In 1972, winning writer John Berger, known for his Marxist worldview, protested during his acceptance speech against Booker McConnell. He blamed Booker's 130 years of sugar production in the Caribbean for the region's modern poverty. Berger donated half of his £5,000 prize to the British Black Panther movement, because it had a socialist and revolutionary perspective in agreement with his own. 1980–1999. In 1980, Anthony Burgess, writer of "Earthly Powers", refused to attend the ceremony unless it was confirmed to him in advance whether he had won. His was one of two books considered likely to win, the other being "Rites of Passage" by William Golding. The judges decided only 30 minutes before the ceremony, giving the prize to Golding. Both novels had been seen as favourites to win leading up to the prize, and the dramatic "literary battle" between two senior writers made front-page news. Alice Munro's "The Beggar Maid" was shortlisted in 1980, and remains the only short-story collection to be shortlisted. In 1981, nominee John Banville wrote a letter to "The Guardian" requesting that the prize be given to him so that he could use the money to buy every copy of the longlisted books in Ireland and donate them to libraries, "thus ensuring that the books not only are bought but also read – surely a unique occurrence".
Judging for the 1983 award produced a draw between J. M. Coetzee's "Life & Times of Michael K" and Salman Rushdie's "Shame", leaving chair of judges Fay Weldon to choose between the two. According to Stephen Moss in "The Guardian", "Her arm was bent and she chose Rushdie", only to change her mind as the result was being phoned through. At the award ceremony, Fay Weldon used her speech to attack the assembled publishers, accusing them of exploiting and undervaluing authors. "I will ask you if in your dealings with authors you are really being fair, and honourable, and right? Or merely getting away with what you can? If you are not careful, you will kill the goose that lays your golden eggs." In 1992, the jury split the prize between Michael Ondaatje's "The English Patient" and Barry Unsworth's "Sacred Hunger". This prompted the foundation to draw up a rule that made it mandatory for the appointed jury to make the award to just a single author/book. The choice of James Kelman's book "How Late It Was, How Late" as 1994 Booker Prize winner proved to be one of the most controversial in the award's history. Rabbi Julia Neuberger, one of the judges, declared it "a disgrace" and left the event, later deeming the book to be "crap"; WHSmith's marketing manager called the award "an embarrassment to the whole book trade"; Waterstones in Glasgow sold a mere 13 copies of Kelman's book the following week. In 1994, "The Guardian"s literary editor Richard Gott, citing the lack of objective criteria and the exclusion of American authors, described the prize as "a significant and dangerous iceberg in the sea of British culture that serves as a symbol of its current malaise".
In 1996, A. L. Kennedy served as a judge; in 2001, she called the prize "a pile of crooked nonsense" with the winner determined by "who knows who, who's sleeping with who, who's selling drugs to who, who's married to who, whose turn it is". In 1997, the decision to award Arundhati Roy's "The God of Small Things" proved controversial. Carmen Callil, chair of the previous year's Booker judges, called it an "execrable" book and said on television that it should not even have been on the shortlist. Booker Prize chairman Martyn Goff said Roy won because nobody objected, following the rejection by the judges of Bernard MacLaverty's shortlisted book due to their dismissal of him as "a wonderful short-story writer and that "Grace Notes" was three short stories strung together". 2000–2019. Before 2001, each year's longlist of nominees was not publicly revealed. From 2001, the longlisted novels started to be published each year, and in 2007 the number of nominees was capped at 12 or 13 each year. John Sutherland, who was a judge for the 1999 prize, was reported as saying in 2001:
In 2001, Peter Carey become the first author to win the Booker Prize for a second time. Carey was the first of four writers to have won the Booker Prize twice, the others being J. M. Coetzee, Hilary Mantel, and Margaret Atwood. The Booker Prize created a permanent home for the archives from 1968 to present at Oxford Brookes University Library. The Archive, which encompasses the administrative history of the Prize from 1968 to date, collects together a diverse range of material, including correspondence, publicity material, copies of both the Longlists and the Shortlists, minutes of meetings, photographs and material relating to the awards dinner (letters of invitation, guest lists, seating plans). Embargoes of ten or twenty years apply to certain categories of material; examples include all material relating to the judging process and the Longlist prior to 2002. Between 2005 and 2008, the Booker Prize alternated between writers from Ireland and India. "Outsider" John Banville began this trend in 2005 when his novel "The Sea" was selected as a surprise winner: Boyd Tonkin, literary editor of "The Independent", famously condemned it as "possibly the most perverse decision in the history of the award" and rival novelist Tibor Fischer poured scorn on Banville's victory. Kiran Desai of India won in 2006. Anne Enright's 2007 victory came about due to a jury split over Ian McEwan's novel "On Chesil Beach". The following year it was India's turn again, with Aravind Adiga narrowly defeating Enright's fellow Irishman Sebastian Barry.
Historically, the winner of the Booker Prize was required to be a citizen of the Commonwealth of Nations, the Republic of Ireland, or Zimbabwe. It was announced on 18 September 2013 that future Booker Prize awards would consider authors from anywhere in the world, so long as their work was in English and published in the United Kingdom or Ireland. This change proved controversial in literary circles. Former winner A. S. Byatt and former judge John Mullan said the prize risked diluting its identity, whereas former judge A. L. Kennedy welcomed the change. Following this expansion, the first winner not from the Commonwealth, Ireland, or Zimbabwe was American Paul Beatty in 2016. Another American, George Saunders, won the following year. In 2018, publishers sought to reverse the change, arguing that the inclusion of American writers would lead to homogenisation, reducing diversity and opportunities everywhere, including in America, to learn about "great books that haven't already been widely heralded". Man Group announced in early 2019 that the year's prize would be the last of eighteen under their sponsorship. A new sponsor, Crankstart – a charitable foundation run by Sir Michael Moritz and his wife, Harriet Heyman – then announced it would sponsor the award for five years, with the option to renew for another five years. The award title was changed to simply "The Booker Prize".
In 2019, despite having been unequivocally warned against doing so, the foundation's jury – under the chair Peter Florence – split the prize, awarding it to two authors, in breach of a rule established in 1993. Florence justified the decision, saying: "We came down to a discussion with the director of the Booker Prize about the rules. And we were told quite firmly that the rules state that you can only have one winner ... and as we have managed the jury all the way through on the principle of consensus, our consensus was that it was our decision to flout the rules and divide this year's prize to celebrate two winners." The two were British writer Bernardine Evaristo for her novel "Girl, Woman, Other" and Canadian writer Margaret Atwood for "The Testaments". Evaristo's win marked the first time the Booker had been awarded to a black woman, while Atwood's win, at 79, made her the oldest winner. Atwood had also previously won the prize in 2000. 2020–present. In 2020, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the annual award ceremony was replaced with a livestream from the Roundhouse in London, without the shortlisted authors in attendance. The winner was Douglas Stuart for his debut novel "Shuggie Bain", which had been rejected by more than 30 publishers. 2021's small-scale ceremony, once again impacted by COVID-19, saw South African writer Damon Galgut, who had been shortlisted in 2003 and 2010, win the prize for "The Promise". 2022 saw a re-imagined winner ceremony at the Roundhouse, hosted by comedian Sophie Duker and featuring a keynote speech by singer Dua Lipa. The prize was won by Sri Lankan author Shehan Karunatilaka for his second novel, "The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida".
In 2023, for the first time, the shortlist featured three writers named Paul (Paul Lynch, Paul Murray and Paul Harding). The prize was won by Irish writer Paul Lynch for his novel "Prophet Song". In the media, reaction was mixed. In "The Guardian", Justine Jordan wrote that "This is a novel written to jolt the reader awake to truths we mostly cannot bear to admit", while in "The Telegraph", Cal Revely-Calder wrote that "Prophet Song" is "political fiction at its laziest" and "the weak link in a strong shortlist". The 2024 prize was won by Samantha Harvey for "Orbital", the first book set in space to win the prize and, at 136 pages, the second shortest book to win the Booker after Penelope Fitzgerald's "Offshore". Harvey was also the first woman to win the Booker since 2019. Since winning the Booker, "Orbital" became a UK bestseller, selling over 20,000 print copies in the UK in the week following its win, making it the fastest selling winner of the Booker Prize since records began. Judging. The selection process for the winner of the prize commences with the appointment of a panel of five judges, which changes each year. Gaby Wood, the chief executive of the Booker Prize Foundation, chooses the judges in consultation with an advisory committee made up of senior figures from the UK publishing industry. On rare occasions a judge may be selected a second time. Judges are selected from amongst leading literary critics, writers, academics and leading public figures.
Unlike some other literary prizes, each judge is expected to read all of the books that have been submitted. (In 2023, the judges read 163 books over seven months.) After doing so, they select a longlist of 12 or 13 titles (the "Booker Dozen"), before each reading those books for a second time. They then select a shortlist of six titles, and read the six books a third time before selecting a winner. The Booker judging process and the very concept of a "best book" being chosen by a small number of literary insiders is controversial for many. "The Guardian" introduced the "Not the Booker Prize" voted for by readers partly as a reaction to this. Author Amit Chaudhuri wrote: "The idea that a 'book of the year' can be assessed annually by a bunch of people – judges who have to read almost a book a day – is absurd, as is the idea that this is any way of honouring a writer." The author Julian Barnes once dismissed the prize as "posh bingo" for the apparently arbitrary way winners are selected. On winning the prize in 2011 he joked that he had revised his opinion, telling reporters that he had realised "the judges are the wisest heads in literary Christendom".
For many years, the winner was announced at a formal, black-tie dinner in London's Guildhall in early October. However, in 2020, with COVID-19 pandemic restrictions in place, the winner ceremony was broadcast in November from the Roundhouse, in partnership with the BBC. The ceremony returned to the Roundhouse for a more casual in-person ceremony in 2022, before moving to Old Billingsgate in London in 2023 and 2024. Special awards. In 1971, the nature of the prize was changed so that it was awarded to novels published in that year instead of in the previous year; therefore, no novel published in 1970 could win the Booker Prize. This was rectified in 2010 by the awarding of the "Lost Man Booker Prize" to J. G. Farrell's "Troubles". In 1993, a special Booker of Bookers prize was awarded to mark the prize's 25th anniversary. Three previous judges of the award, Malcolm Bradbury, David Holloway and W. L. Webb, met and chose Salman Rushdie's "Midnight's Children", the 1981 winner, as "the best novel out of all the winners".
In 2006, the Man Booker Prize set up a "Best of Beryl" prize, for the author Beryl Bainbridge, who had been nominated five times and yet failed to win once. The prize is said to count as a Booker Prize. The nominees were "An Awfully Big Adventure", "Every Man for Himself", "The Bottle Factory Outing", "The Dressmaker" and "Master Georgie", which won. Similarly, The Best of the Booker was awarded in 2008 to celebrate the prize's 40th anniversary. A shortlist of six winners was chosen — Rushdie's "Midnight's Children", Coetzee' "Disgrace", Carey's "Oscar and Lucinda", Gordimer's "The Conservationist", Farrell's "The Siege of Krishnapur", and Barker's "The Ghost Road" — and the decision was left to a public vote; the winner was again "Midnight's Children". In 2018, to celebrate the 50th anniversary, the Golden Man Booker was awarded. One book from each decade was selected by a panel of judges: Naipaul's "In a Free State" (the 1971 winner), Lively's "Moon Tiger" (1987), Ondaatje's "The English Patient" (1992), Mantel's "Wolf Hall" (2009) and Saunders' "Lincoln in the Bardo" (2017). The winner, by popular vote, was "The English Patient".
Nomination. Since 2014, each publisher's imprint may submit a number of titles based on their longlisting history (previously they could submit two). Non-longlisted publishers can submit one title, publishers with one or two longlisted books in the previous five years can submit two, publishers with three or four longlisted books are allowed three submissions, and publishers with five or more longlisted books can have four submissions. In addition, previous winners of the prize are automatically considered if they enter new titles. Books may also be called in: publishers can make written representations to the judges to consider titles in addition to those already entered. In the 21st century the average number of books considered by the judges has been approximately 130. Related awards for translated works. A separate prize for which any living writer in the world may qualify, the Man Booker International Prize, was inaugurated in 2005. Until 2015, it was given every two years to a living author of any nationality for a body of work published in English or generally available in English translation. In 2016, the award was significantly reconfigured, and is now given annually to a single book in English translation, with a £50,000 prize for the winning title, shared equally between author and translator. The award has been known as the International Booker Prize since the Man Group ended its association with the prizes in 2019.
A Russian version of the Booker Prize was created in 1992 called the Booker-Open Russia Literary Prize, also known as the Russian Booker Prize. In 2007, Man Group plc established the Man Asian Literary Prize, an annual literary award given to the best novel by an Asian writer, either written in English or translated into English, and published in the previous calendar year. For many years, as part of "The Times" Literature Festival in Cheltenham, a Booker event was held on the last Saturday of the festival. Four guest speakers/judges debated a shortlist of four books from a given year from before the introduction of the Booker Prize, and a winner was chosen. Unlike the real Booker Prize (1969 through 2014), writers from outside the Commonwealth were also considered. In 2008, the winner for 1948 was Alan Paton's "Cry, the Beloved Country", beating Norman Mailer's "The Naked and the Dead", Graham Greene's "The Heart of the Matter" and Evelyn Waugh's "The Loved One". In 2015, the winner for 1915 was Ford Madox Ford's "The Good Soldier", beating "The Thirty-Nine Steps" (John Buchan), "Of Human Bondage" (W. Somerset Maugham), "Psmith, Journalist" (P. G. Wodehouse) and "The Voyage Out" (Virginia Woolf).
Book of Joel The Book of Joel (Hebrew: ספר יוֹאֵל "Sefer Yo'él") is a Jewish prophetic text containing a series of "divine announcements". The first line attributes authorship to "Joel the son of Pethuel". It forms part of the Book of the twelve minor prophets or the Nevi'im ("Prophets") in the Hebrew Bible, and is a book in its own right in the Christian Old Testament where it has three chapters. In the New Testament, his prophecy of the outpouring of God's Holy Spirit upon all people was notably quoted by Saint Peter in his Pentecost sermon. The Book of Joel’s frequent allusions to earlier Hebrew Bible texts and signs of literary development suggest a late origin and its potential to have been a unifying piece within the prophetic canon. Surviving early manuscripts. The original text was written in Hebrew language. Some early manuscripts containing the text of this book in Hebrew are of the Masoretic Text tradition, which includes the Codex Cairensis (895 CE), the Petersburg Codex of the Prophets (916), Aleppo Codex (10th century), Codex Leningradensis (1008). Fragments containing parts of this book in Hebrew were found among the Dead Sea Scrolls, including 4Q78 (4QXIIc; 75–50 BCE) with extant verses 1:10–20, 2:1, 2:8–23, and 3:6–21; and 4Q82 (4QXIIg; 25 BCE) with extant verses 1:12–14, 2:2–13, 3:4–9, 3:11–14, 3:17, 3:19–2; Schøyen MS 4612/1 (DSS F.117; DSS F.Joel1; 50–68 CE) with extant verses 3:1–4); and Wadi Murabba'at Minor Prophets (Mur88; MurXIIProph; 75–100 CE) with extant verses 2:20, 2:26–27, 2:28–32, and 3:1–16.
Ancient manuscripts in Koine Greek containing this book are mainly of the Septuagint version, including Codex Vaticanus (B; formula_1B; 4th century), Codex Sinaiticus (S; BHK: formula_1S; 4th century), Codex Alexandrinus (A; formula_1A; 5th century) and Codex Marchalianus (Q; formula_1Q; 6th century). Content. After the initial attribution, the book may be broken down into the following sections: Chapters. The Book of Joel's division into chapters and verses differs widely between editions of the Bible; some editions have three chapters, others four. Translations with four chapters include the Jewish Publication Society's version of the Hebrew Bible (1917), the Jerusalem Bible (1966), New American Bible (Revised Edition, 1970), Complete Jewish Bible (1998), and Tree of Life Version (2015). In the 1611 King James Bible, the Book of Joel is formed by three chapters: the second one has 32 verses, and it is equivalent to the union of the chapter 2 (with 27 verses) and chapter 3 (with 5 verses) of other editions of the Bible.
The differences of the divisions are as follows: Date. As there are no explicit references in the book to datable persons or events, scholars have assigned a wide range of dates to the book. The main positions are: Evidence produced for these positions includes allusions in the book to the wider world, similarities with other prophets, and linguistic details. Some commentators, such as John Calvin, attach no great importance to the precise dating. History of interpretation. The Masoretic text places Joel between Hosea and Amos (the order inherited by the Tanakh and Old Testament), while the Septuagint order is Hosea–Amos–Micah–Joel–Obadiah–Jonah. The Hebrew text of Joel seems to have suffered little from scribal transmission, but is at a few points supplemented by the Septuagint, Syriac, and Vulgate versions, or by conjectural emendation. While the book purports to describe a plague of locusts, some ancient Jewish opinion saw the locusts as allegorical interpretations of Israel's enemies. This allegorical interpretation was applied to the church by many church fathers. Calvin took a literal interpretation of chapter 1, but allegorical view of chapter 2, a position echoed by some modern interpreters. Most modern interpreters, however, see Joel speaking of a literal locust plague given a prophetic or apocalyptic interpretation.
The traditional ascription of the whole book to the prophet Joel was challenged in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries by a theory of a three-stage process of composition: 1:1–2:27 were from the hand of Joel, and dealt with a contemporary issue; 2:28–3:21/3:1–4:21 were ascribed to a continuator with an apocalyptic outlook. Mentions in the first half of the book to the day of the Lord were also ascribed to this continuator. 3:4–8/4:4–8 could be seen as even later. Details of exact ascriptions differed between scholars. This splitting of the book's composition began to be challenged in the mid-twentieth century, with scholars defending the unity of the book, the plausibility of the prophet combining a contemporary and apocalyptic outlook, and later additions by the prophet. The authenticity of 3:4–8 has presented more challenges, although a number of scholars still defend it. Biblical quotes and allusions. There are many parallels of language between Joel and other Old Testament prophets. They may represent Joel's literary use of other prophets, or vice versa.
In the New Testament, his prophecy of the outpouring of God's Holy Spirit upon all people was notably quoted by Saint Peter in his Pentecost sermon. Joel 3:10 / 4:10 is a variation of Isaiah 2:4 and Micah 4:3's prophecy, "They will beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks", instead commanding, "Beat your plowshares into swords and your pruning hooks into spears." The table below represents some of the more explicit quotes and allusions between specific passages in Joel and passages from the Old and New Testaments. Liturgical usage. Plange quasi virgo ("Lament like a virgin"), the third responsory for Holy Saturday, is loosely based on verses from the Book of Joel: the title comes from Joel 1:8. Further reading. See also works on the Minor Prophets as a whole.
Book of Hosea The Book of Hosea () is collected as one of the twelve minor prophets of the Nevi'im ("Prophets") in the Tanakh, and as a book in its own right in the Christian Old Testament where it has fourteen chapters. According to the traditional order of most Hebrew Bibles, it is the first of the Twelve. Set around the fall of the Northern Kingdom of Israel, the Book of Hosea denounces the worship of gods other than Yahweh (the God of Israel), metaphorically comparing Israel's abandonment of Yahweh to a woman being unfaithful to her husband. According to the book's narrative, the relationship between Hosea and his unfaithful wife Gomer is comparable to the relationship between Yahweh and his unfaithful people Israel: this text "for the first time" describes the latter relationship in terms of a marriage. The eventual reconciliation of Hosea and Gomer is treated as a hopeful metaphor for the eventual reconciliation between Yahweh and Israel. Some redaction-critical studies of Hosea since the 1980s have postulated that the theological and literary unity was created by editors, though scholars differ significantly in their interpretations of the redaction process, stages, and the extent of the eighth-century prophet’s original contributions. Nevertheless, many scholars agree that the bulk of the book was probably composed around the times of Jeroboam II of Israel (c. 793–753 BC). Hosea is the source of the phrase "reap the whirlwind", which has passed into common usage in English and other languages.
Background and content. Hosea prophesied during a dark and melancholic era of Israel's history, the period of the Northern Kingdom's decline and fall in the 8th century BC. According to the book, the apostasy of the people was rampant, having turned away from God in order to serve both the calves of Jeroboam and Baal, a Canaanite god. The Book of Hosea says that, during Hosea's lifetime, the kings of the Northern Kingdom, their aristocratic supporters, and the priests had led the people away from the Law of God, as given in the Pentateuch. It says that they forsook the worship of God; they worshiped other gods, especially Baal, the Canaanite storm god, and Asherah, a Canaanite fertility goddess. Other sins followed, says the Book, including homicide, perjury, theft, and sexual sin. Hosea declares that unless they repent of these sins, God will allow their nation to be destroyed, and the people will be taken into captivity by Assyria, the greatest nation of the time. The prophecy of Hosea centers on God's unending love towards a sinful Israel. In this text, God's agony is expressed over his betrayal by Israel. Stephen Cook asserts that the prophetic efforts of this book can be summed up in this passage "I have been the Lord your God ever since the land of Egypt; you know no god but me, and besides me there is no savior". Hosea's job was to speak these words during a time when they had been essentially forgotten.
Summary. The Book of Hosea contains a number of prophecies and messages for both Judah and Northern Israel (Samaria) said (verses 1:1, 1:2) to come from God. These are delivered by the prophet Hosea. Their context is predominantly in the Northern Kingdom, but there are several references to Judah. The editors of the Jerusalem Bible comment that there has been a tendency among biblical scholars to treat all the references to Judah as later additions, but argued from the 1960s that "more sober conclusions are being urged today". In their opinion, while some references may have been additions, such as Hosea 1:7, 2:1-3 and 14:10, others may indicate that Hosea continued to preach in the southern kingdom after the fall of the north. General outline. No further breakdown of ideas is clear in 4–14:9/14:10. Following this, the prophecy is made that someday this will all be changed, and that God will have pity on Israel. Chapter two describes a divorce. This divorce seems to be the end of the covenant between God and the Northern Kingdom. However, it is probable that this was again a symbolic act, in which Hosea divorced Gomer for infidelity, and used the occasion to preach the message of God's rejection of the Northern Kingdom. He ends this prophecy with the declaration that God will one day renew the covenant, and will take Israel back in love.
In chapter three, at God's command, Hosea seeks out Gomer once more. Either she has sold herself into slavery for debt, or she is with a lover who demands money in order to give her up, because Hosea has to buy her back. He takes her home, but refrains from sexual intimacy with her for many days, to symbolize the fact that Israel will be without a king for many years, but that God will take Israel back, even at a cost to himself. Chapters 4–14 spell out the allegory at length. Chapters 1–3 speaks of Hosea's family, and the issues with Gomer. Chapters 4–10 contain a series of oracles, or prophetic sermons, showing exactly why God is rejecting the Northern Kingdom (what the grounds are for the divorce). Chapter 11 is God's lament over the necessity of giving up the Northern Kingdom, which is a large part of the people of Israel, whom God loves. God promises not to give them up entirely. Then, in Chapter 12, the prophet pleads for Israel's repentance. Chapter 13 foretells the destruction of the kingdom at the hands of Assyria, because there has been no repentance. In Chapter 14, the prophet urges Israel to seek forgiveness, and promises its restoration, while urging the utmost fidelity to God.
The capital of the Northern Kingdom fell in 722 BC. All the members of the upper classes and many of the ordinary people were taken captive and carried off to live as prisoners of war. A summary of Hosea's story. First, Hosea was directed by God to marry a promiscuous woman of ill-repute, and he did so. Marriage here is symbolic of the covenantal relationship between God and Israel. However, Israel has been unfaithful to God by following other gods and breaking the commandments which are the terms of the covenant, hence Israel is symbolized by a harlot who violates the obligations of marriage to her husband. Second, Hosea and his wife, Gomer, have a son. God commands that the son be named Jezreel. This name refers to a valley in which much blood had been shed in Israel's history, especially by the kings of the Northern Kingdom. The naming of this son was to stand as a prophecy against the reigning house of the Northern Kingdom, that they would pay for that bloodshed. Jezreel's name means "God sows". Third, the couple have a daughter. God commands that she be named Lo-ruhamah, meaning "unloved", "pity" or "pitied on" to show Israel that, although God will still have pity on the Southern Kingdom, God will no longer have pity on the Northern Kingdom; its destruction is imminent. In the NIV translation, the omitting of the word "him" leads to speculation as to whether Lo-Ruhamah was the daughter of Hosea or one of Gomer's lovers. James Mays, however, says that the failure to mention Hosea's paternity is "hardly an implication" of Gomer's adultery.
Fourth, a son is born to Gomer. It is questionable whether this child was Hosea's, for God commands that his name be Lo-ammi, meaning "not my people". The child bore this name of shame to show that the Northern Kingdom would also be shamed, for its people would no longer be known as God's people. In other words, the Northern Kingdom had been rejected by God. Usage in the New Testament. cites Hosea's prophecy in Hosea 11:1 that God would call His Son out of Egypt as foretelling the flight into Egypt and return to Israel of Joseph, Mary, and the infant Jesus. In Luke 23:30, Jesus referenced Hosea 10:8 when he said "Then they will begin to say to the mountains 'Cover us" and to the hills, 'Fall on us'.'. The quote is also echoed in Revelation 6:16. Interpretation and context. In Hosea 2, the woman in the marriage metaphor could be Hosea's wife Gomer, or could be referring to the nation of Israel, invoking the metaphor of Israel as God's bride. The woman is not portrayed in a positive light. This is reflected throughout the beginning of Hosea 2: "I will strip her naked and expose her as in the day she was born"; "Upon her children I will have no pity, because they are children of whoredom"; "For she said, I will go after my lovers...".
Biblical scholar Ehud Ben Zvi reminds readers of the socio-historical context in which Hosea was composed. In his article "Observations on the marital metaphor of YHWH and Israel in its ancient Israelite context: general considerations and particular images in Hosea 1.2", Ben Zvi describes the role of the Gomer in the marriage metaphor as one of the "central attributes of the ideological image of a human marriage that was shared by the male authorship and the primary and intended male readership as building blocks for their imagining of the relationship." Tristanne J. Connolly makes a similar observation, stating that the husband-wife motif reflects marriage as it was understood at the time. Connolly also suggests that in context the marriage metaphor was necessary in that it truly exemplified the unequal interaction between God and the people of Israel. Biblical scholar Michael D. Coogan describes the importance of understanding the covenant in relation to interpreting Hosea. According to Coogan, Hosea falls within a unique genre called "covenant lawsuit", where God accuses Israel of breaking their previously made agreement. God's disappointment with Israel is therefore expressed through the broken marriage covenant made between husband and wife.
Brad E. Kelle refers to "many scholars" finding references to cultic sexual practices in the worship of Baal, in Hosea 2, to be evidence of an historical situation in which Israelites were either giving up Yahweh worship for Baal, or blending the two, Hosea's references to sexual acts being metaphors for Israelite 'apostasy'. Hosea 13:1–3 describes how the Israelites are abandoning Yahweh for the worship of Baal, and accuses them of making or using molten images for 'idol' worship. Chief among these was the image of the bull at the northern shrine of Bethel, which by the time of Hosea was being worshipped as an image of Baal. Theological contribution. Hosea is a prophet whom God uses to portray a message of repentance to God's people. Through Hosea's marriage to Gomer, God shows his great love for his great people, comparing himself to a husband whose wife has committed adultery, using this image as a metaphor for the covenant between God and Israel. God's love was "misunderstood" by his people. Hosea influenced latter prophets such as Jeremiah. He is among the first writing prophets, and the final chapter of Hosea has a format similar to wisdom literature.
Like Amos, Hosea elevated the religion of Israel to the altitude of ethical monotheism, being the first to emphasize the moral side of God's nature. Israel's faithlessness, which resisted all warnings, compelled him to punish the people because of his own holiness. Hosea considers infidelity as the chief sin, of which Israel, the adulterous wife, has been guilty against her loving husband, God. Against this he sets the unquenchable love of God, who, in spite of this infidelity, does not cast Israel away forever, but will draw his people to himself again after the judgment.
Book of Obadiah The Book of Obadiah is a book of the Bible whose authorship is attributed to Obadiah. Obadiah is one of the Twelve Minor Prophets in the final section of Nevi'im, the second main division of the Hebrew Bible. The text consists of a single chapter, divided into 21 verses with 440 Hebrew words, making it the shortest book in the Tanakh (The Hebrew Bible), though there are three shorter New Testament epistles in Greek (Philemon with 335 words, 2 John with 245 words, and 3 John with 219 words). The Book of Obadiah is a prophecy concerning the divine judgment of Edom and the restoration of Israel. The majority of scholars date the Book of Obadiah to shortly after the fall of Jerusalem in 587 BC. Other scholars hold that the book was shaped by the conflicts between Yehud and the Edomites in the fifth and fourth centuries BCE and evolved through a process of redaction. Content. The Book of Obadiah is based on a prophetic vision concerning the fall of Edom, a mountain-dwelling nation whose founding father was Esau. Obadiah describes an encounter with Yahweh, who addresses Edom's arrogance and charges them for their "violence against your brother Jacob".
Throughout most of the history of Judah, Edom was controlled absolutely from Jerusalem as a vassal state. Obadiah said that the high elevation of their dwelling place in the mountains of Seir had gone to their head, and they had puffed themselves up in pride. "'Though you soar like the eagle and make your nest among the stars, from there I will bring you down,' declares the ". In the Siege of Jerusalem (597 BC), Nebuchadnezzar II sacked Jerusalem, carted away the King of Judah, and installed a puppet ruler. The Edomites helped the Babylonians loot the city. Obadiah, writing this prophecy around 590 BCE, suggests the Edomites should have remembered that blood was thicker than water. "On the day you stood aloof while strangers carried off his wealth and foreigners entered his gates and cast lots for Jerusalem, you were like one of them... You should not march through the gates of my people in the day of their disaster, nor gloat over them in their calamity in the day of their disaster, nor seize their wealth in the day of their disaster."
Obadiah said in judgment that Yahweh would wipe out the house of Esau forever, and not even a remnant would remain. The Edomites' land would be possessed by the lands of the south and they would cease to exist as a people. The Day of the Lord was at hand for all nations, and one day, the children of Israel would return victorious from their exile and possess the land of Edom, the fields of Ephraim, the land of Gilead, the lowland of Philistia, and the fields of Samaria. Scholarly issues. Dating Obadiah. The date of composition is disputed and is difficult to determine due to the lack of personal information about Obadiah, his family, and his historical milieu: the date must therefore be determined based on the prophecy itself. Edom is to be destroyed due to its lack of defense for its brother nation, Israel, when it was under attack. There are two major historical contexts within which the Edomites could have committed such an act. These are during 853–841 BCE when Jerusalem was invaded by Philistines and Arabs during the reign of Jehoram of Judah (recorded in 2 Kings and 2 Chronicles in the Christian Old Testament) and 607–586 BCE when Jerusalem was attacked by Nebuchadnezzar II of Babylon, which led to the Babylonian exile of Israel (recorded in Psalm 137). The earlier period would place Obadiah as a contemporary of the prophet Elijah.
The later date would place Obadiah as a contemporary of the prophet Jeremiah. A sixth-century date for Obadiah is a "near consensus" position among scholars. contains parallels to the Book of Jeremiah . The passage in the Book of Jeremiah dates from the fourth year of the reign of Jehoiakim (604 BCE), and therefore seems to refer to the destruction of Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar II (586 BCE). It is more likely that Obadiah and the Book of Jeremiah together were drawing on a common source presently unknown to us rather than Jeremiah drawing on previous writings of Obadiah as his source. There is also much material found in which Jeremiah does not quote, and which, had he had it laid out before him, would have suited his purpose admirably. Sepharad. The term "Sepharad" mentioned in the 20th verse of Obadiah comes from the Hebrew word for Spain. Scriptural parallels. The exact expression "the Day of the Lord", from , has been used by other authors throughout the Old and New Testaments, as follows: New Testament. For other parallels, compare with .
Book of Jonah The Book of Jonah is one of the twelve minor prophets of the Nevi'im ("Prophets") in the Hebrew Bible, and an individual book in the Christian Old Testament where it has four chapters. The book tells of a Hebrew prophet named Jonah, son of Amittai, who is sent by God to prophesy the destruction of Nineveh, but attempts to escape his divine mission. The story has a long interpretive history and has become well known through popular children's stories. In Judaism, it is the Haftarah portion read during the afternoon of Yom Kippur to instill reflection on God's willingness to forgive those who repent, and it remains a popular story among Christians. The story is also retold in the Quran. Mainstream Bible scholars generally regard the story of the Book of Jonah as fictional, and often at least partially satirical. Most scholars consider the Book of Jonah to have been composed long after the events it describes due to its use of words and motifs exclusive to postexilic Aramaic sources. Date. The prophet Jonah (Hebrew: יוֹנָה, Yonā) is mentioned in 2 Kings 14:25, which places Jonah's life during the reign of Jeroboam II, King of Israel, (786–746 BC), but the book of Jonah itself does not name a king or give any other details that would give the story a firm date. Most scholars consider the Book of Jonah to have been composed long after the events it describes due to its use of words and motifs exclusive to postexilic Aramaic sources. A later date is sometimes proposed, with Katherine Dell arguing for the Hellenistic period (332–167 BC).
Evangelical Assyriologist Donald Wiseman takes issue with the idea that the story is late (or a parable). Among other arguments he mentions that the "Legends of Agade" (see Sargon of Akkad and Rabisu) date to the time of the Old Babylonian Empire, though later versions "usually taken as a late composition, propagandistic fairy tale or historical romance can now, on the basis of new discoveries of earlier sources, be shown to be based on a serious and reliable historical record". Narrative. Unlike the other Minor Prophets, the book of Jonah is almost entirely narrative with the exception of the psalm in the second chapter. The actual prophetic word against Nineveh is given only in passing through the narrative. The story of Jonah has a setting, characters, a plot, and themes; it also relies heavily on such literary devices as irony. Chapter and verse divisions. The original text was written in Hebrew language. Chapters 1 and 2 are divided differently in the Hebrew and English versions: verse 2:1 in the Hebrew version is equivalent to Jonah 1:17 in the English version.
Outline. An outline of the book of Jonah: Summary. Jonah is the central character in the Book of Jonah, in which God ("the ") commands him to go to the city of Nineveh to prophesy against it for their great wickedness against God. However, Jonah instead attempts to run from God by going to Jaffa and sailing to Tarshish. A huge storm arises and the sailors, realizing that it is no ordinary storm, cast lots and discover that Jonah is to blame. Jonah admits this and states that if he is thrown overboard, the storm will cease. The sailors refuse to do this and continue rowing, but all their efforts fail and they are eventually forced to throw Jonah overboard. As a result, the storm calms and the sailors then offer sacrifices to God. Jonah is miraculously saved by being swallowed by a "great fish", in whose belly he spends three days and three nights. While inside the great fish, Jonah prays to God in thanksgiving and commits to paying what he has vowed. Jonah's prayer has been compared with some of the Psalms, and with the Song of Hannah in 1 Samuel 2:1-10.
God then commands the fish to vomit Jonah out. In chapter 3, God once again commands Jonah to travel to Nineveh and to prophesy to its inhabitants. This time he obeys God's command, and goes into the city, crying, "In forty days Nineveh shall be overthrown." After Jonah has walked across Nineveh, the people of Nineveh begin to believe his word and proclaim a fast. The king of Nineveh then puts on sackcloth and sits in ashes, making a proclamation which decrees fasting, the wearing of sackcloth, prayer, and repentance. God sees their repentant hearts and spares the city at that time. The entire city is humbled and broken, with the people (and even the animals) in sackcloth and ashes. In chapter 4, displeased by the Ninevites' repentance, Jonah refers to his earlier flight to Tarshish while asserting that, since God is merciful, it was inevitable that God would turn from the threatened calamities. He then leaves the city on its eastern side, and makes himself a shelter, waiting to see whether or not the city will be destroyed. God causes a plant, in Hebrew a , also called a gourd in the King James Version, to grow over Jonah's shelter to give him some shade from the sun. Later, God causes a worm to bite the plant's root and it withers. Jonah, now being exposed to the full force of the sun, becomes faint and pleads for God to kill him. In response, God offers Jonah one final rebuke:
The book ends abruptly at this point. Interpretive history. Early Jewish interpretation. Fragments of the book were found among the Dead Sea Scrolls, most of which follow the Masoretic Text closely and with Mur XII reproducing a large portion of the text. As for the non-canonical writings, the majority of references to biblical texts were made as appeals to authority. The Book of Jonah appears to have served less purpose in the Qumran community than other texts, as the writings make no references to it. Late Jewish interpretation. The 18th century Lithuanian master scholar and kabbalist, Elijah of Vilna, known as the Vilna Gaon, authored a commentary on the biblical Book of Jonah as an allegory of reincarnation. Early Christian interpretation. New Testament. The earliest Christian interpretations of Jonah are found in the Gospel of Matthew and the Gospel of Luke. Both Matthew and Luke record a tradition of Jesus' interpretation of the Book of Jonah (notably, Matthew includes two very similar traditions in chapters 12 and 16).
As with most Old Testament interpretations found in the New Testament, the interpretation ascribed to Jesus is primarily typological. Jonah becomes a "type" for Jesus. Jonah spent three days in the belly of the fish; Jesus will spend three days in the tomb. Here, Jesus plays on the imagery of Sheol found in Jonah's prayer. While Jonah metaphorically declared, "Out of the belly of Sheol I cried," Jesus will literally be in the belly of Sheol. Finally, Jesus compares his generation to the people of Nineveh. Jesus fulfills his role as a type of Jonah, however his generation fails to fulfill its role as a type of Nineveh. Nineveh repented, but Jesus' generation, which has seen and heard one even greater than Jonah, fails to repent. Through his typological interpretation of the Book of Jonah, Jesus has weighed his generation and found it wanting. Augustine of Hippo. The debate over the credibility of the miracle of Jonah is not simply a modern one. The credibility of a human being surviving in the belly of a great fish has long been questioned. In , Augustine of Hippo wrote to Deogratias concerning the challenge of some to the miracle recorded in the Book of Jonah. He writes:
Augustine responds that if one is to question one miracle, then one should question all miracles as well (section 31). Nevertheless, despite his apologetic, Augustine views the story of Jonah as a figure for Christ. For example, he writes: "As, therefore, Jonah passed from the ship to the belly of the whale, so Christ passed from the cross to the sepulchre, or into the abyss of death. And as Jonah suffered this for the sake of those who were endangered by the storm, so Christ suffered for the sake of those who are tossed on the waves of this world." Augustine credits his allegorical interpretation to the interpretation of Christ himself (Matthew 12:39–40), and he allows for other interpretations as long as they are in line with Christ's. Medieval commentary tradition. The "Ordinary Gloss", or , was the most important Christian commentary on the Bible in the later Middle Ages. Ryan McDermott comments that "The Gloss on Jonah relies almost exclusively on Jerome's commentary on Jonah (), so its Latin often has a tone of urbane classicism. But the Gloss also chops up, compresses, and rearranges Jerome with a carnivalesque glee and scholastic directness that renders the Latin authentically medieval." "The Ordinary Gloss on Jonah" has been translated into English and printed in a format that emulates the first printing of the Gloss.
The relationship between Jonah and his fellow Jews is ambivalent, and complicated by the Gloss's tendency to read Jonah as an allegorical prefiguration of Jesus Christ. While some glosses in isolation seem crudely supersessionist ("The foreskin believes while the circumcision remains unfaithful"), the prevailing allegorical tendency is to attribute Jonah's recalcitrance to his abiding love for his own people and his insistence that God's promises to Israel not be overridden by a lenient policy toward the Ninevites. For the glossator, Jonah's pro-Israel motivations correspond to Christ's demurral in the Garden of Gethsemane ("My Father, if it be possible, let this chalice pass from me") and the Gospel of Matthew's and Paul's insistence that "salvation is from the Jews" (John 4:22). While in the Gloss the plot of Jonah prefigures how God will extend salvation to the nations, it also makes abundantly clear—as some medieval commentaries on the Gospel of John do not—that Jonah and Jesus are Jews, and that they make decisions of salvation-historical consequence as Jews.

Subsets and Splits

No community queries yet

The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.