- Obadiah
- One of the Twelve Prophets; a sixth century Judean prophet who condemned Edom for its cruel treatment of conquered Judah. See Chapter 13.
- Offering
- Something given to God as an act of worship, often animals and grains; the offering of animals made right the relationship between God and the worshiper.
- Old Testament
- (abbreviated OT) The name of the Hebrew Bible used in the Christian community; it presupposes that there is a New Testament; the term testament goes back to testamentum, the Latin equivalent for the Hebrew word covenant; for most Protestant Christians, the Old Testament is identical to the Hebrew Bible; for classical Roman Catholic and Greek Orthodox Christianity, the Old Testament also includes the Apocrypha. See Introduction.
- Oracle
- A statement originating with God, delivered by a prophet, and directed to an audience.
- Oral torah
- (also called oral law) In traditional Jewish pharisaic/rabbinic thought, God revealed instructions for living through both the written scriptures and through a parallel process of orally transmitted traditions; these oral applications of the Torah for contemporary situations later took written form in the Mishnah and other Jewish literature; the Jewish belief in both a written and an oral torah is known as "the dual Torah"; critics of this approach within Judaism include the Sadducees and the Karaites. See Conclusion.
- Oral tradition
- Material passed down through generations by word of mouth before taking fixed written form.
- Original sin
- In classical Christian thought, the fundamental state of sinfulness and guilt, inherited from the first man Adam, that infects all of humanity but can be removed through depending on Christ.
- Orthodox
- (from Greek for "correct opinion/outlook," as opposed to heterodox or heretical) The judgment that a position is "orthodox" depends on what are accepted as the operative "rules" or authorities at the time; over the course of history, the term "orthodox" has come to denote the dominant surviving forms that have proved themselves to be "traditional" or "classical" or "mainstream" (e.g. rabbinic Judaism; the Roman Catholic and Greek Orthodox Christian churches).
- OT
- See Old Testament.