Editorial

As a member of the Editorial Board for over thirty years, I have taken pleasure in following the Jewish Bible Quarterly’s growth and development into a periodical read all over the world. The number of contributors has grown to such an extent that a year or two must elapse before their articles can be published. None of this would have been possible without the hard work and enthusiasm of our editor, Dr. Shimon Bakon, and his colleagues.

We live in an era of “talking books” and extensive material — whether newspapers, periodicals, or entire books — that can be located, read, and downloaded from the Internet. On the one hand, this has given rise to an understandable fear that children and adults may no longer bother to read the printed book, which could well become obsolete. On the other hand, as Dr. Bakon indicates in the following survey, giving free online access to the Jewish Bible Quarterly has had two positive effects. It has expanded our circulation from hundreds of subscribers to a potential readership numbering in the tens of thousands and, conceivably, in the millions; and it has also brought our published articles to the attention of many more scholars, who not only read them but also contribute papers of their own which they then quote elsewhere for the academic community’s benefit.

May the JBQ continue to flourish in the years ahead, spreading a knowledge and appreciation of Tanakh throughout enlightened and civilized humanity!

Dr. Gabriel A. Sivan
Chairman, Jewish Bible Association