Vol. 38:2

A memorial notice for Patricia (Pnina) J. Berlyn (1930-2010), Associate Editor of The Jewish Bible Quarterly from 1996 to 2009, listing her many contributions to the journal on topics from Naboth's vineyard to the Omride dynasty, and noting her co-authored book Shani: Her Adventures beyond the Sambatyon and unpublished manuscript The House of Omri.

A close literary reading of the fourteen verses bridging the brothers' two trips to Egypt, identifying six narrative devices — abrupt change, dialogue, the intensifying infinitive absolute, doubling, alliteration/rhyming, and allusion to the past — and showing how their dense interweaving builds the tension of Jacob's reluctant agreement to send Benjamin.

Argues that the ten-generation genealogy closing the Book of Ruth is deliberately symbolic rather than strictly historical, paralleling the ten-generation lists in Genesis 5 and 11 to mark the dawn of the Davidic era, and proposes that the Nahshon-to-Salma link is the genealogy's point of compression, resolving the well-known chronological difficulty raised by Ibn Ezra.

Examines Pharaoh's three successive compromise offers during the plagues — sacrifice within Egypt, men only, or families without livestock — and Moses' point-by-point rejection of each, arguing that the exchanges foreshadow enduring theological questions about where and how God is served, whether religious observance is full-time or partial, and the place of family within covenant.

Argues that the Book of Daniel was composed as a covert theological-political tract addressed to the Hasidim resisting Antiochus IV's Hellenizing persecution, its true setting disguised under Babylonian and Persian time-lines, and draws out point-by-point parallels between Daniel's Babylonian tales and the Seleucid-era struggles over Hebrew identity, kosher law, idolatry, and the promise that empires persecuting Israel inevitably fall.

Draws on Pseudepigraphic sources to argue that Dan and Gad, sons of the handmaids, were the primary instigators behind the sale of Joseph and the pact of silence that followed, and re-examines Reuben's inconsistent behavior after discovering the empty pit, suggesting the Torah's account is compressed and that Reuben was pressured into a face-saving cover-up engineered by his brothers.

Observes that almost none of the eighteen characters populating Exodus 2 are named, despite the chapter opening the book of Shemot ('Names'), and argues this pervasive anonymity is a deliberate literary device reflecting the Israelites' dehumanization under slavery, one in which characters are instead defined by their relationships to others — a mutuality that ultimately preserves their dignity and identity.

Proposes that Jacob's nocturnal wrestling match (Gen. 32:23-32) allegorizes an internal struggle between two competing impulses — one urging him to claim the promised land despite the risk of war with Esau, the other favoring a safe, prosperous life beyond its border — reading the coming of dawn and the crossing of the river as symbols of Jacob's resolution of that inner conflict and his readiness to become Israel.

Applies the modern clinical concept of post-traumatic stress disorder to Noah, Lot's wife, and Isaac, reading Noah's post-Flood drunkenness, Lot's wife's catatonic transformation into a pillar of salt, and Isaac's apparent withdrawal after the Akedah and his mother's death as three different biblical responses to severe psychological trauma, with only Isaac's story showing a path toward eventual recovery.

Reviews the 2006 revised edition of W. Gunther Plaut's landmark Reform Torah commentary, examining reviser David E. S. Stein's approach to gendered translation of the Hebrew text and of God, the incorporation of Chaim Stern's fresh renderings of Genesis and the haftarot, and the volume's expanded essays and bibliography, set against the original 1981 edition's pioneering place in liberal Jewish Bible scholarship.

Two letters responding to prior JBQ articles: one praising Ethan Dor-Shav's two-part 'Ecclesiastes, Fleeting and Timeless' for recasting Kohelet's message as appreciative rather than despairing, and one from Jacob Chinitz disputing Leo Abrami's reading of positive versus negative commandments, arguing that the Ten Commandments in fact contain fourteen distinct mitzvot.