Vol. 50:1

A short history of the Jewish Bible Quarterly on the occasion of its fiftieth year of continuous publication, tracing the journal from its 1972 founding as Dor le Dor under Rabbi Dr. Louis Katzoff and the World Jewish Bible Society, through its 1989 renaming and 1990 independence as the Jewish Bible Association, to its editorial leadership under Shimon Bakon and the author.

Argues that the Book of Esther alludes systematically to the Jacob-Esau narrative of Genesis in order to reassure post-exilic Jews, anxious that Edom's rise signaled their own rejection as the chosen people, that Jacob's line remains chosen. Working through parallel characters (Jacob/Mordecai, Esau/Haman, Isaac/Ahasuerus, Rebekah/Esther), parallel narrative sequences, and shared linguistic formulations, the author shows how Esther both echoes and tendentiously reverses the earlier story to produce a happier ending, a reading corroborated by later additions in the Aramaic Esther translations.

A survey of the 'literary-theological' school within Orthodox Tanakh scholarship, which combines close, unified-text literary analysis with unwavering commitment to Oral Law and traditional belief in revelation. The essay traces the school from twentieth-century forerunners (the Da'at Mikra commentary, Nehama Leibowitz, Mordechai Breuer) through contemporary exponents (Yoel Bin-Nun, Elhanan Samet, Shalom Carmy, and the Maggid Tanakh commentary series), and considers how figures such as Amnon Bazak and Joshua Berman have addressed the religious challenges posed by academic Bible criticism.

Examines the rare biblical phenomenon of epizeuxis — God (or God's representative) calling a person's name twice in quick succession — as it occurs with Abraham, Jacob, Moses, and Samuel. Surveying rabbinic midrash and medieval and modern commentators on each of the four episodes, the author finds no single unifying principle behind the doubling, but notes that all four figures belong to the earlier period of Israel's history when God alone, rather than a human king, ruled the people.

Resolves the chronological difficulty in Rashi's reading of God's lech-lecha command to Abram — since Terach had already relocated the family from Ur to Haran before the command is given — by proposing, following Ibn Ezra's principle that the Torah need not follow chronological order, that the command actually preceded and motivated Terach's move to Haran. On this reconstruction Terach, having been persuaded by Abram's rejection of idolatry, fled Ur to protect his son, and only the later journey from Haran to Canaan, after Terach's death, is the delayed fulfillment of the original command. The article argues on this basis for a more sympathetic reading of Terach's character than the Midrash's portrait of him as an idol-maker allows.

Asks why the biblical narrative of Tanakh, unlike Chronicles or Malachi, ends on the seemingly unremarkable notes of the wood offering and the bringing of first fruits (Neh. 13:31), rather than with a more triumphant close. Tracing these two practices back to Nehemiah's covenant-code in chapter 10, the only two reforms there marked as is written in the Torah, the article argues that they were singled out as foundational: the first fruits recall the Exodus declaration of Deuteronomy 26, and the wood offering safeguards the perpetual altar fire of Leviticus 6:5, making them fitting emblems of the Temple service and the exclusivity of Israel's covenant with which Ezra-Nehemiah is chiefly concerned.

On Leonard Greenspoon's history of Jewish Bible translation. Opens on the Italian tag traduttore, traditore — every translator a traitor — and the question it forces: what should a Bible translation be for? Fidelity to the original word by word, or something a reader can actually read?

Mitchell First's collection of sixty-odd columns from the Jewish Link, grouped as Hebrew Roots, History and Liturgy. The reviewer singles out the Hebrew Roots section for students of Tanakh — words often misunderstood and mistranslated — and the range of what First draws on, from Rashi, Radak and Ibn Ezra to modern scholarship and Akkadian.