The only Jewish-sponsored English-language journal devoted exclusively to the Bible.https://www.jewishbible.org/en-ushttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/beyond-invoking-additional-meanings/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/beyond-invoking-additional-meanings/Ephraim A. Landau — A sequel to the author’s study of qara’ besheim X and hizkir besheim X. Examining the remaining biblical verses that use these phrases — together with qara’ sheim X and hizkir (’et) sheim X — this article argues that their meaning depends neither on the verb chosen nor on how the divine name is introduced, and that across the corpus they carry four distinct senses: to invoke, to worship, to relate someone’s great characteristics and acts, or to designate and appoint.Wed, 01 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMTDivine NamesBiblical HebrewPhilologyPrayer and Worshiphttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/seven-day-week-in-the-bible/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/seven-day-week-in-the-bible/Joshua Backon — Seven-day units pervade biblical law and ritual. Drawing on the linguistic link between sheva (seven) and sova (fullness), and on the circaseptan (roughly seven-day) rhythms documented in the medical literature — nested within shorter ultradian and biochemical cycles — this note argues that the seven-day week expresses a natural sense of wholeness, unity, and completeness.Wed, 01 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMTSabbathNumerology in the BibleBible and Sciencehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/noahs-vintner-tale/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/noahs-vintner-tale/Joel B. Wolowelsky and Avner Taler — Why does Noah, the righteous survivor of the Flood, end up drunk and shamed in his tent — and why is Canaan, not Ham, cursed? Reading the episode as the coda to the Flood narrative and as an anti-pagan polemic, this study sets Noah’s Vintner Tale against the Ugaritic “Drunkenness of El,” arguing that the Torah adopts a familiar pagan motif in “human language” precisely to overturn it with a demand for moral responsibility.Wed, 01 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMTAncient Near EastComparative LiteratureNoahhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/sair-lazazel-guide-for-the-perplexing-ramban/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/sair-lazazel-guide-for-the-perplexing-ramban/Geula Twersky — The scapegoat cast to Azazel on Yom Kippur is among the Torah’s most enigmatic rites. Following Ramban’s identification of Azazel with Samael and his pairing of the two goats with Jacob and Esau, this study reads the Sair L’Azazel and the Sair L’Hashem as entangled opposites on a single continuum of human desire — a ritual dramatization of sexuality, sin, and the enduring possibility of repentance.Wed, 01 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMTYom KippurRambanTemple ServiceJewish Thoughthttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/rav-kook-ancient-near-eastern-parallels/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/rav-kook-ancient-near-eastern-parallels/Zvi Ron — The discovery of ancient Near Eastern texts that parallel the Torah has long unsettled traditional readers. This study examines how R. Abraham Isaac Hacohen Kook, in Eder HaYakar and the posthumously published Lenvuchei HaDor, reframed these parallels — not as evidence that the Torah merely reflects its environment, but as traces of an earlier human encounter with the divine will, later refined and preserved in the Torah. A case study of the laws of kidnapping shows how the approach works in practice.Wed, 01 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMTTorah and the Ancient Near EastRav KookBiblical CriticismJewish Thoughthttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/why-is-psalm-94-song-of-the-day-for-wednesday/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/why-is-psalm-94-song-of-the-day-for-wednesday/Yaakov Jaffe — Why is Psalm 94 the song of the day for Wednesday? Examining the psalm’s form, diction, placement, and content, this study argues that Psalm 94 is properly the second half of Psalm 93 and, like it, commemorates the splitting of the sea — an event traditionally dated to a Wednesday — offering a fuller answer than earlier explanations for its assignment to the fourth day of the week.Wed, 01 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMTPsalmsLiturgySong of the Seahttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/book-review-jps-psalms-120-150/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/book-review-jps-psalms-120-150/David J. Zucker — A review of The JPS Bible Commentary: Psalms 120–150 (commentary by Adele Berlin, with sidebars by Avigdor Shinan and Benjamin D. Sommer; JPS, 2023) — the first installment of a multi-volume JPS Psalms set — noting its focus on the ancient meaning of the text and its use of the 1985/1999 JPS translation rather than the newer gender-sensitive edition.Wed, 01 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMTBook ReviewPsalmsJPShttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/some-reflections-on-the-nature-and-provenance-of-esther/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/some-reflections-on-the-nature-and-provenance-of-esther/Jacob Love — Esther is among the strangest books in the Hebrew Bible, and its place in the canon was not always secure. Setting it beside the books that were debated and admitted — Kohelet, Song of Songs — and those excluded but kept by Christians, this essay asks what kind of book Esther is and where it came from.Thu, 01 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMTCanonSecond Temple PeriodBiblical Narrativehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/spectacle-culture-vision-in-the-samson-cycle/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/spectacle-culture-vision-in-the-samson-cycle/Timothy Yap — Opening on Gibran's parable of the eye that sees a mountain the other senses deny, this reading takes sight in the Samson cycle as a plot device rather than a motif: what Samson sees drives what he does, and the eye offers an observation the other faculties cannot replicate.Thu, 01 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMTBiblical NarrativeLiterary AnalysisProphetic Literaturehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/sarah-died-of-broken-heart-syndrome/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/sarah-died-of-broken-heart-syndrome/Joshua Backon — Sarah dies suddenly, just after the binding of Isaac. Midrash Tanchuma Vayera 23:5 and Pirkei d'Rabbi Eliezer 32 both have Satan bring her news of Isaac's death, and she faints and dies on hearing it — a sequence with a modern cardiac diagnosis behind it.Thu, 01 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMTMedicine and the BibleMidrashPatriarchal Narrativeshttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-narration-of-joseph-and-rabbinic-interpretation/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-narration-of-joseph-and-rabbinic-interpretation/Zvi Ron — The Narration of Joseph is a short fragmentary Coptic text of the fourth or fifth century that retells the selling of Joseph in Genesis 37:15-35. It belongs to the genre of rewritten Scripture, which builds on the biblical text with additions and even changes — and those embellishments are set here beside the rabbinic readings of the same verses.Thu, 01 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMTRabbinic ExegesisSecond Temple PeriodHistory of Interpretationhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-akedah-drama/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-akedah-drama/Joel B. Wolowelsky — Genesis 22 read not as a tale of submission to divine cruelty but as a staged drama of faith redefined, sanctifying restraint over zeal and conscience over conformity. Why test Abraham at all, why so horrifying a test, why his silence after he had argued for Sodom, why Isaac's compliance, and why blessings he had already been given.Thu, 01 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMTPatriarchal NarrativesBiblical NarrativeJewish Thoughthttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/their-ruler-shall-rise-above-agag/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/their-ruler-shall-rise-above-agag/Gad Dishi — Balaam's third blessing, to Balak's chagrin and vexation, promises a ruler risen above Agag. Read in the context of Numbers 24:1-11 rather than as an isolated line, the verse is asked whether it looks forward to the king who would one day spare an Agag of his own.Thu, 01 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMTProphecyKingshipBiblical Exegesishttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/book-review-old-testament-pseudepigrapha-volume-2/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/book-review-old-testament-pseudepigrapha-volume-2/Simcha Rosenberg — The long-awaited second volume of the Eerdmans collection edited by Bauckham, Davila and Panayotov, following its 2013 predecessor and now matching Charlesworth's classic Old Testament Pseudepigrapha in bulk. Works falsely titled to a biblical hand, held significant and perhaps sacred in their day, preserving views other than those that became the canon.Thu, 01 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMTBook ReviewSecond Temple PeriodCanonhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/book-review-pursuing-peshat/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/book-review-pursuing-peshat/Yonatan Horovitz — Moshe Sokolow's book takes history, methodology and pedagogy together across three sections, the first of them 'The Theoretical Realm' — forms of biblical interpretation and how to tell a valid reading from an invalid one. A reviewer who teaches Tanakh for a living finds an author at home both in academic Bible study and on the yeshivah benches.Thu, 01 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMTBook ReviewBiblical ExegesisBible Educationhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/how-do-you-keep-the-music-playing/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/how-do-you-keep-the-music-playing/Timothy Yap — A close reading of every reference to music in the Saul narrative of I Samuel, tracing how music functions as a sign of Saul's election as king (I Sam. 10:5-8), a therapeutic response to his affliction by an evil spirit (16:14-23), a trigger for his violent jealousy of David (18:6-11), and — through its conspicuous absence — a marker of his final rejection (19:9-24). The article argues that as Saul's kingship unravels, music's power to help him steadily diminishes, culminating in the silence that accompanies his last, humiliating breakdown.Wed, 01 Oct 2025 00:00:00 GMTMusic in the BibleKingshipSaul and DavidNarrative Criticismhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/from-adam-to-abraham/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/from-adam-to-abraham/Geula Twersky — The genealogies of Genesis 5 and 11 appear to date the emergence of Adam to roughly six millennia ago, in apparent tension with the archaeological record of far older civilizations such as Jericho. Rather than reading these tables as continuous father-son chronology, this article argues — drawing on the term holid ('begat') as marking official lines of succession, on parallel ten-generation king lists from the Ancient Near East, and on the ten eleh/zeh toledot divisions that structure the whole book of Genesis — that the genealogies are a schematic, dynastic charting of the line leading from Adam to the future Israelite monarchy, not a literal count of years.Wed, 01 Oct 2025 00:00:00 GMTGenesis GenealogiesBiblical ChronologyAncient Near EastKingshiphttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/listening-to-the-chalil/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/listening-to-the-chalil/Jonathan L. Friedmann — The chalil, a reed pipe appearing just six times in the Tanakh, is unusual among biblical instruments for its presence at both joyous occasions — prophetic processions, coronations, revelries, victory celebrations — and at funerary laments. Drawing on Ancient Near Eastern parallels, Mishnaic sources, and the mourning ritual for the god Tammuz, this article argues that the chalil's dual role is not a contradiction but reflects a deeper, de-mythologized connection to fertility, birth, and rebirth that outlasted the ancient cultic associations the Bible otherwise suppresses.Wed, 01 Oct 2025 00:00:00 GMTMusic in the BibleAncient Near EastMourning CustomsFertility Symbolismhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/we-heard-in-ephrathah/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/we-heard-in-ephrathah/Benjamin Scolnic — Psalm 132:6 — 'We heard it was in Ephrath; we came upon it in the region of Jaar' — has resisted satisfactory explanation, with some scholars even excising the verse from the psalm. Reviewing traditional Jewish commentary and modern scholarship on what 'it' refers to, where Ephrathah and the 'forested field' are located, and who 'we' are, this article argues that the verse is best read against I Samuel 6, where the Ark was found in a field near Beth-Shemesh — and proposes that the verse may preserve David's own boyhood memory, from Bethlehem/Ephrathah, of hearing that the Ark had miraculously been recovered.Wed, 01 Oct 2025 00:00:00 GMTPsalmsArk of the CovenantKing DavidBiblical Geographyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/old-ammunition-for-today/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/old-ammunition-for-today/Louis Garb — Exodus juxtaposes the Israelites' armed departure from Egypt with Moses carrying Joseph's bones, a pairing largely passed over by classical commentators except for the Mekhilta and R. S.R. Hirsch. Building on traditional readings of Joseph's oath to his brothers, this article argues that Joseph's remains functioned as a deliberate, multi-generational mechanism of religious memory transmission — 'spiritual ammunition' of gratitude, faith, and identity that complemented, and perhaps outweighed, the nation's literal weapons, and that this Jewish approach to sacred objects as connective tools rather than venerated relics has remained central to Jewish practice ever since.Wed, 01 Oct 2025 00:00:00 GMTJoseph NarrativeExodusReligious MemorySacred Objectshttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/book-review-prophetic-voices/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/book-review-prophetic-voices/David J. Zucker — Barbara AB Symons's collection on the haftarah. The reviewer starts from how long the practice has stood — public Torah reading on Shabbat for two thousand years, with a reading from the Prophets as its counterpoint and conclusion attested from early on — and what renewing it might now mean.Wed, 01 Oct 2025 00:00:00 GMTBook ReviewProphecyLiturgyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/why-is-20-the-minimum-age-in-the-bible/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/why-is-20-the-minimum-age-in-the-bible/Joshua Backon — Three separate thresholds in the Bible fall at the same age. Proposes one explanation for all of them from neurodevelopment: synaptic pruning, the elimination of weak connections, begins around nine and is largely complete at twenty — before which, on this reading, the brain is still a child's.Wed, 01 Oct 2025 00:00:00 GMTScience and the BibleBiblical LawPriesthoodhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/invoking-the-god-x-in-the-hebrew-bible/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/invoking-the-god-x-in-the-hebrew-bible/Ephraim A. Landau — Landau examines the biblical phrases qara' besheim X ("call [on] the name of the god X") and hizkir besheim X ("recall" or "make mention of the name of the god X"), arguing that in most of their occurrences — from the Elijah-versus-the-prophets-of-Baal contest on Mt. Carmel to Naaman's expectation that Elisha will cure his leprosy — these phrases denote a specific act: formally addressing a god by name to request that he manifest his powerful presence to help, witness an oath, or accept a sacrifice. Engaging closely with Willem Smelik's proposal that hizkir besheim X instead means "swear by the name of," the article defends "invoke" as the better reading across all four of that phrase's occurrences (Joshua 23:7, Isaiah 48:1, Amos 6:10, and Psalm 20:8), while distinguishing invocation from both simple utterance of a divine name and from worship proper.Tue, 01 Jul 2025 00:00:00 GMTHebrew PhilologyPrayer and WorshipComparative SemiticsBiblical Theologyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-parah-adumah-paradox/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-parah-adumah-paradox/Geula Twersky — Twersky argues that the red heifer ritual (Num. 19), long treated as the archetype of an inexplicable Torah statute, coheres around a single theme: the destruction of death and the triumph of life through resurrection. Tracing the heifer's affinities with the purification of the leper — itself read as a rite of symbolic death and rebirth — and with the rabbinic insistence on deliberately defiling the heifer's handler against Sadducean practice, the article proposes that the Parah Adumah's paradoxical power to render both pure and impure dramatizes the Torah's polemic against Egyptian cow- and bull-cults (Hathor and Apis) and stakes out resurrection as a claim exclusively about God's dominion over life and death.Tue, 01 Jul 2025 00:00:00 GMTRitual PuritySacrificeResurrectionRabbinic LiteratureComparative Religionhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-mosaic-covenant-a-doable-covenant-of-grace/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-mosaic-covenant-a-doable-covenant-of-grace/Steven Coxhead — Writing for an interfaith audience, Coxhead argues against the historic Christian view — traceable through Augustine, Aquinas, and especially Luther — that the Mosaic covenant demanded absolute moral perfection and therefore could not itself be a vehicle of grace. Marshaling the Tanakh's own descriptions of David, Hezekiah, and Josiah as Torah-keepers despite their acknowledged sins, together with the sacrificial system's built-in provision for atonement, he contends that Torah was always structured as a doable covenant of grace: obedience required was covenantal rather than absolute, and forgiveness was never external to the Law but integral to it from Sinai onward.Tue, 01 Jul 2025 00:00:00 GMTCovenant TheologyTorah ObservanceChristian-Jewish DialogueAtonementhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/who-were-the-rephaim/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/who-were-the-rephaim/Shaul Bar — Bar surveys the Bible's two distinct uses of Rephaim — an ancient race of giants or heroes (Genesis, Deuteronomy, Chronicles) and the powerless "shades" of the dead in Sheol (Isaiah, Psalms, Proverbs, Job) — and argues, against readings that treat the Rephaim as minor deities or savior-healers, that the term originally designated a legendary line of heroic warriors and kings that biblical monotheism deliberately reduced to feeble, silent shades. Drawing on Ugaritic funerary texts, the Hadad and Eshmunazar inscriptions, and rabbinic and Talmudic sources, the article traces how figures like Og of Bashan and the giants defeated by David's men illustrate the transition from titanic hero to mocked corpse in Sheol.Tue, 01 Jul 2025 00:00:00 GMTAncient Near EastMythologyAfterlifeComparative Semiticshttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/david-took-goliaths-sword/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/david-took-goliaths-sword/Benjamin Scolnic — Against scholars who read David's Philistine sojourn as straightforward treachery, Scolnic reframes it through the lens of Iron Age military technology: the Philistines held a near-monopoly on ironworking and iron weaponry, leaving Saul's Israel so under-armed that not a single soldier besides Saul and Jonathan carried sword or spear at Michmash. David's slaying of Goliath and appropriation of his sword, his later reliance on Philistine mercenaries (the Cherethites and Pelethites) even after becoming king, and Israel's eventual access to Edom's iron deposits are traced as the ironic mechanism by which time spent among the enemy equipped David — and the nation he built — to finally match Philistine arms.Tue, 01 Jul 2025 00:00:00 GMTMilitary HistoryIron Age TechnologyDavidPhilistineshttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-rebellious-son-can-his-execution-be-justified/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-rebellious-son-can-his-execution-be-justified/Ilona Rashkow — Deuteronomy 21:18-21 is unusually specific: parents bring a wayward son before the elders, declare him disloyal, defiant, a glutton and a drunkard, and the men of the town stone him. Takes the law at its word and asks whether the sentence can be justified on the terms the text itself sets out.Tue, 01 Jul 2025 00:00:00 GMTBiblical LawBiblical EthicsRabbinic Exegesishttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-62nd-international-bible-contest/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-62nd-international-bible-contest/Joshua Backon — Held in Jerusalem on Israel's Independence Day under the slogan OZ L'YISRAEL — oz meaning strength and carrying the numerical value 77, for Israel's 77th year. Sixteen contestants reached the final, after the preparatory camp that tours the country and puts them in front of former contestants.Tue, 01 Jul 2025 00:00:00 GMTBible ContestBible EducationIsraelhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/semantic-differentiated-approach-relational-words/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/semantic-differentiated-approach-relational-words/Russell Jay Hendel — Hendel proposes a category of 'relational words' — connectives, syntactic markers, and pragmatic discourse markers — that neither refer to objects nor actions but instead connect and relate parts of a sentence or narrative. Working through examples ranging from the multiple senses of ki and the lamah/lammah distinction to the pairing of achar and acharay and the choice between a terminal heh and a prefixed lamed for 'to,' he argues that a single Hebrew relational word often corresponds to several distinct nuances rather than free variants. The article ranks its examples by the strength of textual support, from speculative Talmudic and Malbim readings to cases, such as Hirsch's account of lamah/lammah, that resolve genuine interpretive difficulties.Tue, 01 Apr 2025 00:00:00 GMTBiblical Hebrew GrammarRashi and Medieval ExegesisLinguisticsPragmaticshttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/hoham-king-of-hebron/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/hoham-king-of-hebron/Harel Rosenberg — Hoham, one of five Amorite hill-country kings put to death by Joshua, is a biblical figure known only from a single chapter. Rosenberg proposes that his name derives not from an Anatolian root but from Ham, the Transjordanian capital of the giant Zuzim/Zamzumim destroyed by Chedorlaomer's coalition in Genesis 14, making Hoham the last scion of that people who fled west to giant-inhabited Hebron after the Ammonites overran his homeland. Marshaling evidence on the gigantic stature attributed to 'ethnic Amorites' in rabbinic and biblical sources, the article situates Hoham's alliance against the Gibeonites within a broader biblical narrative pattern of Israel overcoming Transjordanian and Cisjordanian giants.Tue, 01 Apr 2025 00:00:00 GMTBiblical OnomasticsCanaanite PeoplesGiants in the BibleHistorical Geographyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/tyndale-or-tanakh-leviticus-18-22-20-13/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/tyndale-or-tanakh-leviticus-18-22-20-13/George Hollenback — Hollenback argues that Leviticus 18:22 and 20:13 were originally directed at the passive rather than the active party in male-on-male anal intercourse, and traces how English translations came to reverse that address. Following the chain from the Hebrew through the Latin Vulgate, several German translations of the Vulgate, Luther's German Pentateuch, and Tyndale's 1530 English Pentateuch, he shows that a German printer's substitution of 'boy' for 'male' in Leviticus 20:13, later adopted and extended by Luther, and Tyndale's own 'as with' phrasing borrowed from Luther, together produced the reading — still followed by modern English translations including the NJPS — that has held the field for five centuries.Tue, 01 Apr 2025 00:00:00 GMTBible Translation HistoryLeviticus LawSexuality in the BibleReformation-Era Translationshttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/akeda-as-measure-for-measure/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/akeda-as-measure-for-measure/Moshe Soller and Rachel Soller Yudkowsky — The authors argue that the Akeda is not solely a test of Abraham's love and faith but also, and primarily, a measure-for-measure response to his earlier treatment of Hagar and Ishmael. Because 'fear of God' (yirat Elokim) in the Pentateuch always concerns interpersonal, not devotional, conduct, the angel's closing declaration that Abraham is now known to be 'God-fearing' points back to his conduct toward Hagar rather than to his willingness to sacrifice Isaac. A series of intertextual parallels between the expulsion of Hagar and Ishmael in Genesis 21 and the binding of Isaac in Genesis 22 is offered as evidence that the latter functions as atonement for the former.Tue, 01 Apr 2025 00:00:00 GMTAkedaIntertextualityFear of GodMeasure for Measurehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/bochen-klayot-valev-kidneys-and-heart/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/bochen-klayot-valev-kidneys-and-heart/Joshua Backon — Biblical and rabbinic sources repeatedly treat the kidneys, alongside the heart, as seats of moral understanding and conscience — a usage generally read today as metaphorical. Backon surveys recent medical research on personality changes reported after organ transplantation, on sensory neurites in the heart implicated in decision-making, and on cell memory recently demonstrated in kidney and nerve tissue, and argues that this literature lends the biblical language of the kidneys 'advising' or being 'searched' by God more than a purely figurative basis.Tue, 01 Apr 2025 00:00:00 GMTBiblical AnthropologyScience and TorahRabbinic Literaturehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/where-is-your-wife-sarah/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/where-is-your-wife-sarah/Avner Taler and Joel B. Wolowelsky — Reading the divine visitors' question 'Where is your wife Sarah?' alongside Abraham's earlier silence about God's promise that Sarah herself would bear his heir, the authors argue that Abraham repeatedly, if unintentionally, treated Sarah as subordinate rather than as an essential party to the covenant. The visitors' question, like God's questions to Adam and Cain, is less a request for information than a rebuke calculated to correct Abraham's relationship with his wife — and God's subsequent gentle handling of Sarah's doubt, and immediate resumption of confiding in Abraham, models how a covenantal relationship absorbs a rebuke without being broken by it.Tue, 01 Apr 2025 00:00:00 GMTAbraham and SarahGender in the BibleRabbinic Exegesishttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-120-satraps-darius-the-mede/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-120-satraps-darius-the-mede/Zvi Ron — The 120 satraps and three ministers described in Daniel 6 vastly exceed any attested count of Persian administrative divisions, which Ron argues marks the number as typological rather than historical — built, like the 127 provinces of Esther 1:1, on the sexagesimal round number 120 that elsewhere denotes a maximal human lifespan (Genesis 6:3, Deuteronomy 34:7). He further traces how this idealized figure likely became the basis for the traditionally cited membership of 120 in the rabbinic Men of the Great Assembly, and, through it, for the 120-seat Knesset.Tue, 01 Apr 2025 00:00:00 GMTBook of DanielPersian EmpireSymbolic NumbersMen of the Great Assemblyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/eldad-and-medad-the-men-who-were-not-there/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/eldad-and-medad-the-men-who-were-not-there/David J. Zucker — Numbers 11, late in the second year of the wilderness: the people complain bitterly, fire ravages the camp's edge, and Moses has to intervene once again. Out of that comes the episode of the two men who prophesied in the camp rather than at the Tent — the ones who were not there.Tue, 01 Apr 2025 00:00:00 GMTProphecyMosesLeadershipBiblical Narrativehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/book-review-time-to-time/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/book-review-time-to-time/David J. Zucker — Dalia Marx's month-by-month passage through the Jewish year, translated by Peretz Rodman, with art by Elad Lifshitz. Twelve months, twelve faces, twelve phases — the reviewer's point being that the year is only visible whole if each of its parts is taken in turn.Tue, 01 Apr 2025 00:00:00 GMTBook ReviewJewish CalendarLiturgyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/joseph-sold-into-slavery-or-sent-as-a-savior/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/joseph-sold-into-slavery-or-sent-as-a-savior/Charlotte Katzoff — Katzoff examines the tension between Joseph's insistence that God, not his brothers, sent him to Egypt and the reader's intuition that the brothers are morally culpable for selling him into slavery. Drawing on Harry Frankfurt's Principle of Alternate Possibilities and the example of the counterfactual intervener 'Black,' she argues that the sale was rendered inevitable by God's providential design without being directly caused by God, so the brothers remain blameworthy even though they could not have avoided it. The article traces this inevitability through the narrative of Genesis 37, beginning at the point Joseph sets out for Dothan, and situates the reading within the classical rabbinic principle of 'dual causality' governing biblical narrative.Wed, 01 Jan 2025 00:00:00 GMTFree Will and DeterminismDivine ProvidenceMoral ResponsibilityJoseph Narrativehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/reading-mordecai-in-the-shadow-of-saul/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/reading-mordecai-in-the-shadow-of-saul/Timothy Yap — Building on prior scholarship connecting the books of Samuel and Esther, Yap argues that Mordecai is constructed as a positive antithesis to King Saul through two recurring literary motifs: clothing and food. In Samuel, Saul progressively loses his garments and mishandles food (sparing Agag, imposing a self-defeating fast, feasting with the necromancer at Endor) as markers of his decline, while in Esther, Mordecai moves from sackcloth to royal robes and uses fasting to distinguish the Jews from their enemies rather than to seal his own downfall. The article traces the two motifs scene by scene across both books to show that where Saul's story ends in stripped armor and death, Mordecai's ends in royal apparel and civic celebration.Wed, 01 Jan 2025 00:00:00 GMTIntertextualityClothing SymbolismFood SymbolismKingshiphttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/rape-and-vengeance-the-story-of-dinah/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/rape-and-vengeance-the-story-of-dinah/Ilona Rashkow — Rashkow reads the rape of Dinah and the subsequent slaughter at Shechem in Genesis 34 against Ancient Near Eastern rape and vengeance law, including the Middle Assyrian Laws, Hittite Laws, and Deuteronomy 22. She argues on grammatical grounds — the shift from the verb 'lay with' (a preposition, denoting consent) to 'lay her' (a direct object, denoting force) — that the text unambiguously depicts a rape rather than the 'mutual love' some scholars have proposed. Turning to Simeon and Levi's reprisal, she contends that their vengeance meets none of the criteria the Bible treats as legitimate and is therefore 'sinful,' yet remarkably draws no word of reproof from Jacob, the narrator, or God.Wed, 01 Jan 2025 00:00:00 GMTSexual ViolenceAncient Near Eastern LawBiblical EthicsGenesis Narrativehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/psalm-60-a-psalm-of-david/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/psalm-60-a-psalm-of-david/Benjamin Scolnic — Against the critical consensus that Psalm 60 is a composite text stitched together from an eighth-century oracle and a sixth-century lament, Scolnic argues that the psalm reads as a unified composition set precisely within David's own reign — after his victories over northern Israel, the Arameans, the Philistines, and Moab, but before his difficult conquest of Edom. He reads the psalm's introduction against the account in II Samuel 8 and 1 Kings 11 of Joab 'returning' to bury the Israelite dead and killing every Edomite male, proposing that this unusual severity reflects an initial Israelite defeat that II Samuel's victory-focused narrative otherwise suppresses. The article closes with a broader defense of the psalm superscriptions that tie individual psalms to episodes in David's life, arguing they are original and theologically coherent rather than late scribal guesswork.Wed, 01 Jan 2025 00:00:00 GMTDavidic AuthorshipHistorical CriticismAncient WarfarePsalm Superscriptionshttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/age-is-not-a-factor/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/age-is-not-a-factor/Michael Wolff — Against the popular image of Jacob and Rachel as young lovers of the same age, Wolff reconstructs a biblical chronology — using Jacob's stated age of 130 before Pharaoh and Joseph's age at his appointment as viceroy — showing that Jacob was 77 when he met Rachel at the well and 84 when he married her, while rabbinic sources suggest she may have been a child. Extending the argument through Abraham and Keturah, Isaac and the three-year-old Rebecca of rabbinic tradition, and Judah and Tamar, he argues that large spousal age gaps recur throughout Genesis and are neither incidental nor morally troubling to the text itself. He concludes that readers who imagine these couples as age-matched are projecting modern moral assumptions and modern lifespans onto a narrative whose own interest lies in character and consequence rather than chronology.Wed, 01 Jan 2025 00:00:00 GMTPatriarchal NarrativesMarriage CustomsRabbinic ExegesisBiblical Chronologyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/books-3-5-of-the-book-of-psalms/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/books-3-5-of-the-book-of-psalms/Hayyim Angel — Psalms is one book divided into five collections, a shape the Midrash reads as deliberate: what Moses did, David also did, five books of Torah answered by five books of Psalms. Takes that parallel as more than structural — Moses the master of prophecy, God's word to people; David the master of prayer, people's word back — and follows the last three collections from harshness to hallelujah.Wed, 01 Jan 2025 00:00:00 GMTPsalmsBiblical PoetryLiturgyMidrashhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/book-review-qohelet-searching-for-a-life-worth-living/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/book-review-qohelet-searching-for-a-life-worth-living/Yonatan Horovitz — Menachem Fisch's philosophical commentary with Debra Band's illuminations. The reviewer frames the difficulty the book takes on: Qohelet is so full of one-line idioms and apparently unconnected musings that readers miss the forest for the trees, and finding a thread through it has occupied several books over the last two decades.Wed, 01 Jan 2025 00:00:00 GMTBook ReviewWisdom LiteratureJewish Philosophyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/gematria-in-the-hebrew-bible/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/gematria-in-the-hebrew-bible/Elaine Goodfriend — Modern scholars generally date the use of letters as numbers (gematria) to the Hellenistic period, assuming Hebrew borrowed the practice from Greek usage. This article argues instead that the Hebrew Bible itself preserves evidence — most persuasively the number 318 in Genesis 14:14 and the numerical value of the name Gad — that ancient Israelites assigned numerical values to letters well before the Hellenistic era. It distinguishes "overt" gematria, where both the number and the lexical unit appear in the text, from "secret" gematria, the modern practice of counting words, letters, or verses to find hidden numbers, and finds the latter far less persuasive when evaluated against the work of Labuschagne, Knohl, Bazak, and Christensen.Tue, 01 Oct 2024 00:00:00 GMTGematriaNumerologyBiblical HebrewAncient Near Easthttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/who-wrote-the-psalms/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/who-wrote-the-psalms/Hayyim Angel — Surveying rabbinic, medieval, and modern scholarship on the authorship of Psalms, this article argues that the popular notion of a single "traditional" view — that David wrote every psalm — is a myth contradicted by the Talmud itself, which lists up to ten authors extending as late as Ezra. Reviewing Rabbi Saadiah Gaon, Ibn Gikatilla, Ibn Ezra, and Malbim, the author shows that classical Jewish sources readily accommodate composition and editing of Psalms throughout the biblical period, dissolving the supposed conflict between religious tradition and modern text-critical evidence such as the postexilic setting of Psalm 137.Tue, 01 Oct 2024 00:00:00 GMTPsalmsAuthorshipRabbinic LiteratureBiblical Criticismhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/who-was-lamenting-and-why/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/who-was-lamenting-and-why/Ilona Rashkow — Comparing the biblical book of Lamentations to the earlier Sumerian City Laments mourning the fall of Ur and other cities, this article traces shared images — a lonely, grieving female figure who speaks for the city, the absence of musicians, potsherds as a metaphor for the dead, foxes in the ruins — while highlighting a decisive theological difference. Where the Sumerian laments attribute destruction to inscrutable divine fate or overpopulation, unrelated to human deeds, Lamentations frames the fall of Jerusalem as covenantal retribution for Judah's sin, and closes with a plea for reconciliation rather than a restored temple cult.Tue, 01 Oct 2024 00:00:00 GMTLamentationsAncient Near EastComparative LiteratureTheodicyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-order-of-the-books-in-tanach/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-order-of-the-books-in-tanach/Zvi Ron — The order of biblical books mandated by the Talmud (Baba Batra 14b) differs from the order found in every printed Tanakh today — Isaiah precedes rather than follows Jeremiah and Ezekiel, the five megillot are grouped together, and Job precedes Proverbs. This article traces how chronological reasoning (per Radak, Abarbanel, and Elia Levita) displaced the Talmud's thematic ordering for the Prophets and for Psalms-Job-Proverbs, how liturgical reading order displaced chronology for the megillot, and why Chronicles alone remains out of chronological sequence, closing Tanakh instead of directly preceding Ezra-Nehemiah.Tue, 01 Oct 2024 00:00:00 GMTCanonTanakhTalmudTextual Historyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/psalm-19-revisited/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/psalm-19-revisited/Shubert Spero — Psalm 19 abruptly shifts, without transition, from praising the heavens to praising the Torah — a structural puzzle this article resolves by reading both halves as celebrating the works of the same indivisible God, the cosmos and the Torah alike. Close attention to the shift from mesaprim to magid in verse 2 shows the psalm directing readers past the heavens' bare testimony toward the more intimate "handiwork" of the atmosphere (rakiah) that sustains life. The article then places the psalm in dialogue with Isaiah 40:27 and with Kant's and Heschel's aesthetics of the sublime, distinguishing an intellectual argument from design from an aesthetic experience of awe before the heavens.Tue, 01 Oct 2024 00:00:00 GMTPsalmsCreationTorahAestheticsJewish Philosophyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/book-review-early-jewish-literature-anthology/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/book-review-early-jewish-literature-anthology/Simcha Rosenberg — A review of Early Jewish Literature: An Anthology (Brad Embry, Ronald Herms, and Archie T. Wright, eds.; Eerdmans, 2018, two volumes), a comprehensive collection of Second Temple era Jewish writing spanning the Apocrypha, Pseudepigrapha, Dead Sea Scrolls, Philo, and Josephus. The reviewer highlights its value for Tanakh-focused readers — including expansions of biblical narratives, additional Psalms, and the earliest pesharim-style commentary on Scripture — and praises its scholarly introductions, glossaries, and indices as making the material accessible to specialists and newcomers alike.Tue, 01 Oct 2024 00:00:00 GMTBook ReviewSecond Temple LiteratureApocryphaPseudepigraphahttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/divine-doppelgangers-yhwhs-ancient-look-alikes/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/divine-doppelgangers-yhwhs-ancient-look-alikes/Reuven Chaim Klein — A review essay on Divine Doppelgängers: YHWH's Ancient Look-Alikes (Collin Cornell, ed.; Eisenbrauns, 2020), a thirteen-contributor volume asking how the Bible's God differs from the many Ancient Near Eastern deities He resembles in description and role. Surveying the comparative, theological, and "manmade revelation" approaches offered by contributors including Miller, Strawn, Goldenberg, Levenson, Keel, Becking, and Cornell himself, the reviewer — writing as an Orthodox Jew — finds most unsatisfying and instead proposes a traditionalist resolution rooted in the rabbinic idea of an original Urmonotheismus, later balkanized into paganism, of which biblical and pagan literature both preserve fragmentary echoes.Tue, 01 Oct 2024 00:00:00 GMTBook ReviewAncient Near EastMonotheismComparative ReligionJewish Theologyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/is-deuteronomy-22-10-a-double-entendre/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/is-deuteronomy-22-10-a-double-entendre/Elaine Goodfriend — Deuteronomy 22:10's ban on plowing with an ox and an ass together has traditionally been read as compassion for animals, a warning against the ruminant ox provoking the non-ruminant ass, or an extension of the ban on mixed species. Surveying ancient Near Eastern and rabbinic uses of 'plowing' as a sexual metaphor — from the Sumerian Inanna hymns to Ben Sira's marital advice to the Jerusalem Talmud — this article argues that the verse may also function as a witty double-entendre warning against inappropriate sexual liaisons, fitting a broader pattern of suggestive wordplay in Deuteronomy.Mon, 01 Jul 2024 00:00:00 GMTBiblical LawAnimal EthicsSexual SymbolismAncient Near EastWordplayhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/month-naming-and-ideology-in-esther/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/month-naming-and-ideology-in-esther/Berel Dov Lerner — The book of Esther consistently dates events using a 'compound formula' of numbered and Babylonian-named months — until Esther 9, where the numbered months abruptly disappear in favor of Babylonian names alone. Building on Aaron Koller's account of Esther's diasporic ideology, this article argues that the numbered months evoke the exodus and Israelite salvation history, while their disappearance in chapter 9 signals the triumph of a diasporic worldview in which the Jews' deliverance owes nothing to that history and everything to skillful participation in Persian imperial politics.Mon, 01 Jul 2024 00:00:00 GMTCalendar and ChronologyEstherDiaspora IdentityBiblical Ideologyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/sacrifices-for-the-dead/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/sacrifices-for-the-dead/Shaul Bar — Providing food for the dead was a common ancient practice, rooted in the belief that the dead could help or harm the living depending on how well they were attended to. Examining Deuteronomy 26:12-14's tithe confession, Psalm 106:28's 'sacrifices to the dead' at Baal Peor, the libations of blood in Psalm 16:3-4, and the incubation rites condemned in Isaiah 65:4, this article concludes that while such offerings were practiced in the ancient Near East and occasionally penetrated Israelite society, the Bible is consistently antagonistic toward the custom of feeding or libating the dead.Mon, 01 Jul 2024 00:00:00 GMTDeath and AfterlifeAncient Near EastIdolatryRitual Practicehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/synonymous-prepositions-in-ezekiel-21/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/synonymous-prepositions-in-ezekiel-21/Ephraim A. Landau — Three parallel verses in Ezekiel 21 describe God's sword using near-identical pairs of phrases built on the nouns tevah ('slaughter') and baraq ('lightning'), yet the prophet sometimes uses the preposition lema'an and sometimes the synonymous le- to introduce them. Working through vv. 15a, 20b, and 33b, this article rejects the theory that the choice tracks whether an infinitive or a noun follows, and instead argues that the shift from balanced to unbalanced parallelism across the three verses is a deliberate stylistic device, one that mirrors in its structure the breakdown of order the prophecy foretells for Jerusalem.Mon, 01 Jul 2024 00:00:00 GMTBiblical HebrewGrammar and SyntaxProphetic LiteraturePoetic Structurehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/tamar-triumphant-and-the-deception-of-judah/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/tamar-triumphant-and-the-deception-of-judah/David J. Zucker — The third in Zucker's series on Tamar (Genesis 38), this article surveys contemporary and feminist scholarship on Judah's deception of Tamar and Tamar's deception of Judah. Drawing on Westermann, Schneider, Bal, Cotter, Speiser, Claassens, Niditch, and others, it traces Tamar's arc from a passive object handed from son to son to an agent who, through disguise and the demand 'Examine, please' at the moment of her exposure, claims recognition as an individual with rights — while noting that even sympathetic feminist readings tend to define her, and the other women of Genesis, primarily through the men around them.Mon, 01 Jul 2024 00:00:00 GMTFeminist InterpretationGenesis NarrativesGender and DeceptionBiblical Womenhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/intertextuality-idealism-eshet-hayil/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/intertextuality-idealism-eshet-hayil/Katharina Hadassah Wendl — Shulamit Valler has argued that the late Midrash Eshet Hayil, which assigns each verse of Proverbs 31:10-31 to a biblical woman, reflects a liberal rabbinic conception of women as spiritual and political leaders. Close-reading the midrash's intertextual connections to Yocheved, Miriam, Yael, Batya, and Ruth, this article amends Valler's conclusion: the women of Midrash Eshet Hayil are consistently portrayed as auxiliary to the men around them, their boundary-crossing acts of courage undertaken and then relinquished in service of male-centered, national deliverance — making the midrash's ideal woman not liberal but a more strikingly idealized, and ultimately unattainable, version of the biblical Eshet Hayil.Mon, 01 Jul 2024 00:00:00 GMTMidrashWomen in Rabbinic LiteratureProverbsGender Ideologyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/why-did-joseph-not-send-a-messenger-to-his-father/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/why-did-joseph-not-send-a-messenger-to-his-father/Louis Garb — Against R. Yoel Bin-Nun's influential theory that Joseph withheld word of his survival because he believed Jacob complicit in the brothers' plot, this article argues that such a reading cannot be squared with two well-evidenced facts: Joseph's demonstrated righteousness and the deep mutual love between father and son. Proposing instead that Joseph's own analytical instincts led him to the false but reasonable conclusion that Jacob had died without ever mounting a search for him, the article reframes the absence of any message as a tragedy of mutual, mirrored misapprehension rather than betrayal on either side.Mon, 01 Jul 2024 00:00:00 GMTGenesis NarrativesJoseph StoryFamily RelationshipsRabbinic Exegesishttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/bible-contest-for-jewish-youth/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/bible-contest-for-jewish-youth/Joshua Backon — A report on the 61st International Bible Contest for Jewish Youth, held in Jerusalem on Israel's Independence Day and sponsored by the Israeli Ministry of Education, the Jewish Agency, and Keren Kayemet, with the Jewish Bible Association as an affiliate sponsor. Sixteen contestants from Israel and the Diaspora competed in the finals, with Evyatar Bar-Gil and David Shasha tying for first place; the report also notes Prime Minister Netanyahu's remarks linking the contest, held against the backdrop of the ongoing war, to the biblical themes of resilience running from Abraham through Nehemiah.Mon, 01 Jul 2024 00:00:00 GMTJewish EducationContemporary Jewish Lifehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/abraham-jacob-and-god-at-beth-el/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/abraham-jacob-and-god-at-beth-el/Benjamin Scolnic — Reading Jacob's dream at Bethel (Gen. 28:10-22) against Abraham's earlier altar between Bethel and Ai (Gen. 12-13), this article argues that the two patriarchal encounters with God took place at the very same site, and that Jacob simply did not recognize the spot his grandfather had consecrated a generation before. Against the common critical view that the Bethel story is a late etiology invented to legitimate Jeroboam's rival sanctuary, the author contends that Jeroboam instead exploited a genuinely ancient tradition of Bethel's sanctity — one that archaeology, Genesis, and even Hosea's otherwise scathing critique of the site all attest to. The article traces this thread from Abraham's original altar through Jacob's pillar, Jeroboam's golden calf, and the site's eventual destruction under Josiah.Mon, 01 Apr 2024 00:00:00 GMTPatriarchal NarrativesSacred SpaceMonotheism and PolytheismSource Criticismhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/meanwhile-back-at-jobs-ranch/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/meanwhile-back-at-jobs-ranch/Ryan M. Armstrong — The prologue of Job (chs. 1-2) uniquely intercuts a heavenly storyline, in which God and the Adversary debate Job's righteousness, with an earthly storyline in which Job's children and livestock are destroyed — a technique the article compares to Hitchcock's parallel-storyline filmmaking, where tension builds toward the moment the two narratives collide. Job's demand for direct revelation, unusual within wisdom literature, pushes him to try to break out of his 'Divine-Silent' story into a 'Divine-Interaction' one, a shift that finally occurs in the epilogue when God speaks openly to Job and his friends. The article argues that this generic collision is the book's central literary strategy, complicating both the comfort offered by Divine-Silent narratives like Ruth and Esther and the comfort offered by Divine-Interaction narratives like the stories of Abraham and Moses.Mon, 01 Apr 2024 00:00:00 GMTBook of JobNarrative CriticismTheodicyDivine-Human Interactionhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/presence-of-dragons-in-the-hebrew-bible/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/presence-of-dragons-in-the-hebrew-bible/Jacob F. Love — The Hebrew word tanin is rendered by English translators as serpent, dragon, sea monster, crocodile, and even whale, depending on context — from the rod-turned-serpent of Exodus 7 to the great sea creatures of Genesis 1:21 to Leviathan's companion in Isaiah 27:1. Surveying tanin across Exodus, Genesis, Isaiah, Job, Psalms, and Ezekiel alongside the English word dragon's own shifting history and cognate terms in Ugaritic, Sumerian, and Akkadian, this article argues that the inconsistency of translation reflects a genuine thinness in biblical Hebrew's vocabulary for creatures of the sea and rivers, in contrast to its richer vocabulary for cultic objects. That thinness, the author suggests, says as much about ancient Israel's relative indifference to the sea as it does about any single creature called tanin.Mon, 01 Apr 2024 00:00:00 GMTBiblical HebrewLexicographyMythologyBible Translationhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/shiphrah-and-puah-two-strong-women/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/shiphrah-and-puah-two-strong-women/Ilona Rashkow — The two midwives who defy Pharaoh's genocidal decree in Exodus 1 are examined both as a test case for recovering women's experience from a text assumed to be written by and for men, and as the Bible's first recorded act of civil disobedience in defense of a moral imperative. The article surveys the long-running debate over whether Shiphrah and Puah were themselves Hebrew or Egyptian — weighing rabbinic identifications of the pair with Jochebed and Miriam against modern arguments, following Francis Nataf, that Pharaoh's mild response to their insubordination and the text's use of 'fearing God' point toward an Egyptian identity — and considers what their reward of 'houses' (Ex. 1:20-21) may have meant. Whatever their origin, the article argues, the midwives' evasive answer to Pharaoh is itself a subtle and sardonic act of resistance.Mon, 01 Apr 2024 00:00:00 GMTWomen in the BibleExodus NarrativeRabbinic InterpretationCivil Disobediencehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/a-new-approach-to-the-hitpael-conjugation/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/a-new-approach-to-the-hitpael-conjugation/Russell Jay Hendel — Against the traditional grammatical consensus that the hitpael conjugation primarily marks reflexive action, this article proposes that it instead marks an active verb performed under some influence — a counter-influence resisting the act, an inner emotion driving it, or the influence of another person — and tests the proposal against ten paired verses (one hitpael, one in another conjugation) describing the same or a parallel act. Cases examined include Adam's hiding after eating the forbidden fruit, the golden calf's donated jewelry, Absalom's plotting brothers, and Rashi's comments on Moses needling Pharaoh over the plague of frogs. The article also offers an alternative to Gesenius's historical explanation of why some verbs of mourning appear in the hitpael and others in the qal, arguing the difference tracks emotional influence rather than the period in which a passage was composed.Mon, 01 Apr 2024 00:00:00 GMTBiblical Hebrew GrammarVerb ConjugationRashiLinguisticshttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/transition-to-and-from-aramaic-in-daniel/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/transition-to-and-from-aramaic-in-daniel/Zvi Ron — The book of Daniel shifts from Hebrew to Aramaic at 2:4 and back to Hebrew at chapter 8, a transition that does not track the book's usual division between the court tales of chapters 1-6 and the visions of chapters 7-12. Following Ibn Ezra and Abarbanel, the article first considers the traditional explanation that the Aramaic sections simply preserve the actual language in which the recorded dialogue and archival records took place, comparable to the Aramaic documents embedded in Ezra-Nehemiah, before turning to Abarbanel's further claim that chapter 7 stays in Aramaic because it is still dated to Babylonian rule while chapter 8 shifts to Hebrew because it marks Babylonia's end. The article then proposes a complementary, more thematic reading: that the shift from Hebrew to Aramaic and back to Hebrew is designed to walk the reader through the experience of exile and redemption, reinforced by the book's three separate mentions of Cyrus at the close of each of its major sections.Mon, 01 Apr 2024 00:00:00 GMTBook of DanielBiblical AramaicExile and RedemptionLiterary Structurehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/conundrum-ki-haadam-etz-hasadeh/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/conundrum-ki-haadam-etz-hasadeh/Joshua Backon — Deuteronomy 20:19's prohibition on destroying a besieged city's fruit trees — Are trees of the field human to withdraw before you under siege? — is read alongside ancient Near Eastern siege accounts (Thutmose III at Megiddo, Shalmaneser III against Damascus, Tiglath-Pileser III against Rezin) that describe armies literally felling orchards to build siegeworks, supporting the verse's plain sense as a rhetorical question rather than a comparison of people to trees. The article then asks why the halakhic category of gidulei karka ('something that grows from the ground'), applied to human beings in several talmudic and later sources, is never proved from this verse despite an extensive literature search, when Deuteronomy 20:19 would seem a far more fitting prooftext than the one the Talmud actually uses (Lev. 25:46). The author suggests the Sages preferred the plain, non-metaphorical reading of the verse followed by Rashi, which leaves it without bearing on the gidulei karka question.Mon, 01 Apr 2024 00:00:00 GMTHalakhaBiblical WarfareAncient Near EastDeuteronomyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/book-review-jps-tanakh-gender-sensitive-edition/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/book-review-jps-tanakh-gender-sensitive-edition/David J. Zucker — A review of The JPS Tanakh: Gender-Sensitive Edition (2023), the first complete gender-sensitive translation of the Hebrew Bible into English, tracing its lineage from the 2006 Contemporary Torah and detailing how the new RJPS renders the tetragrammaton as 'the ETERNAL' rather than 'the LORD' and recasts masculine-generic language such as 'He who fatally strikes a man' as 'One who fatally strikes another.' The review situates the edition's methodology — guided by accessibility, clarity, and authenticity — against the 1985 NJPS it revises, and notes the physical quality of the new volume as a minor disappointment.Mon, 01 Apr 2024 00:00:00 GMTBook ReviewBible TranslationGender and Languagehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/book-review-textual-history-of-the-bible-vienna/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/book-review-textual-history-of-the-bible-vienna/Simcha Rosenberg — A review of the proceedings volume from the Fifteenth International Symposium of Hebrew University's Orion Center for the Study of the Dead Sea Scrolls, covering three areas: Second Temple period scripture (mainly the Dead Sea Scrolls), Greek scripture texts from the Jewish Wars to the early Masoretic codices, and the Vienna Papyrus Collection's roughly 200 Hebrew texts from late antique and medieval Egypt. Highlights singled out include Geoffrey Khan's account of the relationship between the Karaites and the Masoretic tradition, Nancy Benovitz's discussion of a Jewish apotropaic silver amulet, and Alexander Rofe's chapter arguing that the identity of the prophet Malachi may in fact be Haggai, based on a Septuagint interpolation at Malachi 1:1 and the shared title 'the LORD's messenger.'Mon, 01 Apr 2024 00:00:00 GMTBook ReviewDead Sea ScrollsTextual CriticismMasoretic Texthttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/male-virility-and-biblical-power-dynamics/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/male-virility-and-biblical-power-dynamics/Reuven Chaim Klein — The Babylonian Talmud reads three biblical sexual encounters — King David and Bathsheba, Zimri and Cozbi, and Sisera and Jael — as multi-coital, assigning each a precise (and physiologically impossible) number of acts. This article argues that these assertions, however hyperbolic, all serve a single motif: sex as a display of power and dominance, allowing David, Zimri, and Sisera each to reassert a threatened claim to status. It surveys the exegetical bases the Talmud and commentators offer for each count and situates the inflated numbers within the broader rabbinic convention of hyperbolic stock numbers.Mon, 01 Jan 2024 00:00:00 GMTSexuality and PowerTalmudic InterpretationRabbinic HermeneuticsNumerologyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/a-provincial-who-married-a-princess/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/a-provincial-who-married-a-princess/Shubert Spero — A midrashic parable in Yalkut Shimoni compares a provincial man married to a princess — who can never satisfy her because she is accustomed to royal life — to the human soul, which no earthly labor can fully nourish because it originates 'from Above.' Working from a close reading of Ecclesiastes 6:7 that separates the verse's two clauses, the article recovers Rabbi Levi's reading of ha-nefesh as 'the soul' rather than 'appetite,' and argues that this midrash, along with the closing verses of Ecclesiastes, anticipates key emphases of twentieth-century religious existentialism, notably Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik's account of man's irreducible loneliness.Mon, 01 Jan 2024 00:00:00 GMTRabbinic MidrashSoul and BodyExistentialismBiblical Exegesishttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/daughters-of-zelophehad/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/daughters-of-zelophehad/Ilona Rashkow — Setting the story of Zelophehad's daughters (Numbers 27 and 36) against inheritance law across the ancient Near East — the Laws of Hammurabi, Lipit Ishtar, the Assyrian Laws, and the Elephantine papyri — this article argues that the Bible's strict patrilineal inheritance rule reflects a clan-based social structure distinct from Israel's more urbanized neighbors. It traces how the daughters' calculated, deferential approach to Moses secured a narrow but real legal innovation: daughters inherit when there are no sons, provided they marry within their father's tribe, and examines rabbinic traditions that cast the sisters as wise, pious interpreters of the law rather than mere petitioners.Mon, 01 Jan 2024 00:00:00 GMTWomen's RightsInheritance LawAncient Near EastFeminist Interpretationhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/fall-of-jericho/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/fall-of-jericho/Benjamin Scolnic — Rather than pursue archaeological or naturalistic explanations for Jericho's fall, this article reads Joshua 6 against the disastrous majority report of the scouts in Numbers 13 — a report whose truthful core (large, fortified, unconquerable cities) was distorted into exaggerated, fear-mongering rhetoric that condemned a generation to die in the wilderness. Joshua's insistence on total silence during the seven-day circuit of Jericho, broken only by a single unified shout, is read as a corrective: where the scouts' divided, doubting voices brought catastrophe, the new generation's unanimous, obedient shout brings down the walls, demonstrating that the conquest depends on unity and trust in God rather than military stratagem.Mon, 01 Jan 2024 00:00:00 GMTConquest NarrativesCollective ObedienceRhetoric and Leadershiphttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/form-and-function-of-the-luchot/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/form-and-function-of-the-luchot/Geula Twersky — The Torah says almost nothing about the physical form of the Luchot, yet centuries of art — from Michelangelo to the Bnei Akiva logo — have fixed a square or round-topped tablet in the popular imagination. Surveying rabbinic debate over how many commandments each tablet held (five, ten, or twenty), the article develops David Peter's proposal that the Luchot were not flat tablets at all but cylinder seals, a reading that resolves several talmudic puzzles — the mysterious silver rods kept alongside them in the Ark, the tradition that their text was legible in reverse — and reframes the Luchot's function from law code or covenant relic to God's own seal of authority, transferred to Israel at Sinai.Mon, 01 Jan 2024 00:00:00 GMTTablets of the LawAncient Near Eastern ParallelsTalmudic InterpretationSymbolismhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/shifra-shfoferet-therapeutic-technique/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/shifra-shfoferet-therapeutic-technique/Joshua Backon — The Talmud's etymologies for the names of the midwives Shifra and Puah (Exodus 1:15-21) associate them with cleaning and comforting newborns, but a comment of R. Meir of Rothenburg links Shifra's name to shfoferet, a tube used rectally to revive infants believed stillborn. This short note argues that the comment preserves a genuine ancient medical technique — overlooked by Julius Preuss's standard survey of biblical and talmudic medicine — that anticipates the recently documented cardiovascular effects of digital rectal stimulation in terminating cardiac arrhythmias.Mon, 01 Jan 2024 00:00:00 GMTTalmudic MedicineMidwiferyEtymologyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/zeh-as-a-derogatory-demonstrative/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/zeh-as-a-derogatory-demonstrative/Jeffrey M. Cohen — The Hebrew demonstrative zeh usually does no more than point, but this article collects eighteen biblical passages — from Rebecca's anguished lamah zeh anokhi to Achashverosh's furious mi hu zeh — where zeh instead carries a sharp derogatory or contemptuous charge that standard translations (JPS, Koren, NKJV, NRSV) routinely flatten or miss. Working example by example through Genesis, Exodus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, Samuel, Kings, Hosea, Psalms, Lamentations, and Esther, the article proposes emphatic renderings — 'this no-good fellow,' 'this contemptible people,' 'this scoundrel' — that recover the emotional register the plain demonstrative otherwise obscures.Mon, 01 Jan 2024 00:00:00 GMTBiblical HebrewPhilologyTranslationDemonstrative Pronounshttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/tensions-between-jews-and-christians/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/tensions-between-jews-and-christians/Yohanan Kapah — Examines how the fifteenth-century Lisbon exegete R. Joseph Hayyun engaged, both directly and through implication, with Christian interpretations of Jeremiah in a period marked by disputations such as Tortosa and mounting pressure on Iberian Jewry. Kapah shows that Hayyun rarely confronts Christological readings head-on — doing so only twice, on Jeremiah 23:6 and 23:38 — preferring instead an indirect strategy of insisting on the Torah's permanence, rejecting divine materiality, and affirming that the exile and its promised redemption remain future events. The article situates Hayyun within a broader tradition, alongside Rashi and Kimhi, of Jewish commentators who used adherence to the plain sense of Scripture as a quiet rebuttal of allegorical Christian exegesis.Sun, 01 Oct 2023 00:00:00 GMTJewish-Christian PolemicsMedieval Jewish ExegesisMessianismBiblical Commentaryhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/looking-through-the-window/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/looking-through-the-window/Ilona Rashkow — Traces the recurring biblical motif of characters who look — or are looked at — through a window, contrasting the passive, socially confined gaze of elite women such as Sisera's mother, Michal, and Jezebel with the active agency of Rahab, who uses her window to save herself and the Israelite spies. Reads Abimelech's glimpse of Isaac and Rebekah, and Daniel's enemies spying on him at prayer, as parallel male-authored scenes in which looking through a window yields enlightenment rather than confinement. Argues that the gendered asymmetry of the motif — women observed and immobilized, men empowered by what they see — runs through Genesis, Judges, Samuel, and Kings alike, with Rahab standing as the exception that proves the rule.Sun, 01 Oct 2023 00:00:00 GMTGender in the BibleNarrative MotifsWomen in the Biblehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/enoch-and-elijah-ascent-to-heaven/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/enoch-and-elijah-ascent-to-heaven/Shaul Bar — Argues, against the popular legend that Enoch and Elijah ascended bodily to heaven, that both biblical accounts originally described ordinary deaths whose euphemistic language — 'he was not' and 'God took him' for Enoch, disappearance in a whirlwind for Elijah — later gave rise to apocalyptic and rabbinic traditions of literal ascension. Draws on Genesis Rabbah, Targumic renderings, and the Mesopotamian Enmeduranki tradition to show how Enoch's story was reshaped by later Jewish and Christian apocalyptic literature into the Enoch/Metatron mythology, while Elijah's ascent became bound up with messianic expectation. Concludes that by the Talmudic period the belief that mortals could ascend to heaven had become fully naturalized despite the ambiguity of the original texts.Sun, 01 Oct 2023 00:00:00 GMTAfterlife and ResurrectionRabbinic LegendMesopotamian ParallelsMessianismhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/when-peace-fails-psalm-120/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/when-peace-fails-psalm-120/Adele Berlin — A brief homiletical reading of Psalm 120, written in the aftermath of October 7, 2023, that reads the psalm's opening plea for rescue from 'treacherous lips' and 'a deceitful tongue' as a meditation on how deceptive speech precedes and enables violence. Compares the psalm's imagery of arrows and hot coals to similar figures elsewhere in the Psalter, and reads the speaker's exile among 'those who hate peace' as an image of living amid enemies whose worldview is fundamentally hostile to peace. Closes by urging readers to hold onto the psalm's opening confidence that God answers those who call to Him in distress.Sun, 01 Oct 2023 00:00:00 GMTPsalmsWar and PeaceRhetoric of Deceptionhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/ishmael-ben-nethaniahs-massacre-of-the-pilgrims/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/ishmael-ben-nethaniahs-massacre-of-the-pilgrims/Benjamin Scolnic — Reconsiders the assassination of Gedaliah and the subsequent massacre of eighty pilgrims by Ishmael ben Nethaniah (Jer. 41), arguing against the common view that Ishmael sought the Judean throne; Scolnic proposes instead that he was acting as an agent of Baalis, king of Ammon, seeking to prevent any restoration of Judean power and its Temple center. The article also revisits the pilgrims' self-gashing, disputing Brian Schmidt's claim that the practice was permitted before a late, post-Jeremianic prohibition; Scolnic argues the biblical prohibition (Lev. 19, 21; Deut. 14) is early, and that these particular pilgrims — from the northern towns of Shechem, Shiloh, and Samaria — may reflect surviving Canaanite mourning customs rather than normative Judean practice.Sun, 01 Oct 2023 00:00:00 GMTSelf-Mutilation ProhibitionBabylonian ExileAssassination NarrativesRitual Lawhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/what-animal-was-the-tinshemet/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/what-animal-was-the-tinshemet/Moshe Raanan — Investigates the identity of the tinshemet, an animal named twice in Leviticus 11 — once among forbidden birds, once among forbidden crawling creatures — through the lens of the Talmudic gloss that both are 'ba'ut.' Tracing manuscript variants, Aramaic Targum renderings, and the etymological link to the Hebrew root for breathing, Raanan argues that the bird-tinshemet is best identified as an owl and the vermin-tinshemet as the blind mole-rat, both nocturnal, breath-marked creatures of darkness. The article weighs classical sources (Rashi, Onkelos, Targum Pseudo-Jonathan) against the divergent identifications of the Septuagint and Vulgate.Sun, 01 Oct 2023 00:00:00 GMTBiblical ZoologyTalmudic PhilologyDietary Lawshttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/avoiding-amalek-three-approaches/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/avoiding-amalek-three-approaches/Zvi Ron — Surveys three rabbinic strategies for functionally neutralizing the Torah's command to annihilate Amalek without confronting its ethical difficulty head-on: the claim that Amalek can no longer be identified after Sennacherib's population transfers, the view that the command applies only in messianic times once a king is installed, and the position that Amalek has already been wiped out. Ron draws a structural parallel to the Talmud's treatment of the 'stubborn and rebellious son,' where impossible legal conditions render a harsh law purely theoretical, and closes by noting the modern homiletical use of 'Amalek' for enemies like the Nazis that leaves the underlying legal question unresolved.Sun, 01 Oct 2023 00:00:00 GMTEthics of WarHalakhic InterpretationAmalek Traditionhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/60th-international-bible-contest/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/60th-international-bible-contest/Joshua Backon — A brief report on the 60th International Bible Contest for Jewish Youth, held in Jerusalem on Israel's Independence Day and sponsored by Israel's Ministry of Education, the Jewish Agency, and Keren Kayemet, with the Jewish Bible Association as an affiliate sponsor. Notes that for the first time in seventeen years both finalists were Israeli girls, Emuna Cohen (winner) and Neta Lax (runner-up), and describes the ceremony at which Prime Minister Netanyahu and other officials presented the prizes.Sun, 01 Oct 2023 00:00:00 GMTBible EducationJewish Youth Programshttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/book-review-textual-criticism-of-the-hebrew-bible/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/book-review-textual-criticism-of-the-hebrew-bible/David J. Zucker — Reviews the revised and expanded fourth edition of Emanuel Tov's Textual Criticism of the Hebrew Bible, describing how the new edition streamlines the theoretical apparatus of earlier versions in favor of a more practical handbook built around tables, annotated sample texts, and exercises. Zucker walks through the volume's two-part structure — the textual witnesses (the Masoretic Text, the Dead Sea Scrolls, and the ancient versions) and the practice of textual criticism itself — and highlights its expanded discussion of digital editions of the Hebrew Bible.Sun, 01 Oct 2023 00:00:00 GMTTextual CriticismDead Sea ScrollsMasoretic TextBook Reviewhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/book-review-kohelet-a-map-to-eden/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/book-review-kohelet-a-map-to-eden/Reuven Chaim Klein — Reviews David Curwin's Kohelet: A Map to Eden, which applies Rabbi David Fohrman's keyword-based intertextual method to argue that Ecclesiastes encodes a hidden narrative connecting Solomon's own spiritual decline to Adam's expulsion from Eden and Israel's failure with the spies. Klein highlights Curwin's reading of the refrain hevel as an echo of Abel's name, making Kohelet's laments a kind of mourning voiced through Adam, and praises the book's non-linear, keyword-driven method as an accessible entry into a notoriously enigmatic biblical book.Sun, 01 Oct 2023 00:00:00 GMTEcclesiastes StudiesIntertextualityBook ReviewRabbinic Hermeneuticshttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/moses-our-nursemaid/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/moses-our-nursemaid/Daniel A. Klein — A philological investigation of the obscure Hebrew word omen in Moses' complaint at Numbers 11:12, where he asks whether he must carry the people 'as an omen carries an infant.' Surveying translations and commentators from the Septuagint through modern scholarship — nurse, foster father, nursing father, nursing-parent, educator, and wet-nurse's husband — the article shows that each rendering runs into difficulty, and argues on the strength of the sevenfold repetition of the root nasa ('to carry') in Numbers 11:11-17 that omen denotes not a nurse but a child's primary male caregiver, a meaning that also clarifies the word's later uses for Mordecai and for the kings of Isaiah's vision.Sat, 01 Jul 2023 00:00:00 GMTBiblical HebrewPhilologyMosesTranslation Historyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/i-am-the-lord-who-heals-you/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/i-am-the-lord-who-heals-you/Ilona Rashkow — A survey of health, illness, and healing in the Hebrew Bible, framed by the covenantal claim of Exodus 15:26 that God alone is Israel's healer. The article traces biblical prayers for the sick, the ambivalent rabbinic and biblical attitude toward human physicians, the Bible's treatments for wounds and illness against the backdrop of Ancient Near Eastern magic and medicine, and the theology of fertility and barrenness, arguing that all of these threads return to the same premise: that health is a mitzvah bound up with Israel's relationship to God.Sat, 01 Jul 2023 00:00:00 GMTAncient Near EastMedicine and HealingDivine ProvidenceFertilityhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-meaning-and-interpretation-of-saf/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-meaning-and-interpretation-of-saf/Zvi Ron — The biblical word saf oscillates between two apparently unrelated meanings, 'threshold' and 'basin' or 'vessel,' a duality already registered in the Tannaitic dispute between R. Yishmael and R. Akiva over the blood of the Paschal offering in Exodus 12:22. Tracing the same ambiguity through the guards of the saf in Esther 2:21, the article argues that commentators who chose the rarer 'vessel' meaning were not simply parsing philology but pursuing exegetical payoffs — aligning the Exodus sacrifice with later Israelite ritual, or strengthening the narrative parallels between Esther and the Joseph story — even though the Akkadian cognate sippu and the balance of biblical usage favor 'threshold' as the primary sense.Sat, 01 Jul 2023 00:00:00 GMTBiblical HebrewPhilologyRabbinic ExegesisRitual Lawhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-altar-of-ahaz-and-monarchical-polytheism/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-altar-of-ahaz-and-monarchical-polytheism/Benjamin Scolnic — King Ahaz's altar, copied from a model he saw in Damascus and installed in the Jerusalem Temple in II Kings 16, has long been read either as a straightforward act of pagan syncretism or, on a more sympathetic reading, as a legitimate act of devotion to the LORD conducted in traditional sacrificial form. Weighing the traditional cultic detail of the II Kings account, the silence of Isaiah and Chronicles about the altar itself, and the compliance of the priest Uriah against the negative Deuteronomistic and Chronistic portraits of Ahaz, the article argues that Ahaz is best understood not as a straightforward idolater but as a 'monarchical polytheist' — a king whose flexible, politically motivated religious practice combined traditional YHWH worship with tolerance of other cults.Sat, 01 Jul 2023 00:00:00 GMTMonarchyIdolatry and PolytheismTemple WorshipBiblical Historiographyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/for-he-took-a-cushite-woman/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/for-he-took-a-cushite-woman/David Fachler — An examination of Miriam and Aaron's slander of Moses over 'the Cushite woman' in Numbers 12, tracing the classical midrashic reading (that the phrase is a euphemism for Moses' celibate separation from Zipporah) against the more literalist readings of Rashbam and R. Joseph Bechor Shor, and Ibn Caspi's sharp objection that the midrash smuggles in a Christian-monastic ideal of celibacy foreign to Judaism. Drawing on Adiel Schremer's argument that the midrash was in fact composed to polemicize against Christian celibacy rather than to endorse it, the article concludes that the episode's real lesson is not the virtue of abstinence but the humility God praises in Moses, who alone among the prophets was commanded to separate from his wife.Sat, 01 Jul 2023 00:00:00 GMTRabbinic ExegesisMosesMarriage and CelibacyMidrashhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/connecting-psalm-50-with-christianity/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/connecting-psalm-50-with-christianity/Yaakov Jaffe — David Berger called Don Isaac Abarbanel's reading of Psalm 50 as a prophetic rebuke of Christian doctrine 'stunning' and traced it to the late fifteenth century. This article shows the anti-Christian reading is considerably older: Radak, in the early thirteenth century, already attributes an anonymous elderly scholar's identification of Psalm 50:21 with the doctrine of incarnation, and the Talmud's discussion of the death of Yeishu's disciples in Sanhedrin 43b appears to presuppose the same association centuries earlier still. The article surveys the Psalm's content, its unusual triple divine names and 'son of your mother' phrasing, and the layered history of a reading that is simultaneously theological exegesis and Jewish-Christian polemic.Sat, 01 Jul 2023 00:00:00 GMTPsalmsJewish-Christian PolemicsMedieval Jewish ExegesisRabbinic Literaturehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/book-review-torah-song/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/book-review-torah-song/Lara Kwalbrun — Geula Twersky on the poetry set at the Torah's critical moments, and what its devices are doing there. The reviewer takes the book's claim seriously: that Torah poetry is a loosely connected network of meditations linking the five books, on God's sovereignty and Israel's role as keepers of the covenant.Sat, 01 Jul 2023 00:00:00 GMTBook ReviewBiblical PoetryBiblical Theologyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/letter-to-the-editor-51-3/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/letter-to-the-editor-51-3/Shubert Spero — On Ilona Rashkow's article about the Azazel ritual in JBQ 51:2. Asks whether any neighbouring culture selected its scapegoat by lot as the Bible does, and takes up her reading of the high priest laying both hands on the goat — not only "this is mine" but "this is me" — against the writer's own earlier suggestion that the two goats stand for two components of human consciousness.Sat, 01 Jul 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-repeated-use-of-vayomer/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-repeated-use-of-vayomer/Ephraim A. Landau — Examines the biblical narrative habit of dividing one character's uninterrupted speech into parts by repeating vayo'mer ('he said') with no change of speaker or narratorial comment in between. Working through examples from Genesis and Exodus involving both divine and human speakers, the article tests how source critics (Driver, Noth, Friedman) treat these repetitions against traditional Jewish commentary, and argues that in most cases the repetition functions as a stylistic device — marking a shift in topic, tone, or logical step — rather than as a seam between spliced sources.Sat, 01 Apr 2023 00:00:00 GMTBiblical HebrewNarrative TechniqueSource CriticismPentateuchhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/azazel-the-scapegoat/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/azazel-the-scapegoat/Ilona Rashkow — Traces the Yom Kippur scapegoat ritual of Leviticus 16 — in which the sins of Israel are transferred onto a live goat sent into the wilderness to Azazel — against comparable 'sending-away' rites from Ebla, Hatti, Ugarit, and Neo-Assyria. Rashkow argues the ritual answers a specific problem the two sacrificial goats cannot solve: intentional sin, unlike impurity, cannot be neutralized on-site and must instead be physically relocated far from the tabernacle. The article closes by tracing how this transference logic dropped out of Yom Kippur observance once the Temple fell and prayer and repentance took its place.Sat, 01 Apr 2023 00:00:00 GMTYom KippurRitual and SacrificeAncient Near EastComparative Religionhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/awesome-artistry-song-of-songs/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/awesome-artistry-song-of-songs/Joshua M. Sears — Tackles the notorious crux of ayummah kannidgalot, the phrase describing the beloved in Song of Songs 6:4 and 6:10, surveying the military, astral, and 'sights/visions' readings scholars have proposed for nidgalot and the discomfort many have felt in rendering the same two words differently across the two verses. Drawing on modern linguistic theory about context-dependent meaning, Sears argues that the phrase is not required to mean the same thing twice: the cities of 6:4 prime a martial reading ('awesome as a bannered host'), while the sun-and-moon imagery of 6:10 primes a celestial one, with the first occurrence itself priming the reader for the shift in the second.Sat, 01 Apr 2023 00:00:00 GMTSong of SongsBiblical HebrewPhilologyLinguisticshttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/let-my-outcasts-moab-find-asylum/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/let-my-outcasts-moab-find-asylum/Benjamin Scolnic — Rereads Isaiah 15-16, a lament over Moab's suffering unusual among Isaiah's oracles against foreign nations for its sympathy rather than gloating, and surveys the wide range of proposed historical settings scholars have assigned it, from the ninth century to the Hasmonean period. Scolnic argues that the specificity of place names and the freedom of movement the text describes fit a natural disaster — an earthquake or drought in the geologically volatile Dead Sea region — better than a military invasion, which makes Isaiah's plea for Judah to shelter Moabite refugees a call grounded in compassion rather than conquest. The article situates that plea within the Bible's longer, ambivalent history of Israelite-Moabite relations, from Lot and Ruth to the Mesha stele.Sat, 01 Apr 2023 00:00:00 GMTProphetic LiteratureMoabRefugees and CompassionHistorical Geographyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-meaning-of-tzantrot/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-meaning-of-tzantrot/Zvi Ron — Investigates the hapax legomenon tzantrot in Zechariah's menorah vision (4:12), which supplies the oil channel connecting the two olive trees to the lamp and, by extension, stands in for the 'two sons of the anointed ones' — Joshua the high priest and Zerubavel. Ron lays out three competing identifications (a pipe or vessel, human olive pressers, or Persian-derived mythological beings) and shows how each carries a different theological claim about how much agency Second Temple leaders had in a divine project traditionally described as happening 'not with valor and not with strength, but with My spirit.'Sat, 01 Apr 2023 00:00:00 GMTProphetic LiteratureSecond Temple PeriodPhilologyHapax Legomenahttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-message-of-the-four-species/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-message-of-the-four-species/Geula Twersky — Reconsiders the four species of Sukkot — lulav, etrog, hadas and arava — starting from an anomaly traditional harvest-festival readings can't explain: none of the four bears edible fruit. Tracing the word hadar and its cognates through military, majestic, and water-in-the-desert contexts across the Torah, Prophets and Psalms, Twersky argues the four species function as a symbolic set of disarmed war implements, paraded to credit God rather than human strength for victory — a reading corroborated by Bar Kokhba's wartime letters requesting citrons and palm branches for his troops, and by the prophetic image of swords beaten into plowshares.Sat, 01 Apr 2023 00:00:00 GMTSukkotRitual SymbolismBiblical HebrewSecond Temple Periodhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/tamar-triumphant-targumim/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/tamar-triumphant-targumim/David J. Zucker — Compares how the three Aramaic Targumim to the Torah — Onqelos, Neofiti, and Pseudo-Jonathan — render the Tamar-Judah narrative of Genesis 38, from small euphemistic substitutions (translating 'Canaanite' as 'merchant,' 'prostitute' as 'one who goes out') to Neofiti's and Pseudo-Jonathan's substantially expanded scene at the burning, in which Tamar prays for her three pledges and a heavenly voice exonerates her and Judah. Zucker argues that across these expansions the Targumim consistently reshape Tamar from the Bible's quick-witted, tenacious figure into a resourceful, restrained, and explicitly vindicated heroine — 'Tamar triumphant.'Sat, 01 Apr 2023 00:00:00 GMTTargumAramaic LiteratureRabbinic InterpretationWomen in the Biblehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/when-he-saw-the-agalot-jacobs-spirit-revived/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/when-he-saw-the-agalot-jacobs-spirit-revived/Nava Finkelman — Rashi's midrash links Jacob's revived spirit at the sight of Joseph's wagons ('agalot) to the laws of the eglah arufah, the heifer whose neck is broken to atone for an unsolved murder. This article traces how medieval commentators from Rashbam to the Maharal explain that connection, and argues that the deeper link lies in shared guilt: just as the elders of a city bear responsibility for a traveler killed after leaving without an escort, Jacob may have felt responsible for sending Joseph unescorted to his brothers. Reading Jacob's later statement 'alai hayu khulanah with the sense of 'on my account' rather than 'upon me,' the author suggests that Jacob's revived spirit reflects not only relief that Joseph lives, but the realization that Joseph's survival exonerates him of guilt for having sent his son into danger.Sun, 01 Jan 2023 00:00:00 GMTMidrashGenesis NarrativeGuilt and AtonementRabbinic Exegesishttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/was-samuel-a-priest/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/was-samuel-a-priest/Shaul Bar — Although I Chronicles 6 traces Samuel's lineage to Levi, I Samuel 1:1 identifies him as an Ephraimite, and this article argues that the Chronicler's genealogy is an artificial construction meant to glorify the tribe of Levi rather than a historical record. Surveying Samuel's activities at Shiloh, Mizpah, Gilgal, and Ramah, the author shows that building altars, offering sacrifices, blessing meals, and interceding in prayer were not exclusive priestly prerogatives, and were also performed by kings, elders, and prophets such as Elijah and Joshua. The article concludes that Samuel served as a temple attendant (na'ar) under Eli rather than as a priest, and that his true legacy — confirmed by the failure of the prophecy in I Samuel 2:35 to apply to him — was as Israel's prophet, not its priest.Sun, 01 Jan 2023 00:00:00 GMTPriesthoodLevitesProphecyBiblical Genealogyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/i-am-the-woman-story-and-prayer-of-hannah/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/i-am-the-woman-story-and-prayer-of-hannah/Benjamin Scolnic — Reading I Samuel 1-2 on its own terms, this article argues that the Hannah narrative offers a positive feminist perspective centuries before the concept existed, contrasting Hannah's spiritual clarity with the limited understanding shown by both her husband Elkanah and the priest Eli. The author traces how Hannah's silent prayer, her vow, her naming of Samuel, and her control over when he enters temple service all demonstrate a woman directing her own destiny rather than being merely a vessel for reproduction. Addressing the scholarly consensus that Hannah's song in I Samuel 2:1-10 is a secondary interpolation — given its military imagery and reference to a future king — the article contends that regardless of the poem's origin, the text's attribution of it to Hannah makes a deliberate claim: a woman can pray with power and be answered by God.Sun, 01 Jan 2023 00:00:00 GMTBiblical FeminismPrayer and WorshipWomen in the BiblePsalmshttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/chattel-or-laws-relating-to-female-slaves/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/chattel-or-laws-relating-to-female-slaves/Ilona Rashkow — This article surveys the laws governing female slaves in ancient Israel, arguing that they represent a compromise between property law, which treated the slave as chattel, and family law, which recognized her personhood and reproductive role. Comparing biblical statutes on the sold daughter (Exodus 21:7-11), the captive bride (Deuteronomy 21:10-14), and concubinage with parallel provisions in the Laws of Hammurabi, Ur-Nammu, and the Hittite laws, the author shows that biblical law extended female slaves protections — rights to food, clothing, and conjugal relations, restrictions on resale, and a right of redemption — largely unparalleled in neighboring legal systems. The article concludes that while far from egalitarian, biblical law resisted treating the female slave purely as property, affording her a measure of humanity absent from comparable Near Eastern codes.Sun, 01 Jan 2023 00:00:00 GMTSlaveryWomen in the BibleAncient Near East LawBiblical Lawhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/liturgical-uses-of-psalm-29-interpretations/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/liturgical-uses-of-psalm-29-interpretations/Yaakov Jaffe — Psalm 29 is recited in three distinct liturgical settings — the weekly return of the Torah to the ark, Kabbalat Shabbat, and the festival of Sukkot — and this article argues that each setting reflects a different medieval interpretation of the psalm's ambiguous imagery of voice, fire, and water. Rashi, following the Talmud, reads the psalm as a commemoration of the giving of the Torah at Sinai; Ibn Ezra reads it as a description of a literal storm; and Radak reads it as a vision of messianic redemption, a reading reinforced by the psalm's parallels to the messianic Psalms 95-99. The article concludes that the choice of when to recite an ambiguous biblical text in the liturgy effectively fixes one interpretation of that text, and that reciting Psalm 29 in all three contexts commits worshippers, whether they realize it or not, to holding multiple readings of the same words simultaneously.Sun, 01 Jan 2023 00:00:00 GMTPsalmsLiturgyRabbinic ExegesisJewish Prayerhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/tamar-triumphant-rewritten-bibles/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/tamar-triumphant-rewritten-bibles/David J. Zucker — This article examines how the story of Judah and Tamar in Genesis 38 was retold by Second Temple-era 'Rewritten Bible' texts — Jubilees, the Testament of Judah, and Pseudo-Philo's Biblical Antiquities — each reshaping the biblical account to fit its own agenda. Jubilees and the Testament of Judah both make Judah's Canaanite wife responsible for the family's troubles and identify Tamar as an Aramean to preserve the purity of Judah's line, but the misogynistic Testament of Judah alone omits Tamar's vindication and casts her as duplicitous. By contrast, Pseudo-Philo's Biblical Antiquities transforms Tamar into a heroine invoked by Moses' father Amram as a model of faith and resistance to intermarriage, so that across most of these retellings, with the exception of the Testament of Judah, an already resourceful biblical Tamar becomes even more triumphant.Sun, 01 Jan 2023 00:00:00 GMTSecond Temple LiteratureWomen in the BibleRewritten BibleGenesis Narrativehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/abraham-and-isaac-human-frailty-and-trauma/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/abraham-and-isaac-human-frailty-and-trauma/Stephen Spector — Reading the Abraham-Isaac narratives through the lens of clinical trauma theory, this article argues that Isaac's lifelong passivity, neediness, blindness, and avoidance of his father are literary symptoms of psychological injury inflicted by the near-sacrifice at Moriah. Comparing Isaac's behavior to diagnostic features associated with PTSD — reliving, avoidance, emotional numbing, and retraumatization — the author traces how the trauma of the Akedah resurfaces when Isaac is later deceived by Rebekah and Jacob. The article situates this reading within Genesis's broader tendency to portray the patriarchs as flawed, fallible human beings rather than idealized heroes, and suggests that this candor about suffering, followed eventually by reconciliation, distinguishes the ancestral narratives from Greek tragedy.Sat, 01 Oct 2022 00:00:00 GMTTrauma and PsychologyPatriarchal NarrativesBiblical CharacterizationGenesishttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/between-the-judges-and-the-spies/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/between-the-judges-and-the-spies/Rafi Ganz — Moses' review of the appointment of judges in Deuteronomy 1 is oddly placed immediately before his review of the episode of the spies, and this article argues that the juxtaposition is deliberate rather than a seam left by careless editing. Tracing verbal and thematic parallels between the two passages — the injunction not to fear, the selection of representatives, and the language of matters 'too difficult' to resolve — the author proposes that the courage and independence demanded of the judge is offered as a model for the courage the Israelites failed to show when faced with the report of the spies. The judiciary, chosen by and from the people rather than imposed by pedigree, becomes a symbol of the former slaves' transition to an autonomous, self-governing nation, a transition the spies episode shows they were not yet ready to complete.Sat, 01 Oct 2022 00:00:00 GMTBiblical LawLeadershipDeuteronomyIsraelite JudiciarySlavery and Autonomyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-cries-of-our-rivals/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-cries-of-our-rivals/David Curwin — Deuteronomy uniquely commands Israel not to abhor Edom or Egypt, despite their history of hostility toward the Israelites, and this article uncovers a shared narrative pattern behind both prohibitions: a lost birthright, a plea for a blessing, and a 'great cry' of loss (Esau's cry in Genesis 27 and Egypt's cry after the death of the firstborn in Exodus 11-12). Because Israel bore some responsibility for each loss — Jacob's deception of Esau, Joseph's economic subjugation of the Egyptians — the Torah pairs grievance with mandated empathy rather than simple vindication. The article extends the same template to Moab, arguing that the puzzling verses about Sihon's conquest of Moabite land in Numbers 21 are meant to preserve the Moabite perspective on a loss Israel benefited from, and closes by connecting this pattern to Jonathan Sacks' argument that biblical narrative consistently directs sympathy toward the unchosen sibling.Sat, 01 Oct 2022 00:00:00 GMTDivine ElectionEnemies of IsraelBlessing and BirthrightDeuteronomyEmpathy in the Torahhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/gideon-and-the-patience-of-god/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/gideon-and-the-patience-of-god/Benjamin Scolnic — Source criticism finds strong evidence of composite authorship in the Gideon narrative of Judges 6 — repeated theophanies, two divine names, and a hero with two names — and Mark Smith and Elizabeth Bloch-Smith's recent commentary lays out that case in exhaustive detail. This article reads the same chapter as a single, deliberately unified story, arguing that its apparent repetitions instead trace a coherent progression: God patiently escalating the forms of reassurance he offers a fearful, doubting Gideon, from a human prophet to a physical angel to direct speech to two further signs on demand. The author situates this pattern of divine patience alongside similar 'doubling' scenes elsewhere in the Bible (Abraham and Sarah's laughter, the two calls of Moses) and suggests that Judges 6, read this way, dramatizes a distinctly biblical theology in which even Israel's greatest leaders are permitted their doubts.Sat, 01 Oct 2022 00:00:00 GMTSource CriticismDivine PatienceCall NarrativesJudgesBiblical Compositionhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/ones-who-have-fallen-out-miscarriage-laws/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/ones-who-have-fallen-out-miscarriage-laws/Ilona Rashkow — Surveying biblical and rabbinic law alongside archaeological and comparative Near Eastern evidence, this article examines how ancient Israel understood and regulated miscarriage — spontaneous, accidental, and intentional. It analyzes the two competing interpretive traditions of the Exodus 21:22-25 injury law, one reading the described harm as harm to the fetus, the other as harm to the pregnant woman, and surveys medical, magical, and liturgical practices used to protect pregnancies. The article traces rabbinic rulings on abortion and the purity laws of miscarriage, concluding that the fetus was generally treated as part of the mother's body rather than as a separate legal person until birth, and closes by setting these Israelite sources against comparable Mesopotamian, Hittite, Greek, and Roman traditions, several of which treated abortion far more punitively, or far more permissively, than rabbinic law did.Sat, 01 Oct 2022 00:00:00 GMTBiblical LawWomen's HistoryMiscarriage and AbortionAncient Near EastRabbinic Lawhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/psalms-37-25-and-34-11-after-meal-theology/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/psalms-37-25-and-34-11-after-meal-theology/Raymond Apple — Bir'kat HaMazon, the Grace After Meals, concludes with biblical verses affirming that the righteous never go hungry — a claim that seems to contradict lived experience. This article examines the two most troubling of these verses, Psalms 37:25 and 34:11, offering both a theological reading (in which the righteous do not feel their deprivation, or will be vindicated in God's own time) and a literary reading (in which the verses are personal poetic reflection rather than binding doctrine). Drawing on Rashi, Ibn Ezra, Radak, Samson Raphael Hirsch, and modern scholars including Jonathan Sacks and Benjamin Segal, the article concludes that readers need not be scandalized by verses that are opinion rather than dogma, even as it takes seriously why so many prayer books quietly soften their wording.Sat, 01 Oct 2022 00:00:00 GMTTheodicyPsalmsLiturgyRabbinic Exegesishttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-59th-international-bible-contest/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-59th-international-bible-contest/Joshua Backon — The first contest held in person since the pandemic, in Jerusalem on Israel's Independence Day: some 45 contestants from 20 countries, 16 of them in the teenage final, gathered at the Jewish Agency building after two years of running virtually.Sat, 01 Oct 2022 00:00:00 GMTBible ContestBible EducationIsraelhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/how-much-is-she-worth/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/how-much-is-she-worth/Ilona Rashkow — A comparative survey of marriage, dowry, inheritance, and divorce law across six Ancient Near Eastern legal traditions — Ur-Nammu, Lipit-Ishtar, Eshnunna, Hammurabi, Middle Assyrian, and Hittite — set alongside the scattered biblical evidence on the same topics. The article argues that while bride-price appears uniformly across the region, biblical law is comparatively silent on dowry and inheritance by daughters, reflecting Israel's clan-based, strictly patrilineal social structure against the more centralized, urban societies of its neighbors. It draws on the Elephantine papyri, Ugaritic marriage texts, and biblical narrative (Jacob and Rachel, Naomi, Job's daughters) to illustrate where practice diverged from or filled gaps in the formal legal record.Fri, 01 Jul 2022 00:00:00 GMTMarriage LawAncient Near EastWomen in the BibleInheritanceComparative Lawhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/you-shall-not-eat-with-the-blood/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/you-shall-not-eat-with-the-blood/Shaul Bar — An examination of the three biblical references to "eating with the blood" — the prohibition in Leviticus 19:26, the historical incident of Saul's troops in 1 Samuel 14, and the prophetic rebuke in Ezekiel 33:25 — read against medieval Jewish exegesis and comparative Ancient Near Eastern evidence for blood rituals directed at chthonic deities and the spirits of the dead. Following Nahmanides and Maimonides, the article argues that the practice was bound up with divination and with placating underworld powers, and that Saul's soldiers, eating meat where the blood of freshly slaughtered animals had been spilled, were most likely engaged in a rite meant to appease the spirits of the dead and ward off their vengeance.Fri, 01 Jul 2022 00:00:00 GMTDietary LawsDivinationAncient Near EastDeath and the Underworldhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-assassination-of-king-amon-of-judah/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-assassination-of-king-amon-of-judah/Benjamin Scolnic — A critical review of the geo-political, religious, and dynastic theories scholars have proposed to explain the courtiers' assassination of King Amon of Judah in 640 BCE, none of which the biblical text itself supports. Comparing the parallel and pointedly unembellished accounts in II Kings 21 and II Chronicles 33 with the more detailed treatment Chronicles gives other royal assassinations, the article argues that the silence is itself the evidence: the courtiers killed Amon for reasons bound up with their own position and power, not for any cause the Deuteronomic historian would have been eager to report.Fri, 01 Jul 2022 00:00:00 GMTRegicideKings of JudahBiblical HistoriographyCourt Politicshttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/jonah-chapter-2-as-a-prophetic-vision/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/jonah-chapter-2-as-a-prophetic-vision/Zvi Ron — Most classical and even rationalist Jewish commentators treated Jonah's three days in the fish as a literal miracle, but a minority tradition, traceable through Ibn Kaspi, Profiat Duran's reading of Maimonides, and later scholars, proposed instead that the episode was a prophetic vision experienced by Jonah rather than an event in observable physical reality. Surveying Ibn Ezra, Ibn Kaspi, and the disputed testimony of Rambam's Guide of the Perplexed, the article argues that commentators reserved the visionary reading for episodes marked by the appearance of an angel or a solitary protagonist, and that Jonah's story — with its cast of sailors, captain, and Ninevites acting independently — did not fit that pattern, which explains why even rationalist exegetes stopped short of calling it a vision outright.Fri, 01 Jul 2022 00:00:00 GMTProphecyRabbinic ExegesisMiracle and RationalismMedieval Jewish Commentaryhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/moses-and-the-books-of-the-pentateuch/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/moses-and-the-books-of-the-pentateuch/Shubert Spero — Building on the rabbinic tradition that Moses wrote the Torah, the article traces the recurring biblical term sefer — a written record distinguished not by physical form but by its formal, documentary style — from the "Book of the Covenant" of Exodus 24 through Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy's self-declared sefer superscription, arguing that each book grew as an open, ongoing record kept by Moses as events occurred. It further proposes that Moses composed Genesis, including the primeval history of chapters 1-11, at specific points in his mission when he recognized the Israelites' need to know the God of their ancestors and to understand the rationale for the Sabbath.Fri, 01 Jul 2022 00:00:00 GMTMosaic AuthorshipPentateuchComposition HistoryBiblical Historiographyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-westcar-papyrus-and-genesis-42-44/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-westcar-papyrus-and-genesis-42-44/David J. Fuller — Scholars have long noted Egyptian parallels to the Joseph cycle, but have largely overlooked one: the placement of crowns in a corn sack by the birth-goddesses in the fourth tale of the Middle Kingdom Westcar Papyrus, set beside Joseph's repeated placement of silver and a cup in his brothers' sacks in Genesis 42–44. Using Benjamin Sommer's distinction between literary "allusion" and mere "echo," the article works through three ways this connection could reshape a reading of the Joseph story — casting Joseph in a god-like providential role, contrasting the discovery of silver with the goddesses' gift of crowns, and linking the episode to the later promise of kingship through Judah — while concluding that the more likely function of the parallel is the simpler pleasure of an echo rather than a deliberate, meaning-bearing allusion.Fri, 01 Jul 2022 00:00:00 GMTEgyptian ParallelsJoseph NarrativeLiterary AllusionAncient Near Easthttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/book-review-voices-from-the-ruins/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/book-review-voices-from-the-ruins/David J. Zucker — A review of Dalit Rom-Shiloni's Voices from the Ruins: Theodicy and the Fall of Jerusalem in the Hebrew Bible (Eerdmans, 2021), which asks how the biblical writers — chiefly Jeremiah and Ezekiel, but also Kings, Lamentations, and a set of lament psalms — reckoned with the destruction of Jerusalem and exile without abandoning belief in a good and omnipotent God. The review highlights Rom-Shiloni's model of theodicy as a many-voiced discourse of justification, doubt, and protest organized around God's roles as king, warrior, and judge, and notes the book's demanding use of Hebrew and its place as a major contribution to the study of sixth-century BCE biblical thought.Fri, 01 Jul 2022 00:00:00 GMTBook ReviewTheodicyExile and Destructionhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/current-trends-in-academic-biblical-studies/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/current-trends-in-academic-biblical-studies/Ilona Rashkow — A survey, not an evaluation, of the major methods that have shaped academic biblical criticism from the twentieth century to today. The article moves from source, historical, form, and redaction criticism through structuralism and reader-response theory to the poststructuralist turn — intertextuality, deconstruction, and the ideological criticisms (feminist, postcolonial, Marxist) — and closes with psychological approaches to text, character, and reader. Throughout, the piece situates each method's questions and limits rather than adjudicating between them.Fri, 01 Apr 2022 00:00:00 GMTBiblical CriticismHermeneuticsAcademic MethodLiterary Theoryhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/in-search-of-bithiah-bat-pharaoh/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/in-search-of-bithiah-bat-pharaoh/Geula Twersky — Chronicles' cryptic notice that Bithiah, daughter of Pharaoh, married Mered of the tribe of Judah has usually been read either as pure midrash or, following Richard Steiner, as a memory of an otherwise unattested thirteenth-century Ramessid princess. This article argues instead, on the strength of the biblical chronology's mid-fifteenth-century Exodus and recent archaeological redatings (Mount Eval, El-Ahwat), that Bithiah is plausibly identifiable with Neferubity, the vanished daughter of Thutmose I and sister of Hatshepsut — and that the medieval commentators' readings of I Chronicles 4:18 support taking the verse's historical claim seriously rather than dissolving it into homily.Fri, 01 Apr 2022 00:00:00 GMTGenealogyChroniclesEgyptologyExodus Chronologyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/death-sentences-torahs-major-characters/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/death-sentences-torahs-major-characters/Arthur Sandman — The Torah reports the deaths of its major characters in four distinct idioms — "gathered to his kin," "died," "died there," or not at all — and this article argues that the choice among them is never random. Grouping the patriarchs with Ishmael, contrasting the matriarchs' fates with the conspicuously unrecorded deaths of Rebecca, Leah, and Esau, and reading Moses, Aaron, and Miriam's identical "died there" against the liturgy of Deuteronomy 26:5, the piece shows how the Torah's death formulas quietly rank and relate its protagonists to one another.Fri, 01 Apr 2022 00:00:00 GMTDeath and MourningNarrative TechniqueCharacterizationGenesishttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/jeremiah-and-hananiah-true-false-prophecy/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/jeremiah-and-hananiah-true-false-prophecy/Benjamin Scolnic — The confrontation in Jeremiah 28, in which Hananiah breaks the yoke symbolizing Judah's submission to Babylon, has long been read as the Bible's central test case for distinguishing true from false prophecy. Engaging Buber, Carroll, Néher, and especially Heschel's concept of prophetic pathos, this article argues that the usual rigid binaries — true/false, God/human, patriotism/treason — misdescribe the encounter. What separates Jeremiah from Hananiah is not a formal criterion but pathos: an emotional, historically attuned engagement with what God actually wants, which Hananiah's static, precedent-bound thinking lacks.Fri, 01 Apr 2022 00:00:00 GMTProphecyHermeneuticsTheologyJeremiahhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/remembering-adam-zertal/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/remembering-adam-zertal/Gabriel A. Sivan — A memorial tribute to the Israeli archaeologist Adam Zertal (1936–2015), occasioned by the posthumous English translation of his Sisera's Secret. Sivan traces Zertal's path from wounded Yom Kippur War veteran to controversial excavator of Mount Eval and El-Ahwat, and revisits his own earlier JBQ article on Haroshet Ha-Goyyim in light of Zertal's identification of Sisera's cavalry base with El-Ahwat and its Shardana Sea Peoples inhabitants — arguing that the archaeological case for locating the site in northwestern Samaria, rather than the Mount Carmel region, is now considerably stronger.Fri, 01 Apr 2022 00:00:00 GMTBiblical ArchaeologySea PeoplesMemorial TributeBook Reviewhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-exodus-census-evading-the-evil-eye/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-exodus-census-evading-the-evil-eye/Jeffrey M. Cohen — Exodus 30:11-16 requires a half-shekel 'ransom' from every census-taker to avert a negef, and Rashi explains the danger as the evil eye activated by counting large numbers. This article argues that the traditional 'evil eye' reading cannot be sustained for the Sinaitic period, and that the census, its half-shekel donation, and its restriction to men twenty and older are better explained as a military stratagem: a way to keep track of available fighting men while concealing troop strength from a watching enemy, paralleling the language of Numbers 31 in the aftermath of the Midianite war.Fri, 01 Apr 2022 00:00:00 GMTRitual LawMilitary HistorySuperstitionExodushttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/entering-our-50th-year-of-publication/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/entering-our-50th-year-of-publication/Zvi Ron — 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.Sat, 01 Jan 2022 00:00:00 GMTJournal HistoryWorld Jewish Bible SocietyEditorialhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/allusions-to-the-jacob-esau-story-in-esther/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/allusions-to-the-jacob-esau-story-in-esther/Nava Finkelman — 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.Sat, 01 Jan 2022 00:00:00 GMTIntertextualityEstherGenesis NarrativesPost-Exilic TheologyEdomhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/bridging-tradition-and-the-academy/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/bridging-tradition-and-the-academy/Hayyim Angel — 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.Sat, 01 Jan 2022 00:00:00 GMTOrthodox Bible ScholarshipBiblical CriticismMethodologyTanakh Studyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/god-called-abraham-jacob-moses-samuel/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/god-called-abraham-jacob-moses-samuel/David J. Zucker — 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.Sat, 01 Jan 2022 00:00:00 GMTDivine SpeechRhetorical DevicesRabbinic MidrashBiblical Narrativehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/lech-lecha-rearranging-chronology-terach/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/lech-lecha-rearranging-chronology-terach/Jeffrey M. Cohen — 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.Sat, 01 Jan 2022 00:00:00 GMTPatriarchal NarrativesRabbinic ExegesisChronologyCharacter Studieshttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-final-verse-of-nehemiah/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-final-verse-of-nehemiah/Zvi Ron — 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.Sat, 01 Jan 2022 00:00:00 GMTBiblical EndingsSecond Temple PeriodTemple RitualEzra-Nehemiahhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/book-review-jewish-bible-translations/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/book-review-jewish-bible-translations/David J. Zucker — 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?Sat, 01 Jan 2022 00:00:00 GMTBook ReviewBible TranslationHistory of Interpretationhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/book-review-links-to-our-legacy/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/book-review-links-to-our-legacy/Simcha Rosenberg — 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.Sat, 01 Jan 2022 00:00:00 GMTBook ReviewBiblical HebrewLiturgyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/in-memoriam-earl-h-spero/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/in-memoriam-earl-h-spero/Shubert Spero — A brief dedication opening the issue, in which Shubert Spero remembers his father, Earl H. Spero (1898-1983), an early congregational song leader (Baal Tefillah) who brought communal singing into Young Israel synagogue services in the United States and who led creative educational projects through the Spero Foundation in the 1950s and 1960s. Spero frames his father's life as an embodiment of the Levitical credo of song and service, a theme that anticipates his own following study of the tribe of Levi in this issue.Fri, 01 Oct 2021 00:00:00 GMTDedicationJewish LiturgyBiographyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-levites-a-tribe-for-all-seasons/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-levites-a-tribe-for-all-seasons/Shubert Spero — Tracing the tribe of Levi from Jacob's deathbed rebuke through the return from Babylonian exile, Spero argues that the violent, zealous impulse the Levites display at Shechem and again at the Golden Calf is progressively rechanneled over the generations into guardianship, administration, teaching, and above all liturgical song. He reads the Levites' appointment at Sinai as filling a vacuum left by the disqualified firstborn, follows their specialization into singers, gatekeepers, and officers under David and at Solomon's Temple, and credits Levitical teachers such as Ezra and Nehemiah's 'mevinim' with cementing Torah study as the tribe's enduring legacy.Fri, 01 Oct 2021 00:00:00 GMTTribe of LeviPriesthoodTemple WorshipBiblical HistoryMusic and Liturgyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/tov-veyashar-in-the-hebrew-bible-and-greece/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/tov-veyashar-in-the-hebrew-bible-and-greece/Ephraim A. Landau — Landau examines the fixed biblical 'X and Y' phrase (ha)tov ve(ha)yashar ('the good and the straight'), arguing against reading it as a classical hendiadys or a merism and instead classifying it, alongside phrases like chanun verachum, as a pair of closely related terms fused into one general idea of what is proper, pleasing, or best. He surveys the nine biblical occurrences of the phrase and its single inverted appearance in Deuteronomy 6:18, then flags a possible point of contact with the Greek world: Plato's Meno twice pairs orthos ('straight') with eu ('good'), a coincidence Landau suggests is worth further philological investigation alongside the earlier Homer-Philistines parallels noted by Stephen Walter Caesar.Fri, 01 Oct 2021 00:00:00 GMTBiblical HebrewPhilologyHendiadysComparative Literaturehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-garden-of-god/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-garden-of-god/Ilona Rashkow — Rashkow situates the biblical Garden of Eden within the wider Ancient Near Eastern genre of 'gardens of the gods' -- lush, well-watered, jewel-adorned precincts guarded against human access -- comparing Eden and Ezekiel's jewel-studded 'garden of God' (Ezek. 28:13) to the Sumerian Jewel Forest of Gilgamesh and to Ugaritic divine geography. She traces the guardian figures who bar entry to these gardens (Humbaba, the Scorpion-people, and the biblical cherubim) and argues that the nine gemstones Ezekiel assigns to Eden overlap strikingly with those on the High Priest's breastplate, suggesting that the biblical writers deliberately matched, and sought to surpass, the splendor of neighboring Near Eastern divine gardens and their attendant deities.Fri, 01 Oct 2021 00:00:00 GMTAncient Near EastGarden of EdenCherubimComparative MythologyTemple and Priesthoodhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/king-davids-spear-and-the-carians/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/king-davids-spear-and-the-carians/Benjamin Scolnic — Scolnic reconstructs the coup that ended Athaliah's usurpation of the Davidic throne, focusing on the pivotal moment when the priest Jehoiada arms the captains of the Carian mercenary guard with 'King David's spear' from the Temple armory before revealing the hidden heir Joash to them. He argues that the historical detail of Carian mercenaries -- attested elsewhere in Egyptian and Greek sources as renowned professional soldiers with distinctive weapons -- is plausible for ninth-century Judah, and that the symbolic gesture of handing them David's own weapons was less about their practical use than about signaling that these outsiders were restoring, not seizing, the Davidic line.Fri, 01 Oct 2021 00:00:00 GMTDavidic DynastyAncient WarfareMercenariesPolitical HistoryKings of Judahhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/abigail-and-abels-wise-woman/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/abigail-and-abels-wise-woman/Noam Zion and David J. Zucker — Zion and Zucker set Abigail of Maon (I Samuel 25) alongside the unnamed Wise Woman of Abel Beth-maacah (II Samuel 20) as two women who use rhetorical persuasion, rather than trickery or force, to talk a violent leader -- first David, later his general Joab -- out of indiscriminate bloodshed. The authors catalogue seven verbal and structural parallels between the episodes (placement near the end of their books, defense against imminent violence, shared vocabulary, appeals to God, self-motivated action, distancing from the 'rebel' male, and successful one-on-one negotiation) against seven contrasts (youth versus age, speech versus terseness, declared versus tacit loyalty, reward versus none, responsibility taken versus withheld, ambiguous versus clear political standing, and what follows the encounter), concluding that both women exemplify a practical, ethically directed wisdom that Proverbs associates with sound counsel to kings.Fri, 01 Oct 2021 00:00:00 GMTWomen in the BibleWisdom LiteratureRhetoric and PersuasionDavidic Narrativehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/a-husband-of-valor-who-can-find/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/a-husband-of-valor-who-can-find/J.J. Kimche — Eshet Ḥayil (Proverbs 31:10-31) is usually read as a portrait of the ideal wife, but this essay asks what role, if any, the poem leaves for her husband. Surveying the general evidence and then the individual verses in which he is addressed or invoked, the essay weighs a husband-centric reading (in which the wife's virtues exist to serve and enrich him) against a wife-centric reading (in which she is the poem's true protagonist and he is comparatively marginal). It concludes that while the husband retains a public role at the city gates, the poem's structure and language consistently centralize the wife's competence and independence, making her the dominant figure even as she remains within traditionally feminine domestic boundaries.Thu, 01 Jul 2021 00:00:00 GMTWisdom LiteratureGenderProverbsMarriagehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/joseph-and-his-brothers-unexpected-encounter/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/joseph-and-his-brothers-unexpected-encounter/Chaya Greenberger — After Jacob's death, his sons fear that Joseph will finally take revenge on them for selling him into slavery, and approach him through an intermediary rather than face to face. Drawing on midrashic sources alongside the biblical text, this article asks why this brief, seemingly unnecessary encounter (Genesis 50:14-21) needed to be recorded at all, and argues that Joseph's response — reassuring, comforting, and restoring his brothers' sense of their own indispensability — models how a family's most empowered member can take responsibility for the collective future even when he was the one who was wronged.Thu, 01 Jul 2021 00:00:00 GMTFamily DynamicsForgivenessMidrashPatriarchal Narrativeshttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/inverted-ayin-and-bent-peh/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/inverted-ayin-and-bent-peh/Zvi Ron — Alongside the well-known inverted nuns that delineate Numbers 10:35-36, a now mostly forgotten scribal tradition preserved two other unusual letterforms in Torah scrolls: an "inverted ayin" with a small backward-curling tail, and a "bent peh" (or peh leffufa) whose interior resembles an @ sign. Drawing on Sefer Tagin, Sefer haRemazim, Ba'al haTurim, and later halachic authorities, this article traces where these letters appear, what the medieval and early-modern sources say they signify, and why the bent peh — found in roughly two hundred places, chiefly in Yemenite Torah scrolls — became by far the more common of the two forms.Thu, 01 Jul 2021 00:00:00 GMTScribal TraditionMasoretic TextTorah ScrollsHalachahttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/inquiring-of-the-dead/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/inquiring-of-the-dead/Shaul Bar — The Hebrew Bible repeatedly forbids consulting ovot and yiddeonim, terms bound up with necromancy and the belief that the spirits of the dead could reveal the future to the living. Surveying the prohibitions in Leviticus and Deuteronomy, the story of Saul at Endor, the practice of leaving food for the dead, and Isaiah 65:4's condemnation of those who sleep among tombs, this article argues that Isaiah's verse preserves traces of incubation — sleeping in a sacred or funerary place to receive a revelatory dream — repurposed as a forbidden form of contact with dead ancestors.Thu, 01 Jul 2021 00:00:00 GMTNecromancyAncient Near EastProhibited PracticesDeath and Afterlifehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/romance-of-ruth-ruse-of-boaz/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/romance-of-ruth-ruse-of-boaz/Jeffrey M. Cohen — The Book of Ruth is deliberately vague about the precise family relationship of both Boaz and the unnamed go'el to Naomi's deceased husband Elimelekh, suggesting that neither man was biblically obligated to perform levirate marriage. This article argues that Boaz, having fallen in love with Ruth, deliberately baits the go'el into believing that redeeming Elimelekh's field also entails marrying Ruth the Moabitess and thereby permanently associating his own family's name with an intermarriage — a prospect the go'el, unlike the more open-minded Boaz, finds unacceptable. Read this way, the book emerges as a romance in which the true motive for Boaz's pursuit of Ruth is love rather than kinship obligation, paralleling the fusion of the spiritual and the romantic found in Song of Songs.Thu, 01 Jul 2021 00:00:00 GMTLevirate MarriageRuthConversionRomancehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/psalm-on-carrying-the-ark/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/psalm-on-carrying-the-ark/Arthur Sandman — Against commentators who read Psalm 24 as a conflation of two originally separate liturgies — one for pilgrims ascending to the Temple, one for the Ark's return from battle — this article argues that the psalm is a unified composition mapped onto the Ark's journey in Samuel and Kings, from its capture by the Philistines through its arrival in the City of David. Tracking six resting places of the Ark against six occurrences of God's name and of the root for "to raise" in the psalm, and linking the psalm's language to the Creation account and to Solomon's dedication of the Temple, the article contends that Psalm 24 was composed specifically for, and evokes, the moment David brought the Ark into Zion.Thu, 01 Jul 2021 00:00:00 GMTPsalmsArk of the CovenantKing DavidTemplehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/book-review-unto-us-a-child-is-born/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/book-review-unto-us-a-child-is-born/David J. Zucker — A review of Tyler D. Mayfield's Unto Us a Child is Born: Isaiah, Advent, and Our Jewish Neighbors (Eerdmans, 2020), which asks how Isaiah can be read faithfully as both a Christian Advent text and the Jewish prophet Judaism has always known him to be. The review commends Mayfield's distinction between a Christian "Near Vision" and a historically grounded "Far Vision" of Isaiah's four traditionally messianic passages, while flagging one passage where the book's own language inadvertently "Christianizes" its otherwise careful historical-critical account of Second Isaiah.Thu, 01 Jul 2021 00:00:00 GMTBook ReviewIsaiahJewish-Christian RelationsBiblical Interpretationhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/book-review-biblical-hero/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/book-review-biblical-hero/David J. Zucker — A review of Elliott Rabin's The Biblical Hero: Portraits in Nobility and Fallibility (JPS/University of Nebraska, 2020), which examines Moses, Samson, Esther, Abraham, Jacob, and David as biblical heroes and devotes a further chapter to God as a heroic figure. The review highlights Rabin's five consistent messages about biblical heroism and his eclectic use of sources ranging from rabbinic literature to Agatha Christie, while noting as a shortcoming Rabin's continued use of masculine, monarchical language for God even where gender-neutral alternatives were readily available.Thu, 01 Jul 2021 00:00:00 GMTBook ReviewBiblical HeroesCharacter Studieshttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/moses-king-arthur-and-lot/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/moses-king-arthur-and-lot/Stanley Schneider — A comparative study of the legendary staff transmitted from Adam through the patriarchs to Moses, tracing its parallels in the Arthurian legend of the sword in the stone, Christian traditions of the wood of the cross, and an Islamic legend about Lot. The article argues that across these traditions, a chosen leader is authenticated by performing a feat no one else can — pulling a staff or sword from where it is fixed — and that the staff's engraved letters and its chain of custody through history mark it as a symbol of authority, power, and hierarchy.Thu, 01 Apr 2021 00:00:00 GMTMidrashComparative ReligionSymbolismLeadershiphttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/how-nebuchadnezzar-became-a-dwarf/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/how-nebuchadnezzar-became-a-dwarf/Benjamin Scolnic — Jewish tradition faced a theological problem: Nebuchadnezzar destroyed the Temple and exiled the Judeans yet continued to reign as a successful monarch, a fact the relatively nuanced portrait in Daniel 1-6 does not fully redress. This article traces how midrashic sources — Pesikta Rabbati, Yalkut Shimoni, Pesikta de Rav Kahana — respond by literalizing the 'lowest of men' language of Daniel 4:14 into a comic image of Nebuchadnezzar as a literal dwarf, unable to reach the harps the exiled Levites hung in the trees of Psalm 137. The midrash is read as a bridge between the court tales of Daniel 1-6 and the apocalyptic visions of Daniel 7-12, restoring the emotional reality of exile that the Book of Daniel itself underplays.Thu, 01 Apr 2021 00:00:00 GMTMidrashBook of DanielBabylonian ExileKingshiphttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/understanding-balaams-donkey/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/understanding-balaams-donkey/Nava Schorer-Finkelman — The donkey episode of Numbers 22:21-35 sits awkwardly inside the Balaam narrative: elsewhere Balaam insists he can only say what God permits, yet here he appears to defy God outright. Reading the episode against three motifs shared with the Exodus story — the divine granting of speech, the sword on the prophet's road, and the enemy's confession of sin — this article argues that the donkey story is not a redundant insertion but the moment Balaam is disabused of the idea that his speech, unlike his movements, is his own to control. Balaam emerges not as a wavering or ambiguous figure but as an unwilling instrument of a God who, as with Pharaoh, overrides a foreign power's free will for Israel's benefit.Thu, 01 Apr 2021 00:00:00 GMTBalaam NarrativeIntertextualityProphecyExodus Parallelshttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/joseph-and-his-brothers-sibling-rivalry/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/joseph-and-his-brothers-sibling-rivalry/Jeffrey M. Cohen — Genesis 37:2's account of the young Joseph bringing 'their evil report' to Jacob is read closely against classical and modern commentators to untangle who the 'evil report' concerns — the sons of Leah, the sons of the handmaids, or both. Building on Ramban's insight that Joseph was caught between two separate rivalries, the article argues that the sons of the handmaids' shifting allegiance, from confiding in Joseph to joining his brothers' plot against him, is best explained by the abuse and reprisals they suffered at the hands of the Leah clan once their disclosures to Joseph became known — a reading supported by modern research on sibling abuse.Thu, 01 Apr 2021 00:00:00 GMTGenesisFamily DynamicsJewish ExegesisSibling Rivalryhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/jacobs-farewell-interdependence-address/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/jacobs-farewell-interdependence-address/Chaya Greenberger — Jacob's blessings to his twelve sons in Genesis 49 are read as a deliberately uneven address whose ambiguities are not literary defects but a calculated strategy: to neutralize threats to family unity (Reuben, Simeon and Levi), to elevate a unifying leader (Judah) and an outstanding heir (Joseph) without provoking envy, and to secure the standing of the sons of the handmaids as full tribes. The article argues that Jacob's closing blessing of 'them' rather than 'him' signals that the individual gifts he assigns are meant to be shared across the tribes, so that individuation and interdependence become two sides of the same legacy.Thu, 01 Apr 2021 00:00:00 GMTGenesisTribal IdentityBlessingsLeadershiphttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/shepherds-instruments/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/shepherds-instruments/Jonathan L. Friedmann — Shepherding and shepherd metaphors for leadership pervade the Hebrew Bible, and this article argues that the same pastoral culture accounts for the prevalence of three standard instruments in the text: the kinnor (lyre), ugav (flute), and shofar (horn). Because the Bible is a theologically focused text that mostly records music-making in cultic or celebratory contexts, its everyday, non-cultic uses by ordinary shepherds are left as faint, indirect traces rather than explicit description. Drawing on organology, ancient Near Eastern iconography, and cross-cultural shepherd practices, the article reconstructs how each instrument likely functioned to calm flocks, signal fellow herders, and pass the time.Thu, 01 Apr 2021 00:00:00 GMTBiblical MusicShepherdingMusical InstrumentsComparative Religionhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/book-review-unbinding-isaac/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/book-review-unbinding-isaac/David J. Zucker — A review of Aaron Koller's Unbinding Isaac (JPS/University of Nebraska, 2020), which traces philosophical and theological responses to the Akedah from Kierkegaard's 'Knight of Faith' through Soloveitchik and Leibowitz to Koller's own reading via Maimonides. The review highlights Koller's central objection to Kierkegaard — that focusing on Abraham's faith erases Isaac as the story's actual victim — and his conclusion, following Maimonides and Joseph ibn Kaspi, that God only partially desired the sacrifice while fully desiring that Abraham not carry it out.Thu, 01 Apr 2021 00:00:00 GMTBook ReviewAkedahJewish Philosophyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/book-review-thinking-about-the-prophets/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/book-review-thinking-about-the-prophets/David J. Zucker — A review of Kenneth Seeskin's Thinking About the Prophets (JPS/University of Nebraska, 2020), part of the JPS Essential Judaism Series, which reads Amos, Hosea, First and Second Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Job through the lens of later philosophers including Maimonides, Kant, Hegel, Buber, and Soloveitchik. The review credits the book's introductory treatment of the question 'What is a Prophet?' while noting its limitation to a handful of the literary prophets, pointing readers wanting fuller coverage of figures like Samuel and Nathan to more comprehensive surveys.Thu, 01 Apr 2021 00:00:00 GMTBook ReviewProphetsJewish Philosophyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/book-review-the-ethics-of-numbers/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/book-review-the-ethics-of-numbers/Yonatan Horovitz — A review of Rabbi Dr. Abba Engelberg's The Ethics of Numbers (Kodesh Press, 2020), the fourth volume of his series on the Pentateuch, which walks through the Book of Numbers largely through Talmudic and midrashic eyes, connecting episodes like the spies and Korach's rebellion to contemporary ethical dilemmas. The review appreciates the book's willingness to address the place of worldly pleasure in Jewish tradition and its treatment of Moses, Aaron, and Miriam's complementary leadership styles, while offering two alternative, simpler explanations of points the author reaches through more elaborate midrashic routes, and noting the work's lack of a clear methodological throughline.Thu, 01 Apr 2021 00:00:00 GMTBook ReviewNumbersJewish Ethicshttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/miketz-esrim-shana/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/miketz-esrim-shana/Ami Hordes — Reading the haftara pairing of the Judgment of Solomon with the Joseph narrative, this article argues that Solomon consciously modeled his handling of the baby-custody case on Joseph's psychological insight into his brothers, using a staged threat to the child's life to force the two litigants to reveal their true feelings. It offers a close legal and psychological reading of the courtroom exchange — including why Solomon's restatement of the arguments in 3:23 was strategic rather than redundant — and argues that the non-mother's shocking assent to the child's death is best explained as a trauma-driven act of denial and jealousy rather than as pure cruelty or a staged fable.Fri, 01 Jan 2021 00:00:00 GMTWisdom and JudgmentPsychological InsightLegal NarrativeJoseph Narrativehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/literary-art-korah-episode/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/literary-art-korah-episode/Yitzchak Blau — Arguing against the source-critical consensus that splits the Korah narrative into two originally independent rebellion accounts, this essay contends that the standard list of textual difficulties is far less compelling than usually presented, and that source criticism's easy recourse to redactors and alternative traditions lets almost any theory be sustained. The essay's larger claim is that fixating on authorial strands blinds readers to the chapter's literary art and psychological insight — its verbal echoes, its Buber-style Leitwort patterning around the root edah, and its realistic portrait of how disparate rebel factions find temporary common cause.Fri, 01 Jan 2021 00:00:00 GMTSource CriticismLiterary AnalysisRebellion NarrativesBiblical Poeticshttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/jehu-ben-nimshi-ishmael-ben-nethaniah/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/jehu-ben-nimshi-ishmael-ben-nethaniah/Ruth Walfish — Building on Yisrael Rosenson's thesis that the Jehu narrative in II Kings carries a covert critique beneath its overt praise, this article uses inner-biblical interpretation to argue that the account of Ishmael ben Nethaniah's assassination of Gedaliah (Jeremiah 40-41) is deliberately patterned to echo Jehu's rise to power. Five points of contact — deceit, slaughter beside a pit, murder of the innocent, wiping out a remnant, and a grim aftermath — link the two figures, suggesting that the Ishmael story functions as a later, critical commentary on how the Bible wants Jehu's methods to be judged, even as it credits him with eliminating Baal worship.Fri, 01 Jan 2021 00:00:00 GMTInner-biblical InterpretationKingship and PowerProphetic NarrativeMoral Ambiguityhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/lo-yada-dissociation-syndrome-esther/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/lo-yada-dissociation-syndrome-esther/Jeffrey M. Cohen — Coining the term 'lo yada-dissociation syndrome' from Rava's Purim dictum about drinking until one cannot discern Haman from Mordechai, this article argues that nearly every character in Esther — Ahasuerus, Vashti, Haman, Esther, and even the narrator — exhibits a psychological pattern of willed unknowing that lets them avoid confronting uncomfortable realities, from the king's studied ignorance of Esther's Jewish identity to Esther's insulation from Haman's decree. Mordechai alone, whose defining verb throughout the book is 'to know,' stands outside the syndrome, and the essay reads the ritual drunkenness of Purim itself as a deliberate re-enactment of the book's pervasive dissociation from reality.Fri, 01 Jan 2021 00:00:00 GMTPsychological InterpretationPurimCharacterizationBook of Estherhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/menaanim-musical-instruments-of-the-people/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/menaanim-musical-instruments-of-the-people/Jonathan L. Friedmann — The mena'anim of David's procession bringing the Ark to Jerusalem (II Samuel 6:5) are the only biblical instrument whose identity remains genuinely unsettled, having been translated across the centuries as sistrums, castanets, rattles, drums, and even trumpets. Weighing the archaeological and etymological evidence, this article argues for Batya Bayer's identification of mena'anim as humble clay rattles, and explains their single biblical appearance — despite abundant archaeological attestation — as a casualty of censorship: the Chronicler's parallel account in I Chronicles 13:8 replaces the folk instrument with priestly silver trumpets, part of a broader effort to distance the Ark's procession from associations with pagan and undignified popular ritual.Fri, 01 Jan 2021 00:00:00 GMTBiblical MusicMaterial CultureArk NarrativeTextual Redactionhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/who-was-jabez/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/who-was-jabez/Zvi Ron — Jabez appears in Chronicles only in a brief, unidentified genealogical notice and a two-verse prayer, yet the rabbis made him one of the select few who entered paradise alive. This article traces Jabez from the plain sense of the text — where a name meaning 'pain' is transposed by prayer, echoing the Rachel/Benjamin naming story — through the aggadic tradition that identified him with Otniel and turned him into a Torah scholar whose prayer for a pain-free life was answered because of his selfless teaching. The changing readings of Jabez illustrate how rabbinic interpretation can transform a minor, obscure genealogical figure into a paradigm of a particular virtue.Fri, 01 Jan 2021 00:00:00 GMTRabbinic InterpretationGenealogy in ChroniclesPrayerMinor Biblical Figureshttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/a-patriarch-reviews-the-past/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/a-patriarch-reviews-the-past/Chaya Greenberger — Reading Jacob's final encounter with Joseph and his grandchildren Ephraim and Manasseh (Genesis 48) as a deliberate act of life review, this article argues that Jacob selectively recollects and reinterprets his own past — the prophecy at Luz, Rachel's death, and the conquest of Shechem — in order to build a legal and emotional case for elevating Joseph's sons to the status of his own children. Jacob's retrospective framing, the article contends, is simultaneously a rectification for Rachel and a calculated, backward-looking exercise of patriarchal authority that shapes the tribal future without ever voicing regret for the favoritism that originally set the Joseph story in motion.Fri, 01 Jan 2021 00:00:00 GMTPatriarchal NarrativesBlessing and InheritanceMemory and RetrospectionJoseph Cyclehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/book-review-cain-v-abel/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/book-review-cain-v-abel/David J. Zucker — A review of Dan Ornstein's Cain v. Abel: A Jewish Courtroom Drama (JPS/University of Nebraska, 2020), which recasts Genesis 4:1-16 as a modern courtroom proceeding with God, Eve, Adam, and Abel's blood as witnesses and an array of classical and modern commentators giving testimony. The review praises the book's imaginative structure and its supporting study materials, but faults its unexamined assumption that Cain committed murder rather than manslaughter or a killing in self-defense.Fri, 01 Jan 2021 00:00:00 GMTBook ReviewCain and AbelMidrashhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/giving-birth-on-someones-knees/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/giving-birth-on-someones-knees/Ephraim A. Landau — Rachel tells Jacob that Bilhah 'will give birth on my knees/lap' so that she too will be 'built' through her handmaid (Genesis 30:3). Surveying traditional Jewish commentary, Hittite-Hurrian birth myths, and comparative Near Eastern adoption texts, the author argues against the popular view that placing a newborn on someone's knees was a legal adoption ceremony. Building on the parallel phrase in Genesis 50:23, he proposes instead that the idiom means simply 'in my presence,' so that the handmaid's childbirth functions as an extension of the wife herself rather than a formal rite of legitimation.Thu, 01 Oct 2020 00:00:00 GMTMatriarchsBirth and FertilityAncient Near EastAdoptionComparative Philologyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/milk-a-potent-nectar/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/milk-a-potent-nectar/Steven Oppenheimer — Rabbinic sources describe milk (chalav) as capable of intoxicating a person to the point of disqualifying a kohen from Temple service or a sage from issuing halachic rulings, yet modern science finds no basis for milk as a soporific or intoxicant. Marshaling talmudic, midrashic, and targumic evidence — including the etymological link between chalav and chelbon (white wine) — the author argues that the 'milk' in these legal contexts, and possibly the milk Yael gives Sisera in Judges 4, actually refers to white date wine rather than animal milk.Thu, 01 Oct 2020 00:00:00 GMTTalmudic LawComparative PhilologyKashrutRabbinic Literaturehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/medium-of-endor-and-saul/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/medium-of-endor-and-saul/David J. Zucker — Although consulting the dead is forbidden by biblical law, the woman who raises Samuel's spirit for Saul in I Samuel 28 is portrayed with surprising sympathy rather than condemnation. The author traces this sympathetic portrayal, and the parallel tragic depiction of Saul, through two ancient retellings — Josephus' Judean Antiquities and the pseudepigraphic Biblical Antiquities (Pseudo-Philo) — and surveys how modern Bible translations differ in labeling her a medium, necromancer, or witch.Thu, 01 Oct 2020 00:00:00 GMTNecromancyReception HistorySecond Temple LiteratureBible TranslationKingshiphttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/psalm-92-shabbat-and-the-temple/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/psalm-92-shabbat-and-the-temple/Jonathan L. Friedmann — Psalm 92's superscription assigns it to Shabbat, yet the psalm itself contains little explicit Sabbath language, a puzzle scholars have long tried to resolve. The author argues that the psalm's themes of victory, divine enthronement, Temple, and creation made it appropriate for Levitical performance on Shabbat, drawing on ancient Near Eastern enthronement-and-temple-building patterns and proposing that Psalm 92 may have been performed liturgically alongside the Genesis 1:1-2:3 creation account.Thu, 01 Oct 2020 00:00:00 GMTPsalmsTemple WorshipShabbatLiturgyAncient Near Easthttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/interpretation-of-variant-spellings-in-the-bible/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/interpretation-of-variant-spellings-in-the-bible/Zvi Ron — The Masoretic Text's defective and plene (full) spellings are generally considered by modern scholars to follow no consistent system, yet rabbinic literature repeatedly treats these variations as meaningful. The author surveys the dominant rabbinic approach — that a defective spelling signals some deficiency in what it describes — and tests it against the recurring word ha-gadol across the Torah, showing that while the methodology is not perfectly uniform, it operates as an implicit and recoverable exegetical principle in the Talmud, midrash, and medieval commentators.Thu, 01 Oct 2020 00:00:00 GMTMasoretic TextBiblical OrthographyRabbinic HermeneuticsTextual Criticismhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-shma-as-dynamic-of-redemption/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-shma-as-dynamic-of-redemption/Shubert Spero — Deuteronomy 6:5's declaration that 'the Lord is One' seems at odds with Rashi's reading of the Sh'ma as a future promise — that God will become one only when all nations recognize Him. Drawing on Ramban, Zephaniah, Zechariah, and R. Moshe Chaim Luzzatto's distinction between God's unity and His other attributes, the author argues that God's singularity includes an aspect of exclusive sovereignty that remains unrealized so long as humanity worships other values, so that the Sh'ma functions as a personal commitment to a still-unfolding messianic unity rather than merely a static metaphysical claim.Thu, 01 Oct 2020 00:00:00 GMTMonotheismLiturgyJewish PhilosophyDivine AttributesMessianismhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/book-review-ani-maamin/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/book-review-ani-maamin/Reuven Chaim Klein — A review of Joshua Berman's Ani Maamin (Maggid Books, 2020), a lay synthesis of Berman's earlier scholarship arguing that the Bible should be read within its Ancient Near Eastern literary context rather than through the Documentary Hypothesis. The review traces Berman's 'exhortative' reading of biblical narrative and law, his comparison of Deuteronomy to Near Eastern vassal treaties, and the book's largely disconnected second half on the historical origins of Maimonides' Thirteen Principles of Faith.Thu, 01 Oct 2020 00:00:00 GMTBook ReviewBiblical CriticismDocumentary HypothesisMaimonidesAncient Near Easthttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/a-matter-of-words-and-assumptions-in-jacobs-household/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/a-matter-of-words-and-assumptions-in-jacobs-household/Chaya Greenberger — A close reading of Genesis 37 argues that the Joseph story is, at its core, a story about the family's failure to communicate. Greenberger traces how Joseph's tattling, Jacob's silent favoritism, and the brothers' refusal to confront Joseph directly compound into the sale into slavery, and reads the chapter's three 'meltdowns' as variations on a single theme: unspoken assumptions and withheld words, rather than any single act, tear the house of Jacob apart.Wed, 01 Jul 2020 00:00:00 GMTFamily DynamicsRabbinic ExegesisCommunicationJoseph Narrativehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/naming-nehemiah/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/naming-nehemiah/Zvi Ron — Traditional Judaism treats Ezra and Nehemiah as a single book, and the Talmud explains that Nehemiah was denied a book named for him as punishment for a prideful tone in his memoir. Ron traces how the division into two books, and the naming of the second as 'Nehemiah,' originated with Origen and the Christian textual tradition and only entered printed Hebrew Bibles through Daniel Bomberg's sixteenth-century editions — and how later rabbinic figures, notably the Chida, came to read this originally Christian innovation as divinely sanctioned rehabilitation of Nehemiah's reputation.Wed, 01 Jul 2020 00:00:00 GMTBiblical CanonTextual HistoryRabbinic LiteraturePrinting Historyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/psalm-113-is-verse-9-the-womans-voice/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/psalm-113-is-verse-9-the-womans-voice/Raymond Apple — Responding to Marc Zvi Brettler's essay arguing that Psalm 113 preserves an otherwise-absent woman's liturgical voice marking childbirth, Apple contends that the psalm's concern is theological rather than gendered — God's power to raise up both the poor (vv. 7-8) and the barren woman (v. 9) alike. Apple surveys rabbinic identifications of the 'happy mother of children' (Sarah, Hannah, Yokheved, the mother of the seven martyred sons, the nation of Israel) and argues, via the construct grammar of aqeret ha-bayit, that the verse is not primarily about female voice at all.Wed, 01 Jul 2020 00:00:00 GMTPsalmsFeminist Biblical CriticismRabbinic ExegesisLiturgyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-fall-of-jericho-as-an-earthquake-myth/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-fall-of-jericho-as-an-earthquake-myth/Jonathan L. Friedmann — Friedmann reads Joshua 6's account of the shofar blasts that topple Jericho's walls as an earthquake myth of a familiar cross-cultural type — like the earthquake-causing catfish of Japan or the elephants of Hindu mythology — in which a culturally specific object explains a seismic event. Because the shofar was already bound up with theophany, warfare, and Israelite ceremony, the Jericho narrative channels the shofar's divinely infused sonic power into the collapse of the walls, distinguishing it from other earthquake myths by giving human beings, through the priesthood, some agency over the trembling earth.Wed, 01 Jul 2020 00:00:00 GMTComparative MythologyArchaeologyShofarConquest Narrativehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/moses-non-genealogy/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/moses-non-genealogy/Francis Nataf — The genealogy interrupting the exodus narrative in Exodus 6:14-28 nominally introduces Moses and Aaron, yet lists only Aaron's marriages, sons, and grandson Phinehas — Moses's own wife and children go unmentioned. Nataf argues that this asymmetry is deliberate: the genealogy belongs entirely to Aaron, not Moses, which is why it names Aaron before Moses uniquely at its close (6:26). He proposes that Aaron's hereditary priesthood, or Aaron's role as the family-continuity counterweight to Moses's singular prophetic vocation, explains why the text tracks Aaron's line rather than his brother's.Wed, 01 Jul 2020 00:00:00 GMTGenealogyPriesthoodRabbinic ExegesisExodus Narrativehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/master-of-life-abraham-sacrifice-isaac/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/master-of-life-abraham-sacrifice-isaac/Benjamin Scolnic — Rejecting readings of the Akedah as atonement for Abraham's expulsion of Ishmael, as Abraham's atonement for doubting God in Genesis 15, or as a foundational covenant-moment per Levenson and Blumenthal, Scolnic traces Abraham and Sarah's repeated skepticism and mockery of God's promise of a miraculous heir across Genesis 15-21. He argues that God commands the sacrifice of Isaac not to test Abraham's ethics or love, but to force Abraham to fully internalize — after a pattern of doubt, laughter, and improvised solutions like Hagar — that God alone is the Master of Life, the sole author of fertility and covenantal continuity.Wed, 01 Jul 2020 00:00:00 GMTAkedahFaith and DoubtCovenantRabbinic Exegesishttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-seventy-israelites-who-went-to-egypt/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-seventy-israelites-who-went-to-egypt/David Gollub — Genesis 46:27 counts seventy members of Jacob's family who descended to Egypt, but the sub-totals for each of Jacob's wives, especially Leah's thirty-three, do not add up cleanly against the names actually listed. Gollub surveys the classical solutions — that the missing member is Jochebed, conceived en route and born in Egypt (per TB Baba Batra 123b), or that Jacob himself is the seventieth person (per Ibn Ezra) — and proposes an alternative: that Dinah is excluded from the count because, unlike Serach bat Asher, she is never singled out elsewhere in the Bible as a notable figure in her own right.Wed, 01 Jul 2020 00:00:00 GMTGenealogyTextual CriticismWomen in the BibleRabbinic Exegesishttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/book-review-the-queen-and-the-spymaster/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/book-review-the-queen-and-the-spymaster/David J. Zucker — A review of Sandra E. Rapoport's 500-page novel elaborating on the book of Esther, which Zucker calls 'the world's longest Purim spiel.' Reading the novel against Adele Berlin's characterization of the biblical Esther as farce and Lillian Klein's account of its politics of honor and shame, Zucker finds Rapoport's caricatured villains and secretive Jewish 'Sanhedrin Brotherhood' entertaining but worries the melodrama risks reinforcing, rather than satirizing, contemporary antisemitic tropes about Jewish power and disloyalty.Wed, 01 Jul 2020 00:00:00 GMTBook ReviewEstherHistorical FictionPurimhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/book-review-a-theology-of-holiness/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/book-review-a-theology-of-holiness/Reuven Chaim Klein — A review of Alec Goldstein's A Theology of Holiness (Kodesh Press, 2018), which pursues the meaning of kedushah first through etymology and biblical antonyms (hillel, tamei), then through a thematic survey of holy places, times, and persons, and finally through philosophical readings ranging from Nahmanides and Maimonides to Kant and Rudolf Otto. Klein finds the book erudite and wide-ranging but notes it deliberately offers no single settled definition of holiness, leaving readers with a kaleidoscope of views rather than a conclusion.Wed, 01 Jul 2020 00:00:00 GMTBook ReviewHolinessJewish PhilosophyBiblical Theologyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/patriarch-without-a-narrative-saga-of-isaac/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/patriarch-without-a-narrative-saga-of-isaac/David Richter — Richter argues that the Isaac saga of Genesis 25-26 has been disordered in transmission, and proposes a reconstructed chronology in which Isaac and Rebekah move to Gerar, prosper, are expelled to the Wadi of Gerar and then Rehoboth, and only afterward move to Beersheba, where Rebekah's barrenness is resolved and the twins are conceived. Along the way he reads the two theophanies of Genesis 26 as complementary rather than redundant, and reinterprets ahuzzath mere'ehu in the Abimelech covenant not as a councilor's name but as a land deed, paralleling the ahuzzah motifs attached to all three patriarchs. Extensive appendices display the type-scenes of the Isaac saga and align its wife-sister episode with the parallel Abraham narratives in Genesis 12-13 and 20-21.Wed, 01 Apr 2020 00:00:00 GMTPatriarchal NarrativesBiblical ChronologyLiterary AnalysisGenesishttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/psalm-72-and-micah-5-1-the-primordial-messiah/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/psalm-72-and-micah-5-1-the-primordial-messiah/Yaakov Jaffe — The Talmud lists the Messiah's name among seven things that preceded the creation of the world, citing Psalm 72:17 (Yinon) as its proof text — even though Psalm 72 is on its plain sense a psalm about Solomon, with no explicit messianic content. Jaffe argues that the Midrash's true, unstated source is Micah 5:1, which explicitly places the Messiah's origin kedem, from ancient times, and that later tradition substituted Psalm 72 for polemical reasons: associating the Messiah's birthplace with Bethlehem, as Micah 5:1 does, risked being read as corroborating Christian claims about Jesus. The article situates this substitution within a broader pattern in which Midrashim cite one biblical verse while actually being inspired by another, unstated one.Wed, 01 Apr 2020 00:00:00 GMTMessiahMidrashTalmudPsalmsProphecyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/psalm-116-conditional-or-unconditional-love-of-god/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/psalm-116-conditional-or-unconditional-love-of-god/Raymond Apple — Apple examines the opening verses of Psalm 116, part of Hallel, and the syntactic puzzle of ahavti ki yishma Ado-nai et koli tahannunai — is the psalmist saying he loves God, or that he loves it when God hears his plea? Surveying Rashi, Ibn Ezra, and modern theologians (Rosenzweig, Kaplan, Baeck), Apple distinguishes love of God that is t'luyyah b'davar, dependent on God's responsiveness, from a rarer 'pure' love attested elsewhere in the Psalter that exists independent of any visible cause. He concludes that Psalm 116 depicts a conditional love — the psalmist loves God because God hears him — while gesturing, through Luzzatto, toward the ideal of loving God unconditionally, whether or not one's plea is answered.Wed, 01 Apr 2020 00:00:00 GMTPsalmsLove of GodLiturgyJewish Theologyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/levad-mimkarav-al-ha-avot/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/levad-mimkarav-al-ha-avot/Jeffrey M. Cohen — The phrase levad mimkarav al ha-avot in Deuteronomy 18:8 is, by one commentator's description, among the hardest passages in the Torah to interpret. Cohen surveys the Talmudic reading (an anachronistic reference to the priestly duty-rotas established under David), and the rival literalist readings of Rashbam (a family acquaintance sharing sacrificial meat) and Ibn Ezra (proceeds of an inherited house sale), and finds all three wanting on grammatical or contextual grounds. He proposes instead that the unvocalized consonants were originally read as levad mimakarav al ha'ovot — excepting those recognized as practitioners of necromancy — arguing that this reading coheres with the immediately following prohibition of sorcery and divination in Deuteronomy 18:9-11 and better explains why a purity requirement would attach to a priest's approach to the altar.Wed, 01 Apr 2020 00:00:00 GMTPriesthoodLevitesBiblical HebrewTextual CriticismSorceryhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/was-cain-the-father-of-civilization/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/was-cain-the-father-of-civilization/Shubert Spero — Genesis credits Cain's line with founding the first city and, through Lamech's children, with pioneering herding, music, and metallurgy — an odd inheritance for the Bible's first murderer. Following Abarbanel, Spero reads this cluster of inventions as the fruit of Cain's remorse: having lost his place as a tiller of the soil, Cain becomes a builder of cities, and his descendants, driven to make amends, transform violence and humiliation into cultural creativity. Spero gives particular attention to music's inclusion among humanity's foundational achievements, arguing that song functions as the language of emotion which lets even the vilest sinner, following the model of Cain's own repentance, discharge anger and burst into praise.Wed, 01 Apr 2020 00:00:00 GMTCain and AbelRepentanceMusic in the BibleGenesisRabbinic Exegesishttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/two-polyphonic-narrations-red-sea-and-givonites/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/two-polyphonic-narrations-red-sea-and-givonites/Avner Taler, Joel B. Wolowelsky — Building on R. Soloveitchik's account of the Torah's cosmic and covenantal narrations of Creation, Taler and Wolowelsky develop 'Polyphonic Narration' as a technique whereby the Bible presents two competing versions of the same event almost simultaneously, each interrupting the other, rather than consecutively. They apply this method to two well-known cases of textual duplication: the parting of the Red Sea in Exodus 14, where an 'intended' natural-seeming outcome and an 'actual' miraculous outcome are interleaved, and the Givonite treaty of Joshua 9, where the people's and the chieftains' version of events runs alongside Joshua's own. Reading the repetitions and contradictions long noted by commentators as evidence of two interwoven narrators, rather than as textual corruption, resolves several classic exegetical difficulties in both chapters.Wed, 01 Apr 2020 00:00:00 GMTBiblical NarrativeLiterary AnalysisExodusJoshuaTextual Criticismhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/nimrod-the-pitfalls-of-power/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/nimrod-the-pitfalls-of-power/Mordechai Beck — Nimrod, described in Genesis 10:9 as 'a mighty hunter before the Lord,' becomes in rabbinic tradition the Bible's archetypal negative leader — a byword for rebellion, deception, and rule by force, later fused with the builder of Babel and with Abraham's antagonist. Beck traces this legend through Rashi, Abarbanel, Rabbi Akiva, and Samson Raphael Hirsch to construct a negative model of kingship built entirely by contrast with Abraham's open tent and voluntary submission, and follows Nimrod to his traditional violent end — first at Babel, where his own linguistic confusion mirrors his abuse of power, and finally at the hands of Esau, who covets and kills for the very garment that had given Nimrod his dominion over the animals.Wed, 01 Apr 2020 00:00:00 GMTLeadershipRabbinic ExegesisMidrashKingshipGenesishttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/barukh-ha-shem-role-of-gentiles-in-the-bible/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/barukh-ha-shem-role-of-gentiles-in-the-bible/Avi Baumol — Baumol traces a recurring biblical pattern in which a gentile figure — Melchizedek, Jethro, Rahab, Hiram of Tyre, and the Queen of Sheba — hears of Israel's God, comes to the Israelite camp, and responds with blessing before returning home. Reading this pattern across Abraham, Moses, Joshua, David, and Solomon as five progressive stages of a single divine plan, he argues that each stage was meant to culminate in the nations recognizing God through Israel, a mission fulfilled only partially before Solomon's own decline. The article closes by connecting this ancient pattern to modern expressions of gentile support for Israel.Wed, 01 Jan 2020 00:00:00 GMTGentiles in the BibleBlessingBiblical TheologyDivine Providencehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-nation-of-isaac/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-nation-of-isaac/David Curwin — Curwin reads the Book of Genesis as a chiasm centered on the single, brief chapter devoted to Isaac alone, arguing that this structural centrality makes Isaac — not Abraham or Jacob — the pivotal figure whose faithfulness represents the road not taken. Contrasting Isaac's undivided devotion to Rebecca and to the land with Abraham's descent to Egypt and use of Hagar, and with Jacob's later flight to Mesopotamia, he argues that Isaac's willingness to forgo alternatives and rely on prayer models the exclusive covenantal faithfulness (ne'emanut) that the Torah's later legal covenant at Sinai would formalize.Wed, 01 Jan 2020 00:00:00 GMTGenesis StructurePatriarchal NarrativesFaith and CovenantChiasmhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/judah-and-tamar-self-esteem-lost-and-redeemed/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/judah-and-tamar-self-esteem-lost-and-redeemed/Chaya Greenberger — Greenberger reads the story of Judah and Tamar (Gen. 38) as a psychological account of a man's collapse and partial recovery of self-esteem following his role in selling Joseph. She traces textual cues — Judah's unnamed and unloved wife, his silence in mourning, his hasty and unjust judgments of Tamar as a katlanit and later as a supposed harlot — to argue that Judah's estrangement from his family left him isolated and prone to self-protective blame. Tamar's calculated risk-taking and her orchestration of Judah's public admission of guilt, tzadka mimeni, become the mechanism of his moral recovery, though the article stresses that his redemption remains incomplete.Wed, 01 Jan 2020 00:00:00 GMTSelf-EsteemFamily DynamicsNarrative AnalysisRepentancehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/two-notes-on-the-exceptional-shalshelet/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/two-notes-on-the-exceptional-shalshelet/Gilad J. Gevaryahu — Gevaryahu examines the four occurrences of the cantillation mark shalshelet in the Torah, arguing that in the three Genesis instances (Lot's hesitation, Abraham's servant's prayer, Joseph's refusal of Potiphar's wife) the trope consistently marks a prolonged passage of time, extending an argument he develops for the more puzzling fourth instance in Leviticus 8:23, where he proposes the shalshelet marks the extended, multi-step act of slaughtering the ram of consecration together with its accompanying blood applications. A second section addresses the grammatical relationship between the shalshelet and the following pasek, engaging a recent exchange with Marc B. Shapiro over whether the pasek there functions as a disjunctive trope or simply a breathing mark.Wed, 01 Jan 2020 00:00:00 GMTCantillationMasoretic TextBiblical HebrewTropehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/what-does-i-will-be-built-mean/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/what-does-i-will-be-built-mean/Ephraim A. Landau — Landau examines the idiom 'ibbaneh mimmenna, 'I will be built from/through her,' used by Sarah and Rachel when offering their maidservants to their husbands, arguing that the traditional Jewish reading — that the wife hopes to become personally able to conceive — is better supported than the modern scholarly consensus (Gunkel, Speiser) that the phrase describes a surrogacy or adoption arrangement modeled on ancient Near Eastern legal texts from Nuzi and the Code of Hammurabi. Marshaling the Akkadian cognate evidence, the parallel use of the same root in Jeremiah 31:4, and close readings of Genesis 16 and 21 that show Sarah never treating Ishmael as her own, he concludes that the idiom expresses a hope for the wife's own fertility, possibly rooted in an original belief in a kind of sympathetic magic.Wed, 01 Jan 2020 00:00:00 GMTAncient Near EastBiblical HebrewPhilologyFertility and Procreationhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/fifty-sixth-international-bible-contest-for-jewish-youth/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/fifty-sixth-international-bible-contest-for-jewish-youth/Joshua J. Adler — Adler reports on the 56th International Bible Contest for Jewish Youth (Hidon ha-Tanakh), held in Jerusalem on Israel's 71st Independence Day, which drew roughly eighty contestants from thirty countries — a record turnout. The report covers the speeches of Naftali Bennett, Yitzhak Herzog, and Knesset Speaker Yuli Edelstein, notes the participation of Misgenaw Ayahu representing the Ethiopian Jewish community, and records Yonatan Weissman of Jerusalem as this year's champion, with Benjamin Colchamiro of New Jersey as runner-up.Wed, 01 Jan 2020 00:00:00 GMTBible ContestJewish EducationIsraelYouthhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/book-review-commentators-bible-miqraot-gedolot-genesis/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/book-review-commentators-bible-miqraot-gedolot-genesis/David J. Zucker — Zucker reviews Michael Carasik's English edition of the traditional Miqra'ot Gedolot for Genesis, which surrounds the Hebrew text and two JPS translations with the commentaries of Rashi, Rashbam, Ibn Ezra, Radak, Ramban, and other medieval exegetes. He highlights Carasik's method of rewriting rather than literally translating the commentators for readers unfamiliar with Hebrew, illustrating the volume's approach through its treatment of the Binding of Isaac, and concludes that the resulting colloquial accessibility outweighs the loss of a strictly literal rendering.Wed, 01 Jan 2020 00:00:00 GMTBook ReviewMiqra'ot GedolotMedieval CommentatorsGenesishttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/book-review-song-of-riddles/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/book-review-song-of-riddles/Yonatan Horovitz — Horovitz reviews Geula Twersky's Song of Riddles, which argues on structural and thematic grounds that the rabbinic reading of the Song of Songs as an allegory for the relationship between God and Israel can be intellectually upheld, principally by tracing parallels between the Song's imagery and the keruvim of Solomon's Temple. He praises the book's exhaustive and compelling argument, particularly its treatment of the three 'Who is this?' poems as a chronicle of the Ark's journey to the Temple, while cautioning that Twersky sometimes favors her preferred interpretation over other plausible readings, such as her treatment of the word eres in Song of Songs 1:16.Wed, 01 Jan 2020 00:00:00 GMTBook ReviewSong of SongsSymbolismTemplehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/image-of-god-genesis-1-2-3/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/image-of-god-genesis-1-2-3/David Fried — Against the common view that Genesis 1 and Genesis 2-3 are separate creation accounts, this article argues that the two chapters form a single interdependent narrative. Because Genesis 1 tells us almost nothing about God except what God does, being created 'in the image of God' must refer to specific divine actions — chiefly naming things and judging them to be good. Genesis 2-3 then dramatizes humanity's struggle with exactly these two capacities: Adam is given the task of naming the animals, while Eve's fatal error is forming her own judgment that the forbidden fruit is 'good.' The article develops two complementary readings of this dynamic — one cautionary, one developmental — and traces how Adam's renaming of Eve as Hava after the expulsion signals a return to sanctioned naming.Tue, 01 Oct 2019 00:00:00 GMTCreation NarrativeImage of GodGenesisRabbinic Exegesishttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/uses-of-silver-in-the-bible/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/uses-of-silver-in-the-bible/Susan V. Meschel — A survey of the metallurgy and material culture behind the Bible's hundreds of references to silver, drawing on the chemistry of ancient smelting and cupellation to illuminate biblical vocabulary for furnaces, crucibles, bellows, and dross. The article traces silver from ore source (notably Tarshish) through refining technique to its uses as tribute, plunder, currency, cast idols, musical instruments, and Tabernacle and Temple fittings, and shows how the Bible repeatedly turns the physical process of purifying silver into a moral metaphor for purifying Israel.Tue, 01 Oct 2019 00:00:00 GMTMetallurgyMaterial CultureTabernacle and TempleAncient Technologyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/psalm-22-the-esther-connection/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/psalm-22-the-esther-connection/Raymond Apple — Many Sephardi, Oriental, and some Ashkenazi communities read Psalm 22 as the special psalm for Purim, a custom this article traces to a rabbinic tradition, especially the Midrash Tehillim, that reads the psalm as reflecting the ordeal of Esther's marriage to Ahasuerus. After working through the psalm's obscure heading, its opening cry of abandonment, and its turn from lament to praise at verse 22, the article argues that Esther's suffering as 'the morning star' and Haman's role as the unnamed enemy compared to dogs, bulls, and lions gave the community a text that supplied the divine name missing from the Book of Esther itself, and thereby helped Purim secure liturgical standing as the first post-Pentateuch festival.Tue, 01 Oct 2019 00:00:00 GMTPsalmsPurimEstherLiturgyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/did-an-aramean-kill-our-father/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/did-an-aramean-kill-our-father/Daniel Kennemer — An examination of the notoriously ambiguous Deuteronomy 26:5 formula 'Arami oved avi,' recited in both the First Fruits declaration and the Passover Haggadah. The article lays out the classical rabbinic reading, followed by Rashi, that identifies the 'Aramean' as Lavan attempting to destroy Jacob, against the counter-readings of Ibn Ezra, Sforno, and Rashbam (with support from the Septuagint), which take oved to mean 'wandering' or 'poor' and identify the wandering Aramean as Jacob himself, or even Abraham. Working through the Semitic root's semantic range, the author concludes that the verse may function as figurative, collective speech in which every generation identifies with an ancestor who was himself once a stateless wanderer, a rhetorical move paralleled elsewhere in Deuteronomy and Ezekiel.Tue, 01 Oct 2019 00:00:00 GMTPassover HaggadahFirst Fruits DeclarationHebrew PhilologyRabbinic Exegesishttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/moses-misplaced-speech-father-in-law/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/moses-misplaced-speech-father-in-law/Nathan Laufer — Building on Elchanan Samet's concept of the 'split narrative' — a single story divided in the Torah's final redaction for chronological, literary, or thematic reasons — this article argues that Moses' invitation to his father-in-law in Numbers 10:29-32 is the missing conclusion of the Jethro story in Exodus 18, excised and relocated to frame the Israelites' departure from Sinai. Reinserting the four verses restores near-perfect symmetry of length between the two halves of the Exodus 18 narrative, completes several seven-fold key-word patterns (Jethro/father-in-law, Israel/people, and the word 'good'), and answers the long-standing exegetical puzzle of why Moses is absent from the state dinner honoring his father-in-law. The article closes with a full reconstituted text of the combined narrative.Tue, 01 Oct 2019 00:00:00 GMTTorah RedactionLeitwortJethroSplit Narrativehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/tattenai-and-haman/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/tattenai-and-haman/Zvi Ron — Tattenai, the Persian governor who questioned the Jews' right to rebuild the Second Temple in Ezra 5-6, is read by some commentators as a neutral bureaucrat and by others, following Rashi, as an adversary of the Jews. This article argues that the plot structure of the Tattenai episode — an official who tries to harm the Jews, appeals to the king, is met by the recollection of a forgotten record, and is answered with the opposite of what he sought — closely parallels the Haman narrative in Esther and the accusation against Daniel in Daniel 6. The parallel, already sensed by the Geonic-era Targum Rishon to Esther, which makes Haman's wife Zeresh the daughter of Tattenai, supports reading Tattenai as belonging among the Bible's recurring gallery of failed adversaries of the Jews.Tue, 01 Oct 2019 00:00:00 GMTEzra-NehemiahEstherTargumNarrative Structurehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/matzah-on-passover-why-no-chametz/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/matzah-on-passover-why-no-chametz/Shubert Spero — The Passover Haggadah explains why Jews eat matzah — there was no time for the dough to leaven before the Exodus — but never explains why chametz is so severely forbidden. Reconstructing the sequence of events on the night of the Exodus from Exodus 12, the author argues that the Israelites, reassured by the death of the firstborn that their oppressors had been dealt a decisive blow, began leisurely preparing their ordinary breakfast of leavened bread instead of the provisions for departure they had been commanded to ready. On this reading, chametz became a symbol of the inertia of habit and reluctance to seize a moment of historic opportunity, a meaning the Rabbis left largely unstated because it exposed the Israelites' own hesitation to leave Egypt.Tue, 01 Oct 2019 00:00:00 GMTPassoverExodus NarrativeHaggadahSymbolismhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/book-review-new-testament-people/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/book-review-new-testament-people/Clifford Hubert Durousseau — A review of New Testament People – A Rabbi's Notes (Bloomington: Author House, 2016), Raymond Apple's collection of ninety-eight brief articles written to advance Jewish-Christian dialogue. The review surveys Apple's treatment of Jesus, Mary, and Paul, his contrast of Jewish and Christian concepts of God, and his handling of the virgin-birth prophecy debate over Isaiah 7:14, concluding that the book offers a welcome and enthusiastic Jewish perspective alongside works like Sandmel's A Jewish Understanding of the New Testament and the Jewish Annotated New Testament.Tue, 01 Oct 2019 00:00:00 GMTBook ReviewJewish-Christian RelationsNew Testamenthttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/book-review-redeeming-relevance-leviticus/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/book-review-redeeming-relevance-leviticus/Yitzchak Etshalom — A review of Rabbi Francis Nataf's Redeeming Relevance in the Book of Leviticus (Urim Publications, 2019), the concluding volume of his four-part series making the broader themes of the Torah accessible to contemporary readers. The review highlights Nataf's treatment of Offerings, Purity, and Sanctity, and his handling of Leviticus's two narrative episodes — the deaths of Nadav and Avihu and the unnamed blasphemer of Danite ancestry — judging the volume a valuable, if debatable, attempt to redeem meaning from the most ritually remote of the five books of the Torah.Tue, 01 Oct 2019 00:00:00 GMTBook ReviewLeviticusTorah Commentaryhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/joseph-tzaddik-who-rarely-prayed/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/joseph-tzaddik-who-rarely-prayed/Jeffrey M. Cohen — Unlike Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, Joseph is never shown praying to God, nor does God ever speak directly to him, despite Joseph's evident God-consciousness. The article argues that Joseph regarded his life's course as already divinely scripted from childhood — a destiny as fixed as if it had already occurred — so that petitionary prayer to alter it would have been a 'vain prayer' (tefillat shav) in the sense of the Mishnah. Joseph's silence is thus read not as a lack of faith but as the deepest form of it: total submission to a providence he believed could not be renegotiated, prefiguring the mindset of the later prophets who spoke of the future in the past tense.Mon, 01 Jul 2019 00:00:00 GMTPrayer and WorshipJoseph NarrativeDivine ProvidencePatriarchal Narrativeshttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/samson-agonistes/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/samson-agonistes/Raymond Apple — An examination of Milton's 1671 dramatic poem Samson Agonistes as a reworking of Judges 13-16, arguing that Milton uses the biblical Samson both to deepen the psychology of the original figure — his blindness, his hair, his relationship with Delilah, his final act of violence — and to comment allegorically on the Puritan and Restoration political struggles in which Milton himself was enmeshed. The article catalogues the poem's departures from the biblical text (new characters like Harapha, a living Manoa, an introspective Samson who moves from despair to penitence) and situates Milton's method alongside classical Midrash as a legitimate, if 'anxious,' form of creative re-reading of Scripture.Mon, 01 Jul 2019 00:00:00 GMTSamson NarrativeBible and LiteratureReception HistoryMiltonhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/notes-on-biblical-hebrew/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/notes-on-biblical-hebrew/Jack Fellman — A linguistic survey situating Biblical Hebrew within the Semitic family and the larger Hamito-Semitic (Afro-Asiatic) phylum, and characterizing its phonology, morphology and syntax as broadly typical of a Semitic language. The article's most speculative claim is that Biblical Hebrew's pervasive triliteral-root system — in which nearly all content words are organized around a single unifying morphological principle — may itself have been a contributing factor, alongside historical, geographical and sociological causes, in the development of Israelite monotheism's single formative religious concept.Mon, 01 Jul 2019 00:00:00 GMTBiblical HebrewHistorical LinguisticsSemitic LanguagesPhilologyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/jacob-the-heretic-and-zecharia-meshulam/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/jacob-the-heretic-and-zecharia-meshulam/Yaakov Jaffe — The Talmud records three separate polemical encounters between the sages and an otherwise obscure figure called Jacob the Heretic, one of which turns on whether Nehemiah 8:4's list of Ezra's students names twelve people or thirteen — that is, whether 'Zecharia' and 'Meshulam' at the end of the list are two names for one person or two people missing a conjunction. The article argues that this ostensibly technical exegetical dispute is in fact polemical: a leader-with-twelve-disciples motif was of live interest to Jews and Christians in late antiquity, and Rav Yehudah's insistence on exactly six Ezra loyalists to Ezra's right and six to his left is best read as reasserting Jewish ownership of that motif against early Christian claims, with the Yom Kippur aliyah count offered only afterward as a secondary, legal peg for the same reading.Mon, 01 Jul 2019 00:00:00 GMTTalmudic PolemicsSecond Temple PeriodJewish-Christian PolemicTextual Criticismhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/seven-weeks-newly-freed-slaves-people-of-god/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/seven-weeks-newly-freed-slaves-people-of-god/Shubert Spero — Why does seven weeks separate the Exodus from the Sinai covenant, and why is Shavuot named for a count rather than given a fixed calendar date? The article reads each station of the wilderness journey — Succot, Marah, the manna and quail, Rephidim, and the battle with Amalek — as a deliberately staged lesson in collective organization and mutual reliance, arguing that this seven-week interlude was what actually made a formerly atomized population of slaves capable of the unified, credible national response demanded at Sinai: 'all the people answered together.'Mon, 01 Jul 2019 00:00:00 GMTExodus NarrativeSinai CovenantNation-BuildingWilderness Wanderinghttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-meaning-of-melika/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-meaning-of-melika/Zvi Ron — Bird offerings were killed not by shehita but by melika — pinching or severing the neck with a priest's fingernail alone, no knife involved, a method that would render any other bird prohibited as neveila. The article surveys the etymological uncertainty around the term, the Talmudic description of the technique, and the traditional attempts (Moshav Zekeinim, Recanati, Sefer haChinuch, R. Hirsch) to find symbolic meaning in it — either as an image of sin and the sinner's exposed neck, or as a lesson about expediting the poor person's offering — alongside more technical explanations tied to the small quantity of a bird's blood and the prohibition on using a blade upon the altar.Mon, 01 Jul 2019 00:00:00 GMTTemple SacrificeLeviticusRitual LawKaraite-Rabbinic Polemicshttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/ein-mikra-yotzeh-miydei-peshuto-raavad/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/ein-mikra-yotzeh-miydei-peshuto-raavad/Yosef Zarnighian — Though not usually classed among the pashtanim, the Provençal halakhic authority R. Abraham b. David (Raavad, c. 1125–1198) repeatedly invokes the plain sense of a verse — ein mikra yotzeh miydei peshuto, 'a verse never loses its plain meaning' — to check or dissent from Maimonides in his glosses on the Mishneh Torah. The article traces this method across philosophical questions (anthropomorphism, the nature of the Messianic era) and legal ones (justifiable homicide against a burglar, the scope of priestly mourning restrictions, tithing exemptions, and the classification of skin afflictions), arguing that Raavad's willingness to let plain meaning constrain legal generalization makes him a genuine, if overlooked, practitioner of pshat-based halakhic reasoning.Mon, 01 Jul 2019 00:00:00 GMTBiblical ExegesisMaimonides and RaavadHalakhic MethodPshat Interpretationhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/jubilees-rewriting-rebeccas-reputation/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/jubilees-rewriting-rebeccas-reputation/David J. Zucker — In Genesis 27, Rebecca's engineering of Jacob's blessing reads to many traditional and modern commentators alike as manipulative, even a form of elder abuse against the failing Isaac. The extra-biblical Book of Jubilees (2nd century BCE) tells the same story very differently: Rebecca acts in concert with her father-in-law Abraham's own explicit wishes for Jacob, Isaac himself later comes around to endorse the choice, and 'the change was from heaven' rather than mere deception. The article argues that Jubilees systematically rehabilitates Rebecca into a commanding, prophetic, priest-like matriarch — more voluble and more visible than her Genesis counterpart — in service of the book's two governing concerns: harmonious relations among the patriarchs and matriarchs, and the promotion of endogamous marriage.Mon, 01 Jul 2019 00:00:00 GMTBook of JubileesRebeccaSecond Temple LiteratureRewritten Biblehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/book-review-god-versus-gods/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/book-review-god-versus-gods/Jeff Bienenfeld — A review of Rabbi Reuven Chaim Klein's God versus Gods: Judaism in the Age of Idolatry (Mosaica Press, 2018) — the first of a planned two-volume study of idolatry from the biblical period through the destruction of the First Temple. The review praises the book's reader-friendly chronological structure, its encyclopedia-style catalogue of ancient deities named in the Bible, and its integration of classical rabbinic sources with academic and archaeological scholarship, singling out its closing chapter on idolatry's transition into more 'rarified,' modern forms after prophecy itself ceased.Mon, 01 Jul 2019 00:00:00 GMTBook ReviewIdolatryBiblical Historyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/book-review-discovering-second-temple-literature/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/book-review-discovering-second-temple-literature/David J. Zucker — A review of Malka Z. Simkovich's Discovering Second Temple Literature: The Scriptures and Stories That Shaped Early Judaism (JPS/University of Nebraska, 2018), which surveys the modern recovery of Second Temple sources (the Cairo Genizah, the Dead Sea Scrolls), the distinct Jewish communities of Jerusalem, Alexandria and Antioch, the worldviews of Wisdom Seekers and Sectarians, and the era's holy and 'rewritten' texts. The review commends the book as a valuable complement to the three-volume Outside the Bible (2013), while faulting its introduction for never settling on clear chronological boundaries for what counts as the 'Second Temple Era.'Mon, 01 Jul 2019 00:00:00 GMTBook ReviewSecond Temple LiteratureJewish Historyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/obituary-dr-shimon-bakon/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/obituary-dr-shimon-bakon/Gabriel A. Sivan — A memorial tribute to Dr. Shimon Bakon, longtime Editor of the Jewish Bible Quarterly (known earlier as Dor le Dor), who died in February 2019 at age 103. It traces his path from Czechoslovakia through wartime emigration and U.S. Army service to a career in Jewish education, his 1974 aliyah, and his more than two decades as Editor, during which he built the journal's international reputation and readership.Mon, 01 Apr 2019 00:00:00 GMTBiographyJewish Bible Quarterly HistoryEditorial Leadershiphttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-lesson-at-marah/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-lesson-at-marah/Ephraim A. Landau — Exodus 15:25b-26 has long puzzled commentators: after the episode of the bitter waters at Marah, the text abruptly speaks of the Lord 'setting law and statute' for the people and 'testing' them. Building on Rashbam's reading, this article argues that the phrase 'set for someone law and statute' is a fixed idiom — attested also in Joshua 24:25 and I Samuel 30:25 — meaning the establishment of a binding precedent from experience, and that nissah here means 'to give a difficult, instructive experience' rather than 'to test.' Read this way, the two clauses of v. 25b and the promise in v. 26 form a single, coherent unit rather than a poorly stitched editorial patchwork.Mon, 01 Apr 2019 00:00:00 GMTBiblical ExegesisLegal IdiomTextual CriticismWilderness Narrativeshttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/saul-and-jonathan/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/saul-and-jonathan/Shaul Bar — This article traces the arc of Saul and Jonathan's relationship across the books of Samuel, from an early rivalry for military glory, through the crisis of the honey-eating oath and its near-fatal consequences for Jonathan, to the decisive rupture caused by David's rise. It argues that Jonathan's repeated loyalty to David — concealed from, and ultimately punished by, his father — reflects a broader biblical strategy of legitimizing David's claim to the throne, even as Jonathan himself never abandons Saul, fighting and dying alongside him at Mount Gilboa.Mon, 01 Apr 2019 00:00:00 GMTFamily RelationshipsKingshipNarrative AnalysisLoyalty and Betrayalhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/manoahs-wife-in-second-temple-literature/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/manoahs-wife-in-second-temple-literature/David J. Zucker — Manoah's wife is anonymous in Judges 13 yet gradually becomes the story's most active figure, and this article traces how three late Second Temple retellings — Josephus's Judean Antiquities, the Hebrew Biblical Antiquities (Pseudo-Philo), and the Hellenistic homily 'On Samson' — each expand her role further, giving her beauty, a name, courage, and theological insight far beyond what Judges provides. Comparing the three versions against the biblical text and against rabbinic parallels in Numbers Rabbah, the article shows each source adding its own distinct emphasis: physical description and jealousy drama in Josephus, penitent self-blame in Biblical Antiquities, and rhetorical praise for her perceptiveness in 'On Samson.'Mon, 01 Apr 2019 00:00:00 GMTSecond Temple LiteratureWomen in the BibleRewritten BibleJudgeshttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/moses-in-cush/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/moses-in-cush/Stanley Schneider — Numbers 12:1 mentions, without explanation, a 'Cushite woman' whom Moses married, and this article traces how ancient and medieval sources tried to identify her — either with Zipporah, via a midrashic equation of 'Cushite' with 'beautiful,' or with a separate Ethiopian queen Moses married and ruled beside during a legendary sojourn in Cush. Comparing the accounts of Artapanus, Josephus, and Yalkut Shimoni, the article shows how each version handles the delicate question of whether Moses actually consummated a marriage with a foreign queen, and argues that the legend served to fill a gap in Moses's biography while enhancing his stature as a leader and, in its rabbinic form, preserving his fidelity to the patriarchal prohibition on marrying outside the family line.Mon, 01 Apr 2019 00:00:00 GMTMosesRabbinic LegendHellenistic JudaismMidrashhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/glorification-of-god-at-the-sea/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/glorification-of-god-at-the-sea/Eliezer Barany — Exodus 14 distinguishes between the Egyptians 'knowing' the Lord, an effect already achieved by the ten plagues, and the Lord 'gaining glory' through Pharaoh's pursuit at the sea, a distinct and higher outcome. This article argues that the plagues established the Lord's mastery over nature for all people, while the splitting of the Sea revealed a unique, elective relationship between the Lord and Israel specifically — a use of kavod paralleled elsewhere in the Torah's depiction of the Tabernacle, the Ark, and the Temple — and that recognizing this distinction clarifies why the people respond to the sea's splitting with awe rather than mere belief.Mon, 01 Apr 2019 00:00:00 GMTDivine GloryExodus NarrativeTheologyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/allegorical-interpretation-of-daniel-12-2/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/allegorical-interpretation-of-daniel-12-2/Zvi Ron — Daniel 12:2 is traditionally read as an explicit prooftext for bodily resurrection of the dead, and Maimonides even singled it out as admitting no other interpretation. Yet this article traces a minority allegorical reading — that the verse describes national restoration rather than literal resurrection — from the pagan philosopher Porphyry and Syriac Christian exegetes through its sole named medieval Jewish exponent, the Karaite Yeshua ben Yehuda, whose view survives only because Ibn Ezra quotes it. The article argues that Ibn Ezra's ambiguous treatment of Yeshua's opinion, and later discussions by Albo and others of similarly allegorized verses like Ezekiel's dry bones and Isaiah 26:19, suggest a persistent undercurrent of rationalist discomfort with literal resurrection language.Mon, 01 Apr 2019 00:00:00 GMTResurrection of the DeadMedieval Jewish ExegesisKaraite ThoughtAllegorical Interpretationhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-sojourn-in-egypt/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-sojourn-in-egypt/David J. Marwil — The Torah gives two seemingly incompatible figures for Israel's time in Egypt — 400 years of oppression (Genesis 15:13) against 430 years of total residence (Exodus 12:40), further complicated by the claim that only four generations would pass (Genesis 15:16). Rather than following Ramban's move of transposing the verse or Sarna's proposal that 'generation' means a variable life-span, this article calculates the actual years each of Levi's four descendants (Levi, Kohath, Amram, Aaron) spent in Egypt from the genealogical data given in the text, finds their sum comes to exactly 430, and proposes that the traditional figures describe the summed years of overlapping generations rather than a single continuous span — which would substantially shorten the real duration of the sojourn while leaving the biblical numbers intact.Mon, 01 Apr 2019 00:00:00 GMTChronologyExodus NarrativeGenealogyBiblical Numbershttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/book-review-moses-as-a-model-for-leadership/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/book-review-moses-as-a-model-for-leadership/Simcha Rosenberg — A review of Religion and Contemporary Management: Moses as a Model for Effective Leadership by Arthur Wolak (Anthem Press, 2016), which argues that Moses's humility and empathy — traits at odds with the usual profile of a modern leader — are in fact the core competencies of effective leadership, and surveys how theories from Freud's Great Man Theory to modern transformational leadership models map onto the biblical portrait of Moses.Mon, 01 Apr 2019 00:00:00 GMTBook ReviewLeadershipMoseshttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/book-review-israels-wisdom-traditions/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/book-review-israels-wisdom-traditions/Simcha Rosenberg — A review of An Introduction to Israel's Wisdom Traditions, edited by John L. McLaughlin (Eerdmans, 2018), an introductory textbook covering Proverbs, Job, and Ecclesiastes alongside their ancient Near Eastern parallels — including close comparisons with the Epic of Gilgamesh and Egyptian wisdom texts — as well as the deuterocanonical Wisdom of Ben Sira and Wisdom of Solomon.Mon, 01 Apr 2019 00:00:00 GMTBook ReviewWisdom LiteratureComparative Literaturehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/meat-bread-parallel-word-pair-biblical-poetry/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/meat-bread-parallel-word-pair-biblical-poetry/Ephraim A. Landau — Exodus 16 poses a puzzle: the people's complaint and the Lord's promises give equal weight to 'meat' and 'bread', yet quails appear and vanish within a single half-verse while the manna dominates the rest of the chapter. Building on the observation that leḥem/basar (bread/meat) functions elsewhere in the Bible — in prose merisms and in poetic parallelism (I Kings 17:6, Isaiah 44:19, Daniel 10:3) — as a figurative pair meaning simply 'food', the article shows that the three occurrences of the word-pair in Exodus 16:3, 8, and 12 are embedded poetic bicola using this same figurative sense rather than literal promises of meat. It concludes that verse 13a, which reports the quails' arrival, was a later gloss added by someone who misunderstood the figurative idiom, and that the original chapter was a story about the manna alone.Tue, 01 Jan 2019 00:00:00 GMTBiblical PoetryExodusPentateuchal CriticismHebrew Philologyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/greek-translation-of-the-bible/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/greek-translation-of-the-bible/Stanley Schneider — A survey of the historical and rabbinic record surrounding the translation of the Hebrew Bible into Greek, from the Letter of Aristeas's legendary account of seventy-two scholars producing the Septuagint for Ptolemy II, through the parallel and diverging versions of that legend in Sefer Torah, Soferim, and TB Megillah 9a. The article traces rabbinic ambivalence toward 'Greek Wisdom' versus the Greek language itself, and follows the later Jewish revisions of Aquila, Theodotion, and Symmachus that arose once the Septuagint had been adopted by the Church. It closes by situating these translations within the broader tension between Hellenistic acculturation and the preservation of Jewish religious identity.Tue, 01 Jan 2019 00:00:00 GMTSeptuagintRabbinic LiteratureHellenismBible Translation Historyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/amen-as-response-and-introduction/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/amen-as-response-and-introduction/Raymond Apple — A study of the Hebrew exclamation Amen, tracing its root (aleph-mem-nun, 'to be firm, faithful') and its grammatical status as a stative verb comparable to kasher or zaken. The article surveys Amen's biblical role as a legal and liturgical response — in the Pentateuch's oath-confirmations, the Psalter's doxologies, and the synagogue's benediction responses — and argues that two apparent biblical instances of an introductory Amen (I Kings 1:36, Jeremiah 28:6) are, on closer analysis, still functioning as responses. It closes by contrasting this exclusively responsive biblical and talmudic usage with the New Testament's introductory Amen, and surveys various theories for that shift.Tue, 01 Jan 2019 00:00:00 GMTLiturgyPrayerHebrew PhilologyComparative Religionhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/joseph-and-the-enslavement-of-the-egyptians/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/joseph-and-the-enslavement-of-the-egyptians/Moshe Soller — Against the popular image of Joseph as the architect of Egypt's impoverishment and enslavement, a close reading of Genesis 41-47 suggests a different story. The article argues from the vocabulary of pikadon (a returnable deposit) and shever (provisions) that Joseph's original grain policy was a free, trust-based distribution, and that it was Pharaoh — a demonstrated micromanager of Joseph's every move — who later imposed the sale of grain for money, livestock, land, and person. On this reading, the eventual arrangement amounted to a flat 20% tax with the Egyptians remaining on their own land, and Joseph functioned as a reluctant intermediary shielding Pharaoh from popular resentment rather than as the mastermind of the Egyptians' ruin.Tue, 01 Jan 2019 00:00:00 GMTJoseph NarrativeBiblical HebrewAncient EgyptTaxation and Economicshttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/did-the-patriarchs-know-gods-name/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/did-the-patriarchs-know-gods-name/Daniel M. Berry and Sandra Van Eden — A reconsideration of Exodus 6:3, in which God tells Moses that He appeared to the patriarchs as El Shaddai but 'did not become known' to them by the name YHWH — a claim seemingly contradicted by Genesis passages where the patriarchs use that very name. The authors propose repunctuating the verse so that 'I did not become known to them' stands as its own clause, and argue that the verb yada' here carries its specialized sense of intimate, face-to-face knowing (as in Deuteronomy 34:10 regarding Moses) rather than mere awareness of a name. On this reading, the patriarchs knew God's name and experienced His appearances, but did not attain the singular face-to-face relationship later granted to Moses.Tue, 01 Jan 2019 00:00:00 GMTDivine NamesBiblical HebrewExodusPatriarchal Narrativeshttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/she-named-him-moses/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/she-named-him-moses/David J. Zucker — Exodus 2:10 says only that 'she named him Moses,' leaving the antecedent of 'she' ambiguous between Pharaoh's daughter and Moses' birth mother Yokheved. Ancient sources (Artapanus, Philo, Josephus, Pseudo-Philo) and the rabbinic midrashim overwhelmingly assign the naming to the princess, despite the difficulty that the name's etymology is explained in Hebrew rather than Egyptian. The article shows that the formula 'she named him,' va-tikra et shmo, otherwise belongs exclusively to mothers naming their own children throughout Genesis and beyond, and weighs this pattern — along with the minority view of Hizkuni and Abarbanel that Yokheved did the naming — against the near-universal consensus that it was the Egyptian princess.Tue, 01 Jan 2019 00:00:00 GMTNaming ConventionsExodusMosesRabbinic Exegesishttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/aarons-role-in-the-sin-of-the-golden-calf/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/aarons-role-in-the-sin-of-the-golden-calf/Geula Twersky — Aaron's central role in fashioning the golden calf sits uneasily with his stature as high priest, and his claim that the calf 'sprang forth' on its own has long strained credulity. The article proposes that masseka, the word used for the calf, derives not from a root meaning 'to cast a molten image' but from masak, 'to mix' or 'pour,' and denotes a ritual laver of the kind adorned with bull imagery in Solomon's Temple and across the ancient Near East. On this reading, Aaron's true intention was to build a laver-altar complex that would remind Israel of the purification required before divine service — a plan the people fatally misappropriated as an idol — and the article draws out a further parallel between the golden calf's aftermath and the ritual of the sota, the errant woman, to argue that Aaron's underlying goal throughout was reconciliation between Israel and God.Tue, 01 Jan 2019 00:00:00 GMTGolden CalfAaronTabernacle RitualRabbinic InterpretationAncient Near Easthttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/poetical-approach-to-evening-and-morning-exodus-16/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/poetical-approach-to-evening-and-morning-exodus-16/Ephraim A. Landau — The repeated pairing of “evening” and “morning” in Exodus 16:6-12 has long puzzled commentators, who cannot agree on which day the promised theophany and the arrival of quail and manna actually occur. Landau argues that all three occurrences of the word-pair form embedded poetic bicola, and that biblical poetry consistently uses “evening/morning” not for its literal timeframe but as a figurative idiom for a brief, swiftly passing interval — as shown by parallel uses in Psalms, Isaiah, and Genesis. Applying this figurative reading to Exodus 16 dissolves the chronological contradictions that literal readings by Ibn Ezra, Ramban, Malina, and Childs all struggle to resolve, since the entire episode can then be read as unfolding within a single day.Mon, 01 Oct 2018 00:00:00 GMTBiblical PoetryExodusManna NarrativeHebrew Word-Pairshttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/jacob-and-the-wife-sister-stories/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/jacob-and-the-wife-sister-stories/Marian Kelsey — The rare biblical rebuke ‘What is this you have done?’ links Jacob’s discovery that he was married to the wrong sister (Gen. 29:25) to the three wife-sister deception stories of Abraham and Isaac. Kelsey argues that Jacob’s tale deliberately inverts that pattern — sister becomes wife rather than wife becoming sister, and Jacob is the victim of deception rather than its author — while sharing structural features such as travel to a foreign land, dishonesty, and a concluding covenant. The inversion reads as a kind of ancestral poetic justice: just as Jacob once passed himself off as Esau to steal a blessing, Laban’s sibling-switch repays him for his own earlier deception.Mon, 01 Oct 2018 00:00:00 GMTPatriarchal NarrativesGenesisDeception MotifLiterary Parallelismhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/identifying-the-daniel-character-in-ezekiel/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/identifying-the-daniel-character-in-ezekiel/Reuven Chaim Klein — Ezekiel twice names a righteous “Daniel” alongside Noah and Job, and once asks the King of Tyre whether he is wiser than Daniel — but the identity of this figure is genuinely unclear. Klein lays out the traditional rabbinic identification with Daniel of the Book of Daniel, the academic identification with Danel of the Ugaritic Tale of Aqhat, and a third, largely overlooked option: Daniel/Chileab, King David's little-discussed second son. Weighing the chronological problems, the anomalous spelling of the name without a yod, and the disadvantages of each candidate, the article concludes that no proposed identification is fully satisfying and that Daniel's identity may simply be unrecoverable.Mon, 01 Oct 2018 00:00:00 GMTProphetic LiteratureUgaritic ParallelsRabbinic ExegesisBiblical Nameshttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/gems-in-the-high-priests-breastplate/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/gems-in-the-high-priests-breastplate/Susan V. Meschel — A chemist's assessment of the twelve gemstones set into the High Priest's breastplate (Ex. 28:15-30), working from physical rather than purely philological evidence — hardness, ancient availability, and probable size given the roughly 8-9 inch span of the folded linen. Meschel surveys the identifications offered by the Septuagint, Josephus, Saadia Gaon, Ibn Ezra, and Theophrastus for each of the twelve names, and proposes a table of modern mineralogical best guesses (carnelian, peridot, green feldspar, lapis lazuli, onyx, and others) while candidly acknowledging that no identification can be made with certainty.Mon, 01 Oct 2018 00:00:00 GMTPriestly BreastplateGemologyMaterial CultureTabernaclehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/physical-characteristics-of-hebrew-letters/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/physical-characteristics-of-hebrew-letters/Zvi Ron — A rare but traditional exegetical method reads meaning into the physical shape of Hebrew letters themselves — the closed sides of the bet that opens Genesis, the oversized vav in Vaizata's name in Esther 9:9, the open mem in Nehemiah 2:13's “breached” walls, and the mixed small-and-large peh in Daniel 6:20's account of Darius rising early. Ron traces each interpretation from the Talmud and midrash through medieval commentators such as Ibn Ezra, Radak, Rashi, and Rabbenu Nissim, arguing that the visual form of these anomalous letters was read as a graphic representation of the very content the verse describes — a beam, a breach, a staircase.Mon, 01 Oct 2018 00:00:00 GMTMasoretic TextLetter SymbolismRabbinic ExegesisOrthographyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/english-poets-rizpah/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/english-poets-rizpah/Raymond Apple — Ritzpah, Saul's concubine who guards the impaled bodies of her executed sons in II Samuel 21, is a minor and largely passive figure in the biblical text itself. Apple traces how three English-language poets — William Cullen Bryant, Alfred Lord Tennyson, and Henry Kendall — each took up her story and, in doing so, gave her something the Bible withholds: a voice. Tennyson reads the story through Victorian anxieties about madness and bereaved mothers, Bryant recasts her as an articulate, grieving speaker, and Kendall extends her into a metaphor for the mothers of soldiers lost in modern wars, and in each case a Bible woman largely confined to the narrative's margins is pulled into the foreground.Mon, 01 Oct 2018 00:00:00 GMTReception HistoryWomen in the BibleEnglish PoetryBiblical Motherhoodhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/how-chapter-six-put-the-exodus-back-on-track/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/how-chapter-six-put-the-exodus-back-on-track/Shubert Spero — After Pharaoh's refusal and the people's loss of faith in Exodus 5, the mission of Moses and Aaron appears to collapse — yet by Exodus 7:6 it is proceeding smoothly, even though Moses again protests his unsuitability for the task in chapter 6. Spero argues that Exodus 6:13 and 7:1-2 resolve two underlying misunderstandings: first, that Aaron's real role was as Moses' liaison to the suffering Israelites rather than as spokesman to Pharaoh, and second, that Moses himself was meant to speak directly under divine inspiration before Pharaoh's court, with Aaron elucidating as needed, rather than simply having Aaron do the talking.Mon, 01 Oct 2018 00:00:00 GMTExodus NarrativeMoses and AaronProphecyBiblical Rhetorichttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/international-bible-contest-for-jewish-youth-5778/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/international-bible-contest-for-jewish-youth-5778/Joshua J. Adler — A report on the 55th annual International Bible Contest for Jewish Youth (Hidon ha-Tanakh), held in Jerusalem on Israel's 70th Independence Day. Ezriel Shilat of Hatzor Haglilit, a former Gaza Strip settler evacuated in 2005, won the title over runner-up Oriah Cohen of Haifa, in a final round of sixteen contestants drawn from Israel and seven other countries. Adler describes the contest's format — video-question rounds, pre-contest tours of biblical sites, and meetings with government leaders — and the organizations, including the Jewish Agency and the IDF, that sponsor it each year.Mon, 01 Oct 2018 00:00:00 GMTBible EducationInternational Bible ContestContemporary Jewish Lifehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/esau-and-jacob-brothers-clash-reconcile-and-separate/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/esau-and-jacob-brothers-clash-reconcile-and-separate/Chaya Greenberger — A close rabbinic reading of the Jacob-Esau cycle argues that the brothers' conflict was never simply good versus evil but a contest over two legitimate, distinct spheres of leadership — Jacob's over the spiritual realm and Esau's over the material one. Tracing the sale of the birthright, Isaac's blessings, Jacob's wrestling match at Peniel, and the brothers' reunion and final parting, the article contends that Jacob ultimately renounces the blessing of worldly dominion as mismatched to his character, restoring it to Esau, while the brothers separate in mutual, if hard-won, recognition of each other's God-given path.Sun, 01 Jul 2018 00:00:00 GMTPatriarchal NarrativesFraternal ConflictRabbinic ExegesisLeadershiphttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/more-on-the-seven-nations-girgashite-flight/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/more-on-the-seven-nations-girgashite-flight/Reuven Chaim Klein — A sequel to the author's study of the biblical lists of Canaanite nations, this article gathers rabbinic traditions that the Girgashites voluntarily fled the Holy Land before Joshua's conquest — settling, according to various sources, in Africa, Phrygia, or even Spain, France, or Germany — as an explanation for their frequent absence from those lists. It then examines how the term 'Canaanite' can denote either the Canaanite super-nation as a whole or, per Nahmanides, a narrower nation descended from Canaan's firstborn Sidon, and closes by weighing rabbinic and academic explanations for why the Holy Land itself came to be called the 'Land of Canaan.'Sun, 01 Jul 2018 00:00:00 GMTCanaanite NationsRabbinic LiteratureBiblical GenealogyAncient Near Easthttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/discerning-nahshons-character-from-textual-nuance/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/discerning-nahshons-character-from-textual-nuance/David Fried — Nahshon ben Amminadab looks like a minor figure in the Torah, yet midrashic literature gives him outsized prominence. This article argues that a close reading of Numbers 7 — the seemingly misplaced and out-of-order story of the tribal chieftains' inaugural offerings — reveals that Nahshon's willingness to bring the first sacrifice after the deaths of Nadab and Abihu explains why his tribe, Judah, was chosen to lead the camp toward Canaan. It then shows how Rabbi Yehudah's midrash about Nahshon leaping first into the Red Sea transposes this same character trait onto an earlier, silent moment in Exodus, and traces the trait through Caleb and David as a recurring mark of Judahite leadership.Sun, 01 Jul 2018 00:00:00 GMTMidrashTribal LeadershipTextual AnalysisBook of Numbershttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-plague-of-darkness-hysterical-blindness/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-plague-of-darkness-hysterical-blindness/Stanley Schneider and Morton Seelenfreund — Reading the ninth plague's three biblical gradations of darkness alongside classical commentators who link blindness to fear (Ibn Ezra, Abravanel), the authors propose that the plague of darkness described in Exodus 10:21–23 is best understood as a case of collective hysterical (conversion-disorder) blindness rather than, or alongside, a literal absence of light. Drawing on medical literature on transient visual loss, amaurosis fugax, and post-traumatic blindness, and on social-psychological accounts of anxiety in large groups, they argue that eight prior plagues had already traumatized the Egyptian population to the point where a further, culturally and psychologically induced blindness became possible.Sun, 01 Jul 2018 00:00:00 GMTExodus NarrativePsychology and the BibleAncient EgyptMiracleshttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/raised-from-the-dead-rationalist-approaches/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/raised-from-the-dead-rationalist-approaches/Zvi Ron — Examining the three biblical episodes of the dead being revived — the son of the widow of Zarephath, the son of the Shunammite woman, and the man thrown into Elisha's grave — this article finds that Jewish commentators, including Maimonides, almost never sought naturalistic explanations for these miracles. The one partial exception, the claim that the widow's son was never truly dead, arose not from discomfort with the miracle itself but from a halakhic difficulty about Elijah's priestly status, showing that classical Jewish exegesis treated resurrection as no more extraordinary than any other biblical wonder.Sun, 01 Jul 2018 00:00:00 GMTMiraclesResurrectionMaimonidesRationalist Exegesishttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/sabbatical-and-jubilee-regulations-economic-recovery/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/sabbatical-and-jubilee-regulations-economic-recovery/Samson O. Olanisebe — Reading the biblical Sabbatical and Jubilee legislation — debt remission, release of patrimonial land, and the freeing of slaves with provisions to start afresh — as more than a utopian ideal, this article argues that the principles behind these laws, rather than their literal observance, offer a template for modern economic recovery. Surveying the Jubilee 2000 debt-forgiveness movement and its critics, and drawing on the traditional Yoruba ethic of collective family responsibility, the author proposes that these biblical principles of release and communal support speak directly to Nigeria's contemporary economic recession.Sun, 01 Jul 2018 00:00:00 GMTSocial JusticeEconomic LawSabbatical YearContemporary Applicationhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/book-review-textual-history-of-the-bible/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/book-review-textual-history-of-the-bible/Simcha Rosenberg — A review of Textual History of the Bible: The Hebrew Bible, Volume 1B (Pentateuch, Former and Latter Prophets) and Volume 1C (Writings), edited by Armin Lange and Emanuel Tov (Brill, 2017). The review highlights the volumes' book-by-book textual histories and comparisons among the proto-Masoretic Text, the Qumran scrolls, the Septuagint, and the Samaritan Pentateuch, and notes the work's purely text-based conclusion that the non-Masoretic evidence offers little support for the Documentary Hypothesis.Sun, 01 Jul 2018 00:00:00 GMTBook ReviewTextual CriticismMasoretic TextQumranhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/nations-and-super-nations-of-canaan/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/nations-and-super-nations-of-canaan/Reuven Chaim Klein — A comparative study of the Bible's various lists of Canaanite nations — the genealogy of Canaan's sons in Genesis 10, the ten nations promised to Abraham in Genesis 15, and the recurring six- and seven-nation lists in Exodus, Deuteronomy, Joshua, and I Kings — that catalogues the discrepancies in number, name, and order among them. Drawing chiefly on traditional Jewish exegesis rather than academic scholarship, the article surveys rabbinic and medieval attempts to identify obscure nations like the Hivites and the Kenites, Kenizzites, and Kadmonites, and concludes by examining the idea, developed by Rashi, Mizrahi, and Ibn Ezra among others, that the term Canaanite functioned in the Bible both as the name of a specific nation and as an inclusive super-nation term covering all the peoples of the land.Sun, 01 Apr 2018 00:00:00 GMTCanaanite NationsBiblical GenealogyRabbinic ExegesisBiblical Geographyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/religious-significance-of-bavel-in-jeremiah/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/religious-significance-of-bavel-in-jeremiah/David Fried — Argues that the book of Jeremiah's relentless message of destruction in its first nineteen chapters — dramatized by the smashed jug of chapter 19 and the divorce imagery of chapter 3 — is not mere hyperbole but a deliberate rhetorical strategy: the people had to believe exile could be permanent and unconditional in order to be moved to repent. Only after the exile actually begins does Jeremiah's letter to the captives in Babylon (chapter 29) offer any comfort, and even the famous seventy-year prophecy, read against the two-year return promised by the false prophet Hananiah, functions less as consolation than as a sobering demand to settle in for the long term. The article argues that by instructing the exiles to build houses, plant vineyards, marry, and seek Bavel's welfare — activities Deuteronomy associates with the Land of Israel itself — Jeremiah effectively sanctifies Babylon as a surrogate holy land, laying the groundwork for the Torah centers that would later sustain Judaism in exile.Sun, 01 Apr 2018 00:00:00 GMTProphecyExile and RedemptionBabylonian CaptivityRepentancehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/psalm-34-does-the-heading-fit/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/psalm-34-does-the-heading-fit/Raymond Apple — Defends the traditional heading of Psalm 34, which links the psalm to David feigning madness before King Achish/Abimelech (I Samuel 21), against critics like Oesterley and Buttenweiser who dismiss the superscription as a mistaken or poetically worthless addition. Working through the psalm's alphabetical acrostic structure — including its missing vav-verse and its extra, non-acrostic peh-verse of redemption — the article argues that the poem alternates between autobiographical reflection and Wisdom-style generalization, and that this personal dimension, together with the closing declaration that God redeems his servants, supports reading the historical heading as original and apt rather than an editorial error.Sun, 01 Apr 2018 00:00:00 GMTPsalmsAcrostic PoetrySuperscriptionsDavidhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/how-did-moses-die/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/how-did-moses-die/Daniel M. Berry and Sandra Van Eden — Argues, on close grammatical grounds, that God's command to Moses in Deuteronomy 32:50 — mut, the blunt singular imperative "die," rather than the future tense ve-tamut — means that Moses himself had to take some action to bring about his own death, unlike Aaron, whom God simply "gathers." Comparing Deuteronomy 34:10's unique description of Moses as known by God panim el panim ("face to face") with the intimate, fatal sense of "knowing" God's face found in Jacob's encounter at Peniel, the authors propose that Moses obtained God's permission to see His face a second time — fatal, as God had warned forty years earlier at the burning bush — and that this, rather than natural causes, is how Moses died on Mount Nevo.Sun, 01 Apr 2018 00:00:00 GMTDeath of MosesBiblical HebrewDivine EncounterTorah Commentaryhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/role-of-destiny-in-the-joseph-story/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/role-of-destiny-in-the-joseph-story/Shubert Spero — Explores when and how Jacob and Joseph themselves became conscious of playing a role in a providential drama larger than their family quarrel — the drama, foretold to Abraham, of Israel's descent into Egypt. The article traces Joseph's realization back to the moment in Egypt when his brothers' bowing triggers the flashback to his own prophetic dreams, and Jacob's back to his puzzled but retained memory of those same dreams, arguing that neither man grasped the full scope of the destiny he sensed himself serving, and that Jacob's eventual decision to descend to Egypt itself was made in that same spirit of faith in Providence.Sun, 01 Apr 2018 00:00:00 GMTProvidenceJoseph NarrativeDreamsPatriarchal Narrativeshttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/sinai-and-the-shabbat-cycle-laws/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/sinai-and-the-shabbat-cycle-laws/Alex Maged — Asks why Leviticus 25:1 goes out of its way to note that the laws of shemittah and yovel were given to Moses "on Mount Sinai," since the whole Torah was given there. Tracing six linguistic and thematic parallels between the shemittah/yovel legislation of Parshat Behar and the revelation narrative — counting sabbatical weeks of years versus weeks to Shavuot, the shofar blasts marking both the jubilee and Sinai, the sanctification language shared by both scenes, and the freeing of slaves and return to ancestral land — the article argues that Sinai and the Shabbat-cycle laws are persistently paired throughout the Torah, and concludes that the socioeconomic message of rest for workers, animals, and land is Sinai's fundamental, underlying theme.Sun, 01 Apr 2018 00:00:00 GMTShemittah and YovelSinai RevelationSabbathBiblical Lawhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/septuagint-readings-as-additional-exegetical-layers/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/septuagint-readings-as-additional-exegetical-layers/Zvi Ron — Examines cases where the Septuagint (LXX) reflects a different vocalization or clause division of the same consonantal text as the Masoretic Text, and argues that rabbinic literature sometimes preserves the reading tradition underlying the LXX even where the Masoretes rejected it. Using Exodus 22:13's watchman law and Genesis 47:31's account of Jacob bowing as clear examples — where midrashic and talmudic sources echo the LXX's vocalization despite following MT's consonants — the article extends the method to two unresolved cases in Isaiah (9:7 and 24:23), suggesting that some of these consonantal ambiguities may have been intentional, functioning like the rabbinic al-tikre technique of reading a word two ways at once.Sun, 01 Apr 2018 00:00:00 GMTSeptuagintMasoretic TextTextual CriticismRabbinic Exegesishttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/god-man-and-trees-of-eden/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/god-man-and-trees-of-eden/Ted Chertok — Reading Genesis 2-3 through peshat and midrash, this article traces a sustained biblical motif linking humankind and trees — from the parallel creation of man and trees in Eden, through Deuteronomy's paired laws of the life-preserving fruit tree and the corpse cut down from a tree, to rabbinic discussions of human creativity versus divine design. It argues that Adam and Eve's shame-driven turn to the garden's fig leaves and trees, and the later halakhic category of 'orlah governing a young fruit tree's first years, reflect an evolving, jointly-authored relationship between God, man, and tree in the aftermath of the expulsion from Eden.Mon, 01 Jan 2018 00:00:00 GMTGarden of EdenTrees in the BibleMidrash and PeshatCircumcisionAgricultural Lawhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/leap-month-fabricated-by-jeroboam/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/leap-month-fabricated-by-jeroboam/Reuven Chaim Klein — Examines R. Reuven Margaliot's claim — also found in an unpublished manuscript of R. Saadia Gaon — that Jeroboam's cultic innovation in I Kings 12:32-33 was not simply moving Sukkot to the eighth month but changing the rule governing intercalation of the Hebrew calendar, adding a leap Elul (as in the Babylonian calendar) rather than a leap Adar. Compares this to King Hezekiah's calendar intervention in II Chronicles 30 and the Mishnah's criticism of it, arguing that in both cases the biblical and rabbinic critique targeted improper calendrical authority rather than the date of the festival itself.Mon, 01 Jan 2018 00:00:00 GMTHebrew CalendarJeroboamBabylonian InfluenceRabbinic Interpretationhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/sound-of-music-phonetic-analysis-shirat-hayam/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/sound-of-music-phonetic-analysis-shirat-hayam/Alex Maged — Applies a phonetics-based reading to the Song of the Sea (Exodus 15) and its surrounding narrative, cataloguing paired words that sound alike across two overlapping units — Exodus 13:17-15:19 and 14:30-15:27 — even where their Hebrew roots differ. Argues these sound-echoes reinforce the episode's dramatic irony and its measure-for-measure justice, first meted out against the pursuing Egyptians and then, in the water crisis at Marah, against the celebrating Israelites themselves, tempering national triumphalism with empathy for the defeated.Mon, 01 Jan 2018 00:00:00 GMTSong of the SeaBiblical PhoneticsBiblical PoetryMeasure for Measurehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/josephs-self-imposed-estrangement/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/josephs-self-imposed-estrangement/Jeffrey M. Cohen — Argues that Joseph, despite his proximity and authority in Egypt, deliberately avoided visiting his father Jacob throughout the seventeen years in Goshen except twice, when summoned to Jacob's bedside, because he feared any encounter would force disclosure of his brothers' role in his kidnapping and thereby destroy Jacob's relationship with his other sons. Marshals close textual readings — the impersonal phrasing of the summons in Genesis 47:29 and 48:1, the brothers' absence from the mourning scenes, and Jacob's death-bed allusion to violence against Joseph — to support this reconstruction against Ramban's competing view that Jacob never learned the truth.Mon, 01 Jan 2018 00:00:00 GMTJoseph NarrativeFamily RelationshipsTextual SilenceRabbinic Midrashhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/is-pesah-passover/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/is-pesah-passover/Raymond Apple — Challenges the conventional English rendering 'Passover' for Pesah, tracing the translation to William Tyndale's sixteenth-century distinction between the Jewish Pesah and the Christian Pascha (rendered 'Easter'). Surveys the disputed etymology and biblical usage of the verb p-s-h — to skip or limp versus to protect or spare — through Rashi, Ibn Ezra, Rashbam, Onkelos, and modern scholars such as Carol Meyers and Tamara Prosic, concluding that the root more accurately conveys divine protection and compassion than the neutral, even dismissive, sense 'pass over' carries in modern English.Mon, 01 Jan 2018 00:00:00 GMTPassoverEtymologyBible TranslationExodus Narrativehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/magical-sound-of-priestly-bells/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/magical-sound-of-priestly-bells/Jonathan L. Friedmann — Examines the golden bells (pa'amonim) sewn onto the hem of the High Priest's robe in Exodus 28, arguing that beyond marking sacred status and separating priestly space from the profane, the bells served an apotropaic function — warding off dangerous spirits at the threshold of the sanctuary — paralleled in Near Eastern priestly costume, the Egyptian sistrum, and later Jewish and Christian bell-magic. Engages the Kaufmann-Cross debate over whether Israelite religion evolved from surrounding pagan practice, arguing the biblical text preserves traces of a magical origin even as it reframes the bells' stated purpose.Mon, 01 Jan 2018 00:00:00 GMTPriestly VestmentsRitual ObjectsApotropaic MagicAncient Near Easthttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/why-was-hametz-so-strictly-forbidden-on-passover/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/why-was-hametz-so-strictly-forbidden-on-passover/Tzvi Pittinsky — Asks why the Bible's hametz prohibition on Passover is unusually strict — comparable in scope only to the prohibition against idols — and argues, building on Maimonides' explanation of the year-round ban on offering leaven at the altar, that hametz was itself bound up with Egyptian idolatry. Draws on the Joseph narrative (Potiphar withholding 'bread' from Joseph, the Egyptians' refusal to eat bread with Hebrews as an 'abomination') and the Zohar's identification of Egypt with hametz to suggest that the Egyptians revered their invented leavening process, making its destruction on Passover a repudiation of Egyptian idol worship.Mon, 01 Jan 2018 00:00:00 GMTPassoverLeavenIdolatryJoseph Narrativehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/mishloach-manot-on-purim-and-rosh-hashanah/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/mishloach-manot-on-purim-and-rosh-hashanah/Zvi Ron — Traces the term mishloach manot beyond its familiar association with Purim (Esther 9:22) to Nehemiah 8's account of the first Rosh Hashanah celebration under Ezra, arguing that sending food portions — paired in both texts with giving to the poor — was a standard Persian-era holiday practice rather than a custom unique to Purim. Connects this pattern, and an unusual Talmudic account of a Purim bonfire-jumping custom, to Persian Nowruz festivities, arguing that Jews adopted regional expressions of festivity into existing biblical holidays without borrowing the holidays themselves.Mon, 01 Jan 2018 00:00:00 GMTPurimRosh HashanahPersian InfluenceHoliday Customshttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/aramaic-cognate-of-almah-in-the-targumim/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/aramaic-cognate-of-almah-in-the-targumim/Clifford Hubert Durousseau — A brief philological note surveying the Aramaic term uleimta, the Targumic cognate of the Hebrew 'almah ('young woman'), which occurs over seventy times across the Targumim compared to 'almah's nine biblical occurrences. Shows that the Targumim apply uleimta to married and non-virgin women alike — Dinah after her rape, the Levite's concubine in Judges 19, Ruth as the widow of Mahlon — undermining claims, echoed since Jerome, that 'almah exclusively denotes a virgin, and argues that this abundant Aramaic evidence makes recourse to Ugaritic, Arabic, or Latin cognates unnecessary to interpret Isaiah 7:14.Mon, 01 Jan 2018 00:00:00 GMTAlmahTargumPhilologyIsaiah 7:14https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/book-review-the-early-prophets/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/book-review-the-early-prophets/David J. Zucker — Review of Everett Fox's The Early Prophets: Joshua, Judges, Samuel, and Kings (Schocken Bible Vol. 2, 2014), the sequel to Fox's The Five Books of Moses. Highlights Fox's aural, rhythm-attentive translation method, his use of Hebraized personal and place names within the text alongside standard English forms in his introductions, and the volume's book-by-book introductions and running notes, concluding that it succeeds both as a study aid and as an attempt to recover the Hebrew text's oral character.Mon, 01 Jan 2018 00:00:00 GMTBook ReviewBible TranslationEarly Prophetshttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/book-review-matriarchs-of-genesis/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/book-review-matriarchs-of-genesis/Mordecai Schreiber — Review of David J. Zucker and Moshe Reiss's The Matriarchs of Genesis: Seven Women, Five Views (2015), which expands the traditional four matriarchs to seven by including the maidservants Zilpah and Bilhah alongside Abraham's second wife Hagar. Notes the book's use of biblical, early extra-biblical, rabbinic, post-rabbinic, and contemporary feminist sources to address the sparse and often contradictory information about these women, and situates the book within a broader contemporary reassessment of women's roles in Jewish religious life.Mon, 01 Jan 2018 00:00:00 GMTBook ReviewMatriarchsFeminist Biblical ScholarshipGenesishttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/amenhotep-iii-and-the-exodus/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/amenhotep-iii-and-the-exodus/Ira Friedman — Friedman argues that Amenhotep III, whose reign shows a documented gap that Egyptologist Arielle Kozloff attributes to a national epidemic crisis, is the best candidate for the pharaoh of the Exodus. He correlates biblical details — Sekhmet worship, the toponyms Ramesses and Raamesses, and rabbinic chronologies for the Israelite sojourn and enslavement — with the reigns of Amenhotep III, Akhenaten, Hatshepsut, and Thutmose III. The article also revisits Manetho's two Exodus-like accounts preserved by Josephus, proposing that their portrayal of a Thutmossid pharaoh and an 'Amenophis' who expels a diseased population offers non-biblical corroboration for this dating.Sun, 01 Oct 2017 00:00:00 GMTExodusEgyptologyBiblical ChronologyPlagueshttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/annihilation-of-sennacheribs-army/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/annihilation-of-sennacheribs-army/Stephen Walter Caesar — Caesar argues that the destruction of 185,000 Assyrian soldiers in Second Kings 19:35 is best explained as an outbreak of septicemic plague, the deadliest and fastest-killing of the three historical forms of the disease. Drawing on Herodotus's account of mice overrunning the Assyrian camp — long read by classicists as a symbol of pestilence — and on comparative evidence from the Plague of Justinian and the Black Death, he argues that the unsanitary, crowded conditions of a besieging army made it especially vulnerable to a fast-moving epidemic. He further notes that Assyrian kings routinely omitted military disasters from their own annals, and that Assyrian sources elsewhere attribute army-destroying plagues to the wrath of the plague god Nergal, paralleling the biblical framing of the episode as an act of God.Sun, 01 Oct 2017 00:00:00 GMTPlague and DiseaseAssyriaBiblical HistoryAncient Near Easthttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/etiologies-in-the-bible/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/etiologies-in-the-bible/David S. Farkas — Building on Hermann Gunkel's foundational work on biblical etiology, Farkas surveys how the Bible explains the origins of names and places, distinguishing etiologies (which explain origins) from the Talmudic principle of shema garim (which reads character out of a name). He classifies etiologies as explicit (Noah, Gilgal, Bokhim), doubled (Be'er Sheva, Isaac, Edom, the naming of several tribal ancestors), or hidden and merely implied (Har Seir, Paran, Petah Einayim, the Yabbok river, Kadesh). The article argues that recognizing these layered etiologies — even the unstated ones — uncovers meaning in the text that a surface reading misses.Sun, 01 Oct 2017 00:00:00 GMTEtymologyNames in the BibleBiblical NarrativeGenesishttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/babel-or-babylon/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/babel-or-babylon/Andrew W. Dyck — Of the 224 occurrences of the Hebrew Bäbel in the Tanakh, only the two in Genesis 10:10 and 11:9 are conventionally rendered 'Babel' rather than 'Babylon.' Dyck surveys how TWOT, BDB, Gesenius, HALOT, Clines, Swanson, and the Old Greek translation treat the word, finding that most lexicons either equivocate or default to an etymological link with the verb balal ('to confuse'). Through a syntactic analysis of the two Genesis verses and comparison with the word's other 222 occurrences, he concludes that there is no linguistic basis for treating 'Babel' as a distinct location from Babylon, the capital of Babylonia, and that 'Babylon' is the more accurate translation in both verses.Sun, 01 Oct 2017 00:00:00 GMTBiblical HebrewLexicographyTranslationGenesishttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/height-theology-david-and-goliath/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/height-theology-david-and-goliath/Avinoam Sharon — Sharon argues that the biblical narrator deliberately uses ambiguous Hebrew terms — na'ar and katan — to create the impression that David was small at the time of the Goliath episode, even though other details (Saul's armor fitting him, his taking up Goliath's sword) imply he was physically large. This calculated ambiguity, paralleled by the treatment of the adult Benjamin as a 'child' in Genesis 44, serves the story's theological point: that God, unlike Saul or Goliath, does not judge by outward appearance, and that Israel's victory over its enemies depends on divine deliverance rather than physical might.Sun, 01 Oct 2017 00:00:00 GMTBiblical NarrativeDavid and GoliathBiblical HebrewTheologyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/isaacs-counter-legacy/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/isaacs-counter-legacy/Chaya Greenberger — Against the midrashic tradition that frames Isaac's legacy as one of self-sacrifice at the akedah, this article argues that the biblical text itself emphasizes a different, counter legacy: Isaac's slow, largely self-initiated return to a coherent and productive life afterward. Tracing Isaac's diminished role in the akedah narrative, his sparse and non-interactive divine revelations, his agricultural success in Gerar, and his eventual clarity about which son deserves the birthright, the article shows Isaac learning to engage the world with little divine guidance. This model of recovery through reflection and action, rather than the trauma of near-sacrifice, is presented as Isaac's true inheritance for later generations.Sat, 01 Jul 2017 00:00:00 GMTPatriarchal NarrativesGenesisTrauma and RecoveryDivine Revelationhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/exegesis-of-demetrius-the-chronographer/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/exegesis-of-demetrius-the-chronographer/Zvi Ron — Demetrius the Chronographer, the earliest datable Jewish author writing in Greek, offered explanations for several biblical difficulties centuries before the rabbinic exegetical tradition addressed the same questions. This article examines three of his solutions — why Joseph never contacted his father, why Benjamin received five portions at Joseph's table, and where the Israelites obtained weapons to fight Amalek — and compares them to later rabbinic answers, showing that Demetrius's explanations were consistently ignored or rejected by Jewish exegetes despite being the earliest recorded attempts at resolving these problems.Sat, 01 Jul 2017 00:00:00 GMTHellenistic JudaismBiblical ExegesisJoseph NarrativeComparative Exegesishttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/nehoshet-copper-bronze-or-brass/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/nehoshet-copper-bronze-or-brass/Susan V. Meschel — The Hebrew word nehoshet, applied in the biblical text to objects such as the Bronze Sea, the Nehushtan, and the Temple's cymbals and pillars, has been variously translated as copper, bronze, or brass. Drawing on the metallurgy of copper, tin, and zinc — including their melting points and the difficulty of producing zinc-based brass with ancient technology — this article argues that bronze is the most scientifically plausible translation for nearly all nehoshet objects, while brass, which requires a metallurgical process not documented before the medieval period, is highly unlikely. A related discussion of the difficult term hashmal in Ezekiel's chariot vision concludes that electrum, not amber or bronze, best fits the text's description of a fiery, glittering substance.Sat, 01 Jul 2017 00:00:00 GMTMetallurgyTabernacle and TempleBible TranslationMaterial Culturehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/an-electric-ark-history-of-an-interpretation/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/an-electric-ark-history-of-an-interpretation/Stephen A. Newman — The deaths of Nadab and Abihu, Aaron's sons, after offering alien fire before the Lord have long puzzled Jewish commentators, who focused mainly on why the tragedy occurred rather than how it was physically carried out. This article traces the history of one such physical explanation: the eighteenth-century idea, first proposed by Georg Wilhelm Lichtenberg shortly after the invention of the Leyden jar, that the Ark of the Covenant functioned as a giant capacitor capable of delivering a lethal electric shock. The theory spread through popular scientific literature and even offbeat religious writing of the nineteenth century, but never gained acceptance among traditional Jewish commentators, for whom the deaths remained a purely supernatural act.Sat, 01 Jul 2017 00:00:00 GMTTabernacle and TempleHistory of ScienceDeath and PunishmentBiblical Exegesishttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/genre-and-audience-of-deuteronomy-9-7/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/genre-and-audience-of-deuteronomy-9-7/Yaakov Jaffe — Deuteronomy 9:7 has traditionally been read as the closing verse of a hortatory passage addressed to the generation of the desert, admonishing them to remember their own rebelliousness in the wilderness. This article traces how the sixteenth-century kabbalist Isaac Luria reclassified the verse as a legislative imperative addressed to all future generations, and how that reading — despite being a minority view for most of the history of biblical interpretation — has become the standard understanding in modern prayer books. The article also considers Nahmanides' ambivalent treatment of the verse and argues that, on a simple reading, the verse refers generically to the people's rebelliousness rather than specifically to the incident of the Golden Calf.Sat, 01 Jul 2017 00:00:00 GMTDeuteronomyBiblical GenreKabbalahLiturgyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/modern-searches-for-aviv-barley/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/modern-searches-for-aviv-barley/Alex Strashny — Since 1988 Nehemia Gordon has led annual searches for aviv (ripening) barley in Israel, seeking to reconstruct the pre-rabbinic observational Hebrew calendar in which the new month began with sightings of the crescent moon and the year began after aviv barley was found. This article presents, for the first time in a peer-reviewed publication, seventeen years (2000–2016) of the aviv search data alongside Israeli new-moon sighting records, and compares the resulting hypothetical observational date of Nisan 15 each year to the fixed rabbinic calendar's date. The two calendars agree closely in most years, differing by at most two days except for 2005, when a disputed intercalation produced a full month's divergence.Sat, 01 Jul 2017 00:00:00 GMTHebrew CalendarAgricultureHalakhahAstronomyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-meaning-of-dammesek-eliezer/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-meaning-of-dammesek-eliezer/Raymond Apple — Eliezer, Abraham's servant and steward, is called in Genesis 15:2 "Dammesek Eliezer," an appellation whose meaning has never been settled. This article surveys the competing interpretations — that Eliezer was the son of a concubine named Mesek, that Dammesek denotes his Damascene origin despite the awkward Hebrew grammar this requires, that it is a corrupted form of adam meshek ("man of business"), and various homiletical readings — and concludes that while the traditional geographic reading remains the most reasonable, none of the proposed etymologies fully resolves the difficulty.Sat, 01 Jul 2017 00:00:00 GMTGenesisOnomasticsBiblical HebrewAbraham Narrativehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/shemots-missing-names/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/shemots-missing-names/Francis Nataf — Reading Exodus 1–2 as a single literary unit, this article argues that the Torah's withholding of names in the account of Egyptian bondage — Moses unnamed until adopted by Pharaoh's daughter, his parents unnamed throughout, his sister Miriam unnamed for fourteen chapters — is a deliberate literary device rather than incidental terseness. Because the midwives Shifrah and Puah, plausibly Egyptian rather than Israelite, are named in the same section, the pattern emerges that Israelites, however important, go unnamed while Egyptians do not. The contrast with the named family heads who enter Egypt in Genesis 46 shows the descent of the Israelites from a people of status and name to an undifferentiated, nameless mass under slavery.Sat, 01 Jul 2017 00:00:00 GMTExodus NarrativeLiterary AnalysisNaming in the BibleSlaveryhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/leviticus-12-2-midrash-not-versocentric/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/leviticus-12-2-midrash-not-versocentric/Aryeh Klapper — Against the common characterization of midrash as "atomistic" or "versocentric," narrowly fixated on isolated verses without regard for context, this article uses the Talmud's three explanations (TB Shavuot 18b) of why a woman's pregnancy leads to bearing a male child (Lev. 12:2) to show that midrash instead privileges structural context — thematic and compositional links across a literary unit — over immediate, adjacent context. Tracing how each rabbinic reading connects Leviticus 12:2 back through the laws of havdalah and holiness in Leviticus 10–11 via the literary device of semikhut parshiyot (meaningful juxtaposition) and even an early form of inclusio, the article argues that midrash reflects sustained literary sensitivity to the Torah as an integrated whole, not a lack of concern for context.Sat, 01 Jul 2017 00:00:00 GMTMidrashLeviticusRabbinic HermeneuticsLiterary Structurehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-exodus-syndemic/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-exodus-syndemic/Ira Friedman, John Marr — Building on a 1996 epidemiological analysis of the ten plagues, the authors argue that the deaths of the tenth plague were the product of a 'syndemic' — the synergistic effect of diseases seeded by the earlier plagues rather than a single sudden affliction. Tracing likely disease vectors (schistosomiasis, malaria, leishmaniasis, anthrax, leptospirosis, brucellosis) through the Nile's contamination, the death of frogs and fish, insect swarms, and diseased livestock, they reconstruct a plausible medical chain of causation running from the first plague to the last. The article situates this natural mechanism within, rather than against, the biblical text's insistence on the plagues' miraculous character and timing.Sun, 01 Jan 2017 00:00:00 GMTEpidemiologyExodus NarrativeAncient EgyptScience and the Biblehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/jeremiahs-trial-as-a-false-prophet/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/jeremiahs-trial-as-a-false-prophet/Hayyim Angel — Angel examines three classical readings of Jeremiah 26 — by Abarbanel, Malbim, and Menahem Boleh — that reconstruct how the priests, prophets, elders, and masses each responded to Jeremiah's prophecy of the Temple's destruction. Each commentator resolves the narrative's ambiguities (who speaks in verses 20-23, why the elders invoke Micah's precedent after a favorable verdict, and why Ahikam still needed to intervene) differently, yielding sharply different portraits of the religious sincerity, cowardice, or wickedness of Jeremiah's various opponents. The article argues that the range of readings shows Jeremiah's adversaries were not uniformly wicked, but included sincerely religious people who were simply convinced, on reasonable grounds, that he was a false prophet.Sun, 01 Jan 2017 00:00:00 GMTProphecyRabbinic ExegesisBiblical Trial NarrativesTemple Destructionhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/daniel-embodiment-of-exile-and-redemption/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/daniel-embodiment-of-exile-and-redemption/Zvi Ron — Ron reconstructs Daniel's chronology from the book's own dating formulas and, borrowing the detail that Joseph was seventeen when taken captive, proposes that Daniel was the same age when brought to Babylon. On that reckoning Daniel turned 77 — a number resonating with the 'seventy weeks' of Daniel 9:24 — in the very year Cyrus proclaimed the end of the exile, and was about 79 or 80 at his final vision. The article argues that this symbolic lifespan makes Daniel a living embodiment of Israel's exile and its unfinished, gradually unfolding redemption, paralleling the extensive Daniel-Joseph literary parallels noted by earlier commentators.Sun, 01 Jan 2017 00:00:00 GMTChronologyExile and RedemptionRabbinic ExegesisBiblical Numerologyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/noahs-survival-and-enduring-legacy/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/noahs-survival-and-enduring-legacy/Chaya Greenberger — Reading Noah's story through the lens of survivor psychology, Greenberger divides his ordeal into three stages — anticipating the flood, enduring a year of sole responsibility for the ark's passengers, and confronting the devastation upon disembarking — and argues his silence in each stage should not simply be read as a moral failure compared to Moses' or Abraham's intercessions. She contends that Noah's true legacy lies in his post-flood initiative: his sacrifice, understood through midrashic and Rambam-adjacent readings as an act of humility that 'made room' for God, prompts God's covenant and invitation to humanity to partner in maintaining a moral world, an outcome the article treats as more significant than Noah's earlier passivity or his later drunkenness.Sun, 01 Jan 2017 00:00:00 GMTFlood NarrativeCovenantSacrificeRabbinic Exegesishttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-problem-of-theodicy-in-psalms/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-problem-of-theodicy-in-psalms/Raymond Apple — Apple examines the Psalm verses appended to Grace After Meals — especially Psalms 34:11 and 37:25 — which assert that the righteous never go hungry, a claim plainly contradicted by ordinary experience and by the Book of Job. Surveying rabbinic and modern responses (Rabbi Yannai's admission that the answer 'is not in our hands,' Hirsch's idea that the righteous do not feel their lack, and the reading of k'firim in 34:11 as either young lions or metaphorical 'unbelievers'), he concludes that the most workable resolution is that the righteous, even when objectively deprived, subjectively transcend their suffering rather than experience divine protection from it.Sun, 01 Jan 2017 00:00:00 GMTTheodicyLiturgyPsalmsRabbinic Exegesishttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-status-of-women-and-exodus-25-2/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-status-of-women-and-exodus-25-2/Dan Vogel — Vogel traces the long translation history of the ambiguous phrase kol ish ('every man') in the Lord's call for donations to the Tabernacle (Exodus 25:2), showing that translators from Onkelos through the King James and Jewish Publication Society versions split between a literal, male-only rendering and a gender-inclusive one, with several 'quasi-official' translations liberalizing the phrasing between their first and second editions. He argues that the Torah itself resolves the ambiguity ten chapters later, when Exodus 35:22 and 36:6 explicitly include women among the donors and Exodus 38:8 credits women by name for the laver's construction, showing the Torah anticipated and corrected any implication that women held secondary status in this invitation to give.Sun, 01 Jan 2017 00:00:00 GMTBible TranslationStatus of WomenTabernacleGender in the Biblehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/he-that-formed-the-eye-shall-he-not-see/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/he-that-formed-the-eye-shall-he-not-see/Shubert Spero — Spero analyzes Psalm 94:9-10, in which the Psalmist rebuts the 'wicked' who claim God neither sees nor hears, as a four-part graduated argument moving from the ear to the eye to moral instruction to knowledge itself — each premised on the principle that the Creator of a faculty must possess that faculty in its fullest sense. He shows how the choice of verbs (noteh for the ear's placement, yabit for the eye's directed, intentional gaze) signals increasing complexity, culminating in the claim that God's teaching of da'at to man implies not merely divine awareness but a fully rational, moral will — a version of the classical Argument from Design that Spero connects to Maimonides and John Stuart Mill.Sun, 01 Jan 2017 00:00:00 GMTPsalms ExegesisPhilosophy of ReligionArgument from DesignDivine Attributeshttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/book-review-jps-song-of-songs/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/book-review-jps-song-of-songs/Simcha Rosenberg — Rosenberg reviews Michael Fishbane's volume on Song of Songs in the JPS Bible Commentary series, which tackles the book's long-standing interpretive dilemma — plain romantic meaning versus rabbinic allegory — by running four parallel commentaries (peshat, derash, remez, and sod) on every verse. He highlights Fishbane's innovative remez (philosophical) and sod (mystical) layers as genuine advances over prior literal and allegorical treatments such as ArtScroll's and the Da'at Mikra series, concluding that the book rewards sustained study more than any other volume yet published in the series.Sun, 01 Jan 2017 00:00:00 GMTBook ReviewSong of SongsBiblical CommentaryAllegorical Interpretationhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/book-review-words-of-gad-the-seer/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/book-review-words-of-gad-the-seer/Simcha Rosenberg — Rosenberg reviews Meir Bar-Ilan's edition of The Words of Gad the Seer, a pseudepigraphic work attributed to the otherwise-lost prophetic book mentioned in 1 Chronicles 29:29, preserved only in a manuscript brought from the Jews of Cochin, India to Cambridge around 1806. He describes Bar-Ilan's thirty years of research establishing the manuscript's textual and codicological features (masoretic notes, scribal peculiarities) and its dating debate between a first-century-BCE and a 12th-16th-century composition, and highlights two of the work's more striking narrative expansions — the Moabite shepherd's conversion and the continuation of Tamar's story after Absalom's revenge — as the volume's most interesting original contribution.Sun, 01 Jan 2017 00:00:00 GMTBook ReviewPseudepigraphaManuscript StudiesRabbinic Literaturehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/book-review-have-you-considered-my-servant-job/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/book-review-have-you-considered-my-servant-job/Michal Porath-Zibman — Porath-Zibman reviews Samuel Balentine's thematic study of the Book of Job, praising its fresh chapters on minor characters such as Job's wife and its wide-ranging history of Job's reception across theology, art, and literature. She faults the book on two fronts: its treatment of God and the Satan cites only Saadiah Gaon and Maimonides among Jewish commentators despite centuries of further discussion, and its reliance on pop-culture touchstones — an episode of the television show House, a Google search on 'hero' — undercuts its scholarly seriousness even as it may appeal to a more casual reader.Sun, 01 Jan 2017 00:00:00 GMTBook ReviewBook of JobTheodicyReception Historyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/letter-jeroboams-calves-and-the-bronze-snake/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/letter-jeroboams-calves-and-the-bronze-snake/Joshua J. Adler — Responding to Yosef Green's reappraisal of Jeroboam ben Nabat (JBQ 44:2), Adler agrees that Jeroboam had positive attributes but argues his choice of golden calves as cult objects at Dan and Beth-El was indefensible given their idolatrous associations since the time of Moses. Adler suggests Jeroboam could have followed the precedent of Moses' bronze serpent (Numbers 21:9) instead, noting that a snake image was in fact preserved for centuries afterward even among Davidic kings in Judah, until it was finally destroyed during the reign of Hezekiah.Sun, 01 Jan 2017 00:00:00 GMTLetters to the EditorIdolatryKingdom of IsraelRabbinic Literaturehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/why-doesnt-noah-have-more-children/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/why-doesnt-noah-have-more-children/Ami Hordes — Noah is commanded, both directly and by implication, to father more children after the Flood, yet the text records that he never does. Working through the layered instructions to enter and leave the Ark, the twin repetitions of Pru Urvu addressed to Noah by name, and the later Ham incident, this article argues that Noah's silence is best explained by Radak's account of a man who lost faith in humanity before the Flood and never recovered it afterward — a reading reinforced by the rabbinic debate over whether the world was worth creating at all.Sat, 01 Oct 2016 00:00:00 GMTProcreationRabbinic ExegesisCharacter StudyDivine Commandhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/samson-absalom-and-nezirut/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/samson-absalom-and-nezirut/Alex Maged — The laws of the Nazirite are followed, in the triennial reading cycle, by the Haftarah of Samson's birth — an unlikely pairing that this article argues is deliberate. Tracing a long list of narrative parallels between Samson and Absalom (long hair, anger and revenge, consorting with the enemy, betrayal by a confidant, an undignified death), the piece contends that both men mistake their own gifts for license to place themselves above their community, which is exactly the temptation nezirut is designed to guard against.Sat, 01 Oct 2016 00:00:00 GMTNezirutCharacter ComparisonLeadershipCommunal Identityhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/addenda-to-psalm-145/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/addenda-to-psalm-145/Raymond Apple — Psalm 145 (Ashrei) is recited three times daily framed by two added verses that do not belong to the psalm itself: a prologue drawn from Psalms 84:5 and 144:15, and an epilogue from Psalm 115:18. This article surveys literary, communal, and liturgical explanations for why these addenda were attached, and argues that the liturgical explanation — rooted in the practice of pre-worship meditation and the psalm's role introducing the closing unit of Psalms 145-150 — best accounts for their function in the prayer service.Sat, 01 Oct 2016 00:00:00 GMTLiturgyPsalmsPrayer HistoryTalmudic Commentaryhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/nahmanides-abrahams-mesopotamian-origins/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/nahmanides-abrahams-mesopotamian-origins/Reuven Chaim Klein — Against the consensus view that Abraham was born in Ur Kasdim and later migrated to Haran, Nahmanides argues from Joshua 24:2-4 and other verses that Abraham was actually born in Haran, moved with Terah to Ur, and only later returned to Haran. This article lays out Nahmanides' proofs, questions several of his underlying assumptions (particularly about the ethnic makeup of Sumer and the location of Cutha), and elaborates a third position — that of R. Nissim of Gerona and Abarbanel — under which Ur Kasdim itself lay within northern Mesopotamia, 'beyond the river.'Sat, 01 Oct 2016 00:00:00 GMTPatriarchal NarrativesMedieval CommentaryHistorical GeographyNahmanideshttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/orphans-and-affirmative-action/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/orphans-and-affirmative-action/Gil Student — Halakha grants orphans preferential legal treatment — their court cases are heard first, and they may charge otherwise-forbidden interest — which raises the question of who actually qualifies as an orphan. Tracing Rambam's definition (a child who has lost a parent and cannot yet care for himself like other adults) to its long-obscure source in the Mekhilta De-Rashbi, this article argues that halakha deliberately confines 'orphan' status to dependent children, and draws out the contemporary implication that hardship alone, without that narrow status, does not entitle an adult to permanent preferential treatment.Sat, 01 Oct 2016 00:00:00 GMTHalakhaLegal DefinitionsRambamSocial Ethicshttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-mishkan-and-the-aesthetic/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-mishkan-and-the-aesthetic/Shubert Spero — Though the word yafeh, beautiful, never appears in the Torah's account of the Mishkan's construction, this article argues that aesthetic considerations were nonetheless built into the project by design. Examining the choice of costly, colorful materials, the description of Bezalel's artistic gifts, the repeated reference to a visual 'pattern' shown to Moses, and the ornamental cups and flowers on the menorah that Rashi himself calls decorative, Spero contends that beauty was cultivated as a genuine, if understated, value in the sanctuary's construction and in the High Priest's garments alike.Sat, 01 Oct 2016 00:00:00 GMTAestheticsTabernaclePriestly GarmentsJewish Philosophyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-role-of-terah-in-patriarchal-family/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-role-of-terah-in-patriarchal-family/Ari Berman — Terah receives only eight verses in Genesis, yet the Torah's toldot-headings mark him, not Abraham, as ancestor of the chosen family — a family whose members consistently intermarry among Terah's own descendants. This article argues that Terah's unfinished journey from Ur toward Canaan reflects a genuine, if incomplete, spiritual turn toward God, one that explains why Haran's household already invokes the Lord's name by the time of Rebekah's betrothal, but that it is Abraham's completion of that journey — not its mere initiation — that earns him, and not his father, the title of first patriarch.Sat, 01 Oct 2016 00:00:00 GMTPatriarchal NarrativesGenesisFamily and GenealogyCharacter Studyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/an-event-not-pure-political-analysis/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/an-event-not-pure-political-analysis/Daniel M. Zucker — Saul's private explanation for David's absence from the New Moon feast — 'it's accidental, he must be unclean and not yet cleansed' — repeats the word tahor twice in a way commentators from Rabbi Isaiah di Trani to Abarbanel have found redundant. Reading the verse's pronoun hu as referring to the absence itself rather than to David produces a different, double-entendre translation, 'it's an event not pure, for it's not pure,' which this article argues better anticipates Saul's explosive reaction the next day, when Jonathan's cover story for David confirms the king's simmering suspicion of his son-in-law's disloyalty.Sat, 01 Oct 2016 00:00:00 GMTNarrative AnalysisDavid and SaulPolitical Interpretationhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/nebuchadnezzars-second-year-daniel-2/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/nebuchadnezzars-second-year-daniel-2/Zvi Ron — Daniel 2:1 dates Nebuchadnezzar's dream to 'the second year of his reign,' but this conflicts with the three-year training period Daniel has already undergone in chapter 1. After surveying source-critical, harmonizing, and traditional rabbinic solutions (including Seder Olam's view that the count runs from the Temple's destruction), this article proposes that the phrase is instead a deliberate literary echo of 'after two years' time' in Genesis 41:1, aligning Daniel's rise with Joseph's — a parallel already noticed by the Midrash but not, until now, traced to this specific chronological detail.Sat, 01 Oct 2016 00:00:00 GMTBook of DanielChronologyJoseph Narrative ParallelsRabbinic Exegesishttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/bara-as-sudden-expansion/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/bara-as-sudden-expansion/Joshua Backon — The word bara in Genesis 1:1 has long puzzled commentators, since its root literally means 'to cut and form' yet the term is generally taken to denote creation ex nihilo. Drawing on a secondary etymological sense of b-r-a — to grow, expand, or feed — together with Talmudic language describing a world that 'went on expanding' until God said 'enough,' this article proposes reading Genesis 1:1-3 as a loose poetic anticipation of cosmic inflation: bara as sudden expansion, and 'let there be light' as the escape of photons once the early universe thinned out.Sat, 01 Oct 2016 00:00:00 GMTCreation NarrativeHebrew EtymologyScience and Torahhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/book-review-the-ethics-of-genesis/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/book-review-the-ethics-of-genesis/Simcha Rosenberg — A review of The Ethics of Genesis by Rabbi Dr. Abba Engelberg (New York: Kodesh Press, 2014), a book that takes up the ethical questions a thoughtful reader brings to the weekly Torah portion but that classical verse-by-verse commentators tend not to address. Rosenberg highlights the author's boldest arguments — that the Flood may have killed innocent children because open-ended miraculous provision for them was never God's way, and that the true (failed) test of the Akeidah was whether Abraham would challenge an apparently unethical divine command — and concludes the book best serves an English-language reader encountering Genesis's deeper moral questions with fresh eyes.Sat, 01 Oct 2016 00:00:00 GMTBook ReviewGenesisBiblical Ethicshttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-fifth-annual-bible-contest-for-adults/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-fifth-annual-bible-contest-for-adults/Joshua J. Adler — A firsthand report on the Fifth Annual Hidon Hatanakh for adults, held during Hanukah at Jerusalem's Binyanei Ha'umah before an audience of Bible enthusiasts, with remarks from Prime Minister Netanyahu and Education Minister Naftali Bennett. Adler describes the contest's format — a written qualifying exam followed by oral rounds that narrowed twelve contestants to a final six — and its outcome, a tie between Yafit Soliman of Kfar Yavitz and Levi Sudri of Bet Shemesh after both answered dozens of tie-breaker questions correctly.Sat, 01 Oct 2016 00:00:00 GMTBible ContestIsraelJewish Educationhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/literary-parallels-homer-philistines/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/literary-parallels-homer-philistines/Stephen Walter Caesar — Comparing Homer's Iliad and Odyssey with the biblical narratives of the Philistines, this article argues that shared motifs — an ox-goad as weapon, sumptuous cloth as economic stakes, thunder as divine intervention, single champion combat, and the stripping and beheading of a defeated foe's corpse — point to a genuine Aegean cultural background for the Philistines. It draws on archaeological evidence from Ashkelon, Mycenae, Enkomi, and Sardinia to argue that Goliath's armor and weaponry in particular reflect authentic Bronze Age Aegean material culture rather than local Canaanite conventions.Fri, 01 Jul 2016 00:00:00 GMTPhilistinesHomeric LiteratureComparative MythologyBiblical Archaeologyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/dagon-the-fish-god/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/dagon-the-fish-god/Gil Student — Examining the widespread belief that the Philistine idol Dagon was shaped like a mermaid, this article traces the fish identification back only as far as the Church Father Jerome, and shows that the classical Jewish sources — from Menachem Ben Saruk and Rabbenu Tam through Ralbag — largely reject or complicate it. It argues that the deity's more likely origin is the Semitic grain god Dagan, and that the case for a fish-shaped idol rests on little more than the resemblance between the words dag and Dagon.Fri, 01 Jul 2016 00:00:00 GMTIdolatryPhilistinesRabbinic ExegesisAncient Near Easthttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/book-of-job-jewish-national-suffering/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/book-of-job-jewish-national-suffering/David Fried — Why is the book of Job, an individual tragedy, included among the texts permitted for study on the Ninth of Av alongside Lamentations and the sad portions of Jeremiah? Through close linguistic and structural comparison — the cursing of one's birth-day, the fantasy of a lawsuit against God, the shared setting in the land of Utz, and parallel structures of faith, complaint, and uncertain resolution — this article argues that Job gives voice to a kind of grief that personal repentance cannot: the sense that national suffering is simply unjust, even while faith in ultimate divine justice is preserved.Fri, 01 Jul 2016 00:00:00 GMTBook of JobTheodicyNinth of AvComparative Literaturehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/moses-is-cured-of-leprosy/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/moses-is-cured-of-leprosy/Stephen A. Newman — Why was the sign of Moses' hand becoming diseased and then healed the only one of the three signs given at the Burning Bush that was never displayed to the Egyptians? Drawing on Exodus Rabbah's reading of the sign as a rebuke for slander, and on the Egyptian historian Manetho's hostile account (preserved by Josephus) that identifies Moses with a leprous priest named Osarseph, this article argues that the sign was meant only for the Israelites themselves — a private assurance that, whatever status the Egyptians assigned them, they were pure and blameless.Fri, 01 Jul 2016 00:00:00 GMTExodusMosesEgyptian HistoryRabbinic Exegesishttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/reworking-the-midrash-achashverosh-temple/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/reworking-the-midrash-achashverosh-temple/Zvi Ron — Rabbinic chronology places Achashverosh's reign before the building of the Second Temple, while cuneiform evidence and Greek historians place Xerxes' reign after it — a discrepancy that colors several midrashim about Achashverosh's feast and his refusal to permit Temple construction. This article argues that these aggadic statements remain meaningful once reread against the historically correct setting: not as being about the Temple itself, which was already standing, but about the still-unwalled and unrebuilt city of Jerusalem, whose reconstruction Achashverosh's successors likewise resisted.Fri, 01 Jul 2016 00:00:00 GMTPersian Period ChronologyMidrashBook of EstherSecond Templehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/anti-hybridization-laws-sodom-gomorrah/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/anti-hybridization-laws-sodom-gomorrah/Geula Twersky — The Torah's prohibition against hybridizing animals, plants, and fibers (kilayim) receives no stated rationale, and the commentators disagree over whether it concerns idolatry, the integrity of creation, or sexual morality. This article follows the view of Maharal and Ibn Ezra that the prohibition hints at illicit sexual relations, and argues — through etymology, biblical parallels, and Bronze Age archaeological evidence for viticulture and grain cultivation in the southern Jordan Valley — that the specific choice of the vineyard and grain fields to represent this prohibition is best explained by their association with Sodom and Gomorrah, cities remembered for abundant wine and bread alongside notorious sexual sin.Fri, 01 Jul 2016 00:00:00 GMTKilayimSodom and GomorrahBiblical EtymologyArchaeologyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/how-long-was-the-sojourn-in-egypt/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/how-long-was-the-sojourn-in-egypt/David Gadeloff — Exodus 12:40 states plainly that Israel dwelt in Egypt for 430 years, yet the lifespans recorded for Kehath, Amram, and Moses leave room for only about 350 years, forcing the traditional rabbinic solution that counts the 430 (and 400) years from the Covenant of the Parts rather than from the descent to Egypt, yielding an actual sojourn of only 210 years. This article proposes instead reading Exodus 12:40 and Genesis 15 literally, and reinterprets the genealogical list in Genesis 46 as including grandchildren born both before and after the descent to Egypt, a solution the author argues is better supported by the text and resolves several difficulties in Genesis 38 and Numbers 26 as well.Fri, 01 Jul 2016 00:00:00 GMTBiblical ChronologyExodusGenealogyRabbinic Exegesishttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/weekday-amidah-and-biblical-psalms/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/weekday-amidah-and-biblical-psalms/Jonathan L. Friedmann — Reading the Weekday Amidah as a rabbinic psalm, this article traces both its divergences from and convergences with the Book of Psalms — from the replacement of Temple sacrifice with verbal prayer and the shift from priestly performance to congregational participation, to direct quotations, shared theological epithets, and the psalmic device of parallelism. Applying Hermann Gunkel's form-critical categories of lament, hymn, thanksgiving, wisdom, and royal psalms to the Amidah's nineteen benedictions, it argues that the prayer's architects modeled their liturgy on cultic hymns even as they deliberately diverged from them to mark a break with the sacrificial Temple system.Fri, 01 Jul 2016 00:00:00 GMTLiturgyAmidahPsalmsForm Criticismhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/first-biblical-family-when-did-they-live/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/first-biblical-family-when-did-they-live/Samuel Sostre — Genesis describes Adam and Cain as tillers of the soil and Abel as a shepherd, and within only seven generations has Tubal-cain forging copper and iron implements — a level of technological development that, per the archaeological record of agriculture, animal domestication, and metallurgy, could not have existed before roughly 4500 BCE for copper and 1300 BCE for iron. Reading the genealogy of Genesis 4 as historically literal, this article argues that the first biblical family's described lifestyle fits a period around or after 1300 BCE, most likely during the time of the Judges rather than at the true dawn of the human species.Fri, 01 Jul 2016 00:00:00 GMTGenesisBiblical ChronologyArchaeologyEarly Human Historyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/can-one-criticize-the-biblical-heroes/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/can-one-criticize-the-biblical-heroes/Abba Engelberg — This article surveys the long-running Jewish exegetical debate over whether the Bible's heroes may be judged 'at eye-level' or must be viewed as superior beings beyond criticism, tracing the tension from Talmudic disputes over Reuben and Bilhah through Ramban's willingness to fault Abraham and Jacob's sons, to Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch's view that Scripture's candor about the patriarchs' failings is what lends it credibility. It shows how later authorities, including Radak, R. Yosef Bekhor Shor, and the Zohar-influenced 'superior-being' school, divided over whether unstated biblical silence implies approval or an invitation to independent moral judgment. The author concludes that Hirsch charts a middle path: criticism is warranted when Scripture itself voices it, but where the text is silent, one should first seek to justify the patriarchs' conduct before resorting to censure.Fri, 01 Apr 2016 00:00:00 GMTBiblical ExegesisPatriarchsRabbinic LiteratureEthicshttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/eternal-davidic-covenant-in-samuel/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/eternal-davidic-covenant-in-samuel/Hayyim Angel — Angel examines the tension between Nathan's prophecy in II Samuel 7, which promises David's dynasty eternal rule despite the sins of individual kings, and passages in Kings that make the monarchy's endurance conditional on faithfulness to the Torah. Surveying Psalm 89's anguished protest at the covenant's apparent abrogation and Jeremiah 33's reinterpretation of the covenant as eternal even through a lapse in the monarchy, the article traces how Zechariah and Chronicles carried Jeremiah's resolution forward. It further roots the divergent readings in the ambiguity of Jacob's blessing to Judah in Genesis 49:10, and distinguishes Psalm 89's immediate human reaction to catastrophe from Jeremiah's longer-term prophetic perspective.Fri, 01 Apr 2016 00:00:00 GMTDavidic CovenantKingshipProphecyBiblical Theologyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/rewarding-a-mitzvah-etymology-of-issakhar/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/rewarding-a-mitzvah-etymology-of-issakhar/Raymond Apple — Apple investigates the disputed etymology of Issakhar, the ninth son of Jacob, arguing that the key to unlocking his name lies in the root s-kh-r ('reward' or 'hire'), which threads through both the Zilpah and mandrake episodes in Leah's account of his birth. Weighing rival theories — an Egyptian deity Seker/Sokar, an Amorite cognate, and the rabbinic 'yesh sakhar' reading — he argues for a preferred derivation from ish sakhar ('a man who is a reward'), with the initial aleph eliding and the medial shin merging into the following sin. The article closes by surveying the divergent customs for pronouncing the name — Yissakhar versus Yissas'khar — across different Jewish communities.Fri, 01 Apr 2016 00:00:00 GMTEtymologyHebrew PhilologyNaming in the Biblehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/jeroboam-ben-nebat-a-reappraisal/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/jeroboam-ben-nebat-a-reappraisal/Yosef Green — Green reappraises the standard rabbinic caricature of Jeroboam ben Nebat as an archetypal villain, arguing that his early career — rising from an orphaned commoner to leader of a revolt against Solomon's oppressive labor and tax policies — casts him instead as a 'second Moses' who liberated Israel from Solomon's corvee. Drawing on Josephus and a set of literary parallels between the Exodus and Jeroboam narratives, the article credits him with genuine constructive leadership before turning to his sins: the golden calves at Bethel and Dan, the ousting of the Levitical priesthood, and the recalendaring of Sukkot. Weighing scholarly views from Graetz, Buber, and Albright that the calves represented an invisible God rather than an idol, Green concludes that Jeroboam's religious missteps, though real, should not erase his earlier record as a positive and constructive leader.Fri, 01 Apr 2016 00:00:00 GMTKingshipNorthern KingdomRabbinic LiteratureBiblical Historyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/camels-in-the-bible/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/camels-in-the-bible/Judah Landa — Responding to widely publicized 2014 media claims that carbon-dating of camel bones in the Aravah Valley proves camels are 'anachronistic' in Genesis, Landa argues that the domestication of the dromedary was a centuries-long transition during which camels remained rare, expensive possessions of the wealthy and powerful — exactly the pattern the patriarchal narratives display, from Abraham's camels (a gift from Pharaoh) to their conspicuous absence from Isaac, Jacob's early years, and the donkey-borne journeys of Joseph's brothers to Egypt. He contends that the text's precise placement of camels only where wealth and geography would predict them, and their equally precise absence in contexts where later 'anachronistic' insertion would be expected, is evidence the narratives were recorded close to the events they describe rather than invented or edited centuries later.Fri, 01 Apr 2016 00:00:00 GMTCamelsBiblical ArchaeologyPatriarchal NarrativesBible and Sciencehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/cain-and-abel-mismanaging-rejection/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/cain-and-abel-mismanaging-rejection/Chaya Greenberger — Greenberger offers a close psychological reading of Genesis 4, arguing that Cain's rejected offering — following a childhood in which he was favored as firstborn and partner in tilling the soil — exposed an inflated, extrinsically-based self-worth that collapsed the moment it was challenged. She traces God's response to Cain not as reproach but as a preventative, empathetic intervention urging him toward self-improvement rather than rivalry with Abel, and reads Cain's murder of his brother as the tragic result of his refusal to accept that path. The article closes by drawing out universal implications: rejection and defeat are unavoidable features of the human condition, and society's rehabilitative response to wrongdoing — exemplified in Cain's mark, exile, and fathering of Hanoch — models how individuals can be held accountable while still being offered a route back to self-worth.Fri, 01 Apr 2016 00:00:00 GMTCain and AbelPsychology and BibleRejectionGenesis Narrativeshttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/between-the-rivers-arnon-and-jabbok/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/between-the-rivers-arnon-and-jabbok/Reuven Chaim Klein — Klein resolves an apparent contradiction between Numbers 21, which describes the territory between the Arnon and Jabbok rivers as originally Moabite land conquered by Sihon the Amorite, and Judges 11, where the king of Ammon claims that same territory as historically Ammonite. Surveying talmudic and medieval sources — Rashi, Nahmanides, R. Meyuhas b. Eliyahu, R. Hayyim Paltiel, and Raabad — he shows several proposed reconciliations, from the view that Sihon conquered land from both nations to the claim that Ammon and Moab, as brother nations descended from Lot, shared a single king and were sometimes treated as a single political entity in the biblical text. The article closes by tracing rabbinic traditions that identify the Moabite idol Chemosh with the pre-Islamic cult object at the site later occupied by the Kaaba in Mecca, and how its worship may have spread from Moab to Ammon.Fri, 01 Apr 2016 00:00:00 GMTAmmon and MoabBiblical GeographyRabbinic ExegesisConquest Narrativeshttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-meaning-of-bikkoret-in-leviticus-19-20/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-meaning-of-bikkoret-in-leviticus-19-20/Gil Student — An examination of the obscure term bikkoret in the law of the half-freed maidservant (Leviticus 19:20), surveying Rashi's rendering as 'investigation' against Ramban's challenge and three comparative-linguistic alternatives drawn from Aramaic, Arabic, and Akkadian. The article concludes that despite the appeal of these philological parallels, Rashi's straightforward reading — that the court must investigate the woman's status and intent — remains the most defensible, a conclusion also reached by Milgrom.Fri, 01 Jan 2016 00:00:00 GMTBiblical LawComparative Semitic PhilologyRashiSlavery in the Biblehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/reconstructing-the-destruction-of-the-tabernacle-of-shiloh/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/reconstructing-the-destruction-of-the-tabernacle-of-shiloh/Akiva Males — Jewish tradition holds that the Tabernacle of Shiloh was destroyed by the Philistines, yet this creates three problems: no emergency campaign was needed to rebuild it in Nob, its original candelabrum and table nonetheless survived to serve in Solomon's Temple, and the Talmud maintains the original Tabernacle was later respectfully stowed away rather than lost. The article proposes that only the Tabernacle of Shiloh's stone-walled sanctuary building was destroyed by the Philistines, because all of the structure's movable components had already been evacuated to safety and reassembled at Nob before the Philistines arrived.Fri, 01 Jan 2016 00:00:00 GMTTabernacleShilohTalmudic TraditionBiblical Archaeologyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/rebuke-your-mother-but-who-is-she/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/rebuke-your-mother-but-who-is-she/Hayyim Angel — Hosea 2:4-7 calls on 'children' to rebuke their 'mother,' departing from the prophet's usual practice of using both wife and children imagery for the same collective Israel. After surveying and critiquing the readings of Rashi, Ibn Ezra, and Abrabanel, the article argues — drawing on the parallel condemnation of corrupt priests in Hosea 4:4-9, and on a midrashic wordplay on horatam ('teachers') preserved by Rashi — that the mother represents the corrupt religious leadership and the children the sinful masses who are nonetheless accountable for following them.Fri, 01 Jan 2016 00:00:00 GMTProphetic LiteratureRabbinic ExegesisMetaphorReligious Leadershiphttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/shofetim-the-book-of-judges-anarchy-vs-monarchy/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/shofetim-the-book-of-judges-anarchy-vs-monarchy/Pinchas Kahn — The Book of Judges' refrain 'there was no king in Israel; every man did that which was right in his own eyes' is usually read as a pro-monarchy corrective to lawlessness, but the article traces an earlier anti-monarchy strand — Gideon's refusal of kingship, Jotham's anti-monarchical parable, and Samuel's objections — rooted in the ideal of exclusive divine kingship (theocracy). It argues that the Judges period's lack of centralized human government was a deliberate political-religious experiment, one that ultimately failed and gave way to a constitutional monarchy still answerable to God's law.Fri, 01 Jan 2016 00:00:00 GMTPolitical TheologyMonarchyTheocracyBook of Judgeshttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-creation-theme-in-genesis-psalm-104-and-job/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-creation-theme-in-genesis-psalm-104-and-job/Fred Gottlieb — A comparison of the Bible's three most detailed Creation accounts — the ordered prose narrative of Genesis 1, the joyous poetic hymn of Psalm 104, and God's rhetorical display of Creation's wonders to Job in Job 38-42 — each written in a distinct style and for a distinct purpose, yet united in portraying God as both Creator and ongoing Sustainer of the world without reference to Israel's covenant. The article traces recurring images across the three texts, such as the bounding of the chaotic waters and the daily renewal of Creation, to show how Job's speeches echo and ironically invert language found in Psalm 104.Fri, 01 Jan 2016 00:00:00 GMTCreationBiblical PoetryTheodicyComparative Literaturehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/ezra-the-first-rabbi/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/ezra-the-first-rabbi/Zvi Ron — Biblical leadership is generally modeled on the king or the prophet, but Ezra fits neither mold: he holds no political or military office and, unlike Moses or Samuel, is never described as receiving direct divine communication. Instead his authority rests on Torah scholarship and teaching, making him the biblical prototype of the later rabbi. The article traces embryonic 'rabbinic' legal reasoning in Ezra's extension of the intermarriage prohibition and in the extra-Torah communal enactments — the wood offering, the annual half-shekel, the Sabbath trade ban — accepted by the people in Nehemiah 10.Fri, 01 Jan 2016 00:00:00 GMTReligious LeadershipRabbinic ExegesisSecond Temple PeriodIntermarriagehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/from-judges-to-monarchy/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/from-judges-to-monarchy/Shimon Bakon — Traces the transition from the non-hereditary, divinely-summoned leadership of the Judges to the institution of monarchy under Samuel, arguing that Samuel — though personally averse to relinquishing his role as chief magistrate — crafted a distinctive constitutional monarchy (mishpat ha-melukhah) in which the king is chosen by God, subject to divine authority, and confirmed by popular acclaim, rather than the autonomous 'king like all the nations' the people had requested. The article finds a later echo of this ideal in the covenant renewed by Jehoiada the priest at the coronation of the boy-king Joash.Fri, 01 Jan 2016 00:00:00 GMTMonarchyBook of JudgesSamuelPolitical Theologyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/reconciling-sacrifices-ezekiel-torah/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/reconciling-sacrifices-ezekiel-torah/Reuven Chaim Klein — The closing chapters of Ezekiel prescribe festival and daily sacrifices that diverge sharply from the parallel laws in Numbers and Exodus — in the animals required, the meal-to-animal ratios, and the accompanying libations. This article catalogues those discrepancies and surveys four traditions of resolving them: the Talmud's reading of Ezekiel as describing exigent circumstances, Radak's view that sacrificial law will simply change in the Messianic era, Maimonides' claim that Ezekiel describes one-time inaugural offerings governed by different rules, and the view of several commentators that Ezekiel's sacrifices are additions to, rather than replacements for, the Torah's own requirements.Thu, 01 Oct 2015 00:00:00 GMTSacrificesEzekielTalmudic ExegesisThird TempleHalakhahhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/book-of-ruth-contrast-end-judges/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/book-of-ruth-contrast-end-judges/Jennifer Raskas — The Book of Ruth opens with the words 'in the days when the judges judged,' explicitly locating itself in the lawless era chronicled at the end of Judges. This article traces a deliberate set of shared roots — shalaf, davak, lyn, yada, paga, and others — that Judges uses to narrate corruption (rape, theft, civil war) and that Ruth reuses to narrate virtue (loyalty, hospitality, redemption). Read together, the two books trace Israel's movement from a society that is superficially righteous but actually corrupt to one that learns to see past appearances — Ruth's foreignness included — and recognize goodness from within, culminating in the birth of King David.Thu, 01 Oct 2015 00:00:00 GMTBook of JudgesIntertextualityBiblical HebrewKingshipHospitalityhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/hidden-storyline-david-and-saul/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/hidden-storyline-david-and-saul/Samuel Sostre — Because the Books of Samuel present an idealized, pro-David narrative, the text nonetheless preserves an alternative storyline — retained, the author argues, out of respect for authoritative tradition — in which David actively works to unseat Saul rather than merely fleeing his jealousy. Tracing David's rise from court musician to army commander, his pact with Jonathan, his flight to Philistine Ziklag where he built an army explicitly said to march against Saul, and the chronological math of Ish-bosheth's two-year reign against David's seven-and-a-half years in Hebron, the article contends that David had likely already taken control of Judah years before Saul's death on Mount Gilboa.Thu, 01 Oct 2015 00:00:00 GMTKingshipHistoriographyNarrative CriticismDavidSaulhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/mystery-of-urim-vetummim/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/mystery-of-urim-vetummim/Shimon Bakon — The High Priest's breastplate held the Urim ve-Tummim, objects used to render divine decisions on communal matters, but the Bible never says what they actually were. This article surveys the major traditions — Ramban's view that they were divine names inscribed and consulted through a form of ru'ah ha-kodesh, Ibn Ezra's claim that they were crafted objects corresponding to astrological symbols, the view that they were simply the twelve breastplate stones, and Driver's proposal that they were sacred lots — and traces every explicit biblical mention of them, from the priestly garments through their apparent disuse after the era of David, Samuel, and Solomon and their hoped-for future reappearance in Ezra and Nehemiah.Thu, 01 Oct 2015 00:00:00 GMTPriesthoodOraclesTalmudic ExegesisHigh PriestDivinationhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/hidden-message-book-of-esther/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/hidden-message-book-of-esther/Joshua J. Adler — The Masoretic Book of Esther is strikingly irreligious — God's name never appears, its heroes bear pagan names, and its Jews respond to crisis with fasting and mourning rather than prayer, in contrast to the more overtly pious Greek versions. The author argues that this is deliberate: the canonized Hebrew text depicts a assimilated Shushan community that nonetheless remains a target of Gentile hatred, and its hidden message is that concealing Jewish identity and abandoning observance does not purchase safety in the Diaspora, a lesson the author extends to nineteenth- and twentieth-century European Jewish assimilation and its failure to blunt antisemitism.Thu, 01 Oct 2015 00:00:00 GMTBook of EstherAssimilationAntisemitismDiasporaPurimhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/elon-the-zebulunite-of-aijalon/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/elon-the-zebulunite-of-aijalon/Nathan C. Moskowitz — Judges 12:11-12 devotes just two terse verses to Elon the Zebulunite, a minor judge buried in a town called Aijalon that Joshua 19 assigns to the tribe of Dan, not Zebulun. Reading this apparent contradiction against the broader biblical record of Dan's failure to hold its southern allotment — most vividly dramatized in the isolation of Samson, a Danite fighting alone in Judah with no tribal army behind him — the author argues that Aijalon-Zebulun and Aijalon-Dan are the same city, peacefully absorbed by seafaring Zebulunites as Dan's population thinned and migrated north, and that the brief notice of Elon's judgeship and burial there preserves a otherwise unrecorded chapter of Israel's shifting tribal borders.Thu, 01 Oct 2015 00:00:00 GMTTribal TerritoriesBook of JudgesHistorical GeographyTribe of DanTribe of Zebulunhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/pentateuch-quoted-intact/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/pentateuch-quoted-intact/Ben Zion Katz — Against William Propp's argument that a fragment of an independent Priestly source can be excavated intact from Ezekiel 20, this article revives and extends M. Burrows's older claim that Ezekiel already knew the composite Pentateuch as we have it — pointing to Ezekiel 27's mixture of P and J nations from Genesis 10, and to parallels between Ezekiel 8:4 and Exodus 24. It then makes a parallel case for Psalm 106, tracing a sequence of verbal parallels — most tellingly its retelling of the Baal Peor incident, which follows Numbers 25 in order through both its J and P material — to argue that the Psalmist, too, knew the Torah's sources already combined.Thu, 01 Oct 2015 00:00:00 GMTDocumentary HypothesisEzekielPsalmsPentateuchBiblical Criticismhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/52nd-international-bible-contest/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/52nd-international-bible-contest/Joshua J. Adler — A first-person report on the 52nd annual Hidon ha-Tanakh, held in Jerusalem on Israel Independence Day with 76 contestants from 33 countries plus 4 Israeli finalists. The theme was the ingathering of the exiles, reflected in Prime Minister Netanyahu's questions to the finalists; Eyal Matas of Rehovot defeated Yisrael Elgrabi of Jerusalem in the deciding round, the first solo Israeli win in several years. The report also notes the guest appearance of Bat Galim Shaar, mother of the murdered Gilad Shaar, and remarks by Knesset speaker Yuli Edelstein and Jewish Agency chairman Natan Sharansky.Thu, 01 Oct 2015 00:00:00 GMTBible ContestJewish EducationYouthIsraelhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/book-review-i-kings-torn-in-two/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/book-review-i-kings-torn-in-two/Gad Dishi — A review of I Kings – Torn in Two by Alex Israel (Maggid Books, 2013), part of the Maggid Studies in Tanakh series, praising its chapter-by-chapter treatment of national unity, prophecy, monarchy, and the Temple and its combination of rabbinic and academic sources. The reviewer highlights the book's reading of the prophet-from-Judah episode in chapter 13 and its analysis of Ahab's political calculations in chapter 20, while noting a few factual slips and a missed opportunity to flag its excellent back-of-book study questions earlier in the text.Thu, 01 Oct 2015 00:00:00 GMTBook ReviewBook of KingsMonarchyProphecyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/book-review-outside-the-bible/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/book-review-outside-the-bible/David J. Zucker — A review of the three-volume Outside the Bible: Ancient Writings Related to Scripture (Feldman, Kugel and Schiffman, eds.; JPS/University of Nebraska, 2013), an anthology of Dead Sea Scrolls material, Philo, Josephus, and Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha spanning from the end of the Babylonian Exile to the second century CE. The reviewer highlights its introductory essays on the Septuagint and on Philo and Josephus, its mix of republished and newly commissioned translations, and its value both to scholars and to general readers seeking to fill the literary gap between the Hebrew Bible and the Mishnah.Thu, 01 Oct 2015 00:00:00 GMTBook ReviewApocrypha and PseudepigraphaSecond Temple LiteratureDead Sea Scrollshttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/book-review-old-testament-pseudepigrapha/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/book-review-old-testament-pseudepigrapha/Simcha Rosenberg — A review of Old Testament Pseudepigrapha: More Noncanonical Scriptures, Volume 1 (Bauckham, Davila and Panayotov, eds.; Eerdmans, 2013), a supplement to Charlesworth's classic two-volume Old Testament Pseudepigrapha that adds newly discovered material and texts through the early seventh century CE. The reviewer highlights the Balaam Text from Tell Deir 'Alla — the only pre-exilic extra-biblical document naming a figure from the Torah — and the Legend of Rabbi Yehoshua ben Levi, and notes that the volume increasingly blurs the line between pseudepigraphic and early midrashic literature.Thu, 01 Oct 2015 00:00:00 GMTBook ReviewApocrypha and PseudepigraphaSecond Temple LiteratureBalaamhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/dan-vogel-in-memoriam/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/dan-vogel-in-memoriam/The Editors — A memorial tribute to Dan Vogel, longtime contributor and associate editor of the Jewish Bible Quarterly, who died in 2015. It traces his path from a Jersey City childhood through a career as professor of English at Yeshiva College and Stern College, his aliyah in 1973 and subsequent professorship at Michlalah-Jerusalem College for Women, and his prolific output of JBQ articles and book reviews that drew on world literature — from Melville to Milton — to illuminate biblical texts.Wed, 01 Jul 2015 00:00:00 GMTObituaryJewish Bible Quarterly HistoryLiterary Criticismhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/grave-matters-sheol-in-the-hebrew-bible/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/grave-matters-sheol-in-the-hebrew-bible/Shaul Bar — Bar surveys how the Hebrew Bible uses the term she'ol, weighing the scholarly debate over whether it denotes an actual grave, the netherworld, or both. Drawing on Ezekiel, Isaiah, Job, and the Psalms, he argues that Sheol most often signifies a "bad death" — premature, violent, or divinely punitive — rather than a destination reserved strictly for the wicked or shared by all the dead. He closes by tracing how later rabbinic sources, and Proverbs 15:24 in particular, began to separate the fates of the righteous and the wicked in ways foreign to the plain sense of the biblical text.Wed, 01 Jul 2015 00:00:00 GMTAfterlifeSheolDeath and the GraveBiblical Cosmologyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/judge-ibzan-of-bethlehem/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/judge-ibzan-of-bethlehem/Nathan C. Moskowitz — Moskowitz examines the enigmatic judge Ibzan, whose three-verse biography (Judg. 12:8-10) omits his tribal affiliation, and argues against the rabbinic identification of Ibzan with Boaz of Bethlehem-Judah. Marshaling both a peshat argument from the geographic clustering of northern judges and a derash argument built on wordplay linking Zebulun's name and Bethlehem's etymology to the theme of "dwelling," he contends that Ibzan in fact hailed from the northern Bethlehem in the territory of Zebulun.Wed, 01 Jul 2015 00:00:00 GMTBook of JudgesTribal IdentityRabbinic ExegesisPeshat and Derashhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/resetting-the-exodus-mission/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/resetting-the-exodus-mission/Shubert Spero — Spero addresses the apparent redundancy of Exodus chapter 6, arguing that its five divine speeches to Moses are not a repetitive rehash but a deliberate strategic reset after the crisis of chapter 5. He shows how God's instructions clarify a division of labor between Moses and Aaron — Aaron to win back the disillusioned Israelites, Moses to serve as a divine mouthpiece before Pharaoh — and reads the inserted genealogy of Exodus 6:14-25 as an answer to lingering doubts about Moses' and Aaron's legitimacy as leaders.Wed, 01 Jul 2015 00:00:00 GMTExodus NarrativeMoses and AaronBiblical RhetoricLeadershiphttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-enigmatic-rabshakeh/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-enigmatic-rabshakeh/Gabriel A. Sivan — Continuing his study of Sennacherib's siege of Jerusalem, Sivan focuses on the Rabshakeh, the Assyrian officer who delivers a fluent Hebrew propaganda harangue to the besieged city. Drawing on Assyriological research by Hayim Tadmor and others, he weighs several theories of the Rabshakeh's puzzling command of Hebrew and knowledge of Judean religion — that he was a renegade Israelite, a bilingual court scribe, or an officer who served among exiled Israelites — before tracing the episode's resolution in the destruction of the Assyrian army and Sennacherib's own assassination, and its afterlife in Western literature from Byron to a 2004 novelette.Wed, 01 Jul 2015 00:00:00 GMTAssyrian Siege of JerusalemHezekiah and SennacheribAncient Near EastBiblical Historicityhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/what-did-the-dove-bring-to-noah/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/what-did-the-dove-bring-to-noah/Gilad J. Gevaryahu — Gevaryahu investigates the philological puzzle of Genesis 8:11, where the dove is grammatically female throughout the verse except for the anomalous masculine form of taraf ("plucked"). Surveying Rashi, the Targumim, Ibn Ezra, and modern Hebrew lexicography, he argues that taraf is best read as a noun denoting the flat blade of the leaf rather than a verb describing the dove's action. He traces how the Septuagint and Vulgate's rendering of the word as "twig" — a reading not found in Jewish sources — gave rise to the familiar Western image of the dove bearing an olive branch of peace, when in the Jewish tradition the leaf instead signals a new beginning after the Flood.Wed, 01 Jul 2015 00:00:00 GMTBiblical PhilologyFlood NarrativeSymbolismSeptuagint and Vulgatehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-philistines-bitter-enemy-of-israel/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-philistines-bitter-enemy-of-israel/Simon Novak — Novak traces the six-century conflict between Israel and the Philistines, from their possible early appearance among the Patriarchs through the Late Bronze Age Sea Peoples' invasion, the defeat at Aphek and loss of the Ark, the wars of Saul, David, and Hezekiah, and the prophetic denunciations of Isaiah, Amos, Jeremiah, and Zephaniah. He closes by considering how the Philistines, though extinct as a distinct people by the fifth century BCE, left their name attached to the land of Israel itself through the Roman renaming of Judea as Palestina.Wed, 01 Jul 2015 00:00:00 GMTPhilistinesSea PeoplesIsraelite WarfareBiblical Geographyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/a-journey-to-succoth/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/a-journey-to-succoth/Vivien Hidary — Hidary reads Jacob's stop at Succoth (Gen. 33:17) as the deliberate conclusion of a long process of atonement that began with his deceiving Isaac and Esau. Tracing verbal and thematic echoes between the reconciliation scene with Esau and the original blessing-theft — the language of servant and lord, the repeated verb "approach," the gifts of goats and bread — she argues that Jacob's reunion with his brother functions as a personal Day of Atonement, of which the sukkot he then builds are the culminating gesture, prefiguring the later historical sequence from Yom Kippur to the festival of Sukkot.Wed, 01 Jul 2015 00:00:00 GMTJacob and EsauRepentance and AtonementSukkotNarrative Parallelismhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/political-assassination-in-biblical-israel/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/political-assassination-in-biblical-israel/Aiton Birnbaum — Birnbaum catalogs the Bible's political assassinations of Israelite and Judean rulers, tallying roughly a third of the forty-four monarchs of the united and divided monarchies as victims of murder, and finds regicide markedly more frequent in the Northern Kingdom than in Judah. He attributes the gap partly to reverence for the Davidic line and partly to pointed anti-assassination messages he finds embedded in the Books of Samuel, especially David's repeated condemnations of those who killed Saul, Abner, and Ish-bosheth. He closes by citing survey evidence that most Israeli Jews today are unaware how common the phenomenon actually was.Wed, 01 Jul 2015 00:00:00 GMTPolitical AssassinationKings of Israel and JudahHouse of DavidBiblical Historiographyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/arami-oved-avi/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/arami-oved-avi/Raymond Apple — Apple examines the notoriously difficult phrase arami oved avi in the Deuteronomy 26 first-fruits declaration, contrasting the peshat reading — "my father [Jacob] was a wandering Aramean" — with the Passover Haggadah's derash, which recasts the Aramean as Laban plotting to destroy Jacob's family. He surveys the grammatical debate over the verb oved between Rashi, Ibn Ezra, and the Maharal, and suggests, following Louis Finkelstein, that the midrash's demonization of Laban over Pharaoh may reflect later political sympathies between Ptolemaic Egypt and Seleucid Aram rather than the verse's original agricultural context.Wed, 01 Jul 2015 00:00:00 GMTPassover HaggadahPeshat and DerashBiblical PhilologyFirstfruitshttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/reflections-of-trees-and-men-in-the-bible/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/reflections-of-trees-and-men-in-the-bible/Ted Chertok — Reading four seemingly unrelated legal passages together — the prohibition of a fruit tree's first three years of produce (orlah), the ban on destroying fruit trees in wartime, the law of accidental manslaughter with an axe, and the requirement to bury an executed criminal's body before nightfall — this article argues that the Bible repeatedly stages man and tree as mirror images of one another. Where the tree's fruit is withheld from human ownership and the tree itself is protected from man's blade, man's own body is marked by a single sanctioned cut (circumcision) and is otherwise protected from mutilation; the pairing of these commandments expresses a shared theology in which neither the fruit of one's labor nor one's own body and land are fully one's own, but partnered with God.Wed, 01 Apr 2015 00:00:00 GMTBiblical LawTree SymbolismRitual PurityEnvironmental Ethicshttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-siege-of-jerusalem-assyria-the-world-power/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-siege-of-jerusalem-assyria-the-world-power/Gabriel A. Sivan — The first installment of a two-part study, this article sets the historical stage for Sennacherib's siege of Jerusalem by profiling the Assyrian high officials — the Tartan, the Rabsaris, and the Rabshakeh — who confronted Hezekiah's envoys, and by comparing the biblical narrative of II Kings 18-19 and Isaiah 36-37 with Sennacherib's own Annals, inscribed on the Taylor, Oriental Institute, and Jerusalem Prisms. It shows that the Assyrian record corroborates the siege and the tribute Hezekiah was forced to pay, while diverging from and exaggerating other details, and surveys the deliberate terror tactics — mass impalement, deportation, and boastful atrocity narrative — through which Assyrian kings sought to browbeat their opponents into surrender.Wed, 01 Apr 2015 00:00:00 GMTAncient Near EastAssyrian EmpireBiblical ArchaeologyHistorical Criticismhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-iniquities-of-ammon-and-moab/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-iniquities-of-ammon-and-moab/Reuven Chaim Klein — Deuteronomy 23:4-5 bars Ammonites and Moabites from the assembly of Israel because they failed to meet the Israelites with bread and water in the wilderness, yet Deuteronomy 2:28-29 has Moses recall both the Edomites and the Moabites selling the Israelites food and water — an apparent contradiction that generations of medieval commentators tried to resolve. This article surveys the major approaches, from Rashi's and Ibn Ezra's attempts to distinguish selling from granting passage, to Rashbam's and the Meiri's geographic solution limiting the sale to the Moabites of Ar, to Nahmanides' claim that the two nations were condemned for two distinct sins, testing each against the wording of Nehemiah 13:1-2 and rabbinic sources such as TB Yevamot 76b-77a and TB Sanhedrin 103b.Wed, 01 Apr 2015 00:00:00 GMTBiblical LawRabbinic ExegesisTorah Commentaryhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/jonadab-friend-of-amnon/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/jonadab-friend-of-amnon/Shimon Bakon — Jonadab appears twice in the story of Amnon's rape of Tamar and its bloody aftermath (II Samuel 13): first advising Amnon on how to lure Tamar to his bed, and later coolly informing David that only Amnon, not all his sons, has been killed. This article weighs the two main readings of Jonadab offered by the commentators — the minority view that he was a well-meaning but naive friend who never anticipated the rape, against the majority view (Rashi, Radak, Ralbag) that he was a scheming Iago-like courtier who used the crime to engineer the elimination of David's unfit heir — and argues that Jonadab's silence about Absalom's murder plot and his eagerness to have his own report verified by the king expose him as never having been Amnon's true friend.Wed, 01 Apr 2015 00:00:00 GMTNarrative AnalysisCourt IntrigueCharacter Studyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/understanding-the-red-heifer-ritual/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/understanding-the-red-heifer-ritual/Stephen A. Newman — The Red Heifer ritual of Numbers 19 has long resisted rational explanation, both because of the ash's paradoxical power to purify the impure while defiling the pure, and because the Talmud itself classifies it as a hok beyond reason. Building on Rashi's citation of Rabbi Moshe ha-Darshan, who reads the ritual as atonement for the Golden Calf, this article connects the red cow to the Egyptian cow-goddess Hathor and argues that the burning of the heifer, and even the burning of a crimson thread in the ritual, symbolically reenacts and negates the destruction of that idol, offering a fresh account of why contact with the ashes both purifies and defiles.Wed, 01 Apr 2015 00:00:00 GMTRitual PurityAncient EgyptSymbolismGolden Calfhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-genesis-of-the-etrog/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-genesis-of-the-etrog/Gabriel Moskovitz — Leviticus 23:40 never names the etrog, calling instead for the ambiguous "fruit of goodly trees," and the word etrog appears nowhere in the Bible; yet by the first century CE, Targum Onkelos and Josephus both identify the citron as one of Sukkot's Four Species. Combining textual analysis of Leviticus and Nehemiah 8 with the botanical history of citrus and a 2012 pollen discovery at the royal garden of Ramat Rahel, this article argues that the citron was unknown in the biblical Land of Israel and only arrived from Persia during or after the Second Temple period, so that its identification with the "goodly fruit" of Leviticus was a later, exegetical innovation rather than an unbroken tradition reaching back to Sinai.Wed, 01 Apr 2015 00:00:00 GMTSukkotRitual HistoryBotanySecond Temple Periodhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/note-on-the-term-pakad/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/note-on-the-term-pakad/Joshua Backon — When Genesis 21:1 says that God pakad Sarah, most classical commentators reject Nahmanides' rendering "remembered" in favor of a meaning tied to the healing of her infertility, with Pa'ane'ah Raza and Hayyim Paltiel linking the verb to the talmudic phrase for the return of the menstrual cycle. Building on his own earlier reading of akarah in Genesis 11:30 as an "unattached follicle," the author proposes that pakad is the semantic opposite of ne'ekar ("detached") and, following a suggestion of Samson Raphael Hirsch linking pakad to beged (a garment), argues that the term describes the reattachment or fixation of Sarah's previously unattached follicle.Wed, 01 Apr 2015 00:00:00 GMTBiblical HebrewPhilologyInfertility Narrativeshttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-first-confrontation-with-the-samaritans/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-first-confrontation-with-the-samaritans/Zvi Ron — The three-verse exchange in Ezra 4:1-3, in which the Samaritans offer to help build the Second Temple and are rebuffed by Zerubbabel and Jeshua, is read here as a dense text encoding the deeper dispute over Israelite identity. The article traces why the high priest Jeshua joins a response to an offer addressed only to political leaders, what the enigmatic phrase "we ourselves together will build" is meant to exclude, why the narrator calls the Samaritans "adversaries of Judah" before they have done anything hostile, and how the keri/ketiv variant on "we sacrifice unto Him [lo]" quietly discredits the Samaritans' claim to worship the same God — cumulatively making the case that the passage became the proof text for excluding gentiles from obligatory Temple contributions.Wed, 01 Apr 2015 00:00:00 GMTSamaritansSecond Temple PeriodTextual Analysishttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/why-was-mount-gerizim-chosen-for-the-blessing/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/why-was-mount-gerizim-chosen-for-the-blessing/Gilad J. Gevaryahu — Deuteronomy commands that the blessing be pronounced at Mount Gerizim and the curse at Mount Ebal, but never explains the choice. After surveying Ramban's directional symbolism and the long-repeated but topographically false claim (traced to Benjamin of Tudela) that Gerizim is lush while Ebal is barren, this article proposes instead that Gerizim's abundant springs — which watered Shechem and its valley for generations — are the real basis for the choice, reinforced by the shared b-r-kh root linking berakhah (blessing) and berekhah (pool), and by the Torah's own requirement that the inscribed stones be plastered, which only makes sense in a dry climate.Wed, 01 Apr 2015 00:00:00 GMTBiblical GeographyHistorical GeographyDeuteronomyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/a-people-that-shall-dwell-alone/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/a-people-that-shall-dwell-alone/Shubert Spero — Balaam's oracle that Israel is "a people that shall dwell alone" (Num. 23:9) reads as a curse to modern ears attuned to the interdependence of nations, yet the biblical and rabbinic tradition (Rashi, Deut. 23:6) insists it was meant as a blessing. This article works through several senses in which the verse can be read positively — Israel's historical indestructibility, its distinctiveness as a people set apart in law and custom, and, drawing on Adrian Hastings' thesis that biblical Israel is the prototype of the modern nation-state, its claim to be the first true "nation" rather than a mere ethnicity — before closing with Rav Soloveitchik's distinction between being alone and being lonely as a possible key to Balaam's oracle.Wed, 01 Apr 2015 00:00:00 GMTJewish PeoplehoodChosennessJewish PhilosophyBalaam Narrativehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/book-review-ezra-and-the-law-in-history-and-tradition/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/book-review-ezra-and-the-law-in-history-and-tradition/Simcha Rosenberg — A review of Ezra and the Law in History and Tradition by Lisbeth S. Fried (University of South Carolina Press, 2014), part of the Studies on Personalities of the Old Testament series. The review highlights the book's survey of how Ezra is portrayed beyond the biblical text — in the Apocrypha and in Christian, Muslim, and Samaritan literature, including the Fourth Ezra tradition that he prophetically re-dictated a burned Torah — and singles out its critique of Peter Frei's theory of Persian imperial authorization of local law as a particularly forceful piece of the book's argument against the Documentary Hypothesis's account of Ezra.Wed, 01 Apr 2015 00:00:00 GMTBook ReviewEzraSecond Temple Periodhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/book-review-recalling-the-covenant/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/book-review-recalling-the-covenant/Simcha Rosenberg — A review of Recalling the Covenant: A Contemporary Commentary on the Five Books of the Torah by Moshe Shammah (KTAV, 2011), an Orthodox peshat commentary that combines fidelity to the Masoretic Text with modern biblical scholarship and ancient Near Eastern comparison. The review highlights Shammah's readings of the Tower of Babel as literary parody, of Cain and Abel as allegory, and of the Torah's laws of adultery and the captive "beautiful woman" against their ancient Near Eastern counterparts, as well as his teacher Rabbi Solomon D. Sassoon's view that biblical numbers are frequently symbolic rather than literal.Wed, 01 Apr 2015 00:00:00 GMTBook ReviewTorah CommentaryPeshathttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/rachel-mother-of-israel/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/rachel-mother-of-israel/Joel B. Wolowelsky — A close reading of the midrashic and classical commentary tradition surrounding Rachel — from her complicity in the substitution of Leah on her wedding night, through her demand for children and her theft of Laban's terafim, to the naming of her sons — argues that Rachel's growth from self-interested entitlement toward genuine hesed is tracked by the Torah's alternation between the divine names Elokim and Hashem. Rachel earns the title 'Mother of Israel' not by suppressing self-interest but by learning to hold it together with an undiluted capacity for hesed.Thu, 01 Jan 2015 00:00:00 GMTMidrashMatriarchsDivine NamesGenesis Narrativeshttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/tola-the-judge-midrashic-analysis/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/tola-the-judge-midrashic-analysis/Nathan C. Moskowitz — The Book of Judges devotes only two terse verses to Tola, Israel's seventh judge, in sharp contrast to the extended account of Abimelech's violent reign that precedes it. Reading the names in Tola's genealogy — Tola, Puah, Dodo, and his home at Shamir — against the tribal blessings given to Issachar, this article reconstructs a hypothetical portrait of Tola's twenty-three-year judgeship as an idyllic period of scholarship, domestic calm, and peace, won through the classical method of midreshei shemot, homiletical name-interpretation.Thu, 01 Jan 2015 00:00:00 GMTMidrashJudgesOnomasticsTribal Blessingshttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/god-vs-the-sea-psalms-and-midrash/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/god-vs-the-sea-psalms-and-midrash/Solomon Wiener — Psalms 106 and 114 personify the sea at the Splitting of the Sea of Reeds — rebuked in one psalm, fleeing in fright in the other — in ways the Exodus narrative itself never states. Tracing rabbinic identification of the sea with the angel Rahab, and reading a series of midrashim that reconcile the Exodus and Psalms accounts, this article reconstructs a fuller mythological backstory: a haughty or overzealous angel of the sea who defies Moses and is subdued by God, teaching that the Lord tolerates no rival power, however loyal, interfering with His plan for Israel.Thu, 01 Jan 2015 00:00:00 GMTPsalmsMidrashMythologyExodus Narrativehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/isaacs-personality-lasuach-basadeh/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/isaacs-personality-lasuach-basadeh/Zvi Ron — The hapax legomenon la-su'ah ba-sadeh (Gen. 24:63), describing what Isaac was doing just before he first saw Rebekah, has been read by the classical commentators as prayer, as agricultural planting, and as taking a leisurely stroll. This article surveys the three traditions and argues that each yields a markedly different first impression of Isaac's character — as a holy ascetic emulating Abraham, as a settled farmer breaking from the patriarchal pattern of nomadism, or as a man capable of simple enjoyment — and that this ambiguity itself shaped how later readers understood Rebekah's entry into his life.Thu, 01 Jan 2015 00:00:00 GMTPatriarchal NarrativesBiblical HebrewExegesisCharacter Studyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/judean-mindset-babylonian-exile/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/judean-mindset-babylonian-exile/Benjamin Glass — Tracing the major image-systems of the Book of Jeremiah — water, bride and harlot, father, and ritual — against the political and agricultural insecurity of late-monarchic Judah, and then following the shift to imagery of face, bone, light, and redemption across the three literary divisions of the apocryphal Book of Baruch, this article argues that Judean imagery moves in a clear arc: from pre-exilic insecurity and idolatry, through exilic despair and repentance, to the religious reconstruction and eventual joyous optimism that greeted Cyrus's decree.Thu, 01 Jan 2015 00:00:00 GMTProphetic LiteratureBabylonian ExileImageryApocryphahttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-term-pharaoh-in-the-bible/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-term-pharaoh-in-the-bible/Joel J. Forman — Tracing the Egyptian title per-o ('great house') from its earliest use for the royal administration around 2500 BCE to its New Kingdom shift toward designating the king himself, this brief note argues that the Bible's own usage of 'Pharaoh' — untitled in Genesis and Exodus, later paired with a personal name from Pharaoh Neco and Pharaoh Hophra onward — mirrors this Egyptian development, and that the term's appearance in the patriarchal narratives is an anachronism reflecting the audience's own time rather than a historical marker.Thu, 01 Jan 2015 00:00:00 GMTEgyptologyGenesis NarrativesExodusRoyal Titleshttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/ages-of-the-patriarchs-matriarchs/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/ages-of-the-patriarchs-matriarchs/David J. Zucker — The extraordinary ages recorded for Abraham, Sarah, Isaac, and Jacob become far more credible, this article proposes, if the word shanah once denoted a six-month season rather than a full twelve-month year — so that a stated 'year' of age in Genesis actually represents half that span. Drawing on the Bible's competing spring and autumn calendars, on other biblical words like yom that carry both a broad and a narrow sense, and on the either/or seasonal pairings in Genesis 8:22 and Psalm 74:17, the theory recasts Abraham's migration, the Patriarchs' fertility, and their reported lifespans into numbers consistent with ordinary human experience.Thu, 01 Jan 2015 00:00:00 GMTChronologyPatriarchal NarrativesBiblical HebrewCalendarhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/genre-of-the-call-narrative/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/genre-of-the-call-narrative/Fred Guyette — Norm Habel's influential six-part model of the biblical call narrative — divine confrontation, introductory word, commission, objection, reassurance, and sign — fits Gideon's call cleanly, but this article shows that the callings of Samuel and Elisha depart from the pattern in instructive ways. Samuel's call comes through a mistaken human voice and gradual recognition rather than direct confrontation, while Elisha's call arrives through Elijah's mantle and is answered with gestures rather than words. The variety of forms undermines any single template for how the Bible depicts a divine summons to service.Thu, 01 Jan 2015 00:00:00 GMTProphetic LiteratureLiterary Form CriticismVocationNarrativehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/va-yafog-libbo-jacobs-heart/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/va-yafog-libbo-jacobs-heart/Joshua Backon — When Jacob learns that Joseph is alive, the Torah says va-yafog libbo, a phrase JPS renders 'his heart fainted' and NJPS 'his heart went numb.' Surveying commentators from Rashi and Rambam's metaphorical reading of a departed and returning divine spirit to Ibn Ezra, Sforno, and Samson Raphael Hirsch's more literal 'heart stopped,' this note argues, on the linguistic evidence of Brown-Driver-Briggs and the medical readings of Rambam and Ramban, that the phrase describes a genuine cardiac event brought on by sudden joy.Thu, 01 Jan 2015 00:00:00 GMTBiblical HebrewMedicine in the BibleExegesishttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/book-review-from-gods-to-god/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/book-review-from-gods-to-god/Simcha Rosenberg — A review of From Gods to God: How the Bible Debunked, Suppressed, or Changed Ancient Myths and Legends by Avigdor Shinan and Meir Zakovitch (JPS, 2012), which argues that biblical writers fixed competing oral traditions in writing to suppress rival versions of Israel's foundational stories, leaving detectable traces that rabbinic literature sometimes independently recovers. The review credits the book's engaging, example-driven method while questioning whether it adequately defends its core assumption that oral traditions were both immutable enough to leave visible remnants and pliable enough to be substantially rewritten. Also briefly noted: James L. Crenshaw's Qoheleth: The Ironic Wink, Larry Tabick's The Aura of Torah, and Zev Bar Eitan's Abravanel's World of Torah on Genesis.Thu, 01 Jan 2015 00:00:00 GMTBook ReviewComparative MythologyBiblical Criticismhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/book-review-womens-bible-commentary/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/book-review-womens-bible-commentary/David J. Zucker — A review of the third edition of Women's Bible Commentary (Carol A. Newsom, Sharon H. Ringe, and Jacqueline E. Lapsley, eds.; Westminster John Knox, 2012), a 50-percent-expanded update of the pioneering 1990s feminist commentary. The review surveys its book-by-book structure, its special articles on figures like Eve, Sarah and Hagar, and Miriam, and its chapter on 'When Women Interpret the Bible,' which addresses the Bible's ambivalent authority for women readers and the challenge of gendered language for both humanity and God.Thu, 01 Jan 2015 00:00:00 GMTBook ReviewFeminist Biblical CriticismWomen in the Biblehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-wives-of-esau/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-wives-of-esau/Reuven Chaim Klein — Genesis names Esau's wives twice, in chapter 26 and chapter 36, using two seemingly unrelated sets of names — a discrepancy traditional commentators have resolved in strikingly different ways. Surveying opinions from Rashi through Nahmanides to R. Abraham Maimuni, this article traces proposed solutions ranging from three identical wives known by alternate names to six entirely distinct women, weighing the textual and midrashic evidence each approach must reconcile.Wed, 01 Oct 2014 00:00:00 GMTRabbinic ExegesisGenealogyEsau and JacobMidrashhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-pillars-of-the-temple/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-pillars-of-the-temple/Raymond Apple — The two bronze pillars, Jachin and Boaz, that stood before Solomon's Temple have long puzzled readers: what were they made of, what did their names mean, and did they serve a structural, ceremonial, or purely symbolic purpose? Drawing on ancient Near Eastern parallels, rabbinic commentary, and even Freemasonic legend, this article surveys the competing explanations for the pillars' material, names, function, and orientation, concluding that the questions have long outlasted any single answer.Wed, 01 Oct 2014 00:00:00 GMTSolomon's TempleSymbolismAncient Near EastArchitecturehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/chronicles-levitical-covenant/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/chronicles-levitical-covenant/David J. Zucker and Moshe Reiss — Zucker and Reiss argue that Chronicles, writing for a demoralized post-exilic community without a king or full independence, downplays both the Mosaic Sinai covenant and the Davidic Zion covenant in favor of an implicit third covenant centered on the Jerusalem Temple and its Levitical personnel. Tracing how Chronicles sanitizes David into an idealized cult-founder who comes to eclipse Moses, they propose calling this synthesis a 'Levitical Covenant' — one that let the Chronicler's audience find religious meaning in Temple worship after the political covenants of Israel's past had failed to sustain them.Wed, 01 Oct 2014 00:00:00 GMTChroniclesLevitesCovenantTempleDavidic Kingshiphttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/story-of-judah-the-hero-analysis-of-genesis-38/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/story-of-judah-the-hero-analysis-of-genesis-38/Yong Zhao — Reading against the common view that Genesis 37–50 is simply 'the story of Joseph,' Zhao argues that Judah, not Joseph, is its true developing hero. Tracing Judah's arc from his ambiguous departure from his brothers at the start of Genesis 38 through his self-sacrificing plea for Benjamin's release, the article contends that chapter 38's account of Judah's failure and repentance with Tamar is the narrative hinge that transforms him from a failed rescuer into the leader who ultimately reconciles the family and inherits Jacob's blessing.Wed, 01 Oct 2014 00:00:00 GMTNarrative CriticismLeadershipJudah and TamarJoseph Narrativehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/psalms-chapter-63-david-in-the-wilderness/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/psalms-chapter-63-david-in-the-wilderness/Tani Prero — Reading Psalm 63 against the physical realities of the Judean wilderness — thirst, sleeplessness, scarce food, prowling jackals — Prero, drawing on his own experience leading wilderness treks in the region, shows how David repeatedly redirects the language of physical deprivation into an expression of longing for God. The result is a portrait of a psalm whose central move is not complaint but the transformation of bodily suffering into praise.Wed, 01 Oct 2014 00:00:00 GMTPsalmsWilderness ImageryPrayer and WorshipDavidhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-triple-tragedy-of-the-gedaliah-assassination/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-triple-tragedy-of-the-gedaliah-assassination/Joshua J. Adler — Adler traces the aftermath of Gedaliah's assassination in Jeremiah 40–44 as a threefold catastrophe: a Jew's murder of a fellow Jew, the coerced flight of the remaining community — and the prophet Jeremiah — to Egypt against God's explicit word, and that community's subsequent relapse into idolatry there. Read together, he argues, these episodes amount to a bitter reversal of the Exodus, undoing in a few violent months what Moses and generations of prophets had achieved.Wed, 01 Oct 2014 00:00:00 GMTBabylonian ExilePolitical HistoryIdolatryProphecyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/who-were-the-fearers-of-the-lord-in-psalms/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/who-were-the-fearers-of-the-lord-in-psalms/Shimon Bakon — Bakon examines four Psalms passages that list 'those who fear the Lord' (yir'ei Hashem) alongside the houses of Israel, Aaron, and Levi, arguing — against readings that take the term to mean especially pious Israelites or proselytes — that it designates righteous gentiles who worshipped Israel's God without full conversion. Tracing figures such as Naaman and later Roman sympathizers such as Poppaea, he situates the phenomenon within a broader biblical and post-exilic invitation to the nations, one eventually curtailed by rabbinic restrictions on proselytizing and by Christianity's more welcoming missionary success.Wed, 01 Oct 2014 00:00:00 GMTPsalmsRighteous GentilesConversionSecond Temple Judaismhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-destroying-angel/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-destroying-angel/Shaul Bar — Bar surveys the Bible's scattered references to a 'destroying angel' (malakh ha-mashhit) — at the threshing floor of Araunah, in the death of Egypt's firstborn, and possibly at Sennacherib's camp — alongside Mesopotamian myths of autonomous death-gods like Erra and Namtar. He argues that the Bible's angel, unlike its Near Eastern counterparts, is never independent: it acts strictly on God's command and can be halted by God's word alone, a distinction that consistently separates Israelite monotheism from the polytheistic frameworks it answers.Wed, 01 Oct 2014 00:00:00 GMTAngelsAncient Near EastDivine PunishmentComparative Mythologyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/metallurgy-in-the-bible-ironworking-and-the-golden-calf/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/metallurgy-in-the-bible-ironworking-and-the-golden-calf/Susan V. Meschel — Meschel brings the science of metallurgy to bear on two biblical puzzles: when Israelites first mastered ironworking (later than their neighbors, she concludes, not securely attested until the age of Hezekiah), and how Moses could have 'burned' the Golden Calf into a powder that could be strewn on water. Reviewing chemical and archaeological evidence alongside classical and medieval commentators, she favors David Frankel's proposal that a scribal error swapped the description of the shattered stone tablets with that of the melted calf, since limestone dust — unlike gold dust — floats.Wed, 01 Oct 2014 00:00:00 GMTMetallurgyAncient TechnologyGolden CalfBiblical Archaeologyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/fifty-first-international-bible-contest-for-jewish-youth/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/fifty-first-international-bible-contest-for-jewish-youth/Joshua J. Adler — Adler reports on the fifty-first International Bible Contest for Jewish Youth, held on Israel's Independence Day 2014, in which Eitan Amos of Toronto became the first non-Israeli champion in at least two decades. The report covers the contest's format, its roster of dignitaries and judges, and the broader educational and diplomatic apparatus — from the Jewish Agency to the IDF Education Corps — that sustains the annual competition.Wed, 01 Oct 2014 00:00:00 GMTJewish EducationBible ContestIsraelYouthhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/rashis-midrashic-comments-biblical-texts/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/rashis-midrashic-comments-biblical-texts/Moshe Anisfeld — Rashi distinguishes in his Torah commentary between peshat, the plain sense of the text, and derash, midrashic elaboration that he includes only when he judges it to have some basis in the text itself. This article argues that three of Rashi's seemingly imaginative midrashic comments — linking Sarah's death to the Akedah, comparing the Promised Land favorably to Egypt, and singling out Amalek for total obliteration — are in fact supported by textual evidence beyond the specific verses where Rashi cites them, including narrative juxtaposition, patterns of word choice, and analogous usages elsewhere in the Torah. In the Amalek case, the author proposes that Rashi's inclusion of an otherwise fanciful rabbinic reading involving sexual violation is triggered by the Torah's exceptional use of the term zekher, ordinarily reserved for God, the righteous, and Israel, rather than the generic shem used for other enemies — an anomaly that echoes the term's association with mishkav zakhar. The study thus reframes derash not as free invention but as a mode of exegesis anchored, however subtly, in the biblical text.Tue, 01 Jul 2014 00:00:00 GMTRashiMidrash and DerashBiblical ExegesisAmalekhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/reign-of-king-solomon/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/reign-of-king-solomon/Yosef Green — Reassessing Solomon's reputation as a sage and poet, this article argues that his most consequential achievement was diplomatic and economic: leveraging the territorial gains of David's reign and a rare interval of peace, Solomon built commercial partnerships — chief among them with Hiram of Tyre — that gave Israel access to Phoenician maritime expertise and made Ezion-geber a hub of copper refining and Red Sea trade. Drawing on the biblical text alongside archaeological and Near Eastern comparative evidence, the author reconstructs the economic logic behind episodes such as the Queen of Sheba's visit, reading it as a high-stakes trade negotiation prompted by Israelite inroads into Arabian caravan routes rather than mere curiosity about Solomon's wisdom. The article also traces how Solomon's building programs, foreign marriages, and tax burdens, while diplomatically and economically astute in the short term, sowed the resentment that fractured the kingdom after his death.Tue, 01 Jul 2014 00:00:00 GMTKing SolomonAncient Near Eastern DiplomacyTrade and EconomyQueen of Shebahttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/midrashic-interpretation-psalms-6-and-20/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/midrashic-interpretation-psalms-6-and-20/Arie Folger — Reading rabbinic and midrashic treatments of Psalm 6 and Psalm 20 against their plain sense, this article argues that the Sages were not attempting to explain these psalms' original meaning but used them as a springboard, an asmakhta, for teaching independent theological lessons. The Talmud's association of Psalm 6's superscription with circumcision, and Midrash Tehillim's linking of Psalm 20 — a martial psalm — to a woman in labor, both illustrate how midrashic exegesis freely detaches itself from a text's peshat in service of its didactic aims. Engaging literary theorist Wolfgang Iser's account of the limits a text imposes on its readers, the article contends that Midrash operates by a different logic, one unconstrained by such limits.Tue, 01 Jul 2014 00:00:00 GMTMidrashPsalmsCircumcisionChildbirthLiturgyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/book-of-jubilees-and-midrash-tower-of-babel/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/book-of-jubilees-and-midrash-tower-of-babel/Zvi Ron — Continuing a series comparing the Book of Jubilees to later rabbinic midrash, this installment examines how Jubilees handles the Tower of Babel narrative and its surrounding material in Genesis 10-11. It argues that Jubilees' account of the earth's secret division among Noah's sons — and its explanation that Peleg was named for that division rather than for a future dispersal — could not be absorbed into rabbinic literature because it conflicts with the dominant rabbinic view that all humanity took part in building the tower and was later scattered. But other elements original to Jubilees, including the idea that the tower's builders sought to storm heaven and that Canaan wrongfully seized land allotted to Shem, reappear largely intact in the Talmud and later Midrash, since neither raised any theological difficulty for the Sages.Tue, 01 Jul 2014 00:00:00 GMTBook of JubileesMidrashTower of BabelRabbinic Literaturehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/a-soothing-savor/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/a-soothing-savor/David J. Marwil — Examining the recurring biblical phrase re'ah niho'ah — God's "pleasing odor" from sacrifice — this article moves past the classical reading of the phrase as a mere metaphor for divine acceptance and argues, drawing on Talmudic sources (TB Zevahim 46b, TB Berakhot 43b), that the sacrificial smell describes an actual spiritual exchange: the nefesh (life-force) carried in the blood rises to God as scent (re'ah) in return for the ru'ah (spirit or inspiration) God bestows. This etymological pairing of re'ah and ru'ah also explains how a bloodless grain offering (minhah), brought by the poor in place of an animal's blood, can likewise produce a re'ah niho'ah, and why incense — the most "non-physical" of all sacrifices — held such a central role in the Yom Kippur service. The article closes by suggesting that after the Temple's destruction, prayer inherited this function, becoming the means by which a worshiper's own nefesh reaches God.Tue, 01 Jul 2014 00:00:00 GMTSacrificeAnthropomorphismNefesh and BloodPrayer and Worshiphttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/thoughts-on-the-death-penalty/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/thoughts-on-the-death-penalty/Shimon Bakon — Bakon traces how the Sages of the Talmud, faced with a Torah that mandates the death penalty for numerous crimes, effectively neutralized its application while formally leaving it "on the books." He argues that this restraint follows from principles embedded in the Written Law itself — the sanctity of man created in God's image, the infinite worth of a single life, and above all the two-witness requirement, whose corollaries (the exclusion of circumstantial evidence and the ban on self-incrimination) made conviction for a capital crime nearly impossible. The article surveys supporting cases, from the false testimony against Naboth to R. Simeon ben Shetah's refusal to convict a man he had all but seen commit murder, and closes by praising the State of Israel for perpetuating this rabbinic tradition of retaining capital punishment in law while almost never carrying it out.Tue, 01 Jul 2014 00:00:00 GMTDeath PenaltyRabbinic InterpretationSanctity of Human LifeLegal Testimonyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/heeling-in-the-torah/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/heeling-in-the-torah/Hayyim Angel — Hayyim Angel reads two of Genesis’s strangest images — the talking snake of Eden and the nocturnal being who wrestles with Jacob at the Jabbok — as deliberately demythologized figures for inward psychological struggle rather than as literal supernatural beings. Drawing on the Zohar, Radak, Sforno, and Cassuto’s wordplay on Eve’s name, he argues the snake personifies Eve’s own temptation, which becomes internalized as part of her nature once she sins; drawing on midrashic identifications of Jacob’s opponent as either Esau’s guardian angel or Jacob’s own deceitful self, he argues the wrestling match dramatizes Jacob’s need to confront both his brother and his history of deception. Unlike Adam and Eve, who deflect blame and are banished, Jacob takes ownership of the struggle and is renamed Israel — though the Bible’s continued use of both names, and later prophetic wordplay on ya’akov/akov (deceit), shows that becoming Israel is a lifelong process rather than a completed transformation.Tue, 01 Jul 2014 00:00:00 GMTPsychological InterpretationMidrashSymbolismNames in the Biblehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/downplaying-the-davidic-dynasty/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/downplaying-the-davidic-dynasty/David J. Zucker and Moshe Reiss — Traces how hope for a restored Davidic monarchy, confidently proclaimed by Jeremiah and Ezekiel, is progressively muted across the Exilic and post-Exilic corpus. Second Isaiah transfers the language of divine appointment to Cyrus; Haggai and Zechariah hint at Zerubbabel's Davidic descent without naming it outright; and Ezra-Nehemiah, Chronicles, and Daniel largely omit the subject altogether. The authors argue this trajectory reflects a shrewd political calculation by Judean writers operating under Persian and later Hellenistic rule, for whom open talk of a restored native king could be read as sedition.Tue, 01 Jul 2014 00:00:00 GMTDavidic DynastyProphecyPost-Exilic LiteraturePersian Periodhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/third-adult-bible-contest-2013/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/third-adult-bible-contest-2013/Joshua J. Adler — A firsthand report on the Third Adult Bible Contest, held in December 2013 at Jerusalem's Binyanei Ha-Umah and broadcast on Israeli television, describing the event's sponsors, format, and winners. The report also previews plans to reopen the contest to international, non-Israeli contestants beginning Hanukkah 2014, reviving the International Adult Bible Contest after roughly fifty years.Tue, 01 Jul 2014 00:00:00 GMTBible ContestIsraelJewish Educationhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/book-review-composition-of-the-pentateuch/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/book-review-composition-of-the-pentateuch/Ben Zion Katz — A review of Joel S. Baden's The Composition of the Pentateuch: Renewing the Documentary Hypothesis (Yale University Press, 2012), which refashions the classical documentary hypothesis as a purely literary argument resting on a single, minimally-creative compiler. The review credits Baden's case studies with real analytical skill but argues, through a series of specific textual counter-examples in Exodus, Numbers, and the Joseph and Sinai narratives, that many of his source divisions create as many literary problems as they resolve and that his claim that D never draws on P has real exceptions.Tue, 01 Jul 2014 00:00:00 GMTBook ReviewDocumentary HypothesisPentateuchBiblical Criticismhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/book-review-new-english-translation-septuagint/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/book-review-new-english-translation-septuagint/Simcha Rosenberg — A review of A New English Translation of the Septuagint (NETS), edited by Albert Pietersma and Benjamin G. Wright (Oxford University Press, 2007) — the first full English rendering of the LXX since 1851. The review welcomes its thorough introductions and side-by-side treatment of double Greek versions, but notes that NETS is not a fresh translation from the Greek so much as a modified NRSV, and questions why the editors did not instead adapt the JPS Tanakh translation for a Jewish readership.Tue, 01 Jul 2014 00:00:00 GMTBook ReviewSeptuagintBible Translationhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/letters-to-the-editor-42-3/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/letters-to-the-editor-42-3/Malcolm E. Schrader and Aron Pinker — Two letters respond to earlier JBQ articles. Malcolm E. Schrader challenges a 2012 study of biblical war curses for equating scriptural 'defeat in war' with the death of individual combatants, arguing the Bible instead treats defeat as national punishment for collective sin, with individual deaths as an incidental consequence. Aron Pinker rebuts a proposed emendation of the hapax legomenon keseh in Psalm 81:4 to kesef ('silver trumpets'), marshaling orthographic, versional, and lexical evidence that the received text should stand.Tue, 01 Jul 2014 00:00:00 GMTLetters to the EditorWar and Divine RetributionTextual CriticismPsalmshttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/sforno-commentary-on-the-torah/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/sforno-commentary-on-the-torah/Hayyim Angel — Examining three recurring themes in Rabbi Ovadiah Sforno's Torah commentary — prophecy in a waking state, self-actualization, and repentance — this article asks which of Sforno's readings are grounded in the biblical text and which go beyond it. It argues that Sforno's emphasis on this-worldly spirituality and the actualization of human potential reflects both close textual analysis and the influence of his Renaissance Italian milieu, while his recurring insistence on repentance in narratives where the text gives no such indication may respond to the trauma of the Spanish Expulsion and the broader experience of exile.Tue, 01 Apr 2014 00:00:00 GMTMedieval Jewish ExegesisTorah CommentaryProphecyRepentancehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/tower-of-babel-eliezer-ashkenazi/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/tower-of-babel-eliezer-ashkenazi/Byron L. Sherwin — A study of the sixteenth-century Polish exegete Eliezer Ashkenazi's unusual reading of the Tower of Babel narrative in his Sefer Ma'aseh Hashem, in which God's confusion of languages represents not a punishment but a deliberate introduction of religious pluralism — a diversity of belief that Ashkenazi sees as the necessary precondition for the free intellectual inquiry through which Abraham discovers religious truth. The article situates this reading in Ashkenazi's own historical moment, the fracturing of religious unity in Reformation-era Poland, and traces its possible afterlife in Abraham Joshua Heschel's twentieth-century writing on religious pluralism.Tue, 01 Apr 2014 00:00:00 GMTRenaissance Jewish ThoughtBiblical ExegesisReligious PluralismTower of Babelhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/why-did-the-torah-allow-servitude/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/why-did-the-torah-allow-servitude/Shimon Bakon — An examination of why biblical law permits servitude at all, given the Torah's overriding commitment to liberty. Surveying the laws of the Hebrew and Canaanite slave alongside comparative material from the Code of Hammurabi, ancient Athens, and Rome, the article argues that biblical servitude was a regulated, temporary alternative to beggary or imprisonment, hedged with humane protections, and that rabbinic tradition — from Maimonides' account of gradual moral reform to the Talmud's treatment of slaves as partial members of the covenant — reflects an underlying trajectory toward the institution's eventual abolition.Tue, 01 Apr 2014 00:00:00 GMTSlavery and ServitudeBiblical LawTalmudComparative Ancient Lawhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-three-day-plan/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-three-day-plan/Berel Dov Lerner — Moses tells Pharaoh only that the Israelites need a three-day journey into the wilderness to sacrifice, never that they intend to leave for good. Rejecting Ibn Ezra and Nahmanides' identification of this 'Three-Day Plan' with the theophany at Sinai — which took place months, not days, after the Exodus, and involved bulls and male leaders rather than the flock animals and whole families Moses described — the article argues that the plan was in fact realized in Egypt itself, through the first Passover, and that this realization also explains why Pharaoh only belatedly gives chase after the Israelites.Tue, 01 Apr 2014 00:00:00 GMTExodus NarrativeBiblical ExegesisPassoverMedieval Commentatorshttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/book-of-jubilees-and-the-midrash-noah-and-the-flood/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/book-of-jubilees-and-the-midrash-noah-and-the-flood/Zvi Ron — The second installment of a comparison between the Book of Jubilees and rabbinic Midrash, this time on the Noah narrative: who was the eldest of Noah's sons, the identity and naming of Noah's wife, the purpose of Noah's post-Flood sacrifice, the claim that Shavu'ot originated as a covenant renewal in Noah's time, the calendar dispute over when the Flood began, and the surprisingly sympathetic account of Noah's drunkenness after planting the vine. Throughout, the article shows how Jubilees consistently elevates Noah to heroic, quasi-priestly status in ways the rabbis pointedly declined to follow, preferring Abraham as the tradition's true founding role model.Tue, 01 Apr 2014 00:00:00 GMTSecond Temple LiteratureMidrashBook of JubileesCalendar and Festivalshttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-psalms-of-the-day/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-psalms-of-the-day/Raymond Apple — An inquiry into why the seven psalms recited daily in the Shaharit liturgy — one per day of the week, a practice inherited from the Levitical choir of the Temple — were assigned to their particular days. The article surveys the classic rabbinic explanation linking each psalm to a day of Creation, the Zohar's alternative scheme mapping the psalms onto seven millennial world-ages, and a modern numerological theory, concluding that none of these explanations is fully persuasive and that the original rationale for the assignments was likely lost soon after the Temple's destruction.Tue, 01 Apr 2014 00:00:00 GMTLiturgyPsalmsTemple RitualRabbinic Interpretationhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/laws-of-tzaraat-in-leviticus-13-14-and-medical-leprosy/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/laws-of-tzaraat-in-leviticus-13-14-and-medical-leprosy/Samson O. Olanisebe — A comparison of biblical tzara'at with Hansen's disease (modern medical leprosy), arguing that despite the traditional translation of tzara'at as 'leprosy,' the two conditions share only their visibility on the skin: the diagnosis, ritual treatment, and religious framing of tzara'at in Leviticus 13-14 mark it as a concern of sacred space, time, and status rather than a medical category. The article closes by drawing a broader parallel between the historical stigmatization of leprosy sufferers and the social exclusion faced by people with HIV/AIDS today, arguing that both call for empathy rather than isolation.Tue, 01 Apr 2014 00:00:00 GMTLeviticusRitual PurityBiblical LawHistory of Medicinehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/moses-not-a-man-of-words/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/moses-not-a-man-of-words/Morris Rosman — Rather than reading Moses's admission that he is 'not a man of words' as mere stammering, the article traces a consistent pattern of social withdrawal and inarticulateness across Moses's early life — his flight after killing the Egyptian taskmaster, his silence with Jethro's daughters, Jethro's giving him Zipporah rather than Moses taking her — and argues that God's insistence on sending him to Pharaoh despite this is itself the point: a reluctant, unpolished spokesman makes it unmistakable that the words he speaks are God's, not his own. On this reading, Moses's later fluency in pleading for Israel after the Golden Calf marks his successful retraining as 'a man of words,' which makes his subsequent regression — striking the rock instead of speaking to it — a disqualifying relapse into the man of action he had once been.Tue, 01 Apr 2014 00:00:00 GMTMosesProphecyCharacter StudyExodus Narrativehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/why-isaac-wasnt-permitted-to-resist-at-the-akedah/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/why-isaac-wasnt-permitted-to-resist-at-the-akedah/Joshua Backon — Rabbinic tradition holds that Isaac was a full-grown adult of thirty-seven at the Akedah, which raises a halakhic puzzle: later law entitles, and even obligates, a child to resist a parent who threatens his life under the law of the rodef (pursuer). Why, then, did Isaac offer no resistance? Drawing on the Minhat Hinnukh's linking of the Akedah to the law requiring obedience to a prophet's command to temporarily suspend a Torah prohibition, the article argues that Isaac's passivity is legally mandated rather than merely admirable, since Abraham, acting as a prophet, was owed the same obedience later given to Elijah on Mount Carmel.Tue, 01 Apr 2014 00:00:00 GMTAkedahHalakhahBiblical LawRabbinic Exegesishttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/book-review-a-journey-through-torah/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/book-review-a-journey-through-torah/Simcha Rosenberg — A review of Ben Zion Katz's A Journey Through Torah: A Critique of the Documentary Hypothesis (Urim Publications, 2012), which confronts the Documentary Hypothesis directly rather than dismissing it as heresy, marshaling talmudic, medieval, and philosophical sources that already accept limited forms of textual emendation and post-Mosaic authorship to argue for a 'fragmentary hypothesis' — that Moses compiled the Torah's prehistory from older material and that non-legislative changes were later made by prophets — as a middle path between traditional faith and academic biblical criticism.Tue, 01 Apr 2014 00:00:00 GMTBook ReviewDocumentary HypothesisPentateuchBiblical Criticismhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/wordplay-in-genesis-2-25-3-1/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/wordplay-in-genesis-2-25-3-1/Zvi Ron — Ibn Ezra stands almost alone among the classical commentators in noting that arummim ('naked,' Gen. 2:25) and arum ('cunning,' Gen. 3:1) play on the same root, a pun most traditional exegetes pass over in silence, perhaps wary of ascribing literary artifice to the Torah itself. Comparing this wordplay to similar puns in Judges and contrasting it with Targum Pseudo-Jonathan's attempt to neutralize it by rendering both words as 'wise,' the article argues that the pun functions primarily as an elegant narrative hinge linking the creation of Adam and Eve to the introduction of the serpent, rather than as a vehicle for any deeper theological lesson.Wed, 01 Jan 2014 00:00:00 GMTBiblical HebrewWordplayTorah CommentaryTargumhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/and-he-called-by-the-name-of-the-lord/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/and-he-called-by-the-name-of-the-lord/Shimon Bakon — Why does Abraham repeatedly 'invoke the name of the Lord' at altars and a planted tamarisk, with no sacrifice ever mentioned? Reading the phrase va-yikra be-shem against Maimonides' account of Abraham's independently discovered monotheism and against other biblical uses of shem as 'proclamation' or 'renown,' the article argues that invoking the Lord's name was Abraham's way of publicly teaching his new theology to the idolaters around him — a missionary act that Isaac continued but that Jacob, already surrounded by his own large household, no longer needed to perform.Wed, 01 Jan 2014 00:00:00 GMTDivine NamesAbrahamMidrashTorah Commentaryhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/queen-athaliah-daughter-of-ahab-or-omri/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/queen-athaliah-daughter-of-ahab-or-omri/Reuven Chaim Klein — The Bible calls Athaliah both the daughter of Ahab and the daughter of Omri, and reconciling the two claims matters halakhically, since either reading implies that a Davidic king married his own aunt. Surveying rabbinic and modern academic attempts to resolve the contradiction — that 'daughter' can mean granddaughter, or that it can mean sister — the article shows that every solution requires treating some biblical verse about the royal marriages as non-literal, and traces how commentators from Kimhi to the Vilna Gaon worked around the resulting genealogical knot.Wed, 01 Jan 2014 00:00:00 GMTGenealogyRabbinic ExegesisMonarchyHalakhahhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/yah-a-name-of-god/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/yah-a-name-of-god/Clifford Hubert Durousseau — Yah, the short form of the Tetragrammaton first attested in the Song of the Sea, is far more widespread in the Hebrew Bible than most English translations let on — appearing alone dozens of times in Psalms, embedded in theophoric names from Elijah to Isaiah, and standing beside the full name YHVH in Isaiah and Psalms. Surveying how major English and Aramaic translations have obscured or transliterated Yah across the centuries, and distinguishing it from the notorious hybrid 'Jehovah,' the article argues that Yah is knowable, pronounceable, liturgically popular, and — unlike the Tetragrammaton itself — permissible to say aloud.Wed, 01 Jan 2014 00:00:00 GMTDivine NamesBiblical HebrewTranslation HistoryLiturgyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/trial-of-jeremiah-and-the-killing-of-uriah/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/trial-of-jeremiah-and-the-killing-of-uriah/Claude F. Mariottini — Jeremiah 26 records both Jeremiah's near-execution for prophesying the Temple's destruction and, almost as an aside, the actual killing of a lesser-known prophet, Uriah ben Shemaiah, who preached the same message and was extradited from Egypt and put to death by King Jehoiakim. Reading the chapter's shifting crowd sympathies, the elders' invocation of Micah's precedent under Hezekiah, and the narrative role of Ahikam ben Shaphan, the article argues that the Uriah episode was appended by Jeremiah's tradents specifically to underscore Jehoiakim's wickedness and to show how narrowly Jeremiah escaped Uriah's fate.Wed, 01 Jan 2014 00:00:00 GMTProphecyJeremiahMonarchyBiblical Narrativehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/shepherding-as-a-metaphor/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/shepherding-as-a-metaphor/Gerald Aranoff — The Bible repeatedly identifies its heroes — Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, David — as shepherds, and the standard midrashic reading treats shepherding as leadership training. But that explanation cannot account for Abel, the Bible's first and least leaderly shepherd. Tracing the sacrificial logic back to Cain and Abel, the article argues that the Bible's real point in naming its heroes as shepherds is to mark them as capable of bringing the correct sacrifice to God — animal sacrifice having been validated as the proper mode of worship from the very first offering accepted in Genesis.Wed, 01 Jan 2014 00:00:00 GMTSacrificeMidrashPatriarchal NarrativesBiblical Occupationshttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/saul-and-genocide/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/saul-and-genocide/Berel Dov Lerner — The standard reading of I Samuel 15 — that Saul was ordered to exterminate the Amalekites and failed only by sparing King Agag and the livestock — cannot explain why Agag's mother is later described as still capable of being bereaved, or why Amalekites reappear fighting David a dozen chapters later. Building a close reading around the biblical word am, which frequently denotes a military force rather than an entire people, the article argues that Saul actually killed only the Amalekite combatants and spared the non-combatants, and that his real sin, condemned by Samuel, was a different and narrower one: yielding to his troops' wish to keep the plunder.Wed, 01 Jan 2014 00:00:00 GMTBiblical EthicsKingshipBiblical HebrewWar in the Biblehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/serah-bat-asher-in-rabbinic-literature/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/serah-bat-asher-in-rabbinic-literature/Moshe Reiss — Serah, daughter of Asher, appears in the Bible only in two genealogical lists centuries apart — yet rabbinic literature builds her into an immortal figure who reassures Jacob that Joseph is alive, authenticates Moses as redeemer, reveals the location of Joseph's sunken coffin, talks Joab out of destroying an entire city as the 'wise woman' of Abel Beth-maacah, and corrects a rabbi's teaching about the Red Sea centuries later still. The article traces this midrashic tradition across sources from Genesis Rabbah to the Zohar and to the historical veneration of Serah's tomb in Isfahan, arguing that she functions as a female counterpart to Elijah: a transtemporal bearer of hidden knowledge who links the patriarchal age to the redemption from Egypt and beyond.Wed, 01 Jan 2014 00:00:00 GMTMidrashWomen in the BibleRabbinic LiteratureFolklorehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/elkanah-consecrated-samuel-as-a-nazirite/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/elkanah-consecrated-samuel-as-a-nazirite/Joshua Backon — Hannah's vow to raise Samuel as a Nazirite runs into a legal snag: Jewish law holds that only a father, not a mother, may consecrate a minor son as a Nazirite, yet the text never states that Elkanah did so — a difficulty Radak himself flagged without resolving. Drawing on a Talmudic rule that a husband who says 'Amen' to his wife's Nazirite vow thereby becomes a co-vower, the article proposes that Elkanah's reply in I Samuel 1:23, 'May the Lord fulfill His word,' is the missing prooftext that legally completes Samuel's consecration.Wed, 01 Jan 2014 00:00:00 GMTHalakhahNazirite VowRabbinic Exegesishttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/book-review-onkelos-on-the-torah/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/book-review-onkelos-on-the-torah/Raymond Apple — A review of Onkelos on the Torah: Understanding the Bible Text, the five-volume edition and translation by Israel Drazin and Stanley M. Wagner (Gefen, 2011) — the first full English rendering of Targum Onkelos. The review praises the set's elegant translation and extensive commentary while faulting its inconsistent Aramaic source text, its handling of the identity and dating of 'Onkelos,' and some missed opportunities to explore the ideological reasons behind the Targum's characteristic rewritings, such as its avoidance of anthropomorphism and its preference for the Tetragrammaton over Elohim.Wed, 01 Jan 2014 00:00:00 GMTBook ReviewTargumTranslation HistoryRabbinic Literaturehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/book-review-jps-bible-commentary-jonah/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/book-review-jps-bible-commentary-jonah/David J. Zucker — A review of Uriel Simon's JPS Bible Commentary on Jonah (1999), which surveys and rejects the three traditional readings of the book's central theme — atonement versus repentance, universalism versus particularism, and prophecy realized versus prophecy complied with — in favor of a fourth: Jonah as a study of divine compassion caught between justice and mercy. The review credits Simon's densely argued introduction and close attention to irony while questioning whether his own thesis fully squares with his claim that Jonah shows no anguish over his unfulfilled prediction.Wed, 01 Jan 2014 00:00:00 GMTBook ReviewJonahProphecyBiblical Ironyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/letter-to-the-editor-meaning-of-mayim/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/letter-to-the-editor-meaning-of-mayim/Aron Pinker — Responding to Min Suc Kee's earlier JBQ article arguing that the Hebrew word mayim ('water') owes its dual grammatical form to ancient Near Eastern creation myths in which the primordial waters were split into an upper and lower pair, Pinker counters that a word as basic as 'water' must predate any creation legend, not derive from one. He proposes instead that mayim descends from the onomatopoeic yam, echoing the sound of moving water, and that shamayim ('heaven') may be a contraction of sham mayim, 'where water was.'Wed, 01 Jan 2014 00:00:00 GMTBiblical HebrewEtymologyCorrespondencehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/sarahs-treatment-of-hagar/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/sarahs-treatment-of-hagar/Hayyim Angel — An examination of Sarah's harsh treatment of Hagar in Genesis 16 through the lens of both classical Jewish commentary and ancient Near Eastern legal codes. Radak defends Abraham but faults Sarah, while Ramban implicates both; Rabbi Elhanan Samet argues, on the basis of Mesopotamian marriage contracts and the Code of Hammurabi, that Sarah and Abraham acted entirely within the legal conventions of their day, against Nehama Leibowitz's insistence that the Torah judges them by a higher standard. The article proposes a synthesis: Sarah acted lawfully within her social-legal context, yet the narrative's sympathy for Hagar's suffering signals the Torah's discomfort with that very context, a discomfort later realized in laws protecting runaway slaves.Tue, 01 Oct 2013 00:00:00 GMTEthics and MoralityAncient Near EastWomen in the BibleRabbinic Exegesishttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/alcohol-and-the-fate-of-nadab-and-abihu/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/alcohol-and-the-fate-of-nadab-and-abihu/Arthur J. Wolak — Leviticus gives no explicit reason for the sudden death of Aaron's sons Nadab and Abihu after they offered 'alien fire' before the Lord. Surveying modern commentators such as Milgrom, Levine, and Schwartz alongside the Midrash of Leviticus Rabbah, this article argues that the underlying cause was impaired judgment from alcohol consumption — a reading supported by the prohibition against priestly intoxication that immediately follows their death in Leviticus 10:8-11. Whatever specific ritual infraction the brothers committed, the article contends that drink was the reason they were incapable of the clear-headedness their office demanded.Tue, 01 Oct 2013 00:00:00 GMTPriesthoodRitual LawRabbinic ExegesisEthics and Moralityhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-psychology-of-balaam/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-psychology-of-balaam/Moshe Anisfeld — Why did Balaam undertake a mission he had every reason to believe would fail, and why did he persist after his first oracle blessed rather than cursed the Israelites? Drawing on close readings of Rashi and other commentators, this article argues that avarice and grandiosity — not, as rabbinic tradition holds, hatred of Israel — drove Balaam to accept Balak's invitation, and that after the humiliation of his failed first oracle he continued out of a need to retaliate against the Moabites' affronts to his wounded ego.Tue, 01 Oct 2013 00:00:00 GMTPsychology and the BibleProphecyRabbinic ExegesisEthics and Moralityhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/ruth-and-elisha-comparative-study/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/ruth-and-elisha-comparative-study/Ruth Walfish — Ruth and Elisha seem to have little in common, yet both reject their former lives to attach themselves to a reluctant mentor-figure — Naomi and Elijah, respectively — who would each prefer to travel their critical final journey alone. The article traces this shared pattern of rejection, oath-bound loyalty, and provision for others, then argues that the two stories diverge sharply in direction and tone: Ruth's is a story of hope, natural fertility, and dynastic renewal ending in the birth of David's ancestor, while Elisha's is a story of miracle-dependent crisis unfolding against the coming exile of the Northern Kingdom.Tue, 01 Oct 2013 00:00:00 GMTWomen in the BibleProphecyMentorship and SuccessionComparative Narrativehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/sinai-upside-down/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/sinai-upside-down/Raymond Apple — The ambiguous Hebrew phrase be-tahtit ha-har in Exodus 19:17 ('at the foot of the mountain') opens the door to a striking rabbinic derash: that God inverted Mount Sinai over the Israelites like a barrel and threatened to bury them alive unless they accepted the Torah. This article traces how Rashi, Tosafot, and later thinkers wrestled with the theological problem this midrash creates — coercion versus the people's professed willing acceptance (na'aseh ve-nishma) — and surveys several ways of reading the story, from Rava's account of a later reaffirmation in the days of Esther to Rav Kook's notion of a Torah relationship that deepens over time.Tue, 01 Oct 2013 00:00:00 GMTMidrash and AggadahRevelationRabbinic ExegesisTheologyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/from-noah-to-abraham-onomastics/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/from-noah-to-abraham-onomastics/Fred Blumenthal — Why does Genesis bother naming every link in the genealogical chain from Noah to Abraham, rather than simply noting, as the Mishnah does, that ten generations separated them? Taking as a model the Bible's own explanation of Peleg's name as a forward-looking allusion to the dispersion of nations, this article proposes symbolic meanings for each name in the line — Shem, Arpachshad, Shelah, Eber, Peleg, Reu, Serug, Nahor, and Terah — reading them as a chronicle of humanity's post-Flood emotional and religious evolution: from mourning, through the rise of idolatry and the deification of kings, sun, and moon, to Abraham's rediscovery of monotheism.Tue, 01 Oct 2013 00:00:00 GMTOnomasticsGenealogyIdolatryRabbinic Exegesishttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/who-knows-seven/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/who-knows-seven/Yosef Green — Why does the number seven carry such outsized significance across Israelite and wider Mediterranean tradition — from the seven days of Creation and Sukkot's water libation to folk customs for inducing fertility? Building on Philo's observation that seven's properties are 'beyond all words,' this article proposes that the number's prestige derives from the distinctive two-season climate of ancient Israel and the Mediterranean, where a six-month dry season gives way to a six-month rainy season beginning in the seventh month — making seven, at its root, a symbol of rainfall, fertility, and the blessing that follows from both.Tue, 01 Oct 2013 00:00:00 GMTNumerologyFestivals and HolidaysComparative ReligionFolklorehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/meaning-of-and-he-went-shefi/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/meaning-of-and-he-went-shefi/Gilad J. Gevaryahu — The word shefi in Numbers 23:3 (va-yelekh shefi, describing Balaam's departure) has resisted confident translation for centuries, with classical and modern sources proposing 'alone,' 'a bare height,' 'lame,' and 'slowly' among other readings. This article surveys the range of ancient and modern translations and rabbinic interpretations, then argues on the basis of the Akkadian cognate šēpu ('foot') that shefi simply means 'on foot' — a reading that also explains why the Talmud understood Balaam as lame, and why the text bothers to note his mode of travel just after his talking donkey drops out of the story.Tue, 01 Oct 2013 00:00:00 GMTPhilologyBiblical HebrewAkkadian StudiesRabbinic Exegesishttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/bible-contest-for-jewish-youth-5773/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/bible-contest-for-jewish-youth-5773/Joshua J. Adler — A report on the fiftieth International Bible Contest for Jewish Youth (Hidon Hatanakh) held in Jerusalem, notable for its first tie in over twenty years between Elior Babian of Bet Shemesh and Yishai Eisenberg of New Jersey. The contest drew 54 overseas contestants from 26 countries, alongside separate qualifying rounds for Israeli and Diaspora youth, and featured appearances by Minister of Education Rabbi Shai Piron, Knesset chairman Yuli Edelstein, and Prime Minister Netanyahu.Tue, 01 Oct 2013 00:00:00 GMTBible EducationJewish YouthIsraelhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/book-review-jps-ruth/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/book-review-jps-ruth/David J. Zucker — A review of The JPS Bible Commentary: Ruth (commentary by Tamara Cohn Eskenazi and the late Tikva Frymer-Kensky; JPS, 2011), winner of the 2011 National Jewish Book Award. The review highlights the volume's combination of scholarly and traditional Jewish material, its extensive Introduction covering topics from levirate marriage to feminist interpretation, and the distinctive contribution of two women scholars to a book named for one of only two biblical women with an eponymous megillah.Tue, 01 Oct 2013 00:00:00 GMTBook ReviewRuthJPSWomen in the Biblehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/letter-matrilineality-in-summary/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/letter-matrilineality-in-summary/Raymond Apple — Responding to Arthur J. Wolak's article on Ezra's role in establishing matrilineal descent as the criterion of Jewish identity, this letter argues that signs of a matrilineal policy predate Ezra, tracing biblical hints of a mother's house alongside the father's house and surveying rabbinic, Greek, and Roman-period parallels for why the criterion of Jewish status ultimately settled on the mother's line.Tue, 01 Oct 2013 00:00:00 GMTJewish IdentityLaw and Legal InterpretationRabbinic Exegesishttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-book-of-jubilees-and-the-midrash-on-genesis/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-book-of-jubilees-and-the-midrash-on-genesis/Zvi Ron — Reading the Book of Jubilees alongside classical midrash on Genesis 1–6:8, Ron shows how this early-second-century-BCE retelling sometimes anticipates rabbinic solutions to biblical difficulties — the pre-solar creation of light, Cain and Abel's wives, Adam's death at 930 — and sometimes diverges sharply from them, as with Jubilees' forty-day purification period before Adam enters Eden, its seven blissful years in the Garden, and its insistence that all animals originally spoke. The article argues that Jubilees functions as an early form of midrashic literature whose interpretations were sometimes absorbed into later rabbinic tradition and sometimes pointedly suppressed.Mon, 01 Jul 2013 00:00:00 GMTSecond Temple LiteratureMidrashGenesisPseudepigraphahttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-prophet-micaiah-in-kings-and-chronicles/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-prophet-micaiah-in-kings-and-chronicles/David J. Zucker — Chronicles ordinarily excises the northern kingdom's history and its Elijah-Elisha cycle, yet it retains, almost verbatim from I Kings 22, the confrontation between King Ahab and the prophet Micaiah ben Imlah — largely because Judah's King Jehoshaphat is present at the scene. Zucker asks why Ahab tells Jehoshaphat that he 'hates' Micaiah despite the prophet's only appearance being this single chapter, and proposes that Micaiah is the unnamed attendant who accompanies Elijah in I Kings 18-19, making Ahab's hatred of Micaiah an extension of his hatred of Elijah. The article also traces how the episode's contrast between the 'word of the Lord' and the 'spirit of the Lord' serves the Chronicler's broader concern with the divine name and true versus false prophecy.Mon, 01 Jul 2013 00:00:00 GMTProphecyChroniclesKingsElijahhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/ecclesiastes-part-ii-themes/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/ecclesiastes-part-ii-themes/Aron Pinker — Continuing a study of the Book of Kohelet, Pinker argues that its recurring themes — vanity, toil, joy, wisdom, death, fear of God, justice, timeliness, and youth — are consistently the preoccupations of the mature and established rather than the young. He proposes that Kohelet is not a single author's treatise but a record of debates conducted within a havurah-like circle, the kohelet, of wealthy, aging Jerusalem patricians under Ptolemaic rule, whose guarded, ambiguous style reflects fear of the regime's reporting apparatus. This, he suggests, explains both the book's contradictions and its eventual admission into the biblical canon.Mon, 01 Jul 2013 00:00:00 GMTWisdom LiteratureEcclesiastesCanon FormationSecond Temple Periodhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/subtleties-in-joseph-and-potiphars-wife/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/subtleties-in-joseph-and-potiphars-wife/Shimon Bakon — Bakon draws on rabbinic and medieval close reading to recover the hidden emotional drama beneath the terse account of Joseph's temptation in Genesis 39 — the rare shalshelet cantillation mark on 'but he refused,' signaling hesitation shared with Lot and Eliezer; the Talmud's inference that Joseph nearly succumbed until an image of his father Jacob stopped him; and the recurring word begged ('garment'), whose root evokes betrayal and infidelity. He also contrasts the narrative's psychological subtlety, especially in how Potiphar's wife manipulates her household and her husband, with the plainer parallel Egyptian tale of Anubis and Bata.Mon, 01 Jul 2013 00:00:00 GMTGenesis NarrativeMidrashJoseph StoryBiblical Rhetorichttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/isaiah-7-14b-in-new-christian-bible-translations/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/isaiah-7-14b-in-new-christian-bible-translations/Clifford Hubert Durousseau — Durousseau traces how major Christian Bible translations, from the 1952 RSV through the 2011 NABRE, have progressively corrected the ancient mistranslation of almah as 'virgin' in Isaiah 7:14b, restoring 'young woman' and the definite article, and rendering harah as a present-tense predicate rather than a future verb of conception. He argues this confirms that Isaiah's oracle described an imminent, contemporary birth as a sign to King Ahaz, not a distant virginal conception of the Messiah, and that Matthew's use of the Septuagint's parthenos represents a midrashic pesher rather than the peshat of the Hebrew text.Mon, 01 Jul 2013 00:00:00 GMTIsaiahBible TranslationJewish-Christian RelationsHebrew Philologyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/was-ezra-a-high-priest/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/was-ezra-a-high-priest/Reuven Chaim Klein — Though Ezra's genealogy in Ezra 7:1-5 traces him back to Aaron, classical rabbinic sources hold that Jeshua ben Jehozadak, not Ezra, served as high priest of the early Second Temple. Klein surveys a competing medieval tradition — Maimonides, Meiri, and others — that took Ezra himself to have been kohen gadol, tracing the dispute through readings of Mishnah Parah 3:5 on the preparation of the red heifer, and through attempts by Rabbis Emden, Azulai, and Palache to reconcile Maimonides' apparent position with the plain sense of the biblical text. He concludes that most authorities reject the high priest tradition, though Maimonides' own view remains ambiguous.Mon, 01 Jul 2013 00:00:00 GMTSecond Temple PeriodPriesthoodRabbinic TraditionMaimonideshttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/be-dorotav-noahs-generations-and-longevity/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/be-dorotav-noahs-generations-and-longevity/Jeffrey M. Cohen — Cohen revisits the talmudic dispute between Rabbi Johanan and Resh Lakish over whether Noah's righteousness 'in his generation' (be-dorotav, Gen. 6:9) was diminished or enhanced by the wickedness around him, noting that both readings assume a singular be-doro despite the text's actual plural form. Working from the ages at which antediluvian versus postdiluvian patriarchs first fathered children, he argues that be-dorotav is literal: because the human generative age dropped sharply after the Flood, Noah — who lived 950 years, 350 of them after the Flood — personally witnessed roughly ten generations of descendants, far more than any of his forebears, which supports Resh Lakish's view that some of those later generations were not wholly wicked.Mon, 01 Jul 2013 00:00:00 GMTGenesis NarrativeRabbinic ExegesisChronologyNoahhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/a-latin-term-in-targum-pseudo-jonathan/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/a-latin-term-in-targum-pseudo-jonathan/Eugene Wernick — Wernick examines Targum Pseudo-Jonathan's midrashic expansion of Genesis 39:1, in which Potiphar buys Joseph out of homosexual desire and is punished with sterility, and identifies the Targum's unusual term for Potiphar's office, sapokleturia, as a Hebraized form of the Latin speculator — an imperial bodyguard-turned-executioner also found in Mark 6:27 and rabbinic literature. He suggests that the Targum's choice of this specifically Roman term reflects the trauma of Jewish captives, especially boys and young men, sold into sexual slavery throughout the Roman Empire after the wars with Rome, with Joseph's ordeal functioning as a coded prayer for their deliverance.Mon, 01 Jul 2013 00:00:00 GMTTargumMidrashJoseph StoryRoman Judeahttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/moses-wrote-his-book-and-the-portion-of-balaam/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/moses-wrote-his-book-and-the-portion-of-balaam/Shubert Spero — Spero asks how Moses could have written the Balaam narrative of Numbers 22-24, told entirely from Balak's point of view and never revealed to Moses by prophecy, and reads the story itself as a satire exposing the empty pretensions of pagan sorcery — Balaam's transparent haggling over fees, his terror at his donkey seeing what he cannot, and his eventual, genuine prophetic inspiration. He proposes that Moses learned the episode's details only later, from Phinehas, who could have heard Balaam boast of his encounter with Balak while visiting Midian shortly before Balaam's death (Num. 31:8), and that this explains the puzzling ve-hazar ('and he returned and wrote') of the Jerusalem Talmud's version of the Bava Batra tradition.Mon, 01 Jul 2013 00:00:00 GMTTorah AuthorshipBalaamProphecyRabbinic Traditionhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/outsmarting-god-egyptian-slavery-and-tower-of-babel/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/outsmarting-god-egyptian-slavery-and-tower-of-babel/Sheila Tuller Keiter — Keiter argues that the Torah deliberately links Pharaoh's enslavement of Israel with the Tower of Babel narrative through the shared formula 'Come, let us . . .' (havah n-) and the shared motif of brick and mortar, found nowhere else in the Torah. Both episodes, she contends, are really challenges to God's authority disguised as practical policy — the tower builders sought to make a name for themselves and defy dispersal, while Pharaoh, a would-be god himself, sought to disprove the superiority of Israel's God by crushing His people — and both rely on the willing dehumanization of individuals for a collective cause, a theme underscored by the pervasive namelessness running through both stories.Mon, 01 Jul 2013 00:00:00 GMTExodus NarrativeTower of BabelMidrashBiblical Rhetorichttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-garden-of-eden-as-gods-first-sanctuary/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-garden-of-eden-as-gods-first-sanctuary/Lifsa Schachter — Reads the Eden narrative by looking at it rather than only reading it — recovering the visual setting a listening audience would have pictured, in an era when the Bible was heard far more often than read. Attention to the garden's concrete furniture brings out imagery that later biblical texts and the midrashim pick up, and that mainstream Jewish readings of the story largely pass over: Eden as the first sanctuary.Mon, 01 Apr 2013 00:00:00 GMTCreationTabernacleSymbolismMidrashhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-idol-of-micah-and-the-concubine-at-gibeah/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-idol-of-micah-and-the-concubine-at-gibeah/Gerald Aranoff — Judges closes with two disturbing stories, both framed by the refrain that there was no king in Israel. Asks why the two provoked such different responses: the Danites steal Micah's idol and found an idolatrous shrine with no reprisal at all, while the outrage at Gibeah brings the whole nation to war against Benjamin. Answers from the rabbinic reading, which also explains why Israel's first assaults on Benjamin failed.Mon, 01 Apr 2013 00:00:00 GMTJudgesIdolatryBiblical EthicsRabbinic Exegesishttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/ecclesiastes-part-1-authorship/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/ecclesiastes-part-1-authorship/Aron Pinker — Traces the question of who wrote Kohelet from Seder Olam Rabbah and Kohelet Rabbati, which assign it to Solomon in his old age, through Luzzatto — the first Jewish commentator to deny Solomonic authorship, arguing for a post-exilic writer who borrowed Solomon's name to borrow his authority.Mon, 01 Apr 2013 00:00:00 GMTWisdom LiteratureBiblical CriticismHistory of InterpretationRabbinic Literaturehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/jethro-the-convert/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/jethro-the-convert/Moshe Reiss — There is no formal conversion procedure anywhere in the Torah: those who joined Israel did so by leaving home and living among them. Against that, and against the scale of conversion implied by the population between the two destructions, examines Jethro — introduced in Exodus 2 marrying Zipporah to Moses, and treated as a proselyte on the strength of his much later return in Exodus 18.Mon, 01 Apr 2013 00:00:00 GMTComparative ReligionBiblical LawMosesExodus Narrativehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/sisera-and-harosheth-goiim/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/sisera-and-harosheth-goiim/Gabriel A. Sivan — Opens on the three verses that set up Deborah's war — Jabin of Hazor, Sisera and his nine hundred iron chariots, twenty years of oppression — in a period without national unity or religious authority. Draws the parallel the text itself invites, between deliverance from Sisera and deliverance from Pharaoh, each crowned by a song of triumph.Mon, 01 Apr 2013 00:00:00 GMTJudgesAncient Near EastArchaeologyBiblical Poetryhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-ghost-of-samuel-real-or-imaginary/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-ghost-of-samuel-real-or-imaginary/Fred Blumenthal — I Samuel 28 reports Saul consulting the witch of En-Dor, who raises Samuel to reconfirm the end of his kingdom. Notes that the chapter repeats Samuel's death and burial, already recorded when they happened, and reads the repetition as deliberately linking the two events — while questioning Rashi's explanation, which sits awkwardly against the statement that prophet and king had ceased to meet even in Samuel's lifetime.Mon, 01 Apr 2013 00:00:00 GMTKingshipProphecyIdolatryBiblical Narrativehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-root-g-r-a-in-the-bible/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-root-g-r-a-in-the-bible/Gilad J. Gevaryahu — The daughters of Zelophehad appear twice in Numbers, and their plea turns on a single verb: why should their father's name be withdrawn — yiggara — from his family for want of a son? Follows that root through the plea, the Lord's reply granting them their father's inheritance, and its other appearances in the Bible.Mon, 01 Apr 2013 00:00:00 GMTBiblical HebrewPhilologyWomen in the BibleBiblical Lawhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-bloody-bridegroom-and-the-joseph-narrative/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-bloody-bridegroom-and-the-joseph-narrative/Gideon Miller — Exodus 4:24-26 — the Lord seeking to kill Moses on the road, and Zipporah's circumcision of their son — has resisted explanation: why would God attack His agent of redemption immediately after appointing him? Argues the episode is not incidental but fundamental to the Exodus narrative and to how Moses is to be judged, reading it against the Joseph story.Mon, 01 Apr 2013 00:00:00 GMTMosesExodus NarrativeJoseph NarrativeIntertextualityhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/magdil-and-migdol/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/magdil-and-migdol/Raymond Apple — The verse that closes Grace after Meals exists in two forms, one from II Samuel 22 and one from Psalm 18, differing at verse 51 between the participle magdil, He magnifies, and the noun migdol, a tower. Weighs the linguistic case for the Psalms reading against the Masoretic keri and ketiv in Samuel, where the same consonants are read one way and written the other, and traces how the liturgy accommodated both.Mon, 01 Apr 2013 00:00:00 GMTLiturgyMasoretic TextTextual CriticismPsalmshttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/i-will-pour-out-my-spirit-on-all-flesh/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/i-will-pour-out-my-spirit-on-all-flesh/Mordecai Schreiber — Joel is placed between Hosea and Amos yet cannot be dated: proposals range across three centuries, and he is tied to no particular time or place, which has cost him attention. Takes up his central vision of the four locusts — plague or figure for Israel's enemies — and the way he answers his fellow prophets, reversing Isaiah's swords into ploughshares and borrowing Amos's roaring lion.Mon, 01 Apr 2013 00:00:00 GMTProphecyProphetic LiteratureMessianismIntertextualityhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/god-rested-on-the-seventh-day/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/god-rested-on-the-seventh-day/Malcolm E. Schrader — The fourth commandment grounds the Sabbath in creation: God laboured six days and rested on the seventh. Takes up the difficulty in that account — what it can mean for God to rest — reading the Exodus formulation against the three different verbs Genesis 2:1-3 uses for finishing and resting.Mon, 01 Apr 2013 00:00:00 GMTSabbathCreationBiblical TheologyBiblical Hebrewhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/lost-battle-of-king-ahab-rediscovered/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/lost-battle-of-king-ahab-rediscovered/P. J. Berlyn — The Bible never mentions the Battle of Qarqara (853 BCE), in which King Ahab of Israel joined a coalition of Aramean and Phoenician rulers to halt the advance of Shalmaneser III of Assyria — an episode recoverable only from Shalmaneser's own Monolith Inscription. The author reconstructs how the League of Qarqara was assembled, tallies its combined forces against Assyria's, and shows that Ahab's contribution of 2,000 chariots was larger than that of every other member of the coalition combined, a figure that fits comfortably with the military buildup attested archaeologically at Samaria, Megiddo, and Hazor. She closes by weighing why the biblical narrator, so attentive to Ahab's wars against Aram, passed over in total silence a campaign in which Israel's role may have been decisive.Tue, 01 Jan 2013 00:00:00 GMTAncient Near EastMilitary HistoryAssyriologyKings of Israelhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/phinehas-elijah-and-circumcision/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/phinehas-elijah-and-circumcision/Jeffrey M. Cohen — At a traditional circumcision the mohel recites the opening verses of parashat Pinhas, and designates an honorary seat for the prophet Elijah. The author traces both customs to a midrashic identification of Elijah with Phinehas, and argues that this pairing carries a deeper thematic link to circumcision itself — through Maimonides' rationale that circumcision tempers excessive lust, through the semantic overlap between beriti (covenant) and berit milah, and through the ironic contrast between Phinehas's pure zealotry and his tribe's earlier, abused use of circumcision against the Shechemites.Tue, 01 Jan 2013 00:00:00 GMTCircumcisionMidrashRabbinic TraditionZealotryhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/elijah-and-elisha-part-ii/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/elijah-and-elisha-part-ii/David J. Zucker — Elisha follows Elijah's example so closely that the text underscores the connection through the cloak, the parting of the Jordan, and the repeated cry 'Father, father, Israel's chariots and horsemen!' Yet the two prophets diverge sharply in temperament and method: Elijah is a self-reliant, dramatic loner who deals harshly with his enemies, while Elisha works through a community of prophets and disciples, treats enemy soldiers leniently, and involves himself deeply in the political fortunes of the monarchy. The article argues that although Elijah's public confrontations were the more dramatic, Elisha's quieter statesmanship — arranging the anointing of Hazael and Jehu — had the greater long-term effect on Israel's political history.Tue, 01 Jan 2013 00:00:00 GMTProphetsElijahElishaKings of Israelhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/rescue-from-fiery-death/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/rescue-from-fiery-death/Zvi Ron — Daniel chapter 3, the story of Hananiah, Mishael and Azariah's rescue from Nebuchadnezzar's furnace, is the only chapter in the Book of Daniel in which Daniel himself does not appear. The author argues that this absence is not, as critical scholars suggest, evidence that the chapter is an unrelated interpolation, but a deliberate structural echo of Genesis 38, the story of Judah and Tamar, which similarly interrupts the Joseph narrative without mentioning Joseph. Both digressions tell of a righteous figure saved from death by fire, both feature a condemning authority who later admits his error, and rabbinic tradition ties the two together by attributing the youths' salvation to the merit of their ancestor Judah, casting both episodes as milestones on the road to the Davidic monarchy.Tue, 01 Jan 2013 00:00:00 GMTBook of DanielNarrative StructureMidrashDavidic Linehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/torah-with-70-different-faces/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/torah-with-70-different-faces/Allen S. Maller — Rabbinic tradition holds that Torah has shiv'im panim, seventy faces, meaning that a single verse can sustain many, even contradictory, correct interpretations. The author illustrates this principle by cataloguing more than a dozen classical and original readings of the phrase 'and behold, it was very good' in Genesis 1:31, grouping them into three families: readings that locate the 'very good' in a particular feature of creation, readings that find it in the value of moral struggle and conflicting possibilities, and readings that see it as marking an advance to a higher stage of development. The survey is offered as a demonstration, not just a description, of pluralistic interpretation in action.Tue, 01 Jan 2013 00:00:00 GMTRabbinic HermeneuticsMidrashCreationBiblical Interpretationhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/length-of-the-rule-of-joshua/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/length-of-the-rule-of-joshua/Elihu A. Schatz — The Bible never states how long Joshua ruled, and the traditional figure of 28 years — built on the assumption that Joshua was Caleb's contemporary and required patching with 24 extra years borrowed from two periods of subjugation — produces an inconsistent chronology and an implausibly elderly commander at the conquest of Canaan. The author derives Joshua's age independently from the Numbers narrative of the spies, showing he was 19 at the Exodus and therefore 59 when his rule began, giving him a 52-year reign that both fits a more plausible age for his military campaigns and reconciles exactly with the 300 years Jephthah cites from the conquest of Sihon to his own judgeship.Tue, 01 Jan 2013 00:00:00 GMTBiblical ChronologyBook of JoshuaBook of Judgeshttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/understanding-psalm-46/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/understanding-psalm-46/Arie Folger — Psalm 46 has long resisted being read as a unified composition, appearing instead to combine natural imagery, a portrait of the City of God, and martial triumph. The author identifies two overlapping structures in the psalm — one marked by the refrain selah into three equal stanzas, another organized thematically into a natural motif and a martial motif — and argues that the City of God is the point where both structures, and both themes, converge: a place whose peace from nature's chaos is itself a metaphor for its Divine protection from human enemies. The article then surveys the messianic, historical, metaphoric, and synthesis readings of the classical and modern commentators to show how each fits, and fails fully to fit, this proposed structure.Tue, 01 Jan 2013 00:00:00 GMTPsalmsBiblical PoetryJerusalemStructural Analysishttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/concealing-tekhelet-revealing-shekhinah/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/concealing-tekhelet-revealing-shekhinah/Mois A. Navon — Responding to an earlier JBQ article that argued the biblical blue dye tekhelet was deliberately concealed to curb overly enthusiastic mystics, the author rebuts both of its proof texts concerning Rabbi Meir and argues that seeking to behold the Divine Presence was never considered a transgression in rabbinic literature. He instead reviews other rabbinic uses of the term nignaz (stored away), proposing that tekhelet's disappearance is better explained by kings hoarding it for royal use, making it too dangerous for ordinary Jews to wear, rather than by any deliberate suppression of mystical practice.Tue, 01 Jan 2013 00:00:00 GMTTekheletRabbinic LiteratureMysticismTzitzithttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/maimonides-eighth-principle-of-faith/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/maimonides-eighth-principle-of-faith/Aharon E. Wexler — Maimonides' eighth principle of faith holds that the Torah text in our hands is entirely divine, yet the Masoretic tradition itself contains variants, and rabbinic sources acknowledge that portions of the text were transmitted or corrected by human hands. The author argues that Maimonides' principle, properly read, requires only that Moses contributed no independent input to the text he received at Sinai, and does not foreclose the possibility that the text was subsequently corrupted and later reconstructed by Ezra the Scribe. Drawing on Marc B. Shapiro's survey of textual variants and David Weiss Halivni's theory of Chate'u Yisrael, the article proposes a modus vivendi that lets an Orthodox Bible student accept the findings of textual criticism without abandoning belief in the Torah's divine origin.Tue, 01 Jan 2013 00:00:00 GMTMaimonidesTextual CriticismJewish PhilosophyMasoretic TextRevelationhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/davids-sin-counting-the-people/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/davids-sin-counting-the-people/Shimon Bakon — II Samuel 24 treats David's census of Israel and Judah as a grievous sin punished by a plague of 70,000 dead, but the text never states what exactly was wrong with counting the people — especially since Saul had done the same without consequence. Rather than the usual explanations (omitting the half-shekel, royal pride, misplaced trust in numbers), the author proposes that David's real transgression was the purpose behind the census: mustering a population for forced labor (mas) to build the Temple and royal structures, a policy of corvée that, traced through Adoram's later role under Solomon and Rehoboam, directly precipitated the revolt that split the kingdom.Tue, 01 Jan 2013 00:00:00 GMTKing DavidCensusForced LaborDivided Kingdomhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/what-is-keseh-in-psalm-81-4/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/what-is-keseh-in-psalm-81-4/Nathan Stein — The hapax legomenon keseh in Psalm 81:4 has been read as 'covered' (referring to the moon at Rosh Ha-Shanah or, per JPS, the full moon), and by Rashi, Ibn Ezra and Radak as 'the appointed time,' but none of these readings sits comfortably with the verse's plain sense. Noting that verse 3 pairs two musical instruments with no occasion specified, while verse 4 pairs the shofar with a specific day, the author argues by parallelism that keseh names a second instrument, and proposes deriving it from kesef ('silver'), so that the verse describes the shofar sounded on Rosh Ha-Shanah alongside silver trumpets used on the new month generally.Tue, 01 Jan 2013 00:00:00 GMTPsalmsHebrew PhilologyRosh Ha-ShanahHapax Legomenahttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/book-review-invention-of-monotheist-ethics/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/book-review-invention-of-monotheist-ethics/Jack Riemer — A review of Hillel Millgram's two-volume The Invention of Monotheist Ethics: Exploring the Book of Samuel (University Press of America, 2010), which the reviewer treats as, in substance, a fresh verse-by-verse commentary on the Book of Samuel. Focusing on the opening chapter's story of Hannah, the review highlights three nuances Millgram draws out — the fractured unhappiness shared by Elkanah, Peninnah and Hannah alike, Eli's failure to distinguish a drunkard from a woman pouring out her heart in prayer, and the shift in Hannah's own prayer from what she lacks to what she can give — as evidence of a commentary that renews a text the reviewer thought he already knew well.Tue, 01 Jan 2013 00:00:00 GMTBook ReviewBook of SamuelPrayerHannahhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/responsive-voices-song-of-the-sea/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/responsive-voices-song-of-the-sea/Nissim Amzallag and Michal Avriel — Amzallag and Avriel argue that the Song of the Sea (Exodus 15:1-21) was composed to be performed not by a single voice but antiphonally, in 'cross-responsa' fashion, by two choirs singing paired verses in ascending and descending order around a central axis. Splitting each verse into four units using the Masoretic cantillation's pausal markers, they show that pairing verses 1 with 21, 2 with 19, and so on down to the central 10/11 pair produces a strikingly symmetrical, coherent composite text — resolving longstanding puzzles about the status of verse 19 and the so-called Song of Miriam without emending the Masoretic Text. They conclude that apparent structural anomalies in this and other biblical psalms may reflect an antiphonal mode of performance rather than textual corruption.Mon, 01 Oct 2012 00:00:00 GMTBiblical PoetryLiturgy and PerformanceMasoretic TextExodushttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/elijah-and-elisha-part-1-moses-and-joshua/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/elijah-and-elisha-part-1-moses-and-joshua/David J. Zucker — Zucker traces a chain of deliberate literary patterning running from Moses through Joshua and from Elijah through Elisha: shared forty-day sojourns and theophanies at Horeb/Sinai, twelve memorial stones, publicly designated successors, divine fire, and the splitting of the Jordan and the Sea of Reeds. He argues that the Elijah-Elisha narratives in Kings consciously present Elijah as a 'Moses redivivus' and Elisha as a latter-day Joshua, so that each pair of leaders in Israel's history is understood through, and legitimized by, the pattern set by its predecessor.Mon, 01 Oct 2012 00:00:00 GMTProphetic NarrativeTypologyLeadership SuccessionLiterary Allusionhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-curse-of-death-in-war/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-curse-of-death-in-war/Shaul Bar — Bar surveys the Bible's vocabulary for death in battle (the roots n-f-l and h-l-l, and idioms like halalei herev and metei milhamah) and argues that death in war, unlike natural death, was regarded as an unnatural death and a curse — a punishment for Israel's sins, paralleled in Assyrian and Babylonian treaty curses and royal inscriptions. He further shows that non-burial of the war-dead, exemplified by Saul and by the taunts exchanged between David and Goliath, compounded that curse, since the Bible and the ancient Near East alike regarded denial of burial as worse than death itself.Mon, 01 Oct 2012 00:00:00 GMTWar and ViolenceDeath and BurialCovenant CursesAncient Near Easthttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/psalm-68-echoes-of-the-song-of-deborah/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/psalm-68-echoes-of-the-song-of-deborah/Shoshana Sussman — Sussman argues that Psalm 68, David's hymn of victory, deliberately echoes the Song of Deborah in Judges 5, a connection noted by Buttenwieser and Pollack but passed over by nearly all the classical commentators. Comparing parallel language about God going forth from Seir, the earth quaking and the heavens dripping, the enumeration of tribes, and shared repetitive cadences, she concludes that recognizing these allusions clarifies the psalm's theme: David, like Deborah before him, attributes a hard-won military victory to God's providential intervention rather than to strength or strategy alone.Mon, 01 Oct 2012 00:00:00 GMTBiblical PoetryIntertextualityDivine WarriorPsalmshttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/whats-in-a-name-yaakov-and-or-yisrael/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/whats-in-a-name-yaakov-and-or-yisrael/Francis Nataf — Nataf takes up the Talmud's puzzle (TB Berakhot 13a) over why the Torah keeps using the name Ya'akov after God renames him Yisrael, even though the text seems to prohibit exactly that. Rather than accepting the Talmud's own answer as fully satisfying, he argues that Jacob uniquely carries two coexisting essential identities — the sheltered, roundabout Ya'akov of his youth and the bold, confrontational Yisrael forged at the Jabbok — and traces this duality through his two households, his sons' rivalry, and the recurring literary pairings of the two names through the end of Genesis and beyond.Mon, 01 Oct 2012 00:00:00 GMTNaming and IdentityPatriarchal NarrativesRabbinic Exegesishttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/peril-and-deliverance-akedah-sinai-structure/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/peril-and-deliverance-akedah-sinai-structure/Gideon Miller — Miller argues that the Akedah, the Revelation at Sinai, and the episode at Marah share a single literary structure built around the third day, an isolated mountain location, and the language of nissah ('trial' or 'test'), producing a recurring pattern of perceived danger followed by divine deliverance. Reading this pattern through Nahmanides, he concludes that the Torah's tests are never meant to harm the one being tested — a fundamental premise for the unconditional, non-sacrificial acceptance of the Torah at Sinai.Mon, 01 Oct 2012 00:00:00 GMTNarrative StructureLiterary AllusionAkedahRevelation at Sinaihttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/pharaohs-dreams-an-extended-interpretation/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/pharaohs-dreams-an-extended-interpretation/Stephen A. Newman — Newman proposes that Joseph's interpretation of Pharaoh's dreams succeeded, where the Egyptian wise men's had failed, because it drew on imagery already loaded with meaning for Pharaoh: the goddess Hathor, visualized as a great cow associated with the Nile's annual flooding and the resulting harvest, and often appearing in groups of seven as a foreteller of the future. Both the seven cows emerging from the Nile and the seven ears of corn, he argues, would have called Hathor's fertility symbolism immediately to Pharaoh's mind, explaining why Joseph's reading of the dream as a unified whole rang true where the Egyptian priests' fragmented explanations had not.Mon, 01 Oct 2012 00:00:00 GMTDream InterpretationAncient Egyptian ReligionJoseph Narrativehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-ten-plagues-debunking-egyptian-polytheism/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-ten-plagues-debunking-egyptian-polytheism/Fred Blumenthal — Blumenthal reads the ten plagues as a systematic confrontation between Israelite monotheism and specific dogmas of Egyptian polytheism: the belief that slaves had no personal relationship with the gods, and that Pharaoh himself was the divine son of the sun-god Ra. Grouping the plagues into animals-turned-attackers, animal deities struck with sickness, and the direct disabling of the Nile and of Ra's sunlight, he argues that the plagues were designed not merely to punish Egypt but to demonstrate, plague by plague, that the previously 'nonexistent' God of the enslaved Hebrews could overpower Egypt's entire pantheon.Mon, 01 Oct 2012 00:00:00 GMTExodus NarrativeAncient Egyptian ReligionPolytheism vs. Monotheismhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/genesis-31-jacobs-peculiar-dream/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/genesis-31-jacobs-peculiar-dream/Shimon Bakon — Bakon asks why the Torah bothers to record Jacob's second dream at Haran — an unglamorous vision of streaked, speckled, and mottled goats mating — when his first dream, of angels ascending and descending a ladder, was full of promise and reassurance. He argues that the mundane content of the second dream is itself the point: it dramatizes how far the spiritual heir of Abraham and Isaac had drifted into becoming Laban's master breeder, and God's reintroduction as 'the God of Beth-el' is a pointed reminder of the man Jacob was meant to be, prompting his return to the land of his fathers.Mon, 01 Oct 2012 00:00:00 GMTDreams and VisionsJacob NarrativeRabbinic Exegesishttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/noah-and-the-dove-connection-to-jonah/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/noah-and-the-dove-connection-to-jonah/Sheila Tuller Keiter — Keiter connects the raven and dove that Noah sends from the ark to the character of the prophet Jonah — whose name means 'dove' — arguing that Noah dispatched the scavenging raven not to test for dry land but out of fear that the earth was strewn with corpses, and sent the homing dove to learn, indirectly, whether his own former home was habitable again. Building on the observation that doves fly home, and that the dove's final failure to return is what finally releases Noah from the ark, she argues that both Noah and Jonah share the same instinct to retreat into a safe 'nest' rather than confront the human cost of catastrophe, and that both are ultimately taught the same lesson in empathy.Mon, 01 Oct 2012 00:00:00 GMTNoah NarrativeJonah NarrativeSymbolismIntertextualityhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/akarah-ein-lah-valad-unattached-follicle/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/akarah-ein-lah-valad-unattached-follicle/Joshua Backon — Backon reexamines the description of Sarah as akarah, ein lah valad ('barren, she had no valad') and argues, against the standard rendering of valad as 'child,' that the phrase is a technical description of what modern medicine calls polycystic ovarian syndrome (PCOS). Reading akarah in its literal sense of 'unattached' and valad as the developing ovarian follicle, and drawing on Ralbag's linkage of Sarah's infertility to her weight, he proposes that Genesis 11:30 and 18:11 together describe a reversible endocrine condition rather than an anatomical defect, with implications for understanding Isaac's temperament as well.Mon, 01 Oct 2012 00:00:00 GMTBiblical PhilologyBible and MedicineSarah Narrativehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/forty-ninth-international-bible-contest-for-jewish-youth/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/forty-ninth-international-bible-contest-for-jewish-youth/Joshua J. Adler — Adler reports on the 49th International Bible Contest for Jewish Youth, held on Israel's Independence Day, in which a tie between Akiva Abramowitz of Brooklyn and Aaron Goldberg of Toronto led organizers to declare both overseas champions, while at the main contest the Israeli Elchanan Bloch of Netivot won the international title after a quick-fire tiebreaker with American finalist Akiva Abramowitz. The report also covers the record 12,600 Israeli pupils who took part in local Hidon competitions and the contest's theme of social justice, drawn from Micah 6:8.Mon, 01 Oct 2012 00:00:00 GMTJewish EducationBible ContestIsraelYouthhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/book-review-jps-guide-the-jewish-bible/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/book-review-jps-guide-the-jewish-bible/David J. Zucker — Zucker reviews JPS Guide: The Jewish Bible (Project Editor Carol Hupping, Jewish Publication Society, 2008), praising its sixteen introductory chapters and extensive reference apparatus — glossary, timelines, chronologies, maps — as a well-written resource for both general readers and scholars that fairly represents both source-critical and traditional approaches to the Bible's composition. He flags several proofreading errors, including a chart that misplaces Zechariah and Malachi among the Writings and misspellings of Betzalel and Northvale, but concludes that these are minor blemishes on a genuinely valuable book.Mon, 01 Oct 2012 00:00:00 GMTBook ReviewBiblical Reference Workshttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/letter-to-the-editor-kotnot-or/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/letter-to-the-editor-kotnot-or/Aron Pinker — Responding to Stanley Schneider and Morton Seelenfreund's article on kotnot or (Genesis 3:21), which noted a variant spelling with an aleph in place of the standard ayin, Pinker connects that variant reading to Genesis 3:17 through wordplay between kotnot or (aleph-vav-resh) and arur ('cursed,' aleph-resh-vav-resh-he). He proposes that kotnot or should instead be read as 'garments for the curse' — protective clothing given to Adam and Eve to help them survive under the curse just pronounced upon them.Mon, 01 Oct 2012 00:00:00 GMTBiblical PhilologyCorrespondenceTextual Variantshttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/divine-and-human-anger-and-grace/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/divine-and-human-anger-and-grace/Elliot B. Gertel — Reading the Scroll of Esther against the golden calf narrative of Exodus 32-34, this article argues that Esther is at its core a parody of Divine anger — human tempers, Ahasuerus's and Haman's, mirror but trivialize the terrifying, ultimately forgiving anger of God. Gertel traces the careful way the Hebrew text reserves the term af for Divine wrath while assigning hemah and katzaf to the human actors, and shows how rabbinic and kabbalistic tradition already read many of the Megillah's references to 'the king' as veiled allusions to the Divine King. The essay concludes that the two narratives of anger and grace, though differing in vocabulary, both move toward redemption — one through repentance, the other through charm and providence.Sun, 01 Jul 2012 00:00:00 GMTDivine AngerEstherGolden CalfRabbinic Interpretationhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/disappearance-of-the-ark-of-the-covenant/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/disappearance-of-the-ark-of-the-covenant/Theodore D. Ehrlich — Noting that the Ark of the Covenant is present in Solomon's Temple but absent by the time of the Second Temple's dedication, this article surveys the usual suspects — Pharaoh Shishak, King Jehoash of Israel, and Nebuchadnezzar — and finds none of them a likely culprit, since the Bible never actually credits any of them with taking it. Ehrlich instead proposes that Queen Athaliah, the Baal-worshipping usurper who nearly destroyed the Davidic line, had the Ark secretly removed or destroyed in retaliation for Jehu's slaughter of her family, and that the priesthood then concealed its absence rather than admit the loss. He reads Josiah's otherwise puzzling instruction to 'put the Holy Ark' back in the Temple, and Jeremiah's declaration that the Ark will no longer be missed or remade, as evidence that its disappearance long predated the Babylonian destruction.Sun, 01 Jul 2012 00:00:00 GMTArk of the CovenantTemple HistoryAthaliahBiblical Mysteryhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/eschatological-meaning-of-the-book-of-ruth/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/eschatological-meaning-of-the-book-of-ruth/Abraham D. Cohen — Cohen argues that the term ge'ulah (redemption) in the Book of Ruth carries a theological weight beyond its legal sense in Deuteronomy, pointing toward the eschatological hope of an enduring Davidic line rather than merely the mechanics of land redemption and levirate marriage. Linking Ruth to the Judah-Tamar episode of Genesis 38 through their shared genealogical stakes, he contends that the 'redeemer' the book pursues in its narrow family drama ultimately points to the future Messianic king. The article situates this claim within the broader biblical eschatological complex found in Isaiah and Jeremiah's prophecies of an unending Davidic throne.Sun, 01 Jul 2012 00:00:00 GMTRedemptionMessianismLevirate MarriageDavidic Linehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/leadership-qualities-of-pharaoh/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/leadership-qualities-of-pharaoh/Joshua J. Adler — Reading midrashic comments on Exodus 14, Adler notices that Rashi's Mekhilta-based commentary seems to praise Pharaoh's generalship — his personal preparation of his mount, his promise to share the spoils, and his willingness to lead from the front — in implicit contrast to Moses' failure to win the Israelites' full confidence at the Red Sea. He compares this to historical instances of admired enemy commanders, such as Robert E. Lee and Erwin Rommel, and suggests the Midrash's point is less an endorsement of Pharaoh than a lesson that even one's adversaries can model qualities of leadership worth learning from.Sun, 01 Jul 2012 00:00:00 GMTMidrashLeadershipExodus Narrativehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/city-of-babel-and-its-tower/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/city-of-babel-and-its-tower/Allen S. Maller — Maller reads the Tower of Babel story as a response to trauma rather than to hubris: a post-Flood humanity, still fearful and vulnerable, sought safety and conformity through mass-produced brick construction rather than through the diversity and dispersal that God had commanded. Manufactured, uniform bricks — as opposed to the natural, unhewn stones the Torah later prefers for altars — become in his reading a symbol of the builders' desire to erase individual difference in favor of an anxious collective sameness. God's confounding of their language is thus reinterpreted as a corrective that forced beneficial linguistic, cultural, and religious diversity rather than a punishment for architectural ambition.Sun, 01 Jul 2012 00:00:00 GMTTower of BabelAncient Near EastHuman UnityMidrashhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/corner-boards-of-the-tabernacle/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/corner-boards-of-the-tabernacle/Aleksandr Sigalov — Sigalov reexamines the long-debated corner boards of the Tabernacle's wooden framework, arguing that the traditional Talmudic solution, Rabbi Nehemyah's in TB Shabbat 98, produces boards so thick that all 48 together would have weighed roughly 34 metric tons — far more than the eight oxen of Numbers 7:8 could plausibly haul. He proposes instead that the two 'corner boards' of Exodus 26:23-25 were each formed by bending and 'twinning' two ordinary boards into a hollow, cylindrical column, yielding boards only about a centimeter thick and roughly 14 kilograms apiece. The article works through the geometry in detail and suggests the same round-cornered logic may also clarify obscure architectural language elsewhere in the Bible, including Ezekiel's Temple vision and Solomon's Molten Sea.Sun, 01 Jul 2012 00:00:00 GMTTabernacleBiblical ArchitectureTalmudic Interpretationhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/dual-form-of-mayim-water/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/dual-form-of-mayim-water/Min Suc Kee — Kee argues that the puzzling dual-form spelling of mayim (water) and shamayim (sky) is not merely a grammatical quirk but preserves an ancient conception of water as an original single mass later split into two — the waters above the firmament and the waters below. He traces this idea through the 'chaos-order' pattern of Genesis 1, where the raki'a divides the waters, and through the Babylonian Enuma Elish, where Marduk cleaves the sea-goddess Tiamat's body to form the sky from one half. The parallel, he suggests, shows that Israelites and their Mesopotamian neighbors shared a common cosmological picture of water as an original duality, later fractured into the waters above and below.Sun, 01 Jul 2012 00:00:00 GMTBiblical HebrewPhilologyCreationAncient Near Easthttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/cyrus-as-messiah/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/cyrus-as-messiah/Moshe Reiss — Surveying scholarship including Lisbeth Fried's reading of Isaiah 45:1, Reiss argues that Deutero-Isaiah cast the Persian king Cyrus — not merely as a temporary instrument of divine will, as Nebuchadnezzar had been for Jeremiah — but as a genuine, if temporary, messianic figure: God's anointed, entrusted with rebuilding Jerusalem and returning the exiles. He shows the striking parallels between Isaiah's oracle and the language of the Cyrus Cylinder, and concludes that Cyrus's historical policy of religious restoration allowed him to be seen, in the theology of Deutero-Isaiah, as having actually fulfilled a redemptive, quasi-Davidic role.Sun, 01 Jul 2012 00:00:00 GMTMessianismDeutero-IsaiahCyrus the GreatPersian Periodhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/happy-man-of-psalm-1/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/happy-man-of-psalm-1/Raymond Apple — Apple examines why the Book of Psalms opens with ashrei ha-ish, 'happy is the man,' and argues that the choice of a Wisdom poem as the Psalter's opening statement reflects an ancient debate over whether the sage or the pietist represents the ideal Jewish type. Working through the aleph-shin-resh root behind ashrei — which can suggest stepping, forward motion, or being 'confirmed' and validated — he contends that the happiness described is not ecstatic emotion but a settled, active state of mind that comes from a directed, Torah-oriented life. He concludes that Psalm 1's happy man is best read not as a specific historical figure such as David, but as a Wisdom-literature type embodying contentment earned through righteousness rather than religious excitement.Sun, 01 Jul 2012 00:00:00 GMTPsalmsWisdom LiteratureBiblical HebrewRabbinic Interpretationhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/book-review-how-to-read-the-bible/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/book-review-how-to-read-the-bible/Alan T. Levenson — Levenson reviews James Kugel's How to Read the Bible, engaging Kugel's central and provocative thesis that the Hebrew Bible as we know it is entirely the creation of a body of 'early interpreters,' active roughly from 300 BCE to 200 CE, who invested originally etiological, non-moralizing ancient texts with the four assumptions of eternal relevance, coherence, divine origin, and hidden meaning — and that modern biblical scholarship and traditional Judaism are therefore permanently irreconcilable. Surveying critical responses from William Kolbrener, John C. Reeves, and Benjamin Sommer, Levenson adds his own objection rooted in canonical criticism and inner-biblical interpretation: since later biblical texts, such as Jeremiah and Ezekiel reworking Deuteronomy, already treated earlier texts as authoritative Scripture, that scriptural status did not have to wait for Kugel's 'early interpreters' to arrive. He concludes that Kugel's either/or framing sells short both the antiquity of scripture-like reading within the Bible itself and the possibility of holding historical criticism and religious meaning together.Sun, 01 Jul 2012 00:00:00 GMTBook ReviewBiblical CriticismHistorical-Critical Methodhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/editorial-v40p2/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/editorial-v40p2/Zvi Ron — Dr. Zvi Ron reflects on his long friendship with Dr. Shimon Bakon and announces the transition of editorship, with Dr. Bakon taking on the role of Editor Emeritus of the Jewish Bible Quarterly.Sun, 01 Apr 2012 00:00:00 GMTJewish Bible QuarterlyEditorialEditorshiphttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/signaling-in-biblical-warfare-and-moses-role-as/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/signaling-in-biblical-warfare-and-moses-role-as/S. H. Blondheim and Uri C. Cohen — Examines military signaling techniques in the Hebrew Bible, focusing on Joshua's use of the kidon as a battle signal at Ai and Moses' upraised hands during the battle with Amalek as a form of military command and signaling.Sun, 01 Apr 2012 00:00:00 GMTBiblical WarfareMilitary HistoryMosesJoshuaAmalekMilitary Commandhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/heinous-sin-harbinger-of-catastrophe-or-redemption/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/heinous-sin-harbinger-of-catastrophe-or-redemption/Byron L. Sherwin — Explores the Pentateuchal accounts of incest—particularly the stories of Lot and his daughters and Judah and Tamar—to examine how heinous sin paradoxically serves as a harbinger of both catastrophe and ultimate redemption in classical Jewish religious thought.Sun, 01 Apr 2012 00:00:00 GMTSinIncestLotTamarJudahRedemptionDivine Retributionhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/noahs-ark-as-metaphor/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/noahs-ark-as-metaphor/Fred Blumenthal — Interprets Noah's ark as a metaphor conveying significant religious meaning, examining symbolic parallels between the ark narrative and the creation story, and arguing that a metaphorical reading resolves the practical difficulties posed by a literal interpretation.Sun, 01 Apr 2012 00:00:00 GMTNoahArkFlood NarrativeMetaphorCreationhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/ezras-radical-solution-to-judean-assimilation/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/ezras-radical-solution-to-judean-assimilation/Arthur J. Wolak — Examines Ezra's approach to the problem of Judean assimilation following the return from Babylonian exile, analyzing his radical measures against intermarriage and his efforts to maintain Jewish distinctiveness in the Persian period.Sun, 01 Apr 2012 00:00:00 GMTEzraAssimilationIntermarriageBabylonian ExileReturn to ZionNehemiahPersian Periodhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/isaac-a-life-of-bitter-laughter/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/isaac-a-life-of-bitter-laughter/David J. Zucker — Explores the life of the patriarch Isaac through the recurring theme of laughter, from his birth name through the ironic and bitter dimensions of his experiences, examining how laughter—both joyful and sardonic—shapes the narrative of his life.Sun, 01 Apr 2012 00:00:00 GMTIsaacPatriarchsLaughterCovenantAkedahGenesis Narrativeshttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/translation-of-the-biblical-word-shofar/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/translation-of-the-biblical-word-shofar/Daniel D. Stuhlman — Surveys the various translations of the Hebrew word shofar across different Bible translations and contexts, analyzing how scholars and translators have handled the term's multivalent connotations and the linguistic challenges it presents.Sun, 01 Apr 2012 00:00:00 GMTShofarTranslationHebrew LanguageLinguisticsBible Translationhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/kotnot-or-genesis-3-21-skin-leather-light-or-blind/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/kotnot-or-genesis-3-21-skin-leather-light-or-blind/Stanley Schneider and Morton Seelenfreund — Examines the phrase 'kotnot or' (garments made for Adam and Eve) in Genesis 3:21, surveying classical commentators, Aramaic targumim, and rabbinic sources to determine whether the word or means skin, leather, light, or conveys another meaning entirely.Sun, 01 Apr 2012 00:00:00 GMTGarden of EdenAdam and EveClothingHebrew LanguageRabbinic CommentaryTargumhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/mixed-multitude-according-to-the-zohar/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/mixed-multitude-according-to-the-zohar/Gerald Aranoff — Analyzes the Zohar's interpretation of the 'mixed multitude' (erev rav) who left Egypt with the Israelites during the Exodus, focusing on the Zohar's commentary regarding their identity and their participation in the Passover offering.Sun, 01 Apr 2012 00:00:00 GMTZoharKabbalahMixed MultitudeExodusPassoverJewish Mysticismhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/history-of-the-tishrei-conundrum/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/history-of-the-tishrei-conundrum/Allan M. Langner — Investigates the historical and textual basis for the identification of Tishrei as simultaneously the first and seventh month of the Hebrew calendar, examining the shofar sounding on Rosh Hashanah, the Psalms, and the relationship between the new moon and the Jewish new year.Sun, 01 Apr 2012 00:00:00 GMTTishreiRosh HashanahJewish CalendarShofarNew MoonMishnahhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/editorial/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/editorial/Gabriel A. Sivan — A member of the JBQ Editorial Board for over thirty years reflects on the publication's remarkable growth, celebrating its expanded online readership and Dr. Shimon Bakon's editorial leadership.Sun, 01 Jan 2012 00:00:00 GMTEditorialhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/editor-s-corner-psalm-24-3-4-nafshi-or-nafsho-his-soul/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/editor-s-corner-psalm-24-3-4-nafshi-or-nafsho-his-soul/Shimon Bakon — Examines the keri/ketiv textual variants in Psalm 24:4 (nafsho vs. nafshi), tracing how different translations reflect divergent rabbinic and medieval interpretations of who answers the psalmist's question.Sun, 01 Jan 2012 00:00:00 GMTPsalmsTextual CriticismKeri and Ketivhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/egypt-the-nemesis-of-israel-and-judah/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/egypt-the-nemesis-of-israel-and-judah/Shimon Bakon — Chronicles Egypt's destructive role in the political downfall of both Israel and Judah, from the reign of Rehoboam through the Babylonian conquest, arguing that Egyptian promises consistently proved empty and fatal.Sun, 01 Jan 2012 00:00:00 GMTEgyptIsraelJudahAssyriaBabylonProphecyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/sons-of-god-daughters-of-men/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/sons-of-god-daughters-of-men/Shubert Spero — Questions traditional interpretations of the 'sons of God' (benei elohim) in Genesis 6:1-5, proposing that these may refer to Neanderthals or other hominids whose interbreeding with homo sapiens prompted God's decision to bring the Flood.Sun, 01 Jan 2012 00:00:00 GMTGenesisFlood NarrativeNephilimCreationNeanderthalshttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/eve-the-first-feminist-john-milton-s-midrash-on/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/eve-the-first-feminist-john-milton-s-midrash-on/Dan Vogel — Reads John Milton's Paradise Lost as a narrative midrash on Genesis 3:6, examining how Milton drew on Radak's commentary to portray Eve as a proto-feminist figure who acts independently in pursuit of wisdom.Sun, 01 Jan 2012 00:00:00 GMTMiltonEveGarden of EdenMidrashParadise LostFeminismhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/joseph-and-the-eglah-arufah/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/joseph-and-the-eglah-arufah/Ruth Walfish — Explores the midrashic connection between the Joseph story and the laws of the eglah arufah (the beheaded heifer), arguing that the wagons Joseph sent to Jacob encoded a secret message of life and forgiveness.Sun, 01 Jan 2012 00:00:00 GMTJosephJacobEglah ArufahMidrashRashihttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/bed-of-og/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/bed-of-og/Zvi Ron — Surveys classical and modern interpretations of Og's iron bed in Deuteronomy 3:11, examining whether it was a literal bed, crib, sarcophagus, or fortification, and what it reveals about Og's actual stature among the Rephaim.Sun, 01 Jan 2012 00:00:00 GMTGiantsOgRephaimDeuteronomyArchaeologyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/chronicles-the-neglected-book-of-the-bible-part-ii/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/chronicles-the-neglected-book-of-the-bible-part-ii/Joshua J. Adler — Continues an examination of the Book of Chronicles, arguing that its differences from Kings and Samuel stem primarily from the Chronicler's access to additional historical sources rather than ideological bias alone.Sun, 01 Jan 2012 00:00:00 GMTChroniclesSecond Temple PeriodLevitesDavidic MonarchyHistoriographyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/when-love-and-politics-mix-david-and-his-relationships/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/when-love-and-politics-mix-david-and-his-relationships/Hayyim Angel — Analyzes the entangled roles of love and politics in David's relationships with Saul, Jonathan, and Michal in the book of Samuel, arguing that the text's narrative ambiguity reflects the complex interplay of personal emotion and political necessity.Sun, 01 Jan 2012 00:00:00 GMTDavidSaulJonathanMichalLovePolitical IntrigueSamuelhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/elijah-s-battle-for-the-soul-of-israel/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/elijah-s-battle-for-the-soul-of-israel/P. J. Berlyn — Traces Elijah the Tishbite's dramatic confrontation with King Ahab and the prophets of Baal on Mount Carmel, examining the spiritual, political, and theological dimensions of his battle for Israel's soul.Sun, 01 Jan 2012 00:00:00 GMTElijahAhabJezebelProphetsMount CarmelBaalhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/why-was-moses-barred-from-leading-the-people-into/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/why-was-moses-barred-from-leading-the-people-into/Moshe Anisfeld — Examines why God barred Moses from entering the Promised Land, arguing that Moses failed not because of an ordinary sin but because he did not counteract the Israelites' slide into blasphemy at the Waters of Meribah.Sat, 01 Oct 2011 00:00:00 GMTMosesMeribahPunishmentSinWildernesshttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/prophecy-of-joel-the-prophets-message-beliefs/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/prophecy-of-joel-the-prophets-message-beliefs/Ronald T. Hyman — Reviews the prophecy of Joel, examining three aspects: Joel's beliefs about the people of Judah facing crisis, the prophecy's connection to the Sinai covenant, and Joel's distinctive prophetic style.Sat, 01 Oct 2011 00:00:00 GMTJoelProphecyCovenantDay of the LordRepentancehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/joseph-a-biblical-approach-to-dream-interpretation/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/joseph-a-biblical-approach-to-dream-interpretation/Russell Jay Hendel — Presents the innovative methods of dream interpretation introduced by Joseph, arguing that Joseph uniquely treated his seemingly ordinary dreams as prophetic messages from God, unlike other biblical dreams which required divine symbols.Sat, 01 Oct 2011 00:00:00 GMTJosephDreamsDream InterpretationProphecyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/lion-judah/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/lion-judah/Marshall A. Portnoy — Argues that Judah, rather than Joseph, is the controlling character in Genesis 44, demonstrating through his intercession before Joseph how Judah embodies independence, bravery, honesty, and accountability.Sat, 01 Oct 2011 00:00:00 GMTJudahJosephCharacter AnalysisTamarhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/new-understanding-of-the-divorce-and-remarriage/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/new-understanding-of-the-divorce-and-remarriage/Anthony J. M. Garrett — Proposes a new interpretation of the prohibition in Deuteronomy 24:1-4 against a divorced woman returning to her first husband, based on a re-evaluation of the term "ervat davar" and its relationship to the concept of ritual defilement.Sat, 01 Oct 2011 00:00:00 GMTDivorceRemarriageMarriage LawErvat Davarhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/malbim-on-job-chapter-42-the-happy-ending/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/malbim-on-job-chapter-42-the-happy-ending/Gerald Aranoff — Presents Malbim's analysis of Job chapter 42, highlighting his claim that Job's ten children did not die but were only captured by Satan and released unharmed, yielding a truly happy ending to the book.Sat, 01 Oct 2011 00:00:00 GMTJobMalbimCommentaryDivine ProvidenceFaithhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/ages-of-the-personalities-in-genesis/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/ages-of-the-personalities-in-genesis/Leo Michel Abrami — Examines the extraordinarily long ages of biblical figures in Genesis, exploring connections to Sumerian records of antediluvian kings and mathematical patterns in which the patriarchal ages correspond to multiples of 19, 6, and 7.Sat, 01 Oct 2011 00:00:00 GMTAgesPatriarchsGenesisLongevityNumerologyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/observations-on-the-character-of-joseph-in-egypt/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/observations-on-the-character-of-joseph-in-egypt/Hayim Granot — Examines the character of Joseph as vizier of Egypt, offering a psychological explanation for why Joseph never contacted his father Jacob during his years of power, suggesting he blamed Jacob as complicit in his betrayal.Sat, 01 Oct 2011 00:00:00 GMTJosephCharacter AnalysisEgyptJacobFamily Relationshttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/book-review-redeeming-relevance-in-the-book-of-exodus/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/book-review-redeeming-relevance-in-the-book-of-exodus/Aharon E. Wexler — Reviews Rabbi Francis Nataf's "Redeeming Relevance in the Book of Exodus," praising its fresh literary approach to the biblical text while noting that Nataf devotes too much attention to Genesis rather than focusing on Exodus.Sat, 01 Oct 2011 00:00:00 GMTBook ReviewExodusLiterary Analysishttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/48th-annual-international-bible-contest-for-jewish/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/48th-annual-international-bible-contest-for-jewish/Joshua J. Adler — Reports on the 48th annual International Bible Contest for Jewish Youth (Hidon HaTanakh), held on Israel Independence Day with 28 countries represented, in which Shlomi Adelman was named Hatan HaTanakh.Sat, 01 Oct 2011 00:00:00 GMTBible ContestHidon HaTanakhJewish EducationYouthIsraelhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/closer-examination-deuteronomy-20-19-20/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/closer-examination-deuteronomy-20-19-20/Akiva Wolff — A close linguistic and exegetical analysis of Deuteronomy 20:19-20, the source of the prohibition of bal tashhit (needless destruction), examining key words and phrases with the aid of classical and modern commentators to reveal the verse's broader environmental and ethical implications.Fri, 01 Jul 2011 00:00:00 GMTBal TashhitEnvironmentTreesBiblical LawEcologyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/true-false-prophets/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/true-false-prophets/Shimon Bakon — This article examines the biblical and rabbinic criteria for distinguishing true from false prophets, focusing on three case studies: Micaiah versus Zedekiah (I Kings 22), Jeremiah's battles with court prophets, and Jeremiah's confrontation with Hananiah ben Azzur (Jeremiah 28).Fri, 01 Jul 2011 00:00:00 GMTProphecyFalse ProphetsJeremiahAhabMicaiahhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/in-search-biblical-hammurabi/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/in-search-biblical-hammurabi/David S. Farkas — This article examines biblical and extra-biblical evidence to identify the figure of Hammurabi with Nimrod of Genesis, tracing linguistic, chronological, and geographical connections between the Babylonian king and the biblical narrative.Fri, 01 Jul 2011 00:00:00 GMTHammurabiNimrodAncient Near EastBiblical Lawhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/ten-generations-adam-noah-versus-noah-abraham/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/ten-generations-adam-noah-versus-noah-abraham/Shubert Spero — This article analyzes the two sets of ten generations in Genesis — from Adam to Noah and from Noah to Abraham — exploring structural parallels and differences that illuminate the biblical periodization of early human history.Fri, 01 Jul 2011 00:00:00 GMTAdamNoahAbrahamPeriodizationFloodhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/wise-courtier-rabbinic-literature/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/wise-courtier-rabbinic-literature/Zvi Ron — This article identifies the 'wise courtier' type-scene shared by the Joseph narrative, Daniel, and Esther, and argues that the rabbis of the Talmud recognized and deliberately used this pattern when adding midrashic elements to fill perceived gaps in the book of Esther.Fri, 01 Jul 2011 00:00:00 GMTType-SceneMidrashJosephDanielEstherDiasporahttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/two-wise-women-proverbs-chapter-31/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/two-wise-women-proverbs-chapter-31/Raymond Apple — This article analyzes the two sections of Proverbs 31 — the queen mother's admonition to King Lemuel (vv. 1-9) and the alphabetical hymn to the eshet hayyil (vv. 10-31) — examining whether they are connected and what each figure represents in Jewish tradition.Fri, 01 Jul 2011 00:00:00 GMTEshet HayilWomenWisdomProverbs 31Queen Motherhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/adam-created-image-likeness-god/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/adam-created-image-likeness-god/Moshe Reiss — This article surveys the major interpretive traditions — physical, spiritual, relational, and representational — concerning what it means for Adam to have been created in the image and likeness of God (Genesis 1:26-27), drawing on biblical, rabbinic, medieval, and modern sources.Fri, 01 Jul 2011 00:00:00 GMTAdamImage of GodCreationAngelsAnthropomorphismhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/did-earth-rebel-against-god-third-day-creation/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/did-earth-rebel-against-god-third-day-creation/Justin Heard — This article examines the midrashic tradition that the earth rebelled against God's command on the third day of creation by producing trees bearing fruit rather than trees tasting like their fruit, exploring the theological implications of this rabbinic interpretation.Fri, 01 Jul 2011 00:00:00 GMTCreationMidrashhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/cut-baby-half-solomons-divinely-inspired-wisdom/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/cut-baby-half-solomons-divinely-inspired-wisdom/Hayyim Angel — This article surveys traditional and modern commentators on Solomon's famous judgment (I Kings 3:16-28), examining how divine wisdom is demonstrated not only in the sword ruse but also in Solomon's willingness to give a fair hearing to the lowest members of society.Fri, 01 Jul 2011 00:00:00 GMTSolomonWisdomJusticeBiblical Narrativehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/religion-israelites-egypt/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/religion-israelites-egypt/Michael Alan Stein — Drawing on pentateuchal texts and rabbinic sources, this article reconstructs the pre-Sinai religious world of the Israelites in Egypt, identifying practices including monolatry, idol worship, magic, fertility rituals, and folk demonology that the Torah subsequently co-opted or prohibited.Fri, 01 Jul 2011 00:00:00 GMTReligionIdolatryEgyptMonotheismFolk Religionhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/jacobs-family-dynamics-climbing-rungs-ladder/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/jacobs-family-dynamics-climbing-rungs-ladder/Aharon E. Wexler — A review of Gad Dishi's Jacob's Family Dynamics: Climbing the Rungs of the Ladder, assessing the book's analysis of the Jacob narrative in Genesis through the lens of family dynamics and interpersonal relationships.Fri, 01 Jul 2011 00:00:00 GMTBook ReviewJacobhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/50th-international-bible-contest/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/50th-international-bible-contest/Joshua J. Adler — The Fiftieth Annual International Bible Contest for Jewish Youth, held on Israel Independence Day in Jerusalem, resulted in an unprecedented tie between two contestants from Israel and the United States, with 54 participants from 26 countries taking part.Fri, 01 Jul 2011 00:00:00 GMTBible ContestEducationhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/editorial-v39p2/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/editorial-v39p2/Gabriel A. Sivan — Bible study is undergoing a worldwide renaissance, yet it faces malign attacks from Islamic fundamentalists who deny the historical connection between the Jewish people and their sacred sites. The editor calls on readers to play their part by studying, teaching, discussing, and finding inspiration in the Book of Books.Fri, 01 Apr 2011 00:00:00 GMTEditorialBible Studyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/numbers-lawbook-speech-morality/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/numbers-lawbook-speech-morality/Russell Jay Hendel — Numbers presents a comprehensive set of case histories as illustrative examples from which Jewish law derives three categories of forbidden speech: slander, malignity, and gossip. The paper examines incidents in Numbers—especially the story of Miriam—as the archetypes that underlie the classical laws of oral communication.Fri, 01 Apr 2011 00:00:00 GMTSpeech EthicsSlanderGossipMiriamhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/torah-reading-rosh-ha-shanah/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/torah-reading-rosh-ha-shanah/Larry Magarik — Why is the Torah reading for the first day of Rosh Ha-Shanah Genesis 21? The article examines standard explanations—that the holiday celebrates creation, or that Sarah conceived Isaac on that day—and finds them unpersuasive, proposing a new explanation rooted in the liturgical and legal development of the holiday.Fri, 01 Apr 2011 00:00:00 GMTRosh Ha-ShanahLiturgyTorah Readinghttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/solomon-too-wise-king/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/solomon-too-wise-king/Allen S. Maller — Solomon's legendary wisdom, a divine gift granted in response to his humble request, was both his glory and his undoing. The Talmud records that Solomon came to rely on his own intuition rather than proper legal process, and that his many foreign marriages—motivated by diplomatic wisdom—led to the spiritual downfall the Torah had explicitly warned against.Fri, 01 Apr 2011 00:00:00 GMTSolomonWisdomTemplehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/ramah-upswept-uplifted-upraised/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/ramah-upswept-uplifted-upraised/Reeve Robert Brenner — The biblical word ramah, describing the fate of pharaoh's troops at the Sea of Reeds, is best translated as 'uplifted' or 'upraised' rather than 'hurled' or 'flung.' Drawing on both biblical evidence and Egyptian inscriptions from the El Arish shrine, the article argues that the account describes a tsunami-like event in which the pharaoh was catapulted vertically before drowning.Fri, 01 Apr 2011 00:00:00 GMTExodusSea of ReedsEtymologyEgypthttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/saul-witch-en-dor/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/saul-witch-en-dor/Shaul Bar — In I Samuel 28, Saul sought the help of a medium to raise the dead prophet Samuel. This paper argues that the medium saw a 'godlike being,' that Samuel reacted with anger at having his grave desecrated, and that Saul's transgressions were disobedience and violating a sacred ban against the Amalekites, contrasting the biblical account with talmudic interpretations.Fri, 01 Apr 2011 00:00:00 GMTNecromancySaulMediumSamuelhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/mystery-meaning-disappearance-tekhelet/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/mystery-meaning-disappearance-tekhelet/Yosef Green and Pinchas Kahn — The blue thread (tekhelet) in the tzitzit fringes commanded in Numbers 15 carries deep mystical significance, linking earth to heaven and symbolizing the Throne of Glory. This paper traces the rabbinic elaboration of its meaning through Talmud and Midrash and explores the historical circumstances of its disappearance from Jewish practice.Fri, 01 Apr 2011 00:00:00 GMTTekheletTzitzitMysticismhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/psalm-118/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/psalm-118/Fred Blumenthal — Psalm 118, familiar from the Hallel liturgy, is here interpreted as an organic description of the ceremony surrounding the Thanksgiving Sacrifice (Korban Todah). The author assigns the psalm a superscription—'A Ceremony for the Bringing of the Korban Todah'—and uses it to explain the shift from singular to plural within the chapter and its unfolding liturgical setting at the Temple gates.Fri, 01 Apr 2011 00:00:00 GMTPsalmsHallelLiturgyKorban Todahhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/worship-four-kings-chronicles/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/worship-four-kings-chronicles/Fred Guyette — This essay explores the Chronicler's concerns with worship as illustrated through four kings of Israel: David, Solomon, Hezekiah, and Josiah. Against Wellhausen's dismissal of Chronicles, the article argues that the book offers a rich resource for understanding genuine worship of God and the hope it sustains for a people separated from the Temple.Fri, 01 Apr 2011 00:00:00 GMTWorshipDavidSolomonHezekiahJosiahChronicleshttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/book-review-torah-womens-commentary/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/book-review-torah-womens-commentary/David J. Zucker — A review of The Torah: A Women's Commentary (2008), edited by Tamara Cohn Eskenazi and Andrea L. Weiss. This award-winning work is the first comprehensive Torah commentary written entirely by women, representing a broad spectrum of Jewish scholars and applying gender-accurate language to the entire text of the Torah.Fri, 01 Apr 2011 00:00:00 GMTWomenCommentaryBook Reviewhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/2010-adult-bible-contest-first-in-30-years/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/2010-adult-bible-contest-first-in-30-years/Joshua J. Adler — A report on the first televised adult Bible contest (Hidon Ha-Tanakh) held in Jerusalem in 30 years, broadcast during Hanukkah 2010. The author describes the format, its similarities to the annual international youth Hidon, and expresses mixed feelings: satisfaction at the renewal of this tradition but disappointment at the absence of innovation.Fri, 01 Apr 2011 00:00:00 GMTBible ContestHidon Ha-TanakhJerusalemhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/letter-editor-zucker/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/letter-editor-zucker/David J. Zucker — A letter thanking Judy Taubes Sterman for her article 'Themes in the Deborah Narrative' in Vol. XXXIX:1, noting its compelling analysis of three mothers who take on assertive roles, and observing connections with the letter writer's own article on Genesis 27 in the same issue.Fri, 01 Apr 2011 00:00:00 GMTDeborahLettershttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/letter-to-the-editor/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/letter-to-the-editor/Shoshana Sussman — Reader responds to David Zucker's article 'Isaac Betrayed and Triumphant,' questioning whether the Genesis 27 narrative warrants a modern psychological reading that frames Isaac as a victim of child and elder abuse.Sat, 01 Jan 2011 00:00:00 GMTIsaacblessingdeceptionAkedahhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/pharaohs-who-knew-moses/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/pharaohs-who-knew-moses/P. J. Berlyn — Examines the identities of the pharaohs in the Exodus narrative through biblical chronological data, using the 480-year figure of I Kings 6:1 and other textual clues to identify candidates for the Pharaoh of the Oppression and Pharaoh of the Exodus.Sat, 01 Jan 2011 00:00:00 GMTExodusEgyptchronologyPharaohhistoryhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/themes-in-the-deborah-narrative-judges-4-5/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/themes-in-the-deborah-narrative-judges-4-5/Judy Taubes Sterman — Analyzes the recurring theme of movement and immobility in Judges 4-5, showing how Deborah's Song fills in narrative gaps and draws deliberate parallels with the Exodus story to reveal the nature of Canaanite oppression and Israel's victory.Sat, 01 Jan 2011 00:00:00 GMTDeborahJudgesExodus parallelliterary themesdivine interventionhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/habakkuk-from-perplexity-to-faith/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/habakkuk-from-perplexity-to-faith/Shimon Bakon — Traces Habakkuk's theological journey through his three-chapter dialogue with God, from anguished complaint about divine silence in the face of evil and the Chaldean threat, through the divine response, to the prophet's ultimate resolution in faith.Sat, 01 Jan 2011 00:00:00 GMTHabakkuktheodicyfaithprophecyChaldeanshttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/ezekiel-priest-prophet/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/ezekiel-priest-prophet/Hayyim Angel — Examines how Ezekiel's priestly background shaped his distinctive prophetic style, explaining the passive character of his prophetic experiences, his prolonged silence, and his use of elaborate symbolic actions as substitutes for Temple service.Sat, 01 Jan 2011 00:00:00 GMTprophecypriesthoodexileEzekielsymbolic actionhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/deceiver-deceived-rereading-genesis-27/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/deceiver-deceived-rereading-genesis-27/David J. Zucker — Proposes that Isaac was not deceived in the Genesis 27 blessing narrative; rather, Isaac and Rebekah conspired together, and it was Jacob himself who was deceived into believing he was stealing the patriarchal blessing.Sat, 01 Jan 2011 00:00:00 GMTGenesisIsaacRebekahJacobdeceptionblessinghttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/thoughts-on-creation/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/thoughts-on-creation/Morris Rosman — Proposes that creation was instantaneous but operated through natural laws as its mechanism, offering a framework that reconciles the Torah's creation account with modern science and the concept of evolution.Sat, 01 Jan 2011 00:00:00 GMTcreationevolutionscience and TorahGenesisTikun Olamhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/listening-to-her-voice/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/listening-to-her-voice/Haim A. Gottschalk — Explores the apparent contradiction between Adam's punishment for heeding his wife's voice and God's command that Abraham listen to Sarah, arguing that true listening requires active conversation and engagement rather than passive compliance.Sat, 01 Jan 2011 00:00:00 GMTlisteningmarriageAdamAbrahamSarahhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/saving-zoar-how-did-lot-succeed/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/saving-zoar-how-did-lot-succeed/Gad Dishi — Contrasts Abraham's failed plea for justice on behalf of Sodom with Lot's successful, self-interested appeal to save Zoar, tracing the leitwort na through both men's speeches to argue that Lot's rescue turns on an appeal to mercy rather than merit, while Abraham's demand for universal justice leaves no room for a personal exception.Fri, 01 Oct 2010 00:00:00 GMTLotSodomDivine JusticeGenesishttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/how-should-we-understand-ecclesiastes-2-26/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/how-should-we-understand-ecclesiastes-2-26/Aron Pinker — Surveys the three main scholarly approaches to the closing verse of Kohelet's 'royal fiction' — reading it as poetic justice, Divine arbitrariness, or a later pious gloss — and argues that each is internally inconsistent with Ecclesiastes' own worldview, concluding that the verse is best understood as a quoted position that Kohelet ultimately rejects as hevel.Fri, 01 Oct 2010 00:00:00 GMTEcclesiastesWisdom LiteratureBiblical Interpretationhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/what-is-it-interpreting-exodus-16-15/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/what-is-it-interpreting-exodus-16-15/Zvi Ron — Traces the history of interpretation of the Israelites' puzzled exclamation man hu upon first seeing manna, surveying grammarians and commentators who read it as a question in a foreign or archaic dialect, as a declaration that the food was 'prepared' or 'a gift,' or as a spontaneous naming after a familiar desert substance, and shows how each reading resolves the awkward Hebrew of the phrase differently.Fri, 01 Oct 2010 00:00:00 GMTMannaHebrew PhilologyExodushttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/mantle-of-the-matriarchs-ruth-4-11-15/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/mantle-of-the-matriarchs-ruth-4-11-15/Alan T. Levenson — Applies intra-biblical interpretation to the elders' blessing over Ruth and Boaz's marriage, arguing that the text deliberately echoes Rachel, Leah, and Tamar to cast Ruth as a culmination of the matriarchal tradition, and contends against Phyllis Trible that Ruth's role is not eclipsed but rather elevated through these allusions, even as Rebekah's absence from the parallel remains a puzzle the Sages themselves noticed.Fri, 01 Oct 2010 00:00:00 GMTRuthMatriarchsIntra-biblical Interpretationhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/ehyeh-asher-ehyeh/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/ehyeh-asher-ehyeh/Gerardo G. Sachs — Examines the grammar of God's enigmatic self-description to Moses at the burning bush, showing how the incomplete-action form of the Hebrew verb h-y-h allows Ehyeh-Asher-Ehyeh to be read as four distinct, mutually exclusive philosophical positions on divine constancy and change, and connects the shift between the first-person Ehyeh and third-person Yod-Heh-Vav-Heh to how God and humanity each refer to the divine name.Fri, 01 Oct 2010 00:00:00 GMTNames of GodHebrew GrammarExodushttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/hot-pursuit-into-canaan/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/hot-pursuit-into-canaan/Shubert Spero — Compares the brief account of Israel's victory over the King of Arad in Numbers 21:1-3 and 33:40 with the seemingly parallel episode in Judges 1:16-18, and adopts historian Ze'ev Yavitz's proposal that both describe the same event: an early, independent incursion by the tribe of Judah into Canaan that was later folded into the national narrative and, separately, into Judah's own tribal conquest history.Fri, 01 Oct 2010 00:00:00 GMTConquest of CanaanTribe of JudahNumbersJudgeshttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/tzefardea-frogs-or-crocodiles/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/tzefardea-frogs-or-crocodiles/Natan Slifkin — Weighs the two classical identifications of the second plague of Egypt, tzefarde'a, as either frogs or crocodiles, tracing the crocodile reading through Ibn Ezra, the Midrash ha-Gadol, and Rabbenu Bahya, and the frog reading through etymology and later commentators, and concludes that the etymological and midrashic evidence favors frogs, though a few sources see the term as covering both amphibians and reptiles.Fri, 01 Oct 2010 00:00:00 GMTPlagues of EgyptNatural HistoryExodushttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/three-tenses-in-the-kingdom-of-god/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/three-tenses-in-the-kingdom-of-god/Jacob Chinitz — Traces the liturgical formula 'The Lord reigns, has reigned, and will reign forever,' assembled from three separate biblical verses, back to its sole Torah source in the Song at the Sea, and surveys commentators from Rashi through Ramban on whether Exodus 15:18 envisions God's kingship as limited to Israel or extending universally, arguing the tension is echoed in later rabbinic and philosophical formulations of God's eternal nature.Fri, 01 Oct 2010 00:00:00 GMTLiturgyKingdom of GodTheologyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/book-review-the-dawn-of-redemption/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/book-review-the-dawn-of-redemption/Mattan Erder — Reviews Rabbi Dr. Meir Levin's The Dawn of Redemption (Urim Publications, 2009), praising its rabbinically-grounded readings of Ruth and Jonah as sources of guidance on alienation and return, while questioning Levin's tendency to present rabbinic literature as a monolithic 'view of the Sages' and his relatively thin engagement with the philosophical implications of intergenerational repair in Ruth.Fri, 01 Oct 2010 00:00:00 GMTBook ReviewRuthJonahhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/book-review-etz-hayim-torah-and-commentary/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/book-review-etz-hayim-torah-and-commentary/David J. Zucker — Reviews Etz Hayim: Torah and Commentary, the Conservative movement's 2001 successor to the Hertz Pentateuch, examining its layered peshat/derash/halakhah le-ma'aseh commentary structure, its treatment of gendered language about God and people compared to two other contemporary liberal Torah commentaries, and its extensive supplementary essays and haftarah commentary.Fri, 01 Oct 2010 00:00:00 GMTBook ReviewTorah CommentaryGender and Translationhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/early-traditions-on-the-kidnapping-and-sale-of-joseph/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/early-traditions-on-the-kidnapping-and-sale-of-joseph/Jeffrey M. Cohen — This second installment investigates Reuben's mysterious absence at the moment Joseph was sold into slavery, drawing on Midrash, Talmudic sources, and Pseudepigraphic texts — especially the Testament of Gad — to reconstruct the volatile family dynamics among Jacob's sons. The author concludes that Jacob ultimately discovered the truth of what had happened to Joseph, as evidenced by allusions embedded in Jacob's deathbed blessings of Judah, Joseph, Dan, and Gad.Thu, 01 Jul 2010 00:00:00 GMTJosephReubenMidrashPseudepigraphaBiblical Narrativehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/day-of-the-lord/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/day-of-the-lord/Shimon Bakon — This article surveys the prophetic concept of 'The Day of the Lord' as articulated by six biblical prophets — Joel, Amos, Isaiah, Ezekiel, Zephaniah, and Zechariah — tracing how each envisions a cosmic day of divine judgment that leads ultimately to Israel's redemption and universal peace. Despite their differing political and historical contexts, all the prophets agree that God's power will move all nations toward an era in which the Lord is universally acknowledged and Israel dwells in peace.Thu, 01 Jul 2010 00:00:00 GMTProphecyDay of the LordEschatologyBiblical ProphetsMessianismhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/differences-between-the-wise-and-the-foolish-in-psalms/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/differences-between-the-wise-and-the-foolish-in-psalms/Hayyim Angel — The Book of Psalms is grounded in the theology of Psalm 1, which declares that the righteous prosper and the wicked perish, yet many psalms directly confront the unsettling reality of righteous suffering and the prosperity of evildoers. This article traces how psalmists and rabbinic commentators — including Radak, Rashi, and Ibn Ezra — distinguish between the wise, who deepen their relationship with God through suffering, and fools, who abandon their faith.Thu, 01 Jul 2010 00:00:00 GMTTheodicyDivine ProvidenceWisdom LiteraturePsalmsRighteousnesshttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/isaac-betrayed-and-triumphant/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/isaac-betrayed-and-triumphant/David J. Zucker — Isaac is often dismissed as a passive and peripheral figure in Genesis, overshadowed by the towering personalities of Abraham and Jacob. This article argues that Isaac is in fact a resilient patriarch who endured two profound betrayals — his father Abraham's near-sacrifice of him at Moriah and his son Jacob's deception to steal the patriarchal blessing — and still achieved a long and remarkable life, dying at 180, older than any of his immediate clan.Thu, 01 Jul 2010 00:00:00 GMTIsaacPatriarchsAkedahChild AbuseElder Abusehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/book-of-daniel-part-ii/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/book-of-daniel-part-ii/Nathan C. Moskowitz — This article examines the literary and thematic connections between the Book of Daniel and the Passover Haggadah, arguing that the Haggadah's structure and central themes — including zoomorphic symbolism, Aramaic bookends, and the motif of redemption — were directly influenced by Daniel's prophetic moral lessons. In particular, the zoomorphic allegory of 'Had Gadya' echoes Daniel's visions of successive empires and ultimate divine deliverance, offering a message of steadfast faith to every generation.Thu, 01 Jul 2010 00:00:00 GMTDanielPassover HaggadahAramaicZoomorphic AllegoryRedemptionhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/miriam-rediscovered/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/miriam-rediscovered/Moshe Reiss — Miriam, sister of Moses and Aaron, appears in the Torah in only a handful of passages, yet rabbinic tradition and midrash recognize her as a prophetess, poetess, and charismatic leader who played a central role in Israel's survival and spiritual life in the wilderness. This article traces the full arc of her life — from her courageous intervention to save the infant Moses to her death at Kadesh — and explores her enduring legacy as a model for Jewish women.Thu, 01 Jul 2010 00:00:00 GMTMiriamWomen in the BibleProphecyExodusMidrashhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/translation-midrash-and-commentary-through-the-eyes-of/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/translation-midrash-and-commentary-through-the-eyes-of/Stanley M. Wagner — Targum Onkelos, the authoritative Aramaic translation of the Torah venerated for over 1,600 years, regularly departs from the literal biblical text to protect divine dignity, preserve the honor of the Jewish people, and clarify meaning for readers. This essay surveys the translator's methods — including substituting abstract terms for anthropomorphisms, updating place names, and rendering metaphors literally — within the framework of the tannaitic controversy between Rabbi Akiva and Rabbi Yishmael.Thu, 01 Jul 2010 00:00:00 GMTTargum OnkelosAramaic TranslationBiblical InterpretationMidrashAnthropomorphismhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/my-brothers-keeper/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/my-brothers-keeper/Morris Rosman — A short reflection on the theme of brotherly responsibility in the Hebrew Bible, examining how the question 'Am I my brother's keeper?' resonates across Genesis and beyond as a fundamental ethical challenge. The article invites readers to consider the biblical mandate for human solidarity and mutual responsibility.Thu, 01 Jul 2010 00:00:00 GMTBrotherhoodEthicsGenesisNarrative TheologyResponsibilityhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/47th-annual-international-bible-contest-for-jewish/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/47th-annual-international-bible-contest-for-jewish/Joshua J. Adler — A report on the 47th annual Hidon HaTanakh (International Bible Contest for Jewish Youth), held in Israel in 2010, describing the contestants, winning questions, and noteworthy events — including the participation of Avner Netanyahu, son of the Prime Minister, and the emergence of secular Israeli school system students as top competitors for the first time.Thu, 01 Jul 2010 00:00:00 GMTBible ContestHidon HaTanakhJewish EducationIsraelYouthhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/in-memoriam-patricia-berlyn/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/in-memoriam-patricia-berlyn/Editors — 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.Thu, 01 Apr 2010 00:00:00 GMTDedicationBiographyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/transition-to-the-second-trip-to-egypt/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/transition-to-the-second-trip-to-egypt/Ronald T. Hyman — 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.Thu, 01 Apr 2010 00:00:00 GMTJosephNarrative AnalysisGenesishttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/genealogical-list-in-the-book-of-ruth/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/genealogical-list-in-the-book-of-ruth/Zvi Ron — 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.Thu, 01 Apr 2010 00:00:00 GMTRuthGenealogySymbolismhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/pharaohs-three-offers/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/pharaohs-three-offers/Shubert Spero — 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.Thu, 01 Apr 2010 00:00:00 GMTExodusPharaohTheologyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/book-of-daniel-part-i/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/book-of-daniel-part-i/Nathan C. Moskowitz — 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.Thu, 01 Apr 2010 00:00:00 GMTDanielSeleucid PeriodApocalyptic Literaturehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/kidnapping-and-sale-of-joseph-part-1/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/kidnapping-and-sale-of-joseph-part-1/Jeffrey M. Cohen — 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.Thu, 01 Apr 2010 00:00:00 GMTJosephPseudepigraphaGenesishttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/significant-anonymity-in-exodus-2/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/significant-anonymity-in-exodus-2/Mark W. Gross — 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.Thu, 01 Apr 2010 00:00:00 GMTExodusMosesNameshttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/who-wrestled-with-jacob/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/who-wrestled-with-jacob/Fred Blumenthal — 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.Thu, 01 Apr 2010 00:00:00 GMTJacobGenesisAllegoryhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/flood-salt-and-sacrifice-ptsd-in-genesis/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/flood-salt-and-sacrifice-ptsd-in-genesis/Steven Luger — 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.Thu, 01 Apr 2010 00:00:00 GMTPsychologyNoahGenesishttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/book-review-torah-a-modern-commentary-revised-edition/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/book-review-torah-a-modern-commentary-revised-edition/David J. Zucker — 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.Thu, 01 Apr 2010 00:00:00 GMTBook ReviewTorah CommentaryGender and Translationhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/letters-to-the-editor-v38p2/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/letters-to-the-editor-v38p2/Various — 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.Thu, 01 Apr 2010 00:00:00 GMTLetters to the Editorhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/biblical-prayers-and-rabbinic-responses-balancing/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/biblical-prayers-and-rabbinic-responses-balancing/Hayyim Angel — This article examines how the rabbis navigated the tension between biblical models of honest, even challenging prayer and the demands of reverence before God, drawing on texts from Habakkuk, the Psalms, Jeremiah, and Daniel.Fri, 01 Jan 2010 00:00:00 GMTBiblical PrayerRabbinic InterpretationHabakkukTheodicyPsalmshttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/note-on-judges-13-20-21-sorting-out-the-syntax/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/note-on-judges-13-20-21-sorting-out-the-syntax/Robert Chisholm — A brief syntactic analysis of Judges 13:20-21, clarifying the grammatical structure of the angelic theophany narrative and its implications for interpretation.Fri, 01 Jan 2010 00:00:00 GMTBiblical SyntaxAngelsJudgesTextual Analysishttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/ketovet-ka-aka-leviticus-19-28-tattooing-or-branding/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/ketovet-ka-aka-leviticus-19-28-tattooing-or-branding/Gilad J. Gevaryahu — An investigation of the hapax legomenon ketovet ka'aka in Leviticus 19:28, exploring whether the prohibition refers to tattooing or branding in light of ancient Near Eastern practices and rabbinic commentary.Fri, 01 Jan 2010 00:00:00 GMTLeviticusBiblical LawHapax LegomenonTattooingAncient Near Easthttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/hidden-mission-of-biblical-angels/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/hidden-mission-of-biblical-angels/Irving H. Skolnick — An exploration of how biblical angels often conceal their true identity and mission, examining accounts in Genesis and Exodus to understand the theological significance of angelic anonymity and revelation.Fri, 01 Jan 2010 00:00:00 GMTAngelsTorahGenesisDivine RevelationBiblical Narrativehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/ten-commandments-as-positive-affirmations/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/ten-commandments-as-positive-affirmations/Leo Michel Abrami — A reinterpretation of the Decalogue suggesting that the commandments, including those phrased negatively, can be understood as positive affirmations of ethical and spiritual values.Fri, 01 Jan 2010 00:00:00 GMTTen CommandmentsDecalogueJewish EthicsTorah Lawhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/did-the-wall-of-jericho-collapse-or-did-the-city/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/did-the-wall-of-jericho-collapse-or-did-the-city/Avraham Lorberbaum Dafna — A lexicographic study of the Hebrew verb in Joshua 6 describing what happened to Jericho's wall, arguing that the text may describe a voluntary surrender rather than a miraculous collapse.Fri, 01 Jan 2010 00:00:00 GMTJerichoJoshuaBiblical ArchaeologyHebrew Lexicographyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/sacrificial-categories-and-personality-types/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/sacrificial-categories-and-personality-types/Russell Jay Hendel — An analysis of the different categories of sacrificial offerings in Leviticus and Numbers, proposing that they correspond to distinct personality types and ethical orientations.Fri, 01 Jan 2010 00:00:00 GMTSacrificial LawLeviticusSymbolismPersonality TheoryBiblical Interpretationhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/numerical-symbolism-in-the-dedication-of-the-altar/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/numerical-symbolism-in-the-dedication-of-the-altar/Joel J. Forman — An examination of the numerical patterns in the tribal offerings at the dedication of the Tabernacle altar in Numbers, revealing a rich layer of symbolic meaning in the repeated quantities.Fri, 01 Jan 2010 00:00:00 GMTNumbersNumerologyTabernacleBiblical Symbolismhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/could-pre-hebrew-be-the-safa-ahat-of-genesis-11-1/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/could-pre-hebrew-be-the-safa-ahat-of-genesis-11-1/Isaac Elchanan Mozeson — A linguistic argument that the 'one language' (safa ahat) of Genesis 11:1 may refer to a proto-Hebrew, based on etymological evidence linking early Semitic roots to later Hebrew vocabulary.Fri, 01 Jan 2010 00:00:00 GMTLinguisticsGenesisTower of BabelHebrew LanguageEtymologyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/masters-of-the-word-vol-ii/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/masters-of-the-word-vol-ii/Dan Vogel — Reviews Yonatan Kolatch's Masters of the Word: Vol. II, covering traditional Jewish Bible commentary from the 11th-13th centuries and examining the methodology of Rashi, Rashbam, and Ibn Ezra.Fri, 01 Jan 2010 00:00:00 GMTRashiMedieval CommentaryParshanutBook ReviewBiblical Exegesishttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/letters-to-the-editor-v38p1/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/letters-to-the-editor-v38p1/Various — Two letters responding to prior JBQ articles: one on Judges 4:18 and a parallel to the Dinah story, and one comparing Koheleth and Goethe's Faust.Fri, 01 Jan 2010 00:00:00 GMTLetters to the Editorhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/we-mourn-the-loss-of-rabbi-dr-theodore-steinberg/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/we-mourn-the-loss-of-rabbi-dr-theodore-steinberg/Jewish Bible Quarterly — Memorial tribute to Rabbi Dr. Theodore Steinberg (z"l), Associate Editor of the Jewish Bible Quarterly and Editorial Board member since 1995, who instituted the Darshanut section and contributed numerous articles to the journal.Thu, 01 Oct 2009 00:00:00 GMTobituaryin memoriamJBQeditorialhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/advantage-of-a-country-in-ecclesiastes-5-8/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/advantage-of-a-country-in-ecclesiastes-5-8/Aron Pinker — Examines the notoriously difficult Hebrew of Ecclesiastes 5:8, surveying ancient and modern scholarly interpretations and proposing that the verse's obscurity stems from a scribal gloss, offering a new contextual reading about the nature of governance and a country's advantage.Thu, 01 Oct 2009 00:00:00 GMTbiblical interpretationEcclesiastesMasoretic textwisdom literaturetextual criticismhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/which-anokhi-did-jacob-not-know/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/which-anokhi-did-jacob-not-know/Jeffrey M. Cohen — Proposes that Jacob's exclamation 'and I knew it not' (Gen. 28:16) refers to a specific Divine attribute of immanent closeness rather than to Jacob's own awareness, drawing on Seforno, Malbim, Rashi, and Luzzatto to illuminate the distinction between the Divine names HaShem and Anokhi.Thu, 01 Oct 2009 00:00:00 GMTdivine namesJacobbiblical Hebrewtheologypatriarchal narrativeshttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/four-acts-of-vowing-in-the-bible/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/four-acts-of-vowing-in-the-bible/Ronald T. Hyman — Analyzes four paradigmatic biblical vows—Jacob's (Gen. 28:20-22), Israel's (Num. 21:2), Jephthah's (Judg. 11:30-31), and Hannah's (1 Sam. 1:11)—identifying common structural characteristics including conditionality, voluntariness, direct address to God, and intensified language.Thu, 01 Oct 2009 00:00:00 GMTvowsprayerbiblical narrativeIsraelite religioncovenanthttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/nivhaz-or-nivhan/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/nivhaz-or-nivhan/Zvi Ron — Investigates the textual discrepancy between 'Nivhaz' (with zayin) in the Masoretic Text and 'Nivhan' (with nun) in both Talmuds for the Avvite idol in II Kings 17:31, tracing the scribal confusion through Radak, Norzi, and manuscript traditions.Thu, 01 Oct 2009 00:00:00 GMTtextual criticismMasoretic textTalmudscribal practicebiblical orthographyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/isaiahs-suffering-servant-a-new-view/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/isaiahs-suffering-servant-a-new-view/Allen S. Maller — Reinterprets Isaiah's Suffering Servant passage (Isa. 52:13–53:12) in light of modern Jewish history, arguing that Germany's Holocaust reparations and subsequent governmental acts of atonement illuminate the prophetic vision of redemption for both the collective Israel and the messianic figure mashiah ben Yosef.Thu, 01 Oct 2009 00:00:00 GMTSuffering ServantIsaiah 53messianismredemptionHolocausthttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/golden-calves-what-happened/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/golden-calves-what-happened/Reuven P. Bulka — Revisits the Golden Calf episode, proposing that a fifth column among the Israelites produced a live calf alongside Aaron's inanimate statue, and reflects on the biblical commandment to remember this sin as an ongoing call for vigilant faith rather than guilt.Thu, 01 Oct 2009 00:00:00 GMTGolden CalfidolatrymemoryExodusfaithhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/acceptance-of-the-convert-based-on-leviticus-19/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/acceptance-of-the-convert-based-on-leviticus-19/Haim A. Gottschalk — Interprets the laws concerning the stranger/convert (ger) in Leviticus 19:33-34 through the Sifra's midrashic commentary, examining the four rabbinic questions about proof of conversion, prohibition of maltreatment, citizenship obligations, and the commandment to love the convert.Thu, 01 Oct 2009 00:00:00 GMTconversiongerSifrahalakhaLeviticushttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/in-defense-of-korah/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/in-defense-of-korah/Brian Weinstein — Defends Korah's rebellion against Moses and Aaron (Num. 16) as a politically motivated challenge to nascent oligarchy rooted in the principle of shared holiness, arguing the uprising had genuine merit and ultimately yielded lasting concessions for the Levite tribe.Thu, 01 Oct 2009 00:00:00 GMTKorahrebellionMosesleadershipLeviteshttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/whats-in-a-name-reflections-upon-divine-names-and-the/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/whats-in-a-name-reflections-upon-divine-names-and-the/Amitai Adler — Explores the theological significance of God's threefold self-revelation to Moses at the Burning Bush, arguing that Ehyeh asher Ehyeh—expressing radical self-determination—is God's essential name and the quality most complementary to a people emerging from slavery.Thu, 01 Oct 2009 00:00:00 GMTdivine namesTetragrammatonEhyeh asher EhyehtheologyGod-Israel relationshiphttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/letters-to-the-editor/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/letters-to-the-editor/Various — Reader correspondence on prior JBQ articles: Aron Pinker comments on Zvi Ron's paper on large letters in the Bible; Zvi Ron responds; Ben Zion Katz recommends Chronicles scholarship; Israel C. Stein adds to the analysis of Lot's character.Thu, 01 Oct 2009 00:00:00 GMTreader correspondenceChroniclestextual criticismLothttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/moonlit-leadership-a-midrashic-reading-of-joshuas-su/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/moonlit-leadership-a-midrashic-reading-of-joshuas-su/Hayyim Angel — The Book of Joshua represents one of Israel's ideal eras. Through a careful survey of narratives in which Joshua appears, the article uses rabbinic statements as catalysts to explain the roots of his phenomenal success as a leader, examining his role as Moses' disciple, his silence and speech at critical moments, and his ultimate emergence as Moses' rightful successor.Wed, 01 Jul 2009 00:00:00 GMTLeadershipMidrashJoshuaBiblical NarrativeRabbinic Literaturehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/lots-failed-trial/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/lots-failed-trial/Berel Dov Lerner — Lot is an ambivalent character whose story ends in humiliation. The article argues that his downfall was entirely his own fault: his religious egocentrism led him to abandon the safety of Zoar despite the angel's promise, setting in motion the circumstances leading to his daughters' act.Wed, 01 Jul 2009 00:00:00 GMTLotCharacter AnalysisBiblical EthicsGenesisDivine Providencehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/suicide-in-the-bible/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/suicide-in-the-bible/Yael Shemesh — The article compares and contrasts six cases of suicide in the Bible (Abimelech, Samson, Saul, Saul's squire, Ahithophel, Zimri), examining the biblical narrator's attitude toward suicide and the literary function of the suicide story in the broader context of what we know about the individuals who opted for this drastic measure.Wed, 01 Jul 2009 00:00:00 GMTSuicideBiblical NarrativeDeath and DyingEthicsLiterary Analysishttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/critical-notes-on-psalm-22-30/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/critical-notes-on-psalm-22-30/Shaul Bar — Various ancient and modern translations are suggested for Psalm 22:30, a verse with scribal errors and a later editorial addition. The article examines the etymology and literary structure of the verse alongside critical opinions, offering a modified translation that better reflects the Masoretic text.Wed, 01 Jul 2009 00:00:00 GMTTextual CriticismPsalmsHebrew Bible TranslationMasoretic TextBiblical Exegesishttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/interpreting-b-r-kh-in-genesis-47/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/interpreting-b-r-kh-in-genesis-47/Michael Alan Stein — Examining Genesis 47:7-10, the article argues that Jacob's interaction with Pharaoh was a powerful invocation of the Divine rather than a mere salutation. Through a survey of the root b-r-kh throughout the pre-Jacob narrative and Jacob's own experiences, the article shows how the text prepares readers to understand Jacob's blessing of Pharaoh as a momentous theological act.Wed, 01 Jul 2009 00:00:00 GMTHebrew Root AnalysisBlessingJacobGenesisBiblical Exegesishttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/function-of-the-root-y-r-kh-in-genesis/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/function-of-the-root-y-r-kh-in-genesis/Ben Zion Katz — The article examines the function of the Hebrew root y-r-kh (thigh/oath organ) in Genesis, arguing that Jacob's yrkh served as a constant physical reminder of his oath and his need for truthfulness. The angel's injury to Jacob's yrkh, causing him to limp, is connected to Jacob's transition from deception to forthrightness as represented in his new name Israel.Wed, 01 Jul 2009 00:00:00 GMTHebrew Root AnalysisJacobGenesisBiblical NarrativeOathhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/seize-the-moment/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/seize-the-moment/David J. Zucker — The emotional climax of the Joseph-cycle (Gen. 37-50) comes when Joseph reveals himself to his brothers. The article examines how Joseph carefully chose his words of reconciliation, seizing the moment by mirroring Judah's approach and making himself vulnerable to heal the breach between the siblings.Wed, 01 Jul 2009 00:00:00 GMTJosephReconciliationBiblical NarrativeFamily RelationshipsGenesishttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/book-review-sol-scharfstein-the-book-of-genesis/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/book-review-sol-scharfstein-the-book-of-genesis/Dan Vogel — A review of Sol Scharfstein's translation-cum-commentary on The Book of Genesis (KTAV Publishing House, 2009), examining his didactic approach of using modern idiom and astrophysical terminology to redirect young Jewish readers toward faith in the literalness of the Bible.Wed, 01 Jul 2009 00:00:00 GMTBook ReviewsGenesis CommentaryBiblical TranslationJewish Educationhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/46th-annual-international-bible-contest-for-jewish/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/46th-annual-international-bible-contest-for-jewish/Joshua J. Adler — A report on the 46th Annual International Bible Contest (Hidon HaTanakh) held on Israel Independence Day, in which 24 countries participated with 47 contestants due to the global economic situation, including first-time participants from Sweden and Switzerland. Contest results and highlights are described.Wed, 01 Jul 2009 00:00:00 GMTBible ContestHidon HaTanakhJewish YouthIsrael Independence Dayhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/letter-to-the-editor-v37p3/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/letter-to-the-editor-v37p3/ — A letter responding to a previous article on the concept of the ger (stranger/sojourner) in Jewish law, noting inconsistencies in the term's usage in the Torah, and discussing the inclusion of the ger in the Covenant as described in Deuteronomy 29, with reference to the work of scholars Krauss and Yehezkel Kaufmann.Wed, 01 Jul 2009 00:00:00 GMTGerCovenantBiblical LawStrangerJewish Lawhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/letter-to-the-editor-v37p2/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/letter-to-the-editor-v37p2/Julius B. Moster — A brief letter responding to the article 'Extra-Biblical Evidence of the Exodus,' arguing that the Bible intentionally portrays Israel as weak in order to magnify God's power in the Exodus narrative.Wed, 01 Apr 2009 00:00:00 GMTExodusHistoricityBiblical Narrativehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/down-to-the-sea-in-ships/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/down-to-the-sea-in-ships/P. J. Berlyn — Surveys the role of the sea and seafaring in the Hebrew Bible, examining Israelite attitudes toward the sea, its creatures including Leviathan and Rahab, and ships from the Ark to Phoenician merchant fleets and the voyage of Jonah to Tarshish.Wed, 01 Apr 2009 00:00:00 GMTSea ImageryShipsLeviathanMaritime HistoryPhoeniciahttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/lord-byron-s-midrashic-lyrics-part-ii-the-fall-of/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/lord-byron-s-midrashic-lyrics-part-ii-the-fall-of/Dan Vogel — Analyzes Part II of Lord Byron's Hebrew Melodies (1815), examining how Byron drew on biblical texts and midrashic themes to portray the tragedy of Jerusalem's destruction and the promise of Jewish redemption and national restoration.Wed, 01 Apr 2009 00:00:00 GMTLord ByronHebrew MelodiesFall of JerusalemPoetryMidrashhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/four-large-letters-in-the-bible/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/four-large-letters-in-the-bible/Zvi Ron — Demonstrates that four seemingly inexplicable oversized letters in the Torah—in Genesis 30:42, Numbers 13:30, Numbers 27:5, and Deuteronomy 29:27—have genuine significance and each falls within established Masoretic categories of large letters.Wed, 01 Apr 2009 00:00:00 GMTMasoretic TextTorah Scribal TraditionLarge LettersMesorahTextual Criticismhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/jonah-the-conscientious-objector/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/jonah-the-conscientious-objector/Shimon Bakon — Analyzes the Book of Jonah focusing on why Jonah refused God's mandate to preach repentance to Nineveh and the book's central theological message, exploring Jonah as a conscientious objector caught between divine justice and divine compassion.Wed, 01 Apr 2009 00:00:00 GMTBook of JonahProphecyRepentanceDivine JusticeNinevehhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/koheleth-and-goethe-s-faust/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/koheleth-and-goethe-s-faust/Isaac Rosenberg — Compares Koheleth (Ecclesiastes) and Goethe's Faust, demonstrating that both works share the central theme of man's inability to comprehend the mystery of existence, and arguing that Goethe was likely influenced by Koheleth in composing his drama.Wed, 01 Apr 2009 00:00:00 GMTKohelethEcclesiastesGoetheComparative LiteratureWisdom Literaturehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/chronicles-the-neglected-books-of-the-bible/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/chronicles-the-neglected-books-of-the-bible/Joshua J. Adler — Argues that the Books of Chronicles, often overlooked as repetitive of Samuel and Kings, contain unique historical information and theological perspectives, and examines key differences that demonstrate the Chronicler's access to independent historical sources.Wed, 01 Apr 2009 00:00:00 GMTChroniclesBiblical HistoriographyDavidManassehTemplehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/how-god-introduced-himself-to-the-patriarchs/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/how-god-introduced-himself-to-the-patriarchs/Jeffrey M. Cohen — Examines three difficulties in Exodus 6:2-3 regarding God's different names as revealed to the Patriarchs versus Moses, explaining that El Shaddai represents patient sufficiency while Hashem represents the immediate fulfillment of divine will.Wed, 01 Apr 2009 00:00:00 GMTDivine NamesEl ShaddaiTetragrammatonPatriarchsExodushttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/and-dinah-the-daughter-of-leah-went-out-the-meaning-of/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/and-dinah-the-daughter-of-leah-went-out-the-meaning-of/Gilad J. Gevaryahu — Examines Rashi's interpretation of the Hebrew term yatz'anit in his commentary on Genesis 34:1, arguing that it refers to a woman who goes out to the market unprotected and risks extramarital encounter, not a prostitute as some modern interpreters claim.Wed, 01 Apr 2009 00:00:00 GMTRashiMidrashWomen in the BibleBiblical CommentaryGenesishttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/biblical-onomastics-what-s-in-a-name/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/biblical-onomastics-what-s-in-a-name/Fred Blumenthal — Explores the theological significance of biblical names through linguistic analysis, demonstrating through the thirteen sons of Yoktan (Gen. 10:26-29) how names in the Torah encode the divergent cultural and religious developments of the pre-Abrahamic world.Wed, 01 Apr 2009 00:00:00 GMTOnomasticsBiblical NamesGenesisGenealogyMonotheismhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/for-in-his-days-the-earth-was-divided/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/for-in-his-days-the-earth-was-divided/Joshua Backon — Presents classical Jewish sources supporting the interpretation of niflega (Gen. 10:25) as a physical geological splitting of the earth rather than merely a dispersal of peoples, finding traditional support for what modern science calls catastrophic plate tectonics.Wed, 01 Apr 2009 00:00:00 GMTGeologyPlate TectonicsPelegMidrashGenesishttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/prophecy-as-potential-the-consolations-of-isaiah-1-12/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/prophecy-as-potential-the-consolations-of-isaiah-1-12/Hayyim Angel — Angel examines the consolatory passages embedded within Isaiah 1-12, arguing that these chapters interweave doom and hope in a deliberate pattern. He contends that Isaiah's promises of redemption are conditional prophecies — dependent on repentance — and that reading them within their literary context reveals a sophisticated theology of potential: redemption is always possible but never automatic. The consolations thus function not as unconditional guarantees but as urgent invitations.Thu, 01 Jan 2009 00:00:00 GMTIsaiahprophecymessianismconsolationbiblical commentaryhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/menorah-psalm/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/menorah-psalm/Shubert Spero — Spero investigates the relationship between Psalm 67 and the Temple menorah, noting that the psalm's seven verses and fifty words mirror the menorah's seven branches. Drawing on Kabbalistic and Zoharic sources, he argues that the psalm was liturgically associated with the menorah and that its imagery of light and divine blessing encodes a theology of Israel as a light to the nations.Thu, 01 Jan 2009 00:00:00 GMTPsalm 67menorahKabbalahZoharJewish mysticismhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/ecclesiastes-fleeting-and-timeless-part-ii/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/ecclesiastes-fleeting-and-timeless-part-ii/Ethan Dor-Shav — In the second installment of his study of Ecclesiastes, Dor-Shav probes the book's central term hevel — conventionally rendered 'vanity' — arguing that it means something closer to 'breath' or 'vapor,' gesturing at the ephemeral rather than the worthless. He traces how Kohelet's cyclical worldview and his repeated confrontation with death yield not nihilism but a disciplined embrace of the present moment as the locus of meaning.Thu, 01 Jan 2009 00:00:00 GMTEcclesiastesKohelethevelbiblical translationJewish philosophyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/lord-byrons-midrashic-lyrics-part-i-saul-and-others/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/lord-byrons-midrashic-lyrics-part-i-saul-and-others/Dan Vogel — Vogel examines Byron's Hebrew Melodies as a form of literary midrash, analyzing how the poet imaginatively elaborates biblical characters and scenes beyond the scriptural text. Focusing on the Saul poems alongside treatments of Job, Ecclesiastes, Daniel, and the Psalms, he argues that Byron's empathetic re-readings of the Hebrew Bible engage Jewish interpretive traditions even when the poet was likely unaware of them, producing a body of work that illuminates the biblical originals through a Romantic lens.Thu, 01 Jan 2009 00:00:00 GMTLord ByronHebrew Melodiesmidrashbiblical poetryliterary criticismhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/real-suffering-servant-decoding-a-controversial-passage/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/real-suffering-servant-decoding-a-controversial-passage/Mordecai Schreiber — Schreiber re-examines Isaiah 53 and the identity of the 'Suffering Servant,' surveying classical Jewish and Christian interpretations before arguing for a reading that identifies the servant with the prophet Jeremiah. He contends that the verbal and biographical parallels between Isaiah 53 and the book of Jeremiah are too precise to be coincidental, and that locating the passage within its historical context dissolves the christological reading while restoring the text's original polemical force.Thu, 01 Jan 2009 00:00:00 GMTIsaiah 53Suffering ServantDeutero-Isaiahbiblical hermeneuticsJewish-Christian dialoguehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/jonah-the-rebellious-prophet-a-look-at-the-man-behind/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/jonah-the-rebellious-prophet-a-look-at-the-man-behind/Raphael B. Shuchat — Shuchat draws on biblical and rabbinic sources to reconstruct the character of Jonah ben Amittai, arguing that his flight from God reflects not cowardice but a principled theological protest rooted in his concern for Israel's standing among the nations. Situating Jonah within the political context of the Northern Kingdom's relationship with Assyria, Shuchat shows how the prophet's rebellion and subsequent repentance illuminate the rabbinic understanding of teshuvah and divine mercy.Thu, 01 Jan 2009 00:00:00 GMTJonahprophecyteshuvahNorthern KingdomAssyriahttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/spirit-is-thicker-than-blood/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/spirit-is-thicker-than-blood/Jacob Chinitz — Chinitz argues that the Bible consistently values spiritual kinship over biological kinship, tracing a thematic thread from Joseph's treatment of his brothers through the stories of the Judges and into the moral vision of Samuel. He contends that the recurring motif of brothers who fail each other — and strangers or rivals who succeed — encodes a biblical preference for covenant loyalty over family loyalty, a preference exemplified in the Maccabean period by the willingness to fight against fellow Jews who had abandoned the covenant.Thu, 01 Jan 2009 00:00:00 GMTbrotherhoodJosephMaccabeesHannukahethicshttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/letter-to-the-editor-v37p1/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/letter-to-the-editor-v37p1/Jacob Chinitz — Chinitz responds to Malcolm E. Schrader's article "Creation" (Vol. 36:3), questioning whether creation ex nihilo is a physical or logical impossibility and arguing that if it is a logical impossibility then even divine omnipotence cannot bring Something from Nothing.Thu, 01 Jan 2009 00:00:00 GMTCreation ex nihiloMaimonidesmetaphysicsphilosophyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/jephthahs-daughter/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/jephthahs-daughter/Moshe Reiss — Reiss examines the troubling story of Jephthah's daughter (Judges 11), situating it within the broader pattern of vows and their consequences in the Hebrew Bible. He argues that the text neither endorses nor glosses over the human sacrifice implied by Jephthah's vow, but rather uses the daughter's dignified acceptance and the narrator's pointed silence to indict a society in which a leader's rash oath could cost an innocent life. Comparative readings from Genesis, Joshua, and Samuel illuminate the uniqueness and tragedy of this episode.Thu, 01 Jan 2009 00:00:00 GMTJephthahvowshuman sacrificeJudgeswomen in the Biblehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/ecclesiastes-fleeting-and-timeless-part-i/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/ecclesiastes-fleeting-and-timeless-part-i/Ethan Dor-Shav — Argues that Ecclesiastes is misread as nihilism, since its key term hevel echoes the name of Abel and carries the sense of vapor or transience rather than futility; on this reading Kohelet is a humanist confronting how quickly life passes while still affirming joy, work, and wisdom in the material world.Wed, 01 Oct 2008 00:00:00 GMTEcclesiastesKoheletHevelMortalityhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/two-hymns-to-wisdom/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/two-hymns-to-wisdom/Shimon Bakon — Sets the wisdom hymn of Proverbs 8 beside that of Job 28, arguing that the first presents an accessible Wisdom who is God's first creation and rewards all who seek her, while the second insists that true wisdom lies beyond every human search, so that both poems reach the same reverence for God by opposite routes: confidence in reward and punishment, and resignation.Wed, 01 Oct 2008 00:00:00 GMTWisdom LiteratureBiblical PoetryTheodicyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-covenant-between-the-parts/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-covenant-between-the-parts/Jed H. Abraham — Proposes that the pharaoh who knew Joseph learned of God's prophecy to Abraham in Genesis 15, calculated its deadline using ancient Near Eastern generation-years, and adopted a deliberate policy of privilege plus confinement to prevent the oppression that would trigger Israel's redemption, so that the covenant was fulfilled only much later through free human choices and the fourth generation that entered Canaan.Wed, 01 Oct 2008 00:00:00 GMTExodus ChronologyAncient EgyptProphecyFree Willhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/rebekahs-hoax/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/rebekahs-hoax/Guy Matalon — Reads Rebekah's deception of the blind Isaac as the decisive instance of women acting as initiators in Genesis, examining the dependent marriage and lopsided parental attachments that set it up, questioning why she never simply told her husband about the oracle, and arguing that the painful consequences visited on both mother and son show the narrative refusing to endorse the idea that ends justify means.Wed, 01 Oct 2008 00:00:00 GMTRebekahDeceptionBiblical EthicsWomen in the Biblehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/remembering-amalek-twice/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/remembering-amalek-twice/Allan M. Langner — Contends that the commands to remember Amalek in Exodus and Deuteronomy respond to two distinct clashes rather than a single one, since Deuteronomy omits Rephidim, Joshua, and the divine oath while describing an attack on the exhausted, which better matches the crushing Israelite defeat recorded in Numbers and explains the delayed timetable for settling accounts.Wed, 01 Oct 2008 00:00:00 GMTAmalekWilderness NarrativesBiblical Warfarehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/ruth-the-legal-code-for-the-laws-of-kindness/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/ruth-the-legal-code-for-the-laws-of-kindness/Russell Jay Hendel — Argues that the Book of Ruth should be read not merely as the account of one convert's celebrated loyalty but as a systematic presentation of hesed across roughly two dozen scenes, illustrating verbal, social, vocational, reputational, and judicial forms of kindness that each rest on established halakhic requirements yet rarely receive attention in conventional treatments of charity.Wed, 01 Oct 2008 00:00:00 GMTHesedJewish LawCharityhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/blood-feud/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/blood-feud/Gerardo G. Sachs — Asks whether the ancient practice of avenging a slain kinsman can be squared with the Sixth Commandment's ban on murder, noting that Scripture already permits killing in war, in self-defense, and by judicial sentence, and arguing that the Torah both acknowledges the blood redeemer and constrains him through cities of refuge and mandatory trial.Wed, 01 Oct 2008 00:00:00 GMTBlood VengeanceSixth CommandmentCities of RefugeBiblical Lawhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/jacob-and-the-spotted-sheep/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/jacob-and-the-spotted-sheep/Joshua Backon — Suggests that Jacob's method of altering his flock's coloring in Genesis 30 becomes intelligible through epigenetics rather than Mendelian genetics, since compounds drawn from the peeled branches into the drinking water could have supplied nutrients that influence coat-color gene expression in the developing offspring, an approach the author also applies to a talmudic account of how the red heifer came about.Wed, 01 Oct 2008 00:00:00 GMTBible and ScienceGeneticsJacobhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/45th-annual-international-bible-contest/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/45th-annual-international-bible-contest/Joshua J. Adler — Reports on the international Bible contest that brought sixty-one young competitors from thirty-six countries to Israel for written and public rounds, names the Israeli and Diaspora winners, describes the meetings with the president and prime minister, and explains how regional and national qualifying contests in the United States select the students who eventually travel to Jerusalem.Wed, 01 Oct 2008 00:00:00 GMTBible ContestJewish EducationIsraelhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/reflections-of-readers-v36p4/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/reflections-of-readers-v36p4/Oscar Davies — A reader questions the common identification of Ramses II as the pharaoh of the Exodus, noting that so powerful a ruler would hardly have tolerated Moses' effrontery, wondering where the departing Hebrews acquired weapons and military training, and observing that Egypt shows no sign of the upheaval that the destruction at the Sea of Reeds should have produced.Wed, 01 Oct 2008 00:00:00 GMTExodusAncient EgyptReader Reflectionshttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/suggestions-to-authors-from-the-editors/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/suggestions-to-authors-from-the-editors/Editors — Offers contributors a compact template for building a persuasive scholarly essay, picturing it as a diamond that opens with a thesis and a preview of the argument, widens into developmental paragraphs each anchored by a claim to be proved and joined by deliberate transitions, and narrows again to a conclusion that summarizes, concedes further study, or draws a homiletic point.Wed, 01 Oct 2008 00:00:00 GMTWritingEditorial GuidanceScholarly Methodhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/letter-to-the-editor-v36p3/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/letter-to-the-editor-v36p3/Steven Luger — A reader responds to the article 'What Sarah Saw: Envisioning Genesis 21:9-10,' offering an additional perspective on Sarah's vision and the episode of Hagar and Ishmael.Tue, 01 Jul 2008 00:00:00 GMTLetter to the EditorSarahHagarhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/historical-allusions-in-the-book-of-habakkuk/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/historical-allusions-in-the-book-of-habakkuk/Aron Pinker — A study of the historical allusions in the Book of Habakkuk that help establish when the prophet's oracles were delivered, examining references to Chaldean dominance, the Battle of Carchemish, and related events.Tue, 01 Jul 2008 00:00:00 GMTHabakkukHistorical DatingChaldeansMinor ProphetsProphetic Chronologyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/after-all-the-lord-does-not-ask-for-much/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/after-all-the-lord-does-not-ask-for-much/Shubert Spero — An analysis of Deuteronomy 10:12-13, where Moses delivers a climactic summary of five requirements of divine service, arguing that the phrase 'not much' reflects a comparison with the demanding practices of surrounding nations.Tue, 01 Jul 2008 00:00:00 GMTDivine ServiceCommandmentsDeuteronomyFear of GodMoseshttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/extra-biblical-evidence-of-the-exodus/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/extra-biblical-evidence-of-the-exodus/Reeve Robert Brenner — A survey of extra-biblical sources—including Egyptian names, hieroglyphic inscriptions, and historical parallels—that support the historicity of the Israelite sojourn in Egypt and the Exodus.Tue, 01 Jul 2008 00:00:00 GMTExodusExtra-Biblical EvidenceEgyptian SourcesHistoricitySojourn in Egypthttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/one-book-two-books-the-joshua-judges-continuum/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/one-book-two-books-the-joshua-judges-continuum/Hayyim Angel — An exploration of how the Books of Joshua and Judges form a literary and theological continuum, with Joshua portraying Israel's Golden Age under divine protection and Judges depicting its precipitous decline into idolatry.Tue, 01 Jul 2008 00:00:00 GMTJoshuaJudgesConquest of CanaanCalebBiblical Continuumhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/power-of-threes/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/power-of-threes/Mark Verman — An exploration of the recurring pattern of three in the Hebrew Bible, examining how triadic structures carry theological and literary significance across multiple books.Tue, 01 Jul 2008 00:00:00 GMTBiblical NumerologyTriadsLiterary AnalysisBiblical Patternshttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/recent-trends-in-biblical-source-criticism/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/recent-trends-in-biblical-source-criticism/David Stern — A critical review of scholarly challenges to the Documentary Hypothesis from the 1980s–1990s, examining how source critics have questioned the scientific basis and subjective methodology of the JEDP framework.Tue, 01 Jul 2008 00:00:00 GMTSource CriticismDocumentary HypothesisBiblical CriticismTorahWellhausenhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/creation-something-from-something-something-from-nothin/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/creation-something-from-something-something-from-nothin/Malcolm E. Schrader — A comparative analysis of how Rashi, Ibn Ezra, and Ramban interpreted the opening verse of Genesis regarding the nature and timing of creation, set against modern cosmological theories.Tue, 01 Jul 2008 00:00:00 GMTCreationGenesis 1:1RashiRambanCreation Ex Nihilohttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/reuben-the-predicament-of-the-firstborn/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/reuben-the-predicament-of-the-firstborn/Brian Weinstein — An analysis of Reuben's complex trajectory as Jacob's firstborn, from his forfeiture of the birthright to his diminished role across the biblical narrative.Tue, 01 Jul 2008 00:00:00 GMTReubenFirstbornBirthrightTribes of IsraelJacob's Sonshttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/ninth-plague/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/ninth-plague/Joel J. Forman — An examination of the ninth plague of darkness in Exodus, proposing that a massive volcanic eruption in the Mediterranean may have caused the three days of impenetrable darkness described in the biblical text.Tue, 01 Jul 2008 00:00:00 GMTPlagues of EgyptNinth PlagueNatural PhenomenaVolcanic Eruptionhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/were-the-prophets-opposed-to-sacrifice/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/were-the-prophets-opposed-to-sacrifice/Jacob Chinitz — Works passage by passage through Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Hosea, Joel, Amos, Jonah, Micah, and Malachi to test the widespread assumption that the prophets rejected the sacrificial cult, and concludes instead that their scorn fell on offerings brought without morality or to false gods, while each prophet anticipated restored Temple worship as the very sign of reconciliation with God.Tue, 01 Apr 2008 00:00:00 GMTProphecySacrificeTemple WorshipProphetic Literaturehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/when-does-the-day-begin/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/when-does-the-day-begin/Yosef Green — Surveys the unresolved dispute over whether the biblical day opens at sunset or at sunrise, following Genesis 1:5 through the rival readings of Rashbam and Ibn Ezra, the solar calendar of the Qumran covenanters, the rabbinic derivation of the Sabbath eve from the laws of Yom Kippur and Matzot, and scholarly attempts to date Israel's shift from solar to lunar reckoning.Tue, 01 Apr 2008 00:00:00 GMTCalendarSabbathQumranMedieval Exegesishttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/eldad-and-medad/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/eldad-and-medad/Fred Blumenthal — Reads the episode of the two men left out of the seventy elders in Numbers 11 as a study in contrasting routes to prophecy, distinguishing figures who attain inspiration through solitary preparation from those trained and ordained by a mentor, and concludes that Scripture reserves effective national leadership for the second type, exemplified by Joshua.Tue, 01 Apr 2008 00:00:00 GMTProphecyLeadershipMosesRabbinic Interpretationhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/zedekiah-last-king-of-judah/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/zedekiah-last-king-of-judah/Shimon Bakon — Reconstructs the final decade of the Judean kingdom by setting five witnesses side by side, namely 2 Chronicles, 2 Kings, the Lachish ostraca, passages of Jeremiah and Ezekiel 17, and argues that unlike the clashing testimonies of Rashomon these accounts complement one another to portray a weak and vacillating king caught between Babylonian overlordship and a pro-Egyptian faction.Tue, 01 Apr 2008 00:00:00 GMTZedekiahBabylonian ExileProphecyArchaeologyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/duality-of-man/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/duality-of-man/Pinchas Kahn — Traces how the Talmud and Midrash resolve the apparent conflicts among three creation verses in Genesis by reading them allegorically, so that the two countenances of the first human, the disputed rib, and the phrase behind and before in Psalm 139 together express one doctrine of human duality: creature and image of God, passive and active, mortal yet accountable for the world.Tue, 01 Apr 2008 00:00:00 GMTCreationTalmudMidrashAllegoryhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/fraternal-strife-in-the-bible/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/fraternal-strife-in-the-bible/Aiton Birnbaum — Identifies eleven major episodes of internal Israelite bloodshed recorded in Scripture, from the Golden Calf to the war of Pekah and Ahaz, and argues that the widespread assumption that no such civil conflict appears in the Bible reflects psychological defenses against anxiety and collective guilt rather than any real absence of evidence in the text.Tue, 01 Apr 2008 00:00:00 GMTCivil WarPsychology and the BibleDivided KingdomCollective Memoryhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/korah-and-his-fall/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/korah-and-his-fall/Joel Litke — Argues that Korah's revolt differed in kind from Israel's other wilderness complaints because it assailed the prophetic authority of Moses rather than physical hardship, and that its governing error was treating holiness as a benefaction automatically conferred on every Israelite instead of a level each individual must reach through study, discipline and self-mastery.Tue, 01 Apr 2008 00:00:00 GMTKorahHolinessLeadershipWilderness Rebellionshttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/shalem-city-or-safely/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/shalem-city-or-safely/Herbert Cohn — Argues that the ambiguous word shalem in Genesis 33:18 names a place rather than describing Jacob's condition, since the adverbial sense of arriving unharmed is otherwise unattested in Scripture and normally requires an accompanying preposition, and suggests that rabbinic reluctance to link the term to Shechem reflected polemic against Samaritan claims for Mount Gerizim.Tue, 01 Apr 2008 00:00:00 GMTHebrew GrammarTranslationJacobShechemhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/reflections-of-readers-v36p2/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/reflections-of-readers-v36p2/Various — Three short reader contributions: Gerardo Sachs on the number eight as the biblical marker of a new beginning alongside seven's symbolism of completion, Elihu Schatz arguing that the sons of Elokim in Genesis 6 are men created directly by God rather than angels, and Israel Stein pairing the political mutiny of the spies with a spiritual mutiny over the Sabbath.Tue, 01 Apr 2008 00:00:00 GMTReader ReflectionsBiblical NumbersCreationhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/book-review-masters-of-the-word-vol-i/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/book-review-masters-of-the-word-vol-i/Dan Vogel — Reviews the opening volume of Yonatan Kolatch's series on traditional Jewish Bible commentary from the first through tenth centuries, praising its lengthy primer on parshanut and its chapters on Hazal, the Targumim, the Zohar, the Geonim, the Spanish linguists, and the Ba'alei Masorah, while noting that thoroughness occasionally costs the book momentum.Tue, 01 Apr 2008 00:00:00 GMTBook ReviewParshanutBiblical ExegesisSaadia Gaonhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/letter-to-the-editor-self-effacement-in-the-bible/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/letter-to-the-editor-self-effacement-in-the-bible/Gloria Wiederkehr-Pollack — Replies to Dr. Kahn's objections to her earlier article on self-effacement, defending the claims that a person may be understood as part of God and may attain devekut, and marshaling Soloveitchik, the Tanya, Nefesh Hahayyim, the Zohar, Ibn Ezra, Ramban, and Or Hahayyim to show that both ideas are native to Jewish thought.Tue, 01 Apr 2008 00:00:00 GMTDevekutJewish MysticismCorrespondenceHasidic Thoughthttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/there-is-no-chronological-order-in-the-torah/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/there-is-no-chronological-order-in-the-torah/Hayyim Angel — Applies the rabbinic axiom that the Torah's narratives are not always in chronological sequence to the Book of Joshua, arguing that departures from historical order in Chapters 1-2, the covenant ceremony at Gerizim and Ebal, and the placement of Chapter 24 at the Book's close are deliberate literary choices that highlight Joshua's initial fear, the nation's growing initiative, and the unique freewill covenant that concludes the Book.Tue, 01 Jan 2008 00:00:00 GMTJoshuaLiterary StructureChronologyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/but-abraham-stood-yet-before-the-lord/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/but-abraham-stood-yet-before-the-lord/Shubert Spero — Argues against Maimonides' reading of Genesis 18 as an entirely internal prophetic vision, showing through recurring textual cues that God remains an active, present participant throughout Abraham's hosting of the three visitors, the annunciation to Sarah, and the negotiation over Sodom, and drawing out the lesson that the palpable presence of the shechina can be evoked through moral action, not only through prayer and study.Tue, 01 Jan 2008 00:00:00 GMTAbrahamGenesisShechinaProphecyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/amos-the-prophet/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/amos-the-prophet/Fred Guyette — Traces how Amos, a herdsman with no prophetic pedigree, is compelled to deliver a message of covenantal justice, examining his confrontation with the priest Amaziah, his rhetorical strategy in the oracles against the nations, his vocabulary for describing the poor (evyonim, anavim, tzadik, dallim), and his five visions of judgment, and contrasts the Bible's 'thick' relational conception of justice with 'thin' contractual, retributive, compensatory, and distributive accounts of justice found in liberal public philosophy.Tue, 01 Jan 2008 00:00:00 GMTAmosProphecyJusticeSocial Ethicshttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-political-side-of-the-zimri-cozbi-affair/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-political-side-of-the-zimri-cozbi-affair/Max Sicherman — Reads Phinehas's killing of Zimri and Cozbi (Num. 25) through the lens of Israelite camp geography and ancient royal-marriage politics, arguing that a lasting union between a Simeonite prince and a Midianite princess would have exposed Israel's southeastern flank, undermined Moses' authority, and set a precedent for tribal factionalism, making Phinehas's act a political rescue of Israel's unity and security as much as a religious zealotry.Tue, 01 Jan 2008 00:00:00 GMTNumbersPhinehasPolitical Historyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/torah-and-rabbinic-compromises-with-human-nature/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/torah-and-rabbinic-compromises-with-human-nature/Joshua J. Adler — Surveys instances where Torah law and later rabbinic legislation accommodate rather than suppress natural human drives and desires — permission to eat meat after the Flood, the demand for meat in the wilderness, the law of the blood avenger, the sacrificial system, marriage to a captive woman, and unforbidden polygamy — alongside rabbinic devices such as the sale of hametz, pruzbul, and relaxed testimony for an agunah, arguing that both Torah and Sages consistently balance moral education against the practical limits of human nature.Tue, 01 Jan 2008 00:00:00 GMTHalakhaTorah LawHuman Naturehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/who-counted-righteousness-to-whom/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/who-counted-righteousness-to-whom/Daniel A. Klein — Untangles the grammatical ambiguity of Genesis 15:6 - whether Abram counted God's promise as righteous, or God counted Abram's faith as righteous - through the shifting views of Samuel David Luzzatto (Shadal), showing that his 1858 Italian translation silently reversed his own earlier published commentary, and that a rediscovered 1858 letter reveals Shadal came to align with Rashi and Onkelos against his own decades-long position, apparently in reaction to the Christian doctrine that faith alone constitutes righteousness.Tue, 01 Jan 2008 00:00:00 GMTGenesisShadalExegesisGrammarhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/haachashtranim-bnei-haramachim/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/haachashtranim-bnei-haramachim/Zvi Ron — Surveys the long history of rabbinic and scholarly attempts to translate the notoriously obscure phrase ha'achashtranim bnei ha'ramachim in Esther 8:10 - a phrase the Talmud itself calls untranslatable - covering readings that identify the animals as mules, horses, camels, riders, or runners, an eight-legged folkloric creature, and the modern Persian-derived understanding of achashtranim as 'royal' steeds.Tue, 01 Jan 2008 00:00:00 GMTEstherTalmudPhilologyTranslationhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/is-there-a-pattern-to-the-five-books-of-moses/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/is-there-a-pattern-to-the-five-books-of-moses/Robert R. Appleson — Popularizes and extends Y. Honigwachs's theory of 'Shared Principles' - five paired themes drawn from aligning the two tablets of the Ten Commandments - arguing that these principles explain the sequence of the Five Books of Moses, the internal division of each Book into five parts, and even the subdivision of parts into five sections, offering a structural answer to critics who see the Torah's organization as arbitrary evidence of composite, non-Divine authorship.Tue, 01 Jan 2008 00:00:00 GMTTorahLiterary StructureTen CommandmentsDocumentary Hypothesishttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/glimpses-of-the-past-in-genesis-exodus/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/glimpses-of-the-past-in-genesis-exodus/Joel J. Forman — Connects the Hyksos invasion and rule of Egypt to the biblical account of Joseph and the Israelite sojourn, and applies basic population-growth mathematics to the Exodus census figure of 603,550 men, concluding that natural increase alone from Jacob's household of seventy could not plausibly account for that number and that immigration, or a smaller historical population, must be part of the explanation.Tue, 01 Jan 2008 00:00:00 GMTHyksosEgyptDemographyExodushttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/what-sarah-saw/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/what-sarah-saw/David J. Zucker — Examines what provokes Sarah's demand to banish Hagar and Ishmael after seeing Ishmael metzahek with Isaac (Gen. 21:9-10), weighing explanations ranging from Ishmael as ethnic Other and rabbinic accusations of sexual misconduct to a more benign reading of Ishmael as an overly influential older sibling, and situates Sarah's reaction within her broader, complicated biography as a woman who endured humiliation, barrenness, and the wife-sister deception before becoming matriarch of Israel.Tue, 01 Jan 2008 00:00:00 GMTSarahGenesisIshmaelMatriarchshttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/letters-to-the-editor-v36p1/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/letters-to-the-editor-v36p1/Various — Two letters responding to prior JBQ articles: Pinchas Kahn challenges a comparison in 'Self Effacement in the Bible' that implied man could become 'part of God,' and Dan Vogel acknowledges an earlier essay on Shylock he had overlooked while writing 'Balaam, Shakespeare, Shylock.' Followed by news of the Jewish Bible Association, including a members' trip to Megiddo and the welcoming of new Deputy Editor Mark Elliott Shapiro.Tue, 01 Jan 2008 00:00:00 GMTLetters to the Editorhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-rebellion-of-jehu/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-rebellion-of-jehu/P. J. Berlyn — A historical reconstruction of the coup that ended the House of Omri, set against the struggle for Ramoth-gilead and the wider contest between Aram and a rising Assyria. Traces how religious, social and economic grievances — focused above all on Jezebel — created the opening for a rebellion mounted by the military establishment against King Joram.Mon, 01 Oct 2007 00:00:00 GMTAncient Near EastKingshipLeadershipBiblical Narrativehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/balaam-is-laban/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/balaam-is-laban/Pinchas Kahn — Examines the anachronistic midrashic tradition, found in Targum Yonatan and the Yalkut Shimoni, that identifies Balaam with Laban the Aramean — figures separated by generations and by geography. Surveys the objections raised by Ibn Ezra and others, and the figurative readings offered in their place, from shared mastery of sorcery to kabbalistic accounts of Laban, Balaam and Amalek as the dross of the universe.Mon, 01 Oct 2007 00:00:00 GMTMidrashRabbinic ExegesisBalaamPatriarchal Narrativeshttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/balaam-shakespeare-shylock/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/balaam-shakespeare-shylock/Dan Vogel — Sets the Balaam narrative of Numbers 22-24 beside Shakespeare's creation of Shylock. Both were gentile poets of great gift, each set a task against the Jews; Balaam's curses were turned to blessings by direct Divine intervention. Argues from the text of The Merchant of Venice — and from Shakespeare's familiarity with the Geneva Bible, published two decades before the play — that a comparable redirection of a poet's intentions can be traced in the drama itself.Mon, 01 Oct 2007 00:00:00 GMTBalaamLiterature and the BibleRabbinic Exegesishttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/both-are-the-words-of-the-living-god/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/both-are-the-words-of-the-living-god/Shimon Bakon — Four pairs of biblical doctrines that appear logically opposed — a God both transcendent and immanent, Providence alongside freedom of choice, universalism alongside particularism, and the priest as guardian of ritual beside the prophet as guardian of social ethics. Drawing on Kadushin's organismic account of value concepts, the article argues these are not contradictions to be resolved but a duality essential to a living faith, echoing the talmudic verdict on Hillel and Shammai.Mon, 01 Oct 2007 00:00:00 GMTTheologyRabbinic LiteratureProphecyBiblical Criticismhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-prophets-of-israel-universalist-and-particularist/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-prophets-of-israel-universalist-and-particularist/Jacob Chinitz — Challenges the familiar claim that the Hebrew prophets championed ethics over ritual and universalism over national particularity. Surveying Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel and the Minor Prophets, the article finds ritual observance and national destiny bound together throughout — Malachi's much-quoted "have we not all one father" turns out to serve an argument against intermarriage — and concludes that the prophets were neither liberals nor radicals but realists.Mon, 01 Oct 2007 00:00:00 GMTProphecyBiblical LawRabbinic ExegesisLiturgyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-circumcision-performed-by-zipporah/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-circumcision-performed-by-zipporah/Fred Blumenthal — The three cryptic verses at Exodus 4:24-26 leave unresolved who was threatened with death, which son was circumcised, and why Zipporah rather than Moses performed the act. Rashi, Targum Jonathan, Ibn Ezra and Abraham ben HaRambam each answer differently. Proposes reading the episode allegorically instead, with Moses' formation between an Egyptian palace and a Midianite priest's household as the key to what the passage is doing.Mon, 01 Oct 2007 00:00:00 GMTExodus NarrativeMosesRabbinic ExegesisBiblical Lawhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-enigma-of-the-joseph-narrative/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-enigma-of-the-joseph-narrative/Chaim Spring and Jay Shapiro — Asks why fourteen of Genesis's fifty chapters are given to Joseph, who receives no direct revelation, builds no altars and offers no sacrifices, yet is known as HaTzaddik. The answer offered is that Joseph is the Jewish Everyman — the figure who must read God's will in ordinary events rather than explicit instruction — making his life the primary model for Jewish conduct in every later generation.Mon, 01 Oct 2007 00:00:00 GMTJoseph NarrativeGenesisPatriarchal NarrativesBiblical Narrativehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/meeting-an-angel/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/meeting-an-angel/Theodore Steinberg — A short reflection on the verb vayifga in Jacob's two encounters with angels, and on the midrash reading Makom not as a place but as a name for God — so that Jacob came upon not a mere campsite but the Lord of all space. Asks whether faith arrived at by surprise can be relied upon, and suggests that exploring Judaism deliberately beats waiting to stumble across it.Mon, 01 Oct 2007 00:00:00 GMTMidrashPatriarchal NarrativesGenesishttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/44th-annual-international-bible-contest/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/44th-annual-international-bible-contest/Joshua J. Adler — A report on the televised Independence Day contest in Jerusalem, in which 61 high school students from 34 countries competed after winning regional contests — with Colombia, Macedonia and Peru entering for the first time. Yishai Gaspan was declared the winner after a tie-break judged by former president Yitzhak Navon.Mon, 01 Oct 2007 00:00:00 GMTBible ContestHidon Ha-TanakhJewish Educationhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/letter-to-the-editor-the-word-ger/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/letter-to-the-editor-the-word-ger/Jacob Chinitz — A response to Stuart Krauss on the meaning of ger, arguing that Deuteronomy 29 includes the stranger not merely in particular mitzvot but in the Covenant itself, and citing Yehezkel Kaufmann's conclusion that the Torah was given to non-Israelites from the beginning.Mon, 01 Oct 2007 00:00:00 GMTConversionBiblical LawRabbinic Literaturehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/esau-and-jacob-revisited/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/esau-and-jacob-revisited/Pesach Schindler — Early midrash tends to excuse the failings of biblical figures, casting Jacob as the tzadik and Esau as the wicked brother — a reading that departs sharply from the plain sense of the text. This study traces that tendency and the counter-school of midrash that answered it, reasserting Divine fairness through measure-for-measure justice.Sun, 01 Jul 2007 00:00:00 GMTMidrashRabbinic ExegesisPatriarchal Narrativeshttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/patriarchal-history-action-and-reaction/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/patriarchal-history-action-and-reaction/Jeffrey M. Cohen — Jacob's flight from Laban produces a double deception: Jacob conceals his departure and Rachel steals the terafim, both described with the same verb for stealing. Following that vocabulary, the article shows a pattern of retaliation running through the patriarchal narratives — the deceiver of Isaac becoming, in turn, the one deceived.Sun, 01 Jul 2007 00:00:00 GMTPatriarchal NarrativesRabbinic ExegesisBiblical Narrativehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/restructuring-psalm-47/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/restructuring-psalm-47/David J. Zucker — Psalm 47 shares its four-word superscription with only Psalms 49 and 85. Rearranging its verses into parallel sets — reading verses 7 and 8 together and splitting verse 10 — brings out an emblematic, stair-like structure that makes the enthronement psalm's argument more emphatic without altering its message.Sun, 01 Jul 2007 00:00:00 GMTPsalmsBiblical PoetryTextual Criticismhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/sacrificing-isaac-a-new-interpretation/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/sacrificing-isaac-a-new-interpretation/Zoltan Fischer — Proposes that the test at Moriah was not whether Abraham would obey. Child sacrifice was unremarkable among his contemporaries, so obedience would have distinguished neither him nor his God. On this reading God sought an argument from Abraham's ethical nature, and the episode establishes once and for all that human sacrifice is not wanted.Sun, 01 Jul 2007 00:00:00 GMTPatriarchal NarrativesBiblical EthicsBiblical Exegesishttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/self-effacement-in-the-bible/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/self-effacement-in-the-bible/Gloria Wiederkehr-Pollack — Bittul hayesh — the surrender of thought, desire and life to the Divine will — is often credited to Platonism, but the article traces it through the Bible itself: Adam's sin, Abraham as dust and ashes, the humility of Moses, David's dance, the pilgrimage festivals, and martyrdom. Draws on the Malbim and Soloveitchik's ontic monism.Sun, 01 Jul 2007 00:00:00 GMTTheologyRabbinic ExegesisLiturgyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/shakespeares-forgivable-portrayal-of-shylock/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/shakespeares-forgivable-portrayal-of-shylock/Brian Weinstein — Traces the association of Jews with usury from the papal prohibitions through to Shakespeare, then shows that Shylock — an observant Jew — is made to violate four biblical and talmudic laws on lending that he would have known. Concludes that the portrayal reveals more about the playwright's grasp of human character than about Judaism.Sun, 01 Jul 2007 00:00:00 GMTLiterature and the BibleBiblical LawRabbinic Literaturehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/ruth-and-naomi-foremothers-of-david/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/ruth-and-naomi-foremothers-of-david/Moshe Reiss — Ruth inverts the pattern of Esther, Joseph and Daniel: a foreigner who succeeds in Israel rather than an Israelite who succeeds abroad. And she is a Moabite, on whom the ban of Deuteronomy 23:4 should have fallen. Follows the hesed extended by Boaz and the strategy devised by Naomi to the line that leads to King David.Sun, 01 Jul 2007 00:00:00 GMTWomen in the BibleKingshipBiblical Narrativehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/was-the-egyptian-experience-necessary/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/was-the-egyptian-experience-necessary/Joel Litke — The Babylonian and Roman exiles are presented in Scripture as consequences of failure, but no reason is given for the Egyptian bondage — it is foretold to Abraham generations before Israel exists. Argues the Egyptian experience was a crucible rather than a punishment, forming a people able to accept the Covenant they had never been asked to agree to.Sun, 01 Jul 2007 00:00:00 GMTExodus NarrativeTheologyAncient Near Easthttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/letters-to-the-editor-353/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/letters-to-the-editor-353/Gilad J. Gevaryahu and Asher Eder — Gevaryahu adds a commentary Michael Avioz's survey of Da'at Mikra passed over — Avraham Kahana's Tanach im Perush Mada'i, published from 1902 and reprinted in Israel, which Segal's own history of exegesis also ignored. Eder answers Israel Stein on sacred space and holy time by listing the other holinesses the Tanakh knows: God Himself, a kingdom of priests, the sons of Aaron, the nazirites, and even holy water.Sun, 01 Jul 2007 00:00:00 GMTHistory of InterpretationBiblical TheologyPriesthoodhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/seeing-the-good-of-israel/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/seeing-the-good-of-israel/Theodore Steinberg — Moses asks only for a glimpse of the good land, and a commentary notes that what he saw was not the land but the good in it — where the spies had seen the bad. Read alongside Heschel's three kinds of seeing, aesthetic, moral and religious, as an argument for looking at Israel with a willing eye.Sun, 01 Jul 2007 00:00:00 GMTLand of IsraelMosesBiblical Exegesishttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-literary-significance-of-the-name-lists-in-ezra-nehemiah/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-literary-significance-of-the-name-lists-in-ezra-nehemiah/Hayyim Angel — The name lists that fill Ezra-Nehemiah struck Josephus as an obstacle to the narrative, and he omitted them. Reading them instead as deliberate literary devices, this study argues they convey the scale of the return and the significance of each participant — and that their bulk offsets the book's conspicuously brief account of the Second Temple's dedication.Sun, 01 Jul 2007 00:00:00 GMTBiblical NarrativeBiblical CriticismSecond Templehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/jobs-perspectives-on-death/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/jobs-perspectives-on-death/Aron Pinker — Job cannot end his life but he can wish for death, and does so repeatedly. Distinguishing the two conceptions at work, this study argues the author uses death-as-extinction when building logical arguments against God, but falls back on the popular notion of Sheol in Job's emotional outbursts.Sun, 01 Apr 2007 00:00:00 GMTWisdom LiteratureTheologyBiblical Exegesishttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/moses-at-the-waters-of-meribah/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/moses-at-the-waters-of-meribah/Pinchas Kahn — The nature of Moses' sin at the rock is unclear, Aaron receives the same punishment despite a minor role, and the link between failing to sanctify God's name and being barred from the land is obscure. Reads the episode through psychological transference from the earlier water crisis at Rephidim and Korah's rebellion, where past emotion colours the response to a present event.Sun, 01 Apr 2007 00:00:00 GMTMosesExodus NarrativeLeadershiphttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-torah-as-divine-fire/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-torah-as-divine-fire/Mark Verman — Traces the image of Torah as fire from the disputed phrase mimino eshdat lamo in Deuteronomy 33:2 — rendered by the Masoretic tradition as a fiery law, and by Onkelos as given from amidst the fire — through Rashi's primordial black fire on white fire, Sifre Devarim, and the rabbinic sense that study itself is incendiary.Sun, 01 Apr 2007 00:00:00 GMTRabbinic LiteratureMidrashBiblical Hebrewhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/jonah-the-reluctant-prophet/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/jonah-the-reluctant-prophet/Fred Blumenthal — The Book of Jonah contains only five Hebrew words of prophetic speech, and even those were cancelled — leaving Jonah looking like a false prophet by the test of Deuteronomy 18:22. Argues the book is not primarily about repentance, which would make its first two chapters superfluous, but an exploration of what passes between a prophet and God once the status has been granted.Sun, 01 Apr 2007 00:00:00 GMTProphecyRabbinic ExegesisBiblical Narrativehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/chaos-or-chiasm/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/chaos-or-chiasm/Rachel Soller Yudkowsky — Abraham's story reads as a patchwork of journeys, challenges and separations. Taking Lekh Lekha and the Akedah as matching bookends, the article maps the intervening narrative as a chiasm — Sarah twice taken, Lot twice rescued, two covenants — and finds, unexpectedly, the birth of Ishmael occupying the central and therefore most emphatic position.Sun, 01 Apr 2007 00:00:00 GMTPatriarchal NarrativesBiblical NarrativeBiblical Exegesishttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-weight-of-the-ark-of-the-covenant/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-weight-of-the-ark-of-the-covenant/Elihu A. Schatz — A response to Josiah Derby's calculation that the Ark weighed some 288 pounds — too heavy for four men, yet Scripture has it carried on their shoulders repeatedly. Correcting the density of ancient gold, the thickness of the overlay, the length of the cubit and the weight of the Tablets brings the figure down to about 183 pounds.Sun, 01 Apr 2007 00:00:00 GMTTabernacleAncient Near EastBiblical Exegesishttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/phinehas-hero-or-vigilante/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/phinehas-hero-or-vigilante/Paul Steinberg — Numbers 25 introduces Phinehas by having him impale an Israelite man and a Midianite woman, after which a plague killing 24,000 ends and he is rewarded with the priesthood for all time. Works through three theological and ethical difficulties: what function the punishment serves, how the deaths of the likely innocent make expiation, and whether Phinehas acted as hero or vigilante.Sun, 01 Apr 2007 00:00:00 GMTBiblical EthicsRabbinic ExegesisPriesthoodhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-kiss-of-esau/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-kiss-of-esau/Mois A. Navon — Every letter of the word kissed in Genesis 33:4 carries a Masoretic dot. Weighs the readings this provoked — that the dots diminish the word and the kiss was insincere, that they add to it and Esau was genuinely moved, and R. Yannai's proposal that Esau meant to bite rather than kiss — against Ibn Ezra's dismissal of the whole exercise as child's play.Sun, 01 Apr 2007 00:00:00 GMTMidrashMasoretic TextPatriarchal Narrativeshttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/book-review-understanding-the-hebrew-bible/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/book-review-understanding-the-hebrew-bible/Dan Vogel — Elliot Rabin's introduction for the uninitiated organises the Hebrew Bible by genre — storytelling, law, history, prophecy, wisdom and poetry. The review finds him strongest on the literary sections and commends his willingness to confront the archaeological silence around the Patriarchs and the Exodus, while noting the question he leaves unanswered: how so inconsistent a book turned the western world to monotheism.Sun, 01 Apr 2007 00:00:00 GMTBook ReviewBiblical CriticismBiblical Narrativehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/letters-to-the-editor-352/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/letters-to-the-editor-352/Israel C. Stein — Two letters. The first qualifies Jeffrey Cohen's comparison of Abraham and Melchizedek, noting that Abraham too kept his guests outside the tent. The second argues that the childlessness of David and Michal is a deliberate biblical judgment, since a son of theirs would have carried royal blood from both Saul and David.Sun, 01 Apr 2007 00:00:00 GMTBiblical ExegesisKingshiphttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/hopping-between-two-opinions-ahab/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/hopping-between-two-opinions-ahab/Hayyim Angel — Kings devotes more space to Ahab than to any other northern monarch, and opens with a condemnation that colours everything after it. Weighing the talmudic dispute between R. Nahman, who held Ahab equally balanced, and R. Joseph, who did not, the essay examines Jezebel's degree of influence and the genuinely positive aspects of the reign.Mon, 01 Jan 2007 00:00:00 GMTKingshipProphecyRabbinic ExegesisLeadershiphttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/who-authorized-israelite-settlement-east-of-the-jordan/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/who-authorized-israelite-settlement-east-of-the-jordan/Shubert Spero — Reuben and Gad ask to settle the grazing land east of the Jordan, and Moses reacts with fury before accepting their offer to fight alongside the other tribes. The compromise answers his stated objection but leaves a larger question untouched: the promised land never included territory east of the river, so on whose authority was the request granted at all?Mon, 01 Jan 2007 00:00:00 GMTLand of IsraelMosesRabbinic ExegesisLeadershiphttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/biblical-formatting-visual-and-virtual/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/biblical-formatting-visual-and-virtual/Russell Jay Hendel — Modern printing signals emphasis with boldface, de-emphasis with parentheses, unity with paragraphing. Argues the biblical authors achieved the same effects by other means — word repetition, the Masoretic dotting of a word, parallel verbal structures, repeated connectives — and reads these as intended formatting rather than later exegetical overlay, following Hirsch's model of the Written Law as lecture notes.Mon, 01 Jan 2007 00:00:00 GMTMasoretic TextBiblical HebrewRabbinic ExegesisTextual Criticismhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/abraham-and-balaam-a-biblical-contrast/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/abraham-and-balaam-a-biblical-contrast/Ricky Novick — Pirke Avot sets the disciples of Abraham against those of Balaam the wicked. Beyond that pairing the article finds real symmetries: both came from Aram Naharaim, both were first prophets — one within Israel, one outside it — both set out on missions that produced the opposite of what was intended, and both saddled their own asses, which the midrash reads as love and hatred alike upsetting the natural order.Mon, 01 Jan 2007 00:00:00 GMTMidrashRabbinic ExegesisPatriarchal NarrativesBalaamhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/samson-a-tragedy-in-three-acts/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/samson-a-tragedy-in-three-acts/Shimon Bakon — Where Greek tragedy turns on fate, biblical tragedy turns on a flaw in the central character — closer to Shakespeare than to Sophocles. Reads Judges 13-16 in three acts, Promising Youth, As a Driven Leaf and Downfall, following a man given supernatural strength and a nazirite calling he never understood, whose actions against the Philistines are private vengeance rather than deliverance.Mon, 01 Jan 2007 00:00:00 GMTBiblical NarrativeLeadershipLiterature and the Biblehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-role-of-the-shoe-in-the-bible/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-role-of-the-shoe-in-the-bible/Jacob Chinitz — Removing a shoe marks a loss of dignity, transfers property, and is required in holy places — so the shoe is at once dignified dress and a thing of dust. Traces that double sense through the halitzah ceremony of levirate marriage, the Burning Bush, and Amos, noting that Hebrew has no word for wearing shoes, only for being barefoot.Mon, 01 Jan 2007 00:00:00 GMTBiblical LawRabbinic LiteratureBiblical Hebrewhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/restructuring-psalm-85/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/restructuring-psalm-85/David J. Zucker — The third in a series on the psalms sharing a four-word superscription with Psalms 47 and 49. Rearranged into parallel configurations, Psalm 85's movement from past forgiveness through present petition to anticipated deliverance becomes more emphatic, and its closing verse reads as much as expectation as assurance.Mon, 01 Jan 2007 00:00:00 GMTPsalmsBiblical PoetryTextual Criticismhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/abrahams-moment-of-decision/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/abrahams-moment-of-decision/Moshe Reiss — God promises the covenant through Isaac, then commands his sacrifice. Approaching that contradiction through Rembrandt, who paints Abraham covering his son's eyes — a father who cannot look into them and still strike — and through Levinas, for whom Abraham saw God in Isaac's face and heard 'thou shalt not kill', making the episode an assertion of the ethical rather than its suspension.Mon, 01 Jan 2007 00:00:00 GMTPatriarchal NarrativesBiblical EthicsLiterature and the Biblehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/letters-to-the-editor-351/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/letters-to-the-editor-351/Israel C. Stein and Susan Tourkin-Komet — Two letters. Stein corrects several citations in Herbert Block's essay distinguishing Jacob from Israel, and offers a reading of Genesis 49:2 in which hearing is passive and listening active. Tourkin-Komet, a poet, takes issue with Dan Vogel's description of Yakov Azriel's verse as mostly free, arguing it carries considerable internal rhyme.Mon, 01 Jan 2007 00:00:00 GMTBiblical ExegesisLiterature and the Biblehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-solomon-and-sheba-story-in-ethiopia/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-solomon-and-sheba-story-in-ethiopia/Jack Fellman — In Ethiopia the meeting of the two monarchs is not literature but foundation document. Follows the terse biblical account through centuries of accretion into the Kebra Nagast, where the Queen converts and bears Solomon a son, Menelik, who brings the Ark to Axum — legitimising a Solomonic dynasty that ran to Haile Selassie as its 225th ruler.Mon, 01 Jan 2007 00:00:00 GMTAncient Near EastKingshipLiterature and the Biblehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/more-bible-curiosities-and-mistranslations/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/more-bible-curiosities-and-mistranslations/Gabriel A. Sivan — A chronological roster of oddly named Bibles, from the Complutensian Polyglot of 1514 onward: the 'Bug' Bible, whose Psalm 91:5 warns against bugges by night; the 'Breeches' Bible, which clothes Adam and Eve in Genesis 3:7; the Ferrara Bible issued in two dedications for two audiences. An archaism or a printer's error is enough to turn an edition into a collector's item.Sun, 01 Oct 2006 00:00:00 GMTBible TranslationHistory of InterpretationChristianity and the Biblehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/david-dances-michal-scoffs/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/david-dances-michal-scoffs/Gerardo G. Sachs — Four verses in II Samuel 6 carry a whole drama with three actors: David, Michal, and the Ark itself. Follows the Ark from Sinai through Shiloh, Philistine captivity and Kiryat Yearim to David's new capital, where a fatal accident halts the procession — and asks what kind of dance the word m'karker describes, and why it cost Michal her standing and her children.Sun, 01 Oct 2006 00:00:00 GMTKingshipBiblical NarrativeWomen in the BibleTabernaclehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/four-homicides-how-these-were-judged-by-the-bible/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/four-homicides-how-these-were-judged-by-the-bible/Moshe Soller — The Pentateuch records four killings: Abel by Cain, the men of Shechem by Simeon and Levi, the Egyptian by Moses, and Zimri by Phinehas. Two are judged explicitly, two only by implication. Reads the linguistic and thematic parallels — Cain's brazen reply echoed in Simeon and Levi's, Moses called ish mizri like the man he killed — to infer the verdict in each case and the criterion behind it.Sun, 01 Oct 2006 00:00:00 GMTBiblical EthicsBiblical LawBiblical NarrativeMoseshttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/prolegomena-to-the-book-of-proverbs/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/prolegomena-to-the-book-of-proverbs/Yosef Green — An introduction to Proverbs and to the wisdom teachers who stand behind it — a class apart from priest and prophet, addressing the individual rather than the nation. Examines the mashal as a form and the book's characteristic mode of personal address, 'my son', which sets it beside the wisdom literature of the wider ancient Near East while remaining distinctly Israelite.Sun, 01 Oct 2006 00:00:00 GMTWisdom LiteratureBiblical PoetryAncient Near Easthttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/retroversion-in-medieval-jewish-biblical-exegesis/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/retroversion-in-medieval-jewish-biblical-exegesis/Ben Zion Katz — Retroversion — reconstructing a Hebrew Vorlage from an ancient translation — is usually treated as a modern critical technique. Shows that Radak and Norzi's Minchat Shai already practised it on the Targum to Jeremiah, inferring the Hebrew text their translator must have had before him, centuries before the method was named.Sun, 01 Oct 2006 00:00:00 GMTTextual CriticismMedieval ExegesisTargumMasoretic Texthttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/sacred-space-and-holy-time/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/sacred-space-and-holy-time/Israel C. Stein — Creation's six days are called good; only the Seventh is called holy. Holiness in space arrives later and, on one reading, only as a concession after the Golden Calf. The verb v'shamru joins the two: the Levites stand guard over the Tabernacle, all Israel stands guard over the Sabbath. Unlike Eden or the land, the Sabbath is portable and cannot suffer dislocation.Sun, 01 Oct 2006 00:00:00 GMTSabbathTabernacleBiblical TheologyPriesthoodhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/seder-olam-and-the-sabbaticals-part-2/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/seder-olam-and-the-sabbaticals-part-2/Rodger C. Young — The second part of a study of the sabbatical cycle recorded in Seder Olam. Tests the years 588 BCE and 69 CE — the sabbaticals associated with the destruction of the First and Second Temples — against the chronological evidence, weighing the reconstructions of Whiston, Gordon and Sarna, and asks which cycle the rabbinic and Josephan data actually support.Sun, 01 Oct 2006 00:00:00 GMTBiblical ChronologySecond Temple PeriodRabbinic Literaturehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-43rd-annual-international-bible-contest/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-43rd-annual-international-bible-contest/Joshua J. Adler — A report on the 2006 Chidon HaTanakh, televised from Jerusalem on Independence Day with the Prime Minister asking the final question. Fifty-nine students from 34 countries competed in the Diaspora round at Ashkelon; Yisrael Witte of Canada won it, and Israeli student Adi Diamant took the main contest. Poland, Romania, Latvia and Uruguay were represented for the first time.Sun, 01 Oct 2006 00:00:00 GMTBible ContestJewish Educationhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-daat-mikra-commentary-series/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-daat-mikra-commentary-series/Michael Avioz — An assessment of Mossad Harav Kook's Da'at Mikra, completed in 2003 after more than thirty years. Its founding guidelines required a commentary rooted in classical exegesis that would draw on modern scholarship only where the conclusions do not run counter to Jewish tradition. Weighs its achievements — the codex base text, its realia, its influence on Olam ha-Tanakh and Mikra Leyisrael — against that constraint, and asks whether the series merits the designation scholarly.Sun, 01 Oct 2006 00:00:00 GMTHistory of InterpretationBiblical CriticismModern Jewish Thoughthttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-word-ger-in-the-bible-and-its-implications/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-word-ger-in-the-bible-and-its-implications/Stuart Krauss — Most translations render ger as 'proselyte'. Argues that through the First Temple period it meant only 'stranger' — Rashi, Nahmanides and Ibn Ezra read it that way — and that circumcision was required of a male ger only to share in the Passover offering, which is not conversion in any later sense. Traces the consequences for patrilineal descent and for the absence of any conversion rite for women.Sun, 01 Oct 2006 00:00:00 GMTBiblical LawBiblical HebrewConversionMedieval Exegesishttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/abrahams-hospitality/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/abrahams-hospitality/Jeffrey M. Cohen — Melchizedek brought bread and wine out to Abraham on the road; Abraham brought his three visitors inside. Setting the two acts side by side explains why only one man became the byword for hospitality — the chain of verbs in Genesis 18 has an aged man two days from circumcision running, hurrying, running again, and standing over his guests himself rather than delegating.Sat, 01 Jul 2006 00:00:00 GMTPatriarchal NarrativesBiblical EthicsBiblical Hebrewhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/biblical-puns/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/biblical-puns/Russell Jay Hendel — Takes 'pun' broadly — innuendo, witticism, paronomasia — and surveys the technique in talmudic and midrashic exegesis under two methods, the exception and the alternate explanation. Cases turn on spelling, style, phrasing and numerical coincidence: David losing his title on his deathbed, the cantillation of Isaiah 45:1 separating the anointed from Cyrus, and the one grandchild in Numbers 26 whose name already contains the divine letters.Sat, 01 Jul 2006 00:00:00 GMTRabbinic ExegesisMidrashBiblical HebrewMasoretic Texthttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/distinguishing-jacob-and-israel/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/distinguishing-jacob-and-israel/Herbert Block — Two names in one man, and God uses both in a single verse. Argues the choice is never idle: the compliant Jacob who outwitted Laban by subtlety could not be the patriarch who names a people, and after the night struggle a second character resides alongside the first — Israel surfacing wherever the text calls for decision and strong action.Sat, 01 Jul 2006 00:00:00 GMTPatriarchal NarrativesBiblical NarrativeBiblical HebrewRabbinic Exegesishttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/letters-to-the-editor-343/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/letters-to-the-editor-343/Curt Leviant and Joel Litke — Leviant objects that Joel Litke's essay on Rashi's view of Genesis excoriates Canaanite immorality while passing over the moral lapses of the Israelite heroes — Judah and Tamar, Reuben and Bilhah, David and Bathsheba, and the slaughter at Shechem. Litke replies that Rashi's concern is the justification for assigning the land, and that the conduct of the patriarchs has no bearing on that comment.Sat, 01 Jul 2006 00:00:00 GMTRabbinic ExegesisBiblical EthicsMedieval Exegesishttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/multiple-functions-of-wells-in-the-tanakh/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/multiple-functions-of-wells-in-the-tanakh/Ronald T. Hyman — Unlike rain, springs or brooks, a well is an invention — it takes tools, knowledge of the terrain, and the strength to hold it against envious neighbours. Sets out ten functions the well serves in the Tanakh, from bare survival (Hagar and Ishmael in the wilderness) to the emotional (David craving water from the well at Bethlehem's gate, then pouring it out as a libation) and the celebratory alliteration of matzanu mayim.Sat, 01 Jul 2006 00:00:00 GMTBiblical NarrativeAncient Near EastBiblical HebrewLand of Israelhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/review-threads-from-a-coat-of-many-colors/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/review-threads-from-a-coat-of-many-colors/Dan Vogel — Poetry as one of the seventy ways of reading a text. Azriel's free verse mostly earns its form, using the line break to weight the words on either side of it, and his best poem — 'The Sacrifice of Sarah' — lifts the Akedah out of millennia of philosophical justification and hands its enormity to a single character, the mother.Sat, 01 Jul 2006 00:00:00 GMTLiterature and the BibleBiblical PoetryPatriarchal Narrativeshttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/seder-olam-and-the-sabbaticals-part-1/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/seder-olam-and-the-sabbaticals-part-1/Rodger C. Young — Much has been written on the religious and social meaning of the sabbatical year, little on its chronological use. Because the cycle is short enough that it could never be lost track of while the people were in the land, any two attested sabbaticals must be an exact multiple of seven years apart — a check on any chronology derived from reign lengths. Applies that constraint, with the remarks in Seder Olam, to the 587 versus 586 date for the burning of the First Temple.Sat, 01 Jul 2006 00:00:00 GMTBiblical ChronologyRabbinic LiteratureSecond Temple PeriodBiblical Lawhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-positive-and-negative-traits-of-gideon/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-positive-and-negative-traits-of-gideon/Hayyim Angel — Judges 6-7 runs the standard cycle to its close, and then Chapter 8 keeps going. Every act in that chapter can be both justified and condemned — the torture at Succoth, the massacre at Penuel that exceeded the threat, the personal grievance offered in place of a claim of authority. Chapter 9 then splits the ambiguity in two, Jotham carrying Gideon's best and Abimelech his worst, making the reign the turning point of the book.Sat, 01 Jul 2006 00:00:00 GMTLeadershipBiblical NarrativeMedieval ExegesisKingshiphttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/zoroastrianism-and-biblical-religion/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/zoroastrianism-and-biblical-religion/Charles David Isbell — A sequel to two earlier essays on Minimalism, which held that the Hebrew Bible is essentially a product of the Persian or Greek era. Surveys the question of dependence and borrowing between Zoroastrianism and biblical religion, setting it beside the well-attested Mesopotamian parallels and the Egyptian coloration of Genesis 38 to Exodus 14, and notes where the Persian loanwords do — and pointedly do not — appear.Sat, 01 Jul 2006 00:00:00 GMTAncient Near EastBiblical CriticismSecond Temple PeriodComparative Religionhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/balaam-and-his-talking-donkey/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/balaam-and-his-talking-donkey/Fred Blumenthal — Jeremiah accepted the future he foresaw and worked against it; Jonah fled from it. Balaam did neither, and travelled with two servants who stand for the split in him — the true prophet and the man who wanted Israel's destiny altered. Following Maimonides in taking the episode as prophetic vision, reads the donkey as the inner voice of witchcraft and the sword-bearing angel as coming for the prophet in him, not the man.Sat, 01 Apr 2006 00:00:00 GMTBalaamProphecyRabbinic ExegesisMedieval Exegesishttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/creation-and-the-limitations-of-the-creator/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/creation-and-the-limitations-of-the-creator/Jacob Chinitz — What kind of king has no subject and no realm? Creation makes God King, and in the same act limits Him — not for want of power but because among His powers is the power to limit Himself. Traces that self-limitation through the kabbalistic tzimtzum and through free will, nature and logic, and asks what consolation the Kaddish imagines mere creatures offering their Creator.Sat, 01 Apr 2006 00:00:00 GMTBiblical TheologyCreationJewish PhilosophyKabbalahhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/deborah-judge-prophetess-and-poet/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/deborah-judge-prophetess-and-poet/Shimon Bakon — Joshua appointed no successor, and the tribes were left in the hills while the Canaanites held the fortified lowlands. Reads the two accounts of the victory over Sisera — the narrative of Judges 4 and the song of Judges 5 — and asks what makes the ode one of the finest in world literature: its invocation of heaven and earth after the manner of Haazinu, and a parallelism whose symmetry is itself an image of certitude.Sat, 01 Apr 2006 00:00:00 GMTLeadershipBiblical PoetryWomen in the BibleProphecyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/dodanim-rodanim-three-approaches/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/dodanim-rodanim-three-approaches/Zvi Ron — A son of Javan is Dodanim in Genesis 10 and Rodanim in I Chronicles 1. Genesis Rabbah reads the pair as a lesson — cousins when Israel is high, oppressors when it is low. Radak answers that dalet and resh simply look alike, and that Scripture preserved both readings. Sets these against a third approach, and beside the parallel cases of Deuel/Reuel and Rivlah/Divlah.Sat, 01 Apr 2006 00:00:00 GMTTextual CriticismMidrashMedieval ExegesisMasoretic Texthttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/end-of-exile/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/end-of-exile/Theodore Steinberg — Tradition assigns a cause to each later exile — idolatry, bloodshed, causeless hatred — but none to the first. The Talmud blames two selas' worth of wool, yet the enslavement was foretold to Abraham long before Joseph's coat existed. So for once the calamity was not our fault. Turns to Yehuda Halevi's Kuzari for what the Egyptian experience was for: the defeat of despair.Sat, 01 Apr 2006 00:00:00 GMTExileJewish PhilosophyRabbinic LiteratureBiblical Theologyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/nahum-1-acrostic-and-authorship/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/nahum-1-acrostic-and-authorship/Aron Pinker — Since the 1880s the theophany hymn opening Nahum has been read as an alphabetic acrostic — the only candidate among the prophets, and if genuine, with Psalms 9-10 the earliest in the Hebrew Bible. Weighs the motives a poet might have for the form (aesthetics, mnemonics, completeness, prowess) against the state of the text, in which the alphabetic order is so truncated that no reader noticed it for two millennia.Sat, 01 Apr 2006 00:00:00 GMTBiblical PoetryTextual CriticismProphecyBiblical Criticismhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/shechem-a-foreshadowing-of-the-future/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/shechem-a-foreshadowing-of-the-future/Moshe Schwartz — Both Abram and Jacob enter Canaan by way of Shechem, and so, on the day they cross the Jordan, do the Israelites. Following Rashi and Nahmanides on the principle that what befell the patriarchs foreshadows their descendants, and Brown-Driver-Briggs on shechem as shoulder, the burden of rule — a place that made its inhabitants feel important, and where affliction ripened: Dinah, the sale of Joseph, the schism of the kingdom.Sat, 01 Apr 2006 00:00:00 GMTPatriarchal NarrativesRabbinic ExegesisMedieval ExegesisLand of Israelhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-biblical-view-of-tyre/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-biblical-view-of-tyre/P. J. Berlyn — Hemmed in by a meagre hinterland, the Phoenician city-states took to the sea, and Tyre — a citadel on a quarter-mile of rock, so stoutly walled it withstood sieges for years — became the entrepôt Ezekiel apostrophised as the perfection of beauty. Traces the biblical portrait of that wealth and of the traffic in people denounced by Amos and Joel, and the prophets' confidence that Tyrian arrogance would bring it down.Sat, 01 Apr 2006 00:00:00 GMTAncient Near EastProphecyIdolatryKingshiphttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-family-relationship-of-simeon-and-dinah/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-family-relationship-of-simeon-and-dinah/Moshe Reiss — Reads the massacre at Shechem back into the household that produced it. Leah named her sons for a husband who never loved her; her daughter met the one other man in the Bible described as speaking tenderly to a woman. Jacob's deathbed curse and Simeon's absence from the blessing of Moses suggest the killing was rejected — and Dinah's own preference is never once asked.Sat, 01 Apr 2006 00:00:00 GMTPatriarchal NarrativesWomen in the BibleBiblical EthicsBiblical Narrativehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-sabbath-to-remember-to-observe-to-make/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-sabbath-to-remember-to-observe-to-make/Asher Eder — Exodus says remember the sabbath, Deuteronomy says observe it — and adds a third verb usually passed over, to make the day. Reads the two versions of the Decalogue as revelation and exposition forty years apart: one giving a cosmological reason under the divine Name of mercy, the other a down-to-earth instruction to a generation born in the desert, grounded in the memory of slavery.Sat, 01 Apr 2006 00:00:00 GMTSabbathBiblical LawBiblical HebrewMoseshttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/why-shamayim-as-sky/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/why-shamayim-as-sky/Gerardo G. Sachs — Shamayim exists only in the plural, and so does mayim, which appears one verse later. Kabbalists read esh combined with mayim; Brown-Driver-Briggs reads a shafel prefix meaning 'gives water', the source of rainfall. Setting that beside the Hebrew shin that intensifies a root, and beside a sky that looks blue for the same reason the sea does, gives shamayim as the superlative of water.Sat, 01 Apr 2006 00:00:00 GMTBiblical HebrewCreationKabbalahhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/why-the-walls-of-jericho-came-tumbling-down/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/why-the-walls-of-jericho-came-tumbling-down/Shubert Spero — Not a replacement for the text but a reality that may lie behind it. Connects the two odd features of the story — Rahab's house built into the wall, and the seven-day procession — and argues that of Yadin's five methods for taking a fortified city, only ruse was open to Joshua. On this reading Rahab's rescue happened earlier than the narrative places it, and the scarlet thread marked the section of wall that would give way.Sat, 01 Apr 2006 00:00:00 GMTConquestBiblical NarrativeArchaeologyLeadershiphttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/a-latch-and-clasp-deuteronomy-and-genesis/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/a-latch-and-clasp-deuteronomy-and-genesis/Moshe Soller — The last verses of Moses' blessing and the verses of the expulsion from Eden share seven words — kedem, va-yomer, va-y'garesh, va-yishkon, herev, derekh and more. Seven is not chance. Reads the pair as a latch joining the end of the Torah to its beginning, and the entry into a land flowing with milk and honey as the annulment of a sentence of thorns and thistles: a second chance for mankind.Sun, 01 Jan 2006 00:00:00 GMTLand of IsraelBiblical HebrewBiblical TheologyMoseshttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-folly-of-impetuous-speech/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-folly-of-impetuous-speech/Yossi Feintuch — Death and life are in the power of the tongue, and four episodes show it. Adam adds a prohibition God never gave, so that one harmless touch discredits the whole command. Rebekah invites her son's curse onto herself and loses him for twenty years, dying before he returns. Rachel demands children or death, and Jacob curses whoever took the teraphim.Sun, 01 Jan 2006 00:00:00 GMTBiblical EthicsPatriarchal NarrativesWisdom LiteratureBiblical Narrativehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-utopian-map-in-ezekiel/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-utopian-map-in-ezekiel/Harold Brodsky — Joshua's tribal allocations follow the topography; Ezekiel's disregard it, and his territories hover over the land with no landmark to anchor them — not even Jerusalem is named. Argues that the boundaries and the allocations should therefore not be mapped together, and that the equal strips express a vision radical for its time: a union of tribes each like his brother, after an old order that had broken apart.Sun, 01 Jan 2006 00:00:00 GMTProphecyLand of IsraelExileTemplehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/a-significant-insignificance-jacob-and-pharaoh/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/a-significant-insignificance-jacob-and-pharaoh/Leon Kosofsky — The head of a family of seventy meets the ruler of a mighty kingdom, and all that passes is a question about age. Why record it? Because the emptiness is the point: the parties have no shared agenda. Joseph's brothers ask to sojourn, lagur; Pharaoh answers settle, hoshev. One means to stay temporarily and keep Egypt out; the other wants trustworthy herdsmen in Goshen for good.Sun, 01 Jan 2006 00:00:00 GMTPatriarchal NarrativesBiblical NarrativeBiblical HebrewJosephhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-book-of-job-as-a-book-of-morality/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-book-of-job-as-a-book-of-morality/Bernard Ehrlich — Bava Batra reaches no consensus on Job — Jew or gentile, historical or invented, patriarchal age or Second Temple — and that absence of tradition frees a reader to work from the text alone. Argues the book is not only theology but morality, and that the prose frame is indispensable: without the heavenly scene we could not umpire the debate, because we would not know for certain that the suffering was undeserved.Sun, 01 Jan 2006 00:00:00 GMTWisdom LiteratureBiblical EthicsRabbinic LiteratureSufferinghttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/sleep-from-the-eyes-slumber-from-the-eyelids/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/sleep-from-the-eyes-slumber-from-the-eyelids/Charles David Isbell — The morning blessings thank God for ordinary moments, and Berakhot ties one of them to washing the face. The biblical record suggests a weightier reason. Sisera, Samson, Saul in the wilderness of Ziph, the mother before Solomon, Jonah in the hold — sleep is where things are lost, and the Assyrian army was unconquerable because it never slept.Sun, 01 Jan 2006 00:00:00 GMTBiblical HebrewRabbinic LiteratureLiturgyBiblical Narrativehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/in-your-lying-down-and-in-your-rising-up/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/in-your-lying-down-and-in-your-rising-up/Drew Kaplan — Gathers what the Bible prescribes for the bed: words of Torah when you lie down, and against it, Micah's men who design evil on their beds and cannot sleep until they have made someone fall. Then the cases where sleep must wait — the creditor holding a poor man's cloak at sunset, the rash pledge, the harvest — and the Psalmist on the emptiness of rising early and staying up late for bread.Sun, 01 Jan 2006 00:00:00 GMTBiblical EthicsWisdom LiteratureBiblical Lawhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/acharei-mot-and-the-strange-fire/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/acharei-mot-and-the-strange-fire/Jeffrey M. Cohen — Why should adding a ritual flourish cost two lives, when synagogue leaders have been doing it ever since? Follows the Netziv of Volozhin in reading the strange fire as metaphor: Nadav and Avihu felt themselves ablaze with a private spirituality at the very ceremony meant to bind the priesthood into one, and in serving their own religious need rather than God's command came close to idolatry.Sun, 01 Jan 2006 00:00:00 GMTPriesthoodBiblical LawRabbinic ExegesisIdolatryhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/gid-hanasheh-as-forgetfulness/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/gid-hanasheh-as-forgetfulness/Theodore Steinberg — The dictionaries cannot agree what gid hanasheh is — thigh vein, thigh muscle, sciatic nerve — but the root nasheh elsewhere means forgetting, as in the name Joseph gave his firstborn. Reads the injured sinew as a gift of forgetfulness, which reconciliation between Jacob and Esau and between Joseph and his brothers both required, and notes its dark side in Moses' rebuke and in the grudge.Sun, 01 Jan 2006 00:00:00 GMTBiblical HebrewPatriarchal NarrativesRabbinic ExegesisBiblical Theologyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/i-am-a-hebrew-jonahs-conflict-with-gods-mercy/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/i-am-a-hebrew-jonahs-conflict-with-gods-mercy/Hayyim Angel — Forty-eight verses, and still no agreed account of why Jonah fled. Abarbanel rejects the midrashic answers; the Jerusalem Talmud's contest between wisdom, prophecy and God sets Jonah against repentance itself but leaves the sailors and the psalm unexplained. Proposes that what Jonah could not accept was mercy extended to pagans — even to sailors who behave better than he does.Sun, 01 Jan 2006 00:00:00 GMTProphecyRepentanceRabbinic ExegesisMedieval Exegesishttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/letter-to-the-editor-341/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/letter-to-the-editor-341/Moshe Reiss — On Jeffrey Cohen's essay about the bridegroom of blood. Reiss presses the Arabic hatana, circumcision, against the Hebrew hatan: Zipporah had been married for years, so the words fit her just-circumcised son rather than her husband. And since milah means both circumcision and word, the man with the uncircumcised son is the one who calls himself of uncircumcised lips.Sun, 01 Jan 2006 00:00:00 GMTBiblical HebrewMosesBiblical Lawhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/on-and-off-the-beaten-track-in-tel-azeka/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/on-and-off-the-beaten-track-in-tel-azeka/Peter Abelow — Azeka was among the first cities Joshua took and among the last in Judea to fall, named with Lachish in Jeremiah as the fortified towns still holding out — and a Lachish ostracon from those days reads that the fires of Azeka have been extinguished. Four centuries earlier its residents had box seats over the Valley of Elah, where the stream David drew his five stones from still runs.Sun, 01 Jan 2006 00:00:00 GMTArchaeologyLand of IsraelConquesthttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/review-esther-ruth-jonah-deciphered/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/review-esther-ruth-jonah-deciphered/Harvey A. Chesterman — Three short books with strong narrative lines, read publicly and known to everyone, put through historical, archaeological and philological deciphering. How did Haman rise so suddenly, and why the tax on the mainland and the islands? Who was the Ploni Almoni with first refusal in Ruth? And a reading of Jonah in which ship, storm, fish and gourd all allegorise the siege of Samaria.Sun, 01 Jan 2006 00:00:00 GMTArchaeologyBiblical NarrativeHistory of Interpretationhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/a-dream-of-a-dream-in-daniel-2/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/a-dream-of-a-dream-in-daniel-2/Aron Pinker — Daniel must recover a dream he was never told and then interpret it, on pain of death — Joseph's feat under harder terms. Asks what the chapter is for: whether it establishes Daniel as a prophet, and whether the night vision qualifies. The Talmud makes him superior to Haggai, Zechariah and Malachi in what he saw and inferior in that he was never sent to Israel; the medievals were less generous still.Sat, 01 Oct 2005 00:00:00 GMTProphecyExileRabbinic LiteratureMedieval Exegesishttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/fathers-and-sons/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/fathers-and-sons/Shimon Bakon — Biblical narration is famously brief — Jacob's grief over Joseph takes two verses where Priam's over Hector takes many hexameters — which leaves little to build psychology on and much room for imagination. Reads several father-son pairs where the son is nothing like the father: Abraham and Isaac, and the rebellious sons, Gideon and Abimelech among them.Sat, 01 Oct 2005 00:00:00 GMTPatriarchal NarrativesBiblical NarrativeLeadershipLiterature and the Biblehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/festschrift-shimon-bakon-90th-birthday/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/festschrift-shimon-bakon-90th-birthday/The Editorial Board — Tributes from the Jewish Bible Association and the journal's editors to Shimon Bakon, who joined the editorial board of Dor leDor in 1975 and had by then edited the Quarterly for eighteen years. Born in Czechoslovakia, a philosophy doctorate at Masaryk in 1939, three years at Torah Vodaath, the U.S. Army in North Africa and Italy, Jewish education in Bridgeport and Springfield, and aliyah in 1974.Sat, 01 Oct 2005 00:00:00 GMTJewish EducationHistory of Interpretationhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/hannahs-parallel-thoughts-and-allusions/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/hannahs-parallel-thoughts-and-allusions/Ronald T. Hyman — An imagined evening conversation between Hannah and Elkanah after she returns from Shiloh, built to draw out the allusions in her song. She was barren like Sarah, Rebekah, Rachel and Manoah's wife; she vowed as Jacob vowed at Bethel; she dedicated her son as a nazirite like Samson's mother; and singing her exultation she wonders whether she too will be called a prophetess.Sat, 01 Oct 2005 00:00:00 GMTWomen in the BibleBiblical PoetryProphecyPrayerhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-42nd-annual-international-bible-contest/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-42nd-annual-international-bible-contest/Joshua J. Adler — A report on the 2005 Chidon HaTanakh. The Diaspora round, contested by 60 students from 34 countries, was held at Kibbutz Dorot near Sderot as a show of support for a town under rocket fire, with the mayor and 200 local pupils present. Haim Kandel of St. Louis won it and placed fourth in the main contest, which went to Shmuel Alpert of Jerusalem.Sat, 01 Oct 2005 00:00:00 GMTBible ContestJewish Educationhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-fall-and-rise-of-job-the-dissenter/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-fall-and-rise-of-job-the-dissenter/Moshe Reiss — A book by an unknown Jewish author about a gentile who never existed, asking a question that belongs to everyone — which is why more has been written on it than on any book but Psalms. It disturbs the moral order it inherits, making room for chance and the irrational, and leaves Job to look for another order that will account for his plight.Sat, 01 Oct 2005 00:00:00 GMTWisdom LiteratureSufferingBiblical TheologyBiblical Ethicshttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-gold-of-the-ark/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-gold-of-the-ark/Josiah Derby — Where did Bezalel learn goldsmithing? Only Egypt, which suggests skilled Hebrews were apprenticed to craftsmen rather than sent to the brick fields. Then a calculation: assuming an overlay a sixty-fourth of an inch thick and a kapporet thick enough not to buckle, the chest, poles, rings, coronet and cherubim come to some 178 pounds of gold — set against the total contributed in Exodus 38:24.Sat, 01 Oct 2005 00:00:00 GMTTabernacleAncient Near EastBiblical LawArchaeologyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-rise-of-the-house-of-omri/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-rise-of-the-house-of-omri/P. J. Berlyn — Judah kept one dynasty for 430 years; Israel ran through nine in 210, seven of them taken by coup. With fearful symmetry, two kings fell in a second regnal year while the army besieged Gibbethon — Nadab in the field, Elah drunk in Tirzah. Zimri, captain of half the chariots, held the throne seven days before word reached the camp and the army made Omri king.Sat, 01 Oct 2005 00:00:00 GMTKingshipAncient Near EastBiblical NarrativeLeadershiphttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-word-torah-in-the-torah/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-word-torah-in-the-torah/Jacob Chinitz — Torah appears thirty-two times in the Pentateuch. Sorts every occurrence into four senses — law in general, a rule for a particular case, the contents of the Torah, and the physical scroll — and finds that all but one of the twenty-one self-referential uses fall in Deuteronomy. Behind the count sits a larger question: is the Torah aware of itself as a book?Sat, 01 Oct 2005 00:00:00 GMTBiblical HebrewBiblical LawRabbinic ExegesisBiblical Theologyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/why-start-jacob-and-joseph-with-a-j/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/why-start-jacob-and-joseph-with-a-j/Daniel D. Stuhlman — Ya'akov and Yosef both begin with yod, and English has a perfectly good /y/ — so why the J? Follows the alphabet from the Northwest Semitic script through Phoenician, Greek, Etruscan and Latin, and the long-standing problem that no alphabet maps one-to-one onto the sounds of speech, leaving the transliterator to choose between the written and the spoken form.Sat, 01 Oct 2005 00:00:00 GMTBiblical HebrewBible TranslationAncient Near Easthttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-riddle-of-psalm-49/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-riddle-of-psalm-49/David J. Zucker — The Riddle of Psalm 49 by David J. Zucker.Fri, 01 Jul 2005 00:00:00 GMTPsalmsBiblical Poetryhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/four-biblical-options-of-moral-choice/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/four-biblical-options-of-moral-choice/Jacob Chinitz — Four Biblical Options of Moral Choice by Jacob Chinitz.Fri, 01 Jul 2005 00:00:00 GMTBiblical Ethicshttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/questions-and-response-in-micah-6/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/questions-and-response-in-micah-6/Ronald T. Hyman — Questions and Response in Micah 6:6-8 by Ronald T. Hyman.Fri, 01 Jul 2005 00:00:00 GMTProphecyBiblical Ethicshttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/our-mother-rachel-prima-inter-pares/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/our-mother-rachel-prima-inter-pares/Yosef Green — Our Mother Rachel: Prima Inter Pares by Yosef Green.Fri, 01 Jul 2005 00:00:00 GMTPatriarchal NarrativesWomen in the Biblehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/accentuation-a-tool-for-interpreting-the-text/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/accentuation-a-tool-for-interpreting-the-text/Leonora Samuel — Accentuation: A Tool for Interpreting the Text of the Hebrew Bible by Leonora Samuel.Fri, 01 Jul 2005 00:00:00 GMTMasoretic TextBiblical HebrewTextual Criticismhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/gods-voice-from-creation-to-the-sanctuary/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/gods-voice-from-creation-to-the-sanctuary/Jeffrey M. Cohen — God's Voice: From Creation to the Sanctuary by Jeffrey M. Cohen.Fri, 01 Jul 2005 00:00:00 GMTBiblical TheologyTabernacleCreationhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/rashis-view-of-genesis/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/rashis-view-of-genesis/Joel Litke — Rashi's View of Genesis by Joel Litke.Fri, 01 Jul 2005 00:00:00 GMTMedieval ExegesisRabbinic Exegesishttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/eliasaph-ben-deuel-reuel/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/eliasaph-ben-deuel-reuel/Zvi Ron — Eliasaph Ben-Deuel/Reuel: A Rabbinic Interpretation by Zvi Ron.Fri, 01 Jul 2005 00:00:00 GMTTextual CriticismMidrashMasoretic Texthttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/a-comment-on-you-shall-not-boil-a-kid/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/a-comment-on-you-shall-not-boil-a-kid/Joel T. Klein — A Comment on You Shall Not Boil a Kid in its Mother’s Milk by Joel T. Klein.Fri, 01 Jul 2005 00:00:00 GMTBiblical LawBiblical Ethicshttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/a-god-who-cares/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/a-god-who-cares/Theodore Steinberg — A God Who Cares by Theodore Steinberg.Fri, 01 Jul 2005 00:00:00 GMTBiblical Theologyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/review-learning-to-read-midrash/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/review-learning-to-read-midrash/Dan Vogel — Book Review: Learning to Read Midrash by Dan Vogel.Fri, 01 Jul 2005 00:00:00 GMTMidrashHistory of Interpretationhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/letters-to-the-editor-333/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/letters-to-the-editor-333/JBQ Readers — Letters to the Editor by JBQ Readers.Fri, 01 Jul 2005 00:00:00 GMTBiblical Exegesishttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/a-midrashic-view-of-ruth-amidst-a-sea-of-ambiguity/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/a-midrashic-view-of-ruth-amidst-a-sea-of-ambiguity/Hayyim Angel — Glass reflects a beam once; a gem returns it from many facets. An idyllic book with superheroes and no villains turns out to be full of deliberate ambiguity — did Elimelech and his sons die for their sins, or simply die? — and the midrashim, rather than resolving the question, preserve the several readings the text will bear.Fri, 01 Apr 2005 00:00:00 GMTMidrashBiblical NarrativeWomen in the BibleRabbinic Exegesishttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/darkness-and-light/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/darkness-and-light/Theodore Steinberg — Halfway through the Siloam Tunnel the guide says blow out the candles, and the eyes never do adjust — a darkness that stays absolute. Reads the ninth plague by that light. What makes it unique is not the dark but its consequence: people could not see one another. The sages took that morally, and Buber's two peasants make the same point over a drink.Fri, 01 Apr 2005 00:00:00 GMTBiblical TheologyBiblical EthicsRabbinic ExegesisModern Jewish Thoughthttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/hatan-damim-the-bridegroom-of-blood/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/hatan-damim-the-bridegroom-of-blood/Jeffrey M. Cohen — Arguably the most baffling passage in the Hebrew Bible, and almost every verb in it lacks a subject: whom did God seek to kill, at whose feet did Zipporah cast the foreskin, and which son was circumcised? Sets out the difficulties — why circumcision at that moment, why a death sentence without warning for a man raised in isolation from his brethren, why bridegroom and not husband, and why say it twice.Fri, 01 Apr 2005 00:00:00 GMTMosesBiblical LawBiblical HebrewRabbinic Exegesishttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/letters-to-the-editor-332/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/letters-to-the-editor-332/Shubert Spero and Israel C. Stein — Spero argues that the real difficulty with opening the Kiddush at yom hashishi was never that the words are out of place — they immediately precede vayechulu — but the rule against quoting a fragment of a verse, which the Chatam Sofer answered by reciting the whole of Genesis 1:31. Stein finds that Irving Welfeld's reading of kadosh as distinction plays well against the separations of Genesis 1 and the verb of havdalah.Fri, 01 Apr 2005 00:00:00 GMTLiturgyBiblical HebrewRabbinic Exegesishttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/nahum-the-prophet-and-his-message/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/nahum-the-prophet-and-his-message/Aron Pinker — Commentators have called Nahum a propagandist, a court lackey, a false prophet, or merely a poet — Pfeiffer found nothing religious in his exultation at all. Argues he should be judged by the goal he set himself rather than by the moralising expected of the literary prophets: to breach a wall of hopelessness under an oppressor who held everything from the Tigris to the Nile.Fri, 01 Apr 2005 00:00:00 GMTProphecyBiblical PoetryAncient Near EastBiblical Criticismhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/samson-and-samuel-two-styles-of-leadership/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/samson-and-samuel-two-styles-of-leadership/Fred Blumenthal — Two sons of long-barren mothers, and two very different kinds of leader. Presses the oddities of the Samson annunciation — a nazirite status imposed from outside, which the Torah's law knows only as a personal vow, and never elsewhere producing strength — and asks why so dramatic a prediction attended a career that instilled fear in the Philistines but built no army and won nothing lasting.Fri, 01 Apr 2005 00:00:00 GMTLeadershipProphecyBiblical NarrativeWomen in the Biblehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/ten-terms-in-the-torah-for-teachings-commandments-and-laws/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/ten-terms-in-the-torah-for-teachings-commandments-and-laws/Jacob Chinitz — For a document so concerned with law, the Torah is strikingly inconsistent about naming it: din, tzedakah, davar, mishmeret, mitzvah, torah, mishpat, hok, edut, ot. Working through the contexts of each, and through the dispute between Akiba, who found significance in every letter, and Yishmael, who held that the Torah speaks in human language — repetition, metaphor, loose prose and all.Fri, 01 Apr 2005 00:00:00 GMTBiblical LawBiblical HebrewRabbinic ExegesisMedieval Exegesishttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-journey-of-terah-ur-kasdim-or-urkesh/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-journey-of-terah-ur-kasdim-or-urkesh/P. J. Berlyn — The genealogy of Shem is names without stories until Terah, where a setting appears — most plausibly the Hurrian Ledge across the top of the Fertile Crescent. Sereg, Terah and Nahor answer to towns there (Sarugi, Turahi, Nahor); Nuzu's tablets preserve family law like the patriarchs'; Ebla's onomasticon holds Eber, Ishmael, Esau, Saul and David. Which raises the question of where Terah actually set out from.Fri, 01 Apr 2005 00:00:00 GMTPatriarchal NarrativesAncient Near EastArchaeologyBiblical Chronologyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-meanings-of-akh/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-meanings-of-akh/Russell Jay Hendel — Biblical particles carry several senses at once, and akh is a good case. Weighing four renderings of Genesis 44:28 by three tests — climax, reasonableness and usage — argues for 'probably', a sense biblical Hebrew has no dedicated word for and which Radak reaches for when he glosses akh with ulay. Then the cases for 'most of' and 'nevertheless'.Fri, 01 Apr 2005 00:00:00 GMTBiblical HebrewBible TranslationMedieval Exegesishttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-women-around-moses/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-women-around-moses/Moshe Reiss — Where the patriarchal families run on rivalry, Moses and his brother and sister act in concert and all three are blessed. Follows the women who made that possible — Miriam arguing her father out of a decree worse than Pharaoh's, the midwives Shifrah and Puah, Jochebed nursing her own child for wages, and the princess who named him and raised him at court.Fri, 01 Apr 2005 00:00:00 GMTMosesWomen in the BibleMidrashProphecyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/comment-on-the-god-of-abraham-rebekah-and-jacob/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/comment-on-the-god-of-abraham-rebekah-and-jacob/Ronald T. Hyman — Three objections to Moshe Reiss's case for Rebekah over Isaac. The va-yomer in Genesis 18:15 leaves it open whether God or Abraham says 'you did laugh', and either way contradicting is not accusing of lying — that label belongs to the narrator. Rebekah never calls Esau 'Jacob's brother' to anyone but Jacob. And the blessing of posterity she receives at 24:60 comes from her family, not from the Lord.Sat, 01 Jan 2005 00:00:00 GMTPatriarchal NarrativesWomen in the BibleBible TranslationBiblical Exegesishttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/derekh-hokhma-part-2/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/derekh-hokhma-part-2/Yamin Levy — Having established in Part I that the three-day journey was a stratagem, asks what it was for. The people believed, then turned on Moses within a few verses — because leaving was not, logistically, thinkable: two million people fed and watered in the desert, then a walled Canaan to take. Their prayer had been for a lighter workload, not independence, which is also why Pharaoh never suspected they might go.Sat, 01 Jan 2005 00:00:00 GMTExodusMosesBiblical TheologyIdolatryhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/dover-and-mdaber/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/dover-and-mdaber/Philip N. Ginsbury — The root d-v-r appears over a thousand times in the piel and forty-one in the kal, almost always as a participle. Following Nyberg, that kal participle is denominative — it names a habitual act, the nature or profession of the speaker — which is why dovér attaches to those who speak truth, or lies, or peace as a matter of character, and preferentially to God, whose speaking is constant even when specific.Sat, 01 Jan 2005 00:00:00 GMTBiblical HebrewBible TranslationBiblical Theologyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/neshekh-and-tarbit-usury-from-bible-to-modern-finance/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/neshekh-and-tarbit-usury-from-bible-to-modern-finance/Joshua Buch — Rava held there is no substantial difference between the two words for interest, and Cassuto follows him — the repetition is there to close loopholes, and where all interest is forbidden there is nothing to rank. But the Mishnah's distinction, neshekh prepaid and tarbit accrued, survives translation into modern finance, and on that reading the biting interest really does cost the borrower more.Sat, 01 Jan 2005 00:00:00 GMTBiblical LawBiblical HebrewRabbinic LiteratureBiblical Ethicshttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-blood-of-life-the-hatat-offering/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-blood-of-life-the-hatat-offering/Laura Duhan Kaplan — A modern sacrifice is instrumental — give something up, get a result — which makes the Temple's sprinklings of blood hard to read. Finds the analogy in the queues at the Red Cross after September 11, where the need to give plainly outran the capacity to receive. Blood given is at once symbol and effect: an acknowledgement that one's own survival was accidental, and a real repair.Sat, 01 Jan 2005 00:00:00 GMTSacrificeTempleBiblical TheologyModern Jewish Thoughthttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-legacy-of-two-adams/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-legacy-of-two-adams/Dan Vogel — Soloveitchik's two Adams — Natura, chief of the animal world but marked by the Image of God, and Humanus, commanded outward into intellectual endeavour — meet a paradox in Genesis 2:17. Man is bidden to quest for knowledge and denied the one tree that holds it, so he must learn to live by a principle of limitation. Hence the expulsion; hence Milton's Adam departing greatly instructed, and Browning's reach exceeding its grasp.Sat, 01 Jan 2005 00:00:00 GMTCreationJewish PhilosophyLiterature and the BibleModern Jewish Thoughthttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-other-demonstrative-pronouns/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-other-demonstrative-pronouns/Scott B. Noegel — Hallazeh and hallaz occur ten times in the Bible, always in direct speech, where the literary dialect would use zeh and zot. Argues they carry a further charge: contempt, or the vulgarising of the ordinary — Rebekah on first sighting Isaac, Joseph's brothers as he approaches. Sophocles' Athena, the accusation before Pilate, and Latin iste show the same use of the demonstrative elsewhere.Sat, 01 Jan 2005 00:00:00 GMTBiblical HebrewAncient Near EastTextual Criticismhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/when-gods-will-can-and-cannot-be-altered/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/when-gods-will-can-and-cannot-be-altered/Hayyim Angel — Why is the deceived Man of God struck down while the lying Old Prophet is spared and even rewarded? Proposes that I Kings 13 is modelled on Balaam: in both, a true prophet obeys, then violates his charge, is rebuked through a mouth that had never prophesied before, and is finally brought to submission. Their near-identical refusals of a wicked king's gold — and where the two stories diverge — carry the answer.Sat, 01 Jan 2005 00:00:00 GMTProphecyBalaamKingshipBiblical Narrativehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/an-inner-light/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/an-inner-light/Theodore Steinberg — We live with Moses nine months of the year and have no idea what he looked like — except for the one thing Ki Tissa tells us, that his face shone, karan, which the Vulgate misread as horns and Michelangelo carved. A child's thank-you letter mishearing the Eternal Light as an internal light turns out to have found the point: the spark of the divine image, the light of conscience, in everyone.Fri, 01 Oct 2004 00:00:00 GMTMosesBiblical TheologyBiblical EthicsBible Translationhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/beged-or-simlah-is-there-a-difference/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/beged-or-simlah-is-there-a-difference/Mois A. Navon — Reuben tears his begadav; five verses later Jacob tears his simlotav. Tests three explanations — status, degree of grief, style — against usage. Simlah is worn by leaders and paupers alike, and though it is torn only three times and always over death, beged is torn over death some thirty times elsewhere. Onkelos renders both as levush, which leaves style, and pshuto ke'targumo.Fri, 01 Oct 2004 00:00:00 GMTBiblical HebrewBible TranslationTargumMedieval Exegesishttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/derekh-hokhma-part-1/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/derekh-hokhma-part-1/Yamin Levy — God's answer at the bush seems not to address what Moses actually asked. Following Rashbam — who prefaces his comment by saying nobody before him understood the verse at all — the charge is two distinct tasks, confronting Pharaoh and bringing the people out; Moses questions both, and God answers each in turn. That reading makes the Exodus narrative a single woven unit rather than a sequence.Fri, 01 Oct 2004 00:00:00 GMTMosesExodusMedieval ExegesisBiblical Narrativehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/ezekiel-the-sentinel/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/ezekiel-the-sentinel/Shimon Bakon — A century earlier the northern deportees had vanished into Assyrian culture within a generation, priests pressed into the conquerors' service and a whole army unit made of exiles. Argues that Ezekiel diagnosed why, and set himself the task of preventing a repeat — and that being priest as well as prophet is exactly what equipped him for it, whatever the Talmud's three hundred barrels of oil or Torrey's claim that he never existed.Fri, 01 Oct 2004 00:00:00 GMTProphecyExilePriesthoodLeadershiphttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/jacob-and-esau-the-relationship-reconsidered/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/jacob-and-esau-the-relationship-reconsidered/Shubert Spero — Layers of later symbolism — hostile Edom, the Idumeans, Herod, Rome, Christianity — have made an objective reading of Esau nearly impossible, and prophet and sage seem to license the worst of it. Sets that aside to ask what Jacob, deciding whether to announce his return after twenty years and a death threat, actually understood about his brother's character.Fri, 01 Oct 2004 00:00:00 GMTPatriarchal NarrativesRabbinic ExegesisBiblical NarrativeBiblical Ethicshttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/jeremiah-the-suffering-prophet-and-ezekiel-the-visionary/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/jeremiah-the-suffering-prophet-and-ezekiel-the-visionary/Moshe Reiss — Two priests who were also prophets, living through the same catastrophe and answering it differently: Jeremiah blames ethical failure, Ezekiel ritual. Jeremiah is the only prophet whose prayers are private cries rather than public office — told not to intercede, denied a family, left with nothing but God, an impossible companion — and the only one, says the Talmud, to have written his own story.Fri, 01 Oct 2004 00:00:00 GMTProphecyExileTempleBiblical Theologyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/letter-to-the-editor-324/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/letter-to-the-editor-324/Aron Pinker — Why should the Kiddush force the Masoretic text so that its first four words spell the Tetragrammaton? Two answers: the biblical portion names God only as Elohim, so the addition balances judgement with mercy, as the midrash has God do at Creation; and Genesis 2:2 seems to say God finished on the seventh day, a difficulty the Samaritan Pentateuch solves by emendation and the Kiddush perhaps by juxtaposition.Fri, 01 Oct 2004 00:00:00 GMTLiturgyMasoretic TextMidrashTextual Criticismhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/minimalism-the-debate-continues-part-2/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/minimalism-the-debate-continues-part-2/Charles David Isbell — A critical review of Thomas Thompson, for whom there was never a United Monarchy, no pre-exilic prophets, and only a Hellenistic Bible. Grants the methodological point that archaeology should not be read through the Bible, then presses two habits: impugning the integrity of earlier scholars whose reconstructions later evidence undid, and presenting self-evident statements as discoveries.Fri, 01 Oct 2004 00:00:00 GMTBiblical CriticismArchaeologyHistory of Interpretationhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-akedah-test-what-passes-and-what-fails/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-akedah-test-what-passes-and-what-fails/Malcolm E. Schrader — On the conventional reading the Akedah is about blind obedience — doing the plainly wrong thing because God said so. But that sits badly with everything else Genesis tells us about Abraham, who gives Lot first choice of land, refuses his war booty, and argues for Sodom; and with Maimonides, who has him reason his way to monotheism and use the same logic on everyone else. Proposes a second meaning embedded in the text, each serving a different purpose.Fri, 01 Oct 2004 00:00:00 GMTPatriarchal NarrativesBiblical EthicsMedieval ExegesisSacrificehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-expanding-perspectives-of-the-sabbath/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-expanding-perspectives-of-the-sabbath/Pinchas Kahn — Exodus grounds the Sabbath in Creation — imitatio Dei, man ceasing as the Creator ceased. Deuteronomy drops that entirely and grounds it in the Exodus, making it a social protection for slaves and workers. Asks whether the two are separate or developmental, and what the Israelites can have understood by the command when it was already in force at the manna, before Sinai and with no reason given.Fri, 01 Oct 2004 00:00:00 GMTSabbathBiblical LawCreationMidrashhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/are-most-jews-bnai-judah/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/are-most-jews-bnai-judah/Farrell Bloch — Reads the two censuses of Numbers as a guide to the tribal affiliation of living Jews. The absolute counts need not be accurate — only the ratio between tribes need hold — and on that footing, with the northern tribes assimilated, Judah accounts for a clear majority. Then weighs four reasons to think descendants of the lost tribes are among us anyway, starting with the mere 27,000 the Assyrian annals record deporting.Thu, 01 Jul 2004 00:00:00 GMTBiblical ChronologyAncient Near EastArchaeologyRabbinic Literaturehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/elijah-the-zealot-a-foil-to-moses/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/elijah-the-zealot-a-foil-to-moses/Moshe Reiss — Six chapters, and a figure closer to Greek legend than Hebrew prophecy — an avenging destroyer who, with Elisha, forms the only miracle-working pair besides Moses and Joshua. Notes what the zeal costs: he tells Ahab the rain will stop unless he gives the word, dismisses Obadiah who saved a hundred prophets, and twice insists he alone is left. Mount Carmel deliberately restages Sinai, twelve stones and all.Thu, 01 Jul 2004 00:00:00 GMTProphecyKingshipIdolatryMoseshttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/josephs-emotional-development/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/josephs-emotional-development/Fred Guyette — Emotions are not private events inside one skin; they are aroused and recognised among other people, first of all in a family. Follows Joseph's through three movements of Genesis. His sense of superiority is not spontaneous — he has absorbed part of his father's story of rivalry with Esau, and missed the part about covenant. Jacob's charge names the brothers before the flocks, and Joseph, asked to look for both, repeats the order.Thu, 01 Jul 2004 00:00:00 GMTJosephPatriarchal NarrativesBiblical NarrativeBiblical Ethicshttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/minimalism-the-debate-continues-part-1/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/minimalism-the-debate-continues-part-1/Charles David Isbell — Kings says so itself: for the rest of the acts of any king, look them up elsewhere. Its editors were writing moral evaluation, not annals, and knew it. But conceding the record is incomplete is not conceding it is fraudulent, which is where minimalism goes — the Bible as a late political brief to persuade Persia. Two objections: total scepticism is not available to anyone, and no evidence any Persian official ever read it.Thu, 01 Jul 2004 00:00:00 GMTBiblical CriticismArchaeologyHistory of InterpretationKingshiphttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/nahums-theological-perspectives/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/nahums-theological-perspectives/Aron Pinker — No lectionary reading is taken from Nahum, as if the book had nothing to offer. Because it neither condemns Judah nor calls for repentance, scholars have made its author a nationalist, a cult prophet, or merely a poet. Answers that the demands a prophet places on man reveal what he takes God to be, and that read this way the book carries a theology of eternal validity, in the best prophetic tradition.Thu, 01 Jul 2004 00:00:00 GMTProphecyBiblical TheologyBiblical CriticismAncient Near Easthttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/shabbat-three-stages-in-israels-experience/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/shabbat-three-stages-in-israels-experience/Shubert Spero — Both versions of the Decalogue presume the Sabbath is already known — remember it, observe it as you were commanded. So where was it learned? Traces three stages: the midrash in which Moses persuades Pharaoh that a slave who never rests will die; the manna, where the double portion teaches that the day is a rest for God too; and Sinai, which gives it its reason.Thu, 01 Jul 2004 00:00:00 GMTSabbathBiblical LawMidrashMoseshttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/she-shall-mourn/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/she-shall-mourn/Benjamin Goodnick — The law of the captive woman, and four questions the commentators seem not to have asked. Is she mourning separation or bereavement? Does isha mean she was married, as Rashi holds, or simply grown? If she still lived with her parents, was the whole population taken? And why are widows — who would be most of the women after a war — never mentioned as eligible at all?Thu, 01 Jul 2004 00:00:00 GMTBiblical LawWomen in the BibleBiblical EthicsMedieval Exegesishttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/tanakh-sources-of-judas-iscariot/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/tanakh-sources-of-judas-iscariot/Lawrence Briskin — A sequel to "Foretold, Fulfilled, Copied". Early Christianity needed antiquity to establish legitimacy, and its writers had no direct knowledge of Jesus, so the Tanakh became a source book rather than a set of predictions fulfilled. Traces the Judas story on that principle — the thirty pieces of silver, the money flung down in the Temple, the potter's field — back to the Hebrew passages it is built from.Thu, 01 Jul 2004 00:00:00 GMTChristianity and the BibleHistory of InterpretationSecond Temple Periodhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-41st-annual-international-bible-contest/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-41st-annual-international-bible-contest/Joshua J. Adler — A report on the 2004 Chidon HaTanakh. Fifty-one students from 27 countries contested the Diaspora round at Ariel, where the Defence Minister asked the final question; Yoni Halpern of Canada won it and came second in the main contest, taken by David Tsur-el of Israel. Ariel Sharon, receiving the contestants, observed that the best tour guide to the land is the Tanakh.Thu, 01 Jul 2004 00:00:00 GMTBible ContestJewish Educationhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-prophetic-visions-of-gods-abode/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-prophetic-visions-of-gods-abode/Fred Blumenthal — Only Isaiah and Ezekiel are inaugurated by a detailed vision of the divine court — and pointedly not Moses, who of all people would have had the clearest view and would surely have reported it if it mattered. That silence, plus the incorporeality of God and of angels, argues the chapters are symbolic. Read ra'ah as intimacy rather than eyesight, and the differences between the visions track the prophets' different eras.Thu, 01 Jul 2004 00:00:00 GMTProphecyJewish PhilosophyMedieval ExegesisBiblical Theologyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/was-adams-action-disobedience/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/was-adams-action-disobedience/Sidney Breitbart — Three readings: the Jewish one, where the disobedience is Adam's alone; the Augustinian, where it stains everyone born; and a third the writer proposes, where no disobedience occurred. Presses the question an inherited act of free will raises, and argues from the text alone that the tree was placed there to be known — the point of the test being to introduce morality through an autonomous choice.Thu, 01 Jul 2004 00:00:00 GMTCreationJewish PhilosophyBiblical EthicsChristianity and the Biblehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/death-in-the-bible/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/death-in-the-bible/Jacob Chinitz — Twenty generations of genealogy manage with one verb for dying; afterwards the Bible uses five more, sometimes two or three at once for a single death. Works through them, and lingers on gathered to his people, which fits Abraham badly — he was buried in a cave he bought, deliberately severed from family and birthplace. Perhaps the phrase outgrew the family tomb it came from.Thu, 01 Apr 2004 00:00:00 GMTBiblical HebrewBiblical TheologyPatriarchal NarrativesBible Translationhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/jethro-hobabs-detainment/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/jethro-hobabs-detainment/Jeffrey M. Cohen — One visit split across two books, or two visits? The rabbis mostly say one, which raises the chronological problem of whether Jethro came before or after Sinai. Nahmanides reads the silence about the revelation as proof he came before, takes his acknowledgement of God as no rejection of idolatry, and reads his abrupt dismissal that same day as a retraction — leaving Numbers 10 to record a second visit, and Moses trying to keep him.Thu, 01 Apr 2004 00:00:00 GMTMosesMedieval ExegesisConversionRabbinic Exegesishttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/rashis-conjectures/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/rashis-conjectures/Josiah Derby — Exodus names the twelve stones of the breastplate but never the order of the tribes engraved on them. Josephus says birth order, perhaps because as a priest he had seen it; Rashi, who had not read Josephus, says the same on common sense alone. Then a second conjecture, that Dan sat on the seventh stone — which rests on a deduction rather than a text, and is where the agreement ends.Thu, 01 Apr 2004 00:00:00 GMTPriesthoodMedieval ExegesisSecond Temple PeriodRabbinic Literaturehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-cain-and-abel-narrative/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-cain-and-abel-narrative/Sidney Breitbart — Cain thought of sacrifice first, unprompted, and brought the fruit of ground God had cursed — the harder labour of the two. So why is Abel named first and his offering heeded? And how did Cain learn it was not? Argues the offerings are not the point: God's reply is about doing right and mastering the urge at the door, making choice the theme, and the lie rather than the unpremeditated killing the grievous act.Thu, 01 Apr 2004 00:00:00 GMTBiblical EthicsSacrificeBiblical NarrativeBiblical Theologyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-god-of-abraham-rebekah-and-jacob/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-god-of-abraham-rebekah-and-jacob/Moshe Reiss — If a patriarch's standing rests on relationship with God, the liturgy may name the wrong figure in the middle generation. Sets Abraham's many encounters and Jacob's dream at Bethel against Isaac's, and argues that in their own generation it is Rebekah, not Isaac, who has the active relationship — a case for saying the God of Abraham, Rebekah and Jacob.Thu, 01 Apr 2004 00:00:00 GMTPatriarchal NarrativesWomen in the BibleBiblical TheologyRabbinic Literaturehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-importance-of-place/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-importance-of-place/Theodore Steinberg — A boy of six is slapped for sitting in a stranger's High Holy Day seat; two shrinking congregations break off a merger over who gets the folding chairs. Vayera closes with Abraham returning to his place, li'mkomo — and Makom is a name for God. Set against that, Heschel's insistence that Judaism sanctifies time rather than space, and the sages' reason for not knowing where Sinai is.Thu, 01 Apr 2004 00:00:00 GMTBiblical TheologyRabbinic LiteratureModern Jewish ThoughtSabbathhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-incorporation-of-pre-modern-scientific-theories/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-incorporation-of-pre-modern-scientific-theories/Edward Reichman — Commentators reach for the science of their own generation, which means a reader needs medical history to follow them. Takes one case: innate heat, Galen's answer to how a body holds its temperature — housed in the heart, driving growth and digestion, and needing respiration to cool it or it consumes itself. That doctrine held until the eighteenth century, and it turns up throughout rabbinic exegesis.Thu, 01 Apr 2004 00:00:00 GMTHistory of InterpretationRabbinic ExegesisMedieval ExegesisScience and the Biblehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-names-of-god/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-names-of-god/Saul Leeman — Halevi and Maimonides hold that the Tetragrammaton is the only proper name and all others are descriptions, yet the tradition teems with names — six more the scribe may not erase, a twelve-lettered and a forty-two-lettered name the Talmud mentions but withholds, and Rashi says are lost. Then the ways the name is carried in code: the twenty-six refrains of the Great Hallel, the acrostic of Yedid Nefesh, the windings of the tzitzit.Thu, 01 Apr 2004 00:00:00 GMTBiblical TheologyBiblical HebrewLiturgyKabbalahhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/wherefore-mitzvot-the-divine-commandments/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/wherefore-mitzvot-the-divine-commandments/Shimon Bakon — Not arbitrary demands made for God's glory: Maimonides has them for man's benefit, Nahmanides for his refinement. Sets out the classifications — duties toward God and toward one's fellow, Saadia's rational and revelational, the Talmud's ordinances that would have had to be written anyway against statutes Satan objects to — and the ethical imperative of imitatio Dei underlying all three.Thu, 01 Apr 2004 00:00:00 GMTBiblical LawBiblical EthicsJewish PhilosophyRabbinic Literaturehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/you-shall-not-boil-a-kid-beyond-exodus-23-19/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/you-shall-not-boil-a-kid-beyond-exodus-23-19/Irving Welfeld — Nine words, repeated three times, became the cornerstone of the kosher kitchen. Traces each term's expansion — kid to bison and turkey, boil to eating and any benefit, mother past parenthood, milk to all dairy, then separate dishes and finally a waiting period that Maimonides put at six hours and Poland at one. And the older question of whether such a law's reason should be sought at all.Thu, 01 Apr 2004 00:00:00 GMTBiblical LawRabbinic LiteratureMedieval ExegesisKashruthttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/according-to-the-laws-of-moses/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/according-to-the-laws-of-moses/Jacob Milgrom — Can Mosaic origin be affirmed rationally rather than by blind faith, when the codes contradict each other — the tithe going to the sanctuary, the Levites and the farmer in three different books? Sets the aggadah of Moses in Akiba's classroom, understanding nothing until told the source is Sinai, against Halivni's minimalist and maximalist positions, and against the Chronicler, who already attributed his own era's practice to Moses.Thu, 01 Jan 2004 00:00:00 GMTBiblical LawBiblical CriticismRabbinic LiteratureMoseshttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/and-these-are-the-judgments-as-a-set-table/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/and-these-are-the-judgments-as-a-set-table/Shubert Spero — Akiba's famous image, preserved because Rashi quoted it: do not teach them by rote and spare yourself the reasons, but set it out ready to be taken in. Reconstructs how he got there. Set before is used where something is presented for consideration; set for them where law is imposed. These conditional judgments would naturally go to judges — but Akiba reads them as going to the people.Thu, 01 Jan 2004 00:00:00 GMTBiblical LawRabbinic ExegesisMidrashJewish Educationhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/biblical-reiteration-expansion-and-chronology/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/biblical-reiteration-expansion-and-chronology/Ben Zion Katz — From mid-Exodus through Leviticus into Numbers 10, the text runs out of chronological order and repeats itself. Argues the repetitions are expansions: Leviticus tells us Aaron raised his hands to bless, and only Numbers supplies the words. Sorts the cases into pure expansion, narrative expansion — Jethro's departure, taken up again eight chapters later — and expansion of the Lord's injunctions, then reconstructs the sequence.Thu, 01 Jan 2004 00:00:00 GMTBiblical ChronologyPriesthoodBiblical CriticismTabernaclehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/editorial-321/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/editorial-321/Gabriel A. Sivan — A Cairo weekly reports a law dean preparing to sue the Jews of the world for the gold taken at the Exodus, repayable with interest over a thousand years. Gratifying, in a way, to see a legal expert in Egypt place such reliance on the Bible — but if the record is admitted as historically accurate, it invites a counter-claim for 430 years of slave labour and a decree to drown the male infants.Thu, 01 Jan 2004 00:00:00 GMTModern Jewish ThoughtHistory of Interpretationhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/is-the-queen-of-heaven-in-jeremiah-the-goddess-anat/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/is-the-queen-of-heaven-in-jeremiah-the-goddess-anat/Herbert Cohn — Anat is never named in the Bible, but a pillar at Beth Shean calls her Queen of Heaven, and fifth-century papyri from Elephantine show Jewish mercenaries worshipping her alongside Yahoo. The Septuagint and Vulgate read Jeremiah's m-l-kh-t as malkat, queen; the Tiberian masoretes vocalised it melekhet, work, which makes little sense — and conveniently conceals that Jews once worshipped a goddess.Thu, 01 Jan 2004 00:00:00 GMTIdolatryAncient Near EastMasoretic TextArchaeologyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/letters-to-the-editor-321/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/letters-to-the-editor-321/Asher Eder, Jonathan C. Kelman and Moshe Reiss — Eder finds Ezekiel 37 rebuilding the re-gathering of Israel out of the vocabulary of Adam's formation — the breath, the coming to life, the giving of rest. Kelman argues Havvah and hay are philologically one, and asks that a darshanut piece say plainly whether it is offering pshat or a drash of a drash. Reiss answers an earlier letter on Ishmael: the protection Abraham sought was from Sarah.Thu, 01 Jan 2004 00:00:00 GMTBiblical HebrewRabbinic ExegesisPatriarchal Narrativeshttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/military-and-archaeological-aspects-of-the-conquest/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/military-and-archaeological-aspects-of-the-conquest/Yigael Yadin — It is civilians who doubt the military plausibility of Joshua; soldiers almost without exception grant it. Sets out the five ways a fortified city could be taken in that period — over the wall, through it, under it, by siege, by ruse — and what the Egyptian reliefs show about each, noting that the Egyptians took cities without heavy siege engines and that Thutmose III still needed seven months at Megiddo.Thu, 01 Jan 2004 00:00:00 GMTConquestArchaeologyAncient Near EastLand of Israelhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/minhag-in-judaism/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/minhag-in-judaism/Harold M. Kamsler — Minhag comes from a root meaning to lead, and the Talmud makes it as binding as Torah — at times more so, since custom overrules law. Sorts customs into three kinds: fences around the law, spurs to the indifferent, and embellishments of love for the commandments. Notes what communities absorbed from their neighbours — clerical collars, the shtreimel of the Polish nobility, bridesmaids.Thu, 01 Jan 2004 00:00:00 GMTRabbinic LiteratureBiblical LawLiturgyJewish Philosophyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/naomis-mission/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/naomis-mission/Brian Weinstein — Reads Ruth as a political text about the origins of a dynasty, with Naomi as its central actor. Famine in the Bible sends people abroad to find what is missing at home and return changed: Abram came back rich, Jacob's family came back a nation, Naomi came back with the great-grandmother of David. Argues that Ruth's Moabite ancestry is not a liability to be explained away but essential to what follows.Thu, 01 Jan 2004 00:00:00 GMTWomen in the BibleKingshipMidrashBiblical Narrativehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/rosh-hodesh-as-a-womans-holiday/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/rosh-hodesh-as-a-womans-holiday/Rochelle G. Saidel — The Hebrew month opens not at the full moon but at the dark of it — the Israelites blessed the moon precisely when its power was least evident and other cultures were not worshipping it. Traces how a day on which work is permitted became one on which women abstain, and how the talmudic reward for refusing to give jewellery to the Golden Calf licensed a celebration women were very likely already keeping.Thu, 01 Jan 2004 00:00:00 GMTWomen in the BibleLiturgyRabbinic LiteratureIdolatryhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/samuel-and-saul-a-negative-symbiosis/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/samuel-and-saul-a-negative-symbiosis/Moshe Reiss — The Psalms rank him with Moses, yet he tries to install his worthless sons, anoints a king who fails, and nearly anoints the wrong brother after that. Judge, prophet and priest at once — the only such figure, and not even a Levite. Follows the wordplay Hannah leaves unresolved: she asked, sha'ul, four times over, and named the child Samuel; the name she did not use went to the king he would come to destroy.Thu, 01 Jan 2004 00:00:00 GMTProphecyKingshipLeadershipWomen in the Biblehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-halakhah-of-the-humash/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-halakhah-of-the-humash/Jacob Chinitz — A Torah scroll carries no punctuation, but its spacing carries meaning: the open paragraph running to the end of the line, the closed one of nine letters, four blank lines between books. Works through what the sages counted and what they must have meant by a unit — 5,845 verses, each with exactly one etnachta — and notes that the chapter numbers everyone now uses came from a thirteenth-century English bishop.Thu, 01 Jan 2004 00:00:00 GMTMasoretic TextBiblical LawRabbinic LiteratureLiturgyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/thou-worm-jacob/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/thou-worm-jacob/Theodore Steinberg — The context is favourable and the epithet is not. Rashi takes it for weakness — their strength was in their mouths — and Radak, something of a naturalist, adds that worms chew through everything in the soil and bring down the cedars of Lebanon: slow, but they get it all. A cut earthworm regenerates, which fits Davidowitz's everdying people, and sets up Kazantzakis on the caterpillar and the flying fish.Thu, 01 Jan 2004 00:00:00 GMTMedieval ExegesisLiterature and the BibleBiblical TheologyModern Jewish Thoughthttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/was-habakkuk-presumptuous/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/was-habakkuk-presumptuous/Aron Pinker — Alone among the prophets, Habakkuk opens by complaining — and every complaint carries the seed of claiming to know better. Everything turns on one word: is the lamma of 1:3 inquisitive, asking what he is meant to learn from the sight, or rhetorical, meaning don't bother, I know already? The verse that follows, in which he shows he grasps the consequences too, settles it.Thu, 01 Jan 2004 00:00:00 GMTProphecyBiblical HebrewRabbinic ExegesisBiblical Ethicshttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/a-note-on-the-prohibition-of-uttering-the-name-of-god/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/a-note-on-the-prohibition-of-uttering-the-name-of-god/Harold M. Kamsler — We call God our Father and do not scruple to name our own fathers; we are commanded to love Him, and no other love forbids speaking the beloved's name. Traces the prohibition to a biblical idea of the extended self, in which name, image, shadow and even clothing are integral parts of a person — which is why Eleazar became priest by being dressed in Aaron's garments, and why the nazirite burns his hair.Wed, 01 Oct 2003 00:00:00 GMTBiblical TheologyBiblical HebrewPriesthoodLiturgyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/and-the-bush-was-not-consumed/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/and-the-bush-was-not-consumed/J. Gerald Janzen — Thirty-five years of reading the burning bush as a manifestation of the God who is a consuming fire — until the author saw the motto over the door at JTS, and then the Holocaust memorials inside. Fire in the prophets also means affliction: the furnace of Isaiah 48, the iron furnace of Egypt. On that reading the sign is not arbitrary attention-getting but integral, and the bush is Israel.Wed, 01 Oct 2003 00:00:00 GMTMosesBiblical TheologyHistory of InterpretationChristianity and the Biblehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/beauty-in-the-bible/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/beauty-in-the-bible/Yossi Feintuch — The Bible says its heroines are fair and then declines to describe them: Rebekah is very fair to look upon, and what follows is her watering the camels. Abigail's intellect is named before her face. The law of the captive woman builds in a month during which her looks will fade, so the decision cannot rest on them. And Joseph, David, Absalom show what mere attraction to beauty can cost.Wed, 01 Oct 2003 00:00:00 GMTBiblical EthicsWomen in the BibleBiblical NarrativeBiblical Lawhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/biblical-cosmogony-a-symbolic-interpretation/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/biblical-cosmogony-a-symbolic-interpretation/Fred Blumenthal — Genesis 1 answers why, not how — the Torah is no textbook of natural science. Read symbolically the six days run in order of what each thing means for man: light and darkness give time, the expanse gives space, then land, food, seasons, and finally a creature able to carry a soul. And the woman was not made from a rib: the Hebrew is his side, which makes the separation an image of man's own duality.Wed, 01 Oct 2003 00:00:00 GMTCreationBiblical TheologyMedieval ExegesisJewish Philosophyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/moses-as-poet-haazinu-as-poem/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/moses-as-poet-haazinu-as-poem/Dan Vogel — The Torah calls only three passages a shir, and Ha'azinu is the one Moses recites alone. Israel had heard these chastisements before, most recently in Deuteronomy 28 — so why in verse? Abravanel answers that prose is forgotten however often repeated, while what is sung is carried by its melody. Reads the prosody line by line: the syllable counts, where the accents fall, and how each verset builds to its climax.Wed, 01 Oct 2003 00:00:00 GMTBiblical PoetryMosesLiterature and the BibleMedieval Exegesishttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/review-canon-and-creativity/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/review-canon-and-creativity/Marcos Paseggi — Against reading a canon as ideological coercion or a clash of wills, Alter offers a dynamic trans-historical textual community. His key move is a double canonicity: Esther, Job, Song of Songs and Ecclesiastes earned their place partly as literature, their stylistic authority outweighing doctrinal doubts. Then Kafka, Bialik and Joyce, each reusing Scripture while appearing to reject it.Wed, 01 Oct 2003 00:00:00 GMTLiterature and the BibleHistory of InterpretationBiblical Criticismhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-40th-annual-international-bible-contest/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-40th-annual-international-bible-contest/Joshua J. Adler — A report on the 2003 Chidon HaTanakh. Sixty teenagers from 27 countries; Joshua Laker of the Mesivta of New Jersey took the Diaspora round, a year after his sister placed second in it. Moran Gomri of Beersheba won the televised final and the title Kallat HaTanakh. Israel, the report notes with pride, marks its independence day not with a military parade but with a Bible contest.Wed, 01 Oct 2003 00:00:00 GMTBible ContestJewish Educationhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-missing-thread-of-blue/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-missing-thread-of-blue/Herbert Block — The Shema commands a thread of blue on the fringes, and no tallit worn today has one — not even among the ultra-orthodox. The answer the author got from Eretz Hemdah is that the dye came from a sea creature unidentified for eleven centuries, and any substitute would be a forgery. Sets that against a Bible full of blue, whole lengths of it in the Tabernacle, and against the injunction not to subtract.Wed, 01 Oct 2003 00:00:00 GMTBiblical LawRabbinic LiteratureTabernacleLiturgyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-mosaic-of-time/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-mosaic-of-time/Beth Uval — A 25-metre calendar laid out at Neot Kedumim, with a rotating inner circle of lunar months against a fixed solar outer one, so a visitor can turn the wheel and watch the eleven-day gap open until a month must be added. The synchronising matters: Passover falls both in Nissan, set by the moon, and in aviv, set by the sun — the God of history and the God of the harvest being one.Wed, 01 Oct 2003 00:00:00 GMTBiblical ChronologyLand of IsraelLiturgyAncient Near Easthttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-name-of-god-in-psalms/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-name-of-god-in-psalms/Harvey Minkoff — Psalms refers to God's shem about a hundred times, and the word is doing different work each time — essential nature, power, reputation. Why say that God's name is the Lord, or that it endures forever? Because a name here is a sign of an attribute. Which is also why we can trust in a holy name, and why majestic, awesome and sublime attach to it: shem stands as synecdoche for the whole.Wed, 01 Oct 2003 00:00:00 GMTBiblical HebrewPsalmsBible TranslationBiblical Theologyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-seven-mitzvot-of-bnai-noah/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-seven-mitzvot-of-bnai-noah/Theodore Steinberg — Rav Yehudah says most people are guilty of some sort of thievery, and the sages had in mind something subtler than burglary. The Hafetz Haim reprinted smudged pages lest a buyer receive damaged goods. Fail to return a greeting and you have stolen goodwill; fail to gladden a bridegroom and you have robbed him of joy due him; stand blocking the synagogue door and you are robbing the congregation of air.Wed, 01 Oct 2003 00:00:00 GMTBiblical EthicsRabbinic LiteratureMidrashBiblical Lawhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/two-fundamental-word-pairs-sow-reap-and-plow-reap/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/two-fundamental-word-pairs-sow-reap-and-plow-reap/Ronald T. Hyman — Word-pairs entered scholarship as a footnote to parallelism in poetry, but they run through the prose too — heaven and earth, light and darkness open Genesis. Treats sow/reap and plow/reap as semantically one, each naming an antecedent and its consequence in the agricultural year, and sets out criteria that work outside poetry before listing and reading every occurrence.Wed, 01 Oct 2003 00:00:00 GMTBiblical PoetryBiblical HebrewAncient Near EastWisdom Literaturehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/when-did-we-become-a-nation/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/when-did-we-become-a-nation/Jeffrey M. Cohen — Abraham's call, the Exodus, Sinai, the conquest, David's capital, Solomon's Temple — Israel has too many candidate foundings, and the dictionary definition only engages a nation once it already has the attributes. Argues the Torah names the moment itself, and that it is a startling one: the blessings and curses proclaimed across Gerizim and Ebal, with the whole people answering Amen.Wed, 01 Oct 2003 00:00:00 GMTBiblical TheologyLand of IsraelBiblical EthicsMoseshttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/a-reconstruction-of-matzor/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/a-reconstruction-of-matzor/Aron Pinker — The prophet takes his station on the matzor to await an answer, and nobody is sure what that is — distress, siege, siege-mound, bulwark, citadel. Reading it as a synonym of mishmarti founders on the grammar. Argues the word is a corruption and reconstructs the original, which bears on whether Habakkuk had a fixed place of prophetic retreat, and whether he was a cultic prophet at all.Tue, 01 Jul 2003 00:00:00 GMTTextual CriticismProphecyBiblical HebrewMedieval Exegesishttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/did-abram-wage-a-just-war/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/did-abram-wage-a-just-war/Harold Brodsky — The Bible's first war, fought by the founding father, and it fails several tests the philosophers would later set. Abram was unmoved by twelve years of Sodom's oppression and acted only for a kinsman; there is no sign of diplomacy first, and the account is silent on casualties on either side. Argues the abstract criteria can never suffice — a leader must also weigh intentions and losses, and so can never fight without anguish.Tue, 01 Jul 2003 00:00:00 GMTBiblical EthicsPatriarchal NarrativesMidrashConquesthttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/gideon-or-jerubaal/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/gideon-or-jerubaal/Josiah Derby — The longest account of any judge, and the only one whose second name is cited outside the book. Sorts biblical names into theophoric, symbolic, and the small class given an etymology — where the derivation is usually midrash, phonetic at best. Havvah should have been Hayyah; would Pharaoh's daughter have known Hebrew, or given her adopted son a Hebrew name? Then Gideon, from the root that means to cut down, and the asherah he cut.Tue, 01 Jul 2003 00:00:00 GMTBiblical HebrewLeadershipIdolatryMidrashhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/letters-to-the-editor-313/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/letters-to-the-editor-313/Israel C. Stein, Asher Eder and Jacob Chinitz — Stein commends Ephros on Nineveh and Sodom — Jonah seeking justice for the guilty as Abraham sought mercy for the innocent. Eder reads Abraham's 'before Thee' as a wish that Ishmael walk in God's ways rather than a plea for protection, and disputes dating Arab persecution of Jews before the late Middle Ages. Chinitz argues the seduction law concerns a minor, and that on several points talmudic law is gentler to the offender than secular law.Tue, 01 Jul 2003 00:00:00 GMTBiblical LawBiblical EthicsPatriarchal NarrativesRabbinic Literaturehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/silence-in-the-bible/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/silence-in-the-bible/Paolo Torresan — The lexicons barely treat it, and where they do it is an obstacle to speech, or mourning, or the muteness of idols. Argues silence is a live force with its own range. If life is relationship sustained by speech, then dumah is death's most intimate aspect — no more dialogue, the dead no longer remembering God. Then the causative forms, in which enemies are reduced to silence, and the whole question of God's own.Tue, 01 Jul 2003 00:00:00 GMTBiblical TheologyBiblical HebrewBiblical PoetrySufferinghttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/sleep-disorders-in-the-bible/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/sleep-disorders-in-the-bible/Sonia Ancoli-Israel — Creation establishes the rhythm of light and dark before anything can live in it — and we now know that rhythm is what tells the body when to secrete and when to sleep. Reads sleep in the Bible as gift and as vulnerability (Samson shorn, Saul spared while a deep sleep from the Lord lay on his men), and maps the Hebrew terms — tenumah, yashen, tardemah — onto the stages sleep research later distinguished.Tue, 01 Jul 2003 00:00:00 GMTBiblical HebrewScience and the BibleLiturgyBiblical Narrativehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-forgotten-figure-at-the-akedah/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-forgotten-figure-at-the-akedah/Dan Vogel — Isaac bound with the knife above him became the emblem of Jewish catastrophe — in Ephraim of Bonn, in Kafka's Joseph K. spread on a rock, in Wiesel's Isaac arriving at Majdanek. In none of them does the angel appear; some midrashim have Isaac slaughtered and revived. Asks why the parallel story of the mother and her seven sons never took hold, and answers that the midrashists intuited what the rescue meant.Tue, 01 Jul 2003 00:00:00 GMTPatriarchal NarrativesLiterature and the BibleMidrashModern Jewish Thoughthttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-gardens-of-eden-and-sodom/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-gardens-of-eden-and-sodom/Berel Dov Lerner — Egypt waters its crops by the farmer's own foot; the Land drinks rain from heaven, and only while its people keep faith. Rashbam draws the conclusion — better than all lands for those who observe, worse for those who don't. Reads that climate as an automatic feedback mechanism, on the model of Halevi's heart: the frailest organ, and therefore the one warned earliest, purging trouble before it takes root.Tue, 01 Jul 2003 00:00:00 GMTLand of IsraelJewish PhilosophyBiblical TheologyMedieval Exegesishttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-genealogy-of-moses-and-aaron/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-genealogy-of-moses-and-aaron/Zvi Ron — Two puzzles. Why place the lineage here, interrupting the mission to Pharaoh and forcing a recap, when Exodus 2 was the natural home for it? And why spend two verses on Reuben and Simeon first, merely repeating Genesis 46? Weighs the pshat answer, that they are the route to Levi, against Sforno and a midrash — then finds the placement explained by what Moses stops saying about the Israelites between 6:12 and 6:30.Tue, 01 Jul 2003 00:00:00 GMTMosesMedieval ExegesisBiblical NarrativePriesthoodhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-messages-of-chapter-4-of-genesis/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-messages-of-chapter-4-of-genesis/Joel Litke — If the point were to condemn murder, a plain prohibition would have done; instead we get both brothers' occupations in detail. And the surprise is that civilisation — the city, the harp and pipe, the forging of bronze and iron — descends from the first murderer. Reads the occupations as decisive: the shepherd accepts the earth as given, the farmer must impose himself on a reluctant soil, and the character follows.Tue, 01 Jul 2003 00:00:00 GMTBiblical NarrativeBiblical EthicsCreationBiblical Theologyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-words-minhag-and-masoret/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-words-minhag-and-masoret/Jacob Chinitz — Custom and tradition dominate modern Judaism and are almost absent from the Tanakh: neither word appears in the Torah, and each appears once elsewhere — minhag describing how Jehu drives, masoret in the bond of the covenant. The Torah's six legal terms are all formal and legislated. And Abraham's virtue is precisely that he abandoned his fathers' ways rather than inheriting them.Tue, 01 Jul 2003 00:00:00 GMTBiblical HebrewBiblical LawRabbinic LiteraturePatriarchal Narrativeshttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/was-bishop-usshers-chronology-influenced-by-a-midrash/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/was-bishop-usshers-chronology-influenced-by-a-midrash/Saul Leeman — Tanna d'be Eliyahu divides the world's six millennia into chaos, Torah and Messiah — the messianic age opening in the fifth. Ussher dates Creation to 4004 BCE and the nativity to 4 BCE, placing it exactly four thousand years after. He read Hebrew, taught divinity at Trinity, and the midrash is quoted twice in the Babylonian Talmud. No proof is claimed; the alternative is a remarkable coincidence.Tue, 01 Jul 2003 00:00:00 GMTBiblical ChronologyMidrashChristianity and the BibleHistory of Interpretationhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/abrahams-ten-trials/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/abrahams-ten-trials/Scott B. Noegel — In biblical rosters of ten, the seventh and tenth entries carry special weight — Enoch and Noah, Boaz and David, the Amorites and Jebusites. Having shown the device also governs narrative in the ten plagues, where hail gets the longest divine monologue, fourteen mentions and Pharaoh's first confession, applies the same reading to the rabbinic list of Abraham's ten trials.Tue, 01 Apr 2003 00:00:00 GMTPatriarchal NarrativesMidrashAncient Near EastBiblical Narrativehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/deuteronomys-definition-of-jewish-learning/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/deuteronomys-definition-of-jewish-learning/Charles David Isbell — Kiddushin reads veshinnantam as repeat, and improves on it by three-peating — a whole pedagogy of rote, with nothing said of debate or question. But the root is sh-n-n, to sharpen, not sh-n-h, as Rashi noted a thousand years ago and as the unpointed consonants already show. Elsewhere sh-n-n gives the sharp arrows of an army, the tooth, the tongue as keen as a sword. That range is what Deuteronomy 6 is asking for.Tue, 01 Apr 2003 00:00:00 GMTBiblical HebrewJewish EducationRabbinic ExegesisMedieval Exegesishttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/exile-and-return/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/exile-and-return/Shimon Bakon — The northern ten tribes vanished into Assyria; the two southern tribes went into a stronger and more sophisticated Babylon and came back. Over 40,000 answered Cyrus, where the Philistines, exiled by the same conqueror, simply ceased to exist. Looks at the 278 years from 722 to Ezra-Nehemiah for what made the difference — Ezekiel among the first deportees, and exiles who already had elders to consult.Tue, 01 Apr 2003 00:00:00 GMTExileProphecySecond Temple PeriodBiblical Theologyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/foretold-fulfilled-copied/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/foretold-fulfilled-copied/Lawrence Briskin — Delete everything Jewish from the Christian Scriptures and they become unintelligible; delete Christianity and Judaism continues unaffected. Neither Paul nor the evangelists knew Jesus, and by the time a biography mattered it was too late to gather one — so the Tanakh, probably in Septuagint form, supplied it. Over 600 verses trace back. The fulfilments prove not prophecy but eisegesis, and good copying.Tue, 01 Apr 2003 00:00:00 GMTChristianity and the BibleHistory of InterpretationBible TranslationSecond Temple Periodhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/hosea-and-gomer-revisited/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/hosea-and-gomer-revisited/Yosef Green — Rashi, Ibn Ezra, Maimonides and Kimhi made the marriage allegory or dream, finding it repugnant that God should command it — though one may ask whether an act becomes less objectionable for being commanded in a vision. Weighs four readings, and prefers the one in which Gomer is not a harlot but a woman of harlotry, implicated in the nation's guilt rather than her own, her children's names spelling the message.Tue, 01 Apr 2003 00:00:00 GMTProphecyMedieval ExegesisWomen in the BibleIdolatryhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/irrevocability-of-persian-law-in-esther/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/irrevocability-of-persian-law-in-esther/Ben Zion Katz — Every commentator repeats that Persian law could not be revoked, and no Persian source says so — nor any Greek one, though the Greeks mocked Persian ways freely. Argues the two supporting verses say something else: lo ya'avor means not transgressed, and le'hashiv concerns recall. Herodotus put three months on a message crossing the empire, and Haman's had been out seventy days. The damage could not be recalled, which is why Esther asked for arms instead.Tue, 01 Apr 2003 00:00:00 GMTSecond Temple PeriodBiblical HebrewAncient Near EastBible Translationhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/letter-to-the-editor-312/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/letter-to-the-editor-312/Walter Zanger — Jotham's parable turns on what the atad is, and identifying it as the thorny Lycium europaeum makes nonsense of the offer — that bush is low and casts no shade at all. Proposes the Christ Thorn, a stately evergreen up to ten metres whose shade is so deep that nothing grows beneath it. Which, Zanger suggests, is exactly Jotham's point, and can be seen outside the gate at Tel es-Sultan in Jericho.Tue, 01 Apr 2003 00:00:00 GMTLand of IsraelBiblical NarrativeScience and the Biblehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/obituary-rabbi-josiah-derby/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/obituary-rabbi-josiah-derby/The Editorial Board — Josiah Derby, rabbi emeritus of the Rego Park Jewish Center and of Congregation Beth Shalom, Coconut Creek, died on 13 Tevet 5763, a week short of eighty-nine. Born in Berditchev, a Harvard mathematician before the Seminary ordained him, an army chaplain, and the seventh-generation descendant of Levi Yitzchak of Berditchev. He founded the first Conservative day school in the country, and wrote more than thirty articles for this journal.Tue, 01 Apr 2003 00:00:00 GMTJewish EducationModern Jewish Thoughthttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/struggling-with-angels-and-men/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/struggling-with-angels-and-men/Jeffrey M. Cohen — Three angelic encounters, read as one long interior struggle. Returning after twenty years to a brother with reason to kill him, Jacob remembers the ladder — angels rising out of sight, angels coming down — and cannot tell whether they are abandoning him or guarding him. At Mahanaim he calls what he sees God's camp, a word with a military sense, and fears the old curse has come to be carried out.Tue, 01 Apr 2003 00:00:00 GMTPatriarchal NarrativesBiblical NarrativeBiblical TheologyRabbinic Exegesishttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-nature-of-kinat-david/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-nature-of-kinat-david/Eve Eichenholtz — David's dirge for Saul and Jonathan opens with an order that the Judites be taught it — a public text. The chiastic inclusio of verses 19 and 25 closes the composed kina, leaving the last two verses outside it, and inside it the imagery is all war and giborim rather than the lyre David actually played for Saul. Which sets up the tension Alter and Gros Louis find in the David of I Samuel 16-17, between the public man and the private one.Tue, 01 Apr 2003 00:00:00 GMTBiblical PoetryKingshipLiterature and the BibleBiblical Narrativehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/turning-to-jerusalem-in-prayer/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/turning-to-jerusalem-in-prayer/Shubert Spero — The practice looks like one of the observances instituted to remember the destroyed Temple — but Daniel is already doing it in Babylon, and the fifty years between destruction and rebuilding left little time for such customs to form. Traces it instead to Solomon's dedication oration: thirty-one verses about the Temple as a house of prayer that never once mention sacrifice.Tue, 01 Apr 2003 00:00:00 GMTLiturgyTempleLand of IsraelRabbinic Literaturehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/understanding-the-beginning-of-genesis/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/understanding-the-beginning-of-genesis/Daniel M. Berry — The shva under the bet makes it in a beginning, not in the beginning — a qamatz would be needed for the definite reading, and the Masoretic vocalisation everyone reads in synagogue has the shva. Rashi solved it syntactically by making the first verse a relative clause, but that requires revocalising the second word too. Proposes keeping the received vowels and the literal sense, and follows where it leads.Tue, 01 Apr 2003 00:00:00 GMTBiblical HebrewCreationMasoretic TextMedieval Exegesishttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-golden-calf-and-ra/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-golden-calf-and-ra/Allan M. Langner — Scholars often say the calf replaced Moses, not God, and functioned like the cherubim — a pedestal for an invisible deity. But then why the gravest sin in Scripture, why Moses' 'whoever is for God, follow me', why three thousand dead? The people asked for elohim in contrast to the man Moses, and hailed it as the god who brought them out. Follows the bull through Egyptian worship to Apis and the solar deity Ra.Wed, 01 Jan 2003 00:00:00 GMTIdolatryMosesAncient Near EastRabbinic Literaturehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/albinism-and-genetics-in-the-bible/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/albinism-and-genetics-in-the-bible/Schneir Levin — Extra-biblical sources give the newborn Noah skin white as snow and eyes transparent to the sun; a Qumran fragment adds red hair. Laban's name means white, and Leah's weak eyes may be the photophobia and nystagmus that go with it. Then the flocks: with Laban having removed every multichrome animal, what Jacob did with the peeled rods was a genetic scheme — Mendel pipped by a shepherd.Wed, 01 Jan 2003 00:00:00 GMTScience and the BiblePatriarchal NarrativesBiblical ChronologyMedieval Exegesishttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/foremost-in-rank-and-foremost-in-power/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/foremost-in-rank-and-foremost-in-power/Harvey Sicherman and Gilad J. Gevaryahu — Jacob stripped Reuben of the birthright and split it three ways — the double portion to Joseph, kingship to Judah, priesthood to Levi — each tied to a place: Shechem, Shiloh, and the site God would choose. Reads three later crises as fallout from that division: Korah's rebellion, the founding of the monarchy and the siting of the Temple, and Jeroboam's revolt.Wed, 01 Jan 2003 00:00:00 GMTPatriarchal NarrativesKingshipPriesthoodRabbinic Exegesishttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/from-enemy-to-friend/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/from-enemy-to-friend/Theodore Steinberg — Mishpatim commands helping your enemy's fallen ass, and the midrash tells of two mule drivers who hated each other until one turned back, and who ended the day eating together at an inn. Note the order: not a general injunction to love your neighbour in the hope that deeds follow, but the deed prescribed first, with the attitude left to catch up. Scripture understood the psychology well before Freud.Wed, 01 Jan 2003 00:00:00 GMTBiblical LawBiblical EthicsMidrashRabbinic Literaturehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/letters-to-the-editor-311/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/letters-to-the-editor-311/Saul Leeman, Moshe Reiss and Israel C. Stein — Leeman argues pi shnayim means two-thirds, not double — as it plainly does in Deuteronomy 21:17 and Zechariah 13:8 — so Elisha asked for a fraction of his master's spirit, not twice it. Reiss, against a favourable comparison with Moses, suggests Samuel usurped the priesthood, tried to make the judgeship dynastic, and twice chose a king by his appearance. Stein adds a note on Shebuel son of Gershon.Wed, 01 Jan 2003 00:00:00 GMTProphecyBiblical HebrewLeadershipBiblical Poetryhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/parental-love-or-child-abuse/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/parental-love-or-child-abuse/Dinah Minkoff — The Bible is full of maxims about parental love and full of children treated as property. Too much love ruins Jacob's household and costs David his children; meanwhile seduction and rape of a virgin are priced as losses to her father, and the Akedah records no test of Isaac's faith and no reward for it. The key is a society in which the individual is subordinate to the group — and even so, the text begins limiting what parents may do.Wed, 01 Jan 2003 00:00:00 GMTBiblical EthicsBiblical LawWomen in the BiblePatriarchal Narrativeshttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/polemical-considerations-among-the-four-children/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/polemical-considerations-among-the-four-children/Larry Magarik — The Mechilta assigns four biblical questions to four children and then answers none of them with the answer the Bible supplies. The wicked son's 'to you' is the same phrase the wise son uses, carries no hostility in context, and gets the same reply as the child who cannot ask at all. Argues the point was never to illumine the verses but to secure the standing of the Oral Law beside the Written.Wed, 01 Jan 2003 00:00:00 GMTMidrashLiturgyRabbinic ExegesisJewish Educationhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/problems-and-solutions-of-habakkuk-3-8/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/problems-and-solutions-of-habakkuk-3-8/Aron Pinker — One verse in the theophany where God's anger falls on neharim and yam, and four ways to take them: ordinary rivers and sea, the Jordan and the Red Sea, Ugaritic Prince Sea and Judge River, or the politics of the prophet's own day. Each of the first three leaves questions — why the anger, why the odd plural, why the Jordan before the Sea. Argues for the fourth.Wed, 01 Jan 2003 00:00:00 GMTProphecyTextual CriticismAncient Near EastBiblical Poetryhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/three-unlikely-leaders/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/three-unlikely-leaders/Josiah Derby — The Bible names a character trait exactly once — that Moses was the humblest of men — and otherwise leaves us to infer. Draws up the job description for each of three roles and shows that Moses, Gideon and Saul each failed it at the moment of appointment: a reluctant emissary who froze at the Sea, a man who demanded two signs and then a third, a king chosen on his looks. So why did God choose them?Wed, 01 Jan 2003 00:00:00 GMTLeadershipMosesKingshipBiblical Narrativehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/violence-and-holiness-in-biblical-dan/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/violence-and-holiness-in-biblical-dan/Walter Zanger — Dan sits in the pinched waist of the Rift Valley, on the trade road north, and the digs show it: Mycenaean pottery, Egyptian alabaster, some of the oldest glass ever found. It is the country's northern marker — from Dan to Beersheba, ten times over — and the most authentic tel in Israel, where you walk real streets rather than an excavation. Then the tribe itself: smallest, worst-placed, and the story that follows from that.Wed, 01 Jan 2003 00:00:00 GMTArchaeologyLand of IsraelAncient Near EastIdolatryhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/zechariah-a-prophet-during-a-pivotal-time/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/zechariah-a-prophet-during-a-pivotal-time/Fred Blumenthal — The visions resist interpretation and the later chapters look unrelated, which is why many read two prophets in one book. Proposes a single underlying theme, set against the theological moment: Judah came back from Babylon free of idolatry, where the ten tribes and the Elephantine colony did not, and a God no longer tied to one place produced what Bickerman called a paradoxical combination of universal monotheism and particularism.Wed, 01 Jan 2003 00:00:00 GMTProphecyExileIdolatrySecond Temple Periodhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/amos-5-24/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/amos-5-24/Ronald T. Hyman — Minor prophet is a judgement on length, not weight, and six Hebrew words carry the whole of Amos. A reader hears at once that the verse rings differently, without needing the terms for why. Works through its sound, its parallelism of justice and righteousness, and its surprise — a herdsman who never sought the office and prophesies because a lion has roared and who can but fear.Tue, 01 Oct 2002 00:00:00 GMTProphecyBiblical PoetryBiblical EthicsBiblical Hebrewhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/isaac-a-psychological-perspective/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/isaac-a-psychological-perspective/Nicky Lachs — Between a pioneering father and a resourceful son, Isaac responds rather than initiates: Abraham plans the sister story in advance, Isaac offers it only when asked. Trauma explains much of that — passivity, fear and withdrawal follow being bound by the man meant to protect you. But the midrashim on Sarah's reaction point further back, to something in the relationship with his mother that predates the Akedah.Tue, 01 Oct 2002 00:00:00 GMTPatriarchal NarrativesMidrashWomen in the BibleScience and the Biblehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/ishmael-son-of-abraham/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/ishmael-son-of-abraham/Moshe Reiss — Abraham was promised an heir of his own seed, and for thirteen years Ishmael was he — the first, with his father, to be circumcised. Then Isaac, and Sarah's demand. Abraham's immediate response to the promise of a second son had been to ask God to protect the first. What Ishmael made of his exile the Bible does not say, but the midrash keeps the relationship alive, and places him at the Akedah.Tue, 01 Oct 2002 00:00:00 GMTPatriarchal NarrativesMidrashWomen in the BibleBiblical Ethicshttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/metalworking-in-the-bible/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/metalworking-in-the-bible/Clarence H. Wagner, Jr. — Israel had copper and almost nothing else, so tin came from Europe by Phoenician ship and iron from Asia Minor. Follows the craft through the biblical record: Job on tunnelling, Solomon's foundries in the Jordan valley, the smith's tongs and hammer and nails, the skin bellows that made the coals hot enough — and the slaves at Timna who worked them, sometimes for a single day.Tue, 01 Oct 2002 00:00:00 GMTArchaeologyAncient Near EastTempleLand of Israelhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/moses-and-samuel-charismatic-leadership/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/moses-and-samuel-charismatic-leadership/Harvey Minkoff — Whose ass have I taken, asks Moses; whose ox or ass, asks Samuel centuries later. Both foresee or face a demand for a king like all the nations, and both pass over their own sons. Between those matching phrases lies a single political experiment: Moses stripped hereditary power from the first-born and split it between a priestly class and a charismatic leader — which is exactly what Korah, and Reuben's descendants, rebelled against.Tue, 01 Oct 2002 00:00:00 GMTLeadershipMosesPriesthoodKingshiphttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/nineveh-and-sodom-juxtaposed/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/nineveh-and-sodom-juxtaposed/Abraham Z. Ephros — Two wicked cities, one destroyed and one spared, with the human party arguing the opposite side each time: Abraham pressing for mercy, Jonah fleeing a mission of it. Sets out the shared vocabulary — the same root for wickedness, the same 'from the greatest to the least', the same unusual verb for overthrow — and tests whether the echoes are coincidence or a deliberate link, ironic in every case.Tue, 01 Oct 2002 00:00:00 GMTProphecyPatriarchal NarrativesRepentanceBiblical Hebrewhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-39th-annual-international-bible-contest/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-39th-annual-international-bible-contest/Joshua J. Adler — A report on the 2002 Chidon HaTanakh, held despite the terror campaign, with few Diaspora contestants cancelling. The Diaspora round at Kiryat Shemona was shared by Toronto and Brooklyn; the international final by two Israelis from the Negev, one of them Avihai Sheli of Netivot, deaf and blind, who studies the Bible in braille — following past champions who were blind or had cerebral palsy.Tue, 01 Oct 2002 00:00:00 GMTBible ContestJewish Educationhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-biblical-concept-of-beauty/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-biblical-concept-of-beauty/Herbert Rand — When the Bible calls someone beautiful it is rarely filling in a portrait; it is moving the plot. Rachel is shapely and beautiful, and then Jacob loves her; Joseph gets the same four words and Potiphar's wife follows. Sets that against the Woman of Valour, for whom beauty is hevel and not a qualification, and against Abigail and Esther, whose looks would not have sufficed without the wit.Tue, 01 Oct 2002 00:00:00 GMTBiblical NarrativeWomen in the BibleWisdom LiteratureBiblical Hebrewhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-parable-of-jotham/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-parable-of-jotham/Michael Livni — Gideon refused the crown and the dynasty: the Lord shall rule over you. His illegitimate son killed seventy brothers to take both, and Jotham, the one who escaped, answered from Mount Gerizim with the trees who sought a king. Sets the parable in the long argument over where authority sits — Korah against Moses, and Moses himself wishing that all the Lord's people were prophets.Tue, 01 Oct 2002 00:00:00 GMTKingshipLeadershipBiblical NarrativeModern Jewish Thoughthttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-wrath-of-moab/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-wrath-of-moab/P. J. Berlyn — Kings notes Omri's might without an example of it; the example survives on Mesha's stele, smashed by tribesmen in 1868 and now two-thirds legible. Mesha, a devout servant of Khemosh and a resentful vassal of Israel, records the tribute in lambs' wool, the taking of Nebo by night with seven thousand killed, and the line that Israel perished utterly forever — set beside the Bible's terse notice of the same revolt.Tue, 01 Oct 2002 00:00:00 GMTKingshipArchaeologyAncient Near EastIdolatryhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/tribute-herbert-rand-95th-birthday/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/tribute-herbert-rand-95th-birthday/The Editorial Board — Herbert Rand, born in New York in 1907, practised law for 56 years before turning to the Bible. His 1970 article on figure vases and the Hebrew midwives has been cited in the Illustrated Dictionary of the Bible and in Sarna's Exploring Exodus, and nineteen more have appeared in this journal over twenty years. The tribute lists them all, from Justice in Solomon's Court to The Biblical Concept of Beauty in this issue.Tue, 01 Oct 2002 00:00:00 GMTJewish EducationHistory of InterpretationArchaeologyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/why-was-god-optimistic-after-the-flood/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/why-was-god-optimistic-after-the-flood/Shubert Spero — Four chapters after everything was very good, the Creator resolves to blot it out — and not only man, whose free will at least explains something, but beast and creeping thing and the earth itself. In what sense can an animal corrupt its way? Proposes the defect was structural rather than moral, and reads Genesis 6-8 as the Torah's account of the mass extinctions paleontology has since uncovered.Tue, 01 Oct 2002 00:00:00 GMTCreationScience and the BibleBiblical TheologyJewish Philosophyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/bereshit-and-the-courage-of-new-beginnings/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/bereshit-and-the-courage-of-new-beginnings/Theodore Steinberg — Twenty-three verses hold the first family, the first murder and the first death. Wiesel finds the theme is responsibility, with neither brother wholly guilty nor wholly innocent. Repunctuate Cain's answer and it stops being a lie and becomes a defence — I didn't know I was supposed to be my brother's keeper — which is worse, because now he knows. And against the mark of Cain as inherited criminality, Adam and Eve simply begin again.Mon, 01 Jul 2002 00:00:00 GMTBiblical EthicsBiblical NarrativeMidrashModern Jewish Thoughthttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/editorial-303-martyrdom/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/editorial-303-martyrdom/The Editorial Board — A martyr, by the dictionary, dies rather than renounce his religion — the ten rabbis under Hadrian, the communities of Cologne, Blois and York who chose death over baptism, the uncounted of the Shoah. In four thousand years only Samson chose to kill his enemies as he died, and he is not offered for emulation. Written because propaganda during the intifada calls suicide bombers martyrs. They are not; they are murderers.Mon, 01 Jul 2002 00:00:00 GMTModern Jewish ThoughtRabbinic LiteratureBiblical Ethicshttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/forget-not-your-forebears/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/forget-not-your-forebears/Dan Vogel — God dealt with humanity universally through Adam, Noah and Babel, and each attempt failed; then came a particular choice, one family through which all families would be blessed. A reply to Pinchas Kahn on the universal mission, pressing the other side: the danger of letting particularism be eclipsed by the cosmic design — a tendency Vogel traces from Hermann Cohen and Buber to contemporary Israeli intellectuals.Mon, 01 Jul 2002 00:00:00 GMTPatriarchal NarrativesModern Jewish ThoughtBiblical TheologyJewish Philosophyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/moses-elisha-and-transferred-spirit-part-2/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/moses-elisha-and-transferred-spirit-part-2/Elliot B. Gertel — The narrative never once calls Elisha a prophet — only a man of God, a title David also carries — except in his own mouth. He needs a musician before the hand of the Lord will come, responds to one king and not another out of respect, and his most dramatic predictions yield partial victories. Asks whether the Bible is quietly mocking the ecstatic prophecy Moses himself imprudently wished on everyone.Mon, 01 Jul 2002 00:00:00 GMTProphecyMosesKingshipBiblical Criticismhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/moses-intermediary-or-teacher/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/moses-intermediary-or-teacher/Jacob Chinitz — Against Christianity, Judaism insists Moses was only a man and we pray to God directly. Read dispassionately, the sources are less certain: the people believed in the Lord and in Moses His servant; forty days without bread or water; I stood between the Lord and you. Set against that, the Torah is at pains to give him an ordinary conception and an ordinary death.Mon, 01 Jul 2002 00:00:00 GMTMosesJewish PhilosophyChristianity and the BibleMidrashhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/suffering-three-biblical-views/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/suffering-three-biblical-views/Shimon Bakon — Retribution, protest, and vicarious purpose. The first rests on Abraham at Sodom and on Sinai, and admits repentance as a way out, most nobly in Jonah — but shows cracks when Jeremiah asks why the way of the wicked prospers. Job breaks with it outright, moving the question from the nation to one man. Isaiah's suffering servant makes the suffering itself part of a plan for Israel and for everyone.Mon, 01 Jul 2002 00:00:00 GMTBiblical TheologySufferingWisdom LiteratureRepentancehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-elusive-mount-zion/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-elusive-mount-zion/Walter Zanger — Zion began as the whole of David's city on the south-eastern hill, grew with Jerusalem, then stretched to mean all Judah and even the people themselves. Then it shrank to the Temple precinct — and by the first century had moved across town, because Josephus called the south-western hill the stronghold of David. Which is where the schoolchildren point today, above a Crusader tomb built over what is very likely Jerusalem's oldest synagogue.Mon, 01 Jul 2002 00:00:00 GMTLand of IsraelArchaeologyTempleChristianity and the Biblehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-mission-of-abraham/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-mission-of-abraham/Pinchas Kahn — Abraham argues furiously over Sodom and goes silent at the Akedah. What bridges them is God's own musing — that he will teach his household justice and judgment, a criterion never named before. Reads the intervening material, apparently miscellaneous, as a lesson plan: Abraham being brought to terms with ethical complexity, so that a God of justice can still be taught in a world that looks absurd.Mon, 01 Jul 2002 00:00:00 GMTPatriarchal NarrativesBiblical EthicsBiblical TheologySacrificehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-resurrection-motif-in-the-hebrew-bible/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-resurrection-motif-in-the-hebrew-bible/Leila Leah Bronner — The bodily resurrection of Daniel 12 cannot have arrived from nowhere in the second century BCE. Tests five verbs — hayah, qum, hekitz, shuv, tzitz — across earlier texts, and finds the motif where qum stands parallel to hayah: the Songs of Moses and Hannah, which put death before life; Elijah and Elisha; Hosea, Isaiah, Ezekiel. Then asks whether the reference is the nation restored or the individual revived.Mon, 01 Jul 2002 00:00:00 GMTBiblical TheologyBiblical HebrewAncient Near EastTextual Criticismhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/who-was-jonathan-son-of-gershom/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/who-was-jonathan-son-of-gershom/Josiah Derby — A suspended nun turns Moshe into Menashe, and the rabbis read it as a scribe sparing the prophet an idolatrous grandson. But the chronology defeats it: Gershom was born in Midian, so his son would have been over 150 when the young Levite served Micah. Argues the identification with that Levite rests on nothing but proximity in the chapter, and proposes a different Jonathan.Mon, 01 Jul 2002 00:00:00 GMTMasoretic TextRabbinic ExegesisBiblical ChronologyIdolatryhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/divination-in-the-bible/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/divination-in-the-bible/David Davis — Sorts divination from sorcery, magic, enchantment and the rest, then groups the biblical injunctions: outright prohibition, insistence that only God discloses, anxiety about false dreamers, contempt for the peoples who practise it, and the punishments — Samaria for its enchantments, Manasseh carried to Babylon. Then the methods actually attested, from the Urim and Thummim to the king of Babylon shaking his arrows, and Joseph, one of only two Israelites in the Bible to read dreams.Mon, 01 Apr 2002 00:00:00 GMTIdolatryAncient Near EastBiblical LawJosephhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/determinism-and-anti-determinism-in-koheleth/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/determinism-and-anti-determinism-in-koheleth/Dominic Rudman — If human action is externally controlled, no law can be just and God owns the bad deeds as well as the good — which is why Koheleth's catalogue of times and seasons has had to be moderated or explained away. Modern commentators divide over how deterministic the book is, and few notice the argument is old: the Targumist and Ibn Ezra read it deterministically, and later Jewish commentators set about countering them.Mon, 01 Apr 2002 00:00:00 GMTWisdom LiteratureJewish PhilosophyMedieval ExegesisHistory of Interpretationhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/displacement-in-the-matriarchal-home/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/displacement-in-the-matriarchal-home/Jeffrey M. Cohen — Anthropology can explain the Hagar arrangement as ordinary Near Eastern practice, but the Bible is not a record of ethnology. Takes Zornberg's reading of Jacob and Rachel as the model — a wife for whom a child is the primary passion, a husband who cannot see why his love is not enough — and applies it to Abraham, who complies with the surrogacy without enthusiasm, merely listening to the voice of his wife.Mon, 01 Apr 2002 00:00:00 GMTPatriarchal NarrativesWomen in the BibleMedieval ExegesisBiblical Ethicshttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/friends-strangers-enemies/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/friends-strangers-enemies/Theodore Steinberg — Thirty-six times the Torah asks that the stranger be loved, for two reasons: you know the feeling, and you know what was done to you. Ramban grounds it in imitatio Dei — God loves the stranger, so go and do likewise. Then the harder case: unload a friend's ass or load an enemy's? The enemy first, says the Talmud, to crush the evil inclination — or, in the Tosefta's better version, to crush the enemy's heart and change it.Mon, 01 Apr 2002 00:00:00 GMTBiblical EthicsRabbinic LiteratureBiblical LawMedieval Exegesishttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/gideon-and-the-ephraimites/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/gideon-and-the-ephraimites/Josiah Derby — Everyone reads Gideon's answer as a compliment that soothed a slighted tribe. Read closely it is an evasion that never addresses the charge, and an insult besides: gleanings are what is left for the poor because it is inferior, so nobody could seriously rank them above the vintage. Set against Jephthah, who answered the same accusation directly and got a war for it, the dissembling looks deliberate.Mon, 01 Apr 2002 00:00:00 GMTLeadershipBiblical HebrewBiblical NarrativePatriarchal Narrativeshttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/jacobs-blessing-for-dan/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/jacobs-blessing-for-dan/Fred Blumenthal — Genesis Rabbah and most commentators read the serpent in the path as Samson. Four objections: it skips Moses and Aaron entirely; the other blessings assign present standing, not distant prophecy; the sons listening could not have understood it; and a man of prodigious strength is poorly figured as a limbless snake, with no mounted Philistines anywhere in his story. Follows Abraham ben-HaRambam toward Dan as guerrilla fighter, in an age the Hyksos had just given the horse.Mon, 01 Apr 2002 00:00:00 GMTPatriarchal NarrativesMedieval ExegesisAncient Near EastMidrashhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/moses-elisha-and-transferred-spirit-part-1/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/moses-elisha-and-transferred-spirit-part-1/Elliot B. Gertel — God draws off the spirit that is on Moses and puts it on seventy elders — but the text never says how Moses came to have it. Numbers 11 turns the mood of the book: the people crave meat and are promised a month of it, and Moses joins the complaining, asking to be killed rather than lead them. The elders' brief ecstasy reads less as a gift than as a matching punishment, a surfeit of spirit.Mon, 01 Apr 2002 00:00:00 GMTProphecyMosesLeadershipBiblical Narrativehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/tamar-times-three/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/tamar-times-three/William I. Rosenblum — Three women of the name: two at the centre of their stories, one a bare mention — or is that third a deliberate echo, meant to be caught by hearers who knew the oral history? Notes what most translations soften: the second word used of Judah's roadside encounter carries the root for holy, making Tamar's disguise that of a cult prostitute, so that lying with her implies not lust but pagan worship.Mon, 01 Apr 2002 00:00:00 GMTWomen in the BiblePatriarchal NarrativesBiblical LawBible Translationhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-subtle-grammar-of-the-biblical-dietary-laws/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-subtle-grammar-of-the-biblical-dietary-laws/Arnold Ages — Laws addressed to Israel alone, and classed as hukim — not amenable to reason — have somehow become the object of hundreds of websites, most run by Christian fundamentalists wrestling with an Old Testament the New has not superseded. Sets Halevi, for whom the inexplicable is the point, against Philo's allegories of fish that resist the current, against Maimonides, who calls the appeal to irrationality a spiritual sickness.Mon, 01 Apr 2002 00:00:00 GMTBiblical LawJewish PhilosophyMedieval ExegesisKashruthttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-use-of-symbolism-in-the-book-of-ruth/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-use-of-symbolism-in-the-book-of-ruth/Raphael B. Shuchat — Who names a child Sickness, or Decimation? Chronicles may preserve the real names, which would mean the author changed them to make them speak. Works through the book's doubled meanings: Orpah from the nape, who turned her back; Ruth whose letters plus the seven Noahide laws make 613; and a family that leaves the house of bread during a famine for the open fields of Moab, where in biblical writing an empty field precedes tragedy.Mon, 01 Apr 2002 00:00:00 GMTWomen in the BibleBiblical NarrativeKabbalahRabbinic Exegesishttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/genesis-i-breitbart/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/genesis-i-breitbart/Sidney Breitbart — A poem on the first chapter: creation as a statement of faith rather than a scientific account, the law of opposites running through the days, and reason, creativity, free will and imagination as the image of God. Dominion makes the human being God's partner in the material dimension — hence responsibility for air, water and the ecology of the earth, a burden that cannot be escaped.Tue, 01 Jan 2002 00:00:00 GMTCreationBiblical PoetryModern Jewish ThoughtScience and the Biblehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/in-the-presence/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/in-the-presence/Theodore Steinberg — All of you stand this day before the Lord your God — but what would it mean to stand before God? A New Yorker cartoon has a man read "Prepare to Meet Thy God" on a billboard and comb his hair. Gathers ways of perceiving what ordinary looking and listening miss: Reik's third ear, a meditation manual that would leave you still on the preliminary psalms at Alenu, and lines from The Fantasticks and Joyce Cary on seeing with the ears.Tue, 01 Jan 2002 00:00:00 GMTPrayerBiblical TheologyModern Jewish ThoughtHomileticshttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/is-incest-with-a-daughter-permissible/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/is-incest-with-a-daughter-permissible/Benjamin Goodnick — Sophie Lafont concludes that the Old Testament nowhere expressly condemns paternal incest, and the list in Leviticus 18 does indeed omit the daughter — the prohibition comes by rabbinic inference. Sets that beside two other omissions: the wife among the relatives a priest may defile himself for, and the wife in the Fourth Commandment. Argues the very closeness of the relation is the reason none of the three needed saying.Tue, 01 Jan 2002 00:00:00 GMTBiblical LawRabbinic ExegesisWomen in the BibleBiblical Ethicshttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/joseph-and-daniel-court-jews-and-dreamers/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/joseph-and-daniel-court-jews-and-dreamers/Bezalel Naor — Both were renamed by their employers, both rose on a royal dream, and Daniel had the harder task since Nebuchadnezzar would not disclose the dream's contents. But the careers run opposite ways: Joseph begins as a dreamer naive enough to tell his brothers about the sheaves and ends as an interpreter, while Daniel begins as an interpreter and ends a visionary. Mordecai is set aside — he has no truck with dreams at all.Tue, 01 Jan 2002 00:00:00 GMTJosephBiblical NarrativeDiasporaDreamshttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/letters-to-the-editor-30-1/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/letters-to-the-editor-30-1/JBQ Readers — Bernhard Lazarus of Durban proposes that in His image be read as resembling Him — copying what we ascribe to Him — since God has no form. Henry Skirball corrects the arithmetic of Kiddush Hahamah, recalling the ritual in the fields of Kibbutz Sdei Eliyahu in 1953. Josh Backon lines up the Ipuwer papyrus against the Ten Plagues, verse by verse: blood, pestilence, hail, locusts, darkness.Tue, 01 Jan 2002 00:00:00 GMTCreationJewish CalendarAncient Near EastExodus from Egypthttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/observations-on-some-cruxes-in-amos-part-5/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/observations-on-some-cruxes-in-amos-part-5/Aron Pinker — The king's mowings in Amos 7:1 rest on a royal right to the first spring grass that the Bible never attests, and on a verb the Bible reserves for shearing sheep. Reads the second lekesh with the Septuagint as yelek — the wingless locust larva — and emends to a vision of the plague in its successive stages, so that a line about the agricultural calendar becomes an event. Continues the cruxes of Parts I-IV.Tue, 01 Jan 2002 00:00:00 GMTTextual CriticismBiblical HebrewProphecyAncient Near Easthttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/seeking-vindication-especially-in-jonah/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/seeking-vindication-especially-in-jonah/Ronald T. Hyman — Questions test, probe, stimulate and inform — and they also rebuke, which takes a triple transformation to hear: interrogative into declarative, valence flipped, tone restored. Isolates a subtype nobody has named, the vindication question, by which a speaker clears himself of an accusation. Six examples lead to the prime one, the question God puts to Jonah in the book's last verse.Tue, 01 Jan 2002 00:00:00 GMTProphecyBiblical NarrativeBiblical HebrewRhetorichttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-prophet-versus-the-king/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-prophet-versus-the-king/Moshe Reiss — Moses is the prototypical prophet, David the prototypical king. Can they hold the same theology? David proposes a house of cedar for God; Nathan approves, and God overrules him, having lived in a tent since Egypt. Reads that refusal as a question about whether a newly crowned king is trying to tie God down to one nation — and notes that God calls David His servant, a title given before only to Abraham and Moses.Tue, 01 Jan 2002 00:00:00 GMTKingshipProphecyTempleBiblical Theologyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/three-rationalist-explanations-of-prophecy/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/three-rationalist-explanations-of-prophecy/Larry Magarik — Prophecy is everywhere in the Hebrew Bible and defined nowhere; navi, roeh and hozeh are as ambiguous in Hebrew as messenger, seer and visionary are in English. The lying-prophet story of I Kings 13 raises every hard question at once, and Deuteronomy answers none of them, ruling out accurate prediction as a test. Compares Maimonides, for whom prophecy is a graded mental process, with Spinoza and with Aryeh Kaplan.Tue, 01 Jan 2002 00:00:00 GMTProphecyJewish PhilosophyMedieval ExegesisModern Jewish Thoughthttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/universalism-and-or-particularism/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/universalism-and-or-particularism/Yosef Green — Judaism is the religion of one people whose God was never less than the Creator of all — which is why Abraham can bargain for Sodom, and why Isaiah welcomes proselytes in the same breath as the return from exile. The balance is visible even in the Alenu, whose first paragraph is uncompromisingly particular and whose second is universal. To some readers this looks like a contradiction; both halves have nonetheless survived millennia.Tue, 01 Jan 2002 00:00:00 GMTBiblical TheologyJewish PhilosophyChosennessRabbinic Literaturehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/was-psalm-50-misplaced/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/was-psalm-50-misplaced/Shubert Spero — Twelve psalms carry Asaph's name; eleven sit together as 73-83, and one stands alone at 50. Accident, or placement? Psalm 50 contains none of the usual elements of prayer — no praise, no supplication — but a theophany, then God in the first person deriding the notion that He needs bullocks, with a force comparable to Isaiah 1 and Amos 5. Connects that unusual content to the historical Asaph and to the book's second division, which ends at 72.Tue, 01 Jan 2002 00:00:00 GMTPsalmsSacrificeTempleBiblical Poetryhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/armageddon-raging-battle-for-bible-history/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/armageddon-raging-battle-for-bible-history/Walter Zanger — To get from Egypt to Mesopotamia you must pass through the Land of Israel, and to pass Mount Carmel most traffic took the narrow Aruna pass — at whose mouth stood Megiddo. Whoever holds the town holds the pass, the road, and the commerce of the world; there is money in a toll booth on the main road, and there is also getting run over. History's first recorded battle was fought here in 1468 BCE, Josiah died here, and John placed the last battle here too. The battle raging at Megiddo now is over chronology.Mon, 01 Oct 2001 00:00:00 GMTArchaeologyLand of IsraelAncient Near EastBiblical Chronologyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/biblical-literature-and-contemporary-parallels/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/biblical-literature-and-contemporary-parallels/Harold M. Kamsler — Enlil floods the earth because human noise annoys the gods, and Utnapishtim is a weapon Ea uses against him; Noah is saved because he is righteous in a perverse generation. The Song at the Sea shares the vocabulary of Enuma Elish and the Baal cycle — the four winds, the mountain of thine inheritance, the house built for the victor — and uses it for something else entirely: not a war among gods but the keeping of a promise made to Abraham.Mon, 01 Oct 2001 00:00:00 GMTAncient Near EastBiblical TheologyCreationExodus from Egypthttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/calendar-notations-in-the-prophets/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/calendar-notations-in-the-prophets/Josiah Derby — The pre-Exilic prophets are dated, if at all, by a later hand adding the names of kings; the post-Exilic ones give the regnal year, the month and the day — thirteen such dates in Ezekiel alone. The difference is not idiosyncrasy but Babylon, whose wise men held that events in the heavens governed events on earth, so that every day carried its own value and had to be recorded. The exiles brought the month names home along with a new script.Mon, 01 Oct 2001 00:00:00 GMTBiblical ChronologyJewish CalendarAncient Near EastProphecyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/do-that-which-is-right-and-good/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/do-that-which-is-right-and-good/Yosef Green — Three lessons out of one verse. The Bible stayed the living law of the Jews precisely because it was never merely a book of laws: Jews built no science of law as Rome did, they legalised every moment of a life. Business is never merely business, and no fast on Yom Kippur expiates a false weight. And above the letter stands lifnim meshurat hadin — Ramban's warning that a man can keep the whole law and still be a scoundrel, which is what Sodom was.Mon, 01 Oct 2001 00:00:00 GMTBiblical EthicsBiblical LawMedieval ExegesisHomileticshttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/elisha-the-prophet/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/elisha-the-prophet/Shimon Bakon — Elisha has none of Nathan's indignation or Elijah's fury, yet nine of the twenty-five chapters of II Kings are his, against sixteen for thirty kings. Read carefully the loose episodes form a pattern: one man's lifelong campaign to eliminate Baal-worship in Israel. Traces his growth from Elijah's servant to head of the Bnei Neviim, his standing with royalty and in Aram, and his toppling of the House of Omri.Mon, 01 Oct 2001 00:00:00 GMTProphecyKingshipIdolatryBiblical Narrativehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/learning-from-isaiah/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/learning-from-isaiah/Norman Podhoretz — Luther complained that Isaiah poured out whatever came into his head, in any order, and it drove him half-mad. Philology and archaeology have since settled the broad question of authorship — first Isaiah through chapter 36, a narrative bridge from Kings, Deutero-Isaiah in Babylonia two centuries later. What they have not cleared away are the selective readings imposed by three constituencies who claim the book: Reform Jews, political liberals and Christians.Mon, 01 Oct 2001 00:00:00 GMTProphecyBiblical CriticismHistory of InterpretationModern Jewish Thoughthttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/observations-on-some-cruxes-in-amos-part-4/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/observations-on-some-cruxes-in-amos-part-4/Aron Pinker — Amos 6:1 has a solid parallelism in its first half that every commentator then abandons in its second, because nekuvei will not pair with ubau lahem. Reads both as actions — entering and coming — one for Zion, one for Samaria, so the woe falls on two kingdoms confident in their two sanctuaries. Continues the cruxes of Parts I-III.Mon, 01 Oct 2001 00:00:00 GMTTextual CriticismBiblical HebrewProphecyTemplehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/purim-and-adloyada/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/purim-and-adloyada/Jeffrey M. Cohen — Why would sober sages tell us to drink until we cannot tell Mordecai from Haman — losing the whole point of the day? Because that is precisely the condition of everyone in the book. A king who throws a 180-day banquet to mark the third year of his reign, who never asks who his wife's people are, nor which nation Haman wants destroyed; a Vashti who misjudged her husband; and Jews at the orgy without a qualm, sure their neighbours would defend them.Mon, 01 Oct 2001 00:00:00 GMTEstherRabbinic LiteratureMidrashJewish Festivalshttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-38th-annual-international-bible-contest/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-38th-annual-international-bible-contest/Joshua J. Adler — Sixty-five students from thirty-one countries, the final held in Jerusalem on Independence Day with two hours of live television. Ariel Sharon gave the group most of an hour, telling them Eretz Yisrael is holy to many peoples but the Promised Land to no other. First place went to Shai Hason of Moshav Elyakim, who has triumphed over congenital cerebral palsy, ahead of Eliav Danziger of Canada.Mon, 01 Oct 2001 00:00:00 GMTBible EducationIsraelJewish Bible Associationhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-relationship-between-biblical-narrative-and-biblical-law/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-relationship-between-biblical-narrative-and-biblical-law/Gershon Hepner — Three patriarchal narratives foreshadow later legislation. Ham seeing his father's nakedness reads against the Holiness Code, where the same phrase plainly denotes intercourse — and Ham is the ancestor of both Egypt and Canaan, the two nations whose practices Leviticus 18 forbids. Then Lot's separation from Abraham, first for its levirate implications, then for the ban on admitting Moabites and Ammonites.Mon, 01 Oct 2001 00:00:00 GMTBiblical LawPatriarchal NarrativesAncient Near EastBiblical Criticismhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/what-never-was-and-never-will-be/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/what-never-was-and-never-will-be/Gilad J. Gevaryahu and Harvey Sicherman — Three laws the Talmud declares never happened and never will: the razed house, the destroyed city, the stoned son. Yet Rabbi Jonathan says he sat on the city's ruin and on the son's grave, and infected bricks were reportedly found in the Galilee. The usual answer — the rabbis humanised a harsh Mosaic law — sits badly with a tradition that never did the same for the red heifer or kashrut. Proposes another reading.Mon, 01 Oct 2001 00:00:00 GMTBiblical LawRabbinic LiteratureRabbinic ExegesisBiblical Ethicshttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/yom-adonai-and-the-ninth-plague/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/yom-adonai-and-the-ninth-plague/Allan M. Langner — Continues the argument that the plague of darkness, not the death of the firstborn, forced the Exodus — the Egyptians, believing Ra himself was dying, slaughtered their own firstborn as pagans did, then pursued Israel the moment the light returned. Adds the prophetic evidence: no prophet mentions makat bechorot at all, while many announce a Day of the Lord in which sun, moon and stars go out.Sun, 01 Jul 2001 00:00:00 GMTExodus from EgyptProphecyAncient Near EastIdolatryhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/bible-translators-as-arbiters-of-ambiguity-part-2/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/bible-translators-as-arbiters-of-ambiguity-part-2/Ronald T. Hyman — Pronoun ambiguity can be preserved in English; phrase ambiguity cannot, because capitals and commas force a decision. Where a floating middle phrase can attach forward or back, the translator must pick, and the sequence of events changes accordingly. Genesis 34:7 is the test case: Alter, the REB and the NIV have the sons hear then come in from the field; the Douay and the NRSV have them come in, then hear, then rage.Sun, 01 Jul 2001 00:00:00 GMTBible TranslationBiblical HebrewBiblical NarrativeTextual Criticismhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/jacobs-death-bed-farewell-to-his-sons/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/jacobs-death-bed-farewell-to-his-sons/Shubert Spero — Jacob calls his sons together twice, and only the first call mentions the end of days — a subject the blessings then never touch. The rabbis read the gap: he sought to reveal the end, the Divine Presence withdrew, and he spoke of other things. Behind the midrash lies their own ambivalence about knowing the future at all. If the end is far off we despair; if it seems near, perhaps we stop trying.Sun, 01 Jul 2001 00:00:00 GMTMidrashPatriarchal NarrativesRabbinic ExegesisMessianismhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/joseph-under-suspicion/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/joseph-under-suspicion/Jeffrey M. Cohen — Someone or other told Joseph his father was ill — not his family, and there is an implicit reproof in the phrasing. Reads seventeen years of near-total absence from Goshen, which would explain why Jacob does not recognise his own grandchildren and why the brothers still fear for their lives. Then Pharaoh's reluctance to let his viceroy travel: a dispossessed peasantry with reason to want him dead, and a king who needed to hear the words I shall return.Sun, 01 Jul 2001 00:00:00 GMTJosephPatriarchal NarrativesBiblical NarrativeAncient Near Easthttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/letters-to-the-editor-29-3/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/letters-to-the-editor-29-3/JBQ Readers — Israel Stein of Bridgeport challenges Sidney Breitbart on Genesis 27: it is Esau who is the man of the field, Jacob who dwells in tents, and the blessing was never the same thing as the birthright. Breitbart answers that a mild man who stayed in camp was not merely eating and sleeping there — someone had to mind the goats — and that Isaac's blessing of dew and grain was plainly meant for a man of the field, not a hunter.Sun, 01 Jul 2001 00:00:00 GMTPatriarchal NarrativesRabbinic ExegesisBiblical Ethicshttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/midrashic-implications-of-the-term-holid/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/midrashic-implications-of-the-term-holid/Dan Vogel — The genealogies prefer vayoled for begot, but two other forms appear — and where they do, one child out of many is singled out. Argues the singling marks two things: the father's aging, and an attempt to rear this son in the father's values, whether or not those values please God. Follows the term from Adam to Terah, with the Midrash's verdict on each of the ten generations, including the two it might have been expected to pass over.Sun, 01 Jul 2001 00:00:00 GMTMidrashBiblical HebrewGenealogyRabbinic Exegesishttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/observations-on-some-cruxes-in-amos-part-3/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/observations-on-some-cruxes-in-amos-part-3/Aron Pinker — Reads Amos as a live delivery with hecklers in it — the I know of 5:12 answering a dispute, 7:14 answering an interruption. On that reading the unique word boshaskhem in 5:11 is not a misspelt trample but a retort thrown back at the crowd: be quiet. Then the pained farmer of 5:16, whom every commentator has to turn into a professional mourner.Sun, 01 Jul 2001 00:00:00 GMTTextual CriticismBiblical HebrewProphecySocial Justicehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/phinehas-and-micah/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/phinehas-and-micah/Susan Weingarten — Less is written on the dialogue between a Torah reading and its haftarah than on either alone. Here the Torah approves a man who runs two people through with a spear, and God calls it turning away wrath. The haftarah opens with Israel as a marauding lion — then takes the punishing of idolatry out of human hands entirely, and closes on what the Lord requires: do justly, love mercy, walk humbly. The rabbis who paired them were saying something.Sun, 01 Jul 2001 00:00:00 GMTBiblical EthicsZealotryHomileticsProphecyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/switching-brides-conspiracy-and-cover-up/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/switching-brides-conspiracy-and-cover-up/Herbert Rand — Rachel says nothing that night, and Leah offers no excuse afterwards — yet Rachel must have noticed both her bridegroom and her sister missing. The substitution could not have worked unless all three were in on it. Reconstructs the meeting held while Jacob was in the field: Laban's groundwork, Rachel's objection that seven more years would cost her childbearing, and the handmaids offered to sweeten the deal.Sun, 01 Jul 2001 00:00:00 GMTPatriarchal NarrativesWomen in the BibleBiblical NarrativeAncient Near Easthttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-jewish-calendar/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-jewish-calendar/Jacob Chinitz — The solar calendar bows to the moon in taking twelve months, and the lunar calendar bows to the sun so that Passover stays in spring — eleven days a year made up by seven leap months in nineteen. Works the arithmetic, notes the anomaly by which a boy born in Adar II reaches Bar Mitzvah before a boy born earlier in Adar, and takes up the blessings of the new moon and of the sun.Sun, 01 Jul 2001 00:00:00 GMTJewish CalendarBiblical ChronologyRabbinic LiteratureJewish Festivalshttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-queen-of-sheba-a-queen-of-egypt-and-ethiopia/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-queen-of-sheba-a-queen-of-egypt-and-ethiopia/Elliot A. Green — Josephus names her, calls her ruler of Egypt and Ethiopia, and elsewhere identifies Saba as the Ethiopian capital later renamed Meroë. Scholarship has settled instead on southern Arabia and simply ignores him, though a wealthy monarch of the biblical stature fits Egypt far better than the Arabian Saba. Sets out the case for each, including the Quran's Bilkis and Genesis 10's two Shebas — one a grandson of Kush, one a Shemite.Sun, 01 Jul 2001 00:00:00 GMTAncient Near EastKingshipArchaeologyHistory of Interpretationhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-tragic-king/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-tragic-king/Josiah Derby — Several kings died by violence, but only one was offered a way out of catastrophe and refused it. Traces the descent from Josiah's death at Megiddo through Necho's deposing of Jehoahaz, Jehoiakim's palace-building, and Jehoiachin's surrender, which bought Jerusalem eleven more years. Then Zedekiah — a youngest son never trained to rule, propelled into the nutcracker between Babylon and Egypt, weak and irresolute.Sun, 01 Jul 2001 00:00:00 GMTKingshipBiblical ChronologyAncient Near EastProphecyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/a-puzzle-in-the-pentateuch/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/a-puzzle-in-the-pentateuch/Johnson Teng Kok Lim — Aaron stands by while Moses strikes the rock, and is barred from the land for it. Explanations run from silence to cowardice to divine caprice to a delayed punishment for the golden calf, and none has convinced anyone. Argues the grammar settles it: God's instruction was addressed to both brothers, and three later verses use the plural you. Moses did what he should not have; Aaron failed to do what he should — a sin of omission beside a sin of commission.Sun, 01 Apr 2001 00:00:00 GMTMosesPriesthoodBiblical HebrewLeadershiphttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/and-abraham-stood-yet-before-the-lord/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/and-abraham-stood-yet-before-the-lord/Shubert Spero — God appears to Abraham at Mamre and says nothing; the next verse has him running after three strangers. Maimonides resolves it by making the whole chapter a prophetic vision, which the realistic texture of the text resists. Proposes instead that the Presence simply stays — through the meal, through Sarah's laughter, through the bargaining over Sodom — and that what Abraham learns from an unbroken Presence during moral work is that God is moral in essence, not merely in what He asks.Sun, 01 Apr 2001 00:00:00 GMTPatriarchal NarrativesBiblical TheologyMedieval ExegesisBiblical Ethicshttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/bible-translators-as-arbiters-of-ambiguity-part-1/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/bible-translators-as-arbiters-of-ambiguity-part-1/Ronald T. Hyman — Readers of a translation rarely know how many decisions were made for them. Sarah denies laughing and is rebuked — but by whom? The King James keeps the ambiguity with a lower-case he; the JPS capitalises the pronoun mid-sentence and thereby decides for God, silently; the Douay goes further and writes Lord. One capital letter settles a question the Hebrew leaves open, and nothing tells the reader it was ever open.Sun, 01 Apr 2001 00:00:00 GMTBible TranslationBiblical HebrewTextual CriticismPatriarchal Narrativeshttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/holidays-some-peculiarities/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/holidays-some-peculiarities/Shimon Bakon — Each of the four major festivals carries a value modern people prize — freedom, law, introspection, joy — and they are paired so that each checks the other, since freedom without restraint becomes anarchy and law without air stifles. Rosh HaShanah sits in the centre and gives the set divine sanction. And the bond servant who will not go free has his ear bored: the ear that heard we are God's servants and chose a human master instead.Sun, 01 Apr 2001 00:00:00 GMTJewish FestivalsBiblical LawBiblical EthicsHomileticshttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/jacobs-choice-in-genesis/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/jacobs-choice-in-genesis/Pinchas Kahn — Two flat verses of genealogy open the parsha, and both are redundant: Abraham's paternity stated twice, Aramean twice with Aram set between. Reads the redundancy as a question posed at the outset — which of two cultural inheritances will supply the values of Isaac and Rebekah's children — and the parsha that follows, one deception after another, as the answer working itself out against the charge given before Sodom, to keep the way of the Lord and do justice.Sun, 01 Apr 2001 00:00:00 GMTPatriarchal NarrativesBiblical EthicsBiblical NarrativeChosennesshttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/jobs-displaced-kidneys/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/jobs-displaced-kidneys/Kevin Snapp — Job longs to behold God and says his kidneys are consumed in his breast — where kidneys are not. The old JPS keeps the organ and softens the location; the new JPS keeps the location and swaps in the heart. Neither is needed: elsewhere the Bible uses kidneys for intention, not for this kind of psychic exhaustion, and the word here is written defectively. Repoint two words and the line reads I am utterly spent within my breast, with the anatomy intact.Sun, 01 Apr 2001 00:00:00 GMTTextual CriticismBiblical HebrewBible TranslationWisdom Literaturehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/kedushah-holiness-and-ethics/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/kedushah-holiness-and-ethics/Dinah Minkoff — Holiness in English suggests ritual and prayer; kedushah in Leviticus covers the whole of life and leans hard on social conduct. Works through the ethical commands of chapter 19 with the commentators: Sifra pairing parents with the Sabbath as the three who made you, Rashi equating the corner of the field with building the Temple, Hirsch insisting that not being a thief leaves you a long way short of kadosh — the command is addressed to a nation.Sun, 01 Apr 2001 00:00:00 GMTBiblical LawBiblical EthicsRabbinic ExegesisMedieval Exegesishttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/letter-to-the-editor-29-2/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/letter-to-the-editor-29-2/Asher Eder — On Jephthah's vow, against Bodoff and Mehlman. The first words — it shall be the Lord's — say plainly that he did not intend to kill anyone, and the words that follow quote Abraham at the Akedah, which everyone knows did not end in a death. Olah can mean ascent as easily as burnt offering. Jephthah consecrated his daughter, as Hannah did Samuel; unlike Samuel and Samson, she was asked, and she agreed.Sun, 01 Apr 2001 00:00:00 GMTBiblical EthicsWomen in the BibleSacrificeMidrashhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/observations-on-some-cruxes-in-amos-part-2/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/observations-on-some-cruxes-in-amos-part-2/Aron Pinker — Snaith called 2:13 the hardest verse in Amos. The usual renderings need a harvest cart, and ancient Israel did not haul its harvest in carts — it used donkeys and camels, and a metaphor has to land in the hearer's own experience. Repoint the word and it is not a cart but a heifer, over-laden and over-fed, in double jeopardy and too slow to escape. Then the Dmeshek conundrum of 3:12.Sun, 01 Apr 2001 00:00:00 GMTTextual CriticismBiblical HebrewProphecyAncient Near Easthttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/review-torah-dialogues/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/review-torah-dialogues/Bernard Zlotowitz — A guide for rabbis leading Torah study, working through every parashah and haftarah of the annual cycle by question and answer, with the responses drawn from Rambam, Rashi, Ramban, Nehama Leibowitz, both Talmuds and the Midrash, plus biographical sketches of everyone quoted. Notes especially what it does for Leviticus, a book that can be tedious and here takes on new garb.Sun, 01 Apr 2001 00:00:00 GMTBible EducationRabbinic ExegesisMedieval Exegesishttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-akedah-machloket-lshem-shamayim-sofa-lhitkayeim/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-akedah-machloket-lshem-shamayim-sofa-lhitkayeim/Berel Dov Lerner — Answers Shubert Spero's reply to "Saving the Akedah from the Philosophers." Spero reports the presupposition that the Akedah posed Abraham a moral problem — but the article's point was the reverse: God had promised the covenant would run through Isaac, so Abraham knew no evil would befall him and there was no dilemma to face. Sodom is not the parallel Spero takes it for, since there God stated an outcome, and here He commanded only an act.Sun, 01 Apr 2001 00:00:00 GMTPatriarchal NarrativesJewish PhilosophyBiblical EthicsSacrificehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-book-of-daniel-a-guide-for-judaism-in-exile/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-book-of-daniel-a-guide-for-judaism-in-exile/Fred Blumenthal — Daniel was canonised without opposition yet kept out of the Prophets, on Rashi's account because he never disclosed his visions to the people. So why include the book at all? Prophecy needed for the generations was written down. Its permanent value is in what it records: a religion converting from one taught in a standing Temple to one carried by individuals — which is why Elephantine and Leontopolis built replica temples and Babylon, at Ezekiel's insistence, did not.Sun, 01 Apr 2001 00:00:00 GMTDiasporaTempleCanonSecond Temple Periodhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-evolution-of-a-law/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-evolution-of-a-law/Josiah Derby — No verse in the Torah says how a marriage is made, and only two terse ones say how it is dissolved — yet levirate marriage gets six, with the sandal, the spitting and the name the refuser carries afterwards. Argues the lavishness is corrective: the practice was old, shared with the Canaanites and Hittites, and already operating in Genesis 38, where Judah withholds Shelah and Tamar takes matters into her own hands by the roadside.Sun, 01 Apr 2001 00:00:00 GMTBiblical LawWomen in the BibleAncient Near EastPatriarchal Narrativeshttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/a-suggested-translation-of-psalm-91/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/a-suggested-translation-of-psalm-91/Reuben M. Katz — Every version turns verse 1 into a clause hanging on verse 2, because none can find it a subject. But Scripture repeatedly puts God in the hiding — darkness as His screen, the secret pavilion, the hidden face in five psalms. Make Elyon the subject of dwells and Shaddai of abides, and verse 1 stands alone: the Most High dwells in secret places. Verse 2 is then the petitioner calling Him out of them.Mon, 01 Jan 2001 00:00:00 GMTBible TranslationPsalmsBiblical HebrewLiturgyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/editorial-29-1/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/editorial-29-1/Gabriel A. Sivan — A sheikh skims Genesis, collects the familiar anthropomorphisms — God resting, Adam hiding, Jacob wrestling — and denounces Jewish heresy. The tirade is a pretext, and its target is the claim to pray on the Temple Mount. Notes what changed: Arab leaders once kept their case political and never disputed the Jewish tie to the land, which would have been awkward when so many village names are biblical Hebrew barely disguised.Mon, 01 Jan 2001 00:00:00 GMTModern Jewish ThoughtLand of IsraelTempleAntisemitismhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/jacobs-paradoxical-encounters/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/jacobs-paradoxical-encounters/Jeffrey M. Cohen — The brother who swore to kill him embraces him and weeps; the angel — a kindred spirit, an associate in God's service — leaves him lamed. One Midrash makes the assailant one of the protecting angels of the ladder; another makes him Esau's guardian, collecting for the lentil pottage. Or read the two as two kinds of strife: the domestic quarrel over inheritance, which can be repaired, and the harder one with God.Mon, 01 Jan 2001 00:00:00 GMTPatriarchal NarrativesMidrashBiblical NarrativeBiblical Theologyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/laban-and-jacob/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/laban-and-jacob/Aharon Pollak — Genesis 30 reports, apparently verbatim, a wage negotiation — and one recognisable anywhere from the Euphrates to the Sahara. Name your wages and I shall pay is not a concession, it is an opening, exactly as Ephron's I give you the field was to Abraham, who knew to answer with money. So Jacob's Pay me nothing is not modesty but the standard move, and what follows is the flock divided by fleece.Mon, 01 Jan 2001 00:00:00 GMTPatriarchal NarrativesAncient Near EastBiblical NarrativeBiblical Ethicshttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/no-happy-ending-for-esther/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/no-happy-ending-for-esther/Berel Dov Lerner — Costumes and noisemakers notwithstanding, a story about attempted genocide has darker aspects. Read as a manual of diaspora politics, the arguments on both sides are shallow: Haman offers the king a bribe, and the Jews are worth saving because the queen is beautiful and Mordecai foiled a plot. And the Megillah never refutes Haman's charge that their laws are different — it ends by instituting another distinctively Jewish law.Mon, 01 Jan 2001 00:00:00 GMTEstherDiasporaAntisemitismSeptuaginthttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/observations-on-some-cruxes-in-amos-part-1/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/observations-on-some-cruxes-in-amos-part-1/Aron Pinker — A herdsman and dresser of sycamores who saw doom in prosperity, and a master of innuendo whose short book has generated a library of unresolved cruxes. Opens with the name: the Midrash makes Amos a stammerer, burdened of tongue; Weiss derives it from Amasiah, God carried; the root can mean carried or carrying, and the Greek confusion of Amos with Amoz is what made Isaiah his son.Mon, 01 Jan 2001 00:00:00 GMTTextual CriticismBiblical HebrewProphecyAncient Near Easthttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/particularism-and-universalism-in-psalms/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/particularism-and-universalism-in-psalms/Jacob Chinitz — Reads the closing verses of the five books of Psalms, and then of the five Halleluyah psalms, for how far the writers' gaze extends. Book One blesses the God of Israel; Book Two adds the whole earth; Book Five reaches everything that has breath. The Halleluyah psalms swing just as wide, from 147, where only Israel is given His word, to 149, where the nations appear only to be bound with chains.Mon, 01 Jan 2001 00:00:00 GMTPsalmsBiblical TheologyChosennessLiturgyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-book-of-samuel-a-literary-masterpiece/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-book-of-samuel-a-literary-masterpiece/Shimon Bakon — Five hundred years before Herodotus, and with nothing in Babylon or Egypt remotely comparable. Reads the craft: meaning carried in sound, where Peninah's taunt hisses with sibilants and Elkanah answers in soft l's, and Goliath's armour clashes in sh while David's staff and five smooth stones run on breath. Then the leitmotifs — the Ark, the roof, hair — threading plot into plot.Mon, 01 Jan 2001 00:00:00 GMTBiblical NarrativeBiblical HebrewKingshipLiterary Criticismhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-liturgical-function-of-exodus-33-16-34-26/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-liturgical-function-of-exodus-33-16-34-26/Charles David Isbell — Why, near the end of the yearly cycle and almost through Deuteronomy, does the intermediate Sabbath of Sukkot send the congregation back to the golden calf? Because the episode holds two incompatible images at once — a people very nearly destroyed, and a people given a second ascent of the mountain. And what Moses brought down the second time was not a lighter Torah or a new one, but exactly the same words.Mon, 01 Jan 2001 00:00:00 GMTLiturgyIdolatryRepentanceMoseshttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-ninth-plague/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-ninth-plague/Allan M. Langner — Who killed the firstborn of Egypt? The text says God, and the Haggadah insists on it — not by an angel, not by a messenger. But the narrative resists: a people convinced they will all die unless Israel leaves is chasing Israel down within days, their terror evaporated. Argues it was the darkness, not the death, that broke Egypt, and that the Egyptians slaughtered their own firstborn as pagans did when a sun god appeared to be dying.Mon, 01 Jan 2001 00:00:00 GMTExodus from EgyptIdolatryAncient Near EastBiblical Theologyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-price-of-assimilation/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-price-of-assimilation/Harvey Minkoff — How could Pharaoh expect Hebrew midwives to kill Hebrew children — and why does he said appear twice in two verses? Read asher as that rather than as a relative pronoun and the first audience is not a dangling introduction but its own event: he gave them Egyptian names. Only after they had time to weigh what a place among the elite was worth did he call them back and name the price. Which is how assimilation has always worked.Mon, 01 Jan 2001 00:00:00 GMTBiblical HebrewWomen in the BibleAssimilationHomileticshttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-problem-of-deception-in-genesis-27/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-problem-of-deception-in-genesis-27/Sidney Breitbart — Three passages set the scene: the oracle that the older shall serve the younger, Esau spurning the birthright for a meal, and the Hittite wives who embittered his parents. On that footing there is no deception. Isaac hears Jacob's voice, hears him say the Lord your God, smells the field rather than the hunt — and blesses him anyway, unwilling to wound a favourite son by saying outright why. The one who withheld the truth was Esau.Mon, 01 Jan 2001 00:00:00 GMTPatriarchal NarrativesBiblical EthicsBiblical NarrativeChosennesshttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/theophoric-names-in-the-bible/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/theophoric-names-in-the-bible/Heriberto Haber — Neither divine name is ever taken whole. Sets out the patterns — El at the head or the tail, the Tetragrammaton reduced to Yeho-, Yo- or -yahu, and once to the single letter added to Avram and Sarai — then asks what the parents meant. Thanks for a son given (the Nathan names), for a son granted by favour (the Hanan names), or a hope for his future: may God raise him, fortify him, strengthen him.Mon, 01 Jan 2001 00:00:00 GMTBiblical HebrewNamesAncient Near EastGenealogyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/a-psalm-for-sabbath-a-literary-view-of-psalm-92/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/a-psalm-for-sabbath-a-literary-view-of-psalm-92/Dan Vogel — A Psalm for Sabbath? A Literary View of Psalm 92 by Dan Vogel.Sun, 01 Oct 2000 00:00:00 GMTPsalmsBiblical PoetryLiturgyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/biblical-metaphor-and-the-dynamics-of-jewish-demography-a/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/biblical-metaphor-and-the-dynamics-of-jewish-demography-a/Shubert Spero — Biblical Metaphor and the Dynamics of Jewish Demography: A Modern Midrash by Shubert Spero.Sun, 01 Oct 2000 00:00:00 GMTModern Jewish ThoughtMidrashBiblical Theologyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/strife-in-the-household-of-king-david/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/strife-in-the-household-of-king-david/Moshe Reiss — Strife in the Household of King David by Moshe Reiss.Sun, 01 Oct 2000 00:00:00 GMTKingshipBiblical NarrativeLeadershiphttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/decalogue-or-dodecalogue/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/decalogue-or-dodecalogue/Aron Pinker — Decalogue or Dodecalogue? by Aron Pinker.Sun, 01 Oct 2000 00:00:00 GMTBiblical LawTextual CriticismBiblical Hebrewhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/a-theological-reason-for-ambiguity/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/a-theological-reason-for-ambiguity/Harvey Minkoff — A Theological Reason for Ambiguity by Harvey Minkoff.Sun, 01 Oct 2000 00:00:00 GMTBible TranslationBiblical TheologyBiblical Hebrewhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-tragedy-of-jephthah/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-tragedy-of-jephthah/Lippman Bodoff — The Tragedy of Jephthah by Lippman Bodoff.Sun, 01 Oct 2000 00:00:00 GMTBiblical EthicsSacrificeWomen in the Biblehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-significance-of-josephs-agrarian-policy/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-significance-of-josephs-agrarian-policy/Zvi Ron — The Significance of Joseph’s Agrarian Policy by Zvi Ron.Sun, 01 Oct 2000 00:00:00 GMTJosephAncient Near EastBiblical Narrativehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/ecology-in-the-bible/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/ecology-in-the-bible/Beth Uval — Ecology in the Bible by Beth Uval.Sun, 01 Oct 2000 00:00:00 GMTBiblical EthicsCreationBiblical Lawhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/imperative-verbs-followed-by-the-preposition-lamed/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/imperative-verbs-followed-by-the-preposition-lamed/Herbert Rand — Imperative Verbs Followed by the Preposition Lamed: Compulsory or Precatory? by Herbert Rand.Sun, 01 Oct 2000 00:00:00 GMTBiblical HebrewBiblical LawBible Translationhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/bread-on-water/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/bread-on-water/Larry Magarik — Darshanut: Bread on Water by Larry Magarik.Sun, 01 Oct 2000 00:00:00 GMTHomileticsWisdom Literaturehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-37th-international-bible-contest-for-jewish-youth/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-37th-international-bible-contest-for-jewish-youth/Joshua J. Adler — The 37th International Bible Contest for Jewish Youth by Joshua J. Adler.Sun, 01 Oct 2000 00:00:00 GMTBible EducationIsraelJewish Bible Associationhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/thoughts-on-an-allegorical-reading-of-jonah/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/thoughts-on-an-allegorical-reading-of-jonah/Ronald T. Hyman — Thoughts on an Allegorical Reading of Jonah by Ronald T. Hyman.Sat, 01 Jul 2000 00:00:00 GMTProphecyHistory of InterpretationBiblical Narrativehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-epilogue-to-jonah/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-epilogue-to-jonah/Pinchas Kahn — The Epilogue to Jonah by Pinchas Kahn.Sat, 01 Jul 2000 00:00:00 GMTProphecyBiblical NarrativeRepentancehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/daniel/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/daniel/Shimon Bakon — Daniel by Shimon Bakon.Sat, 01 Jul 2000 00:00:00 GMTSecond Temple PeriodProphecyDiasporahttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-warhorse-of-the-lord/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-warhorse-of-the-lord/Dominic Rudman — The Warhorse of the Lord by Dominic Rudman.Sat, 01 Jul 2000 00:00:00 GMTProphecyAncient Near EastBiblical Poetryhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-patriarchal-family-in-the-light-of-the-midrash-part-i/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-patriarchal-family-in-the-light-of-the-midrash-part-i/Chaim Spring — The Patriarchal Family in the Light of the Midrash: Part I: Abraham and Sarah by Chaim Spring.Sat, 01 Jul 2000 00:00:00 GMTMidrashPatriarchal NarrativesWomen in the Biblehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/korah-and-his-aspirations/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/korah-and-his-aspirations/Benjamin Goodnick — Korah and His Aspirations by Benjamin Goodnick.Sat, 01 Jul 2000 00:00:00 GMTLeadershipPriesthoodBiblical Narrativehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/nahum-the-little-known-prophet/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/nahum-the-little-known-prophet/Harold M. Kamsler — Nahum: The Little-Known Prophet by Harold M. Kamsler.Sat, 01 Jul 2000 00:00:00 GMTProphecyAncient Near Easthttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/a-fresh-look-at-nebuchadnezzar/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/a-fresh-look-at-nebuchadnezzar/Josiah Derby — A Fresh Look at Nebuchadnezzar by Josiah Derby.Sat, 01 Jul 2000 00:00:00 GMTAncient Near EastKingshipDiasporahttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/septuagint-vocabulary-in-the-gospels-and-acts/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/septuagint-vocabulary-in-the-gospels-and-acts/Lawrence Briskin — Septuagint Vocabulary in the Gospels and Acts by Lawrence Briskin.Sat, 01 Jul 2000 00:00:00 GMTSeptuagintChristianity and the BibleBible Translationhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/mothers-and-sons-in-defense-of-lots-wife/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/mothers-and-sons-in-defense-of-lots-wife/Tzipora Ne’eman — Darshanut: Mothers and Sons: In Defense of Lot’s Wife by Tzipora Ne’eman.Sat, 01 Jul 2000 00:00:00 GMTWomen in the BibleHomileticsPatriarchal Narrativeshttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/letters-to-the-editor-28-3/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/letters-to-the-editor-28-3/JBQ Readers — Letters to the Editor by JBQ Readers.Sat, 01 Jul 2000 00:00:00 GMThttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/abrahams-trials-tests-of-strength-or-learning-experiences/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/abrahams-trials-tests-of-strength-or-learning-experiences/Shubert Spero — Abraham’s Trials: Tests of Strength or Learning Experiences? by Shubert Spero.Sat, 01 Apr 2000 00:00:00 GMTPatriarchal NarrativesJewish PhilosophyBiblical Ethicshttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-education-of-abraham-the-encounter-between-abraham-and/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-education-of-abraham-the-encounter-between-abraham-and/Robert Eisen — The Education of Abraham: The Encounter Between Abraham and God Over the Fate of Sodom and Gomorrah by Robert Eisen.Sat, 01 Apr 2000 00:00:00 GMTPatriarchal NarrativesBiblical EthicsBiblical Theologyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/divine-and-human-curses/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/divine-and-human-curses/Jacob Chinitz — Divine and Human Curses by Jacob Chinitz.Sat, 01 Apr 2000 00:00:00 GMTBiblical TheologyBiblical LawRabbinic Literaturehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/final-judgement-the-ambiguous-moral-question-that/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/final-judgement-the-ambiguous-moral-question-that/Ronald T. Hyman — Final Judgement: The Ambiguous Moral Question That Culminates Genesis 34 by Ronald T. Hyman.Sat, 01 Apr 2000 00:00:00 GMTBiblical EthicsBiblical NarrativeWomen in the Biblehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/a-first-century-c-e-date-for-the-closing-of-the-book-of/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/a-first-century-c-e-date-for-the-closing-of-the-book-of/Gerald H. Wilson — A First Century C.E. Date for the Closing of the Book of Psalms? by Gerald H. Wilson.Sat, 01 Apr 2000 00:00:00 GMTPsalmsCanonBiblical Criticismhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/prophetic-views-of-the-davidic-monarchy/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/prophetic-views-of-the-davidic-monarchy/Josiah Derby — Prophetic Views of the Davidic Monarchy by Josiah Derby.Sat, 01 Apr 2000 00:00:00 GMTProphecyKingshipMessianismhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/psalm-91-as-responsory/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/psalm-91-as-responsory/Asher Eder — Psalm 91 as Responsory by Asher Eder.Sat, 01 Apr 2000 00:00:00 GMTPsalmsLiturgyBiblical Poetryhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/implications-of-the-wager-in-the-book-of-job/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/implications-of-the-wager-in-the-book-of-job/Sidney Breitbart — Implications of the Wager in the Book of Job by Sidney Breitbart.Sat, 01 Apr 2000 00:00:00 GMTWisdom LiteratureSufferingBiblical Theologyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/leadership-in-the-book-of-numbers/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/leadership-in-the-book-of-numbers/Jeffrey M. Cohen — Leadership in the Book of Numbers by Jeffrey M. Cohen.Sat, 01 Apr 2000 00:00:00 GMTLeadershipMosesBiblical Narrativehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/its-all-in-the-translation/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/its-all-in-the-translation/Dan Vogel — Darshanut: It’s All in the Translation by Dan Vogel.Sat, 01 Apr 2000 00:00:00 GMTBible TranslationHomileticshttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/letters-to-the-editor-28-2/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/letters-to-the-editor-28-2/JBQ Readers — Letters to the Editor by JBQ Readers.Sat, 01 Apr 2000 00:00:00 GMThttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-book-of-zephaniah-allusions-to-the-tower-of-babel/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-book-of-zephaniah-allusions-to-the-tower-of-babel/Aron Pinker — The Book of Zephaniah: Allusions to the Tower of Babel by Aron Pinker.Sat, 01 Jan 2000 00:00:00 GMTProphecyBiblical HebrewTextual Criticismhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/archetypes-in-the-patriarchal-family/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/archetypes-in-the-patriarchal-family/Moshe Reiss — Archetypes in the Patriarchal Family by Moshe Reiss.Sat, 01 Jan 2000 00:00:00 GMTPatriarchal NarrativesBiblical Narrativehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-meaning-of-tzemah-hashem-in-isaiah-4-2/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-meaning-of-tzemah-hashem-in-isaiah-4-2/J. J. M. Roberts — The Meaning of Tzemah HaShem in Isaiah 4:2 by J. J. M. Roberts.Sat, 01 Jan 2000 00:00:00 GMTBiblical HebrewProphecyMessianismhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-saga-of-the-ark/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-saga-of-the-ark/Josiah Derby — The Saga of the Ark by Josiah Derby.Sat, 01 Jan 2000 00:00:00 GMTTempleBiblical NarrativeKingshiphttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/king-of-princes-an-exegesis-of-hosea-8-10/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/king-of-princes-an-exegesis-of-hosea-8-10/Herbert Cohn — King of Princes: An Exegesis of Hosea 8:10 by Herbert Cohn.Sat, 01 Jan 2000 00:00:00 GMTProphecyBiblical HebrewTextual Criticismhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/jacob-father-of-a-nation/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/jacob-father-of-a-nation/Shimon Bakon — Jacob: Father of a Nation by Shimon Bakon.Sat, 01 Jan 2000 00:00:00 GMTPatriarchal NarrativesBiblical Narrativehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/archaeology-and-the-bible/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/archaeology-and-the-bible/Joshua J. Adler — Archaeology and the Bible by Joshua J. Adler.Sat, 01 Jan 2000 00:00:00 GMTArchaeologyAncient Near EastLand of Israelhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/rahab-the-harlot-and-other-philosophers-of-religion/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/rahab-the-harlot-and-other-philosophers-of-religion/Berel Dov Lerner — Rahab the Harlot and Other Philosophers of Religion by Berel Dov Lerner.Sat, 01 Jan 2000 00:00:00 GMTWomen in the BibleJewish PhilosophyBiblical Narrativehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-akedah-machloket-lshem-shamayim/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-akedah-machloket-lshem-shamayim/Shubert Spero — The Akedah: Machloket L’Shem Shamayim by Shubert Spero.Sat, 01 Jan 2000 00:00:00 GMTPatriarchal NarrativesJewish PhilosophySacrificehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-preference-of-ephraim/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-preference-of-ephraim/Zvi Ron — The Preference of Ephraim by Zvi Ron.Sat, 01 Jan 2000 00:00:00 GMTPatriarchal NarrativesJosephhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/noah-and-his-family-relations/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/noah-and-his-family-relations/Hayim Granot — Darshanut: Noah and His Family Relations by Hayim Granot.Sat, 01 Jan 2000 00:00:00 GMTHomileticsBiblical Narrativehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/letters-to-the-editor-28-1/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/letters-to-the-editor-28-1/JBQ Readers — Letters to the Editor by JBQ Readers.Sat, 01 Jan 2000 00:00:00 GMThttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/divided-they-stand-the-united-monarchy-split-in-twain/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/divided-they-stand-the-united-monarchy-split-in-twain/P. J. Berlyn — Divided They Stand: The United Monarchy Split in Twain by P. J. Berlyn.Fri, 01 Oct 1999 00:00:00 GMTKingshipBiblical NarrativeAncient Near Easthttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-book-of-job-a-prelude-to-prophecy/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-book-of-job-a-prelude-to-prophecy/Fred Blumenthal — The Book of Job: A Prelude to Prophecy by Fred Blumenthal.Fri, 01 Oct 1999 00:00:00 GMTWisdom LiteratureProphecySufferinghttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-treatment-of-women-in-deuteronomy-moral-absolutism-and-part-2/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-treatment-of-women-in-deuteronomy-moral-absolutism-and-part-2/Jonathan R. Ziskind — The Treatment of Women in Deuteronomy: Moral Absolutism and Practicality – Part II by Jonathan R. Ziskind.Fri, 01 Oct 1999 00:00:00 GMTWomen in the BibleBiblical LawBiblical Ethicshttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-temple-plan-revealed-a-mishnaic-formula-for-building/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-temple-plan-revealed-a-mishnaic-formula-for-building/Robert Feuer — The Temple Plan Revealed: A Mishnaic Formula for Building the Temple by Robert Feuer.Fri, 01 Oct 1999 00:00:00 GMTTempleRabbinic LiteratureArchaeologyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-horns-of-moses/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-horns-of-moses/Maxine Blendis — The Horns of Moses by Maxine Blendis.Fri, 01 Oct 1999 00:00:00 GMTMosesBible TranslationChristianity and the Biblehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/reading-the-pentateuch-politically/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/reading-the-pentateuch-politically/Martin Sicker — Reading the Pentateuch Politically by Martin Sicker.Fri, 01 Oct 1999 00:00:00 GMTBiblical LawLeadershipJewish Philosophyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/pi-hahirot-the-mouth-of-freedom/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/pi-hahirot-the-mouth-of-freedom/Mois A. Navon — Pi-Hahirot: The Mouth of Freedom by Mois A. Navon.Fri, 01 Oct 1999 00:00:00 GMTExodus from EgyptBiblical HebrewAncient Near Easthttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/a-calculated-risk-a-speculative-excursion-into-the-mind-of/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/a-calculated-risk-a-speculative-excursion-into-the-mind-of/Leon Kosofsky — A Calculated Risk: A Speculative Excursion Into the Mind of Pharaoh’s Butler by Leon Kosofsky.Fri, 01 Oct 1999 00:00:00 GMTJosephBiblical NarrativeDreamshttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-inner-voice/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-inner-voice/Michael M. Cohen — Darshanut: The Inner Voice by Michael M. Cohen.Fri, 01 Oct 1999 00:00:00 GMTHomileticsProphecyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/letters-to-the-editor-27-4/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/letters-to-the-editor-27-4/JBQ Readers — Letters to the Editor by JBQ Readers.Fri, 01 Oct 1999 00:00:00 GMThttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-book-of-jonah-as-allegory/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-book-of-jonah-as-allegory/Abraham Z. Ephros — The Book of Jonah as Allegory by Abraham Z. Ephros.Thu, 01 Jul 1999 00:00:00 GMTProphecyHistory of InterpretationRepentancehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-treatment-of-women-in-deuteronomy-moral-absolutism-and-part-1/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-treatment-of-women-in-deuteronomy-moral-absolutism-and-part-1/Jonathan R. Ziskind — The Treatment of Women in Deuteronomy: Moral Absolutism and Practicality – Part I by Jonathan R. Ziskind.Thu, 01 Jul 1999 00:00:00 GMTWomen in the BibleBiblical LawBiblical Ethicshttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/biblical-historiosophy/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/biblical-historiosophy/Shimon Bakon — Biblical Historiosophy by Shimon Bakon.Thu, 01 Jul 1999 00:00:00 GMTBiblical TheologyBiblical ChronologyJewish Philosophyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/saving-the-akedah-from-the-philosophers/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/saving-the-akedah-from-the-philosophers/Berel Dov Lerner — Saving the Akedah from the Philosophers by Berel Dov Lerner.Thu, 01 Jul 1999 00:00:00 GMTPatriarchal NarrativesJewish PhilosophySacrificehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/on-the-inadequacy-of-translation-as-exemplified-by-a-part-2/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/on-the-inadequacy-of-translation-as-exemplified-by-a-part-2/Dov Rappel — On the Inadequacy of Translation: As Exemplified by a Literary Analysis of Four Translations of Psalm 102 – Part II by Dov Rappel.Thu, 01 Jul 1999 00:00:00 GMTBible TranslationPsalmsBiblical Poetryhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/hesed-mercy-or-loyalty/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/hesed-mercy-or-loyalty/Harold M. Kamsler — Hesed – Mercy or Loyalty? by Harold M. Kamsler.Thu, 01 Jul 1999 00:00:00 GMTBiblical HebrewBiblical EthicsBible Translationhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-ten-and-the-torah/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-ten-and-the-torah/Jacob Chinitz — The Ten and the Torah by Jacob Chinitz.Thu, 01 Jul 1999 00:00:00 GMTBiblical LawRabbinic Literaturehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/israels-defining-experience-from-family-to-nations/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/israels-defining-experience-from-family-to-nations/Benjamin Goodnick — Israel’s Defining Experience: From Family to Nations by Benjamin Goodnick.Thu, 01 Jul 1999 00:00:00 GMTExodus from EgyptBiblical NarrativeChosennesshttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-fertility-of-the-early-israelites/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-fertility-of-the-early-israelites/Jeffrey M. Cohen — The Fertility of the Early Israelites by Jeffrey M. Cohen.Thu, 01 Jul 1999 00:00:00 GMTAncient Near EastExodus from EgyptBiblical Narrativehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/jonah-a-transitional-prophet/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/jonah-a-transitional-prophet/Yossi Feintuch — Darshanut: Jonah: A Transitional Prophet by Yossi Feintuch.Thu, 01 Jul 1999 00:00:00 GMTHomileticsProphecyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/letters-to-the-editor-27-3/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/letters-to-the-editor-27-3/JBQ Readers — Letter to the Editor by JBQ Readers.Thu, 01 Jul 1999 00:00:00 GMThttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-36th-international-bible-contest-for-youth/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-36th-international-bible-contest-for-youth/Joshua J. Adler — The 36th International Bible Contest for Youth by Joshua J. Adler.Thu, 01 Jul 1999 00:00:00 GMTBible EducationIsraelJewish Bible Associationhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/on-the-inadequacy-of-translation-as-exemplified-by-a-part-1/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/on-the-inadequacy-of-translation-as-exemplified-by-a-part-1/Dov Rappel — On the Inadequacy of Translation: As Exemplified by a Literary Analysis of Four Translations of Psalm 102 – Part I by Dov Rappel.Thu, 01 Apr 1999 00:00:00 GMTBible TranslationPsalmsBiblical Poetryhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/and-against-all-the-gods-of-egypt-i-will-execute-judgements/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/and-against-all-the-gods-of-egypt-i-will-execute-judgements/Shubert Spero — “And Against All the Gods of Egypt I Will Execute Judgements ...” by Shubert Spero.Thu, 01 Apr 1999 00:00:00 GMTExodus from EgyptIdolatryBiblical Theologyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/why-does-the-seder-begin-with-karpas/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/why-does-the-seder-begin-with-karpas/Gilad J. Gevaryahu and Michael L. Wise — Why Does the Seder Begin With Karpas? by Gilad J. Gevaryahu and Michael L. Wise.Thu, 01 Apr 1999 00:00:00 GMTJewish FestivalsLiturgyRabbinic Literaturehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/observations-on-biblical-hebrew/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/observations-on-biblical-hebrew/Jack Fellman — Observations on Biblical Hebrew by Jack Fellman.Thu, 01 Apr 1999 00:00:00 GMTBiblical HebrewTextual Criticismhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/psalm-147/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/psalm-147/Jacob Chinitz — Psalm 147 by Jacob Chinitz.Thu, 01 Apr 1999 00:00:00 GMTPsalmsBiblical PoetryLiturgyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/mathematical-codes-in-the-torah/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/mathematical-codes-in-the-torah/Joel J. Forman — Mathematical Codes in the Torah by Joel J. Forman.Thu, 01 Apr 1999 00:00:00 GMTScience and the BibleTextual Criticismhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/a-pair-of-contradictory-texts/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/a-pair-of-contradictory-texts/Josiah Derby — A Pair of Contradictory Texts by Josiah Derby.Thu, 01 Apr 1999 00:00:00 GMTTextual CriticismBiblical Lawhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-power-of-hebrew-names/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-power-of-hebrew-names/Heriberto Haber — The Power of Hebrew Names by Heriberto Haber.Thu, 01 Apr 1999 00:00:00 GMTNamesBiblical HebrewAncient Near Easthttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-promise-of-enduring-life/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-promise-of-enduring-life/Shimon Bakon — Darshanut: The Promise of Enduring Life by Shimon Bakon.Thu, 01 Apr 1999 00:00:00 GMTHomileticsBiblical Theologyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/ibn-ezra-on-the-torah-observations/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/ibn-ezra-on-the-torah-observations/Saul Leeman — Ibn Ezra on the Torah: Observations by Saul Leeman.Thu, 01 Apr 1999 00:00:00 GMTMedieval ExegesisBiblical Hebrewhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/letter-to-the-editor-27-2/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/letter-to-the-editor-27-2/Gilad J. Gevaryahu — Letter to the Editor by Gilad J. Gevaryahu.Thu, 01 Apr 1999 00:00:00 GMThttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-tower-of-babel-gods-towering-pride/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-tower-of-babel-gods-towering-pride/Aron Pinker — The Tower of Babel: God’s Towering Pride by Aron Pinker.Thu, 01 Apr 1999 00:00:00 GMTCreationAncient Near EastBiblical Hebrewhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/parallelisms-between-the-tanakh-and-the-gospels/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/parallelisms-between-the-tanakh-and-the-gospels/Lawrence Briskin — Parallelisms Between the Tanakh and the Gospels by Lawrence Briskin.Fri, 01 Jan 1999 00:00:00 GMTChristianity and the BibleHistory of InterpretationMessianismhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/obstetrical-and-lexicographical-complications-the-birth-of/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/obstetrical-and-lexicographical-complications-the-birth-of/S. H. Blondheim and Menahem Blondheim — Obstetrical and Lexicographical Complications: The Birth of Benjamin and Death of Rachel by S. H. Blondheim and Menahem Blondheim.Fri, 01 Jan 1999 00:00:00 GMTWomen in the BiblePatriarchal NarrativesBiblical Hebrewhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/amos/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/amos/Shimon Bakon — Amos by Shimon Bakon.Fri, 01 Jan 1999 00:00:00 GMTProphecySocial JusticeAncient Near Easthttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-prophet-as-watcher/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-prophet-as-watcher/David Greenspoon — The Prophet as Watcher by David Greenspoon.Fri, 01 Jan 1999 00:00:00 GMTProphecyBiblical Hebrewhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/proverbs-31-10-31-the-woman-of-valor-as-allegory/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/proverbs-31-10-31-the-woman-of-valor-as-allegory/Naphtali Gutstein — Proverbs 31:10-31: The Woman of Valor as Allegory by Naphtali Gutstein.Fri, 01 Jan 1999 00:00:00 GMTWomen in the BibleWisdom LiteratureBiblical Poetryhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/upon-the-doorposts/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/upon-the-doorposts/Josiah Derby — “... Upon the Doorposts ...” by Josiah Derby.Fri, 01 Jan 1999 00:00:00 GMTBiblical LawLiturgyBiblical Hebrewhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/genesis-and-genetics/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/genesis-and-genetics/Schneir Levin — Genesis and Genetics by Schneir Levin.Fri, 01 Jan 1999 00:00:00 GMTScience and the BiblePatriarchal Narrativeshttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-biblical-number-12-and-the-formation-of-the-ancient/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-biblical-number-12-and-the-formation-of-the-ancient/Joshua Buch — The Biblical Number 12 and the Formation of the Ancient Nation of Israel by Joshua Buch.Fri, 01 Jan 1999 00:00:00 GMTAncient Near EastBiblical NarrativeGenealogyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/an-anomalous-antonym/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/an-anomalous-antonym/Joseph Jacob — An Anomalous Antonym by Joseph Jacob.Fri, 01 Jan 1999 00:00:00 GMTBiblical HebrewTextual Criticismhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/judah-this-time-i-will-praise-the-lord-genesis-29-35/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/judah-this-time-i-will-praise-the-lord-genesis-29-35/Pesach Schindler — Darshanut: Judah: ‘This Time I Will Praise the Lord’ (Genesis 29:35) by Pesach Schindler.Fri, 01 Jan 1999 00:00:00 GMTHomileticsPatriarchal Narrativeshttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/letters-to-the-editor-27-1/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/letters-to-the-editor-27-1/JBQ Readers — Letters to the Editor by JBQ Readers.Fri, 01 Jan 1999 00:00:00 GMThttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/jacobs-growing-understanding-of-his-experience-at-beth-el/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/jacobs-growing-understanding-of-his-experience-at-beth-el/Shubert Spero — Jacob’s Growing Understanding of His Experience at Beth-El by Shubert Spero.Thu, 01 Oct 1998 00:00:00 GMTPatriarchal NarrativesBiblical TheologyBiblical Narrativehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/semantic-parallelisms-in-job-part-2/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/semantic-parallelisms-in-job-part-2/Erwin Reifler — Semantic Parallelisms in Job – Part II by Erwin Reifler.Thu, 01 Oct 1998 00:00:00 GMTWisdom LiteratureBiblical PoetryBiblical Hebrewhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/revisiting-the-garden-of-eden/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/revisiting-the-garden-of-eden/Julius B. Moster — Revisiting the Garden of Eden by Julius B. Moster.Thu, 01 Oct 1998 00:00:00 GMTCreationBiblical NarrativeBiblical Theologyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/obadiah-the-smallest-book-in-the-bible/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/obadiah-the-smallest-book-in-the-bible/Hayyim Halpern — Obadiah: The Smallest Book in the Bible by Hayyim Halpern.Thu, 01 Oct 1998 00:00:00 GMTProphecyAncient Near Easthttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/nimrod-found/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/nimrod-found/Aron Pinker — Nimrod Found? by Aron Pinker.Thu, 01 Oct 1998 00:00:00 GMTAncient Near EastArchaeologyBiblical Hebrewhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/some-surprises-in-psalm-78/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/some-surprises-in-psalm-78/Jacob Chinitz — Some Surprises in Psalm 78 by Jacob Chinitz.Thu, 01 Oct 1998 00:00:00 GMTPsalmsBiblical PoetryBiblical Theologyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/ezra-rejects-patrilineal-descent/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/ezra-rejects-patrilineal-descent/Benjamin Goodnick — Ezra Rejects Patrilineal Descent by Benjamin Goodnick.Thu, 01 Oct 1998 00:00:00 GMTSecond Temple PeriodBiblical LawWomen in the Biblehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/expletives-in-the-bible/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/expletives-in-the-bible/Josiah Derby — Expletives in the Bible by Josiah Derby.Thu, 01 Oct 1998 00:00:00 GMTBiblical HebrewTextual Criticismhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-daughters-of-zelophehad/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-daughters-of-zelophehad/Zvi Ron — The Daughters of Zelophehad by Zvi Ron.Thu, 01 Oct 1998 00:00:00 GMTWomen in the BibleBiblical LawLand of Israelhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-true-sin-of-nadab-and-abihu/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-true-sin-of-nadab-and-abihu/Martin H. Greenberg — The True Sin of Nadab and Abihu by Martin H. Greenberg.Thu, 01 Oct 1998 00:00:00 GMTPriesthoodBiblical LawBiblical Narrativehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/enochs-shoes/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/enochs-shoes/Theodore Steinberg — Darshanut: Enoch’s Shoes by Theodore Steinberg.Thu, 01 Oct 1998 00:00:00 GMTHomileticsBiblical Narrativehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-35th-international-bible-contest-for-youth/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-35th-international-bible-contest-for-youth/Jewish Bible Association — The 35th International Bible Contest for Youth by Jewish Bible Association.Thu, 01 Oct 1998 00:00:00 GMTBible EducationIsraelJewish Bible Associationhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/letters-to-the-editor-26-4/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/letters-to-the-editor-26-4/JBQ Readers — Letters to the Editor by JBQ Readers.Thu, 01 Oct 1998 00:00:00 GMThttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/semantic-parallelisms-in-job-part-1/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/semantic-parallelisms-in-job-part-1/Erwin Reifler — Semantic Parallelisms in Job – Part I by Erwin Reifler.Wed, 01 Jul 1998 00:00:00 GMTWisdom LiteratureBiblical PoetryBiblical Hebrewhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/malachi-a-prophet-for-his-time/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/malachi-a-prophet-for-his-time/Claude F. Mariottini — Malachi: A Prophet for His Time by Claude F. Mariottini.Wed, 01 Jul 1998 00:00:00 GMTProphecySecond Temple PeriodTemplehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/why-no-message-from-joseph-to-his-father/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/why-no-message-from-joseph-to-his-father/Moshe Soller — Why No Message from Joseph to His Father? by Moshe Soller.Wed, 01 Jul 1998 00:00:00 GMTJosephPatriarchal NarrativesBiblical Narrativehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/koheleth/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/koheleth/Shimon Bakon — Koheleth by Shimon Bakon.Wed, 01 Jul 1998 00:00:00 GMTWisdom LiteratureJewish PhilosophyBiblical Theologyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/lmaan-the-teleological-cause-in-the-pentateuch/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/lmaan-the-teleological-cause-in-the-pentateuch/Jacob Chinitz — L’maan: The Teleological Cause in the Pentateuch by Jacob Chinitz.Wed, 01 Jul 1998 00:00:00 GMTBiblical HebrewBiblical TheologyBiblical Lawhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-wilderness-experience/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-wilderness-experience/Josiah Derby — The Wilderness Experience by Josiah Derby.Wed, 01 Jul 1998 00:00:00 GMTMosesExodus from EgyptBiblical Narrativehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-ritual-of-the-red-heifer/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-ritual-of-the-red-heifer/Rachel T. Harris — The Ritual of the Red Heifer by Rachel T. Harris.Wed, 01 Jul 1998 00:00:00 GMTBiblical LawPriesthoodRabbinic Literaturehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/jonah-and-yom-kippur/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/jonah-and-yom-kippur/Hayim Granot — Darshanut: Jonah and Yom Kippur by Hayim Granot.Wed, 01 Jul 1998 00:00:00 GMTHomileticsRepentanceJewish Festivalshttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/another-look-at-the-tree-of-good-and-evil/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/another-look-at-the-tree-of-good-and-evil/Morton H. Narrowe — Another Look at the Tree of Good and Evil by Morton H. Narrowe.Wed, 01 Jul 1998 00:00:00 GMTCreationBiblical TheologyBiblical Narrativehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/characteristics-of-biblical-historiography/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/characteristics-of-biblical-historiography/Yosef Freund — Characteristics of Biblical Historiography by Yosef Freund.Wed, 01 Jul 1998 00:00:00 GMTBiblical CriticismBiblical ChronologyBiblical Narrativehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/his-brothers-keeper/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/his-brothers-keeper/P. J. Berlyn — His Brothers’ Keeper by P. J. Berlyn.Wed, 01 Apr 1998 00:00:00 GMTJosephPatriarchal NarrativesBiblical Narrativehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/ambiguities-of-the-eagle/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/ambiguities-of-the-eagle/Dan Vogel — Ambiguities of the Eagle by Dan Vogel.Wed, 01 Apr 1998 00:00:00 GMTBiblical PoetryBiblical HebrewAncient Near Easthttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/a-slip-of-the-reader-and-not-the-reed-part-2/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/a-slip-of-the-reader-and-not-the-reed-part-2/Scott B. Noegel — A Slip of the Reader and Not the Reed – Part II by Scott B. Noegel.Wed, 01 Apr 1998 00:00:00 GMTTextual CriticismBiblical HebrewAncient Near Easthttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/joseph-and-revolutionary-egypt/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/joseph-and-revolutionary-egypt/Jonathan A. Steinberg — Joseph and Revolutionary Egypt by Jonathan A. Steinberg.Wed, 01 Apr 1998 00:00:00 GMTJosephAncient Near EastBiblical Narrativehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-code-of-hammurabi-and-the-laws-of-the-torah/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-code-of-hammurabi-and-the-laws-of-the-torah/Mordecai Zer-Kavod — The Code of Hammurabi and the Laws of the Torah by Mordecai Zer-Kavod.Wed, 01 Apr 1998 00:00:00 GMTBiblical LawAncient Near Easthttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/philo-judaeus-linking-biblical-judaism-and-hellenistic/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/philo-judaeus-linking-biblical-judaism-and-hellenistic/Harold M. Kamsler — Philo Judaeus: Linking Biblical Judaism and Hellenistic Beliefs by Harold M. Kamsler.Wed, 01 Apr 1998 00:00:00 GMTSecond Temple PeriodJewish PhilosophyHistory of Interpretationhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-dew-of-heaven/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-dew-of-heaven/Beth Uval — The Dew of Heaven by Beth Uval.Wed, 01 Apr 1998 00:00:00 GMTBiblical HebrewBiblical PoetryLand of Israelhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-speech-defect-of-moses/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-speech-defect-of-moses/Stuart Pollack — The Speech Defect of Moses by Stuart Pollack.Wed, 01 Apr 1998 00:00:00 GMTMosesBiblical HebrewMidrashhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/from-monolatry-to-monotheism/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/from-monolatry-to-monotheism/Herbert Cohn — From Monolatry to Monotheism by Herbert Cohn.Wed, 01 Apr 1998 00:00:00 GMTBiblical TheologyIdolatryAncient Near Easthttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-birds-nest-mitzvah-a-personal-aggadic-interpretation/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-birds-nest-mitzvah-a-personal-aggadic-interpretation/Herbert Rand — The Bird’s Nest Mitzvah: A Personal Aggadic Interpretation by Herbert Rand.Wed, 01 Apr 1998 00:00:00 GMTBiblical LawMidrashBiblical Ethicshttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-defiant-son/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-defiant-son/Hayim Granot — Darshanut: The Defiant Son by Hayim Granot.Wed, 01 Apr 1998 00:00:00 GMTHomileticsBiblical LawRabbinic Literaturehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/letters-to-the-editor-26-2/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/letters-to-the-editor-26-2/JBQ Readers — Letters to the Editor by JBQ Readers.Wed, 01 Apr 1998 00:00:00 GMThttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/reclaiming-esther-from-sex-object-to-sage/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/reclaiming-esther-from-sex-object-to-sage/Leila Leah Bronner — Reclaiming Esther: From Sex Object to Sage by Leila Leah Bronner.Thu, 01 Jan 1998 00:00:00 GMTEstherWomen in the BibleRabbinic Exegesishttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/a-slip-of-the-reader-and-not-the-reed-part-1/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/a-slip-of-the-reader-and-not-the-reed-part-1/Scott B. Noegel — A Slip of the Reader and Not the Reed – Part I by Scott B. Noegel.Thu, 01 Jan 1998 00:00:00 GMTTextual CriticismBiblical HebrewAncient Near Easthttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-funeral-of-jacob-a-joint-hebrew-egyptian-affair/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-funeral-of-jacob-a-joint-hebrew-egyptian-affair/Shubert Spero — The Funeral of Jacob: A Joint Hebrew-Egyptian Affair by Shubert Spero.Thu, 01 Jan 1998 00:00:00 GMTPatriarchal NarrativesAncient Near EastBiblical Narrativehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/centralization-of-worship/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/centralization-of-worship/Shimon Bakon — Centralization of Worship by Shimon Bakon.Thu, 01 Jan 1998 00:00:00 GMTTempleBiblical LawKingshiphttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/god-and-man-in-biblical-action/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/god-and-man-in-biblical-action/Jacob Chinitz — God and Man in Biblical Action by Jacob Chinitz.Thu, 01 Jan 1998 00:00:00 GMTBiblical TheologyJewish Philosophyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/from-the-euphrates-to-the-nile/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/from-the-euphrates-to-the-nile/Josiah Derby — From the Euphrates to the Nile by Josiah Derby.Thu, 01 Jan 1998 00:00:00 GMTLand of IsraelAncient Near EastBiblical Chronologyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/kimchi-and-tanhum-ben-joseph-hayerushalmi-on-chronicles/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/kimchi-and-tanhum-ben-joseph-hayerushalmi-on-chronicles/Ben Zion Katz — Kimchi and Tanhum Ben Joseph Hayerushalmi on Chronicles by Ben Zion Katz.Thu, 01 Jan 1998 00:00:00 GMTMedieval ExegesisHistory of Interpretationhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/jethro-who-was-he/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/jethro-who-was-he/Theodore Steinberg — Darshanut: Jethro – Who Was He? by Theodore Steinberg.Thu, 01 Jan 1998 00:00:00 GMTHomileticsMosesBiblical Narrativehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/letters-to-the-editor-26-1/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/letters-to-the-editor-26-1/JBQ Readers — Letters to the Editor by JBQ Readers.Thu, 01 Jan 1998 00:00:00 GMThttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/from-seventh-day-to-shabbat-dualities-in-genesis-2-1-3/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/from-seventh-day-to-shabbat-dualities-in-genesis-2-1-3/Jonathan Pearl — From “Seventh Day” to “Shabbat”: Dualities in Genesis 2:1-3 by Jonathan Pearl.Thu, 01 Jan 1998 00:00:00 GMTCreationBiblical HebrewSabbathhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-punishment-of-jobs-friends/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-punishment-of-jobs-friends/Julius B. Moster — The Punishment of Job’s Friends by Julius B. Moster.Wed, 01 Oct 1997 00:00:00 GMTWisdom LiteratureSufferingBiblical Theologyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-rape-of-dinah/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-rape-of-dinah/Ernest Neufeld — The Rape of Dinah by Ernest Neufeld.Wed, 01 Oct 1997 00:00:00 GMTWomen in the BibleBiblical EthicsPatriarchal Narrativeshttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-satanic-verses-part-2/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-satanic-verses-part-2/Aron Pinker — The Satanic Verses – Part II by Aron Pinker.Wed, 01 Oct 1997 00:00:00 GMTBiblical TheologyTextual CriticismAncient Near Easthttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/pshat-an-innovative-method-in-torah-commentary/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/pshat-an-innovative-method-in-torah-commentary/Judah H. Henkin — P’shat – An Innovative Method in Torah Commentary by Judah H. Henkin.Wed, 01 Oct 1997 00:00:00 GMTMedieval ExegesisRabbinic ExegesisHistory of Interpretationhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/from-yerushalem-to-yerushalayim/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/from-yerushalem-to-yerushalayim/Josiah Derby — From Yerushalem to Yerushalayim by Josiah Derby.Wed, 01 Oct 1997 00:00:00 GMTBiblical HebrewLand of IsraelMasoretic Texthttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/pronunciation-a-key-to-meaning-i-kings-3-16-28/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/pronunciation-a-key-to-meaning-i-kings-3-16-28/Herbert Rand — Pronunciation: A Key to Meaning — I Kings 3:16-28 by Herbert Rand.Wed, 01 Oct 1997 00:00:00 GMTBiblical HebrewKingshipBible Translationhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/esaus-wives/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/esaus-wives/Jed H. Abraham — Esau’s Wives by Jed H. Abraham.Wed, 01 Oct 1997 00:00:00 GMTPatriarchal NarrativesWomen in the BibleGenealogyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/large-numbers-in-the-hebrew-bible/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/large-numbers-in-the-hebrew-bible/John Wenham — Large Numbers in the Hebrew Bible by John Wenham.Wed, 01 Oct 1997 00:00:00 GMTBiblical ChronologyTextual CriticismAncient Near Easthttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-universal-message-of-death/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-universal-message-of-death/Hayim Granot — Darshanut: The Universal Message of Death by Hayim Granot.Wed, 01 Oct 1997 00:00:00 GMTHomileticsBiblical Theologyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-34th-international-bible-contest-for-youth/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-34th-international-bible-contest-for-youth/Joshua J. Adler — The 34th International Bible Contest for Youth by Joshua J. Adler.Wed, 01 Oct 1997 00:00:00 GMTBible EducationIsraelJewish Bible Associationhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/koheleth-and-the-modern-temper/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/koheleth-and-the-modern-temper/Dan Vogel — Koheleth and the Modern Temper by Dan Vogel.Tue, 01 Jul 1997 00:00:00 GMTWisdom LiteratureModern Jewish ThoughtJewish Philosophyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/baruch-ben-neriah-the-man-who-was-not-a-prophet/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/baruch-ben-neriah-the-man-who-was-not-a-prophet/P. J. Berlyn — Baruch Ben-Neriah: The Man Who Was Not a Prophet by P. J. Berlyn.Tue, 01 Jul 1997 00:00:00 GMTProphecyBiblical NarrativeAncient Near Easthttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/divine-names/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/divine-names/Nahum M. Waldman — Divine Names by Nahum M. Waldman.Tue, 01 Jul 1997 00:00:00 GMTNamesBiblical HebrewBiblical Theologyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-daughters-of-zelophehad-revisited/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-daughters-of-zelophehad-revisited/Josiah Derby — The Daughters of Zelophehad Revisited by Josiah Derby.Tue, 01 Jul 1997 00:00:00 GMTWomen in the BibleBiblical LawLand of Israelhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/shavuot-zman-matan-torateinu/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/shavuot-zman-matan-torateinu/Saul Leeman — Shavuot – Z’man Matan Torateinu by Saul Leeman.Tue, 01 Jul 1997 00:00:00 GMTJewish FestivalsJewish CalendarRabbinic Literaturehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/a-variant-text-from-the-isaiah-scroll/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/a-variant-text-from-the-isaiah-scroll/Daniel D. Stuhlman — A Variant Text from the Isaiah Scroll by Daniel D. Stuhlman.Tue, 01 Jul 1997 00:00:00 GMTTextual CriticismSecond Temple PeriodMasoretic Texthttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-dilemma-of-the-sanctuary/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-dilemma-of-the-sanctuary/Jeffrey M. Cohen — The Dilemma of the Sanctuary by Jeffrey M. Cohen.Tue, 01 Jul 1997 00:00:00 GMTTempleBiblical LawPriesthoodhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-sabbath-commandment-its-two-versions/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-sabbath-commandment-its-two-versions/Asher Eder — The Sabbath Commandment: Its Two Versions by Asher Eder.Tue, 01 Jul 1997 00:00:00 GMTSabbathBiblical LawTextual Criticismhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/domestic-politics/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/domestic-politics/Theodore Steinberg — Darshanut: Domestic Politics by Theodore Steinberg.Tue, 01 Jul 1997 00:00:00 GMTHomileticsBiblical Narrativehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/torah-dialogues-25-3/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/torah-dialogues-25-3/Hayyim Halpern — Torah Dialogues by Hayyim Halpern.Tue, 01 Jul 1997 00:00:00 GMTBible EducationRabbinic Exegesishttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/royal-building-projects-and-the-ethics-of-royalty/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/royal-building-projects-and-the-ethics-of-royalty/Abraham Ruderman — Royal Building Projects and the Ethics of Royalty by Abraham Ruderman.Tue, 01 Jul 1997 00:00:00 GMTKingshipBiblical EthicsTemplehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/creation-tabernacle-and-sabbath/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/creation-tabernacle-and-sabbath/Shimon Bakon — Creation, Tabernacle and Sabbath by Shimon Bakon.Tue, 01 Apr 1997 00:00:00 GMTCreationTabernacleSabbathhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/genesis-33-6-vs-genesis-33-7/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/genesis-33-6-vs-genesis-33-7/Dan Vogel — Darshanut: Genesis 33:6 vs. Genesis 33:7 by Dan Vogel.Tue, 01 Apr 1997 00:00:00 GMTRabbinic ExegesisHomileticshttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/jephthahs-daughter-25-2/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/jephthahs-daughter-25-2/Israel Mehlman — Jephthah’s Daughter by Israel Mehlman.Tue, 01 Apr 1997 00:00:00 GMTWomen in the BibleBiblical NarrativeSacrificehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/jewish-education-in-biblical-times-joshua-to-933-bce/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/jewish-education-in-biblical-times-joshua-to-933-bce/Joel E. Hoffman — Jewish Education in Biblical Times: Joshua to 933 BCE by Joel E. Hoffman.Tue, 01 Apr 1997 00:00:00 GMTBible EducationAncient Near Easthttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/letters-to-the-editor-25-2/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/letters-to-the-editor-25-2/JBQ Readers — Letters to the Editor by JBQ Readers.Tue, 01 Apr 1997 00:00:00 GMThttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-book-of-esther-and-its-motifs/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-book-of-esther-and-its-motifs/Benjamin Goodnick — The Book of Esther and its Motifs by Benjamin Goodnick.Tue, 01 Apr 1997 00:00:00 GMTEstherBiblical NarrativeDiasporahttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-satanic-verses-part-1/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-satanic-verses-part-1/Aron Pinker — The Satanic Verses – Part I by Aron Pinker.Tue, 01 Apr 1997 00:00:00 GMTProphecyTextual CriticismComparative Religionhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/torah-dialogues-25-2/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/torah-dialogues-25-2/Hayyim Halpern — Torah Dialogues by Hayyim Halpern.Tue, 01 Apr 1997 00:00:00 GMTBible EducationRabbinic Exegesishttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/two-sinners/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/two-sinners/Jacob Chinitz — Two Sinners by Jacob Chinitz.Tue, 01 Apr 1997 00:00:00 GMTBiblical EthicsKingshipRepentancehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/yom-kippur-cover-up-or-plea-for-probation/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/yom-kippur-cover-up-or-plea-for-probation/Rav A. Soloff — Yom Kippur: Cover Up or Plea for Probation? by Rav A. Soloff.Tue, 01 Apr 1997 00:00:00 GMTJewish FestivalsRepentanceBiblical Lawhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/and-the-writing-was-the-writing-of-god/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/and-the-writing-was-the-writing-of-god/Shubert Spero — And the Writing Was the Writing of God by Shubert Spero.Wed, 01 Jan 1997 00:00:00 GMTBiblical TheologyMosesRabbinic Literaturehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/why-is-pesach-so-late/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/why-is-pesach-so-late/Saul Leeman — Why Is Pesach So Late? by Saul Leeman.Wed, 01 Jan 1997 00:00:00 GMTJewish CalendarJewish FestivalsBiblical Chronologyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/leahs-eyes/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/leahs-eyes/Seelenfreund and Stanley Schneider — Leah’s Eyes by Seelenfreund and Stanley Schneider.Wed, 01 Jan 1997 00:00:00 GMTWomen in the BiblePatriarchal NarrativesBiblical Hebrewhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/judah-hahasid/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/judah-hahasid/Ben Zion Katz — Judah HaHasid: Three Controversial Commentaries by Ben Zion Katz.Wed, 01 Jan 1997 00:00:00 GMTMedieval ExegesisHistory of InterpretationBiblical Criticismhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/arami-oved-avi-25-1/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/arami-oved-avi-25-1/Neville Krausz — Arami Oved Avi by Neville Krausz.Wed, 01 Jan 1997 00:00:00 GMTBiblical HebrewLiturgyPatriarchal Narrativeshttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/davids-conquest-of-jerusalem/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/davids-conquest-of-jerusalem/Josiah Derby — David’s Conquest of Jerusalem by Josiah Derby.Wed, 01 Jan 1997 00:00:00 GMTKingshipLand of IsraelArchaeologyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/transportation-in-the-bible/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/transportation-in-the-bible/Clarence H. Wagner — Transportation in the Bible by Clarence H. Wagner.Wed, 01 Jan 1997 00:00:00 GMTAncient Near EastArchaeologyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-red-heifer-ritual/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-red-heifer-ritual/Martin H. Greenberg — The Red Heifer Ritual: A Rational Explanation by Martin H. Greenberg.Wed, 01 Jan 1997 00:00:00 GMTBiblical LawPriesthoodRabbinic Literaturehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/torah-dialogues/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/torah-dialogues/Hayyim Halpern — Torah Dialogues by Hayyim Halpern.Wed, 01 Jan 1997 00:00:00 GMTBible EducationRabbinic Exegesishttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-presidents-bible-study-group/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-presidents-bible-study-group/Joshua J. Adler — The President’s Bible Study Group by Joshua J. Adler.Wed, 01 Jan 1997 00:00:00 GMTBible EducationIsraelhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/king-balak-happy-endings/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/king-balak-happy-endings/Theodore Steinberg — King Balak: Happy Endings by Theodore Steinberg.Wed, 01 Jan 1997 00:00:00 GMTHomileticsBiblical NarrativeProphecyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/a-dead-sea-psalm/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/a-dead-sea-psalm/Abraham Ruderman — A Dead Sea Psalm by Abraham Ruderman.Wed, 01 Jan 1997 00:00:00 GMTPsalmsSecond Temple PeriodTextual Criticismhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/letters-to-the-editor-25-1/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/letters-to-the-editor-25-1/JBQ Readers — Letters to the Editor by JBQ Readers.Wed, 01 Jan 1997 00:00:00 GMThttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-patriarchs/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-patriarchs/David Ben-Gurion — The Patriarchs by David Ben-Gurion.Tue, 01 Oct 1996 00:00:00 GMTPatriarchal NarrativesModern Jewish ThoughtBible Educationhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/zerubabbel-the-messianic-hope-of-the-returnees/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/zerubabbel-the-messianic-hope-of-the-returnees/Binyamin Uffenheimer — Zerubabbel: The Messianic Hope of the Returnees by Binyamin Uffenheimer.Tue, 01 Oct 1996 00:00:00 GMTMessianismSecond Temple PeriodProphecyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/psalm-145-its-two-faces/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/psalm-145-its-two-faces/Jacob Chinitz — Psalm 145: Its Two Faces by Jacob Chinitz.Tue, 01 Oct 1996 00:00:00 GMTPsalmsLiturgyBiblical Poetryhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/cain-why-is-he-featured-so-prominently-in-the-bible/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/cain-why-is-he-featured-so-prominently-in-the-bible/Julius B. Moster — Cain: Why Is He Featured So Prominently in the Bible? by Julius B. Moster.Tue, 01 Oct 1996 00:00:00 GMTBiblical NarrativeBiblical EthicsCreationhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/consequences-of-the-akedah/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/consequences-of-the-akedah/Jeffrey M. Cohen — Consequences of the Akedah by Jeffrey M. Cohen.Tue, 01 Oct 1996 00:00:00 GMTPatriarchal NarrativesSacrificeBiblical Theologyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/atbash-in-jeremiah-its-literary-significance-part-3/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/atbash-in-jeremiah-its-literary-significance-part-3/Scott B. Noegel — Atbash in Jeremiah, Its Literary Significance – Part III by Scott B. Noegel.Tue, 01 Oct 1996 00:00:00 GMTTextual CriticismBiblical HebrewProphecyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-earth-is-full-of-your-creations/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-earth-is-full-of-your-creations/Beth Uval — The Earth Is Full of Your Creations (Psalms 104:24) by Beth Uval.Tue, 01 Oct 1996 00:00:00 GMTCreationPsalmsBiblical Poetryhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/davids-census-additional-reflection/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/davids-census-additional-reflection/Joshua J. Adler — David’s Census: Additional Reflection by Joshua J. Adler.Tue, 01 Oct 1996 00:00:00 GMTKingshipBiblical NarrativeBiblical Theologyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/hinds-in-psalm-29/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/hinds-in-psalm-29/Herbert Cohn — Hinds in Psalm 29 by Herbert Cohn.Tue, 01 Oct 1996 00:00:00 GMTPsalmsBiblical HebrewBiblical Poetryhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-lxx-and-the-bible-matter-for-thought/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-lxx-and-the-bible-matter-for-thought/Heriberto Haber — The LXX and the Bible: Matter for Thought by Heriberto Haber.Tue, 01 Oct 1996 00:00:00 GMTSeptuagintBible TranslationTextual Criticismhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/counting-the-omer-two-perspectives/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/counting-the-omer-two-perspectives/Theodore Steinberg — Darshanut: Counting the Omer: Two Perspectives by Theodore Steinberg.Tue, 01 Oct 1996 00:00:00 GMTHomileticsJewish FestivalsJewish Calendarhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/torah-dialogues-fourth-series/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/torah-dialogues-fourth-series/Hayyim Halpern — Torah Dialogues (Fourth Series) by Hayyim Halpern.Tue, 01 Oct 1996 00:00:00 GMTBible EducationRabbinic Exegesishttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/letters-to-the-editor-24-4/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/letters-to-the-editor-24-4/JBQ Readers — Letters to the Editor by JBQ Readers.Tue, 01 Oct 1996 00:00:00 GMThttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/israels-spiritual-and-national-roots/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/israels-spiritual-and-national-roots/David Ben-Gurion — The Bible: Israel’s Spiritual and National Roots by David Ben-Gurion.Mon, 01 Jul 1996 00:00:00 GMTModern Jewish ThoughtLand of IsraelBible Educationhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/not-to-inflict-hurt-on-animals/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/not-to-inflict-hurt-on-animals/Shimon Bakon — Not to Inflict Hurt on Animals by Shimon Bakon.Mon, 01 Jul 1996 00:00:00 GMTBiblical EthicsBiblical LawRabbinic Literaturehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/was-abram-born-in-ur-of-the-chaldees/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/was-abram-born-in-ur-of-the-chaldees/Shubert Spero — Was Abram Born in Ur of the Chaldees? by Shubert Spero.Mon, 01 Jul 1996 00:00:00 GMTPatriarchal NarrativesAncient Near EastArchaeologyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/atbash-in-jeremiah-part-2/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/atbash-in-jeremiah-part-2/Scott B. Noegel — Atbash in Jeremiah – Part II by Scott B. Noegel.Mon, 01 Jul 1996 00:00:00 GMTTextual CriticismBiblical HebrewProphecyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/balaam-some-aspects-of-his-character/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/balaam-some-aspects-of-his-character/Benjamin Goodnick — Balaam: Some Aspects of His Character by Benjamin Goodnick.Mon, 01 Jul 1996 00:00:00 GMTProphecyBiblical NarrativeAncient Near Easthttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/isaiah-and-cyrus/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/isaiah-and-cyrus/Josiah Derby — Isaiah and Cyrus by Josiah Derby.Mon, 01 Jul 1996 00:00:00 GMTProphecyAncient Near EastSecond Temple Periodhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/darshanut/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/darshanut/Amitai Halevi — Darshanut: Does God Have a Sense of Humor? by Amitai Halevi.Mon, 01 Jul 1996 00:00:00 GMTHomileticshttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/notes-on-megillat-ruth-chapter-4/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/notes-on-megillat-ruth-chapter-4/Aharon Pollack — Notes on Megillat Ruth, Chapter 4 by Aharon Pollack.Mon, 01 Jul 1996 00:00:00 GMTWomen in the BibleBiblical LawBiblical Narrativehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/hidden-treasure-in-scripture/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/hidden-treasure-in-scripture/Saul Leeman — “Hidden Treasure” in Scripture by Saul Leeman.Mon, 01 Jul 1996 00:00:00 GMTBiblical HebrewTextual Criticismhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/an-obstetric-problem/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/an-obstetric-problem/Joseph Jacobs — An Obstetric Problem by Joseph Jacobs.Mon, 01 Jul 1996 00:00:00 GMTScience and the BibleWomen in the Biblehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/jacobs-two-dreams/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/jacobs-two-dreams/Simon Novak — Jacob’s Two Dreams by Simon Novak.Mon, 01 Jul 1996 00:00:00 GMTPatriarchal NarrativesDreamsBiblical Narrativehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/torah-dialogues-third-series-24-3/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/torah-dialogues-third-series-24-3/Hayyim Halpern — Torah Dialogues (Third Series) by Hayyim Halpern.Mon, 01 Jul 1996 00:00:00 GMTBible EducationRabbinic Exegesishttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/book-review-rachel/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/book-review-rachel/P. J. Berlyn — Book Review: Rachel by P. J. Berlyn.Mon, 01 Jul 1996 00:00:00 GMTWomen in the BiblePatriarchal Narrativeshttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/a-visit-to-armageddon/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/a-visit-to-armageddon/Abraham Ruderman — A Visit to Armageddon by Abraham Ruderman.Mon, 01 Jul 1996 00:00:00 GMTArchaeologyLand of IsraelAncient Near Easthttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-33rd-international-bible-contest-for-youth/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-33rd-international-bible-contest-for-youth/Joshua J. Adler — The 33rd International Bible Contest for Youth by Joshua J. Adler.Mon, 01 Jul 1996 00:00:00 GMTBible EducationIsraelJewish Bible Associationhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/letters-to-the-editor-24-3/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/letters-to-the-editor-24-3/JBQ Readers — Letters to the Editor by JBQ Readers.Mon, 01 Jul 1996 00:00:00 GMThttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/reflections-of-readers-24-3/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/reflections-of-readers-24-3/Editors — Reflections of Readers by Editors.Mon, 01 Jul 1996 00:00:00 GMThttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-bible-transmission-and-interpretation/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-bible-transmission-and-interpretation/Chaim Pearl — The Bible: Transmission and Interpretation by Chaim Pearl.Mon, 01 Apr 1996 00:00:00 GMTBiblical CriticismHistory of InterpretationTextual Criticismhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/atbash-in-jeremiah/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/atbash-in-jeremiah/Scott B. Noegel — Atbash in Jeremiah by Scott B. Noegel.Mon, 01 Apr 1996 00:00:00 GMTTextual CriticismBiblical HebrewProphecyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/david-and-ahab-a-study-of-crime-and-punishment/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/david-and-ahab-a-study-of-crime-and-punishment/Herbert Rand — David and Ahab: A Study of Crime and Punishment by Herbert Rand.Mon, 01 Apr 1996 00:00:00 GMTKingshipBiblical EthicsProphecyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/go-and-learn/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/go-and-learn/Harry Freedman — Go and Learn by Harry Freedman.Mon, 01 Apr 1996 00:00:00 GMTBible EducationRabbinic Literaturehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/vashti-an-unsung-heroine/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/vashti-an-unsung-heroine/Jeffrey M. Cohen — Vashti: An Unsung Heroine by Jeffrey M. Cohen.Mon, 01 Apr 1996 00:00:00 GMTEstherWomen in the BibleBiblical Narrativehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/a-biblical-freudian-slip-ii-samuel-12-6/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/a-biblical-freudian-slip-ii-samuel-12-6/Josiah Derby — A Biblical Freudian Slip: II Samuel 12:6 by Josiah Derby.Mon, 01 Apr 1996 00:00:00 GMTBiblical HebrewTextual CriticismBiblical Narrativehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-anatomy-of-the-first-lies/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-anatomy-of-the-first-lies/Ernest Neufeld — The Anatomy of the First Lies by Ernest Neufeld.Mon, 01 Apr 1996 00:00:00 GMTCreationBiblical EthicsBiblical Narrativehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/exodus-how-big-was-the-population/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/exodus-how-big-was-the-population/Baek Sung Choi — Exodus: How Big Was the Population? by Baek Sung Choi.Mon, 01 Apr 1996 00:00:00 GMTExodus from EgyptBiblical ChronologyAncient Near Easthttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/darshanut-corner-torah-as-poetry/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/darshanut-corner-torah-as-poetry/Theodore Steinberg — Darshanut: The Torah as Poetry by Theodore Steinberg.Mon, 01 Apr 1996 00:00:00 GMTHomileticsBiblical Poetryhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/torah-dialogues-third-series/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/torah-dialogues-third-series/Hayyim Halpern — Torah Dialogues (Third Series) by Hayyim Halpern.Mon, 01 Apr 1996 00:00:00 GMTBible EducationRabbinic Exegesishttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/excavations-at-tel-dan/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/excavations-at-tel-dan/Abraham Ruderman — Excavations at Tel Dan by Abraham Ruderman.Mon, 01 Apr 1996 00:00:00 GMTArchaeologyAncient Near EastLand of Israelhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/letters-to-the-editor-24-2/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/letters-to-the-editor-24-2/JBQ Readers — Letters to the Editor by JBQ Readers.Mon, 01 Apr 1996 00:00:00 GMThttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-book-of-job-its-true-significance/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-book-of-job-its-true-significance/David Wolfers — The Book of Job: Its True Significance by David Wolfers.Mon, 01 Jan 1996 00:00:00 GMTWisdom LiteratureSufferingBiblical Theologyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/and-a-wind-from-god-genesis-1-2/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/and-a-wind-from-god-genesis-1-2/Tuvia Freedman — And a Wind from God: Genesis 1:2 by Tuvia Freedman.Mon, 01 Jan 1996 00:00:00 GMTCreationBiblical HebrewBible Translationhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/zerubbabel-a-riddle/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/zerubbabel-a-riddle/Saul Leeman — Zerubbabel: A Riddle by Saul Leeman.Mon, 01 Jan 1996 00:00:00 GMTSecond Temple PeriodMessianismKingshiphttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/love-of-neighbor-and-its-antecedent-verses/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/love-of-neighbor-and-its-antecedent-verses/Terry John Lehane — Love of Neighbor and Its Antecedent Verses by Terry John Lehane.Mon, 01 Jan 1996 00:00:00 GMTBiblical EthicsBiblical LawRabbinic Exegesishttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-trope/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-trope/Schneir Levin — The Trope by Schneir Levin.Mon, 01 Jan 1996 00:00:00 GMTMasoretic TextLiturgyBiblical Hebrewhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-great-ladies/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-great-ladies/Jeffrey M. Cohen — The Great Ladies by Jeffrey M. Cohen.Mon, 01 Jan 1996 00:00:00 GMTWomen in the BibleBiblical Narrativehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-listing-of-the-tribes-of-israel/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-listing-of-the-tribes-of-israel/Alexander Tobias — The Listing of the Tribes of Israel by Alexander Tobias.Mon, 01 Jan 1996 00:00:00 GMTGenealogyBiblical NarrativeLand of Israelhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-atbash-acrostic/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-atbash-acrostic/P. J. Berlyn — The Atbash-Acrostic by P. J. Berlyn.Mon, 01 Jan 1996 00:00:00 GMTTextual CriticismBiblical HebrewProphecyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/zipporah-and-the-passover/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/zipporah-and-the-passover/Jacob Chinitz — Zipporah and the Passover by Jacob Chinitz.Mon, 01 Jan 1996 00:00:00 GMTWomen in the BibleMosesJewish Festivalshttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/new-torah-dialogues/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/new-torah-dialogues/Hayyim Halpern — New Torah Dialogues by Hayyim Halpern.Mon, 01 Jan 1996 00:00:00 GMTBible EducationRabbinic Exegesishttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/book-review-the-challenge-of-god-to-man-a-theology-of/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/book-review-the-challenge-of-god-to-man-a-theology-of/Shubert Spero — Book Review: The Challenge of God to Man: A Theology of Responsible Freedom by Shubert Spero.Mon, 01 Jan 1996 00:00:00 GMTJewish PhilosophyBiblical Theologyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/letters-to-the-editor-24-1/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/letters-to-the-editor-24-1/JBQ Readers — Letters to the Editor by JBQ Readers.Mon, 01 Jan 1996 00:00:00 GMThttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-rabshakehs-speech-ii-kings-18-25-a-study-of-rhetorical/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-rabshakehs-speech-ii-kings-18-25-a-study-of-rhetorical/Ronald T. Hyman — The Rabshakeh’s Speech (II Kings 18-25): A Study of Rhetorical Intimidation by Ronald T. Hyman.Sun, 01 Oct 1995 00:00:00 GMTRhetoricAncient Near EastKingshiphttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/rebekahs-deceit-or-isaacs-great-test/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/rebekahs-deceit-or-isaacs-great-test/Benjamin Goodnick — Rebekah’s Deceit or Isaac’s Great Test by Benjamin Goodnick.Sun, 01 Oct 1995 00:00:00 GMTPatriarchal NarrativesWomen in the BibleBiblical Ethicshttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/we-will-do-and-we-will-hearken/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/we-will-do-and-we-will-hearken/Shubert Spero — “We Will Do and We Will Hearken” by Shubert Spero.Sun, 01 Oct 1995 00:00:00 GMTBiblical TheologyBiblical LawRabbinic Literaturehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/of-parents-and-children/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/of-parents-and-children/Reuven P. Bulka — Of Parents and Children by Reuven P. Bulka.Sun, 01 Oct 1995 00:00:00 GMTBiblical EthicsBiblical LawModern Jewish Thoughthttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/fasting-and-atonement/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/fasting-and-atonement/Josiah Derby — Fasting and Atonement by Josiah Derby.Sun, 01 Oct 1995 00:00:00 GMTRepentanceJewish FestivalsBiblical Lawhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-destruction-of-the-golden-calf-a-reply/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-destruction-of-the-golden-calf-a-reply/Herbert Rand — The Destruction of the Golden Calf: A Reply by Herbert Rand.Sun, 01 Oct 1995 00:00:00 GMTIdolatryMosesBiblical Hebrewhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-marriage-and-the-dowry/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-marriage-and-the-dowry/Yosef Freund — The Marriage and the Dowry by Yosef Freund.Sun, 01 Oct 1995 00:00:00 GMTBiblical LawWomen in the BibleAncient Near Easthttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/a-nameless-city/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/a-nameless-city/Serge Frolov and Vladimir Orel — A Nameless City by Serge Frolov and Vladimir Orel.Sun, 01 Oct 1995 00:00:00 GMTAncient Near EastArchaeologyBiblical Narrativehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/psalm-47-numerical-and-geometrical-devices-used-to/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/psalm-47-numerical-and-geometrical-devices-used-to/Samuel I. Cohen — Psalm 47: Numerical and Geometrical Devices Used to Emphasize the Author’s Message by Samuel I. Cohen.Sun, 01 Oct 1995 00:00:00 GMTPsalmsBiblical PoetryTextual Criticismhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-city-of-david/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-city-of-david/Abraham Ruderman — The City of David by Abraham Ruderman.Sun, 01 Oct 1995 00:00:00 GMTArchaeologyLand of IsraelKingshiphttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/torah-dialogues-third-series-23-4/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/torah-dialogues-third-series-23-4/Hayyim Halpern — Torah Dialogues (Third Series) by Hayyim Halpern.Sun, 01 Oct 1995 00:00:00 GMTBible EducationRabbinic Exegesishttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/jonathan/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/jonathan/Shimon Bakon — Jonathan by Shimon Bakon.Sat, 01 Jul 1995 00:00:00 GMTKingshipBiblical NarrativeLeadershiphttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/richard-beer-hofmann-and-the-bible/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/richard-beer-hofmann-and-the-bible/Sarah Fraiman — Richard Beer-Hofmann and the Bible by Sarah Fraiman.Sat, 01 Jul 1995 00:00:00 GMTModern Jewish ThoughtHistory of Interpretationhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/another-look-at-job-18-2-3/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/another-look-at-job-18-2-3/Scott B. Noegel — Another Look at Job 18:2,3 by Scott B. Noegel.Sat, 01 Jul 1995 00:00:00 GMTWisdom LiteratureBiblical HebrewTextual Criticismhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/omphalos-revisited/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/omphalos-revisited/Berel Dov Lerner — Omphalos Revisited by Berel Dov Lerner.Sat, 01 Jul 1995 00:00:00 GMTCreationJewish PhilosophyScience and the Biblehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/sheol/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/sheol/Aron Pinker — Sheol by Aron Pinker.Sat, 01 Jul 1995 00:00:00 GMTBiblical TheologyBiblical HebrewAncient Near Easthttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/was-abraham-heartless/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/was-abraham-heartless/Jeffrey M. Cohen — Was Abraham Heartless? by Jeffrey M. Cohen.Sat, 01 Jul 1995 00:00:00 GMTPatriarchal NarrativesBiblical EthicsSacrificehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/puns-upon-names-subtle-colophons-in-the-bible/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/puns-upon-names-subtle-colophons-in-the-bible/Moshe Garsiel — Puns Upon Names: Subtle Colophons in the Bible by Moshe Garsiel.Sat, 01 Jul 1995 00:00:00 GMTNamesBiblical HebrewBiblical Narrativehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/king-cyrus-anointed-messiah-of-the-lord/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/king-cyrus-anointed-messiah-of-the-lord/Asher Eder — King Cyrus, Anointed (Messiah) of the Lord by Asher Eder.Sat, 01 Jul 1995 00:00:00 GMTMessianismProphecyAncient Near Easthttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/being-jewish-a-parallel-line-to-other-faiths/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/being-jewish-a-parallel-line-to-other-faiths/Milton Kanter — Being Jewish: A Parallel Line to Other Faiths by Milton Kanter.Sat, 01 Jul 1995 00:00:00 GMTModern Jewish ThoughtChosennesshttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/new-torah-dialogues-23-3/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/new-torah-dialogues-23-3/Hayyim Halpern — New Torah Dialogues by Hayyim Halpern.Sat, 01 Jul 1995 00:00:00 GMTBible EducationRabbinic Exegesishttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-32nd-international-bible-contest-for-youth/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-32nd-international-bible-contest-for-youth/Joshua J. Adler — The 32nd International Bible Contest for Youth by Joshua J. Adler.Sat, 01 Jul 1995 00:00:00 GMTBible EducationIsraelJewish Bible Associationhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/jephthah/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/jephthah/Israel Mehlman — Jephthah by Israel Mehlman.Sat, 01 Apr 1995 00:00:00 GMTBiblical NarrativeSacrificeLeadershiphttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/eye-for-an-eye-an-old-canard/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/eye-for-an-eye-an-old-canard/Jacob Chinitz — Eye for an Eye: An Old Canard by Jacob Chinitz.Sat, 01 Apr 1995 00:00:00 GMTBiblical LawBiblical EthicsRabbinic Literaturehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/tv-breast-robbery-or-the-devil/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/tv-breast-robbery-or-the-devil/Stanley Schneider and Joseph H. Berke — TV: Breast, Robbery or the Devil? by Stanley Schneider and Joseph H. Berke.Sat, 01 Apr 1995 00:00:00 GMTModern Jewish ThoughtBiblical Ethicshttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/davids-last-sin-was-it-the-census/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/davids-last-sin-was-it-the-census/Joshua J. Adler — David’s Last Sin: Was It the Census? by Joshua J. Adler.Sat, 01 Apr 1995 00:00:00 GMTKingshipBiblical NarrativeBiblical Theologyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/translating-the-torah-some-reflections-on-the-new-artscroll/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/translating-the-torah-some-reflections-on-the-new-artscroll/Saul Leeman — Translating the Torah: Some Reflections on the New ArtScroll Humash by Saul Leeman.Sat, 01 Apr 1995 00:00:00 GMTBible TranslationRabbinic ExegesisModern Jewish Thoughthttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/ibn-ezra-the-bible-exegesist/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/ibn-ezra-the-bible-exegesist/Moshe Ben-Yoseph Linetzky — Ibn Ezra the Bible Exegesist by Moshe Ben-Yoseph Linetzky.Sat, 01 Apr 1995 00:00:00 GMTMedieval ExegesisHistory of InterpretationBiblical Hebrewhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/jacob-and-esau-their-struggle-in-the-second-century/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/jacob-and-esau-their-struggle-in-the-second-century/Harry Freedman — Jacob and Esau: Their Struggle in the Second Century by Harry Freedman.Sat, 01 Apr 1995 00:00:00 GMTPatriarchal NarrativesRabbinic LiteratureHistory of Interpretationhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-paradox-in-the-book-of-esther/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-paradox-in-the-book-of-esther/Josiah Derby — The Paradox in the Book of Esther by Josiah Derby.Sat, 01 Apr 1995 00:00:00 GMTEstherDiasporaBiblical Narrativehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/evolution-in-the-bible/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/evolution-in-the-bible/Schneir Levin — Evolution in the Bible by Schneir Levin.Sat, 01 Apr 1995 00:00:00 GMTScience and the BibleCreationhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/new-torah-dialogues-23-2/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/new-torah-dialogues-23-2/Hayyim Halpern — New Torah Dialogues by Hayyim Halpern.Sat, 01 Apr 1995 00:00:00 GMTBible EducationRabbinic Exegesishttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-qumran-settlement-scriptorium-villa-or-fortress/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-qumran-settlement-scriptorium-villa-or-fortress/Abraham Ruderman — The Qumran Settlement: Scriptorium, Villa or Fortress by Abraham Ruderman.Sat, 01 Apr 1995 00:00:00 GMTArchaeologySecond Temple PeriodLand of Israelhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/sparks-flying-job-5-7/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/sparks-flying-job-5-7/David Wolfers — Sparks Flying? Job 5:7 by David Wolfers.Sun, 01 Jan 1995 00:00:00 GMTWisdom LiteratureBible TranslationBiblical Hebrewhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/power-of-persuasion-judah-abigail-and-hushai/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/power-of-persuasion-judah-abigail-and-hushai/Ronald T. Hyman — Power of Persuasion: Judah, Abigail, and Hushai by Ronald T. Hyman.Sun, 01 Jan 1995 00:00:00 GMTBiblical NarrativeRhetoricWomen in the Biblehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/proof-texts/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/proof-texts/Rav A. Soloff — Proof Texts by Rav A. Soloff.Sun, 01 Jan 1995 00:00:00 GMTRabbinic ExegesisHistory of Interpretationhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/biblical-hebrew-a-socio-linguistic-history/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/biblical-hebrew-a-socio-linguistic-history/Jack Fellman — Biblical Hebrew: A Socio-Linguistic History by Jack Fellman.Sun, 01 Jan 1995 00:00:00 GMTBiblical HebrewAncient Near Easthttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/magical-transformations-sukkoth-and-the-four-species/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/magical-transformations-sukkoth-and-the-four-species/Ernest Neufeld — Magical Transformations: Sukkoth and the Four Species by Ernest Neufeld.Sun, 01 Jan 1995 00:00:00 GMTJewish FestivalsBiblical LawAncient Near Easthttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/book-review-a-rabbi-reads-the-psalms/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/book-review-a-rabbi-reads-the-psalms/P. J. Berlyn — Book Review: A Rabbi Reads the Psalms by P. J. Berlyn.Sun, 01 Jan 1995 00:00:00 GMTBook ReviewPsalmshttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/dating-the-exodus-a-new-perspective/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/dating-the-exodus-a-new-perspective/Jonathan Adler — Dating the Exodus: A New Perspective by Jonathan Adler.Sun, 01 Jan 1995 00:00:00 GMTExodus from EgyptBiblical ChronologyArchaeologyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/letters-to-the-editor-23-1/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/letters-to-the-editor-23-1/JBQ Readers — Letters to the Editor by JBQ Readers.Sun, 01 Jan 1995 00:00:00 GMThttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/new-torah-dialogues-23-1/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/new-torah-dialogues-23-1/Hayyim Halpern — New Torah Dialogues by Hayyim Halpern.Sun, 01 Jan 1995 00:00:00 GMTBible EducationRabbinic Exegesishttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/on-musical-instruments/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/on-musical-instruments/Alexander Tobias — On Musical Instruments by Alexander Tobias.Sun, 01 Jan 1995 00:00:00 GMTLiturgyTempleAncient Near Easthttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/psalm-119/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/psalm-119/S. M. Lehrman — Psalm 119 by S. M. Lehrman.Sun, 01 Jan 1995 00:00:00 GMTPsalmsBiblical PoetryLiturgyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/reflections-of-readers-23-1/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/reflections-of-readers-23-1/Editors — Reflections of Readers by Editors.Sun, 01 Jan 1995 00:00:00 GMThttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/who-wrote-the-story-of-moses-death/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/who-wrote-the-story-of-moses-death/Heriberto Haber — Who Wrote the Story of Moses’ Death by Heriberto Haber.Sun, 01 Jan 1995 00:00:00 GMTMosesBiblical CriticismRabbinic Literaturehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/why-moses-smashed-the-tablets/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/why-moses-smashed-the-tablets/Jeffrey M. Cohen — Why Moses Smashed the Tablets by Jeffrey M. Cohen.Sun, 01 Jan 1995 00:00:00 GMTMosesIdolatryBiblical Narrativehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/creation-and-the-torah-in-psalm-19/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/creation-and-the-torah-in-psalm-19/Daniel G. Ashburn — Creation and the Torah in Psalm 19 by Daniel G. Ashburn.Sat, 01 Oct 1994 00:00:00 GMTPsalmsCreationBiblical Poetryhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/isaacs-wells-and-israels-return/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/isaacs-wells-and-israels-return/Terry John Lehane — Isaac's Wells and Israel's Return by Terry John Lehane.Sat, 01 Oct 1994 00:00:00 GMTPatriarchal NarrativesLand of IsraelSymbolismhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/jacobs-deception-of-his-father/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/jacobs-deception-of-his-father/Benjamin Goodnick — Jacob’s Deception of his Father by Benjamin Goodnick.Sat, 01 Oct 1994 00:00:00 GMTJacobPatriarchal NarrativesBiblical Ethicshttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/letters-to-the-editor-22-4/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/letters-to-the-editor-22-4/JBQ Readers — Letters to the Editor by JBQ Readers.Sat, 01 Oct 1994 00:00:00 GMThttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/nabal-the-villain/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/nabal-the-villain/Ben-Meir — Nabal, the Villain by Ben-Meir.Sat, 01 Oct 1994 00:00:00 GMTDavidBiblical NarrativeBiblical Ethicshttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/new-torah-dialogues-22-4/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/new-torah-dialogues-22-4/Hayyim Halpern — New Torah Dialogues by Hayyim Halpern.Sat, 01 Oct 1994 00:00:00 GMTBible EducationRabbinic Exegesishttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/pomegranates-as-temple-requisites/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/pomegranates-as-temple-requisites/Asher Eder — Pomegranates as Temple Requisites by Asher Eder.Sat, 01 Oct 1994 00:00:00 GMTTempleSymbolismNature in the Biblehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/reflections-of-readers-22-4/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/reflections-of-readers-22-4/Editors — Reflections of Readers by Editors.Sat, 01 Oct 1994 00:00:00 GMThttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/song-of-songs/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/song-of-songs/Shimon Bakon — Song of Songs by Shimon Bakon.Sat, 01 Oct 1994 00:00:00 GMTBiblical PoetryLiterary AnalysisSymbolismhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/sound-and-silence/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/sound-and-silence/Nahum M. Waldman — Sound and Silence by Nahum M. Waldman.Sat, 01 Oct 1994 00:00:00 GMTLiterary AnalysisBiblical PoetryProphecyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-tower-of-babel-revisited/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-tower-of-babel-revisited/Samuel Dershowitz — The Tower of Babel Revisited by Samuel Dershowitz.Sat, 01 Oct 1994 00:00:00 GMTCreationAncient Near EastBiblical Narrativehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/they-are-no-longer-for-god-has-taken-them/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/they-are-no-longer-for-god-has-taken-them/Shubert Spero — They Are No Longer, For God Has Taken Them by Shubert Spero.Sat, 01 Oct 1994 00:00:00 GMTBiblical TheologySufferingResurrectionhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/a-problem-in-the-book-of-ruth/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/a-problem-in-the-book-of-ruth/Josiah Derby — A Problem in the Book of Ruth by Josiah Derby.Fri, 01 Jul 1994 00:00:00 GMTRuthBiblical LawWomen in the Biblehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/checkmate-the-king-is-dead/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/checkmate-the-king-is-dead/P. J. Berlyn — Checkmate: The King is Dead by P. J. Berlyn.Fri, 01 Jul 1994 00:00:00 GMTKingshipBiblical Narrativehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/letters-to-the-editor-22-3/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/letters-to-the-editor-22-3/JBQ Readers — Letters to the Editor by JBQ Readers.Fri, 01 Jul 1994 00:00:00 GMThttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/milk-and-honey/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/milk-and-honey/Abraham H. Gottesman — Milk and Honey by Abraham H. Gottesman.Fri, 01 Jul 1994 00:00:00 GMTLand of IsraelBiblical HebrewSymbolismhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/new-torah-dialogues-22-3/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/new-torah-dialogues-22-3/Hayyim Halpern — New Torah Dialogues by Hayyim Halpern.Fri, 01 Jul 1994 00:00:00 GMTBible EducationRabbinic Exegesishttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/reflections-of-readers-a-yod-in-teiasseh-exodus-25-31/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/reflections-of-readers-a-yod-in-teiasseh-exodus-25-31/Heriberto Haber — Reflections of Readers: A 'Yod' in Teiasseh (Exodus 25:31) by Heriberto Haber.Fri, 01 Jul 1994 00:00:00 GMTMasoretic TextTextual CriticismTabernaclehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-annual-bible-contest/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-annual-bible-contest/Joshua J. Adler — The Annual Bible Contest by Joshua J. Adler.Fri, 01 Jul 1994 00:00:00 GMTBible ContestBible Educationhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-messianic-idea-the-real-and-the-hidden-son-of-david/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-messianic-idea-the-real-and-the-hidden-son-of-david/Yehezkel Kaufmann — The Messianic Idea: The Real and the Hidden Son of David by Yehezkel Kaufmann.Fri, 01 Jul 1994 00:00:00 GMTMessianismDavidBiblical Theologyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-nature-of-the-decalogue/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-nature-of-the-decalogue/Jeffrey M. Cohen — The Nature of the Decalogue by Jeffrey M. Cohen.Fri, 01 Jul 1994 00:00:00 GMTBiblical LawMosesBiblical Theologyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-number-40-in-the-bible/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-number-40-in-the-bible/Aron Pinker — The Number 40 in the Bible by Aron Pinker.Fri, 01 Jul 1994 00:00:00 GMTSymbolismBiblical ChronologyLiterary Analysishttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/archaeological-adventures-in-israel/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/archaeological-adventures-in-israel/Abraham Ruderman — Archaeological Adventures in Israel by Abraham Ruderman.Fri, 01 Apr 1994 00:00:00 GMTArchaeologyIsraelLand of Israelhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/book-review-al-hasetumot-bamizmor-commentary-on-the-psalms/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/book-review-al-hasetumot-bamizmor-commentary-on-the-psalms/Shubert Spero — Book Review: Al Hasetumot Bamizmor (Commentary on the Psalms) by Shubert Spero.Fri, 01 Apr 1994 00:00:00 GMTBook ReviewPsalmsBiblical Exegesishttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/editorial-22-2/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/editorial-22-2/Chaim Pearl — Editorial by Chaim Pearl.Fri, 01 Apr 1994 00:00:00 GMThttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/esther-3-3-the-question-with-no-response/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/esther-3-3-the-question-with-no-response/Ronald T. Hyman — Esther 3:3: The Question With No Response by Ronald T. Hyman.Fri, 01 Apr 1994 00:00:00 GMTEstherLiterary AnalysisBiblical Narrativehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/from-horeb-to-kadesh-in-eleven-days/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/from-horeb-to-kadesh-in-eleven-days/David Faiman — From Horeb to Kadesh in Eleven Days by David Faiman.Fri, 01 Apr 1994 00:00:00 GMTExodus from EgyptBiblical ChronologyLand of Israelhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/had-noah-lived-in-abrahams-generation/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/had-noah-lived-in-abrahams-generation/Jeffrey M. Cohen — Had Noah Lived in Abraham’s Generation by Jeffrey M. Cohen.Fri, 01 Apr 1994 00:00:00 GMTPatriarchal NarrativesMidrashBiblical Ethicshttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/letters-to-the-editor-22-2/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/letters-to-the-editor-22-2/JBQ Readers — Letters to the Editor by JBQ Readers.Fri, 01 Apr 1994 00:00:00 GMThttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/review-bible-scholar-computer-program/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/review-bible-scholar-computer-program/Joshua Backon — Review: Bible Scholar Computer Program by Joshua Backon.Fri, 01 Apr 1994 00:00:00 GMTBook ReviewBible EducationScience and the Biblehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-bible-and-life-after-death/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-bible-and-life-after-death/Joshua J. Adler — The Bible and Life After Death by Joshua J. Adler.Fri, 01 Apr 1994 00:00:00 GMTBiblical TheologyResurrectionJewish Philosophyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-funniest-word-in-the-bible-purim-torah/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-funniest-word-in-the-bible-purim-torah/Josiah Derby — The Funniest Word in the Bible: Purim Torah by Josiah Derby.Fri, 01 Apr 1994 00:00:00 GMTBiblical HebrewJewish FestivalsHomileticshttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-prowess-of-the-benjaminites/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-prowess-of-the-benjaminites/P. S. Vermaak — The Prowess of the Benjaminites by P. S. Vermaak.Fri, 01 Apr 1994 00:00:00 GMTJudgesAncient Near EastBiblical Narrativehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-translators-dilemma-what-is-itti/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-translators-dilemma-what-is-itti/Herbert Rand — The Translators’ Dilemma: What is Itti? by Herbert Rand.Fri, 01 Apr 1994 00:00:00 GMTBible TranslationBiblical HebrewPhilologyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/book-review-assimilation-versus-separation-joseph-the/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/book-review-assimilation-versus-separation-joseph-the/P. J. Berlyn — Book Review: Assimilation Versus Separation: Joseph the Administrator and the Politics of Religion in Biblical Israel by P. J. Berlyn.Sat, 01 Jan 1994 00:00:00 GMTBook ReviewJoseph NarrativeDiasporahttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/editorial-22-1/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/editorial-22-1/Shimon Bakon — Editorial by Shimon Bakon.Sat, 01 Jan 1994 00:00:00 GMThttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/eikev-the-consequences-of-gods-judgement/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/eikev-the-consequences-of-gods-judgement/Judith Z. Abrams — Eikev: The Consequences of God’s Judgement by Judith Z. Abrams.Sat, 01 Jan 1994 00:00:00 GMTBiblical TheologyTorah CommentaryBiblical Ethicshttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/not-a-blacksmith-could-be-found/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/not-a-blacksmith-could-be-found/Walter Riggans — Not a Blacksmith Could be Found by Walter Riggans.Sat, 01 Jan 1994 00:00:00 GMTAncient Near EastArchaeologyBiblical Narrativehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/on-angels/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/on-angels/Hindishe Lee — On Angels by Hindishe Lee.Sat, 01 Jan 1994 00:00:00 GMTBiblical TheologyMidrashSymbolismhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/rational-torah/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/rational-torah/Jacob Chinitz — Rational Torah by Jacob Chinitz.Sat, 01 Jan 1994 00:00:00 GMTJewish PhilosophyBiblical LawBiblical Theologyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/reflections-of-readers-year-or-season/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/reflections-of-readers-year-or-season/Heriberto Haber — Reflections of Readers: Year or Season? by Heriberto Haber.Sat, 01 Jan 1994 00:00:00 GMTJewish CalendarBiblical Hebrewhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-anatomy-of-the-joseph-cycle/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-anatomy-of-the-joseph-cycle/Ernest Neufeld — The Anatomy of the Joseph Cycle by Ernest Neufeld.Sat, 01 Jan 1994 00:00:00 GMTJoseph NarrativeLiterary AnalysisBiblical Narrativehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-fourth-commandment/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-fourth-commandment/Josiah Derby — The Fourth Commandment by Josiah Derby.Sat, 01 Jan 1994 00:00:00 GMTSabbathBiblical LawBiblical Theologyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-old-and-the-new-jps-translations/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-old-and-the-new-jps-translations/Saul Leeman — The Old and the New JPS Translations by Saul Leeman.Sat, 01 Jan 1994 00:00:00 GMTBible TranslationPhilologyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/three-singular-plurals-job-18-2-3/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/three-singular-plurals-job-18-2-3/David Wolfers — Three Singular Plurals: Job 18:2,3 by David Wolfers.Sat, 01 Jan 1994 00:00:00 GMTJobBiblical HebrewTextual Criticismhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/a-secular-humanist-view/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/a-secular-humanist-view/Yair Zakovitz — A Secular-Humanist View by Yair Zakovitz.Fri, 01 Oct 1993 00:00:00 GMTBiblical CriticismModern Jewish Thoughthttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/a-traditionalist-view/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/a-traditionalist-view/Shubert Spero — A Traditionalist View by Shubert Spero.Fri, 01 Oct 1993 00:00:00 GMTBiblical TheologyModern Jewish ThoughtBiblical Criticismhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/editorial-21-4/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/editorial-21-4/Chaim Pearl — Editorial by Chaim Pearl.Fri, 01 Oct 1993 00:00:00 GMThttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/god-and-man-on-trial/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/god-and-man-on-trial/Shimon Bakon — God and Man on Trial by Shimon Bakon.Fri, 01 Oct 1993 00:00:00 GMTTheodicyJobBiblical Theologyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/israel-museum-exhibit/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/israel-museum-exhibit/P. J. Berlyn — Israel Museum Exhibit by P. J. Berlyn.Fri, 01 Oct 1993 00:00:00 GMTArchaeologyIsraelBible Educationhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/letters-to-the-editor-21-4/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/letters-to-the-editor-21-4/JBQ Readers — Letters to the Editor by JBQ Readers.Fri, 01 Oct 1993 00:00:00 GMThttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/sense-and-incense/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/sense-and-incense/Schneir Levin — Sense and Incense by Schneir Levin.Fri, 01 Oct 1993 00:00:00 GMTTemplePriesthoodSacrificehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-dead-sea-scrolls-40-years-later/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-dead-sea-scrolls-40-years-later/Abraham Ruderman — The Dead Sea Scrolls – 40 Years Later by Abraham Ruderman.Fri, 01 Oct 1993 00:00:00 GMTSecond Temple LiteratureArchaeologyTextual Criticismhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-incident-at-the-lodging-house/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-incident-at-the-lodging-house/Lawrence H. Fink — The Incident at the Lodging House by Lawrence H. Fink.Fri, 01 Oct 1993 00:00:00 GMTMosesTextual CriticismBiblical Narrativehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/two-views-of-the-bible/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/two-views-of-the-bible/Editors — Two Views of the Bible by Editors.Fri, 01 Oct 1993 00:00:00 GMTBiblical CriticismBiblical Theologyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/understanding-redemption-through-the-metaphor-of-the-family/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/understanding-redemption-through-the-metaphor-of-the-family/Diane Cohen — Understanding Redemption Through the Metaphor of the Family by Diane Cohen.Fri, 01 Oct 1993 00:00:00 GMTMessianismBiblical TheologySymbolismhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/and-ekron-as-a-jebusite-zechariah-9-7/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/and-ekron-as-a-jebusite-zechariah-9-7/Yosef Freund — And Ekron as a Jebusite (Zechariah 9:7) by Yosef Freund.Thu, 01 Jul 1993 00:00:00 GMTProphecyBiblical HebrewAncient Near Easthttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/bible-translations-how-reliable/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/bible-translations-how-reliable/Joshua J. Adler — Bible Translations: How Reliable? by Joshua J. Adler.Thu, 01 Jul 1993 00:00:00 GMTBible TranslationPhilologyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/editorial-21-3/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/editorial-21-3/Shimon Bakon — Editorial by Shimon Bakon.Thu, 01 Jul 1993 00:00:00 GMThttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/engraved-with-the-names/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/engraved-with-the-names/P. J. Berlyn — Engraved with the Names by P. J. Berlyn.Thu, 01 Jul 1993 00:00:00 GMTPriesthoodTabernacleSymbolismhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/joseph-and-his-brothers/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/joseph-and-his-brothers/Aryeh Ben-Yosef — Joseph and his Brothers by Aryeh Ben-Yosef.Thu, 01 Jul 1993 00:00:00 GMTJoseph NarrativeBiblical NarrativePatriarchal Narrativeshttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/letters-to-the-editor-21-3/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/letters-to-the-editor-21-3/JBQ Readers — Letters to the Editor by JBQ Readers.Thu, 01 Jul 1993 00:00:00 GMThttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/redemption-time-and-space/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/redemption-time-and-space/Berel Dov Lerner — Redemption: Time and Space by Berel Dov Lerner.Thu, 01 Jul 1993 00:00:00 GMTMessianismBiblical TheologyJewish Philosophyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/subsistence-struggles-of-early-israel/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/subsistence-struggles-of-early-israel/Abraham Ruderman — Subsistence Struggles of Early Israel by Abraham Ruderman.Thu, 01 Jul 1993 00:00:00 GMTArchaeologyAncient Near EastLand of Israelhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-jacob-esau-reunion/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-jacob-esau-reunion/Jeffrey M. Cohen — The Jacob-Esau Reunion by Jeffrey M. Cohen.Thu, 01 Jul 1993 00:00:00 GMTJacobPatriarchal NarrativesBiblical Narrativehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-lex-talionis-in-the-torah/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-lex-talionis-in-the-torah/Stuart A. West — The Lex Talionis in the Torah by Stuart A. West.Thu, 01 Jul 1993 00:00:00 GMTBiblical LawBiblical EthicsRabbinic Exegesishttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-strange-history-of-kasher/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-strange-history-of-kasher/Josiah Derby — The Strange History of ‘Kasher’ by Josiah Derby.Thu, 01 Jul 1993 00:00:00 GMTBiblical HebrewBiblical LawPhilologyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/bdellium/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/bdellium/Abraham H. Gottesman — Bdellium by Abraham H. Gottesman.Thu, 01 Apr 1993 00:00:00 GMTBiblical HebrewNature in the BiblePhilologyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/editorial-21-2/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/editorial-21-2/Chaim Pearl — Editorial by Chaim Pearl.Thu, 01 Apr 1993 00:00:00 GMThttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/job-a-universal-drama-part-2/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/job-a-universal-drama-part-2/David Wolfers — Job: A Universal Drama – Part 2 by David Wolfers.Thu, 01 Apr 1993 00:00:00 GMTJobTheodicyLiterary Analysishttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/race-relations/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/race-relations/Robert Chernoff — Race Relations by Robert Chernoff.Thu, 01 Apr 1993 00:00:00 GMTBiblical EthicsModern Jewish Thoughthttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/reflections-of-readers-judah-and-joseph-a-study-in-contrasts/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/reflections-of-readers-judah-and-joseph-a-study-in-contrasts/Herbert Rand — Reflections of Readers: Judah and Joseph: A Study in Contrasts by Herbert Rand.Thu, 01 Apr 1993 00:00:00 GMTJoseph NarrativeBiblical NarrativePatriarchal Narrativeshttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-bible-lands-museum/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-bible-lands-museum/Abraham Ruderman — The Bible Lands Museum by Abraham Ruderman.Thu, 01 Apr 1993 00:00:00 GMTArchaeologyBible EducationIsraelhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-bridegroom-of-blood/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-bridegroom-of-blood/Allen S. Maller — The Bridegroom of Blood by Allen S. Maller.Thu, 01 Apr 1993 00:00:00 GMTMosesTextual CriticismBiblical Narrativehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-large-numbers-in-the-bible/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-large-numbers-in-the-bible/John Wenham — The Large Numbers in the Bible by John Wenham.Thu, 01 Apr 1993 00:00:00 GMTBiblical ChronologyTextual CriticismAncient Near Easthttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-tassel-and-the-blue-cord/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-tassel-and-the-blue-cord/Benjamin Goodnick — The Tassel and the Blue Cord by Benjamin Goodnick.Thu, 01 Apr 1993 00:00:00 GMTBiblical LawSymbolismLiturgyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-two-tablets-of-the-covenant/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-two-tablets-of-the-covenant/Josiah Derby — The Two Tablets of the Covenant by Josiah Derby.Thu, 01 Apr 1993 00:00:00 GMTBiblical LawMosesCovenanthttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/two-concepts-of-the-covenant/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/two-concepts-of-the-covenant/Richard D. Spero — Two Concepts of the Covenant by Richard D. Spero.Thu, 01 Apr 1993 00:00:00 GMTCovenantBiblical TheologyJewish Philosophyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/annual-bible-contest/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/annual-bible-contest/Joshua J. Adler — Annual Bible Contest by Joshua J. Adler.Fri, 01 Jan 1993 00:00:00 GMTBible ContestBible Educationhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/chronology-in-the-book-of-judges/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/chronology-in-the-book-of-judges/David Faiman — Chronology in the Book of Judges by David Faiman.Fri, 01 Jan 1993 00:00:00 GMTJudgesBiblical ChronologyBiblical Criticismhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/ecclesiastes-1-4-a-proof-text-for-reincarnation/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/ecclesiastes-1-4-a-proof-text-for-reincarnation/Steven A. Moss — Ecclesiastes 1:4: A Proof Text for Reincarnation by Steven A. Moss.Fri, 01 Jan 1993 00:00:00 GMTWisdom LiteratureJewish PhilosophyKabbalahhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/editorial-21-1/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/editorial-21-1/Shimon Bakon — Editorial by Shimon Bakon.Fri, 01 Jan 1993 00:00:00 GMThttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/esther-a-story-of-jewish-defense/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/esther-a-story-of-jewish-defense/Haim Gevaryahu — Esther: A Story of Jewish Defense by Haim Gevaryahu.Fri, 01 Jan 1993 00:00:00 GMTEstherDiasporaBiblical Narrativehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/job-a-universal-drama-part-1/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/job-a-universal-drama-part-1/David Wolfers — Job: A Universal Drama – Part 1 by David Wolfers.Fri, 01 Jan 1993 00:00:00 GMTJobTheodicyLiterary Analysishttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/letters-to-the-editor-21-1/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/letters-to-the-editor-21-1/JBQ Readers — Letters to the Editor by JBQ Readers.Fri, 01 Jan 1993 00:00:00 GMThttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/metzora-at-kasheleg-leprosy/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/metzora-at-kasheleg-leprosy/Judith Z. Abrams — Metzora(at) Kasheleg: Leprosy by Judith Z. Abrams.Fri, 01 Jan 1993 00:00:00 GMTBiblical LawPriesthoodBiblical Hebrewhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/midrash-on-maps/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/midrash-on-maps/Harold Brodsky — Midrash on Maps by Harold Brodsky.Fri, 01 Jan 1993 00:00:00 GMTMidrashLand of IsraelHistory of Interpretationhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-third-commandment/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-third-commandment/Josiah Derby — The Third Commandment by Josiah Derby.Fri, 01 Jan 1993 00:00:00 GMTBiblical LawBiblical EthicsBiblical Theologyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/book-review-haim-m-i-gevaryahu-memorial-volume/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/book-review-haim-m-i-gevaryahu-memorial-volume/Shubert Spero — Book Review: Haim M. I. Gevaryahu Memorial Volume by Shubert Spero.Thu, 01 Oct 1992 00:00:00 GMTBook ReviewJewish Bible Associationhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/citing-chapter-and-verse/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/citing-chapter-and-verse/Rav A. Soloff — Citing Chapter and Verse by Rav A. Soloff.Thu, 01 Oct 1992 00:00:00 GMTMasoretic TextHistory of InterpretationCanonhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/editorial-20-4/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/editorial-20-4/Chaim Pearl — Editorial by Chaim Pearl.Thu, 01 Oct 1992 00:00:00 GMThttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/letters-to-the-editor-20-4/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/letters-to-the-editor-20-4/Saul Leeman — Letters to the Editor by Saul Leeman.Thu, 01 Oct 1992 00:00:00 GMThttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/look-unto-abraham-your-father-isaiah-51-2/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/look-unto-abraham-your-father-isaiah-51-2/Marshall A. Portnoy — Look Unto Abraham Your Father (Isaiah 51:2) by Marshall A. Portnoy.Thu, 01 Oct 1992 00:00:00 GMTProphecyPatriarchal NarrativesBiblical Theologyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/six-biblical-signatures-discovered/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/six-biblical-signatures-discovered/Abraham Ruderman — Six Biblical Signatures Discovered by Abraham Ruderman.Thu, 01 Oct 1992 00:00:00 GMTArchaeologyAncient Near Easthttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-blood-of-naboth/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-blood-of-naboth/P. J. Berlyn — The Blood of Naboth by P. J. Berlyn.Thu, 01 Oct 1992 00:00:00 GMTKingshipProphecyBiblical Ethicshttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-call-of-moses/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-call-of-moses/Jeffrey M. Cohen — The Call of Moses by Jeffrey M. Cohen.Thu, 01 Oct 1992 00:00:00 GMTMosesProphecyExodus Narrativehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-historical-background-of-psalm-24/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-historical-background-of-psalm-24/Joshua J. Adler — The Historical Background of Psalm 24 by Joshua J. Adler.Thu, 01 Oct 1992 00:00:00 GMTPsalmsTempleDavidhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-miracle-at-the-red-sea/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-miracle-at-the-red-sea/Josiah Derby — The Miracle at the Red Sea by Josiah Derby.Thu, 01 Oct 1992 00:00:00 GMTExodus from EgyptMosesBiblical Narrativehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-prophet-samuel-and-king-saul-20-4/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-prophet-samuel-and-king-saul-20-4/Menachem Begin — The Prophet Samuel and King Saul by Menachem Begin.Thu, 01 Oct 1992 00:00:00 GMTProphecyKingshipLeadershiphttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/why-moses/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/why-moses/Ernest Neufeld — Why Moses? by Ernest Neufeld.Thu, 01 Oct 1992 00:00:00 GMTMosesLeadershipBiblical Theologyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/an-update-on-the-dead-sea-scrolls/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/an-update-on-the-dead-sea-scrolls/Abraham Ruderman — An Update on the Dead Sea Scrolls by Abraham Ruderman.Wed, 01 Jul 1992 00:00:00 GMTSecond Temple LiteratureArchaeologyTextual Criticismhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/ason-a-fate-worse-than-death/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/ason-a-fate-worse-than-death/Judith Z. Abrams — Ason, a Fate Worse than Death by Judith Z. Abrams.Wed, 01 Jul 1992 00:00:00 GMTBiblical HebrewPhilologyJoseph Narrativehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/balaam-did-god-change-his-mind/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/balaam-did-god-change-his-mind/Jeffrey M. Cohen — Balaam: Did God Change His Mind? by Jeffrey M. Cohen.Wed, 01 Jul 1992 00:00:00 GMTBalaamProphecyBiblical Theologyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/biblical-notes-four-who-hesitated/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/biblical-notes-four-who-hesitated/Editors — Biblical Notes: Four Who Hesitated by Editors.Wed, 01 Jul 1992 00:00:00 GMTBiblical NarrativeLeadershiphttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/chronology-of-ancient-jewish-history/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/chronology-of-ancient-jewish-history/David Faiman — Chronology of Ancient Jewish History by David Faiman.Wed, 01 Jul 1992 00:00:00 GMTBiblical ChronologySecond Temple PeriodAncient Near Easthttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/editorial-20-3/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/editorial-20-3/David Wolfers — Editorial by David Wolfers.Wed, 01 Jul 1992 00:00:00 GMThttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/ezekiel-from-destruction-to-redemption/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/ezekiel-from-destruction-to-redemption/Shimon Bakon — Ezekiel: From Destruction to Redemption by Shimon Bakon.Wed, 01 Jul 1992 00:00:00 GMTProphecyExileMessianismhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/jonahs-confession/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/jonahs-confession/Herbert Rand — Jonah’s Confession by Herbert Rand.Wed, 01 Jul 1992 00:00:00 GMTProphecyRepentanceBiblical Narrativehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/letters-to-the-editor-20-3/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/letters-to-the-editor-20-3/JBQ Readers — Letters to the Editor by JBQ Readers.Wed, 01 Jul 1992 00:00:00 GMThttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/simeon-the-scapegoat/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/simeon-the-scapegoat/Benjamin Goodnick — Simeon the Scapegoat by Benjamin Goodnick.Wed, 01 Jul 1992 00:00:00 GMTJoseph NarrativeBiblical NarrativePatriarchal Narrativeshttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-biblical-beginning-of-the-jewish-calendar/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-biblical-beginning-of-the-jewish-calendar/Allen S. Maller — The Biblical Beginning of the Jewish Calendar by Allen S. Maller.Wed, 01 Jul 1992 00:00:00 GMTJewish CalendarBiblical LawJewish Festivalshttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-rape-of-tamar/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-rape-of-tamar/Abraham Feinglass — The Rape of Tamar by Abraham Feinglass.Wed, 01 Jul 1992 00:00:00 GMTDavidWomen in the BibleBiblical Ethicshttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/who-is-the-villain/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/who-is-the-villain/Ronald T. Hyman — Who is the Villain? by Ronald T. Hyman.Wed, 01 Jul 1992 00:00:00 GMTBiblical NarrativeBiblical EthicsLiterary Analysishttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/a-stylistic-exegetical-analysis-of-jeremiah-46-1-12/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/a-stylistic-exegetical-analysis-of-jeremiah-46-1-12/J.P. van der Westhuizen — A Stylistic-Exegetical Analysis of Jeremiah 46:1-12 by J.P. van der Westhuizen.Wed, 01 Apr 1992 00:00:00 GMTProphecyLiterary AnalysisBiblical Poetryhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/book-review-a-rabbis-bible/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/book-review-a-rabbis-bible/Sol Liptzin — Book Review: A Rabbi’s Bible by Sol Liptzin.Wed, 01 Apr 1992 00:00:00 GMTBook ReviewBible Educationhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/davids-marriage-to-michal/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/davids-marriage-to-michal/Josiah Derby — David’s Marriage to Michal by Josiah Derby.Wed, 01 Apr 1992 00:00:00 GMTDavidWomen in the BibleKingshiphttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/editorial-20-2/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/editorial-20-2/Shimon Bakon — Editorial by Shimon Bakon.Wed, 01 Apr 1992 00:00:00 GMThttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/ezion-geber-solomons-seaport/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/ezion-geber-solomons-seaport/Abraham Ruderman — Ezion-Geber: Solomon’s Seaport by Abraham Ruderman.Wed, 01 Apr 1992 00:00:00 GMTArchaeologyKingshipAncient Near Easthttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/letters-to-the-editor-20-2/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/letters-to-the-editor-20-2/Isadore Cass — Letters to the Editor by Isadore Cass.Wed, 01 Apr 1992 00:00:00 GMThttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/moses-three-signs-symbol-and-augury/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/moses-three-signs-symbol-and-augury/Avi Rabinowitz — Moses’ Three Signs: Symbol and Augury by Avi Rabinowitz.Wed, 01 Apr 1992 00:00:00 GMTMosesSymbolismExodus Narrativehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-abel-syndrome/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-abel-syndrome/Schneir Levin — The Abel Syndrome by Schneir Levin.Wed, 01 Apr 1992 00:00:00 GMTBiblical NarrativeBiblical EthicsCreationhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-problem-of-job-the-question-still-remains/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-problem-of-job-the-question-still-remains/Sidney Breitbart — The Problem of Job: The Question Still Remains by Sidney Breitbart.Wed, 01 Apr 1992 00:00:00 GMTJobTheodicySufferinghttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-theology-of-psalm-145-part-2/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-theology-of-psalm-145-part-2/Chaim Pearl — The Theology of Psalm 145: Part 2 by Chaim Pearl.Wed, 01 Apr 1992 00:00:00 GMTPsalmsBiblical TheologyLiturgyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-trauma-of-isaac/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-trauma-of-isaac/Murray J. Kohn — The Trauma of Isaac by Murray J. Kohn.Wed, 01 Apr 1992 00:00:00 GMTAkedahPatriarchal NarrativesSufferinghttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/archaeology-and-the-bible-20-1/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/archaeology-and-the-bible-20-1/Abraham Ruderman — Archaeology and the Bible by Abraham Ruderman.Wed, 01 Jan 1992 00:00:00 GMTArchaeologyAncient Near EastLand of Israelhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/did-pythagoras-follow-nazirite-rules/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/did-pythagoras-follow-nazirite-rules/Elliot A. Green — Did Pythagoras Follow Nazirite Rules? by Elliot A. Green.Wed, 01 Jan 1992 00:00:00 GMTComparative ReligionBiblical LawSecond Temple Periodhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/editorial-20-1/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/editorial-20-1/Shimon Bakon — Editorial by Shimon Bakon.Wed, 01 Jan 1992 00:00:00 GMThttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/in-defense-of-esau/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/in-defense-of-esau/Ernest Neufeld — In Defense of Esau by Ernest Neufeld.Wed, 01 Jan 1992 00:00:00 GMTPatriarchal NarrativesJacobBiblical Ethicshttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/isaiah-and-his-audience/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/isaiah-and-his-audience/Yosef Freund — Isaiah and his Audience by Yosef Freund.Wed, 01 Jan 1992 00:00:00 GMTProphecyProphetic LiteratureBiblical Criticismhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/numerological-structure-in-biblical-literature/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/numerological-structure-in-biblical-literature/Herbert Rand — Numerological Structure in Biblical Literature by Herbert Rand.Wed, 01 Jan 1992 00:00:00 GMTLiterary AnalysisSymbolismMasoretic Texthttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-annual-international-bible-contest/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-annual-international-bible-contest/Susan Tourkin-Komet — The Annual International Bible Contest by Susan Tourkin-Komet.Wed, 01 Jan 1992 00:00:00 GMTBible ContestBible Educationhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-oedipus-complex-and-its-biblical-parallels/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-oedipus-complex-and-its-biblical-parallels/Benjamin Goodnick — The Oedipus Complex and its Biblical Parallels by Benjamin Goodnick.Wed, 01 Jan 1992 00:00:00 GMTBiblical NarrativeComparative ReligionLiterary Analysishttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-theology-of-psalm-145-part-1/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-theology-of-psalm-145-part-1/Chaim Pearl — The Theology of Psalm 145: Part 1 by Chaim Pearl.Wed, 01 Jan 1992 00:00:00 GMTPsalmsBiblical TheologyLiturgyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/what-is-a-gav/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/what-is-a-gav/David Wolfers — What is a גב? by David Wolfers.Wed, 01 Jan 1992 00:00:00 GMTBiblical HebrewPhilologyTextual Criticismhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/abraham-cowley-and-the-david-story/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/abraham-cowley-and-the-david-story/Abraham Feinglass — Abraham Cowley and the David Story by Abraham Feinglass.Tue, 01 Oct 1991 00:00:00 GMTLiterature and the BibleDavidHistory of Interpretationhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/editorial-honoring-sol-liptzin/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/editorial-honoring-sol-liptzin/Shimon Bakon — Editorial: Honoring Sol Liptzin by Shimon Bakon.Tue, 01 Oct 1991 00:00:00 GMTJewish Bible AssociationLiterature and the Biblehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/god-abraham-moses-a-comparison-of-key-questions/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/god-abraham-moses-a-comparison-of-key-questions/Ronald T. Hyman — God, Abraham, Moses: A Comparison of Key Questions by Ronald T. Hyman.Tue, 01 Oct 1991 00:00:00 GMTPatriarchal NarrativesMosesBiblical Theologyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/gods-tents-and-authority-a-study-of-exodus-32-and-i-kings-12/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/gods-tents-and-authority-a-study-of-exodus-32-and-i-kings-12/Walter Riggans — Gods, Tents, and Authority: A Study of Exodus 32 and I Kings 12 by Walter Riggans.Tue, 01 Oct 1991 00:00:00 GMTIdolatryKingshipTabernaclehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/letters-to-the-editor-19-4/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/letters-to-the-editor-19-4/JBQ Readers — Letters to the Editor by JBQ Readers.Tue, 01 Oct 1991 00:00:00 GMThttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/man-the-pinnacle-of-creation/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/man-the-pinnacle-of-creation/Nathan Aviezer — Man the Pinnacle of Creation by Nathan Aviezer.Tue, 01 Oct 1991 00:00:00 GMTCreationScience and the BibleBiblical Theologyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/reconstructing-herods-temple-in-jerusalem/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/reconstructing-herods-temple-in-jerusalem/Abraham Ruderman — Reconstructing Herod’s Temple in Jerusalem by Abraham Ruderman.Tue, 01 Oct 1991 00:00:00 GMTTempleArchaeologySecond Temple Periodhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/reflections-beer-hofmanns-image-of-ruth/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/reflections-beer-hofmanns-image-of-ruth/Sol Liptzin — Reflections: Beer-Hofmann’s Image of Ruth by Sol Liptzin.Tue, 01 Oct 1991 00:00:00 GMTLiterature and the BibleWomen in the BibleRuthhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/these-are-the-generations-of-isaac/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/these-are-the-generations-of-isaac/Jeffrey M. Cohen — These are the Generations of Isaac by Jeffrey M. Cohen.Tue, 01 Oct 1991 00:00:00 GMTPatriarchal NarrativesGenealogyBiblical Narrativehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/what-ailed-the-son-of-kish/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/what-ailed-the-son-of-kish/Yonathan Ben Nahum — What Ailed the Son of Kish? by Yonathan Ben Nahum.Tue, 01 Oct 1991 00:00:00 GMTKingshipBiblical NarrativeSufferinghttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/an-elegy-of-david-to-teach-the-sons-of-judah-the-bow/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/an-elegy-of-david-to-teach-the-sons-of-judah-the-bow/Shubert Spero — An Elegy of David: To Teach the Sons of Judah the Bow by Shubert Spero.Mon, 01 Jul 1991 00:00:00 GMTDavidBiblical PoetryLiterary Analysishttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/bulrush-and-bramble/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/bulrush-and-bramble/David Wolfers — Bulrush and Bramble by David Wolfers.Mon, 01 Jul 1991 00:00:00 GMTNature in the BibleBiblical PoetryJobhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/editorial-19-3/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/editorial-19-3/Chaim Pearl — Editorial by Chaim Pearl.Mon, 01 Jul 1991 00:00:00 GMThttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/hezekiahs-second-passover/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/hezekiahs-second-passover/Schneir Levin — Hezekiah’s Second Passover by Schneir Levin.Mon, 01 Jul 1991 00:00:00 GMTKingshipJewish FestivalsTemplehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/jeremiah-a-tragedy-thou-hast-enticed-me-and-i-was-enticed/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/jeremiah-a-tragedy-thou-hast-enticed-me-and-i-was-enticed/Shimon Bakon — Jeremiah, a Tragedy: Thou Hast Enticed Me and I Was Enticed by Shimon Bakon.Mon, 01 Jul 1991 00:00:00 GMTProphecySufferingProphetic Literaturehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/joseph-halpern-a-memorial-tribute/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/joseph-halpern-a-memorial-tribute/Chaim Pearl — Joseph Halpern: A Memorial Tribute by Chaim Pearl.Mon, 01 Jul 1991 00:00:00 GMTJewish Bible Associationhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/kaddish-and-the-lords-prayer/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/kaddish-and-the-lords-prayer/David Baumgardt — Kaddish and the Lord’s Prayer by David Baumgardt.Mon, 01 Jul 1991 00:00:00 GMTLiturgyPrayerChristianity and the Biblehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/letters-to-the-editor-19-3/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/letters-to-the-editor-19-3/JBQ Readers — Letters to the Editor by JBQ Readers.Mon, 01 Jul 1991 00:00:00 GMThttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/tehillim-the-psalms/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/tehillim-the-psalms/Robert Chernoff — Tehillim – The Psalms by Robert Chernoff.Mon, 01 Jul 1991 00:00:00 GMTPsalmsBiblical PoetryLiturgyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-book-of-esther-some-questions-and-responses/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-book-of-esther-some-questions-and-responses/Joshua J. Adler — The Book of Esther: Some Questions and Responses by Joshua J. Adler.Mon, 01 Jul 1991 00:00:00 GMTEstherBiblical NarrativeBiblical Exegesishttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-song-of-songs-the-bibles-celebration-of-love/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-song-of-songs-the-bibles-celebration-of-love/Yaakov Thompson — The Song of Songs: The Bible’s Celebration of Love by Yaakov Thompson.Mon, 01 Jul 1991 00:00:00 GMTBiblical PoetryLiterary AnalysisSymbolismhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/three-women/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/three-women/Andrea Cohen-Kiener — Three Women by Andrea Cohen-Kiener.Mon, 01 Jul 1991 00:00:00 GMTWomen in the BibleBiblical Narrativehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/was-there-a-fourth-temple/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/was-there-a-fourth-temple/Abraham Ruderman — Was There a Fourth Temple by Abraham Ruderman.Mon, 01 Jul 1991 00:00:00 GMTTempleArchaeologySecond Temple Periodhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/a-garden-of-vegetables/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/a-garden-of-vegetables/Haim Gil’ad — A Garden of Vegetables by Haim Gil’ad.Mon, 01 Apr 1991 00:00:00 GMTNature in the BibleLand of Israelhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/biblical-monotheism-some-of-its-implications/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/biblical-monotheism-some-of-its-implications/Shimon Bakon — Biblical Monotheism: Some of its Implications by Shimon Bakon.Mon, 01 Apr 1991 00:00:00 GMTBiblical TheologyIdolatryJewish Philosophyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/could-moses-hands-make-war/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/could-moses-hands-make-war/Berel Dov Lerner — Could Moses’ Hands Make War? by Berel Dov Lerner.Mon, 01 Apr 1991 00:00:00 GMTMosesBiblical NarrativeBiblical Theologyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/editorial-19-2/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/editorial-19-2/Chaim Pearl — Editorial by Chaim Pearl.Mon, 01 Apr 1991 00:00:00 GMThttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/jacob-the-wrestler/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/jacob-the-wrestler/Ernest Neufeld — Jacob the Wrestler by Ernest Neufeld.Mon, 01 Apr 1991 00:00:00 GMTJacobPatriarchal NarrativesSymbolismhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/king-solomons-golden-wealth/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/king-solomons-golden-wealth/Abraham Ruderman — King Solomon’s Golden Wealth by Abraham Ruderman.Mon, 01 Apr 1991 00:00:00 GMTKingshipArchaeologyAncient Near Easthttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/letters-to-the-editor-19-2/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/letters-to-the-editor-19-2/JBQ Readers — Letters to the Editor by JBQ Readers.Mon, 01 Apr 1991 00:00:00 GMThttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-molten-sea-and-the-value-of-pi/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-molten-sea-and-the-value-of-pi/R.C. Gupta — The ‘Molten Sea’ and the Value of Pi by R.C. Gupta.Mon, 01 Apr 1991 00:00:00 GMTTempleScience and the BibleAncient Near Easthttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-selling-of-the-birthright/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-selling-of-the-birthright/Reuven P. Bulka — The Selling of the Birthright by Reuven P. Bulka.Mon, 01 Apr 1991 00:00:00 GMTJacobPatriarchal NarrativesBiblical Ethicshttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-symbolic-acts-of-ezekiel-chapters-3-5/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-symbolic-acts-of-ezekiel-chapters-3-5/Joshua J. Adler — The Symbolic Acts of Ezekiel (Chapters 3-5) by Joshua J. Adler.Mon, 01 Apr 1991 00:00:00 GMTProphecySymbolismExilehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/two-views-on-jacob/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/two-views-on-jacob/Editors — Two Views on Jacob by Editors.Mon, 01 Apr 1991 00:00:00 GMTJacobPatriarchal Narrativeshttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/what-was-the-actual-effect-of-the-tree-of-knowledge/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/what-was-the-actual-effect-of-the-tree-of-knowledge/Nahum M. Waldman — What was the Actual Effect of the Tree of Knowledge? by Nahum M. Waldman.Mon, 01 Apr 1991 00:00:00 GMTCreationBiblical TheologySymbolismhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/biblical-influence-on-shakespeares-hamlet/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/biblical-influence-on-shakespeares-hamlet/Herbert Rand — Biblical Influence on Shakespeare’s Hamlet by Herbert Rand.Tue, 01 Jan 1991 00:00:00 GMTLiterature and the BibleHistory of Interpretationhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/book-review-lexikon-der-biblischen-personen/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/book-review-lexikon-der-biblischen-personen/Sol Liptzin — Book Review: Lexikon der biblischen Personen by Sol Liptzin.Tue, 01 Jan 1991 00:00:00 GMTBook ReviewBible Educationhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/did-the-israelites-conquer-jericho/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/did-the-israelites-conquer-jericho/Abraham Ruderman — Did the Israelites Conquer Jericho by Abraham Ruderman.Tue, 01 Jan 1991 00:00:00 GMTArchaeologyLand of IsraelAncient Near Easthttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/editorial-19-1/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/editorial-19-1/Chaim Pearl — Editorial by Chaim Pearl.Tue, 01 Jan 1991 00:00:00 GMThttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/letters-to-the-editor-19-1/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/letters-to-the-editor-19-1/JBQ Readers — Letters to the Editor by JBQ Readers.Tue, 01 Jan 1991 00:00:00 GMThttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/reply-to-ahasuerus-the-villain/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/reply-to-ahasuerus-the-villain/Russel K. Edwards — Reply to “Ahasuerus the Villain” by Russel K. Edwards.Tue, 01 Jan 1991 00:00:00 GMTEstherBiblical Narrativehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/review-mac-bible-version-2-0/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/review-mac-bible-version-2-0/David Faiman — Review: Mac Bible Version 2.0 by David Faiman.Tue, 01 Jan 1991 00:00:00 GMTBook ReviewBible EducationScience and the Biblehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/science-in-the-book-of-job/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/science-in-the-book-of-job/David Wolfers — Science in the Book of Job by David Wolfers.Tue, 01 Jan 1991 00:00:00 GMTJobScience and the BibleWisdom Literaturehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/sixth-triennial-index/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/sixth-triennial-index/Editors — Sixth Triennial Index by Editors.Tue, 01 Jan 1991 00:00:00 GMTBible Educationhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/spotlight-on-the-winners-of-the-international-bible-contest/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/spotlight-on-the-winners-of-the-international-bible-contest/Susan Tourkin-Komet — Spotlight on the Winners of the International Bible Contest for Youth by Susan Tourkin-Komet.Tue, 01 Jan 1991 00:00:00 GMTBible ContestBible Educationhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-destruction-of-the-wicked/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-destruction-of-the-wicked/Steve Sattler — The Destruction of the Wicked by Steve Sattler.Tue, 01 Jan 1991 00:00:00 GMTBiblical TheologyTheodicyBiblical Ethicshttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-meaning-of-abrahams-test-a-reexamination-of-the-akedah/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-meaning-of-abrahams-test-a-reexamination-of-the-akedah/Moshe J. Yeres — The Meaning of Abraham’s Test: A Reexamination of the Akedah by Moshe J. Yeres.Tue, 01 Jan 1991 00:00:00 GMTAkedahPatriarchal NarrativesBiblical Theologyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-problem-of-the-levirate-marriage/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-problem-of-the-levirate-marriage/Josiah Derby — The Problem of the Levirate Marriage by Josiah Derby.Tue, 01 Jan 1991 00:00:00 GMTBiblical LawWomen in the BibleRabbinic Literaturehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-punishment-of-achan-the-poetic-justice-of-success-and/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-punishment-of-achan-the-poetic-justice-of-success-and/Yaakov Thompson — The Punishment of Achan: The Poetic Justice of Success and Failure by Yaakov Thompson.Tue, 01 Jan 1991 00:00:00 GMTBiblical NarrativeBiblical LawLiterary Analysishttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/city-of-david/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/city-of-david/Abraham Ruderman — City of David by Abraham Ruderman.Mon, 01 Oct 1990 00:00:00 GMTArchaeologyJerusalemDavidhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/editorial-18-4/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/editorial-18-4/Chaim Pearl — Editorial by Chaim Pearl.Mon, 01 Oct 1990 00:00:00 GMThttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/how-many-hebrews-left-egypt/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/how-many-hebrews-left-egypt/David Faiman — How Many Hebrews Left Egypt? by David Faiman.Mon, 01 Oct 1990 00:00:00 GMTExodus from EgyptBiblical ChronologyAncient Near Easthttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/in-memoriam-haim-gevaryahu/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/in-memoriam-haim-gevaryahu/Joshua J. Adler — In Memoriam: Haim Gevaryahu by Joshua J. Adler.Mon, 01 Oct 1990 00:00:00 GMTJewish Bible Associationhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/isaiah-how-the-book-entered-holy-writ/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/isaiah-how-the-book-entered-holy-writ/Haim Gevaryahu — Isaiah: How the Book Entered Holy Writ by Haim Gevaryahu.Mon, 01 Oct 1990 00:00:00 GMTCanonProphecyBiblical Criticismhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/rachel-a-woman-who-would-be-a-mother/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/rachel-a-woman-who-would-be-a-mother/Judith Z. Abrams — Rachel: A Woman Who Would Be a Mother by Judith Z. Abrams.Mon, 01 Oct 1990 00:00:00 GMTWomen in the BiblePatriarchal NarrativesBiblical Narrativehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/sign-ot/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/sign-ot/Shimon Bakon — Sign – אות by Shimon Bakon.Mon, 01 Oct 1990 00:00:00 GMTBiblical HebrewSymbolismBiblical Theologyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-difficult-verse-in-genesis-4-26/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-difficult-verse-in-genesis-4-26/Allen S. Maller — The Difficult Verse in Genesis 4:26 by Allen S. Maller.Mon, 01 Oct 1990 00:00:00 GMTBiblical HebrewTextual CriticismCreationhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-names-of-biblical-verses/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-names-of-biblical-verses/Martin Samuel Cohen — The Names of Biblical Verses by Martin Samuel Cohen.Mon, 01 Oct 1990 00:00:00 GMTMasoretic TextPhilologyLiturgyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-volcano-in-job-28/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-volcano-in-job-28/David Wolfers — The Volcano in Job 28 by David Wolfers.Mon, 01 Oct 1990 00:00:00 GMTJobNature in the BibleWisdom Literaturehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/why-did-god-want-to-kill-moses/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/why-did-god-want-to-kill-moses/Josiah Derby — Why Did God Want to Kill Moses? by Josiah Derby.Mon, 01 Oct 1990 00:00:00 GMTMosesBiblical NarrativeTextual Criticismhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/ahasuerus-the-villain/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/ahasuerus-the-villain/Marshall A. Portnoy — Ahasuerus the Villain by Marshall A. Portnoy.Sun, 01 Jul 1990 00:00:00 GMTEstherBiblical NarrativeLiterary Analysishttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/deborah-the-wife-of-lapidot/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/deborah-the-wife-of-lapidot/Haim Gevaryahu — Deborah, the Wife of Lapidot by Haim Gevaryahu.Sun, 01 Jul 1990 00:00:00 GMTJudgesWomen in the BibleProphecyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/editorial-18-3/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/editorial-18-3/Chaim Pearl — Editorial by Chaim Pearl.Sun, 01 Jul 1990 00:00:00 GMThttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/in-the-spirit-of-purim/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/in-the-spirit-of-purim/Editors — In the Spirit of Purim by Editors.Sun, 01 Jul 1990 00:00:00 GMTJewish FestivalsEstherhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/letters-to-the-editor-18-3/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/letters-to-the-editor-18-3/Raphael S. Schwartzman — Letter to the Editor by Raphael S. Schwartzman.Sun, 01 Jul 1990 00:00:00 GMThttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/satan-psychologist/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/satan-psychologist/Schneir Levin — Satan: Psychologist by Schneir Levin.Sun, 01 Jul 1990 00:00:00 GMTJobTheodicyBiblical Theologyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/solomon-and-sheba-aggadic-roots-of-the-koran-story/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/solomon-and-sheba-aggadic-roots-of-the-koran-story/Harold M. Kamsler — Solomon and Sheba: Aggadic Roots of the Koran Story by Harold M. Kamsler.Sun, 01 Jul 1990 00:00:00 GMTMidrashComparative ReligionKingshiphttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-enoch-tradition/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-enoch-tradition/Sol Liptzin — The Enoch Tradition by Sol Liptzin.Sun, 01 Jul 1990 00:00:00 GMTSecond Temple LiteratureGenealogyComparative Religionhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-hidden-hand-of-god/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-hidden-hand-of-god/Nili S. Fox — The Hidden Hand of God by Nili S. Fox.Sun, 01 Jul 1990 00:00:00 GMTEstherBiblical TheologyBiblical Narrativehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-humpty-dumpty-principle-in-biblical-translation/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-humpty-dumpty-principle-in-biblical-translation/David Wolfers — The Humpty Dumpty Principle in Biblical Translation by David Wolfers.Sun, 01 Jul 1990 00:00:00 GMTBible TranslationPhilologyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-problem-of-the-chosen-people/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-problem-of-the-chosen-people/Sidney Breitbart — The Problem of the “Chosen People” by Sidney Breitbart.Sun, 01 Jul 1990 00:00:00 GMTChosennessBiblical TheologyModern Jewish Thoughthttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-red-heifer-mystery/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-red-heifer-mystery/Ernest Neufeld — The Red Heifer Mystery by Ernest Neufeld.Sun, 01 Jul 1990 00:00:00 GMTBiblical LawPriesthoodRabbinic Literaturehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-tel-dan-excavation/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-tel-dan-excavation/Abraham Ruderman — The Tel Dan Excavation by Abraham Ruderman.Sun, 01 Jul 1990 00:00:00 GMTArchaeologyAncient Near EastLand of Israelhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/zerubbabel/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/zerubbabel/Shimon Bakon — Zerubbabel by Shimon Bakon.Sun, 01 Jul 1990 00:00:00 GMTSecond Temple PeriodTempleExilehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/book-review-gevuroth-haromah/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/book-review-gevuroth-haromah/Joshua J. Adler — Book Review: Gevuroth Haromah by Joshua J. Adler.Sun, 01 Apr 1990 00:00:00 GMTBook ReviewRabbinic Literaturehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/excavating-the-cardo-and-the-ophel/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/excavating-the-cardo-and-the-ophel/Abraham Ruderman — Excavating the Cardo and the Ophel by Abraham Ruderman.Sun, 01 Apr 1990 00:00:00 GMTArchaeologyJerusalemhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/for-the-statutes-of-omri-are-kept-micah-6-16/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/for-the-statutes-of-omri-are-kept-micah-6-16/Ben Zion Luria — For the Statutes of Omri are Kept (Micah 6:16) by Ben Zion Luria.Sun, 01 Apr 1990 00:00:00 GMTProphecyKingshipIdolatryhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/from-the-editors/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/from-the-editors/Editors — From the Editors by Editors.Sun, 01 Apr 1990 00:00:00 GMThttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/garments-of-skin-gen-3-21/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/garments-of-skin-gen-3-21/Robert J. Ratner — ‘Garments of Skin’ (Gen. 3:21) by Robert J. Ratner.Sun, 01 Apr 1990 00:00:00 GMTCreationSymbolismBiblical Hebrewhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/letters-to-the-editor-18-2/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/letters-to-the-editor-18-2/JBQ Readers — Letters to the Editor by JBQ Readers.Sun, 01 Apr 1990 00:00:00 GMThttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-concubine-of-gibeah-jud-19-21/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-concubine-of-gibeah-jud-19-21/Miriam Schneid-Ofseyer — The Concubine of Gibeah (Jud. 19-21) by Miriam Schneid-Ofseyer.Sun, 01 Apr 1990 00:00:00 GMTJudgesWomen in the BibleBiblical Ethicshttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-multiple-functions-of-how-in-the-tanakh/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-multiple-functions-of-how-in-the-tanakh/Ronald T. Hyman — The Multiple Functions of “How” in the Tanakh by Ronald T. Hyman.Sun, 01 Apr 1990 00:00:00 GMTBiblical HebrewLiterary AnalysisPhilologyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-school-of-isaiah-biography-and-transmission-of-the-book/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-school-of-isaiah-biography-and-transmission-of-the-book/Haim Gevaryahu — The School of Isaiah: Biography and Transmission of the Book of Isaiah by Haim Gevaryahu.Sun, 01 Apr 1990 00:00:00 GMTProphecyBiblical CriticismCanonhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-tabernacle-a-psycho-theological-enterprise/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-tabernacle-a-psycho-theological-enterprise/Jeffrey M. Cohen — The Tabernacle: A Psycho-Theological Enterprise by Jeffrey M. Cohen.Sun, 01 Apr 1990 00:00:00 GMTTabernacleBiblical TheologySymbolismhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-testament-of-jacob-an-analysis-of-gen-49-18/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-testament-of-jacob-an-analysis-of-gen-49-18/Herbert Rand — The Testament of Jacob: An Analysis of Gen. 49:18 by Herbert Rand.Sun, 01 Apr 1990 00:00:00 GMTJacobBiblical PoetryPatriarchal Narrativeshttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/three-nuances-of-sexual-intercourse/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/three-nuances-of-sexual-intercourse/J.P. van der Westhuizen — Three Nuances of Sexual Intercourse by J.P. van der Westhuizen.Sun, 01 Apr 1990 00:00:00 GMTBiblical HebrewPhilologyBiblical Lawhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/were-jobs-friends-gentiles/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/were-jobs-friends-gentiles/Yosef Freund — Were Job’s Friends Gentiles? by Yosef Freund.Sun, 01 Apr 1990 00:00:00 GMTJobWisdom LiteratureComparative Religionhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/who-killed-goliath-a-response-to-steven-moss/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/who-killed-goliath-a-response-to-steven-moss/David Wolfers — Who Killed Goliath – A Response to Steven Moss by David Wolfers.Sun, 01 Apr 1990 00:00:00 GMTDavidTextual CriticismBiblical Narrativehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/biblical-man-and-his-questions-of-faith/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/biblical-man-and-his-questions-of-faith/Joshua J. Adler — Biblical Man and His Questions of Faith by Joshua J. Adler.Mon, 01 Jan 1990 00:00:00 GMTBiblical TheologyJewish Philosophyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/book-review-rashi-by-chaim-pearl/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/book-review-rashi-by-chaim-pearl/Shimon Bakon — Book Review: Rashi by Chaim Pearl by Shimon Bakon.Mon, 01 Jan 1990 00:00:00 GMTBook ReviewRashiMedieval Exegesishttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/comments-on-biblical-verses/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/comments-on-biblical-verses/Herbert Rand — Comments on Biblical Verses by Herbert Rand.Mon, 01 Jan 1990 00:00:00 GMTBiblical ExegesisBiblical Hebrewhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/isaac-and-laughter/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/isaac-and-laughter/Aaron Lichtenstein — Isaac and Laughter by Aaron Lichtenstein.Mon, 01 Jan 1990 00:00:00 GMTPatriarchal NarrativesBiblical HebrewLiterary Analysishttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/king-solomons-wives-as-envisioned-by-david-pinski/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/king-solomons-wives-as-envisioned-by-david-pinski/Sol Liptzin — King Solomon’s Wives as Envisioned by David Pinski by Sol Liptzin.Mon, 01 Jan 1990 00:00:00 GMTLiterature and the BibleKingshipWomen in the Biblehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/letters-to-the-editor-18-1/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/letters-to-the-editor-18-1/Lindsay Hassall — Letter to the Editor by Lindsay Hassall.Mon, 01 Jan 1990 00:00:00 GMThttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/parents-have-eaten-sour-grapes/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/parents-have-eaten-sour-grapes/Nahum M. Waldman — Parents Have Eaten Sour Grapes by Nahum M. Waldman.Mon, 01 Jan 1990 00:00:00 GMTProphecyBiblical EthicsTheodicyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/reflections-of-readers-18-1/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/reflections-of-readers-18-1/Editors — Reflections of Readers by Editors.Mon, 01 Jan 1990 00:00:00 GMThttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/spotlight-on-the-diaspora-winners-of-the-international/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/spotlight-on-the-diaspora-winners-of-the-international/Susan Tourkin-Komet — Spotlight on the Diaspora Winners of the International Bible Contest for Youth by Susan Tourkin-Komet.Mon, 01 Jan 1990 00:00:00 GMTBible ContestBible EducationDiasporahttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-illegitimate-child-mamzer-in-jewish-law/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-illegitimate-child-mamzer-in-jewish-law/Joseph Levitsky — The Illegitimate Child (Mamzer) in Jewish Law by Joseph Levitsky.Mon, 01 Jan 1990 00:00:00 GMTBiblical LawRabbinic LiteratureBiblical Ethicshttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-punishment-of-cain/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-punishment-of-cain/Allen S. Maller — The Punishment of Cain by Allen S. Maller.Mon, 01 Jan 1990 00:00:00 GMTBiblical EthicsBiblical NarrativeCreationhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-rise-and-fall-of-israel-in-the-desert/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-rise-and-fall-of-israel-in-the-desert/Benjamin Goodnick — The Rise and Fall of Israel in the Desert by Benjamin Goodnick.Mon, 01 Jan 1990 00:00:00 GMTExodus NarrativeLeadershipBiblical Narrativehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-verb-naar-in-the-bible/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-verb-naar-in-the-bible/David Wolfers — The Verb נער in the Bible by David Wolfers.Mon, 01 Jan 1990 00:00:00 GMTBiblical HebrewPhilologyTextual Criticismhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/who-killed-goliath/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/who-killed-goliath/Steven A. Moss — Who Killed Goliath? by Steven A. Moss.Mon, 01 Jan 1990 00:00:00 GMTDavidTextual CriticismBiblical Narrativehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/why-was-aaron-punished/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/why-was-aaron-punished/Norman Asher — Why Was Aaron Punished? by Norman Asher.Mon, 01 Jan 1990 00:00:00 GMTPriesthoodMosesBiblical Narrativehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/archaeological-research/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/archaeological-research/Abraham Ruderman — Archaeological Research by Abraham Ruderman.Sun, 01 Oct 1989 00:00:00 GMTArchaeologyLand of Israelhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/book-review-sefer-ha-aggadah/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/book-review-sefer-ha-aggadah/Sol Liptzin — Book Review: Sefer Ha-Aggadah by Sol Liptzin.Sun, 01 Oct 1989 00:00:00 GMTBook ReviewMidrashRabbinic Literaturehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/book-review-the-epic-of-the-patriarch/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/book-review-the-epic-of-the-patriarch/Sol Liptzin — Book Review: The Epic of the Patriarch by Sol Liptzin.Sun, 01 Oct 1989 00:00:00 GMTBook ReviewPatriarchal Narrativeshttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/flattering-earth/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/flattering-earth/Joel Litke — Flattering Earth by Joel Litke.Sun, 01 Oct 1989 00:00:00 GMTBiblical PoetryNature in the Biblehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/for-i-am-god-and-not-man/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/for-i-am-god-and-not-man/Shimon Bakon — For I am God and Not Man by Shimon Bakon.Sun, 01 Oct 1989 00:00:00 GMTBiblical TheologyProphecyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/jacobs-limp/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/jacobs-limp/David E. Fass — Jacob’s Limp by David E. Fass.Sun, 01 Oct 1989 00:00:00 GMTJacobPatriarchal NarrativesSymbolismhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/jot-tittle-and-waw/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/jot-tittle-and-waw/David Wolfers — Jot, Tittle and Waw by David Wolfers.Sun, 01 Oct 1989 00:00:00 GMTMasoretic TextPhilologyTextual Criticismhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/letters-to-the-editor-17-4/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/letters-to-the-editor-17-4/JBQ Readers — Letters to the Editor by JBQ Readers.Sun, 01 Oct 1989 00:00:00 GMThttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/reflections-on-shavuoth/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/reflections-on-shavuoth/Abraham H. Gottesman — Reflections on Shavuoth by Abraham H. Gottesman.Sun, 01 Oct 1989 00:00:00 GMTJewish FestivalsLiturgyRuthhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/residual-magic-in-the-bible/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/residual-magic-in-the-bible/Ernest Neufeld — Residual Magic in the Bible by Ernest Neufeld.Sun, 01 Oct 1989 00:00:00 GMTIdolatryAncient Near EastBiblical Lawhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-testing-of-abraham/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-testing-of-abraham/Julius B. Moster — The Testing of Abraham by Julius B. Moster.Sun, 01 Oct 1989 00:00:00 GMTAkedahPatriarchal NarrativesBiblical Theologyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/where-was-the-mountain-of-god/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/where-was-the-mountain-of-god/David Faiman — Where Was the Mountain of God? by David Faiman.Sun, 01 Oct 1989 00:00:00 GMTMosesArchaeologyExodus from Egypthttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/a-drop-of-a-bucket-isaiah-40-15/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/a-drop-of-a-bucket-isaiah-40-15/Nathan Stein — A Drop of a Bucket (Isaiah 40:15) by Nathan Stein.Sat, 01 Jul 1989 00:00:00 GMTProphecyBiblical HebrewBiblical Poetryhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/archaeology-and-the-bible-17-3/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/archaeology-and-the-bible-17-3/Joshua J. Adler — Archaeology and the Bible by Joshua J. Adler.Sat, 01 Jul 1989 00:00:00 GMTArchaeologyAncient Near EastLand of Israelhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/book-review-eschatology-in-the-old-testament/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/book-review-eschatology-in-the-old-testament/Sol Liptzin — Book Review: Eschatology in the Old Testament by Sol Liptzin.Sat, 01 Jul 1989 00:00:00 GMTBook ReviewMessianismBiblical Theologyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/isaacs-blessing-who-has-deceived/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/isaacs-blessing-who-has-deceived/Reuven P. Bulka — Isaac’s Blessing – Who Has Deceived? by Reuven P. Bulka.Sat, 01 Jul 1989 00:00:00 GMTPatriarchal NarrativesJacobBiblical Ethicshttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/josiah/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/josiah/Shimon Bakon — Josiah by Shimon Bakon.Sat, 01 Jul 1989 00:00:00 GMTKingshipTempleBiblical Lawhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/literary-patterns-in-the-song-of-songs/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/literary-patterns-in-the-song-of-songs/Benjamin J. Segal — Literary Patterns in the Song of Songs by Benjamin J. Segal.Sat, 01 Jul 1989 00:00:00 GMTBiblical PoetryLiterary Analysishttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/modern-biblical-translations/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/modern-biblical-translations/David Wolfers — Modern Biblical Translations by David Wolfers.Sat, 01 Jul 1989 00:00:00 GMTBible TranslationPhilologyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/rabbinic-attitudes-toward-intermarriage-part-2/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/rabbinic-attitudes-toward-intermarriage-part-2/Samuel M. Stahl — Rabbinic Attitudes Toward Intermarriage: Part 2 by Samuel M. Stahl.Sat, 01 Jul 1989 00:00:00 GMTBiblical LawRabbinic LiteratureBiblical Ethicshttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-book-of-chronicles/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-book-of-chronicles/Rashi Simon — The Book of Chronicles by Rashi Simon.Sat, 01 Jul 1989 00:00:00 GMTChroniclesBiblical CriticismKingshiphttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-location-of-ai/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-location-of-ai/Ben Zion Luria — The Location of Ai by Ben Zion Luria.Sat, 01 Jul 1989 00:00:00 GMTArchaeologyLand of IsraelAncient Near Easthttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-negev/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-negev/Zeev Vilnay — The Negev by Zeev Vilnay.Sat, 01 Jul 1989 00:00:00 GMTLand of IsraelArchaeologyNature in the Biblehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/adams-sin/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/adams-sin/Josiah Derby — Adam’s Sin by Josiah Derby.Sat, 01 Apr 1989 00:00:00 GMTCreationBiblical TheologyBiblical Ethicshttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/balaams-mission-failure-or-success/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/balaams-mission-failure-or-success/Jeffrey M. Cohen — Balaam’s Mission – Failure or Success? by Jeffrey M. Cohen.Sat, 01 Apr 1989 00:00:00 GMTBalaamProphecyBiblical Narrativehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/biblical-and-talmudic-attitudes-toward-intermarriage-part-1/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/biblical-and-talmudic-attitudes-toward-intermarriage-part-1/Samuel M. Stahl — Biblical and Talmudic Attitudes Toward Intermarriage: Part 1 by Samuel M. Stahl.Sat, 01 Apr 1989 00:00:00 GMTBiblical LawRabbinic LiteratureBiblical Ethicshttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/ezekiel-the-neglected-prophet/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/ezekiel-the-neglected-prophet/Joshua J. Adler — Ezekiel, the Neglected Prophet by Joshua J. Adler.Sat, 01 Apr 1989 00:00:00 GMTProphecyExileProphetic Literaturehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/tehillim-the-book-of-psalms/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/tehillim-the-book-of-psalms/Haim Gevaryahu — Tehillim: The Book of Psalms by Haim Gevaryahu.Sat, 01 Apr 1989 00:00:00 GMTPsalmsBiblical PoetryLiturgyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-art-of-biblical-narrative-part-2/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-art-of-biblical-narrative-part-2/Pinchas Doron — The Art of Biblical Narrative: Part 2 by Pinchas Doron.Sat, 01 Apr 1989 00:00:00 GMTLiterary AnalysisBiblical Narrativehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-jewish-and-christian-covenants-and-the-holocaust/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-jewish-and-christian-covenants-and-the-holocaust/Sidney Breitbart — The Jewish and Christian Covenants and the Holocaust by Sidney Breitbart.Sat, 01 Apr 1989 00:00:00 GMTChristianity and the BibleModern Jewish ThoughtTheodicyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-liberation-of-job/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-liberation-of-job/Joseph Heckelman — The Liberation of Job by Joseph Heckelman.Sat, 01 Apr 1989 00:00:00 GMTJobTheodicySufferinghttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-paradigm-of-job/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-paradigm-of-job/Lawrence Corey — The Paradigm of Job by Lawrence Corey.Sat, 01 Apr 1989 00:00:00 GMTJobTheodicySufferinghttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/book-review-the-book-of-job-a-commentary/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/book-review-the-book-of-job-a-commentary/Sol Liptzin — Book Review: The Book of Job: A Commentary by Sol Liptzin.Sun, 01 Jan 1989 00:00:00 GMTBook ReviewJobWisdom Literaturehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/book-review-the-god-of-job/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/book-review-the-god-of-job/Sol Liptzin — Book Review: The God of Job by Sol Liptzin.Sun, 01 Jan 1989 00:00:00 GMTBook ReviewJobTheodicyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/cain-and-abel/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/cain-and-abel/Ernest Neufeld — Cain and Abel by Ernest Neufeld.Sun, 01 Jan 1989 00:00:00 GMTCreationBiblical EthicsBiblical Narrativehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/elijahs-recovery-from-depression/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/elijahs-recovery-from-depression/Allen S. Maller — Elijah’s Recovery from Depression by Allen S. Maller.Sun, 01 Jan 1989 00:00:00 GMTProphecyBiblical NarrativeSufferinghttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/in-the-shadow-of-amalek/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/in-the-shadow-of-amalek/Hindishe Lee — In the Shadow of Amalek by Hindishe Lee.Sun, 01 Jan 1989 00:00:00 GMTBiblical EthicsBiblical NarrativeModern Jewish Thoughthttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/job-the-third-cycle-dissipating-a-mirage-part-2/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/job-the-third-cycle-dissipating-a-mirage-part-2/David Wolfers — Job: The Third Cycle: Dissipating a Mirage: Part 2 by David Wolfers.Sun, 01 Jan 1989 00:00:00 GMTJobTextual CriticismWisdom Literaturehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/jonah-toward-the-re-education-of-the-prophets/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/jonah-toward-the-re-education-of-the-prophets/Robert J. Ratner — Jonah: Toward the Re-Education of the Prophets by Robert J. Ratner.Sun, 01 Jan 1989 00:00:00 GMTProphecyBiblical NarrativeRepentancehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/letters-to-the-editor-17-1/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/letters-to-the-editor-17-1/JBQ Readers — Letters to the Editor by JBQ Readers.Sun, 01 Jan 1989 00:00:00 GMThttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/new-findings-in-archeology/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/new-findings-in-archeology/Abraham Ruderman — New Findings in Archeology by Abraham Ruderman.Sun, 01 Jan 1989 00:00:00 GMTArchaeologyLand of Israelhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/reflections-of-readers-17-1/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/reflections-of-readers-17-1/Herbert Rand — Reflections of Readers by Herbert Rand.Sun, 01 Jan 1989 00:00:00 GMThttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-art-of-biblical-narrative-part-1/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-art-of-biblical-narrative-part-1/Pinchas Doron — The Art of Biblical Narrative: Part 1 by Pinchas Doron.Sun, 01 Jan 1989 00:00:00 GMTLiterary AnalysisBiblical Narrativehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-fall-of-samaria/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-fall-of-samaria/Shimon Bakon — The Fall of Samaria by Shimon Bakon.Sun, 01 Jan 1989 00:00:00 GMTKingshipProphecyExilehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-jewish-origins-of-the-lords-prayer/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-jewish-origins-of-the-lords-prayer/Robert Chernoff — The Jewish Origins of the Lord’s Prayer by Robert Chernoff.Sun, 01 Jan 1989 00:00:00 GMTChristianity and the BibleLiturgyPrayerhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/twenty-fifth-world-bible-contest-for-jewish-youth/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/twenty-fifth-world-bible-contest-for-jewish-youth/Editors — Twenty-Fifth World Bible Contest for Jewish Youth by Editors.Sun, 01 Jan 1989 00:00:00 GMTBible ContestBible Educationhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/ahitophel-of-gilo-two-literary-portraits/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/ahitophel-of-gilo-two-literary-portraits/Sol Liptzin — Ahitophel of Gilo: Two Literary Portraits by Sol Liptzin.Sat, 01 Oct 1988 00:00:00 GMTDavidLiterature and the BibleBiblical Narrativehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/communication-problems/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/communication-problems/Ze’ev W. Falk — Communication Problems by Ze’ev W. Falk.Sat, 01 Oct 1988 00:00:00 GMTBiblical EthicsBiblical Narrativehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/compulsory-education/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/compulsory-education/Ben Zion Luria — Compulsory Education by Ben Zion Luria.Sat, 01 Oct 1988 00:00:00 GMTBible EducationRabbinic Literaturehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/double-meanings-in-the-song-of-songs/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/double-meanings-in-the-song-of-songs/Benjamin J. Segal — Double Meanings in the Song of Songs by Benjamin J. Segal.Sat, 01 Oct 1988 00:00:00 GMTBiblical PoetryLiterary AnalysisPhilologyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/genesis-14-meaning-and-structure/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/genesis-14-meaning-and-structure/Nahum M. Waldman — Genesis 14 – Meaning and Structure by Nahum M. Waldman.Sat, 01 Oct 1988 00:00:00 GMTPatriarchal NarrativesLiterary AnalysisAncient Near Easthttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/job-the-third-cycle/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/job-the-third-cycle/David Wolfers — Job: The Third Cycle by David Wolfers.Sat, 01 Oct 1988 00:00:00 GMTJobTextual CriticismWisdom Literaturehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/linguistic-elements-in-the-book-of-ruth/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/linguistic-elements-in-the-book-of-ruth/Miriam Schneid-Ofseyer — Linguistic Elements in the Book of Ruth by Miriam Schneid-Ofseyer.Sat, 01 Oct 1988 00:00:00 GMTBiblical HebrewPhilologyWomen in the Biblehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/noblesse-oblige/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/noblesse-oblige/Louis Katzoff — Noblesse Oblige by Louis Katzoff.Sat, 01 Oct 1988 00:00:00 GMTBiblical EthicsLeadershiphttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/polarization-in-the-mosaic-period/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/polarization-in-the-mosaic-period/Jeffrey M. Cohen — Polarization in the Mosaic Period by Jeffrey M. Cohen.Sat, 01 Oct 1988 00:00:00 GMTMosesLeadershipBiblical Narrativehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/sodom-manner-morals-misdeeds/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/sodom-manner-morals-misdeeds/Louis Katzoff — Sodom: Manner, Morals, Misdeeds by Louis Katzoff.Sat, 01 Oct 1988 00:00:00 GMTBiblical EthicsPatriarchal NarrativesBiblical Narrativehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/tehilim-the-book-of-psalms/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/tehilim-the-book-of-psalms/Haim Gevaryahu — Tehilim: The Book of Psalms by Haim Gevaryahu.Sat, 01 Oct 1988 00:00:00 GMTPsalmsBiblical PoetryLiturgyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-hart-and-hind-in-bible-and-midrash/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-hart-and-hind-in-bible-and-midrash/S. P. Toperoff — The Hart and Hind in Bible and Midrash by S. P. Toperoff.Sat, 01 Oct 1988 00:00:00 GMTNature in the BibleMidrashSymbolismhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/adam-i-and-adam-ii/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/adam-i-and-adam-ii/Sidney Breitbart — Adam I and Adam II by Sidney Breitbart.Fri, 01 Jul 1988 00:00:00 GMTCreationJewish PhilosophyModern Jewish Thoughthttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/adams-missing-years-evolution-of-a-legend/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/adams-missing-years-evolution-of-a-legend/Sol Liptzin — Adam’s Missing Years: Evolution of a Legend by Sol Liptzin.Fri, 01 Jul 1988 00:00:00 GMTMidrashLiterature and the BibleCreationhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/book-review-jephthah-and-his-vow-by-david-marcus/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/book-review-jephthah-and-his-vow-by-david-marcus/Chaim Abramowitz — Book Review: Jephthah and His Vow by David Marcus by Chaim Abramowitz.Fri, 01 Jul 1988 00:00:00 GMTBook ReviewJudgesSacrificehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/el-shaddai/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/el-shaddai/Jacob Felton — El Shaddai by Jacob Felton.Fri, 01 Jul 1988 00:00:00 GMTBiblical TheologyBiblical HebrewPatriarchal Narrativeshttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/eye-for-eye/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/eye-for-eye/Shimon Bakon — Eye For Eye by Shimon Bakon.Fri, 01 Jul 1988 00:00:00 GMTBiblical LawBiblical EthicsRabbinic Exegesishttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/free-to-set-a-king-over-thee/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/free-to-set-a-king-over-thee/Louis Katzoff — Free to Set a King Over Thee by Louis Katzoff.Fri, 01 Jul 1988 00:00:00 GMTKingshipBiblical LawLeadershiphttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/letters-to-the-editor-16-3/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/letters-to-the-editor-16-3/JBQ Readers — Letters to the Editor by JBQ Readers.Fri, 01 Jul 1988 00:00:00 GMThttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/looking-and-privacy/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/looking-and-privacy/Louis Katzoff — Looking and Privacy by Louis Katzoff.Fri, 01 Jul 1988 00:00:00 GMTBiblical EthicsBiblical Lawhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/praise-waiteth-for-thee-ps-65-2/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/praise-waiteth-for-thee-ps-65-2/David Hacohen — Praise Waiteth For Thee (Ps. 65:2) by David Hacohen.Fri, 01 Jul 1988 00:00:00 GMTPsalmsBiblical PoetryLiturgyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-cyrus-cylinder-and-isaiah-40-50/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-cyrus-cylinder-and-isaiah-40-50/Aaron Lichtenstein — The Cyrus Cylinder and Isaiah 40-50 by Aaron Lichtenstein.Fri, 01 Jul 1988 00:00:00 GMTAncient Near EastArchaeologyProphecyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-goat-in-bible-and-midrash/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-goat-in-bible-and-midrash/S. P. Toperoff — The Goat in Bible and Midrash by S. P. Toperoff.Fri, 01 Jul 1988 00:00:00 GMTNature in the BibleMidrashSacrificehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-saga-of-the-first-born/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-saga-of-the-first-born/Benjamin Goodnick — The Saga of the First Born by Benjamin Goodnick.Fri, 01 Jul 1988 00:00:00 GMTBiblical LawPriesthoodBiblical Narrativehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/who-was-melchizedek/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/who-was-melchizedek/Edmund Berg — Who Was Melchizedek by Edmund Berg.Fri, 01 Jul 1988 00:00:00 GMTPatriarchal NarrativesPriesthoodAncient Near Easthttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/abraham-plants-a-flag/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/abraham-plants-a-flag/Ernest Neufeld — Abraham Plants a Flag by Ernest Neufeld.Fri, 01 Apr 1988 00:00:00 GMTPatriarchal NarrativesLand of IsraelBiblical Narrativehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/bible-trivia-the-first-bible-translation/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/bible-trivia-the-first-bible-translation/Chaim Abramowitz — Bible Trivia: The First Bible Translation by Chaim Abramowitz.Fri, 01 Apr 1988 00:00:00 GMTBible TranslationHistory of InterpretationBible Educationhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/biblical-teaching-of-peace/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/biblical-teaching-of-peace/Elliot A. Green — Biblical Teaching of Peace by Elliot A. Green.Fri, 01 Apr 1988 00:00:00 GMTBiblical EthicsBiblical TheologyProphecyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/book-review-tanakh-a-new-translation-of-the-holy-scriptures/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/book-review-tanakh-a-new-translation-of-the-holy-scriptures/Joseph Halpern — Book Review: Tanakh: A New Translation of the Holy Scriptures by Joseph Halpern.Fri, 01 Apr 1988 00:00:00 GMTBook ReviewBible Translationhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/elihu-the-provenance-and-content-of-his-speeches/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/elihu-the-provenance-and-content-of-his-speeches/David Wolfers — Elihu: The Provenance and Content of His Speeches by David Wolfers.Fri, 01 Apr 1988 00:00:00 GMTJobWisdom LiteratureTextual Criticismhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/in-memoriam-dr-chaim-i-abramowitz/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/in-memoriam-dr-chaim-i-abramowitz/Louis Katzoff and Shimon Bakon — In Memoriam: Dr. Chaim I. Abramowitz by Louis Katzoff and Shimon Bakon.Fri, 01 Apr 1988 00:00:00 GMTJewish Bible Associationhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/inheritance-heritage/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/inheritance-heritage/Joel Litke — Inheritance – Heritage by Joel Litke.Fri, 01 Apr 1988 00:00:00 GMTBiblical LawBiblical HebrewLand of Israelhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/isaac-tells-the-akeda-story/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/isaac-tells-the-akeda-story/Sheldon Feinberg — Isaac Tells the Akeda Story by Sheldon Feinberg.Fri, 01 Apr 1988 00:00:00 GMTAkedahPatriarchal NarrativesBiblical Narrativehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/isaiah-and-hezekiah-prophet-and-king/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/isaiah-and-hezekiah-prophet-and-king/Haim Gevaryahu — Isaiah and Hezekiah: Prophet and King by Haim Gevaryahu.Fri, 01 Apr 1988 00:00:00 GMTProphecyKingshipBiblical Narrativehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/judah-and-tamar/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/judah-and-tamar/Martin H. Greenberg — Judah and Tamar by Martin H. Greenberg.Fri, 01 Apr 1988 00:00:00 GMTPatriarchal NarrativesWomen in the BibleBiblical Narrativehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/on-darwins-theory-of-evolution/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/on-darwins-theory-of-evolution/Nathan Aviezer — On Darwin's Theory of Evolution by Nathan Aviezer.Fri, 01 Apr 1988 00:00:00 GMTScience and the BibleCreationJewish Philosophyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/questions-by-the-serpent-and-the-ass-part-ii/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/questions-by-the-serpent-and-the-ass-part-ii/Ronald T. Hyman — Questions by the Serpent and the Ass: Part II by Ronald T. Hyman.Fri, 01 Apr 1988 00:00:00 GMTLiterary AnalysisBalaamBiblical Narrativehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/readers-reflections/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/readers-reflections/Editors — Reader’s Reflections by Editors.Fri, 01 Apr 1988 00:00:00 GMThttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/sing-to-me/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/sing-to-me/David Weintraub — Sing to Me by David Weintraub.Fri, 01 Apr 1988 00:00:00 GMTBiblical PoetryLiturgyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-fox-in-bible-and-talmud/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-fox-in-bible-and-talmud/S. P. Toperoff — The Fox in Bible and Talmud by S. P. Toperoff.Fri, 01 Apr 1988 00:00:00 GMTNature in the BibleRabbinic LiteratureSymbolismhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/24th-world-bible-contest/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/24th-world-bible-contest/Editors — 24th World Bible Contest by Editors.Fri, 01 Jan 1988 00:00:00 GMTBible ContestBible Educationhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/book-review-recipes-for-better-living/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/book-review-recipes-for-better-living/Chaim Abramowitz — Book Review: Recipes For Better Living by Chaim Abramowitz.Fri, 01 Jan 1988 00:00:00 GMTBook ReviewBiblical Ethicshttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/dynamics-of-the-divine-human-interaction/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/dynamics-of-the-divine-human-interaction/Avi Rabinowitz — Dynamics of the Divine-Human Interaction by Avi Rabinowitz.Fri, 01 Jan 1988 00:00:00 GMTBiblical TheologyJewish Philosophyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/fish-in-the-bible-and-midrash/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/fish-in-the-bible-and-midrash/S. P. Toperoff — Fish in the Bible and Midrash by S. P. Toperoff.Fri, 01 Jan 1988 00:00:00 GMTNature in the BibleMidrashSymbolismhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/four-repetitions-in-the-song-of-songs/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/four-repetitions-in-the-song-of-songs/Benjamin J. Segal — Four Repetitions in the Song of Songs by Benjamin J. Segal.Fri, 01 Jan 1988 00:00:00 GMTBiblical PoetryLiterary Analysishttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/in-memoriam-chaim-i-abramowitz/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/in-memoriam-chaim-i-abramowitz/Editors — In Memoriam: Chaim I. Abramowitz by Editors.Fri, 01 Jan 1988 00:00:00 GMTJewish Bible Associationhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/jonahs-race-to-nineveh/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/jonahs-race-to-nineveh/Jeffrey M. Cohen — Jonah’s Race to Nineveh by Jeffrey M. Cohen.Fri, 01 Jan 1988 00:00:00 GMTProphecyBiblical NarrativeRepentancehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/kedusha-holiness/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/kedusha-holiness/Shimon Bakon — Kedusha – Holiness by Shimon Bakon.Fri, 01 Jan 1988 00:00:00 GMTBiblical TheologyBiblical HebrewPriesthoodhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/letters-to-the-editor-16-1/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/letters-to-the-editor-16-1/Chaim Pearl — Letters to the Editor by Chaim Pearl.Fri, 01 Jan 1988 00:00:00 GMThttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/purchase-of-the-machpelah/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/purchase-of-the-machpelah/Louis Katzoff — Purchase of the Machpelah by Louis Katzoff.Fri, 01 Jan 1988 00:00:00 GMTPatriarchal NarrativesLand of IsraelAncient Near Easthttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/questions-by-the-serpent-and-the-ass-part-i/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/questions-by-the-serpent-and-the-ass-part-i/Ronald T. Hyman — Questions by the Serpent and the Ass: Part I by Ronald T. Hyman.Fri, 01 Jan 1988 00:00:00 GMTLiterary AnalysisBalaamBiblical Narrativehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/thus-they-stripped-the-egyptians/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/thus-they-stripped-the-egyptians/Julius B. Moster — Thus They Stripped the Egyptians by Julius B. Moster.Fri, 01 Jan 1988 00:00:00 GMTExodus from EgyptBiblical EthicsBiblical Hebrewhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/words-of-torah-samson-raphael-hirschs-commentary-on-the-16-1/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/words-of-torah-samson-raphael-hirschs-commentary-on-the-16-1/Joseph Halpern — Words of Torah: Samson Raphael Hirsch’s Commentary on the Torah by Joseph Halpern.Fri, 01 Jan 1988 00:00:00 GMTTorah CommentaryModern Jewish ThoughtBiblical Exegesishttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/a-world-jewish-bible-center-in-jerusalem/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/a-world-jewish-bible-center-in-jerusalem/Israel Goldstein — A World Jewish Bible Center in Jerusalem by Israel Goldstein.Thu, 01 Oct 1987 00:00:00 GMTJewish Bible AssociationJerusalemBible Educationhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/addresses-by-dr-israel-goldstein/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/addresses-by-dr-israel-goldstein/Editors — Addresses by Dr. Israel Goldstein by Editors.Thu, 01 Oct 1987 00:00:00 GMTJewish Bible AssociationBible Educationhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/bible-trivia-soferim-scribes-counters/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/bible-trivia-soferim-scribes-counters/Chaim Abramowitz — Bible Trivia: Soferim – Scribes – Counters by Chaim Abramowitz.Thu, 01 Oct 1987 00:00:00 GMTMasoretic TextPhilologyBible Educationhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/book-review-identity-and-ethos-a-festschrift-for-sol-liptzin/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/book-review-identity-and-ethos-a-festschrift-for-sol-liptzin/Levi Shalit — Book Review: Identity and Ethos: A Festschrift for Sol Liptzin by Levi Shalit.Thu, 01 Oct 1987 00:00:00 GMTBook ReviewLiterature and the Biblehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/five-questions-of-abraham/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/five-questions-of-abraham/Louis Katzoff — Five Questions of Abraham by Louis Katzoff.Thu, 01 Oct 1987 00:00:00 GMTPatriarchal NarrativesBiblical TheologyBiblical Ethicshttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/i-believe/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/i-believe/Israel Goldstein — I Believe by Israel Goldstein.Thu, 01 Oct 1987 00:00:00 GMTBiblical TheologyModern Jewish Thoughthttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/in-memoriam-dr-israel-goldstein/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/in-memoriam-dr-israel-goldstein/Louis Katzoff, S. J. Kreutner and Gabriel A. Sivan — In Memoriam Dr. Israel Goldstein by Louis Katzoff, S. J. Kreutner and Gabriel A. Sivan.Thu, 01 Oct 1987 00:00:00 GMTJewish Bible Associationhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/jewish-aspects-on-the-500th-anniversary-of-printing/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/jewish-aspects-on-the-500th-anniversary-of-printing/Israel Goldstein — Jewish Aspects on the 500th Anniversary of Printing by Israel Goldstein.Thu, 01 Oct 1987 00:00:00 GMTHistory of InterpretationBible Educationhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/maimonides-approach-to-the-bible/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/maimonides-approach-to-the-bible/Israel Goldstein — Maimonides’ Approach to the Bible by Israel Goldstein.Thu, 01 Oct 1987 00:00:00 GMTMedieval ExegesisJewish PhilosophyBiblical Exegesishttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/mystery-of-the-red-heifer/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/mystery-of-the-red-heifer/Robert Kunin — Mystery of the Red Heifer by Robert Kunin.Thu, 01 Oct 1987 00:00:00 GMTBiblical LawPriesthoodRabbinic Literaturehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/oded-a-prophet-of-god/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/oded-a-prophet-of-god/Ben Zion Luria — Oded, a Prophet of God by Ben Zion Luria.Thu, 01 Oct 1987 00:00:00 GMTProphecyKingshipBiblical Narrativehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/organs-of-statecraft-in-the-israelite-monarchy-part-4/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/organs-of-statecraft-in-the-israelite-monarchy-part-4/Abraham Malamat — Organs of Statecraft in the Israelite Monarchy: Part 4 by Abraham Malamat.Thu, 01 Oct 1987 00:00:00 GMTKingshipAncient Near EastLeadershiphttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/problem-of-theodicy/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/problem-of-theodicy/Sidney Breitbart — Problem of Theodicy by Sidney Breitbart.Thu, 01 Oct 1987 00:00:00 GMTTheodicySufferingBiblical Theologyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/rabban-gamliel-of-yavneh/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/rabban-gamliel-of-yavneh/Israel Goldstein — Rabban Gamliel of Yavneh by Israel Goldstein.Thu, 01 Oct 1987 00:00:00 GMTRabbinic LiteratureSecond Temple Periodhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/reflections-of-readers-15-4/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/reflections-of-readers-15-4/Editors — Reflections of Readers by Editors.Thu, 01 Oct 1987 00:00:00 GMThttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/samson-in-timnah-judges-14-15-form-and-function/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/samson-in-timnah-judges-14-15-form-and-function/Yaakov Thompson — Samson in Timnah: Judges 14-15: Form and Function by Yaakov Thompson.Thu, 01 Oct 1987 00:00:00 GMTJudgesLiterary AnalysisBiblical Narrativehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-eagle-in-bible-and-midrash/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-eagle-in-bible-and-midrash/S. P. Toperoff — The Eagle in Bible and Midrash by S. P. Toperoff.Thu, 01 Oct 1987 00:00:00 GMTNature in the BibleMidrashSymbolismhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/what-about-the-tree-of-life/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/what-about-the-tree-of-life/Allen S. Maller — What About the Tree of Life? by Allen S. Maller.Thu, 01 Oct 1987 00:00:00 GMTCreationSymbolismBiblical Theologyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/witchcraft-in-the-bible/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/witchcraft-in-the-bible/Shimon Bakon — Witchcraft in the Bible by Shimon Bakon.Thu, 01 Oct 1987 00:00:00 GMTBiblical LawIdolatryAncient Near Easthttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/words-of-torah-samson-raphael-hirschs-commentary-on-the-15-4/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/words-of-torah-samson-raphael-hirschs-commentary-on-the-15-4/Joseph Halpern — Words of Torah: Samson Raphael Hirsch’s Commentary on the Torah by Joseph Halpern.Thu, 01 Oct 1987 00:00:00 GMTTorah CommentaryModern Jewish ThoughtBiblical Exegesishttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/a-note-on-job-6-8-10-suicide-and-death-wishes/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/a-note-on-job-6-8-10-suicide-and-death-wishes/Walter Riggans — A Note on Job 6:8-10: Suicide and Death Wishes by Walter Riggans.Wed, 01 Jul 1987 00:00:00 GMTJobSufferingBiblical Ethicshttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/a-unique-biblical-law/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/a-unique-biblical-law/Miriam Y. Shrager — A Unique Biblical Law by Miriam Y. Shrager.Wed, 01 Jul 1987 00:00:00 GMTBiblical LawBiblical Ethicshttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/abrahams-great-sin-a-reevaluation/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/abrahams-great-sin-a-reevaluation/Benjamin Goodnick — Abraham's Great Sin – A Reevaluation by Benjamin Goodnick.Wed, 01 Jul 1987 00:00:00 GMTPatriarchal NarrativesBiblical EthicsBiblical Narrativehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/biblical-trivia-vavei-haamudim/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/biblical-trivia-vavei-haamudim/Chaim Abramowitz — Biblical Trivia: Vavei Ha’amudim by Chaim Abramowitz.Wed, 01 Jul 1987 00:00:00 GMTMasoretic TextBible Educationhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/greek-logic-in-the-book-of-job-chapter-12/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/greek-logic-in-the-book-of-job-chapter-12/David Wolfers — Greek Logic in the Book of Job (Chapter 12) by David Wolfers.Wed, 01 Jul 1987 00:00:00 GMTJobJewish PhilosophyWisdom Literaturehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/moses-and-josiah/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/moses-and-josiah/Charles A. Klein and Allen S. Maller — Moses and Josiah by Charles A. Klein and Allen S. Maller.Wed, 01 Jul 1987 00:00:00 GMTMosesKingshipBiblical Lawhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/organs-of-statecraft-in-the-israelite-monarchy-part-3/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/organs-of-statecraft-in-the-israelite-monarchy-part-3/Abraham Malamat — Organs of Statecraft in the Israelite Monarchy: Part 3 by Abraham Malamat.Wed, 01 Jul 1987 00:00:00 GMTKingshipAncient Near EastLeadershiphttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/reflections-of-readers-15-3/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/reflections-of-readers-15-3/Editors — Reflections of Readers by Editors.Wed, 01 Jul 1987 00:00:00 GMThttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/shemittah-and-the-geography-of-israel/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/shemittah-and-the-geography-of-israel/Louis Katzoff — Shemittah and the Geography of Israel by Louis Katzoff.Wed, 01 Jul 1987 00:00:00 GMTBiblical LawLand of IsraelIsraelhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/sight-sin-and-blindness-in-the-samson-narrative-and-in/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/sight-sin-and-blindness-in-the-samson-narrative-and-in/Peggy Frost — Sight, Sin and Blindness in the Samson Narrative and in Milton’s Samson Agonistes by Peggy Frost.Wed, 01 Jul 1987 00:00:00 GMTLiterature and the BibleJudgesLiterary Analysishttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-dove-turtle-dove-and-pigeon-in-bible-and-midrash/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-dove-turtle-dove-and-pigeon-in-bible-and-midrash/S. P. Toperoff — The Dove, Turtle-Dove and Pigeon in Bible and Midrash by S. P. Toperoff.Wed, 01 Jul 1987 00:00:00 GMTNature in the BibleMidrashSacrificehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-layout-of-the-decalogue-on-the-tablets-and-archaeology/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-layout-of-the-decalogue-on-the-tablets-and-archaeology/Herbert Rand — The Layout of the Decalogue on the Tablets and Archaeology by Herbert Rand.Wed, 01 Jul 1987 00:00:00 GMTArchaeologyBiblical LawMoseshttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/tiles-and-bricks-in-biblical-poetry/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/tiles-and-bricks-in-biblical-poetry/Yosef Green — Tiles and Bricks in Biblical Poetry by Yosef Green.Wed, 01 Jul 1987 00:00:00 GMTBiblical PoetryAncient Near EastPhilologyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/water-in-biblical-times/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/water-in-biblical-times/Robert Kunin — Water in Biblical Times by Robert Kunin.Wed, 01 Jul 1987 00:00:00 GMTAncient Near EastArchaeologyLand of Israelhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/words-of-torah-samson-raphael-hirschs-commentary-on-the-15-3/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/words-of-torah-samson-raphael-hirschs-commentary-on-the-15-3/Joseph Halpern — Words of Torah: Samson Raphael Hirsch’s Commentary on the Torah by Joseph Halpern.Wed, 01 Jul 1987 00:00:00 GMTTorah CommentaryModern Jewish ThoughtBiblical Exegesishttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/canines-in-bible-and-midrash/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/canines-in-bible-and-midrash/S. P. Toperoff — Canines in Bible and Midrash by S. P. Toperoff.Wed, 01 Apr 1987 00:00:00 GMTNature in the BibleMidrashSymbolismhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/hosea-and-the-fertility-cult/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/hosea-and-the-fertility-cult/Louis Katzoff — Hosea and the Fertility Cult by Louis Katzoff.Wed, 01 Apr 1987 00:00:00 GMTProphecyIdolatryAncient Near Easthttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/hosea-his-message/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/hosea-his-message/Shimon Bakon — Hosea – His Message by Shimon Bakon.Wed, 01 Apr 1987 00:00:00 GMTProphecyProphetic LiteratureBiblical Ethicshttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/hoseas-true-marriage/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/hoseas-true-marriage/Chaim Abramowitz — Hosea’s True Marriage by Chaim Abramowitz.Wed, 01 Apr 1987 00:00:00 GMTProphecyWomen in the BibleSymbolismhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/jerusalem-in-jewish-law-part-4/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/jerusalem-in-jewish-law-part-4/Hyman Routtenberg — Jerusalem in Jewish Law: Part 4 by Hyman Routtenberg.Wed, 01 Apr 1987 00:00:00 GMTJerusalemBiblical LawRabbinic Literaturehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/know-what-to-answer-part-3/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/know-what-to-answer-part-3/Joshua J. Adler — Know What to Answer: Part 3 by Joshua J. Adler.Wed, 01 Apr 1987 00:00:00 GMTBiblical CriticismBible EducationComparative Religionhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/letters-to-the-editor-15-2/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/letters-to-the-editor-15-2/Theodor Katz — Letters to the Editor by Theodor Katz.Wed, 01 Apr 1987 00:00:00 GMThttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/organs-of-statecraft-in-the-israelite-monarchy-part-2/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/organs-of-statecraft-in-the-israelite-monarchy-part-2/Abraham Malamat — Organs of Statecraft in the Israelite Monarchy: Part 2 by Abraham Malamat.Wed, 01 Apr 1987 00:00:00 GMTKingshipAncient Near EastLeadershiphttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/prevention-of-cruelty/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/prevention-of-cruelty/Noah J. Cohen — Prevention of Cruelty by Noah J. Cohen.Wed, 01 Apr 1987 00:00:00 GMTBiblical EthicsBiblical LawNature in the Biblehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/reaction-to-terror-a-biblical-perspective/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/reaction-to-terror-a-biblical-perspective/Reuven P. Bulka — Reaction to Terror – A Biblical Perspective by Reuven P. Bulka.Wed, 01 Apr 1987 00:00:00 GMTBiblical EthicsModern Jewish ThoughtIsraelhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-prophet-hosea-a-symposium/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-prophet-hosea-a-symposium/Editors — The Prophet Hosea – A Symposium by Editors.Wed, 01 Apr 1987 00:00:00 GMTProphecyProphetic Literaturehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-theme-of-the-song-of-songs/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-theme-of-the-song-of-songs/Benjamin J. Segal — The Theme of the Song of Songs by Benjamin J. Segal.Wed, 01 Apr 1987 00:00:00 GMTBiblical PoetryLiterary AnalysisSymbolismhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/words-of-torah-samson-raphael-hirschs-commentary-on-the-15-2/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/words-of-torah-samson-raphael-hirschs-commentary-on-the-15-2/Joseph Halpern — Words of Torah: Samson Raphael Hirsch’s Commentary on the Torah by Joseph Halpern.Wed, 01 Apr 1987 00:00:00 GMTTorah CommentaryModern Jewish ThoughtBiblical Exegesishttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/23rd-world-bible-contest-for-jewish-youth/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/23rd-world-bible-contest-for-jewish-youth/Editors — 23rd World Bible Contest for Jewish Youth by Editors.Thu, 01 Jan 1987 00:00:00 GMTBible ContestBible Educationhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/a-missing-hexateuchal-narrative-concerning-child-sacrifice/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/a-missing-hexateuchal-narrative-concerning-child-sacrifice/Yaakov Thompson — A Missing Hexateuchal Narrative Concerning Child Sacrifice by Yaakov Thompson.Thu, 01 Jan 1987 00:00:00 GMTSacrificeBiblical CriticismAncient Near Easthttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/about-some-scriptural-divine-designations/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/about-some-scriptural-divine-designations/Aaron Soviv — About Some Scriptural Divine Designations by Aaron Soviv.Thu, 01 Jan 1987 00:00:00 GMTBiblical HebrewBiblical TheologyPhilologyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/biblical-trivia-the-number-seven/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/biblical-trivia-the-number-seven/Chaim Abramowitz — Biblical Trivia: The Number Seven by Chaim Abramowitz.Thu, 01 Jan 1987 00:00:00 GMTSymbolismBible Educationhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/book-review-jerusalem/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/book-review-jerusalem/Sol Liptzin — Book Review: Jerusalem by Sol Liptzin.Thu, 01 Jan 1987 00:00:00 GMTBook ReviewJerusalemhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/how-david-captured-jerusalem/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/how-david-captured-jerusalem/Shimon Bakon — How David Captured Jerusalem by Shimon Bakon.Thu, 01 Jan 1987 00:00:00 GMTDavidJerusalemArchaeologyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/jerusalem-in-rabbinic-literature-part-3/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/jerusalem-in-rabbinic-literature-part-3/Hyman Routtenberg — Jerusalem in Rabbinic Literature: Part 3 by Hyman Routtenberg.Thu, 01 Jan 1987 00:00:00 GMTJerusalemRabbinic LiteratureTemplehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/know-what-to-answer-part-2/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/know-what-to-answer-part-2/Joshua J. Adler — Know What to Answer: Part 2 by Joshua J. Adler.Thu, 01 Jan 1987 00:00:00 GMTBiblical CriticismBible EducationComparative Religionhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/letters-to-the-editor-15-1/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/letters-to-the-editor-15-1/JBQ Readers — Letters to the Editor by JBQ Readers.Thu, 01 Jan 1987 00:00:00 GMThttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/organs-of-statecraft-in-the-israelite-monarchy-part-1/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/organs-of-statecraft-in-the-israelite-monarchy-part-1/Abraham Malamat — Organs of Statecraft in the Israelite Monarchy: Part 1 by Abraham Malamat.Thu, 01 Jan 1987 00:00:00 GMTKingshipAncient Near EastLeadershiphttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-akedah-a-test-of-god/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-akedah-a-test-of-god/Sidney Breitbart — The Akedah – A Test of God by Sidney Breitbart.Thu, 01 Jan 1987 00:00:00 GMTAkedahPatriarchal NarrativesBiblical Theologyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/two-biblical-parables-irony-and-self-entrapment/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/two-biblical-parables-irony-and-self-entrapment/Nahum M. Waldman — Two Biblical Parables: Irony and Self Entrapment by Nahum M. Waldman.Thu, 01 Jan 1987 00:00:00 GMTLiterary AnalysisProphecyBiblical Narrativehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/words-of-torah-samson-raphael-hirschs-commentary-on-the-15-1/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/words-of-torah-samson-raphael-hirschs-commentary-on-the-15-1/Joseph Halpern — Words of Torah: Samson Raphael Hirsch’s Commentary on the Torah by Joseph Halpern.Thu, 01 Jan 1987 00:00:00 GMTTorah CommentaryModern Jewish ThoughtBiblical Exegesishttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/bible-and-science-a-symposium/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/bible-and-science-a-symposium/Editors — Bible and Science – A Symposium by Editors.Wed, 01 Oct 1986 00:00:00 GMTScience and the BibleCreationBiblical Theologyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/book-review-ancient-judaism-biblical-criticism-from-max/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/book-review-ancient-judaism-biblical-criticism-from-max/Sol Liptzin — Book Review: Ancient Judaism: Biblical Criticism From Max Weber to the Present by Sol Liptzin.Wed, 01 Oct 1986 00:00:00 GMTBook ReviewBiblical CriticismHistory of Interpretationhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/evolutions-fateful-implication/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/evolutions-fateful-implication/Albert Berkowitz — Evolution’s Fateful Implication by Albert Berkowitz.Wed, 01 Oct 1986 00:00:00 GMTScience and the BibleCreationJewish Philosophyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/is-behemoth-also-jewish/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/is-behemoth-also-jewish/David Wolfers — Is Behemoth Also Jewish? by David Wolfers.Wed, 01 Oct 1986 00:00:00 GMTJobNature in the BibleWisdom Literaturehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/israelites-and-aliens-part-6-the-story-of-joseph-and/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/israelites-and-aliens-part-6-the-story-of-joseph-and/Max M. Rothschild — Israelites and Aliens: Part 6: The Story of Joseph and Assenath by Max M. Rothschild.Wed, 01 Oct 1986 00:00:00 GMTJoseph NarrativeSecond Temple LiteratureComparative Religionhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/know-what-to-answer-part-1/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/know-what-to-answer-part-1/Joshua J. Adler — Know What to Answer: Part 1 by Joshua J. Adler.Wed, 01 Oct 1986 00:00:00 GMTBiblical CriticismBible EducationComparative Religionhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/letters-to-the-editor-14-4/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/letters-to-the-editor-14-4/JBQ Readers — Letters to the Editor by JBQ Readers.Wed, 01 Oct 1986 00:00:00 GMThttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/revisionist-intellectual-history-and-the-bible/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/revisionist-intellectual-history-and-the-bible/Richard A. Freund — Revisionist Intellectual History and the Bible by Richard A. Freund.Wed, 01 Oct 1986 00:00:00 GMTBiblical CriticismHistory of Interpretationhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/sibling-relationships-in-the-bible-a-psychodynamic-dimension/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/sibling-relationships-in-the-bible-a-psychodynamic-dimension/Adina Katzoff — Sibling Relationships in the Bible: A Psychodynamic Dimension by Adina Katzoff.Wed, 01 Oct 1986 00:00:00 GMTBiblical NarrativePatriarchal NarrativesBiblical Ethicshttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-how-what-and-why-of-creation/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-how-what-and-why-of-creation/Chaim Abramowitz — The How, What and Why of Creation by Chaim Abramowitz.Wed, 01 Oct 1986 00:00:00 GMTCreationScience and the BibleBiblical Theologyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-mystery-of-being/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-mystery-of-being/Shimon Bakon — The Mystery of Being by Shimon Bakon.Wed, 01 Oct 1986 00:00:00 GMTCreationJewish PhilosophyBiblical Theologyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-route-of-the-exodus/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-route-of-the-exodus/David Faiman — The Route of the Exodus by David Faiman.Wed, 01 Oct 1986 00:00:00 GMTExodus from EgyptArchaeologyLand of Israelhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/words-of-torah-samson-raphael-hirschs-commentary-on-the-14-4/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/words-of-torah-samson-raphael-hirschs-commentary-on-the-14-4/Joseph Halpern — Words of Torah: Samson Raphael Hirsch’s Commentary on the Torah by Joseph Halpern.Wed, 01 Oct 1986 00:00:00 GMTTorah CommentaryModern Jewish ThoughtBiblical Exegesishttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/a-problem-verse-in-dayenu/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/a-problem-verse-in-dayenu/Jeffrey M. Cohen — A Problem Verse in Dayenu by Jeffrey M. Cohen.Tue, 01 Jul 1986 00:00:00 GMTLiturgyJewish FestivalsTextual Criticismhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/bible-trivia-the-72-letter-name-of-god/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/bible-trivia-the-72-letter-name-of-god/Chaim Abramowitz — Bible Trivia: The 72 Letter Name of God by Chaim Abramowitz.Tue, 01 Jul 1986 00:00:00 GMTKabbalahBiblical HebrewRabbinic Literaturehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/book-of-esther-a-novelle/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/book-of-esther-a-novelle/Monique R. Siegel — Book of Esther – A Novelle by Monique R. Siegel.Tue, 01 Jul 1986 00:00:00 GMTEstherLiterary AnalysisBiblical Narrativehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/book-review-the-hebrew-bible-and-its-modern-interpreters/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/book-review-the-hebrew-bible-and-its-modern-interpreters/Sol Liptzin — Book Review: The Hebrew Bible and its Modern Interpreters by Sol Liptzin.Tue, 01 Jul 1986 00:00:00 GMTBook ReviewBiblical CriticismHistory of Interpretationhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/editorial-comment/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/editorial-comment/Editors — Editorial Comment by Editors.Tue, 01 Jul 1986 00:00:00 GMThttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/from-the-city-of-david-to-jerusalem/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/from-the-city-of-david-to-jerusalem/Louis Katzoff — From the City of David to Jerusalem by Louis Katzoff.Tue, 01 Jul 1986 00:00:00 GMTJerusalemDavidArchaeologyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/jerusalem-in-rabbinic-literature-part-2/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/jerusalem-in-rabbinic-literature-part-2/Hyman Routtenberg — Jerusalem in Rabbinic Literature: Part 2 by Hyman Routtenberg.Tue, 01 Jul 1986 00:00:00 GMTJerusalemRabbinic LiteratureTemplehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/joseph-and-his-brothers-vengeance-or-reconciliation/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/joseph-and-his-brothers-vengeance-or-reconciliation/David Chinitz — Joseph and His Brothers: Vengeance or Reconciliation by David Chinitz.Tue, 01 Jul 1986 00:00:00 GMTJoseph NarrativeBiblical EthicsBiblical Narrativehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/scribal-peculiarities-in-the-sefer-torah/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/scribal-peculiarities-in-the-sefer-torah/Manfred R. Lehman — Scribal Peculiarities in the Sefer Torah על פאי”ן לפופין by Manfred R. Lehman.Tue, 01 Jul 1986 00:00:00 GMTMasoretic TextPhilologyRabbinic Literaturehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-art-of-narration-in-the-scroll-of-esther/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-art-of-narration-in-the-scroll-of-esther/Arye Bartal — The Art of Narration in the Scroll of Esther by Arye Bartal.Tue, 01 Jul 1986 00:00:00 GMTEstherLiterary AnalysisBiblical Narrativehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-author-of-the-haggadah-as-an-educator/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-author-of-the-haggadah-as-an-educator/Aaron Lichtenstein — The Author of the Haggadah as an Educator by Aaron Lichtenstein.Tue, 01 Jul 1986 00:00:00 GMTLiturgyBible EducationJewish Festivalshttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-cock-and-the-hen-in-bible-and-midrash/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-cock-and-the-hen-in-bible-and-midrash/S. P. Toperoff — The Cock and the Hen in Bible and Midrash by S. P. Toperoff.Tue, 01 Jul 1986 00:00:00 GMTNature in the BibleMidrashSymbolismhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-song-of-solomon-a-dream-ballet/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-song-of-solomon-a-dream-ballet/M. Hershel Levine — The Song of Solomon – A Dream Ballet by M. Hershel Levine.Tue, 01 Jul 1986 00:00:00 GMTBiblical PoetryLiterary Analysishttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/words-of-torah-samson-raphael-hirschs-commentary-on-the/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/words-of-torah-samson-raphael-hirschs-commentary-on-the/Joseph Halpern — Words of Torah: Samson Raphael Hirsch’s Commentary on the Torah by Joseph Halpern.Tue, 01 Jul 1986 00:00:00 GMTTorah CommentaryModern Jewish ThoughtBiblical Exegesishttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/abstracts-from-beth-mikra-14-2/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/abstracts-from-beth-mikra-14-2/Mordecai Sochen — Abstracts From “Beth Mikra” by Mordecai Sochen.Tue, 01 Apr 1986 00:00:00 GMTBible EducationBiblical Criticismhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/akedah-the-binding-of-isaac/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/akedah-the-binding-of-isaac/Hirsch Patcas — Akedah: The Binding of Isaac by Hirsch Patcas.Tue, 01 Apr 1986 00:00:00 GMTAkedahPatriarchal NarrativesBiblical Theologyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/bible-trivia-the-number-of-letters-in-the-shma/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/bible-trivia-the-number-of-letters-in-the-shma/Chaim Abramowitz — Bible Trivia: The Number of Letters in the Shma by Chaim Abramowitz.Tue, 01 Apr 1986 00:00:00 GMTMasoretic TextLiturgyBible Educationhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/book-review-creation-in-the-old-testament/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/book-review-creation-in-the-old-testament/Sol Liptzin — Book Review: Creation in the Old Testament by Sol Liptzin.Tue, 01 Apr 1986 00:00:00 GMTBook ReviewCreationBiblical Theologyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/jerusalem-in-the-bible-and-talmud-part-1/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/jerusalem-in-the-bible-and-talmud-part-1/Hyman Routtenberg — Jerusalem in the Bible and Talmud: Part 1 by Hyman Routtenberg.Tue, 01 Apr 1986 00:00:00 GMTJerusalemRabbinic LiteratureTemplehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/letters-to-the-editor-14-2/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/letters-to-the-editor-14-2/JBQ Readers — Letters to the Editor by JBQ Readers.Tue, 01 Apr 1986 00:00:00 GMThttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/music-and-prophecy/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/music-and-prophecy/David Weintraub — Music and Prophecy by David Weintraub.Tue, 01 Apr 1986 00:00:00 GMTProphecyLiturgyAncient Near Easthttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/names-of-settlements-in-israel-biblical-terms-turned-into/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/names-of-settlements-in-israel-biblical-terms-turned-into/Zeev Vilnay — Names of Settlements in Israel: Biblical Terms Turned Into Names by Zeev Vilnay.Tue, 01 Apr 1986 00:00:00 GMTLand of IsraelIsraelEtymologyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/noahide-laws-from-genesis-to-genizah/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/noahide-laws-from-genesis-to-genizah/Aaron Lichtenstein — Noahide Laws From Genesis to Genizah by Aaron Lichtenstein.Tue, 01 Apr 1986 00:00:00 GMTBiblical LawRabbinic LiteratureComparative Religionhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/rebeccas-encounter-with-abrahams-servant/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/rebeccas-encounter-with-abrahams-servant/Irving Ziderman — Rebecca’s Encounter with Abraham’s Servant by Irving Ziderman.Tue, 01 Apr 1986 00:00:00 GMTPatriarchal NarrativesWomen in the BibleBiblical Narrativehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/service-of-the-lips/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/service-of-the-lips/Louis Katzoff — Service of the Lips by Louis Katzoff.Tue, 01 Apr 1986 00:00:00 GMTPrayerLiturgySacrificehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-camel-in-the-bible-and-talmud/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-camel-in-the-bible-and-talmud/S. P. Toperoff — The Camel in the Bible and Talmud by S. P. Toperoff.Tue, 01 Apr 1986 00:00:00 GMTNature in the BibleRabbinic LiteratureAncient Near Easthttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-rebellion-of-the-bechorim/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-rebellion-of-the-bechorim/Yosef Green — The Rebellion of the Bechorim by Yosef Green.Tue, 01 Apr 1986 00:00:00 GMTPriesthoodBiblical NarrativeLeadershiphttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-synagogue-its-origin-and-development/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-synagogue-its-origin-and-development/Alter Hilewitz — The Synagogue: Its Origin and Development by Alter Hilewitz.Tue, 01 Apr 1986 00:00:00 GMTLiturgySecond Temple PeriodRabbinic Literaturehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/who-was-shamgar-ben-anath/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/who-was-shamgar-ben-anath/Ben Zion Luria — Who Was Shamgar Ben Anath by Ben Zion Luria.Tue, 01 Apr 1986 00:00:00 GMTJudgesAncient Near EastBiblical Narrativehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/22nd-youth-bible-contest/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/22nd-youth-bible-contest/Editors — 22nd Youth Bible Contest by Editors.Wed, 01 Jan 1986 00:00:00 GMTBible ContestBible Educationhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/birds-in-the-bible-and-midrash/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/birds-in-the-bible-and-midrash/S. P. Toperoff — Birds in the Bible and Midrash by S. P. Toperoff.Wed, 01 Jan 1986 00:00:00 GMTNature in the BibleMidrashSymbolismhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/book-review-studies-in-the-period-of-david-and-solomon-and/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/book-review-studies-in-the-period-of-david-and-solomon-and/Sol Liptzin — Book Review: Studies in the Period of David and Solomon and Other Essays by Sol Liptzin.Wed, 01 Jan 1986 00:00:00 GMTBook ReviewDavidKingshiphttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/is-job-after-all-jewish/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/is-job-after-all-jewish/David Wolfers — Is Job After All Jewish? by David Wolfers.Wed, 01 Jan 1986 00:00:00 GMTJobTheodicyWisdom Literaturehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/ki-yad-al-kes-yah/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/ki-yad-al-kes-yah/David Horowitz — כי יד על כס י-ה by David Horowitz.Wed, 01 Jan 1986 00:00:00 GMTBiblical HebrewBiblical TheologyTextual Criticismhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/maftir-jonah/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/maftir-jonah/Chaim Abramowitz — Maftir Jonah by Chaim Abramowitz.Wed, 01 Jan 1986 00:00:00 GMTJonahLiturgyJewish Festivalshttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/moses-at-the-inn-new-light-on-an-obscure-text/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/moses-at-the-inn-new-light-on-an-obscure-text/Herbert Rand — Moses at the Inn: New Light on an Obscure Text by Herbert Rand.Wed, 01 Jan 1986 00:00:00 GMTMosesTextual CriticismBiblical Hebrewhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/reflections-of-readers-14-1/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/reflections-of-readers-14-1/Editors — Reflections of Readers by Editors.Wed, 01 Jan 1986 00:00:00 GMThttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/religion-by-the-river/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/religion-by-the-river/Joshua J. Adler — Religion by the River by Joshua J. Adler.Wed, 01 Jan 1986 00:00:00 GMTBiblical TheologyLiterature and the Biblehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-biblical-concept-of-government/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-biblical-concept-of-government/Shimon Bakon — The Biblical Concept of Government by Shimon Bakon.Wed, 01 Jan 1986 00:00:00 GMTKingshipLeadershipBiblical Lawhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-book-of-jonah-an-ethical-confrontation-between-god-and/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-book-of-jonah-an-ethical-confrontation-between-god-and/Nathan Aviezer — The Book of Jonah: An Ethical Confrontation Between God and Prophet by Nathan Aviezer.Wed, 01 Jan 1986 00:00:00 GMTProphecyBiblical EthicsRepentancehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-two-seasons-in-israel/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-two-seasons-in-israel/Louis Katzoff — The Two Seasons in Israel by Louis Katzoff.Wed, 01 Jan 1986 00:00:00 GMTLand of IsraelNature in the BibleJewish Calendarhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/tribute-to-chaim-abramowitz/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/tribute-to-chaim-abramowitz/Editors — Tribute to Chaim Abramowitz by Editors.Wed, 01 Jan 1986 00:00:00 GMTJewish Bible Associationhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/a-guide-to-isaiah-chapters-xi-xii/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/a-guide-to-isaiah-chapters-xi-xii/Chaim Pearl — A Guide to Isaiah: Chapters XI-XII by Chaim Pearl.Tue, 01 Oct 1985 00:00:00 GMTProphecyBiblical ExegesisProphetic Literaturehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/biblical-motifs-in-the-poetical-works-of-chaim-nachman/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/biblical-motifs-in-the-poetical-works-of-chaim-nachman/Leila Leah Bronner — Biblical Motifs in the Poetical Works of Chaim Nachman Bialik by Leila Leah Bronner.Tue, 01 Oct 1985 00:00:00 GMTLiterature and the BibleBiblical PoetryModern Jewish Thoughthttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/from-the-nuzi-tablets/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/from-the-nuzi-tablets/Louis Katzoff — From the Nuzi Tablets by Louis Katzoff.Tue, 01 Oct 1985 00:00:00 GMTAncient Near EastArchaeologyPatriarchal Narrativeshttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/incised-stone-fragment-korban/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/incised-stone-fragment-korban/Noah J. Cohen — Incised Stone Fragment “Korban” by Noah J. Cohen.Tue, 01 Oct 1985 00:00:00 GMTArchaeologySacrificeTemplehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/israelites-and-aliens-the-period-of-proselytizing/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/israelites-and-aliens-the-period-of-proselytizing/Max M. Rothschild — Israelites and Aliens: The Period of Proselytizing by Max M. Rothschild.Tue, 01 Oct 1985 00:00:00 GMTBiblical LawSecond Temple PeriodComparative Religionhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/noah-and-the-ark-reexamined/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/noah-and-the-ark-reexamined/Chaim Abramowitz — Noah and the Ark Reexamined by Chaim Abramowitz.Tue, 01 Oct 1985 00:00:00 GMTCreationBiblical NarrativeAncient Near Easthttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/reward-and-punishment-in-jewish-thought-a-symposium/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/reward-and-punishment-in-jewish-thought-a-symposium/Editors — Reward and Punishment in Jewish Thought: A Symposium by Editors.Tue, 01 Oct 1985 00:00:00 GMTBiblical TheologyJewish PhilosophyTheodicyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-bee-in-the-bible-and-midrash/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-bee-in-the-bible-and-midrash/S. P. Toperoff — The Bee in the Bible and Midrash by S. P. Toperoff.Tue, 01 Oct 1985 00:00:00 GMTNature in the BibleMidrashSymbolismhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-hebrew-element-in-everyday-english-some-afterthoughts/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-hebrew-element-in-everyday-english-some-afterthoughts/Gabriel A. Sivan — The Hebrew Element in Everyday English: Some Afterthoughts by Gabriel A. Sivan.Tue, 01 Oct 1985 00:00:00 GMTBiblical HebrewPhilologyBible Translationhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/was-father-isaac-a-co-conspirator/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/was-father-isaac-a-co-conspirator/Joseph Heckelman — Was Father Isaac a Co-conspirator? by Joseph Heckelman.Tue, 01 Oct 1985 00:00:00 GMTPatriarchal NarrativesJacobBiblical Narrativehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/a-guide-to-isaiah-chapter-x/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/a-guide-to-isaiah-chapter-x/Chaim Pearl — A Guide to Isaiah: Chapter X by Chaim Pearl.Mon, 01 Jul 1985 00:00:00 GMTProphecyBiblical ExegesisProphetic Literaturehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/bible-and-aggada/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/bible-and-aggada/Melvin J. Glatt — Bible and Aggada by Melvin J. Glatt.Mon, 01 Jul 1985 00:00:00 GMTMidrashRabbinic LiteratureHistory of Interpretationhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/book-review-lev-avot-by-simon-p-toperoff/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/book-review-lev-avot-by-simon-p-toperoff/Joseph Halpern — Book Review: Lev Avot by Simon P. Toperoff by Joseph Halpern.Mon, 01 Jul 1985 00:00:00 GMTBook ReviewRabbinic Literaturehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/creation-and-commandment/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/creation-and-commandment/Mendel Lewittes — Creation and Commandment by Mendel Lewittes.Mon, 01 Jul 1985 00:00:00 GMTCreationBiblical LawBiblical Theologyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/face-to-face-exodus-32-34/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/face-to-face-exodus-32-34/Shimon Bakon — Face to Face (Exodus 32-34) by Shimon Bakon.Mon, 01 Jul 1985 00:00:00 GMTMosesBiblical TheologyExodus Narrativehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/joseph-and-the-biblical-echo/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/joseph-and-the-biblical-echo/Emmanuel Feldman — Joseph and the Biblical Echo by Emmanuel Feldman.Mon, 01 Jul 1985 00:00:00 GMTJoseph NarrativeLiterary AnalysisIntertextualityhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/redeeming-cain-a-comparative-literary-reading-of-genesis/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/redeeming-cain-a-comparative-literary-reading-of-genesis/Aaron Lichtenstein — Redeeming Cain: A Comparative Literary Reading of Genesis by Aaron Lichtenstein.Mon, 01 Jul 1985 00:00:00 GMTLiterary AnalysisBiblical NarrativeBiblical Ethicshttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-ant-in-the-bible-and-midrash/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-ant-in-the-bible-and-midrash/S. P. Toperoff — The Ant in the Bible and Midrash by S. P. Toperoff.Mon, 01 Jul 1985 00:00:00 GMTNature in the BibleMidrashWisdom Literaturehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-conquest-of-canaan-in-the-book-of-joshua-military-and/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-conquest-of-canaan-in-the-book-of-joshua-military-and/Yigael Yadin — The Conquest of Canaan in the Book of Joshua: Military and Archeological Aspects by Yigael Yadin.Mon, 01 Jul 1985 00:00:00 GMTArchaeologyLand of IsraelAncient Near Easthttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-hamsin-and-the-rain/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-hamsin-and-the-rain/Louis Katzoff — The Hamsin and the Rain by Louis Katzoff.Mon, 01 Jul 1985 00:00:00 GMTNature in the BibleLand of Israelhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/theodicy-in-the-bible/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/theodicy-in-the-bible/Sol Liptzin — Theodicy in the Bible by Sol Liptzin.Mon, 01 Jul 1985 00:00:00 GMTTheodicySufferingBiblical Theologyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/a-guide-to-isaiah-chapter-ix/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/a-guide-to-isaiah-chapter-ix/Chaim Pearl — A Guide to Isaiah: Chapter IX by Chaim Pearl.Mon, 01 Apr 1985 00:00:00 GMTProphecyBiblical ExegesisProphetic Literaturehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/amen-and-hallelujah-their-development-as-liturgical/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/amen-and-hallelujah-their-development-as-liturgical/Haim Gevaryahu — Amen and Hallelujah: Their Development as Liturgical Responses by Haim Gevaryahu.Mon, 01 Apr 1985 00:00:00 GMTLiturgyBiblical HebrewPsalmshttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/book-review-midrash-of-a-kind-biblical-themes-in-world/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/book-review-midrash-of-a-kind-biblical-themes-in-world/S. Gershon Levi — Book Review: Midrash of a Kind: Biblical Themes in World Literature by Sol Liptzin by S. Gershon Levi.Mon, 01 Apr 1985 00:00:00 GMTBook ReviewLiterature and the BibleMidrashhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/concealment-and-irony-in-the-samson-story/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/concealment-and-irony-in-the-samson-story/Nahum M. Waldman — Concealment and Irony in the Samson Story by Nahum M. Waldman.Mon, 01 Apr 1985 00:00:00 GMTLiterary AnalysisJudgesBiblical Narrativehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/dating-the-book-of-daniel-the-legitimacy-of-the-traditional/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/dating-the-book-of-daniel-the-legitimacy-of-the-traditional/Raphael B. Shuchat — Dating the Book of Daniel: The Legitimacy of the Traditional View by Raphael B. Shuchat.Mon, 01 Apr 1985 00:00:00 GMTDanielBiblical CriticismSecond Temple Periodhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/habakkuk-3-13-a-problematic-verse/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/habakkuk-3-13-a-problematic-verse/Joel T. Klein — Habakkuk 3:13 – A Problematic Verse by Joel T. Klein.Mon, 01 Apr 1985 00:00:00 GMTProphecyBiblical HebrewTextual Criticismhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/king-davids-aging-a-psychodynamic-dimension/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/king-davids-aging-a-psychodynamic-dimension/Adina Katzoff — King David’s Aging: A Psychodynamic Dimension by Adina Katzoff.Mon, 01 Apr 1985 00:00:00 GMTDavidKingshipBiblical Narrativehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/matriarchal-influence-in-the-bible-a-medical-psychological/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/matriarchal-influence-in-the-bible-a-medical-psychological/Alexander and Amos Meijer — Matriarchal Influence in the Bible: A Medical-Psychological Study by Alexander and Amos Meijer.Mon, 01 Apr 1985 00:00:00 GMTWomen in the BiblePatriarchal NarrativesBiblical Narrativehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/obstetrical-complication-of-benjamins-birth-the-cause-of/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/obstetrical-complication-of-benjamins-birth-the-cause-of/S. H. Blondheim and Menahem Blondheim — Obstetrical Complication of Benjamin’s Birth: The Cause of Rachel’s Death by S. H. Blondheim and Menahem Blondheim.Mon, 01 Apr 1985 00:00:00 GMTWomen in the BiblePatriarchal NarrativesScience and the Biblehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-three-day-syndrome/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-three-day-syndrome/Chaim Abramowitz — The Three Day Syndrome by Chaim Abramowitz.Mon, 01 Apr 1985 00:00:00 GMTBiblical NarrativeSymbolismRabbinic Exegesishttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/a-guide-to-isaiah-chapter-viii/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/a-guide-to-isaiah-chapter-viii/Chaim Pearl — A Guide to Isaiah: Chapter VIII by Chaim Pearl.Tue, 01 Jan 1985 00:00:00 GMTProphecyBiblical ExegesisProphetic Literaturehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/altars-and-tables-in-the-bible/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/altars-and-tables-in-the-bible/Jacob Chinitz — Altars and Tables in the Bible by Jacob Chinitz.Tue, 01 Jan 1985 00:00:00 GMTSacrificeTempleBiblical Lawhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/autobiographical-notes/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/autobiographical-notes/Joseph Halpern — Autobiographical Notes by Joseph Halpern.Tue, 01 Jan 1985 00:00:00 GMTJewish Bible AssociationModern Jewish Thoughthttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/eastward-and-westward-the-movement-of-prophecy-and-history/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/eastward-and-westward-the-movement-of-prophecy-and-history/Gerda Elata-Alster and Rachel Salmon — Eastward and Westward: The Movement of Prophecy and History in the Book of Yonah by Gerda Elata-Alster and Rachel Salmon.Tue, 01 Jan 1985 00:00:00 GMTProphecyLiterary AnalysisBiblical Narrativehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/for-the-love-of-the-land/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/for-the-love-of-the-land/Shimon Bakon — For the Love of the Land by Shimon Bakon.Tue, 01 Jan 1985 00:00:00 GMTLand of IsraelBiblical TheologyIsraelhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/irony-in-the-book-of-job/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/irony-in-the-book-of-job/Aaron Lichtenstein — Irony in the Book of Job by Aaron Lichtenstein.Tue, 01 Jan 1985 00:00:00 GMTLiterary AnalysisTheodicyWisdom Literaturehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/joseph-and-his-brothers-the-midrashic-approach-versus/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/joseph-and-his-brothers-the-midrashic-approach-versus/Aryeh Ben-Yosef — Joseph and his Brothers: The Midrashic Approach Versus Josephus’ Approach by Aryeh Ben-Yosef.Tue, 01 Jan 1985 00:00:00 GMTJoseph NarrativeMidrashSecond Temple Literaturehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/parallel-lists-of-prediluvian-patriarchs-a-psychological/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/parallel-lists-of-prediluvian-patriarchs-a-psychological/Benjamin Goodnick — Parallel Lists of Prediluvian Patriarchs: A Psychological Interpretation by Benjamin Goodnick.Tue, 01 Jan 1985 00:00:00 GMTGenealogyAncient Near EastBiblical Narrativehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-ass-in-the-bible/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-ass-in-the-bible/S. P. Toperoff — The Ass in the Bible by S. P. Toperoff.Tue, 01 Jan 1985 00:00:00 GMTNature in the BibleMidrashSymbolismhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-enuma-elish-hoax/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-enuma-elish-hoax/I. Rapaport — The Enuma Elish Hoax by I. Rapaport.Tue, 01 Jan 1985 00:00:00 GMTAncient Near EastCreationComparative Religionhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-twenty-first-youth-bible-contest/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-twenty-first-youth-bible-contest/Editors — The Twenty First Youth Bible Contest by Editors.Tue, 01 Jan 1985 00:00:00 GMTBible ContestBible Educationhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/tribute-to-joseph-halpern/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/tribute-to-joseph-halpern/Editors — Tribute to Joseph Halpern by Editors.Tue, 01 Jan 1985 00:00:00 GMTJewish Bible Associationhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/tributes/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/tributes/Editors — Tributes by Editors.Tue, 01 Jan 1985 00:00:00 GMTJewish Bible Associationhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/a-guide-to-isaiah-chapter-7/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/a-guide-to-isaiah-chapter-7/Chaim Pearl — A Guide to Isaiah: Chapter 7 by Chaim Pearl.Mon, 01 Oct 1984 00:00:00 GMTProphecyBiblical ExegesisProphetic Literaturehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/book-review-the-torah-a-modern-commentary-by-w-gunther-plaut/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/book-review-the-torah-a-modern-commentary-by-w-gunther-plaut/Abraham Ruderman — Book Review: The Torah: A Modern Commentary by W. Gunther Plaut by Abraham Ruderman.Mon, 01 Oct 1984 00:00:00 GMTBook ReviewTorah CommentaryModern Jewish Thoughthttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/excess-the-hidden-root-of-evil/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/excess-the-hidden-root-of-evil/Joseph Heckelman — Excess: The Hidden Root of Evil by Joseph Heckelman.Mon, 01 Oct 1984 00:00:00 GMTBiblical EthicsBiblical Theologyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/judah-and-tamar-a-scriptural-enigma/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/judah-and-tamar-a-scriptural-enigma/Stuart A. West — Judah and Tamar: A Scriptural Enigma by Stuart A. West.Mon, 01 Oct 1984 00:00:00 GMTPatriarchal NarrativesWomen in the BibleBiblical Narrativehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/justice-for-esau/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/justice-for-esau/Edmund Berg — Justice for Esau by Edmund Berg.Mon, 01 Oct 1984 00:00:00 GMTPatriarchal NarrativesBiblical EthicsJacobhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/letters-to-the-editor-12-4/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/letters-to-the-editor-12-4/JBQ Readers — Letters to the Editor by JBQ Readers.Mon, 01 Oct 1984 00:00:00 GMThttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/reflections-of-readers-12-4/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/reflections-of-readers-12-4/Editors — Reflections of Readers by Editors.Mon, 01 Oct 1984 00:00:00 GMThttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-enigma-of-elihu/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-enigma-of-elihu/Shimon Bakon — The Enigma of Elihu by Shimon Bakon.Mon, 01 Oct 1984 00:00:00 GMTTheodicyWisdom LiteratureSufferinghttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/two-righteous-men-isaiah-and-hezekiah/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/two-righteous-men-isaiah-and-hezekiah/Chaim Abramowitz — Two Righteous Men: Isaiah and Hezekiah by Chaim Abramowitz.Mon, 01 Oct 1984 00:00:00 GMTProphecyKingshipBiblical Narrativehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/william-blake-and-biblical-imagery/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/william-blake-and-biblical-imagery/Raphael Levy — William Blake and Biblical Imagery by Raphael Levy.Mon, 01 Oct 1984 00:00:00 GMTLiterature and the BibleSymbolismHistory of Interpretationhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/a-biblical-reverie/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/a-biblical-reverie/Miriam Y. Shrager — A Biblical Reverie by Miriam Y. Shrager.Sun, 01 Jul 1984 00:00:00 GMTLiterature and the BibleBiblical Poetryhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/a-guide-to-isaiah-chapter-6/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/a-guide-to-isaiah-chapter-6/Chaim Pearl — A Guide to Isaiah: Chapter 6 by Chaim Pearl.Sun, 01 Jul 1984 00:00:00 GMTProphecyBiblical ExegesisProphetic Literaturehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/abstracts-from-beth-mikra/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/abstracts-from-beth-mikra/Mordecai Sochen — Abstracts From Beth Mikra by Mordecai Sochen.Sun, 01 Jul 1984 00:00:00 GMTBible EducationBiblical Criticismhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/adams-conquest/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/adams-conquest/Joel B. Wolowelsky — Adam’s Conquest by Joel B. Wolowelsky.Sun, 01 Jul 1984 00:00:00 GMTCreationBiblical TheologyBiblical Ethicshttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/at-the-mouth-of-two-witnesses/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/at-the-mouth-of-two-witnesses/Shimon Bakon — At the Mouth of Two Witnesses by Shimon Bakon.Sun, 01 Jul 1984 00:00:00 GMTBiblical LawRabbinic Exegesishttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/book-review-the-mark-of-cain-by-ruth-mellinkoff/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/book-review-the-mark-of-cain-by-ruth-mellinkoff/Sol Liptzin — Book Review: The Mark of Cain by Ruth Mellinkoff by Sol Liptzin.Sun, 01 Jul 1984 00:00:00 GMTBook ReviewLiterature and the BibleHistory of Interpretationhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/in-the-image-of-god/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/in-the-image-of-god/J. Cherchevsky — In the Image of God by J. Cherchevsky.Sun, 01 Jul 1984 00:00:00 GMTCreationBiblical TheologyJewish Philosophyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/letters-to-the-editor-12-3/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/letters-to-the-editor-12-3/JBQ Readers — Letters to the Editor by JBQ Readers.Sun, 01 Jul 1984 00:00:00 GMThttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/moses-and-the-spies/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/moses-and-the-spies/Norman Asher — Moses and the Spies by Norman Asher.Sun, 01 Jul 1984 00:00:00 GMTMosesLeadershipBiblical Narrativehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/reflections-of-readers/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/reflections-of-readers/Editors — Reflections of Readers by Editors.Sun, 01 Jul 1984 00:00:00 GMThttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-forthcoming-international-adult-bible-contest/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-forthcoming-international-adult-bible-contest/Editors — The Forthcoming International Adult Bible Contest by Editors.Sun, 01 Jul 1984 00:00:00 GMTBible ContestBible Educationhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-striking-of-the-rock/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-striking-of-the-rock/Jeffrey M. Cohen — The Striking of the Rock by Jeffrey M. Cohen.Sun, 01 Jul 1984 00:00:00 GMTMosesBiblical NarrativeLeadershiphttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/twins-in-transition-genesis-32-25-31-re-examined/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/twins-in-transition-genesis-32-25-31-re-examined/Herbert Rand — Twins in Transition: Genesis 32:25-31 Re-examined by Herbert Rand.Sun, 01 Jul 1984 00:00:00 GMTJacobPatriarchal NarrativesBiblical Hebrewhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/was-the-hasmonean-state-secular-in-orientation-part-2/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/was-the-hasmonean-state-secular-in-orientation-part-2/Ben Zion Luria — Was the Hasmonean State Secular in Orientation?: Part 2 by Ben Zion Luria.Sun, 01 Jul 1984 00:00:00 GMTSecond Temple PeriodKingshipIsraelhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/a-guide-to-isaiah-chapters-4-and-5/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/a-guide-to-isaiah-chapters-4-and-5/Chaim Pearl — A Guide to Isaiah: Chapters 4 and 5 by Chaim Pearl.Sun, 01 Apr 1984 00:00:00 GMTProphecyBiblical ExegesisProphetic Literaturehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/book-review-the-encyclopaedia-biblica-vols-1-8/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/book-review-the-encyclopaedia-biblica-vols-1-8/Aryeh Ben-Yosef — Book Review: The Encyclopaedia Biblica, vols. 1-8 by Aryeh Ben-Yosef.Sun, 01 Apr 1984 00:00:00 GMTBook ReviewBible Educationhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/gynomorphic-imagery-in-exilic-isaiah-40-66/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/gynomorphic-imagery-in-exilic-isaiah-40-66/Leila Leah Bronner — Gynomorphic Imagery in Exilic Isaiah (40-66) by Leila Leah Bronner.Sun, 01 Apr 1984 00:00:00 GMTWomen in the BibleProphecySymbolismhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/letters-to-the-editor-12-2/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/letters-to-the-editor-12-2/JBQ Readers — Letters to the Editor by JBQ Readers.Sun, 01 Apr 1984 00:00:00 GMThttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/moses-the-inarticulate/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/moses-the-inarticulate/Louis I. Rabinowitz — Moses the Inarticulate by Louis I. Rabinowitz.Sun, 01 Apr 1984 00:00:00 GMTMosesLeadershipExodus Narrativehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/observations-on-ta-amay-hamikra/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/observations-on-ta-amay-hamikra/Ezekiel N. Musleah — Observations on Ta-amay Hamikra by Ezekiel N. Musleah.Sun, 01 Apr 1984 00:00:00 GMTMasoretic TextLiturgyPhilologyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-flood-story-in-the-bible-and-cuneiform-literature/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-flood-story-in-the-bible-and-cuneiform-literature/I. Rapaport — The Flood Story in the Bible and Cuneiform Literature: Tablet XI of the Gilgamesh Epic Wrongly Interpreted by I. Rapaport.Sun, 01 Apr 1984 00:00:00 GMTAncient Near EastCreationComparative Religionhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-hebrew-element-in-everyday-english-parts-7-and-8/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-hebrew-element-in-everyday-english-parts-7-and-8/Gabriel A. Sivan — The Hebrew Element in Everyday English: Parts 7 and 8 by Gabriel A. Sivan.Sun, 01 Apr 1984 00:00:00 GMTBiblical HebrewPhilologyBible Translationhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-last-of-the-maccabees/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-last-of-the-maccabees/M. Hershel Levine — The Last of the Maccabees by M. Hershel Levine.Sun, 01 Apr 1984 00:00:00 GMTSecond Temple PeriodKingshipIsraelhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/was-the-hasmonean-state-secular-in-orientation-part-1/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/was-the-hasmonean-state-secular-in-orientation-part-1/Ben Zion Luria — Was the Hasmonean State Secular in Orientation?: Part 1 by Ben Zion Luria.Sun, 01 Apr 1984 00:00:00 GMTSecond Temple PeriodKingshipIsraelhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/a-guide-to-isaiah-chapter-3/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/a-guide-to-isaiah-chapter-3/Chaim Pearl — A Guide to Isaiah: Chapter 3 by Chaim Pearl.Sun, 01 Jan 1984 00:00:00 GMTProphecyBiblical ExegesisProphetic Literaturehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/aggadah-in-bible-study/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/aggadah-in-bible-study/Nehama Lyn — Aggadah in Bible Study by Nehama Lyn.Sun, 01 Jan 1984 00:00:00 GMTMidrashBible EducationRabbinic Literaturehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/book-review-liliths-daughters-women-and-religion-in/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/book-review-liliths-daughters-women-and-religion-in/Sol Liptzin — Book Review: Lilith’s Daughters: Women and Religion in Contemporary Fiction by B. H. Rigney, and In Light of Genesis by P. W. Hadas by Sol Liptzin.Sun, 01 Jan 1984 00:00:00 GMTBook ReviewWomen in the BibleLiterature and the Biblehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/book-review-the-babylonian-poem-enuma-elish-and-genesis/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/book-review-the-babylonian-poem-enuma-elish-and-genesis/Joseph Halpern — Book Review: The Babylonian Poem Enuma Elish and Genesis Chapter One by I. Rapaport by Joseph Halpern.Sun, 01 Jan 1984 00:00:00 GMTBook ReviewAncient Near EastCreationhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/cain-and-abel-story-of-creation-part-4/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/cain-and-abel-story-of-creation-part-4/Chaim Abramowitz — Cain and Abel: Story of Creation: Part 4 by Chaim Abramowitz.Sun, 01 Jan 1984 00:00:00 GMTCreationBiblical NarrativeBiblical Ethicshttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/jonah-and-nineveh-the-tragedy-of-jonah/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/jonah-and-nineveh-the-tragedy-of-jonah/Norman J. Fredman — Jonah and Nineveh: The Tragedy of Jonah by Norman J. Fredman.Sun, 01 Jan 1984 00:00:00 GMTProphecyRepentanceBiblical Narrativehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/rebekahs-beguilement-of-isaac/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/rebekahs-beguilement-of-isaac/Sol Liptzin — Rebekah’s Beguilement of Isaac by Sol Liptzin.Sun, 01 Jan 1984 00:00:00 GMTPatriarchal NarrativesWomen in the BibleBiblical Narrativehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/suggestion-for-future-bible-contests/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/suggestion-for-future-bible-contests/Ben Zion Luria — Suggestion for Future Bible Contests by Ben Zion Luria.Sun, 01 Jan 1984 00:00:00 GMTBible ContestBible Educationhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-20th-world-jewish-youth-bible-contest/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-20th-world-jewish-youth-bible-contest/Editors — The 20th World Jewish Youth Bible Contest by Editors.Sun, 01 Jan 1984 00:00:00 GMTBible ContestBible Educationhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-hebrew-element-in-everyday-english-parts-5-and-6/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-hebrew-element-in-everyday-english-parts-5-and-6/Gabriel A. Sivan — The Hebrew Element in Everyday English: Parts 5 and 6 by Gabriel A. Sivan.Sun, 01 Jan 1984 00:00:00 GMTBiblical HebrewPhilologyBible Translationhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-living-testament-of-jacob-israel/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-living-testament-of-jacob-israel/Etan Levine — The Living Testament of Jacob-Israel by Etan Levine.Sun, 01 Jan 1984 00:00:00 GMTJacobPatriarchal NarrativesBiblical Poetryhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-trial-of-jeremiah/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-trial-of-jeremiah/M. Hershel Levine — The Trial of Jeremiah by M. Hershel Levine.Sun, 01 Jan 1984 00:00:00 GMTProphecyBiblical LawBiblical Narrativehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/what-is-teruah/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/what-is-teruah/Louis Katzoff — What is Teruah by Louis Katzoff.Sun, 01 Jan 1984 00:00:00 GMTBiblical HebrewJewish FestivalsLiturgyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/a-guide-to-isaiah-chapter-2/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/a-guide-to-isaiah-chapter-2/Chaim Pearl — A Guide to Isaiah: Chapter 2 by Chaim Pearl.Sat, 01 Oct 1983 00:00:00 GMTProphecyBiblical ExegesisProphetic Literaturehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/a-new-world-and-a-new-man-utopias-in-the-era-of-the/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/a-new-world-and-a-new-man-utopias-in-the-era-of-the/Abraham Menes — A New World and a New Man: Utopias in the Era of the Babylonian Exile and the Return to Zion by Abraham Menes.Sat, 01 Oct 1983 00:00:00 GMTExileMessianismSecond Temple Periodhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/foreword/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/foreword/Editors — Foreword by Editors.Sat, 01 Oct 1983 00:00:00 GMThttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/israelites-and-aliens-part-4-under-ezra-and-nehemia/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/israelites-and-aliens-part-4-under-ezra-and-nehemia/Max M. Rothschild — Israelites and Aliens: Part 4: Under Ezra and Nehemia by Max M. Rothschild.Sat, 01 Oct 1983 00:00:00 GMTBiblical LawSecond Temple PeriodExilehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/letters-to-the-editor-11-4/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/letters-to-the-editor-11-4/JBQ Readers — Letters to the Editor by JBQ Readers.Sat, 01 Oct 1983 00:00:00 GMThttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/samuel-and-saul-the-prophetic-dimension/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/samuel-and-saul-the-prophetic-dimension/Shimon Bakon — Samuel and Saul: The Prophetic Dimension by Shimon Bakon.Sat, 01 Oct 1983 00:00:00 GMTProphecyKingshipBiblical Theologyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/samuel-and-saul-the-psychological-dimension/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/samuel-and-saul-the-psychological-dimension/Adina Katzoff — Samuel and Saul: The Psychological Dimension by Adina Katzoff.Sat, 01 Oct 1983 00:00:00 GMTKingshipProphecyBiblical Narrativehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/sauls-kingship-the-tragedy-of-a-leader/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/sauls-kingship-the-tragedy-of-a-leader/Sarah Halperin — Saul’s Kingship: The Tragedy of a Leader by Sarah Halperin.Sat, 01 Oct 1983 00:00:00 GMTKingshipLeadershipBiblical Narrativehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-hebrew-element-in-everyday-english-parts-3-and-4/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-hebrew-element-in-everyday-english-parts-3-and-4/Gabriel A. Sivan — The Hebrew Element in Everyday English: Parts 3 and 4 by Gabriel A. Sivan.Sat, 01 Oct 1983 00:00:00 GMTBiblical HebrewPhilologyBible Translationhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-prophet-samuel-and-king-saul/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-prophet-samuel-and-king-saul/Menachem Begin — The Prophet Samuel and King Saul by Menachem Begin.Sat, 01 Oct 1983 00:00:00 GMTProphecyKingshipLeadershiphttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/a-guide-to-isaiah-chapter-1/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/a-guide-to-isaiah-chapter-1/Chaim Pearl — A Guide to Isaiah: Chapter 1 by Chaim Pearl.Fri, 01 Jul 1983 00:00:00 GMTProphecyBiblical ExegesisProphetic Literaturehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/abraham-and-atlantis/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/abraham-and-atlantis/Joseph Heckelman — Abraham and Atlantis by Joseph Heckelman.Fri, 01 Jul 1983 00:00:00 GMTPatriarchal NarrativesAncient Near EastArchaeologyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/book-review-the-exile-of-the-word-from-the-silence-of-the/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/book-review-the-exile-of-the-word-from-the-silence-of-the/Gabriel A. Sivan — Book Review: The Exile of the Word: From the Silence of the Bible to the Silence of Auschwitz by André Neher by Gabriel A. Sivan.Fri, 01 Jul 1983 00:00:00 GMTBook ReviewModern Jewish ThoughtJewish Philosophyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/esthers-plan-to-save-the-jews/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/esthers-plan-to-save-the-jews/Nathan Aviezer — Esther’s Plan to Save the Jews by Nathan Aviezer.Fri, 01 Jul 1983 00:00:00 GMTEstherWomen in the BibleBiblical Narrativehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/for-the-sake-of-my-name/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/for-the-sake-of-my-name/Yitzhak Gluckman — For the Sake of My Name by Yitzhak Gluckman.Fri, 01 Jul 1983 00:00:00 GMTBiblical TheologyProphecyExilehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/letters-to-the-editor-11-3/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/letters-to-the-editor-11-3/JBQ Readers — Letters to the Editor by JBQ Readers.Fri, 01 Jul 1983 00:00:00 GMThttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/moses-the-tragedy-of-his-personal-life/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/moses-the-tragedy-of-his-personal-life/Louis I. Rabinowitz — Moses: The Tragedy of his Personal Life by Louis I. Rabinowitz.Fri, 01 Jul 1983 00:00:00 GMTMosesLeadershipBiblical Narrativehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-book-of-daniel-its-significance-and-meaning/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-book-of-daniel-its-significance-and-meaning/Asher Finkel — The Book of Daniel: Its Significance and Meaning by Asher Finkel.Fri, 01 Jul 1983 00:00:00 GMTSecond Temple PeriodMessianismProphecyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-hebrew-element-in-everyday-english-parts-1-and-2/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-hebrew-element-in-everyday-english-parts-1-and-2/Gabriel A. Sivan — The Hebrew Element in Everyday English: Parts 1 and 2 by Gabriel A. Sivan.Fri, 01 Jul 1983 00:00:00 GMTBiblical HebrewPhilologyBible Translationhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-laws-of-marriage-biblical-sources-part-2/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-laws-of-marriage-biblical-sources-part-2/Hyman Routtenberg — The Laws of Marriage: Biblical Sources: Part 2 by Hyman Routtenberg.Fri, 01 Jul 1983 00:00:00 GMTBiblical LawRabbinic LiteratureWomen in the Biblehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/book-review-the-hebrew-word-shem-and-its-original-meaning/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/book-review-the-hebrew-word-shem-and-its-original-meaning/Joseph Halpern — Book Review: The Hebrew Word Shem and its Original Meaning by I. Rapaport by Joseph Halpern.Fri, 01 Apr 1983 00:00:00 GMTBook ReviewBiblical HebrewPhilologyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/egypt-and-israel/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/egypt-and-israel/Shimon Bakon — Egypt and Israel by Shimon Bakon.Fri, 01 Apr 1983 00:00:00 GMTAncient Near EastExodus from EgyptArchaeologyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/from-mount-sinai-to-mount-moriah/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/from-mount-sinai-to-mount-moriah/Mendel Lewittes — From Mount Sinai to Mount Moriah by Mendel Lewittes.Fri, 01 Apr 1983 00:00:00 GMTTempleMosesPatriarchal Narrativeshttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/letters-to-the-editor-11-2/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/letters-to-the-editor-11-2/JBQ Readers — Letters to the Editor by JBQ Readers.Fri, 01 Apr 1983 00:00:00 GMThttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/psalm-23-a-pattern-poem/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/psalm-23-a-pattern-poem/Yaacov Bazak — Psalm 23: A Pattern Poem by Yaacov Bazak.Fri, 01 Apr 1983 00:00:00 GMTPsalmsBiblical PoetryLiterary Analysishttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/purim-and-hallel/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/purim-and-hallel/Josiah Derby — Purim and Hallel by Josiah Derby.Fri, 01 Apr 1983 00:00:00 GMTJewish FestivalsLiturgyEstherhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-cult-of-moloch/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-cult-of-moloch/Sol Liptzin — The Cult of Moloch by Sol Liptzin.Fri, 01 Apr 1983 00:00:00 GMTIdolatryAncient Near EastBiblical Lawhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-laws-of-marriage-biblical-sources/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-laws-of-marriage-biblical-sources/Hyman Routtenberg — The Laws of Marriage: Biblical Sources by Hyman Routtenberg.Fri, 01 Apr 1983 00:00:00 GMTBiblical LawRabbinic LiteratureWomen in the Biblehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-sin-of-amalek-in-bible-and-midrash/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-sin-of-amalek-in-bible-and-midrash/Nahum M. Waldman — The Sin of Amalek in Bible and Midrash by Nahum M. Waldman.Fri, 01 Apr 1983 00:00:00 GMTMidrashBiblical EthicsBiblical Narrativehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/torah-dialogues-devarim-11-2/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/torah-dialogues-devarim-11-2/Harold D. Halpern — Torah Dialogues: Devarim by Harold D. Halpern.Fri, 01 Apr 1983 00:00:00 GMTBible EducationRabbinic Exegesishttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/absaloms-story-drama-and-tragedy/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/absaloms-story-drama-and-tragedy/Louis Katzoff — Absalom’s Story: Drama and Tragedy by Louis Katzoff.Sat, 01 Jan 1983 00:00:00 GMTDavidBiblical NarrativeKingshiphttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/aliens-and-israelites-part-3-the-age-of-return/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/aliens-and-israelites-part-3-the-age-of-return/Max M. Rothschild — Aliens and Israelites: Part 3: The Age of Return by Max M. Rothschild.Sat, 01 Jan 1983 00:00:00 GMTBiblical LawSecond Temple PeriodExilehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/letters-to-the-editor-11-1/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/letters-to-the-editor-11-1/JBQ Readers — Letters to the Editor by JBQ Readers.Sat, 01 Jan 1983 00:00:00 GMThttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/mesopotamia-and-israel/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/mesopotamia-and-israel/Shimon Bakon — Mesopotamia and Israel by Shimon Bakon.Sat, 01 Jan 1983 00:00:00 GMTAncient Near EastArchaeologyPatriarchal Narrativeshttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/military-intelligence-in-the-bible-part-4/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/military-intelligence-in-the-bible-part-4/Reuben Efron — Military Intelligence in the Bible: Part 4 by Reuben Efron.Sat, 01 Jan 1983 00:00:00 GMTAncient Near EastBiblical NarrativeLeadershiphttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/reverence-for-god-and-for-the-lord/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/reverence-for-god-and-for-the-lord/Aaron Soviv — Reverence: For God and for the Lord by Aaron Soviv.Sat, 01 Jan 1983 00:00:00 GMTBiblical TheologyBiblical Hebrewhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-19th-world-jewish-youth-bible-contest/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-19th-world-jewish-youth-bible-contest/Editors — The 19th World Jewish Youth Bible Contest by Editors.Sat, 01 Jan 1983 00:00:00 GMTBible ContestBible Educationhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/torah-dialogues-deuteronomy/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/torah-dialogues-deuteronomy/Harold D. Halpern — Torah Dialogues: Deuteronomy by Harold D. Halpern.Sat, 01 Jan 1983 00:00:00 GMTBible EducationRabbinic Exegesishttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/torah-study-and-peace-of-mind/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/torah-study-and-peace-of-mind/Etan Levine — Torah Study and Peace of Mind by Etan Levine.Sat, 01 Jan 1983 00:00:00 GMTBible EducationRabbinic LiteratureModern Jewish Thoughthttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/book-review-tablet-xi-of-the-gilgamesh-epic-and-the/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/book-review-tablet-xi-of-the-gilgamesh-epic-and-the/Joseph Halpern — Book Review: Tablet XI of the Gilgamesh Epic and the Biblical Flood Story by I. Rapaport by Joseph Halpern.Fri, 01 Oct 1982 00:00:00 GMTBook ReviewAncient Near EastCreationhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/king-and-commoner-in-proverbs-and-near-eastern-sources/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/king-and-commoner-in-proverbs-and-near-eastern-sources/Leila Leah Bronner — King and Commoner in Proverbs and Near Eastern Sources by Leila Leah Bronner.Fri, 01 Oct 1982 00:00:00 GMTWisdom LiteratureKingshipAncient Near Easthttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/redemption-in-the-bible/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/redemption-in-the-bible/Arthur Hoffnung — Redemption in the Bible by Arthur Hoffnung.Fri, 01 Oct 1982 00:00:00 GMTBiblical TheologyMessianismhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/slavery-in-the-bible/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/slavery-in-the-bible/Louis Katzoff — Slavery in the Bible by Louis Katzoff.Fri, 01 Oct 1982 00:00:00 GMTBiblical LawBiblical EthicsAncient Near Easthttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/spies-princes-and-korachs-rebellion/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/spies-princes-and-korachs-rebellion/Jeffrey M. Cohen — Spies, Princes and Korach’s Rebellion by Jeffrey M. Cohen.Fri, 01 Oct 1982 00:00:00 GMTLeadershipBiblical NarrativeMoseshttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-original-palestinians/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-original-palestinians/Stuart A. West — The Original Palestinians by Stuart A. West.Fri, 01 Oct 1982 00:00:00 GMTAncient Near EastArchaeologyLand of Israelhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-story-of-creation-part-3-garden-of-eden/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-story-of-creation-part-3-garden-of-eden/Chaim Abramowitz — The Story of Creation: Part 3: Garden of Eden by Chaim Abramowitz.Fri, 01 Oct 1982 00:00:00 GMTCreationBiblical TheologySymbolismhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/torah-dialogues-devarim-10-4/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/torah-dialogues-devarim-10-4/Harold D. Halpern — Torah Dialogues: Devarim by Harold D. Halpern.Fri, 01 Oct 1982 00:00:00 GMTBible EducationRabbinic Exegesishttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/tribute-to-professor-liptzin/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/tribute-to-professor-liptzin/Editors — Tribute to Professor Liptzin by Editors.Fri, 01 Oct 1982 00:00:00 GMTJewish Bible Associationhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/amos-prophet-and-worldly-man/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/amos-prophet-and-worldly-man/Ben Zion Luria — Amos: Prophet and Worldly Man by Ben Zion Luria.Thu, 01 Jul 1982 00:00:00 GMTProphecyBiblical EthicsProphetic Literaturehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/justice-in-solomons-court/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/justice-in-solomons-court/Herbert Rand — Justice in Solomon’s Court by Herbert Rand.Thu, 01 Jul 1982 00:00:00 GMTKingshipBiblical LawWisdom Literaturehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/letters-to-the-editor-10-3/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/letters-to-the-editor-10-3/JBQ Readers — Letters to the Editor by JBQ Readers.Thu, 01 Jul 1982 00:00:00 GMThttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-hebrew-word-shem-a-new-interpretation-of-several/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-hebrew-word-shem-a-new-interpretation-of-several/I. Rapaport — The Hebrew Word Shem: A New Interpretation of Several Biblical Passages by I. Rapaport.Thu, 01 Jul 1982 00:00:00 GMTBiblical HebrewPhilologyBiblical Exegesishttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-judgement-of-solomon/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-judgement-of-solomon/Sol Liptzin — The Judgement of Solomon by Sol Liptzin.Thu, 01 Jul 1982 00:00:00 GMTKingshipWisdom LiteratureLiterature and the Biblehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-plague-in-i-samuel-5-and-6/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-plague-in-i-samuel-5-and-6/Myron Eichler — The Plague in I Samuel 5 and 6 by Myron Eichler.Thu, 01 Jul 1982 00:00:00 GMTBiblical NarrativeAncient Near EastIdolatryhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-story-of-creation-part-2-genesis-chapter-2/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-story-of-creation-part-2-genesis-chapter-2/Chaim Abramowitz — The Story of Creation: Part 2: Genesis Chapter 2 by Chaim Abramowitz.Thu, 01 Jul 1982 00:00:00 GMTCreationBiblical Theologyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/torah-dialogues-devarim-10-3/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/torah-dialogues-devarim-10-3/Harold D. Halpern — Torah Dialogues: Devarim by Harold D. Halpern.Thu, 01 Jul 1982 00:00:00 GMTBible EducationRabbinic Exegesishttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/tribute-to-ben-zion-luria/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/tribute-to-ben-zion-luria/Editors — Tribute to Ben Zion Luria by Editors.Thu, 01 Jul 1982 00:00:00 GMTJewish Bible Associationhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/aliens-and-israelites-part-2/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/aliens-and-israelites-part-2/Max M. Rothschild — Aliens and Israelites: Part 2 by Max M. Rothschild.Thu, 01 Apr 1982 00:00:00 GMTBiblical LawBiblical EthicsAncient Near Easthttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/jacob-man-of-destiny-part-3-the-turning-point/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/jacob-man-of-destiny-part-3-the-turning-point/Shimon Bakon — Jacob, Man of Destiny: Part 3: The Turning Point by Shimon Bakon.Thu, 01 Apr 1982 00:00:00 GMTJacobPatriarchal NarrativesBiblical Narrativehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/semitic-influences-and-the-bible-text/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/semitic-influences-and-the-bible-text/Stanley Schneider — Semitic Influences and the Bible Text by Stanley Schneider.Thu, 01 Apr 1982 00:00:00 GMTAncient Near EastPhilologyTextual Criticismhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/speculations-on-job/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/speculations-on-job/Sam M. Silverman — Speculations on Job by Sam M. Silverman.Thu, 01 Apr 1982 00:00:00 GMTTheodicySufferingWisdom Literaturehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-antwerp-polyglot-bible-1568-1573-a-triumph-of-hebraism/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-antwerp-polyglot-bible-1568-1573-a-triumph-of-hebraism/Gabriel A. Sivan — The Antwerp Polyglot Bible (1568-1573): A Triumph of Hebraism by Gabriel A. Sivan.Thu, 01 Apr 1982 00:00:00 GMTBible TranslationHistory of InterpretationChristianity and the Biblehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-fifth-adult-international-bible-contest/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-fifth-adult-international-bible-contest/Editors — The Fifth Adult International Bible Contest by Editors.Thu, 01 Apr 1982 00:00:00 GMTBible ContestBible Educationhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-love-of-david-and-michal/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-love-of-david-and-michal/Sol Liptzin — The Love of David and Michal by Sol Liptzin.Thu, 01 Apr 1982 00:00:00 GMTDavidWomen in the BibleBiblical Narrativehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-makers-of-israel-a-note-on-psalm-149/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-makers-of-israel-a-note-on-psalm-149/Louis I. Rabinowitz — The Makers of Israel: A Note on Psalm 149 by Louis I. Rabinowitz.Thu, 01 Apr 1982 00:00:00 GMTPsalmsBiblical PoetryIsraelhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/torah-dialogues-devarim/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/torah-dialogues-devarim/Harold D. Halpern — Torah Dialogues: Devarim by Harold D. Halpern.Thu, 01 Apr 1982 00:00:00 GMTBible EducationRabbinic Exegesishttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/tribute-to-professor-gevaryahu/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/tribute-to-professor-gevaryahu/Editors — Tribute to Professor Gevaryahu by Editors.Thu, 01 Apr 1982 00:00:00 GMTJewish Bible Associationhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/and-a-fountain-shall-come-forth-from-the-house-of-the-lord/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/and-a-fountain-shall-come-forth-from-the-house-of-the-lord/Ben Zion Luria — And a Fountain Shall Come Forth From the House of the Lord by Ben Zion Luria.Fri, 01 Jan 1982 00:00:00 GMTProphecyTempleJerusalemhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/jacob-man-of-destiny-his-youth/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/jacob-man-of-destiny-his-youth/Shimon Bakon — Jacob, Man of Destiny: His Youth by Shimon Bakon.Fri, 01 Jan 1982 00:00:00 GMTJacobPatriarchal NarrativesBiblical Narrativehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/ki-yetzer-lev-haadam-ra-minurav/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/ki-yetzer-lev-haadam-ra-minurav/Louis Katzoff — כי יצר לב האדם רע מנעוריו by Louis Katzoff.Fri, 01 Jan 1982 00:00:00 GMTBiblical TheologyBiblical EthicsCreationhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/letters-to-the-editor-10-1/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/letters-to-the-editor-10-1/JBQ Readers — Letters to the Editor by JBQ Readers.Fri, 01 Jan 1982 00:00:00 GMThttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-18th-world-jewish-youth-bible-contest/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-18th-world-jewish-youth-bible-contest/Editors — The 18th World Jewish Youth Bible Contest by Editors.Fri, 01 Jan 1982 00:00:00 GMTBible ContestBible Educationhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-story-of-creation-in-the-bible/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-story-of-creation-in-the-bible/Chaim Abramowitz — The Story of Creation in the Bible by Chaim Abramowitz.Fri, 01 Jan 1982 00:00:00 GMTCreationBiblical TheologyAncient Near Easthttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-tower-of-babel/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-tower-of-babel/Sol Liptzin — The Tower of Babel by Sol Liptzin.Fri, 01 Jan 1982 00:00:00 GMTCreationLiterature and the BibleAncient Near Easthttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-universalism-of-the-book-of-jonah-according-to-the/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-universalism-of-the-book-of-jonah-according-to-the/Haim Gevaryahu — The Universalism of the Book of Jonah: According to the Teaching of Yehezkel Kaufmann by Haim Gevaryahu.Fri, 01 Jan 1982 00:00:00 GMTProphecyChosennessBiblical Criticismhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/torah-dialogues-bemidbar-10-1/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/torah-dialogues-bemidbar-10-1/Harold D. Halpern — Torah Dialogues: Bemidbar by Harold D. Halpern.Fri, 01 Jan 1982 00:00:00 GMTBible EducationRabbinic Exegesishttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/tribute-to-dr-katzoff/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/tribute-to-dr-katzoff/Editors — Tribute to Dr. Katzoff by Editors.Fri, 01 Jan 1982 00:00:00 GMTJewish Bible Associationhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/aliens-and-israelites-part-1/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/aliens-and-israelites-part-1/Max M. Rothchild — Aliens and Israelites: Part 1 by Max M. Rothchild.Thu, 01 Oct 1981 00:00:00 GMTBiblical LawBiblical Ethicshttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/book-review-the-seven-days-of-the-beginning-by-elie-munk/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/book-review-the-seven-days-of-the-beginning-by-elie-munk/Joseph Halpern — Book Review: The Seven Days of the Beginning by Elie Munk by Joseph Halpern.Thu, 01 Oct 1981 00:00:00 GMTBook ReviewCreationhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/international-bible-contest/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/international-bible-contest/Yitzhak Gluckman — International Bible Contest by Yitzhak Gluckman.Thu, 01 Oct 1981 00:00:00 GMTBible ContestBible Educationhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/letters-to-the-editor-9-4/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/letters-to-the-editor-9-4/Harold M. Kamsler — Letters to the Editor: A Further Note on the Torn Robe by Harold M. Kamsler.Thu, 01 Oct 1981 00:00:00 GMTKingshipBiblical Narrativehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/military-intelligence-in-the-bible-part-3/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/military-intelligence-in-the-bible-part-3/Reuben Efron — Military Intelligence in the Bible: Part 3 by Reuben Efron.Thu, 01 Oct 1981 00:00:00 GMTAncient Near EastBiblical Narrativehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/on-dukhan/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/on-dukhan/Edmund Berg — On “Dukhan” by Edmund Berg.Thu, 01 Oct 1981 00:00:00 GMTBiblical HebrewLiturgyPriesthoodhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/schiller-on-moses/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/schiller-on-moses/Sol Liptzin — Schiller on Moses by Sol Liptzin.Thu, 01 Oct 1981 00:00:00 GMTMosesHistory of Interpretationhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-development-of-biblical-prayer/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-development-of-biblical-prayer/Etan Levine — The Development of Biblical Prayer by Etan Levine.Thu, 01 Oct 1981 00:00:00 GMTPrayerLiturgyBiblical Theologyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-mystery-of-genesis-36/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-mystery-of-genesis-36/Stuart A. West — The Mystery of Genesis 36 by Stuart A. West.Thu, 01 Oct 1981 00:00:00 GMTGenealogyPatriarchal NarrativesAncient Near Easthttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/torah-dialogues-bemidbar/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/torah-dialogues-bemidbar/Harold D. Halpern — Torah Dialogues: Bemidbar by Harold D. Halpern.Thu, 01 Oct 1981 00:00:00 GMTBible EducationRabbinic Exegesishttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/why-did-joseph-let-his-father-mourn-for-him/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/why-did-joseph-let-his-father-mourn-for-him/Norman Asher — Why Did Joseph Let His Father Mourn For Him? by Norman Asher.Thu, 01 Oct 1981 00:00:00 GMTJosephPatriarchal NarrativesBiblical Ethicshttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/changing-laws/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/changing-laws/Hyman Routtenberg — Changing Laws by Hyman Routtenberg.Wed, 01 Jul 1981 00:00:00 GMTBiblical LawRabbinic Literaturehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/in-the-language-of-man/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/in-the-language-of-man/Chaim Abramowitz — In the Language of Man by Chaim Abramowitz.Wed, 01 Jul 1981 00:00:00 GMTBiblical HebrewBiblical Theologyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/letters-to-the-editor-9-3/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/letters-to-the-editor-9-3/JBQ Readers — Letters to the Editor by JBQ Readers.Wed, 01 Jul 1981 00:00:00 GMThttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/rahab-of-jericho/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/rahab-of-jericho/Sol Liptzin — Rahab of Jericho by Sol Liptzin.Wed, 01 Jul 1981 00:00:00 GMTWomen in the BibleHistory of Interpretationhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-confirmation-of-noahs-blessing-an-interpretation-of/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-confirmation-of-noahs-blessing-an-interpretation-of/Aaron Soviv — The Confirmation of Noah’s Blessing: An Interpretation of Genesis 8:21-9:11 by Aaron Soviv.Wed, 01 Jul 1981 00:00:00 GMTBiblical NarrativeGenealogyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-symbols-of-nature-in-israel-and-in-the-ancient-near-east/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-symbols-of-nature-in-israel-and-in-the-ancient-near-east/Kalman Yaron — The Symbols of Nature in Israel and in the Ancient Near East by Kalman Yaron.Wed, 01 Jul 1981 00:00:00 GMTAncient Near EastCreationBiblical Poetryhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/torah-dialogues-9-3/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/torah-dialogues-9-3/Harold D. Halpern — Torah Dialogues by Harold D. Halpern.Wed, 01 Jul 1981 00:00:00 GMTBible EducationRabbinic Exegesishttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/whats-in-a-biblical-name/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/whats-in-a-biblical-name/Louis Katzoff — What’s in a Biblical Name by Louis Katzoff.Wed, 01 Jul 1981 00:00:00 GMTNamesBiblical Hebrewhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/abishag-the-shunammite/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/abishag-the-shunammite/Sol Liptzin — Abishag the Shunammite by Sol Liptzin.Wed, 01 Apr 1981 00:00:00 GMTWomen in the BibleKingshipBiblical Narrativehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/and-thou-shalt-love-thy-neighbor-as-thyself/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/and-thou-shalt-love-thy-neighbor-as-thyself/Edmund Berg — And Thou Shalt Love Thy Neighbor as Thyself by Edmund Berg.Wed, 01 Apr 1981 00:00:00 GMTBiblical EthicsBiblical LawRabbinic Exegesishttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/balaam-an-unauthentic-prophet/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/balaam-an-unauthentic-prophet/Shimon Bakon — Balaam: An Unauthentic Prophet by Shimon Bakon.Wed, 01 Apr 1981 00:00:00 GMTBalaamProphecyBiblical Narrativehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/sacrificial-cult-among-the-exiles-in-egypt-but-not-babylon/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/sacrificial-cult-among-the-exiles-in-egypt-but-not-babylon/Leah Bonner — Sacrificial Cult among the Exiles in Egypt but not Babylon – Why? by Leah Bonner.Wed, 01 Apr 1981 00:00:00 GMTExileSacrificeSecond Temple Periodhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-divine-name-e-l-shad-dai-he-who-created-families/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-divine-name-e-l-shad-dai-he-who-created-families/Norman J. Fredman — The Divine Name E-L Shad-dai: He Who Created Families by Norman J. Fredman.Wed, 01 Apr 1981 00:00:00 GMTBiblical HebrewBiblical TheologyPatriarchal Narrativeshttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/torah-dialogues-9-2/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/torah-dialogues-9-2/Harold D. Halpern — Torah Dialogues by Harold D. Halpern.Wed, 01 Apr 1981 00:00:00 GMTBible EducationRabbinic Exegesishttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/editorial-9-1/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/editorial-9-1/Louis Katzoff — Editorial by Louis Katzoff.Thu, 01 Jan 1981 00:00:00 GMThttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/elijah/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/elijah/Shimon Bakon — Elijah by Shimon Bakon.Thu, 01 Jan 1981 00:00:00 GMTProphecyBiblical Narrativehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/introduction-to-a-new-kohelet-commentary/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/introduction-to-a-new-kohelet-commentary/Elchanan Blumenthal — Introduction to a New Kohelet Commentary by Elchanan Blumenthal.Thu, 01 Jan 1981 00:00:00 GMTWisdom LiteratureBiblical Exegesishttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/moses-man-of-indecision/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/moses-man-of-indecision/Stuart A. Weiss — Moses: Man of Indecision by Stuart A. Weiss.Thu, 01 Jan 1981 00:00:00 GMTMosesLeadershipExodus Narrativehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/seventeenth-world-youth-bible-contest/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/seventeenth-world-youth-bible-contest/Editors — Seventeenth World Youth Bible Contest by Editors.Thu, 01 Jan 1981 00:00:00 GMTBible ContestBible Educationhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/solomons-humiliation/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/solomons-humiliation/Sol Liptzin — Solomon’s Humiliation by Sol Liptzin.Thu, 01 Jan 1981 00:00:00 GMTKingshipMidrashBiblical Narrativehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/torah-dialogues-9-1/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/torah-dialogues-9-1/Harold D. Halpern — Torah Dialogues by Harold D. Halpern.Thu, 01 Jan 1981 00:00:00 GMTBible EducationRabbinic Exegesishttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/tragedy-in-the-bible/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/tragedy-in-the-bible/Sarah Halperin — Tragedy in the Bible by Sarah Halperin.Thu, 01 Jan 1981 00:00:00 GMTLiterature and the BibleBiblical NarrativeSufferinghttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/a-biblical-protest-against-the-violation-of-women/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/a-biblical-protest-against-the-violation-of-women/M. Hershel Levine — A Biblical Protest Against the Violation of Women by M. Hershel Levine.Wed, 01 Oct 1980 00:00:00 GMTWomen in the BibleBiblical EthicsBiblical Narrativehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/hezekiah-and-josiah-a-comparison/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/hezekiah-and-josiah-a-comparison/David Glatt — Hezekiah and Josiah: A Comparison by David Glatt.Wed, 01 Oct 1980 00:00:00 GMTKingshipTempleBiblical Narrativehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/message-to-the-bible-readers-union/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/message-to-the-bible-readers-union/Joseph Halpern — Message to the Bible Readers’ Union by Joseph Halpern.Wed, 01 Oct 1980 00:00:00 GMTJewish Bible AssociationBible Educationhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-biblical-tradition-of-popular-democracy/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-biblical-tradition-of-popular-democracy/Sol Liptzin — The Biblical Tradition of Popular Democracy by Sol Liptzin.Wed, 01 Oct 1980 00:00:00 GMTKingshipBiblical EthicsLeadershiphttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-dialectic-of-faith-and-doubt-in-the-philosophy-of/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-dialectic-of-faith-and-doubt-in-the-philosophy-of/Elliot R. Wolfson — The Dialectic of Faith and Doubt in the Philosophy of Socrates and the Piety of Job by Elliot R. Wolfson.Wed, 01 Oct 1980 00:00:00 GMTJewish PhilosophyTheodicySufferinghttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-evolving-symbolism-of-the-burning-bush/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-evolving-symbolism-of-the-burning-bush/Etan Levin — The Evolving Symbolism of the Burning Bush by Etan Levin.Wed, 01 Oct 1980 00:00:00 GMTSymbolismMosesExodus Narrativehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-golden-calf-in-exodus-32-a-foundry-engineers/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-golden-calf-in-exodus-32-a-foundry-engineers/Eli Minoff — The Golden Calf in Exodus 32: A Foundry Engineer’s Interpretation by Eli Minoff.Wed, 01 Oct 1980 00:00:00 GMTIdolatryExodus NarrativeAncient Near Easthttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-prophets-nationalist-or-universalist/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-prophets-nationalist-or-universalist/Jacob Chinitz — The Prophets: Nationalist or Universalist by Jacob Chinitz.Wed, 01 Oct 1980 00:00:00 GMTProphecyChosennessBiblical Theologyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/torah-dialogues-8-4/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/torah-dialogues-8-4/Harold D. Halpern — Torah Dialogues by Harold D. Halpern.Wed, 01 Oct 1980 00:00:00 GMTBible EducationRabbinic Exegesishttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/why-did-samuel-initially-reject-monarchy/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/why-did-samuel-initially-reject-monarchy/Shimon Bakon — Why Did Samuel Initially Reject Monarchy? by Shimon Bakon.Wed, 01 Oct 1980 00:00:00 GMTKingshipProphecyLeadershiphttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/princess-hagar/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/princess-hagar/Sol Liptzin — Princess Hagar by Sol Liptzin.Tue, 01 Jul 1980 00:00:00 GMTWomen in the BiblePatriarchal NarrativesMidrashhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-prophet-and-the-king-8-3/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-prophet-and-the-king-8-3/Arye Bartal — The Prophet and the King by Arye Bartal.Tue, 01 Jul 1980 00:00:00 GMTProphecyKingshipBiblical Narrativehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-rape-of-dinah-and-the-conquest-of-shechem/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-rape-of-dinah-and-the-conquest-of-shechem/Stuart A. West — The Rape of Dinah and the Conquest of Shechem by Stuart A. West.Tue, 01 Jul 1980 00:00:00 GMTPatriarchal NarrativesWomen in the BibleBiblical Ethicshttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-torn-robe-a-study-of-i-samuel-15-26-28/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-torn-robe-a-study-of-i-samuel-15-26-28/Lawrence M. Silverman — The Torn Robe: A Study of I Samuel 15:26-28 by Lawrence M. Silverman.Tue, 01 Jul 1980 00:00:00 GMTKingshipProphecyBiblical Narrativehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-trials-of-abraham/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-trials-of-abraham/Chaim Abramowitz — The Trials of Abraham by Chaim Abramowitz.Tue, 01 Jul 1980 00:00:00 GMTPatriarchal NarrativesMidrashBiblical Theologyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/torah-dialogues-8-3/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/torah-dialogues-8-3/Harold D. Halpern — Torah Dialogues by Harold D. Halpern.Tue, 01 Jul 1980 00:00:00 GMTBible EducationRabbinic Exegesishttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/after-the-youth-bible-contest/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/after-the-youth-bible-contest/Editors — After the Youth Bible Contest by Editors.Tue, 01 Apr 1980 00:00:00 GMTBible ContestBible Educationhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/book-review-talks-on-scripture-vol-2-the-latter-prophets/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/book-review-talks-on-scripture-vol-2-the-latter-prophets/Joseph Halpern — Book Review: Talks on Scripture, vol. 2: The Latter Prophets by Joseph Halpern.Tue, 01 Apr 1980 00:00:00 GMTBook ReviewProphecyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/letters-to-the-editor-8-2/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/letters-to-the-editor-8-2/JBQ Readers — Letters to the Editor by JBQ Readers.Tue, 01 Apr 1980 00:00:00 GMThttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/nabal-and-abigail/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/nabal-and-abigail/Sol Liptzin — Nabal and Abigail by Sol Liptzin.Tue, 01 Apr 1980 00:00:00 GMTBiblical NarrativeWomen in the BibleDavidhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/prophecy-a-phenomenological-approach-part-3-emergence-of/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/prophecy-a-phenomenological-approach-part-3-emergence-of/Shimon Bakon — Prophecy: A Phenomenological Approach: Part 3: Emergence of Literary Prophecy by Shimon Bakon.Tue, 01 Apr 1980 00:00:00 GMTProphecyJewish PhilosophyProphetic Literaturehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/prophecy-and-halacha/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/prophecy-and-halacha/Hyman Routtenberg — Prophecy and Halacha by Hyman Routtenberg.Tue, 01 Apr 1980 00:00:00 GMTProphecyBiblical LawRabbinic Literaturehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/testing-god-a-midrash-on-the-akeda/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/testing-god-a-midrash-on-the-akeda/Joel B. Wolowelsky — Testing God: A Midrash on the Akeda by Joel B. Wolowelsky.Tue, 01 Apr 1980 00:00:00 GMTMidrashAkedahPatriarchal Narrativeshttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-physical-characteristics-of-a-torah-scroll/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-physical-characteristics-of-a-torah-scroll/Etan Levin — The Physical Characteristics of a Torah Scroll by Etan Levin.Tue, 01 Apr 1980 00:00:00 GMTMasoretic TextRabbinic LiteratureTorah Commentaryhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/torah-dialogues-8-2/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/torah-dialogues-8-2/Harold D. Halpern — Torah Dialogues by Harold D. Halpern.Tue, 01 Apr 1980 00:00:00 GMTBible EducationRabbinic Exegesishttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/tov-vara-bamikra/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/tov-vara-bamikra/Leonard Warner — טוב ורע במקרא by Leonard Warner.Tue, 01 Apr 1980 00:00:00 GMTBiblical TheologyBiblical Ethicshttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/balaam-the-magician/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/balaam-the-magician/Chaim Abramowitz — Balaam the Magician by Chaim Abramowitz.Tue, 01 Jan 1980 00:00:00 GMTProphecyIdolatryBiblical Narrativehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/bible-mistranslations-a-supplementary-note/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/bible-mistranslations-a-supplementary-note/Gabriel A. Sivan — Bible Mistranslations: A Supplementary Note by Gabriel A. Sivan.Tue, 01 Jan 1980 00:00:00 GMTBible TranslationPhilologyBiblical Hebrewhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/darshanim-project/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/darshanim-project/Aaron M. Wise — Darshanim Project by Aaron M. Wise.Tue, 01 Jan 1980 00:00:00 GMTBible EducationHomileticshttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/isaiah-and-the-computer/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/isaiah-and-the-computer/Yehuda T. Radday — Isaiah and the Computer by Yehuda T. Radday.Tue, 01 Jan 1980 00:00:00 GMTBiblical CriticismTextual CriticismScience and the Biblehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/letters-to-the-editor-8-1/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/letters-to-the-editor-8-1/JBQ Readers — Letters to the Editor by JBQ Readers.Tue, 01 Jan 1980 00:00:00 GMThttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/prophecy-a-phenomenological-approach-part-2/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/prophecy-a-phenomenological-approach-part-2/Shimon Bakon — Prophecy: A Phenomenological Approach: Part 2 by Shimon Bakon.Tue, 01 Jan 1980 00:00:00 GMTProphecyJewish Philosophyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/sixteenth-world-youth-bible-contest/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/sixteenth-world-youth-bible-contest/Editors — Sixteenth World Youth Bible Contest by Editors.Tue, 01 Jan 1980 00:00:00 GMTBible EducationIsraelhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/sulamith-unallegorized/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/sulamith-unallegorized/Sol Liptzin — Sulamith Unallegorized by Sol Liptzin.Tue, 01 Jan 1980 00:00:00 GMTBiblical PoetryHistory of InterpretationWomen in the Biblehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-nuzi-tablets-reflections-on-the-patriarchal-narratives/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-nuzi-tablets-reflections-on-the-patriarchal-narratives/Stuart A. West — The Nuzi Tablets: Reflections on the Patriarchal Narratives by Stuart A. West.Tue, 01 Jan 1980 00:00:00 GMTAncient Near EastArchaeologyPatriarchal Narrativeshttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/torah-dialogues-8-1/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/torah-dialogues-8-1/Harold D. Halpern — Torah Dialogues by Harold D. Halpern.Tue, 01 Jan 1980 00:00:00 GMTBible EducationRabbinic Exegesishttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/editorial-7-4/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/editorial-7-4/Louis Katzoff — Editorial by Louis Katzoff.Mon, 01 Oct 1979 00:00:00 GMTBible Educationhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/holy-cities-in-the-land-of-ephraim-revisited/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/holy-cities-in-the-land-of-ephraim-revisited/Haim Gevaryahu — Holy Cities in the Land of Ephraim Revisited by Haim Gevaryahu.Mon, 01 Oct 1979 00:00:00 GMTLand of IsraelArchaeologyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/pharaoh-now-has-only-one-option/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/pharaoh-now-has-only-one-option/Gabriel A. Sivan — Pharaoh Now Has Only One Option by Gabriel A. Sivan.Mon, 01 Oct 1979 00:00:00 GMTExodus from EgyptModern Jewish Thoughthttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/prophecy-a-phenomenological-approach-part-1/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/prophecy-a-phenomenological-approach-part-1/Shimon Bakon — Prophecy: A Phenomenological Approach: Part 1 by Shimon Bakon.Mon, 01 Oct 1979 00:00:00 GMTProphecyJewish Philosophyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/solomon-and-the-queen-of-sheba/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/solomon-and-the-queen-of-sheba/Sol Liptzin — Solomon and the Queen of Sheba by Sol Liptzin.Mon, 01 Oct 1979 00:00:00 GMTKingshipHistory of InterpretationAncient Near Easthttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-western-wall-part-7-7-4/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-western-wall-part-7-7-4/Ben Zion Luria — The Western Wall: Part 7 by Ben Zion Luria.Mon, 01 Oct 1979 00:00:00 GMTTempleLand of IsraelArchaeologyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/torah-dialogues-7-4/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/torah-dialogues-7-4/Harold D. Halpern — Torah Dialogues by Harold D. Halpern.Mon, 01 Oct 1979 00:00:00 GMTBible EducationRabbinic Exegesishttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/was-jonathan-guilty-a-study-of-i-samuel-chapter-14/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/was-jonathan-guilty-a-study-of-i-samuel-chapter-14/Lawrence M. Silverman — Was Jonathan Guilty: A Study of I Samuel Chapter 14 by Lawrence M. Silverman.Mon, 01 Oct 1979 00:00:00 GMTKingshipBiblical EthicsBiblical Narrativehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/belshazzars-folly/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/belshazzars-folly/Sol Liptzin — Belshazzar’s Folly by Sol Liptzin.Sun, 01 Jul 1979 00:00:00 GMTAncient Near EastHistory of Interpretationhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/bible-news-around-the-world/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/bible-news-around-the-world/Editors — Bible News Around the World by Editors.Sun, 01 Jul 1979 00:00:00 GMTJewish Bible AssociationBible Educationhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/restoration-of-a-holy-nation-445-bce/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/restoration-of-a-holy-nation-445-bce/Bezalel Porten — Restoration of a Holy Nation (445 BCE) by Bezalel Porten.Sun, 01 Jul 1979 00:00:00 GMTSecond Temple PeriodChosennesshttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-babylonian-captivity/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-babylonian-captivity/Shimon Bakon — The Babylonian Captivity by Shimon Bakon.Sun, 01 Jul 1979 00:00:00 GMTDiasporaAncient Near EastProphecyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-habiru-and-the-hebrews-from-a-social-class-to-an-ethnic/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-habiru-and-the-hebrews-from-a-social-class-to-an-ethnic/Stuart A. West — The Habiru and the Hebrews: From a Social Class to an Ethnic Group by Stuart A. West.Sun, 01 Jul 1979 00:00:00 GMTAncient Near EastArchaeologyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-western-wall-part-7/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-western-wall-part-7/Ben Zion Luria — The Western Wall: Part 7 by Ben Zion Luria.Sun, 01 Jul 1979 00:00:00 GMTTempleLand of IsraelArchaeologyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/torah-dialogues-part-2/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/torah-dialogues-part-2/Harold D. Halpern — Torah Dialogues: Part 2 by Harold D. Halpern.Sun, 01 Jul 1979 00:00:00 GMTBible EducationRabbinic Exegesishttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/adams-rib/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/adams-rib/Elliot B. Gertel — Adam’s Rib by Elliot B. Gertel.Sun, 01 Apr 1979 00:00:00 GMTCreationWomen in the BibleMidrashhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/hammurabi-and-biblical-laws/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/hammurabi-and-biblical-laws/Miriam Y. Shrager — Hammurabi and Biblical Laws by Miriam Y. Shrager.Sun, 01 Apr 1979 00:00:00 GMTBiblical LawAncient Near Easthttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/lady-asenath/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/lady-asenath/Sol Liptzin — Lady Asenath by Sol Liptzin.Sun, 01 Apr 1979 00:00:00 GMTJosephWomen in the BibleHistory of Interpretationhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/some-psychological-insights-into-the-life-of-abraham/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/some-psychological-insights-into-the-life-of-abraham/Max Pusin — Some Psychological Insights into the Life of Abraham by Max Pusin.Sun, 01 Apr 1979 00:00:00 GMTPatriarchal NarrativesBiblical Narrativehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-hand-on-the-door-song-of-songs-5-4/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-hand-on-the-door-song-of-songs-5-4/Chaim Abramowitz — The Hand on the Door (Song of Songs 5:4) by Chaim Abramowitz.Sun, 01 Apr 1979 00:00:00 GMTBiblical NarrativeBiblical Hebrewhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-western-wall-part-6/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-western-wall-part-6/Ben Zion Luria — The Western Wall: Part 6 by Ben Zion Luria.Sun, 01 Apr 1979 00:00:00 GMTTempleLand of IsraelArchaeologyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/torah-dialogues-7-2/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/torah-dialogues-7-2/Harold D. Halpern — Torah Dialogues by Harold D. Halpern.Sun, 01 Apr 1979 00:00:00 GMTBible EducationRabbinic Exegesishttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/bible-translations-and-mistranslations/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/bible-translations-and-mistranslations/Chaim Abramowitz — Bible Translations and Mistranslations by Chaim Abramowitz.Mon, 01 Jan 1979 00:00:00 GMTBible TranslationPhilologyBiblical Hebrewhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/book-review-archeology-of-the-bible-book-by-book-by-gaalyah/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/book-review-archeology-of-the-bible-book-by-book-by-gaalyah/Louis Katzoff — Book Review: Archeology of the Bible: Book by Book by Gaalyah Cornfeld by Louis Katzoff.Mon, 01 Jan 1979 00:00:00 GMTBook ReviewArchaeologyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/fifteenth-world-youth-bible-contest/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/fifteenth-world-youth-bible-contest/Editors — Fifteenth World Youth Bible Contest by Editors.Mon, 01 Jan 1979 00:00:00 GMTBible EducationIsraelhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/jonah-transition-from-seer-to-prophet/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/jonah-transition-from-seer-to-prophet/Zalman Shazar — Jonah: Transition From Seer to Prophet by Zalman Shazar.Mon, 01 Jan 1979 00:00:00 GMTProphecyBiblical Narrativehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/laws-of-shabbat-biblical-sources-part-5/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/laws-of-shabbat-biblical-sources-part-5/Hyman Routtenberg — Laws of Shabbat – Biblical Sources: Part 5 by Hyman Routtenberg.Mon, 01 Jan 1979 00:00:00 GMTSabbathBiblical LawRabbinic Literaturehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-book-of-jonah-a-lesson-for-all-generations/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-book-of-jonah-a-lesson-for-all-generations/Yitzhak Shalev — The Book of Jonah: A Lesson for all Generations by Yitzhak Shalev.Mon, 01 Jan 1979 00:00:00 GMTProphecyRepentancehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-literary-impact-of-jonah/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-literary-impact-of-jonah/Sol Liptzin — The Literary Impact of Jonah by Sol Liptzin.Mon, 01 Jan 1979 00:00:00 GMTHistory of InterpretationProphecyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-origin-of-the-synagogue/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-origin-of-the-synagogue/S. Joshua Kohn — The Origin of the Synagogue by S. Joshua Kohn.Mon, 01 Jan 1979 00:00:00 GMTSecond Temple PeriodLiturgyArchaeologyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-western-wall-part-5/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-western-wall-part-5/Ben Zion Luria — The Western Wall: Part 5 by Ben Zion Luria.Mon, 01 Jan 1979 00:00:00 GMTTempleLand of IsraelArchaeologyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/a-bar-mitzvah-ceremony-at-the-kotel/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/a-bar-mitzvah-ceremony-at-the-kotel/Editors — A Bar Mitzvah Ceremony at the Kotel by Editors.Sun, 01 Oct 1978 00:00:00 GMTTempleIsraelhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/book-review-torah-for-the-family-by-lipis-and-katzoff/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/book-review-torah-for-the-family-by-lipis-and-katzoff/Joseph Halpern — Book Review: Torah for the Family by Lipis and Katzoff by Joseph Halpern.Sun, 01 Oct 1978 00:00:00 GMTBook ReviewBible Educationhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/from-biblical-religion-to-judaism/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/from-biblical-religion-to-judaism/Hugo Mantel — From Biblical Religion to Judaism by Hugo Mantel.Sun, 01 Oct 1978 00:00:00 GMTSecond Temple PeriodBiblical Theologyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/military-intelligence-in-the-bible-part-2/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/military-intelligence-in-the-bible-part-2/Reuben Efron — Military Intelligence in the Bible Part 2 by Reuben Efron.Sun, 01 Oct 1978 00:00:00 GMTAncient Near EastBiblical Narrativehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/music-in-the-bible/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/music-in-the-bible/Shimon Bakon — Music in the Bible by Shimon Bakon.Sun, 01 Oct 1978 00:00:00 GMTLiturgyTempleAncient Near Easthttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-death-of-moses/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-death-of-moses/Sol Liptzin — The Death of Moses by Sol Liptzin.Sun, 01 Oct 1978 00:00:00 GMTMosesMidrashHistory of Interpretationhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-laws-of-sabbath-biblical-sources-part-4/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-laws-of-sabbath-biblical-sources-part-4/Hyman Routtenberg — The Laws of Sabbath – Biblical Sources: Part 4 by Hyman Routtenberg.Sun, 01 Oct 1978 00:00:00 GMTSabbathBiblical LawRabbinic Literaturehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-western-wall-part-2/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-western-wall-part-2/Ben Zion Luria — The Western Wall Part 2 by Ben Zion Luria.Sun, 01 Oct 1978 00:00:00 GMTTempleLand of IsraelArchaeologyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/absaloms-revolt/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/absaloms-revolt/Shimon Bakon — Absalom’s Revolt by Shimon Bakon.Sat, 01 Jul 1978 00:00:00 GMTKingshipBiblical Narrativehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/esther-hamalka-the-royal-mistress-and-mordecai-hayehudi-the/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/esther-hamalka-the-royal-mistress-and-mordecai-hayehudi-the/Norman J. Fredman — Esther Hamalka the Royal Mistress and Mordecai Hayehudi the Jewish Judge by Norman J. Fredman.Sat, 01 Jul 1978 00:00:00 GMTEstherBiblical Narrativehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/gilgal-the-site-of-the-first-passover/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/gilgal-the-site-of-the-first-passover/Max M. Rothschild — Gilgal, the Site of the First Passover by Max M. Rothschild.Sat, 01 Jul 1978 00:00:00 GMTArchaeologyJewish FestivalsLand of Israelhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/jephthahs-literary-vogue/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/jephthahs-literary-vogue/Sol Liptzin — Jephthah’s Literary Vogue by Sol Liptzin.Sat, 01 Jul 1978 00:00:00 GMTHistory of InterpretationSacrificehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/national-and-eschatological-messianism-biblical-writers-of/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/national-and-eschatological-messianism-biblical-writers-of/David Lowenstein — National and Eschatological Messianism: Biblical Writers of the Second Commonwealth by David Lowenstein.Sat, 01 Jul 1978 00:00:00 GMTMessianismBiblical Theologyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-laws-of-sabbath-biblical-sources-part-3/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-laws-of-sabbath-biblical-sources-part-3/Hyman Routtenberg — The Laws of Sabbath – Biblical Sources Part 3 by Hyman Routtenberg.Sat, 01 Jul 1978 00:00:00 GMTSabbathBiblical LawRabbinic Literaturehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-western-wall/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-western-wall/Ben Zion Luria — The Western Wall by Ben Zion Luria.Sat, 01 Jul 1978 00:00:00 GMTTempleLand of IsraelArchaeologyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/book-reviews-the-bible-in-israeli-education-by-j-schoneveld/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/book-reviews-the-bible-in-israeli-education-by-j-schoneveld/Abraham Ruderman — Book Reviews: The Bible in Israeli Education by J. Schoneveld by Abraham Ruderman.Sat, 01 Apr 1978 00:00:00 GMThttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/ezra-the-scribe/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/ezra-the-scribe/Haim Gevaryahu — Ezra the Scribe by Haim Gevaryahu.Sat, 01 Apr 1978 00:00:00 GMTSecond Temple PeriodCanonhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/jabotinskys-samson/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/jabotinskys-samson/Sol Liptzin — Jabotinsky’s Samson by Sol Liptzin.Sat, 01 Apr 1978 00:00:00 GMTHistory of InterpretationModern Jewish Thoughthttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/jerusalem-in-the-days-of-jeremiah/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/jerusalem-in-the-days-of-jeremiah/Ben Zion Luria — Jerusalem in the Days of Jeremiah by Ben Zion Luria.Sat, 01 Apr 1978 00:00:00 GMTProphecyLand of IsraelAncient Near Easthttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/readers-comments/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/readers-comments/Editors — Reader’s Comments by Editors.Sat, 01 Apr 1978 00:00:00 GMThttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/speech-and-silence-in-prophecy/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/speech-and-silence-in-prophecy/André Neher — Speech and Silence in Prophecy by André Neher.Sat, 01 Apr 1978 00:00:00 GMTProphecyJewish Philosophyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-blood-of-the-covenant-in-the-bible/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-blood-of-the-covenant-in-the-bible/Harold M. Kamsler — The Blood of the Covenant in the Bible by Harold M. Kamsler.Sat, 01 Apr 1978 00:00:00 GMTBiblical TheologyAncient Near EastSacrificehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-laws-of-sabbath-biblical-sources-part-2/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-laws-of-sabbath-biblical-sources-part-2/Hyman Routtenberg — The Laws of Sabbath – Biblical Sources Part 2 by Hyman Routtenberg.Sat, 01 Apr 1978 00:00:00 GMTSabbathBiblical LawRabbinic Literaturehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/building-in-biblical-times/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/building-in-biblical-times/Herman Wohlman-Kon — Building in Biblical Times by Herman Wohlman-Kon.Sun, 01 Jan 1978 00:00:00 GMTArchaeologyAncient Near Easthttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/cain-the-anti-establishment-hero/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/cain-the-anti-establishment-hero/Sol Liptzin — Cain, the Anti-Establishment Hero by Sol Liptzin.Sun, 01 Jan 1978 00:00:00 GMTBiblical NarrativeHistory of Interpretationhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/ecological-motifs-in-the-bible/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/ecological-motifs-in-the-bible/Shimon Bakon — Ecological Motifs in the Bible by Shimon Bakon.Sun, 01 Jan 1978 00:00:00 GMTCreationBiblical Ethicshttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/fourteenth-world-bible-contest/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/fourteenth-world-bible-contest/Editors — Fourteenth World Bible Contest by Editors.Sun, 01 Jan 1978 00:00:00 GMTBible EducationIsraelhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/irony-in-i-samuel-chapters-8-15/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/irony-in-i-samuel-chapters-8-15/Dov Rosner — Irony in I Samuel (Chapters 8-15) by Dov Rosner.Sun, 01 Jan 1978 00:00:00 GMTBiblical NarrativeKingshiphttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/letters-to-the-editor-6-1/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/letters-to-the-editor-6-1/Jacob Felton — Letter to the Editor by Jacob Felton.Sun, 01 Jan 1978 00:00:00 GMThttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-jerusalem-streets-abraham-walked-on/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-jerusalem-streets-abraham-walked-on/Louis Katzoff — The Jerusalem Streets Abraham Walked On by Louis Katzoff.Sun, 01 Jan 1978 00:00:00 GMTLand of IsraelArchaeologyPatriarchal Narrativeshttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-laws-of-sabbath-biblical-sources-part-1/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-laws-of-sabbath-biblical-sources-part-1/Hyman Routtenberg — The Laws of Sabbath – Biblical Sources: Part 1 by Hyman Routtenberg.Sun, 01 Jan 1978 00:00:00 GMTSabbathBiblical LawRabbinic Literaturehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-siberian-exile-and-his-book-review-of-a-study-in-wisdom/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-siberian-exile-and-his-book-review-of-a-study-in-wisdom/Ben Zion Luria — The Siberian Exile and His Book – Review of a Study in Wisdom Literature by Ben Zion Luria.Sun, 01 Jan 1978 00:00:00 GMTWisdom Literaturehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/in-memoriam-moshe-gutentag-professor-solomon-zeitlin/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/in-memoriam-moshe-gutentag-professor-solomon-zeitlin/Editors — In Memoriam: Moshe Gutentag, Professor Solomon Zeitlin by Editors.Sat, 01 Oct 1977 00:00:00 GMTJewish Bible Associationhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/joab-captain-of-the-host/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/joab-captain-of-the-host/Shimon Bakon — Joab, Captain of the Host by Shimon Bakon.Sat, 01 Oct 1977 00:00:00 GMTKingshipLeadershipBiblical Narrativehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/laws-of-mourning-biblical-sources-part-4/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/laws-of-mourning-biblical-sources-part-4/Hyman Routtenberg — Laws of Mourning: Biblical Sources – Part 4 by Hyman Routtenberg.Sat, 01 Oct 1977 00:00:00 GMTBiblical LawMourningRabbinic Literaturehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/letters-to-the-editor-5-4/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/letters-to-the-editor-5-4/JBQ Readers — Letters to the Editor by JBQ Readers.Sat, 01 Oct 1977 00:00:00 GMThttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/military-intelligence-in-the-bible/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/military-intelligence-in-the-bible/Reuben Efron — Military Intelligence in the Bible by Reuben Efron.Sat, 01 Oct 1977 00:00:00 GMTAncient Near EastBiblical Narrativehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/moby-dick-and-the-wisdom-of-solomon/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/moby-dick-and-the-wisdom-of-solomon/Marta Berl Shapiro — Moby Dick and the Wisdom of Solomon by Marta Berl Shapiro.Sat, 01 Oct 1977 00:00:00 GMTWisdom LiteratureHistory of Interpretationhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/president-katzirs-address-at-the-ben-gurion-yizkor-gathering/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/president-katzirs-address-at-the-ben-gurion-yizkor-gathering/Ephraim Katzir — President Katzir’s Address at the Ben Gurion Yizkor Gathering by Ephraim Katzir.Sat, 01 Oct 1977 00:00:00 GMTIsraelModern Jewish Thoughthttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/quiz-on-the-book-of-psalms/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/quiz-on-the-book-of-psalms/Harold D. Halpern — Quiz on the Book of Psalms by Harold D. Halpern.Sat, 01 Oct 1977 00:00:00 GMTBible ContestBible EducationPsalmshttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/ruth-and-medea/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/ruth-and-medea/Sol Liptzin — Ruth and Medea by Sol Liptzin.Sat, 01 Oct 1977 00:00:00 GMTLiterature and the BibleWomen in the BibleComparative Religionhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/to-the-bible-readers-union-england/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/to-the-bible-readers-union-england/Joseph Halpern — To the Bible Readers’ Union, England by Joseph Halpern.Sat, 01 Oct 1977 00:00:00 GMTJewish Bible AssociationDiasporaBible Educationhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/who-is-afraid-of-edom-reflections-on-a-theme-in-lamentations/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/who-is-afraid-of-edom-reflections-on-a-theme-in-lamentations/Louis Katzoff — Who is Afraid of Edom: Reflections on a Theme in Lamentations by Louis Katzoff.Sat, 01 Oct 1977 00:00:00 GMTAncient Near EastProphecyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/a-report-to-the-president/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/a-report-to-the-president/Editors — A Report to the President by Editors.Fri, 01 Jul 1977 00:00:00 GMTBible EducationIsraelhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/amos-and-hosea-two-directions-in-israels-prophecy/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/amos-and-hosea-two-directions-in-israels-prophecy/Binyamin Uffenheimer — Amos and Hosea: Two Directions in Israel’s Prophecy by Binyamin Uffenheimer.Fri, 01 Jul 1977 00:00:00 GMTProphecySocial Justicehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/david-and-batsheba-part-3/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/david-and-batsheba-part-3/Moshe Garsiel — David and Batsheba: Part 3 by Moshe Garsiel.Fri, 01 Jul 1977 00:00:00 GMTKingshipWomen in the BibleBiblical Narrativehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/letters-to-the-editor-5-3/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/letters-to-the-editor-5-3/JBQ Readers — Letters to the Editor by JBQ Readers.Fri, 01 Jul 1977 00:00:00 GMThttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/psalm-xv-a-liturgical-or-ethical-psalm/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/psalm-xv-a-liturgical-or-ethical-psalm/Yitzchak Avishur — Psalm XV : A Liturgical or Ethical Psalm by Yitzchak Avishur.Fri, 01 Jul 1977 00:00:00 GMTPsalmsLiturgyBiblical Ethicshttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-cathexis-of-israel-to-egypt/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-cathexis-of-israel-to-egypt/Louis Katzoff — The Cathexis of Israel to Egypt by Louis Katzoff.Fri, 01 Jul 1977 00:00:00 GMTExodus from EgyptAncient Near Easthttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-laws-of-mourning-biblical-sources-part-3/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-laws-of-mourning-biblical-sources-part-3/Hyman Routtenberg — The Laws of Mourning – Biblical Sources: Part 3 by Hyman Routtenberg.Fri, 01 Jul 1977 00:00:00 GMTBiblical LawRabbinic Literaturehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/themes-in-the-book-of-esther/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/themes-in-the-book-of-esther/Norman J. Fredman — Themes in the Book of Esther by Norman J. Fredman.Fri, 01 Jul 1977 00:00:00 GMTEstherBiblical Narrativehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/david-and-bathsheba-part-2/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/david-and-bathsheba-part-2/Moshe Garsiel — David and Bathsheba Part 2 by Moshe Garsiel.Fri, 01 Apr 1977 00:00:00 GMTKingshipWomen in the BibleBiblical Narrativehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/hospitality-in-sodom-a-biblical-contrast/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/hospitality-in-sodom-a-biblical-contrast/Joel B. Wolowelsky — Hospitality in Sodom – A Biblical Contrast by Joel B. Wolowelsky.Fri, 01 Apr 1977 00:00:00 GMTPatriarchal NarrativesBiblical Ethicshttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/monarchy-and-the-bible/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/monarchy-and-the-bible/Max M. Rothschild — Monarchy and the Bible by Max M. Rothschild.Fri, 01 Apr 1977 00:00:00 GMTKingshipBiblical Theologyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/rehabilitation-of-lilith/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/rehabilitation-of-lilith/Sol Liptzin — Rehabilitation of Lilith by Sol Liptzin.Fri, 01 Apr 1977 00:00:00 GMTMidrashWomen in the Biblehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-computation-of-the-new-moon/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-computation-of-the-new-moon/Menachem Raab — The Computation of the New Moon by Menachem Raab.Fri, 01 Apr 1977 00:00:00 GMTJewish CalendarScience and the Biblehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-doctrine-of-reward/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-doctrine-of-reward/Shimon Bakon — The Doctrine of Reward by Shimon Bakon.Fri, 01 Apr 1977 00:00:00 GMTBiblical TheologySufferinghttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-laws-of-mourning-biblical-sources-part-2/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-laws-of-mourning-biblical-sources-part-2/Hyman Routtenberg — The Laws of Mourning – Biblical Sources Part 2 by Hyman Routtenberg.Fri, 01 Apr 1977 00:00:00 GMTBiblical LawRabbinic Literaturehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/book-reviews-in-the-footsteps-of-moses-in-the-footsteps-of/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/book-reviews-in-the-footsteps-of-moses-in-the-footsteps-of/Joseph Halpern — Book Reviews: In the Footsteps of Moses, In the Footsteps of the Prophets by Moshe Pearlman by Joseph Halpern.Sat, 01 Jan 1977 00:00:00 GMThttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/david-and-batsheba-part-1/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/david-and-batsheba-part-1/Moshe Garsiel — David and Batsheba: Part 1 by Moshe Garsiel.Sat, 01 Jan 1977 00:00:00 GMTKingshipWomen in the BibleBiblical Narrativehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/koheleth-a-re-interpretation/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/koheleth-a-re-interpretation/Jacob Felton — Koheleth: A Re-Interpretation by Jacob Felton.Sat, 01 Jan 1977 00:00:00 GMTWisdom LiteratureJewish Philosophyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/letters-to-the-editor-5-1/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/letters-to-the-editor-5-1/Herbert Hubert — Letter to the Editor by Herbert Hubert.Sat, 01 Jan 1977 00:00:00 GMThttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/noble-jonathan/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/noble-jonathan/Sol Liptzin — Noble Jonathan by Sol Liptzin.Sat, 01 Jan 1977 00:00:00 GMTKingshipBiblical Narrativehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/saul-and-the-witch-of-endor/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/saul-and-the-witch-of-endor/Shimon Bakon — Saul and the Witch of Endor by Shimon Bakon.Sat, 01 Jan 1977 00:00:00 GMTKingshipBiblical NarrativeIdolatryhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-development-of-the-mezuzah/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-development-of-the-mezuzah/Ben Zion Luria — The Development of the Mezuzah by Ben Zion Luria.Sat, 01 Jan 1977 00:00:00 GMTBiblical LawArchaeologyLiturgyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-laws-of-mourning-biblical-sources-part-1/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-laws-of-mourning-biblical-sources-part-1/Hyman Routtenberg — The Laws of Mourning: Biblical Sources: Part 1 by Hyman Routtenberg.Sat, 01 Jan 1977 00:00:00 GMTBiblical LawRabbinic Literaturehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/thirteenth-world-youth-bible-contest/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/thirteenth-world-youth-bible-contest/Editors — Thirteenth World Youth Bible Contest by Editors.Sat, 01 Jan 1977 00:00:00 GMTBible EducationIsraelhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/biblical-sources-relating-to-prayer-part-6/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/biblical-sources-relating-to-prayer-part-6/Hyman Routtenberg — Biblical Sources Relating to Prayer: Part 6 by Hyman Routtenberg.Fri, 01 Oct 1976 00:00:00 GMTPrayerLiturgyRabbinic Literaturehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/in-memoriam-rabbi/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/in-memoriam-rabbi/Solomon D. Goldfarb — In Memoriam – Rabbi by Solomon D. Goldfarb.Fri, 01 Oct 1976 00:00:00 GMTJewish Bible Associationhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/jacobs-love-for-rachel/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/jacobs-love-for-rachel/Solomon D. Goldfarb — Jacob’s Love for Rachel by Solomon D. Goldfarb.Fri, 01 Oct 1976 00:00:00 GMTPatriarchal NarrativesWomen in the BibleBiblical Narrativehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/moses-and-the-burning-bush/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/moses-and-the-burning-bush/André Neher — Moses and the Burning Bush by André Neher.Fri, 01 Oct 1976 00:00:00 GMTMosesProphecyBiblical Theologyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/quiz-on-the-book-of-isaiah/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/quiz-on-the-book-of-isaiah/Hayyim Halpern — Quiz on the Book of Isaiah by Hayyim Halpern.Fri, 01 Oct 1976 00:00:00 GMTBible Educationhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-family-corner-books-of-bemidbar-and-devarim-4-4/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-family-corner-books-of-bemidbar-and-devarim-4-4/Philip L. Lipis and Louis Katzoff — The Family Corner: Books of Bemidbar and Devarim by Philip L. Lipis and Louis Katzoff.Fri, 01 Oct 1976 00:00:00 GMTBible Educationhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-hebraic-motifs-in-judges-13-16-relevant-to-john-miltons-4-4/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-hebraic-motifs-in-judges-13-16-relevant-to-john-miltons-4-4/Marta Berl Shapiro — The Hebraic Motifs in Judges 13-16 Relevant to John Milton’s Samson Agonistes: Part 3 by Marta Berl Shapiro.Fri, 01 Oct 1976 00:00:00 GMTHistory of InterpretationBiblical Narrativehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/biblical-sources-relating-to-prayer-part-5/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/biblical-sources-relating-to-prayer-part-5/Hyman Routtenberg — Biblical Sources Relating to Prayer: Part 5 by Hyman Routtenberg.Thu, 01 Jul 1976 00:00:00 GMTPrayerLiturgyRabbinic Literaturehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/in-memoriam-jacob-g-gold/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/in-memoriam-jacob-g-gold/Editors — In Memoriam – Jacob G. Gold by Editors.Thu, 01 Jul 1976 00:00:00 GMTJewish Bible Associationhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/jacobs-return-to-canaan/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/jacobs-return-to-canaan/Shimon Bakon — Jacob’s Return to Canaan by Shimon Bakon.Thu, 01 Jul 1976 00:00:00 GMTPatriarchal NarrativesJacobLand of Israelhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/midrash-and-pesher-two-classical-forms-of-biblical/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/midrash-and-pesher-two-classical-forms-of-biblical/Max M. Rothschild — Midrash and Pesher: Two Classical Forms of Biblical Interpretation by Max M. Rothschild.Thu, 01 Jul 1976 00:00:00 GMTMidrashSecond Temple LiteratureHistory of Interpretationhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/quiz-on-the-book-of-kings/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/quiz-on-the-book-of-kings/Editors — Quiz on the Book of Kings by Editors.Thu, 01 Jul 1976 00:00:00 GMTBible ContestBible Educationhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/sex-and-violence-in-the-bible/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/sex-and-violence-in-the-bible/Solomon D. Goldfarb — Sex and Violence in the Bible by Solomon D. Goldfarb.Thu, 01 Jul 1976 00:00:00 GMTBiblical EthicsBiblical NarrativeWomen in the Biblehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-biblical-mind/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-biblical-mind/Harold M. Kamsler — The Biblical Mind by Harold M. Kamsler.Thu, 01 Jul 1976 00:00:00 GMTBiblical TheologyJewish Philosophyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-family-corner-leviticus-4-3/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-family-corner-leviticus-4-3/Philip L. Lipis and Louis Katzoff — The Family Corner: Leviticus by Philip L. Lipis and Louis Katzoff.Thu, 01 Jul 1976 00:00:00 GMTBible EducationTorah Commentaryhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-hebraic-motifs-in-judges-13-16-relevant-to-john-miltons-4-3/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-hebraic-motifs-in-judges-13-16-relevant-to-john-miltons-4-3/Marta Berl Shapiro — The Hebraic Motifs in Judges 13-16 Relevant to John Milton’s Samson Agonistes: Part 2 by Marta Berl Shapiro.Thu, 01 Jul 1976 00:00:00 GMTLiterature and the BibleJudgesHistory of Interpretationhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/biblical-sources-relating-to-prayer-part-4/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/biblical-sources-relating-to-prayer-part-4/Hyman Routtenberg — Biblical Sources Relating to Prayer: Part 4 by Hyman Routtenberg.Thu, 01 Apr 1976 00:00:00 GMTPrayerLiturgyRabbinic Literaturehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/letters-to-the-editor-4-2/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/letters-to-the-editor-4-2/Benjamin M. Laikin — Letter to the Editor by Benjamin M. Laikin.Thu, 01 Apr 1976 00:00:00 GMThttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/micahs-ideals-stevensons-guide/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/micahs-ideals-stevensons-guide/Reuben Efron — Micah’s Ideals: Stevenson’s Guide by Reuben Efron.Thu, 01 Apr 1976 00:00:00 GMTProphecyBiblical EthicsLiterature and the Biblehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/psalm-xxiv/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/psalm-xxiv/G. I. F. Thomson — Psalm XXIV by G. I. F. Thomson.Thu, 01 Apr 1976 00:00:00 GMTPsalmsLiturgyBiblical Poetryhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-book-of-proverbs-everymans-guide-to-the-higher-life/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-book-of-proverbs-everymans-guide-to-the-higher-life/S. M. Lehrman — The Book of Proverbs: Everyman's Guide to the Higher Life by S. M. Lehrman.Thu, 01 Apr 1976 00:00:00 GMTWisdom LiteratureBiblical Poetryhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-family-corner-exodus/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-family-corner-exodus/Philip L. Lipis and Louis Katzoff — The Family Corner: Exodus by Philip L. Lipis and Louis Katzoff.Thu, 01 Apr 1976 00:00:00 GMTBible EducationTorah Commentaryhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-hebraic-motifs-in-judges-13-16-relevant-to-john-miltons/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-hebraic-motifs-in-judges-13-16-relevant-to-john-miltons/Marta Berl Shapiro — The Hebraic Motifs in Judges 13-16 Relevant to John Milton’s Samson Agonistes by Marta Berl Shapiro.Thu, 01 Apr 1976 00:00:00 GMTHistory of InterpretationBiblical Narrativehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-maccabees-and-the-transmission-of-the-text-of-the-torah/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-maccabees-and-the-transmission-of-the-text-of-the-torah/Max M. Rothschild — The Maccabees and the Transmission of the Text of the Torah by Max M. Rothschild.Thu, 01 Apr 1976 00:00:00 GMTSecond Temple PeriodTextual CriticismCanonhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-prophet-and-the-king/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-prophet-and-the-king/Pinhas Neeman — The Prophet and the King by Pinhas Neeman.Thu, 01 Apr 1976 00:00:00 GMTProphecyKingshipBiblical Narrativehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/was-simeon-not-included-in-moses-blessing/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/was-simeon-not-included-in-moses-blessing/Solomon D. Goldfarb — Was Simeon Not Included in Moses' Blessing by Solomon D. Goldfarb.Thu, 01 Apr 1976 00:00:00 GMTMosesGenealogyBiblical Narrativehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/a-nation-without-a-state-part-2/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/a-nation-without-a-state-part-2/Mendel Lewittes — A Nation Without a State: Part 2 by Mendel Lewittes.Wed, 01 Jan 1975 00:00:00 GMTDiasporaModern Jewish ThoughtChosennesshttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/biblical-sources-relating-to-prayer-part-3/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/biblical-sources-relating-to-prayer-part-3/Hyman Routtenberg — Biblical Sources Relating to Prayer: Part 3 by Hyman Routtenberg.Wed, 01 Jan 1975 00:00:00 GMTPrayerLiturgyRabbinic Literaturehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/our-bible-quiz-for-youth-joshua-judges-and-samuel/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/our-bible-quiz-for-youth-joshua-judges-and-samuel/Editors — Our Bible Quiz for Youth: Joshua, Judges and Samuel by Editors.Wed, 01 Jan 1975 00:00:00 GMTBible ContestBible Educationhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-aqedath-jishaq-theme-in-yiddish-literature/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-aqedath-jishaq-theme-in-yiddish-literature/Percy Matenko — The Aqedath Jishaq Theme in Yiddish Literature by Percy Matenko.Wed, 01 Jan 1975 00:00:00 GMTHistory of InterpretationSacrificePatriarchal Narrativeshttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-family-corner-genesis/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-family-corner-genesis/Philip L. Lipis and Louis Katzoff — The Family Corner: Genesis by Philip L. Lipis and Louis Katzoff.Wed, 01 Jan 1975 00:00:00 GMTBible EducationTorah Commentaryhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/three-charismatic-judges-and-their-strategies/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/three-charismatic-judges-and-their-strategies/Aron Ron — Three Charismatic Judges and Their Strategies by Aron Ron.Wed, 01 Jan 1975 00:00:00 GMTLeadershipBiblical Narrativehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/twelfth-world-youth-bible-contest/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/twelfth-world-youth-bible-contest/Editors — Twelfth World Youth Bible Contest by Editors.Wed, 01 Jan 1975 00:00:00 GMTBible EducationIsraelhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/biblical-sources-relating-to-prayer-part-2/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/biblical-sources-relating-to-prayer-part-2/Hyman Routtenberg — Biblical Sources Relating to Prayer: Part 2 by Hyman Routtenberg.Wed, 01 Oct 1975 00:00:00 GMTPrayerLiturgyRabbinic Literaturehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/prophet-king-and-priest/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/prophet-king-and-priest/Mendel Lewittes — Prophet, King and Priest by Mendel Lewittes.Wed, 01 Oct 1975 00:00:00 GMTProphecyKingshipPriesthoodhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/psalm-cxxx-a-cry-of-the-heart/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/psalm-cxxx-a-cry-of-the-heart/S. M. Lehrman — Psalm CXXX: A Cry of the Heart by S. M. Lehrman.Wed, 01 Oct 1975 00:00:00 GMTPsalmsPrayerRepentancehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/psalms-of-zion/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/psalms-of-zion/Sol Liptzin — Psalms of Zion by Sol Liptzin.Wed, 01 Oct 1975 00:00:00 GMTPsalmsLand of IsraelBiblical Poetryhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-family-corner-bemidbar-and-devarim/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-family-corner-bemidbar-and-devarim/Editors — The Family Corner: Bemidbar and Devarim by Editors.Wed, 01 Oct 1975 00:00:00 GMTBible Educationhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-ten-lost-tribes/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-ten-lost-tribes/Israel Heller — The Ten Lost Tribes by Israel Heller.Wed, 01 Oct 1975 00:00:00 GMTAncient Near EastDiasporaGenealogyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/at-the-rivers-of-babylon/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/at-the-rivers-of-babylon/Zalman Shazar — At the Rivers of Babylon by Zalman Shazar.Tue, 01 Jul 1975 00:00:00 GMTExilePsalmsBiblical Poetryhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/biblical-sources-relating-to-prayer-part-1/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/biblical-sources-relating-to-prayer-part-1/Hyman Routtenberg — Biblical Sources Relating to Prayer: Part 1 by Hyman Routtenberg.Tue, 01 Jul 1975 00:00:00 GMTPrayerLiturgyRabbinic Literaturehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/book-review-ayin-lamikra-by-mazal-weigert/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/book-review-ayin-lamikra-by-mazal-weigert/Pinchas Lapide — Book Review: Ayin Lamikra by Mazal Weigert by Pinchas Lapide.Tue, 01 Jul 1975 00:00:00 GMTBook ReviewBiblical Exegesishttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/eikha-kelev-mishirei-shazar/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/eikha-kelev-mishirei-shazar/Zalman Shazar — איכה כלב משירי שזר by Zalman Shazar.Tue, 01 Jul 1975 00:00:00 GMTBiblical PoetryLiterature and the Biblehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/elijah-the-unique-prophet/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/elijah-the-unique-prophet/Zalman Shazar — Elijah: The Unique Prophet by Zalman Shazar.Tue, 01 Jul 1975 00:00:00 GMTProphecyBiblical Narrativehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/greater-hartford-bible-study-group-takes-names-of-fallen/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/greater-hartford-bible-study-group-takes-names-of-fallen/Editors — Greater Hartford Bible Study Group Takes Names of Fallen Israeli by Editors.Tue, 01 Jul 1975 00:00:00 GMTBible EducationDiasporaIsraelhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/jerusalem-in-the-bible-part-4-3-3/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/jerusalem-in-the-bible-part-4-3-3/Shmuel Abramski — Jerusalem in the Bible: Part 4 by Shmuel Abramski.Tue, 01 Jul 1975 00:00:00 GMTJerusalemLand of IsraelArchaeologyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/king-hezekiahs-pesach-in-jerusalem/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/king-hezekiahs-pesach-in-jerusalem/Ben Zion Luria — King Hezekiah's Pesach in Jerusalem by Ben Zion Luria.Tue, 01 Jul 1975 00:00:00 GMTKingshipJewish FestivalsTemplehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/lider-fun-zalman-shazar/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/lider-fun-zalman-shazar/Zalman Shazar — לידער פון זלמן שזר by Zalman Shazar.Tue, 01 Jul 1975 00:00:00 GMTBiblical PoetryLiterature and the BiblePsalmshttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/my-youth-in-the-company-of-shazar/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/my-youth-in-the-company-of-shazar/Gershom Scholem — My Youth in the Company of Shazar by Gershom Scholem.Tue, 01 Jul 1975 00:00:00 GMTModern Jewish ThoughtIsraelhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-bible-of-my-youthful-days/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-bible-of-my-youthful-days/Zalman Shazar — The Bible of My Youthful Days by Zalman Shazar.Tue, 01 Jul 1975 00:00:00 GMTBible EducationModern Jewish Thoughthttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-direction-and-purpose-of-time-isaiahs-vision-of-the-end/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-direction-and-purpose-of-time-isaiahs-vision-of-the-end/Zalman Shazar — The Direction and Purpose of Time: Isaiah's Vision of the “End of Days” by Zalman Shazar.Tue, 01 Jul 1975 00:00:00 GMTProphecyMessianismBiblical Theologyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-family-corner-leviticus-3-3/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-family-corner-leviticus-3-3/Philip L. Lipis and Louis Katzoff — The Family Corner: Leviticus by Philip L. Lipis and Louis Katzoff.Tue, 01 Jul 1975 00:00:00 GMTBible EducationTorah Commentaryhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-secret-of-the-returning-exiles/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-secret-of-the-returning-exiles/Zalman Shazar — The Secret of the Returning Exiles by Zalman Shazar.Tue, 01 Jul 1975 00:00:00 GMTExileSecond Temple PeriodLand of Israelhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/zalman-shazar-a-good-neighbor/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/zalman-shazar-a-good-neighbor/Solomon D. Goldfarb — Zalman Shazar – A Good Neighbor by Solomon D. Goldfarb.Tue, 01 Jul 1975 00:00:00 GMTModern Jewish ThoughtIsraelhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/beit-hatenakh-in-jerusalem-address-by-ben-gurion-at/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/beit-hatenakh-in-jerusalem-address-by-ben-gurion-at/Editors — Beit HaTenakh in Jerusalem: Address by Ben-Gurion at Groundbreaking by Editors.Tue, 01 Apr 1975 00:00:00 GMTJewish Bible AssociationJerusalemBible Educationhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/canadian-wins-eleventh-world-youth-bible-contest/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/canadian-wins-eleventh-world-youth-bible-contest/Editors — Canadian Wins Eleventh World Youth Bible Contest by Editors.Tue, 01 Apr 1975 00:00:00 GMTBible ContestBible EducationDiasporahttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/jerusalem-in-the-bible-part-5/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/jerusalem-in-the-bible-part-5/Shmuel Abramsky — Jerusalem in the Bible: Part 5 by Shmuel Abramsky.Tue, 01 Apr 1975 00:00:00 GMTJerusalemLand of IsraelArchaeologyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/reminiscences-about-ben-gurion/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/reminiscences-about-ben-gurion/Haim Gevaryahu — Reminiscences About Ben-Gurion by Haim Gevaryahu.Tue, 01 Apr 1975 00:00:00 GMTIsraelBible EducationModern Jewish Thoughthttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-book-of-joshua-chapters-23-24-part-1/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-book-of-joshua-chapters-23-24-part-1/David Ben-Gurion — The Book of Joshua: Chapters 23-24: Part 1 by David Ben-Gurion.Tue, 01 Apr 1975 00:00:00 GMTBiblical NarrativeCovenantLand of Israelhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-book-of-joshua-chapters-23-24-part-2-by-way-of-reply/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-book-of-joshua-chapters-23-24-part-2-by-way-of-reply/David Ben-Gurion — The Book of Joshua: Chapters 23-24: Part 2 – By Way of Reply by David Ben-Gurion.Tue, 01 Apr 1975 00:00:00 GMTBiblical NarrativeCovenantLand of Israelhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-family-corner-the-book-of-exodus/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-family-corner-the-book-of-exodus/Philip L. Lipis and Louis Katzoff — The Family Corner: The Book of Exodus by Philip L. Lipis and Louis Katzoff.Tue, 01 Apr 1975 00:00:00 GMTBible EducationTorah Commentaryhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/a-name-and-rememberance-to-the-soldiers-who-fell-in-the-yom/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/a-name-and-rememberance-to-the-soldiers-who-fell-in-the-yom/Haim Gevaryahu — A Name and Rememberance to the Soldiers Who Fell in the Yom Kippur War by Haim Gevaryahu.Tue, 01 Jan 1974 00:00:00 GMTIsraelLiturgyModern Jewish Thoughthttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/baruch-dayan-emeth/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/baruch-dayan-emeth/Devora Birnbaum — Baruch Dayan Emeth by Devora Birnbaum.Tue, 01 Jan 1974 00:00:00 GMTJewish Bible Associationhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/gods-reply-to-job/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/gods-reply-to-job/Mazal Weigart — God’s Reply to Job by Mazal Weigart.Tue, 01 Jan 1974 00:00:00 GMTWisdom LiteratureBiblical TheologySufferinghttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/in-the-days-of-job/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/in-the-days-of-job/Sol Liptzin — In the Days of Job by Sol Liptzin.Tue, 01 Jan 1974 00:00:00 GMTWisdom LiteratureSufferinghttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/obligatory-and-voluntary-war/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/obligatory-and-voluntary-war/S. M. Lehrman — Obligatory and Voluntary War by S. M. Lehrman.Tue, 01 Jan 1974 00:00:00 GMTBiblical LawBiblical Ethicshttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/settlement-of-the-tribe-of-dan/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/settlement-of-the-tribe-of-dan/Ben Zion Luria — Settlement of the Tribe of Dan by Ben Zion Luria.Tue, 01 Jan 1974 00:00:00 GMTLand of IsraelArchaeologyBiblical Narrativehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-family-corner-3-1/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-family-corner-3-1/Philip L. Lipis and Louis Katzoff — The Family Corner by Philip L. Lipis and Louis Katzoff.Tue, 01 Jan 1974 00:00:00 GMTBible EducationTorah Commentaryhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-motif-of-job-in-modern-literature/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-motif-of-job-in-modern-literature/André Neher — The Motif of Job in Modern Literature by André Neher.Tue, 01 Jan 1974 00:00:00 GMTWisdom LiteratureHistory of InterpretationSufferinghttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/thou-shalt-not-abhor-an-egyptian/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/thou-shalt-not-abhor-an-egyptian/Haim Gevaryahu — Thou Shalt Not Abhor an Egyptian by Haim Gevaryahu.Tue, 01 Jan 1974 00:00:00 GMTBiblical LawBiblical EthicsAncient Near Easthttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/a-perfect-wife/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/a-perfect-wife/Haim Gevaryahu — A Perfect Wife by Haim Gevaryahu.Tue, 01 Oct 1974 00:00:00 GMTWomen in the BibleWisdom LiteratureBiblical Ethicshttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/ahab-a-poor-character/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/ahab-a-poor-character/Solomon D. Goldfarb — Ahab: A “Poor” Character by Solomon D. Goldfarb.Tue, 01 Oct 1974 00:00:00 GMTKingshipBiblical NarrativeProphecyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/jerusalem-in-the-bible-part-4/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/jerusalem-in-the-bible-part-4/Shmuel Abramsky — Jerusalem in the Bible: Part 4 by Shmuel Abramsky.Tue, 01 Oct 1974 00:00:00 GMTJerusalemLand of IsraelArchaeologyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/job-and-faust/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/job-and-faust/Sol Liptzin — Job and Faust by Sol Liptzin.Tue, 01 Oct 1974 00:00:00 GMTLiterature and the BibleTheodicySufferinghttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/let-everything-praise-the-lord/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/let-everything-praise-the-lord/S. Joshua Kohn — Let Everything Praise the Lord by S. Joshua Kohn.Tue, 01 Oct 1974 00:00:00 GMTPsalmsLiturgyBiblical Poetryhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/sources-on-the-history-of-torah-reading-part-5/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/sources-on-the-history-of-torah-reading-part-5/Louis Katzoff — Sources on the History of Torah Reading: Part 5 by Louis Katzoff.Tue, 01 Oct 1974 00:00:00 GMTLiturgyRabbinic LiteratureTorah Commentaryhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-burden-of-jobs-loneliness/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-burden-of-jobs-loneliness/Ben Zion Luria — The Burden of Job’s Loneliness by Ben Zion Luria.Tue, 01 Oct 1974 00:00:00 GMTSufferingTheodicyWisdom Literaturehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-family-corner-books-of-bemidbar-and-devarim/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-family-corner-books-of-bemidbar-and-devarim/Philip L. Lipis and Louis Katzoff — The Family Corner: Books of Bemidbar and Devarim by Philip L. Lipis and Louis Katzoff.Tue, 01 Oct 1974 00:00:00 GMTBible EducationTorah Commentaryhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/who-was-a-teacher-in-biblical-days/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/who-was-a-teacher-in-biblical-days/Haim Gevaryahu — Who Was a Teacher in Biblical Days? by Haim Gevaryahu.Tue, 01 Oct 1974 00:00:00 GMTBible EducationAncient Near EastWisdom Literaturehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/about-books-a-time-for-loving-by-herbert-tarr/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/about-books-a-time-for-loving-by-herbert-tarr/Joseph Halpern — About Books: A Time for Loving by Herbert Tarr by Joseph Halpern.Mon, 01 Jul 1974 00:00:00 GMTBook ReviewLiterature and the Biblehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/heart-of-israel-city-of-man/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/heart-of-israel-city-of-man/Abba Eban — Heart of Israel – City of Man by Abba Eban.Mon, 01 Jul 1974 00:00:00 GMTLand of IsraelModern Jewish Thoughthttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/my-beloved-is-gone-down-to-his-garden-to-the-beds-of-spices/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/my-beloved-is-gone-down-to-his-garden-to-the-beds-of-spices/Ben Zion Luria — My Beloved is Gone Down to his Garden to the Beds of Spices by Ben Zion Luria.Mon, 01 Jul 1974 00:00:00 GMTBiblical PoetryLand of Israelhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/sparks-from-the-psalms/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/sparks-from-the-psalms/S. M. Lehrman — Sparks From the Psalms by S. M. Lehrman.Mon, 01 Jul 1974 00:00:00 GMTPsalmsBiblical Poetryhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-day-ben-gurion-died/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-day-ben-gurion-died/Zalman Shazar — The Day Ben-Gurion Died by Zalman Shazar.Mon, 01 Jul 1974 00:00:00 GMTIsraelModern Jewish Thoughthttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-family-corner-leviticus/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-family-corner-leviticus/Editors — The Family Corner: Leviticus by Editors.Mon, 01 Jul 1974 00:00:00 GMTBible EducationTorah Commentaryhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-jewish-way-of-loving/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-jewish-way-of-loving/Eliezer Livneh — The Jewish Way of Loving by Eliezer Livneh.Mon, 01 Jul 1974 00:00:00 GMTBiblical EthicsModern Jewish Thoughthttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-metaphors-of-the-vine-and-olive-tree/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-metaphors-of-the-vine-and-olive-tree/Yosef Kahaner — The Metaphors of the Vine and Olive Tree by Yosef Kahaner.Mon, 01 Jul 1974 00:00:00 GMTBiblical PoetryLand of Israelhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-youth-corner-our-quiz-on-the-book-of-psalms/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-youth-corner-our-quiz-on-the-book-of-psalms/Editors — The Youth Corner: Our Quiz on the Book of Psalms by Editors.Mon, 01 Jul 1974 00:00:00 GMTBible ContestBible EducationPsalmshttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/tribute-to-yehezkel-kaufman/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/tribute-to-yehezkel-kaufman/C.W. Efroymson — Tribute to Yehezkel Kaufman by C.W. Efroymson.Mon, 01 Jul 1974 00:00:00 GMTBiblical CriticismModern Jewish ThoughtHistory of Interpretationhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/yehezkel-kaufman-an-evaluation/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/yehezkel-kaufman-an-evaluation/Menahem Haran — Yehezkel Kaufman: An Evaluation by Menahem Haran.Mon, 01 Jul 1974 00:00:00 GMTBiblical CriticismModern Jewish ThoughtHistory of Interpretationhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/a-note-on-watergate-in-the-tanach/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/a-note-on-watergate-in-the-tanach/Max M. Rothschild — A Note on “Watergate” in the Tanach by Max M. Rothschild.Mon, 01 Apr 1974 00:00:00 GMTBiblical HebrewJerusalemPhilologyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/jerusalem-in-the-bible-part-3/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/jerusalem-in-the-bible-part-3/Shmuel Abramsky — Jerusalem in the Bible: Part 3 by Shmuel Abramsky.Mon, 01 Apr 1974 00:00:00 GMTJerusalemLand of IsraelArchaeologyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/notes-on-the-verse-of-the-week-the-contrite-heart/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/notes-on-the-verse-of-the-week-the-contrite-heart/Sol Liptzin — Notes on the Verse of the Week: The Contrite Heart by Sol Liptzin.Mon, 01 Apr 1974 00:00:00 GMTTorah CommentaryRepentancePsalmshttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/notes-on-the-verse-of-the-week-the-meaning-of-mikhtam-in/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/notes-on-the-verse-of-the-week-the-meaning-of-mikhtam-in/Haim Gevaryahu — Notes on the Verse of the Week: The Meaning of Mikhtam in Psalms by Haim Gevaryahu.Mon, 01 Apr 1974 00:00:00 GMTBiblical HebrewPsalmsPhilologyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/some-features-of-modern-jewish-bible-research-part-3/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/some-features-of-modern-jewish-bible-research-part-3/Binyamin Uffenheimer — Some Features of Modern Jewish Bible Research: Part 3 by Binyamin Uffenheimer.Mon, 01 Apr 1974 00:00:00 GMTBiblical CriticismHistory of InterpretationModern Jewish Thoughthttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/sources-on-the-history-of-torah-reading-part-4/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/sources-on-the-history-of-torah-reading-part-4/Louis Katzoff — Sources on the History of Torah Reading: Part 4 by Louis Katzoff.Mon, 01 Apr 1974 00:00:00 GMTLiturgyRabbinic LiteratureTorah Commentaryhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-earthquake-that-turned-the-course-of-the-war/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-earthquake-that-turned-the-course-of-the-war/Ben Zion Luria — The Earthquake That Turned the Course of the War by Ben Zion Luria.Mon, 01 Apr 1974 00:00:00 GMTBiblical NarrativeAncient Near EastArchaeologyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-family-corner-book-of-shemot/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-family-corner-book-of-shemot/Philip L. Lipis and Louis Katzoff — The Family Corner: Book of Shemot by Philip L. Lipis and Louis Katzoff.Mon, 01 Apr 1974 00:00:00 GMTBible EducationTorah Commentaryhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-suk-in-ancient-jerusalem/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-suk-in-ancient-jerusalem/Ben Zion Luria — The Suk in Ancient Jerusalem by Ben Zion Luria.Mon, 01 Apr 1974 00:00:00 GMTJerusalemArchaeologyAncient Near Easthttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/youth-corner-our-bible-quiz-on-flying/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/youth-corner-our-bible-quiz-on-flying/Editors — Youth Corner: Our Bible Quiz on Flying by Editors.Mon, 01 Apr 1974 00:00:00 GMTBible ContestBible Educationhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/american-youth-win-bible-contest/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/american-youth-win-bible-contest/Editors — American Youth Win Bible Contest by Editors.Mon, 01 Jan 1973 00:00:00 GMTBible ContestBible EducationDiasporahttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/bible-the-concomitant-of-human-growth-based-on-genesis-3/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/bible-the-concomitant-of-human-growth-based-on-genesis-3/Harry H. Ruskin — Bible: The Concomitant of Human Growth – Based on Genesis 3 by Harry H. Ruskin.Mon, 01 Jan 1973 00:00:00 GMTBible EducationModern Jewish Thoughthttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/israel-and-edom/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/israel-and-edom/Ben Zion Luria — Israel and Edom by Ben Zion Luria.Mon, 01 Jan 1973 00:00:00 GMTAncient Near EastLand of Israelhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/joel-and-his-message/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/joel-and-his-message/S. M. Lehrman — Joel and His Message by S. M. Lehrman.Mon, 01 Jan 1973 00:00:00 GMTProphecyRepentancehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/shazar-the-man-of-many-crowns/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/shazar-the-man-of-many-crowns/Solomon D. Goldfarb — Shazar: The Man of Many Crowns by Solomon D. Goldfarb.Mon, 01 Jan 1973 00:00:00 GMTIsraelModern Jewish Thoughthttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/some-features-of-modern-jewish-bible-research-part-2/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/some-features-of-modern-jewish-bible-research-part-2/Binyamin Uffenheimer — Some Features of Modern Jewish Bible Research: Part 2 by Binyamin Uffenheimer.Mon, 01 Jan 1973 00:00:00 GMTBiblical CriticismHistory of InterpretationModern Jewish Thoughthttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-family-corner-bereshit/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-family-corner-bereshit/Philip L. Lipis and Louis Katzoff — The Family Corner: Bereshit by Philip L. Lipis and Louis Katzoff.Mon, 01 Jan 1973 00:00:00 GMTBible Educationhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-lesson-of-ezekiels-temple/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-lesson-of-ezekiels-temple/Louis I. Rabinowitz — The Lesson of Ezekiel’s Temple by Louis I. Rabinowitz.Mon, 01 Jan 1973 00:00:00 GMTTempleProphecyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-tree-of-knowledge-of-good-and-evil/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-tree-of-knowledge-of-good-and-evil/Nathaniel Kravitz — The Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil by Nathaniel Kravitz.Mon, 01 Jan 1973 00:00:00 GMTCreationBiblical Theologyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-vision-of-the-dry-bones/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-vision-of-the-dry-bones/Ben Zion Luria — The Vision of the Dry Bones by Ben Zion Luria.Mon, 01 Jan 1973 00:00:00 GMTProphecyResurrectionExilehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-youth-corner-bible-quiz-on-hoshea-joel-and-amos/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-youth-corner-bible-quiz-on-hoshea-joel-and-amos/Editors — The Youth Corner: Bible Quiz on Hoshea, Joel and Amos by Editors.Mon, 01 Jan 1973 00:00:00 GMTBible ContestBible EducationProphecyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/about-books-sabbath-chapters-of-talmud-by-rabbi-b-elizur/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/about-books-sabbath-chapters-of-talmud-by-rabbi-b-elizur/Joseph Halpern — About Books: Sabbath Chapters of Talmud by Rabbi B. Elizur-Epstein by Joseph Halpern.Mon, 01 Oct 1973 00:00:00 GMTBook ReviewRabbinic LiteratureSabbathhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/about-books-the-song-of-songs-by-eliezer-levinger/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/about-books-the-song-of-songs-by-eliezer-levinger/Solomon D. Goldfarb — About Books: The Song of Songs by Eliezer Levinger by Solomon D. Goldfarb.Mon, 01 Oct 1973 00:00:00 GMTBook ReviewBiblical Poetryhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/aspaklaria-of-prophetic-vision/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/aspaklaria-of-prophetic-vision/Ittamar Greenwald — Aspaklaria of Prophetic Vision by Ittamar Greenwald.Mon, 01 Oct 1973 00:00:00 GMTProphecyRabbinic LiteratureSymbolismhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/bible-quiz-on-jeremiah-and-ezekiel/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/bible-quiz-on-jeremiah-and-ezekiel/Editors — Bible Quiz on Jeremiah and Ezekiel by Editors.Mon, 01 Oct 1973 00:00:00 GMTBible ContestBible Educationhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/jerusalem-in-the-bible-part-2/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/jerusalem-in-the-bible-part-2/Shmuel Abramski — Jerusalem in the Bible: Part 2 by Shmuel Abramski.Mon, 01 Oct 1973 00:00:00 GMTJerusalemLand of IsraelArchaeologyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/new-light-on-unknown-prophets-the-lachish-letters/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/new-light-on-unknown-prophets-the-lachish-letters/Ben Zion Luria — New Light on Unknown Prophets: The Lachish Letters by Ben Zion Luria.Mon, 01 Oct 1973 00:00:00 GMTArchaeologyProphecyAncient Near Easthttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/notes-on-the-verse-of-the-week-1-4/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/notes-on-the-verse-of-the-week-1-4/Editors — Notes on the Verse of the Week by Editors.Mon, 01 Oct 1973 00:00:00 GMTTorah CommentaryBible Educationhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/some-features-of-modern-jewish-bible-research/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/some-features-of-modern-jewish-bible-research/Binyamin Uffenheimer — Some Features of Modern Jewish Bible Research by Binyamin Uffenheimer.Mon, 01 Oct 1973 00:00:00 GMTBiblical CriticismHistory of InterpretationModern Jewish Thoughthttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/sources-on-the-history-of-torah-reading-1-4/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/sources-on-the-history-of-torah-reading-1-4/Haim Gevaryahu — Sources on the History of Torah Reading by Haim Gevaryahu.Mon, 01 Oct 1973 00:00:00 GMTLiturgyRabbinic LiteratureTorah Commentaryhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-family-corner-deuteronomy/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-family-corner-deuteronomy/Editors — The Family Corner – Deuteronomy by Editors.Mon, 01 Oct 1973 00:00:00 GMTBible EducationTorah Commentaryhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/about-books-ben-gurion-looks-at-the-bible/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/about-books-ben-gurion-looks-at-the-bible/Joseph Halpern — About Books: Ben Gurion Looks at the Bible by Joseph Halpern.Sun, 01 Jul 1973 00:00:00 GMTBook ReviewIsraelHistory of Interpretationhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/cyrus-in-the-perspective-of-the-bible-and-history/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/cyrus-in-the-perspective-of-the-bible-and-history/Abba Eban — Cyrus in the Perspective of the Bible and History by Abba Eban.Sun, 01 Jul 1973 00:00:00 GMTAncient Near EastSecond Temple PeriodProphecyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/elijah-in-yiddish-literature/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/elijah-in-yiddish-literature/Sol Liptzin — Elijah in Yiddish Literature by Sol Liptzin.Sun, 01 Jul 1973 00:00:00 GMTHistory of InterpretationProphecyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/first-international-bible-society-conference-in-jerusalem/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/first-international-bible-society-conference-in-jerusalem/Editors — First International Bible Society Conference in Jerusalem by Editors.Sun, 01 Jul 1973 00:00:00 GMTJewish Bible AssociationBible EducationIsraelhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/jerusalem-in-the-bible/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/jerusalem-in-the-bible/Shmuel Abramski — Jerusalem in the Bible by Shmuel Abramski.Sun, 01 Jul 1973 00:00:00 GMTLand of IsraelTempleArchaeologyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/our-bible-quiz-on-isaiah/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/our-bible-quiz-on-isaiah/Editors — Our Bible Quiz on Isaiah by Editors.Sun, 01 Jul 1973 00:00:00 GMTBible Educationhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/sources-on-the-history-of-torah-reading/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/sources-on-the-history-of-torah-reading/Haim Gevaryahu — Sources on the History of Torah Reading by Haim Gevaryahu.Sun, 01 Jul 1973 00:00:00 GMTLiturgyCanonRabbinic Literaturehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-bible-exhibit/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-bible-exhibit/Gur-Arieh Sadeh — The Bible Exhibit by Gur-Arieh Sadeh.Sun, 01 Jul 1973 00:00:00 GMTBible EducationArchaeologyIsraelhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-family-corner-1-3/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-family-corner-1-3/Editors — The Family Corner by Editors.Sun, 01 Jul 1973 00:00:00 GMTBible Educationhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-verse-of-the-week/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-verse-of-the-week/Ben Zion Luria — The Verse of the Week by Ben Zion Luria.Sun, 01 Jul 1973 00:00:00 GMTBible Educationhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/do-not-destroy-the-fruit-trees/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/do-not-destroy-the-fruit-trees/Judah Feliks — Do Not Destroy the Fruit Trees by Judah Feliks.Sun, 01 Apr 1973 00:00:00 GMTBiblical LawNature in the BibleLand of Israelhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/greetings-to-ben-gurion-on-his-86th-birthday/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/greetings-to-ben-gurion-on-his-86th-birthday/Haim Finkelstein — Greetings to Ben-Gurion on his 86th Birthday by Haim Finkelstein.Sun, 01 Apr 1973 00:00:00 GMTJewish Bible AssociationIsraelhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/king-saul-in-world-literature/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/king-saul-in-world-literature/Sol Liptzin — King Saul in World Literature by Sol Liptzin.Sun, 01 Apr 1973 00:00:00 GMTKingshipHistory of Interpretationhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/notes-on-the-verse-of-the-week/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/notes-on-the-verse-of-the-week/Editors — Notes on the Verse of the Week by Editors.Sun, 01 Apr 1973 00:00:00 GMTTorah CommentaryBible Educationhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/our-bible-quiz/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/our-bible-quiz/Editors — Our Bible Quiz by Editors.Sun, 01 Apr 1973 00:00:00 GMTBible Educationhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/said-the-thistle-to-the-cedar/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/said-the-thistle-to-the-cedar/Judah Feliks — Said the Thistle to the Cedar by Judah Feliks.Sun, 01 Apr 1973 00:00:00 GMTBiblical NarrativeNature in the BibleParableshttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/sources-on-the-history-of-torah-and-haftarah-reading/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/sources-on-the-history-of-torah-and-haftarah-reading/Haim Gevaryahu — Sources on the History of Torah and Haftarah Reading by Haim Gevaryahu.Sun, 01 Apr 1973 00:00:00 GMTLiturgyCanonRabbinic Literaturehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-family-corner/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-family-corner/Editors — The Family Corner by Editors.Sun, 01 Apr 1973 00:00:00 GMTBible Educationhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/what-happened-to-uzziahs-bones/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/what-happened-to-uzziahs-bones/Ben Zion Luria — What Happened to Uzziah’s Bones? by Ben Zion Luria.Sun, 01 Apr 1973 00:00:00 GMTKingshipArchaeologyAncient Near Easthttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-book-of-jonah/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-book-of-jonah/Zalman Shazar — Opening address of the 19th Annual Conference of the Israel Society for Biblical Research. President Shazar examines why Jonah was classified as a prophetic book despite containing no prophetic visions or words to Israel. He explores the distinction between biblical "seers" and literary prophets, and argues that Jonah is the programmatic book for the literary prophets: its core message is that prophecy's entire purpose is to change a people's ways and thereby alter their fate — making the prophet who succeeds in changing behavior a willing "liar" to his own prediction.Sat, 01 Jan 1972 00:00:00 GMTProphecyBook of JonahRepentanceLiterary ProphetsSeers and Prophetshttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/back-to-the-bible/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/back-to-the-bible/Haim Gevaryahu — Traces the history of Bible study among Jews from the Second Commonwealth — when a Greek inscription shows the synagogue's foundation was Torah reading — through the Karaite revival that renewed textual scholarship, to the modern renaissance in Eretz Yisrael. Describes the World Jewish Bible Society's programs: the annual international youth Bible contest, conferences, the Hebrew journal Beth Mikra, and the new English-language bulletin Dor le-Dor launched to deepen biblical attachment in the Diaspora.Sat, 01 Jan 1972 00:00:00 GMTHistory of Bible StudyWorld Jewish Bible SocietyIsrael Society for Biblical ResearchKaraiteshttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-bible-readers-union/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-bible-readers-union/Joseph Halpern — Introduces the Bible Readers' Union, an international membership organization open to Jews and non-Jews promoting systematic Bible study through the Triennial Tanakh Study Calendar — a three-year program covering the entire Hebrew Bible with a chapter per day. Recounts the Union's founding in 1939 on the eve of World War II, its wartime continuity under Rabbi Dr. I. Epstein, and its integration with the World Jewish Bible Society.Sat, 01 Jan 1972 00:00:00 GMTBible Readers UnionTanakh StudyWorld Jewish Bible Societyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/notes-on-the-verse-of-the-week-1-1/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/notes-on-the-verse-of-the-week-1-1/Editors — Commentary on two verses from the Triennial Tanakh Study Calendar for October 1972. The first note examines Genesis 12:1 and the concept of Moledet: tracing the word from its earliest meaning (the maternal household, Bet Ha-em) through its biblical uses in Ruth, Song of Songs, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel, and finally to its modern sense of homeland. The second note explores Joshua 24:22 on religious witnessing: how Moses and the prophets called upon heaven, earth, and Israel itself as covenant witnesses.Sat, 01 Jan 1972 00:00:00 GMTVerse of the WeekMoledetReligious WitnessingTriennial Tanakh Studyhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-family-corner-genesis-1-1/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/the-family-corner-genesis-1-1/Editors — Questions and answers for Shabbat table discussion on Genesis portions, designed to engage the whole family. Covers multiple parashot: Noah (the ark and flood), Vayyera (Abraham's hospitality, the Akedah), Toledot (Jacob and Esau, the birthright), Vayyishlach (Jacob's preparation for meeting Esau, his name change to Israel), and Vayyiggash (Judah's plea before Joseph, the descent to Egypt).Sat, 01 Jan 1972 00:00:00 GMTFamily StudyShabbat DiscussionNoahAbrahamJacobJosephhttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/biblical-names-in-israel/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/biblical-names-in-israel/Editors — Discusses the revival of biblical personal names in modern Israel: of the Bible's approximately 1,500 personal names, only 140 remained in use among Diaspora Jews, but in three generations 460 additional biblical names have come into use in Israel. Illustrated with an anecdote of a soldier at the Golan front coining a new name, "Yaira," from a biblical verse (Deuteronomy 3:14).Sat, 01 Jan 1972 00:00:00 GMTHebrew NamesModern IsraelIsraeli Culturehttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/our-bible-quiz-1-1/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/our-bible-quiz-1-1/Editors — A selection of twenty questions from the Regional Finals of the Eighth World Bible Quiz for Jewish Youth, covering the full range of the Hebrew Bible: topics include brothers' reunions, military victories, the first mention of Jerusalem, rebellions at Shechem, prophetic similes, witnesses, and the book of Psalms.Sat, 01 Jan 1972 00:00:00 GMTBible QuizWorld Bible Contesthttps://www.jewishbible.org/articles/about-books-1-1/https://www.jewishbible.org/articles/about-books-1-1/Editors — Reviews of two Hebrew works on the Bible. The first, David Ben Gurion's Biblical Reflections (Am Oved, 1969), collects 17 addresses and articles by Israel's first Prime Minister on subjects from the Unique Destiny of the Jewish People to the Exodus from Egypt, reflecting his conviction that the ingathering of exiles and world peace are the dual Messianic vision. The second, Dr. Moshe A. Anat's The People's Bible (Tanakh La'Am, 1970–71), presents the Hebrew Bible in a punctuated, verse-by-sense layout that became an immediate bestseller in Israel.Sat, 01 Jan 1972 00:00:00 GMTBook ReviewsBen GurionHebrew Bible Editions