Wayne T. Pitard, "Before Israel: Syria-Palestine in the Bronze Age," in The Oxford History of the Biblical World, Michael D. Coogan, editor (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), 27. There are many reasons to be skeptical of [the Patriarchal] narratives as historically accurate accounts of the lives of Israel's progenitors. Indications within the narratives suggest that... Continue Reading →
What did ex-pagans and Jews expect when they became followers of Jesus? This is the question that Alex Finkelson addresses in his recent post "What kind of blessings did the churches inherit from Israel?" As Finkelson discusses, the various promises made to the patriarchs and even to king David are tangible: a literal kingdom in... Continue Reading →
Happy Valentine's Day! To both of my readers, I love you! Over at Is That in the Bible? readers can find a lengthy post on the story of Joseph entitled "From Robes to Riches: The Fairytale of Joseph." In this piece, Paul Davidson discusses issues related to genre, sources, redaction, and more. This is not... Continue Reading →
Over at the website The Bible and Interpretation there is a piece by religious scholar Jay Williams on "Eden, the Tree of Life, and the Wisdom of the Serpent." It is at once both a very interesting and very bizarre piece. Williams points out not long after the piece begins that the serpent isn't Satan as Christians would like... Continue Reading →
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XcxiyHTGLIU Texts discussed: the Pentateuch; Exodus 17:14-16, 24:4; Ezra 3:2. Recommended reading: John Frederick Jansen, “Pentateuch,” in 'The Oxford Companion to the Bible,' Bruce M. Metzger and Michael D. Coogan, eds. (Oxford University Press, 1993), 580.
Candida Moss (University of Birmingham) wrote a piece back in March on Apollonius, the miracle-working son of God that is often compared to Jesus. In it Moss, a prolific writer and scholar, observes that many in the ancient Mediterannean were considered the son of this or that God and that the miracles of Jesus "weren't completely unprecedented."... Continue Reading →
"When Jesus calls Herod Antipas a 'fox' (Luke 13:32), most modern European readers will automatically think this means he considered Herod to be particularly clever or craft....The same association would naturally have occurred to a Greek reader in the 1st century. In Greek literature, the fox is proverbially a crafty animal. In Jewish literature, however,... Continue Reading →
It’s gotten all mixed up, you see, as it was bound to after thousands and thousands of years of dogma and tradition. Religion doesn’t spawn morality. Intelligence spawns morality,which inevitably gives birth (in intelligent enough species) to religion.Now, some people find that religion helps hone and focus their morality, that it gives their morality a purpose... Continue Reading →
"All translations of great works are of course no more than approximations of the original, in some places happy ones, in some necessarily imperfect. But respecting the sheer physicality of the Bible’s language together with a stylistic decorum appropriate to the Hebrew diction can help readers sense something of the world quite different from ours... Continue Reading →
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