"I will lift up your skirts over your face; and I will let nations look on your nakedness and kingdoms on your shame." Nahum 3:5, NRSV The Bible is full of sex. This is sometimes masked by English translations of the text, but it is most certainly there. For example, in Genesis 26 the Philistine king Abimelech,... Continue Reading →
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 →
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 →
"In the fall of 2018, the problem of Wellhausen’s teaching and his followers came to my attention while working on my master’s degree." - Heather Schuldt on 10.28.181 When I was around ten or eleven I kept a red notebook filled with my musings on issues related to the Bible and Christianity. It included commentaries... Continue Reading →
Michael D. Coogan, The Old Testament: A Historical and Literary Introduction to the Hebrew Scriptures, third edition (OUP, 2014), 89. The further removed biblical writers are from the events they describe, the less secure are modern scholars' attempts to determine whether these events actually happened. With regard to Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebekah, and Jacob... Continue Reading →
Michael D. Coogan, The Old Testament: A Historical and Literary Introduction to the Hebrew Scriptures, third edition (OUP, 2014), 83. Many elements of the plot of Genesis 12-50 are found in other ancient literatures. Among these, one of the most significant is the epic of Kirta (also called Keret), partially preserved on three clay tablets found at Ugarit....The... Continue Reading →
To see other posts in this series, please go to the series' page. Among fundamentalists there are few as notable and infamous as Ray Comfort. Known primarily for his Way of the Master evangelism program and organization, Comfort has been a vocal opponent of evolutionary science, Big Bang cosmology, and much more. He is also known for... Continue Reading →
Here are a few things I've enjoyed this week. Twitter user @Elishabenabuya has a really good blog post on "Henotheism and the OT" over at his website. As he points out, multiple gods are mentioned in the Old Testament, many of which were acknowledged to be real in some form or fashion, a sign of henotheism and not strict monotheism.... Continue Reading →
Richard Elliot Friedman, The Exodus: How It Happened and Why It Matters (New York, NY: HarperOne, 2017), 64-65. So let's do the math: Eight out of eight Israelites with Egyptian names are Levites. Two out of two accounts of the revelation of God's name make it to the Levite Moses and are told in Levite sources.... Continue Reading →
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