Bible Review, 1986

New evidence indicates that the Gospel of Matthew was an original Hebrew composition. Indeed, it is now possible to recover much of this original Hebrew composition from an extant manuscript. But before explaining how this can be done, let me set the stage with a little background. Until now, the four canonical Gospels—Matthew, Mark, […]

The Jacob cycle, heart of the patriarchal narratives, has moved, intrigued and inspired generations throughout the millennia. The characters are as real as we ourselves—and as elusive. Seen through different prisms, they continually reveal new facets. In this issue we examine these stories and the people in them from different perspectives: Jacob, as the […]

Of all the books of the Bible in which poetry plays a role, Psalms is the one set of texts whose poetic status has been most strongly felt throughout the generations—regardless of the vagaries of translation, typographical arrangement of verses or notions about biblical literary form. This unwavering perception that the psalms are formal […]

In an article in the February 1985 issue of Bible Review (“Different Ways of Looking at the Birth of Jesus,” BR 01:01), Kenneth Gros Louis discusses what he calls “narrative strategies in New Testament infancy narratives.” It seems to me that Gros Louis analyzes only minor tactics while completely ignoring the dominant strategy of […]

The artist is a biblical commentator just as surely as the literary critic who studies the Bible’s internal devices, as the form critic who looks at the origins of literary genres, or as the source critic who tries to disentangle components that may have been woven together to create the text we know. Both […]

The biblical story of Jacob is artistically an exquisite creation, psychologically an intriguing portrait, and religiously an interpretive treasurehouse—but it has always been a problem. Even Sunday school children ask why the hero Jacob, the great patriarch, withholds food from his own brother Esau to get his brother’s birthright and then lies to his […]

The University of Pennsylvania’s Jeffrey H. Tigay sets the stage for the article that follows: Since the rise of biblical criticism in the 17th century, scholars have concluded that the books of the Hebrew Bible, like many other ancient literary classics, have not reached us in their original form but are, in their […]

At the beginning of the story of Jacob and Esau, the Bible tells us that Esau was a hunter, a man of the outdoors; Jacob, by contrast, was an ’ îš tām (Genesis 25:27), (pronounced ish tam). If we were to render this expression in accordance with the Bible’s usual meaning of tām (’ […]

In the deft hands of Jerusalem artist Yehudit Shadur, simple sheets of paper are cut into intricate designs blending the poetic words and images of the Bible. A leading reviver of the traditional Jewish folk art of paper-cutting, Shadur combines a sensitive understanding of well-known biblical stories, an intimate knowledge of the plants and […]

We usually think of exegesis as the external interpretation of a text, and of biblical exegesis as interpretation external to the Bible. Exegesis of the Hebrew Bible began, however, long before the canon closed and the text became fixed. And this exegesis, or interpretation, can be identified within the sacred text itself. I call […]

Published 30 years ago, the following analysis of Joseph’s character has become a classic among a small group of cognoscenti. The author, Maurice Samuel, was a Jewish literary critic and novelist whose work appeared in Saturday Review of Literature and other journals. He died in 1972. According to Samuel, Joseph was a failure—the Messiah […]

Then Jacob said to Laban, “Give me my wife, for my days are fulfilled, that I may go in to her.”

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Scholars know it, but most lay people don’t. The first two and a half verses of the Book of Ezra (Ezra 1:1–3a) are identical to the last two verses of the second Book of Chronicles (2 Chronicles 36:22–23). These repeated verses at the end of Chronicles are called “catch-lines.” In ancient times, catch-lines were […]

If I had a little sister, Rachel with sparkling eyes, wooed for seven years and loved by him,

Norman Gottwald is one of North America’s leading biblical scholars, and he has just published a comprehensive introduction to the Hebrew Bible that will soon make his name known to a very wide audience. It is titled The Hebrew Bible—A Socio-Literary Introduction.1 Gottwald is associated with a sociological approach to the study of ancient […]

In recent issues of Bible Review, two quite different articles have examined the infancy narratives in Matthew and Luke—the only two Gospels that include an account of Jesus’ infancy. The first article—by Kenneth R. R. Gros Louis—was a literary study in which the author examined the differing literary techniques used by these two Gospel […]

When one thinks of the narratives of Genesis 12–50, one thinks of the patriarchs, of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob, and of their special role as bearers of God’s promise to the chosen people. But what of the matriarchs—Sarah, Rebekah, Rachel and Leah—what place do they have in these dramatic sagas of Israel’s […]

In biblical times, aspects of nature that are easily explained by modern science were considered mysteries, and sparked a sense of awe. Although today, a scientific explanation is often available, nature still has the power to arouse wonder in us. On the other hand, once a phenomenon is scientifically analyzed and explained, it may […]

Israel emerged as a people just before the period of the Judges, at the end of what archaeologists call the Late Bronze Age (1550–1200 B.C.) and the beginning of Iron Age I (1200–1000 B.C.)—the time when the Israelite tribes settled in the land of Canaan. Scholars have explained Israel’s emergence in Canaan according to […]

In the Book of Genesis, when Adam sees Eve, he immediately says “This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh” (Genesis 2:23). The narrator adds, “Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother and shall cleave unto his wife; and they shall be one flesh” (Genesis 2:24). In […]