Features

The Gospels that Didn’t Make the Cut

A few years ago, I was part of a team of scholars who set out to produce a new translation of the gospels. We were all teachers frustrated with the various New Testament translations in our college and seminary courses. While most of the major translations are quite good, they are designed primarily for […]

The Oldest Cookbooks in the World

When the three messengers visited Abraham to announce the forthcoming birth of his beloved son Isaac, Abraham demonstrated his hospitality by inviting the messengers to a meal before even learning what their mission was. “Let me fetch a morsel of bread that you may refresh yourselves,” he said (Genesis 18:5) with modest understatement, […]

Songs of the Heart
Understanding the Book of Psalms By Nahum M. Sarna

The Hebrew Bible has three parts: the Law (Torah), the Prophets (Nevi’im) and the Writings (Kethuvim). The Book of Psalms is part of the Writings. In the Law and the Prophets, God reaches out to man. The initiative is his. The message is his. He communicates, we receive. Our God-given free will allows us […]

Why Didn’t Joseph Call Home?

The Hebrew Bible contains many unanswered questions and questions for which the answers provided seem inadequate. This, however, is part of the charm of Torah; it challenges us to exercise our powers of conjecture and imagination to supply plausible responses. One of the most intriguing of these questions involves Joseph’s behavior after he has […]

Departments

Sweet Land and Liberty
Whether real or utopian, the laws in Leviticus seem to be a more sensitive safeguard against pauperization than we, here and now, have devised. By Jacob Milgrom
Faith and Scholarship
How can I be a Christian and say the things I say? … The truth of Christianity does not depend on the literal troth or historical infallibility of the Bible. By Marcus J. Borg