Bible Review, August 2001
Features
Francis Ford Coppola filmed two endings for Apocalypse Now, and John Fowles’s The French Lieutenant’s Woman offers a choice of endings. But nothing quite matches the last chapter of the Gospel of Mark for variety. At least nine versions of the ending of Mark can be found among the 1,700 surviving ancient Greek […]
Rahab, a Canaanite prostitute, plays an essential part in Israel’s successful conquest of Jericho. The Israelite Achan, a member of the prestigious tribe of Judah, is to blame for Israel’s subsequent failure to capture Ai. Why is a Canaanite prostitute portrayed so positively while a prominent Israelite is depicted so negatively? Perhaps because a […]
When the patriarch Jacob returns to Canaan with his family after a 20-year sojourn with his uncle Laban, God instructs him to go to Bethel and build an altar (Genesis 35:1). Jacob immediately tells his entourage to rid themselves of the alien gods in their midst, to purify themselves and to change their clothes […]
The first world religion wasn’t Judaism, Christianity or Islam. It was Manichaeism. Today, even the name of this long-dead religion is unfamiliar. But its foundation story will not be—or at least not entirely. For here, Adam, Eve and the other beloved characters of Genesis are woven into an alien account of a primal battle […]