Bible Review, June 1991

Over the years, when editors and journalists have asked me to write about the historical Jesus, almost invariably the first question they raise is: Can you really prove he existed? The implication is that the biblical evidence for Jesus is biased because it is encased in a theological text written by committed believers.

The Roman poet Ovid, in Metamorphosis (10:298–518), relates a story that sensitively reflects much about one of the best-known aromatic substances in the ancient world, myrrh. In the story, Myrrha, the beautiful daughter of the king of Cyprus, falls in love with her father. She disguises herself and proceeds to seduce him. When the […]

The Bible is often called the Good Book. In the way we usually think about the Bible, its good reputation is warranted. From it we learn moral precepts such as “Love your neighbor,” “Honor your father and mother,” “You shall not murder” and much more.1 The Bible urges us to envision the possibility of […]

Computers promise to revolutionize how we study the Bible. The last decade has witnessed the development of a variety of Bible-related programs—simple games for children, vocabulary drills for students of Hebrew and Greek, sermon preparation, sophisticated concordances, lectionary software, computer-assisted learning, church management software, multilingual Greek and Hebrew word processors and much more.

The Torah—the five books of Moses—has rightly been called a book of Law. It is, however, idealized Law—what should be, or, more precisely, what God intended. In the second section of the Hebrew Bible—the Prophets—we learn about the reality.