Bible Review, October 2004
Features
Pazuzu…Lamashtu…Khatyu…Sheseru…Sasam…Lilith…Asmodeus…Beelzebub…. Names to conjure with. Literally. Years ago, when I was a student at Harvard, my teacher Frank Moore Cross raised a puzzling question: Why do demons—so prominent in the greater Near Eastern world, in the New Testament and in the postbiblical world of Judaism and Christianity—play such a minor role in the Hebrew […]
Was John, the author of the Fourth Gospel, a historian or a theologian? Even in antiquity John was known as a theologian. Early Christians could easily see the differences between his gospel and the other three. John’s gospel deals explicitly with theology and Christology (the doctrine of Christ) in a way the others do […]
The concept of sacrifice, and the problems inherent in its practice, greet the reader of the Hebrew Bible almost immediately with the rival offerings of Cain and Abel, the two sons of Adam and Eve.