Authors
Cliff Edwards (“Van Gogh’s Bible”) further explored van Gogh’s religious imagery in Van Gogh and God: A Spiritual Quest (Loyola Univ. Press, 1989). A professor of philosophy and religion at Virginia Commonwealth University, Edwards also wrote Christian Being and Doing, a commentary on the New Testament, and Issa: the Story of a Poet-Priest, a study of a Japanese nature-mystic.
Karel van der Toorn (“Did Ecclesiastes Copy Gilgamesh?”) was recently named professor of ancient religions and dean of the faculty of humanities at the University of Amsterdam. An expert in ancient Near Eastern religions, he edited The Image and the Book (Peeters, 1997) and the comprehensive Dictionary of Deities and Demons in the Bible, now in its second edition (Brill, 1999).
Steve Mason (“O Little Town of…Nazareth?”), professor of classics, history and religious studies at York University, in Toronto, is the general editor of a new English translation of Josephus’s complete works. The first of ten volumes (with commentary) has just been released by Brill. He is the author of “Will the Real Josephus Please Stand Up?” BAR 23:05.
Countless tourists to Israel have relied on Jerome Murphy-O’Connor (“In Bethlehem…Of Course”) and his meticulous travel book The Holy Land: An Archaeological Guide, now in its fourth edition from Oxford University Press. A professor of New Testament and intertestamental literature, Murphy-O’Connor has taught at the École Biblique in Jerusalem for 30 years.