Elie Wiesel inaugurates a new series on supporting roles in the Bible with a consideration of the much-loathed Serpent (see “Supporting Roles: The Serpent”). Wiesel is the author of more than 30 novels, plays and profiles of biblical figures. In 1986 he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his lifelong human rights efforts.
Thousands of tourists have relied on Jerome Murphy-O’Connor and his meticulous travel guide, The Holy Land: An Archaeological Guide from Earliest Times to 1700 (Oxford, 1992), to direct them to biblical sites throughout Israel. His desire to determine the location of the Roman temple in Jerusalem (see “Where Was the Capitol in Roman Jerusalem?”) arose while preparing for a class on the city’s topography—a standard course offering for this professor of New Testament and intertestamental literature. He has taught at the École Biblique et Archéologique in Jerusalem for 30 years.
Dating to the second millennium A.D., the name Richard S. Hess (“Getting Personal—What Names in the Bible Teach Us”) has Anglo-Saxon and German origins and belongs to an American professor of Old Testament at Denver Seminary who has published many pieces on personal names in the Bible. These include “Non-Israelite Personal Names in the Book of Joshua,” Catholic Biblical Quarterly 58 (1996); Joshua: An Introduction and Commentary, Tyndale Old Testament Commentaries (Inter-Varsity, 1996); and “Studies in Personal Names in Genesis 1–11, ” Alter Orient und Altes Testament 234 (Neukircher-Vluyn, 1993).
Tikva Frymer-Kensky is the director of the biblical civilization program at the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College in Philadelphia and professor of Hebrew Bible at the University of Chicago Divinity School. Her most recent book is Motherprayer (G.P. Putnam, 1995), a collection of poems, prayers and rituals drawn from the traditions of Judaism, Christianity and the ancient Near East—all celebrating pregnancy and childbirth. She is also the author of In the Wake of the Goddesses: Women, Culture, and the Biblical Transformation of Pagan Myth (Free Press, 1992).
Elie Wiesel inaugurates a new series on supporting roles in the Bible with a consideration of the much-loathed Serpent (see “Supporting Roles: The Serpent”). Wiesel is the author of more than 30 novels, plays and profiles of biblical figures. In 1986 he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his lifelong human rights efforts.
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