First Glance
Amid the massive media coverage of the breaking of the Dead Sea Scrolls monopoly, scant attention has been paid to the content of the scrolls. What do they tell us about the roots of Christianity and the period before the rise of Rabbinic Judaism? Now James C. VanderKam helps fill the void with “The Dead Sea Scrolls and Early Christianity—How Are They Related?” This unusually important article will appear in two parts in this and the next issue of BR.
One of the more recently appointed members of the official Dead Sea Scroll editing team, VanderKam has been assigned the manuscripts of the Book of Jubilees found in Qumran Cave 4. A scholar of remarkable linguistic facility, he is fluent in five modern languages and ten ancient languages. VanderKam serves as professor of Old Testament at Notre Dame University and chairs the Ancient Manuscripts Committee of the American Schools of Oriental Research. In his extensive publications he has concentrated on the pseudepigraphic and eschatological books of the intertestamental period. The author of Enoch and the Growth of an Apocalyptic Tradition (Catholic Biblical Association, 1984) and The Book of Jubilees (Peeters, 1989), VanderKam is now working on several books simultaneously, including an introductory textbook to the intertestamental period. His “The People of the Scrolls: Essenes or Sadducees?” appeared in the April 1991 BR.
Agatha Christie might have called it the Case of the Disappearing Prophet. Most English translations of the Hebrew Bible end with the Book of Malachi. But there may never have been a prophet by that name (Malachi in Hebrew literally means “my messenger”). The mystery may be resolved by understanding the term massa, which appears at the, beginning of the Book of Malachi and before the concluding chapters of Zechariah. But “What’s a Massa?” you ask? Richard Simon Hanson asks—and answers—precisely that question in “What’s a Massa?”. His analysis may lead you to conclude that the Book of the Twelve (in which Zechariah and Malachi both appear) should be re-named, with a bow to Dame Agatha, And Then There Were Eleven.
Though regularly professor of religion at Luther College in Decorah, Iowa, Hanson is currently the Wilgus Distinguished Visiting Lecturer at the University of Wisconsin at Platteville. He received his Ph.D. from Harvard University and now specializes in paleography and archaeological numismatics. Hanson’s publications include Tyrian Influence in the Upper Galilee (ASOR-Duke, 1980), Kingdoms of Man and the Kingdom of God (Augsburg, 1971) and The Serpent Was Wiser (Augsburg, 1972). His The Grace of God in Jewish Tradition is forthcoming from Mellen Research University Press.
Unsolved mysteries in the biblical text— such as the precise nuances of words and phrases—may seem doomed to remain enigmatic. New archaeological discoveries, however, always hold the possibility that answers may be found. Richard S. Hess examines a case in point in “Eden—A Well-Watered Place.” The origin and meaning of “Eden” and the apparent redundancy of Genesis 1:26 (“Let us make man in our image, after our likeness”) have long puzzled scholars. The clues that suggest solutions to these mysteries ironically come from a statue dedicated to a pagan god, discovered by chance in 1979 at Tell Fakhariyah in Syria. An inscription in two languages on the statue contains cognate words for the biblical words at issue.
Hess is a lecturer in Old Testament and Hebrew at Glasgow Bible College in Scotland. He received his Ph.D. in 1984 from Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati. His post-doctoral research has included fellowships and grants to study Late Bronze Age historical geography, personal names in both Genesis 1–11 and the Alalakh texts, and to work as a research assistant on the Hebrew Dictionary Project. Hess is the author of the forthcoming Amarna Personal Names, which was the subject of his dissertation, and a contributor to the forthcoming Anchor Bible Dictionary and New International Dictionary of Old Testament Theology. Hess is also co-editor of a forthcoming volume of essays on archaeological, historical and literary backgrounds to Genesis 1–11.
“It has some great lithographs in it,” was the low-key way a used-book store owner described to a customer a certain volume on the shelf. Great lithographs indeed. The volume he referred to was an 1859 edition of the Bible illustrated by David Roberts, the creator of what are probably the most popular pictures of the Holy Land ever painted. Dr. W. Benson Harer, Jr., a physician by training but a collector by avocation, describes the book he chanced upon in a Seattle bookstore that day and draws a portrait of the artist and his times in “West Coast Obstetrician Discovers Bible Illustrated by David Roberts.” After reading the article, you may want to check your own shelves—your family Bible may be rarer than you think.
Harer has been a practicing obstetrician/gynecologist for more than 25 years. In May 1991 Harer was honored for outstanding service to the field by the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists. He has lectured extensively on health care in ancient Egypt and has published an article in Obstetrics and Gynecology on Pereshet, the first known female physician, who lived in Egypt in 2500 B.C. Harer is a member of the Board of Governors and Executive Committee for the American Research Center in Egypt and is a member of the Egypt Exploration Society.
The tetragrammaton—the four-lettered personal name of God in the Hebrew Bible—has been rendered in many ways, most commonly as “LORD” or “Yahweh.” Choon-Leong Seow examines what we know of this mysterious name in this issue’s Glossary department, “The Ineffable Name of Israel’s God.” Seow explains how various translations, pious substitutions and confusions (such as Jehovah) regarding God’s name came about.
Seow is associate professor of Old Testament at Princeton Theological Seminary and author of Myth, Drama, and the Politics of David’s Dance (Scholars Press, 1989) and A Grammar for Biblical Hebrew (Abingdon Press, 1987). He is currently preparing a new translation of and commentary on Ecclesiastes for the Anchor Bible series.