First Glance

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Six biblical characters in search of a theme—Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Samson, Samuel and the son of the Shunammite Woman in 2 Kings 4 at first blush seem to have little in common. Even less do they seem connected to the ancient near eastern practice of child sacrifice. But these six are united by an important bond: All were born, after a divine promise, to previously barren women. Susan Ackerman, in “Child Sacrifice: Returning God’s Gift,” details the motifs shared by all six stories of mothers and their sons. Ackerman also explains how Israelite religion expressed God’s claim to what comes from the womb, not by child sacrifice but by divine dedication.

Ackerman is an assistant professor of religion at Dartmouth. She received her Ph.D. from Harvard, where she studied under Frank Moore Cross. Ackerman wrote the entry on Isaiah in The Women’s Bible Commentary (reviewed in this issue). Her article “Sacred Sex, Sacrifice and Death,” an analysis of Isaiah 57:3–13, appeared in BR 06:01.

It’s the stuff that tabloids are made of—a Dead Sea Scroll fragment with parallels to the predictions about Jesus found in the annunciation scene in Luke 1:31–35—but it’s true. “Son of God he will be called and Son of the Most High they will name him” says one of the lines in the text, only recently published in full. In “A Pre-Christian ‘Son of God’ Among the Dead Sea Scrolls,” John J. Collins argues that the text refers to a Jewish messiah and therefore constitutes the earliest known use in a messianic context of the titles “Son of God” and “Son of the Most High.”

Collins is professor of Hebrew Bible at the University of Chicago Divinity School and editor of the Journal of Biblical Literature. His most recent book is Daniel, a volume in the Hermeneia commentary series (Fortress, forthcoming in 1993). A member of the expanded team of Dead Sea Scroll editors, he is working on Pseudo-Daniel and the Prayer of, Nabonidus fragments from Cave 4.

The quest for facts about the life of Jesus makes for strange bedfellows. Both noted theologians and strict fundamentalists think it is a waste of time, if not downright dangerous. Others think it essential. In “Why Search for the Historical Jesus?” John P. Meier examines the reasons scholars—believers and skeptics alike—have studied the meager record of the man some call Messiah and others say never even existed.

Meier is professor of New Testament at Catholic University of America and a past president of the Catholic Biblical Association. He is completing the second volume of A Marginal Jew: Rethinking the Historical Jesus. The first volume appeared in 1991 from Doubleday.

Can there be two individuals more different than Cain and Job? One commits a heinous crime—the world’s first murder, which is also the first instance of fratricide—after God slights his offering, while the other is the paragon of patient suffering. But two share a predicament more than many Bible readers often realize. Joseph P. Klein examines both of these rarely juxtaposed figures and shows “How Job Fulfills God’s Word to Cain.”

Klein is currently rabbi of United Hebrew Congregation in Terre Haute, Indiana. This summer he will assume the pulpit at Mizpah Congregation, in Chattanooga, Tennessee. Klein received his ordination from Hebrew Union College and has served as an adjunct professor of humanities at Indiana State University and at the Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology, both in Terre Haute.

No letters from the pharaohs to the Canaanites ever came back marked “Return to Sender, Address Unknown.” The ancient Egyptians knew where Canaan was. But for many Bible readers, the home of the Canaanites is something of a mystery. Things get even more jumbled when the reader realizes that the word “Canaanites” can refer not only to a nationality but also to a trade. In “Canaan and the Canaanites,” Michael D. Coogan, professor of religious studies at Stonehill College, in North Easton, Massachusetts, dispels the confusion about this people, their land and their primary occupation.

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A Note on Style

B.C.E. (Before the Common Era) and C.E. (Common Era), used by some of our authors and often used in scholarly literature, are the alternative designations corresponding to B.C. and A.D.

Six biblical characters in search of a theme—Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Samson, Samuel and the son of the Shunammite Woman in 2 Kings 4 at first blush seem to have little in common. Even less do they seem connected to the ancient near eastern practice of child sacrifice. But these six are united by an important bond: All were born, after a divine promise, to previously barren women. Susan Ackerman, in “Child Sacrifice: Returning God’s Gift,” details the motifs shared by all six stories of mothers and their sons. Ackerman also explains how Israelite religion expressed God’s claim to what […]