First Glance

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Who was Jesus? A wise teacher, who championed the cause of the poor and outcast? A religious critic, who sought to reform the Temple-centered Judaism of his day? An apocalyptic figure who announced the end of days? BR’s coverage of historical Jesus research continues with British scholar N.T. Wright’s discussion of “How Jesus Saw Himself.” For Wright, Jesus is both an historical and an apocalyptic figure: A first-century Jew, Jesus thought of himself as a prophet in the tradition of such biblical prophets as Moses and Isaiah, who had promised that Israel would one day be freed from exile and reunited with God. But, for Wright, Jesus preached a more radical message, that in himself the earlier prophesies were fulfilled and the Kingdom of Heaven was at hand.

Formerly a lecturer in New Testament studies at Oxford University, Wright is now dean of Lichfield Cathedral in Staffordshire, England. His numerous publications on Christian theology and church history include Who Was Jesus? (Eerdmans, 1992). Jesus and the Victory of God, the second volume of his Christian Origins and the Question of God, is forthcoming this year from Fortress Press.

Divinely inspired, Moses wrote the first five books of the Bible, Jewish tradition tells us. Granted, in the Talmud rabbinical authorities questioned whether Moses could actually have penned the final passages of Deuteronomy, which describe his death at age 120. Nevertheless, the tradition that Moses wrote the Torah was long upheld as truth: In 1697, Thomas Aikenhead, a Scottish student, was hanged for claiming that Ezra—not Moses—had written the Pentateuch. Since the 18th century, however, Bible scholars have suggested not only that Moses never composed all five books, but that no one person could possibly have done so. Today, scholars agree that the Pentateuch is a hybrid produced by many authors over several centuries. One author, whose writings are known as “P,” or the “Priestly source,” concentrates on priestly conduct and ritual laws. In “P—Understanding the Priestly Source,” Victor Hurowitz explores P’s portrait of the development of Israel’s cult.

Hurowitz is a senior lecturer in the department of Bible and ancient Near Eastern studies at Ben-Gurion University, in Beer-Sheva. Known among friends as the world’s last speaker of Akkadian, Hurowitz can be recognized by the cuneiform signs emblazoned on his skullcaps and bright red vest. He is the author of I Have Built You an Exalted House—Temple Building in the Bible in Light of Mesopotamian and Northwest Semitic Writings (JSOT/ASOR, 1992). His many BR articles include “Inside Solomon’s Temple” BR 10:02 and “Did King Solomon Violate the Second Commandment?” BR 10:05.

Murder, adultery, rape and idolatry are but a few of the acts now considered sins that fill the first seventy chapters of the Bible. Some guilty of committing these offenses paid a price for their actions, but others escaped punishment altogether, leaving early exegetes to ponder how guilt may have been determined before the law was given to Moses. In “Torah Before Sinai—The Do’s and Don’ts Before the Ten Commandments,” Gary A. Anderson uses the stories of Reuben and Bilhah, Judah and Tamar, David and Bathsheba, and Pharaoh’s slaughter of the Hebrew males to show how early Bible interpreters explained the apparent discrepancy in punishments.

Anderson is professor of Old Testament/Hebrew Bible at Harvard Divinity School. His article on “Intentional and Unintentional Sin in the Dead Sea Scrolls,” which appeared in Pomegranates and Golden Bells: Studies in Biblical, Jewish and Near Eastern Ritual, Law, and Literature in Honor of Jacob Milgrom (Eisenbrauns, 1995), signals just one focus of his interest in sin. Reaching back to original sin, he is working on a book on The Interpretation of the Garden of Eden in Early Judaism and Christianity, as well as on a commentary on Leviticus.

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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.

Who was Jesus? A wise teacher, who championed the cause of the poor and outcast? A religious critic, who sought to reform the Temple-centered Judaism of his day? An apocalyptic figure who announced the end of days? BR’s coverage of historical Jesus research continues with British scholar N.T. Wright’s discussion of “How Jesus Saw Himself.” For Wright, Jesus is both an historical and an apocalyptic figure: A first-century Jew, Jesus thought of himself as a prophet in the tradition of such biblical prophets as Moses and Isaiah, who had promised that Israel would one day be freed from exile […]