First Glance

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Sin and faith, voyeurism and court-room drama make the apocryphal Book of Susanna perennially fascinating. A pious woman, sexually threatened by two judges and in fear that their charges will lead to her death, is saved by God, acting through the young prophet Daniel. Why was this good-wins-out tale left out of the Hebrew Scriptures and Protestant Bible? Carey Moore, in “Susanna—A Case of Sexual Harassment in Ancient Babylon,” discusses the questions surrounding this brief book. Artists through the ages have found Susanna, bathing in her garden, an ideal opportunity to depict a nude woman. The varied ways they have done this can be seen in the illustrations accompanying this article.

Moore, the Amanda Rupert Strong Professor of Religion at Gettysburg College, Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, is familiar to BR readers from previous articles—also about women in the Bible—including “Judith—the Case of the Pious Killer,” BR 06:01, and “Eight Questions Most Frequently Asked about the Book of Esther,” BR 03:01. He is also the author of Judith, Esther and Daniel, Esther, and Jeremiah: The Additions in the highly praised Anchor Bible series.

The Pharisees have had a bad press. As a result of the harsh portrayal in the New Testament of these teachers of Jewish law, the very name Pharisee has become synonymous with hypocrisy and self-righteousness. But a very different picture of the Pharisees emerges from the Talmud, the vast compendium of religious practices and beliefs that has been the basis of Jewish life for 1, 500 years, where the Pharisees are described as the spiritual forebears of the Talmud’s compilers. Scholars today are confirming this link between the Pharisees and the Talmud thanks to a widely discussed—though still unpublished—Dead Sea Scroll. Lawrence H. Schiffman explains how the scrolls, though written by a rival group, are nonetheless shedding much “New Light on the Pharisees.”

Schiffman is professor of Hebrew and Judaic studies at New York University and an editor of texts recovered from Cave 4 at Qumran. He is the author of Text and Tradition, A History of Second Temple and Rabbinic Judaism (Ktav, 1990), Who was a Jew? Rabbinic and Halakhic Perspectives on the Jewish-Christian Schism (Ktav, 1985) and the editor of Archaeology and History in the Dead Sea Scrolls (Sheffield/ASOR, 1990). Schiffman’s “The Significance of the Scrolls” appeared in BR 06:05.

The biggest little river in the world, in terms of its biblical significance, is the Jordan. Worthless for farming and for transportation in biblical times, the Jordan nevertheless played an important role just by being there. In another entry in our Bible Lands series, “The Jordan—Symbol of Spiritual Transition,” Harold Brodsky explores a wide variety of the Jordan’s aspects—everything from its hurricane-force floods to its influence on songs—and highlights the Bible’s accurate portrayal of the river.

An associate professor in the Department of Geography at the University of Maryland, Brodsky frequently lectures on his special interest, biblical geography. In preparing this article, his third Bible Lands contribution, he stayed at the Kibbutz Kifar Ha-Nasi on the upper Jordan, researched at the nearby A.D. Gordon Agricultural and Nature Study Institute, and enjoyed walking along the Jordan’s lush banks and splashing in its cool waters. Finally, in Jerusalem, Brodsky traded insights and experiences with Professor Yehoshua Ben-Arieh, an authority on the geography of the Jordan.

“Were Words Separated in Ancient Hebrew Writing?” can be answered in a word: yes. But author Alan Millard takes what might have been a simple correction of some mistatements in previous issues of BR and turns it into an opportunity to teach a little history about the development of Hebrew writing.

A noted scholar of ancient West Semitic languages, Millard participated in the recovery and translation of a major Babylonian epic poem, which was published, in collaboration with W. G. Lambert, as Atrahasis: The Babylonian Story of the Flood (Clarendon, 1969). Today Millard serves as the Rankin Reader in Hebrew and Ancient Semitic Languages at the University of Liverpool, England. He has also written two successful volumes for general readers, Treasures from Bible Times (Lion, 1985) and Discoveries from the Time of Jesus (Lion, 1990), and several articles in BR, most 003recently “Ebla and the Bible—What’s Left (If Anything)?” BR 08:02.

Is it just a coincidence that the biblical flood lasted 40 days and the Israelites wandered in the wilderness for 40 years? And if 40 is just a symbol, why was it chosen rather than, say, 30 or 50? This is just one example of a much larger, and often asked, question: Why are certain numbers in the Bible repeated so often? Maureen A. Tilley explains what three of the most frequently repeated numbers—7, 12 and 40—mean in a biblical context and in other cultural contexts in the latest installment of Glossary, “Typological Numbers—Taking a Count of the Bible.”

An assistant professor in the Department of Religion at Florida State University, Tilley teaches several courses on Christian history and religions of Western antiquity. She is also conducting ongoing research in the martyrology of Roman North Africa and is working on translation of Jerome’s Commentary on Jonah in collaboration With David Levensen and Corrine Patton.

Sin and faith, voyeurism and court-room drama make the apocryphal Book of Susanna perennially fascinating. A pious woman, sexually threatened by two judges and in fear that their charges will lead to her death, is saved by God, acting through the young prophet Daniel. Why was this good-wins-out tale left out of the Hebrew Scriptures and Protestant Bible? Carey Moore, in “Susanna—A Case of Sexual Harassment in Ancient Babylon,” discusses the questions surrounding this brief book. Artists through the ages have found Susanna, bathing in her garden, an ideal opportunity to depict a nude woman. The varied ways they […]