First Glance

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To many Bible readers, the semi-nomadic, desert life of the patriarchs may seem hopelessly irretrievable—something to be experienced only in the imagination. In fact, many Bedouin of the Sinai and Negev deserts still follow a lifestyle remarkably similar to that of the patriarchs. Both their material culture and their folkways offer insights into otherwise obscure details in the Bible. A case in point is the story of the rape of Dinah (Genesis 34). The deceit and ruthlessness exhibited by Simeon and Levy in avenging their sister’s rape leaves many modern readers as aghast as Jacob, who cursed his sons for the fierceness of their anger and the cruelty of their wrath (Genesis 49:7). In the context of Bedouin culture, however, Simeon and Levy’s actions become understandable as a show of strength, a warning to other potential transgressors. Using the rape of Dinah and other Biblical incidents and practices as examples, Clinton Bailey explains “How Desert Culture Helps Us Understand the Bible.”

A founder of the Museum of Bedouin Culture at Lahav, in the Negev, Bailey has spent more than 20 years among the Bedouin of the Sinai and Negev, recording their culture, history and poems. For many years he lectured on Bedouin culture at Tel Aviv University, and during the 1990–1991 academic year he served as a visiting professor at Trinity College, in Hartford, Connecticut. Bailey is now doing more research among the Bedouin, collecting rhymed legal maxims on a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities. Oxford University Press recently published his Bedouin Poetry from Sinai and the Negev: Mirror of a Culture, reviewed in Bible Books.

When politically motivated rioters attacked the Jewish inhabitants of Aleppo, Syria in 1947 and put the Mustaribah synagogue to the torch, a collective shudder went through the world of biblical scholarship. Not only were scholars saddened by the loss of life and property, they were appalled at what they feared was an irreplaceable loss to the study of the Hebrew Bible. For centuries the once-thriving mercantile city had been host to one of the most important manuscripts of the Hebrew Scriptures known as the Aleppo Codex and honored, with the title “The Crown of Aleppo.” This work, produced by the tenth-century scribal authority Aaron ben Asher, contained the oldest and most complete text of the Hebrew Scriptures, with notations on the meaning of ambiguous words and with the vowel signs that became a guide to pronunciation in all later texts. Happily, thanks to the efforts of several fearless individuals, much of the manuscript was literally plucked from the flames, hidden and later smuggled to Israel. Mixing equal parts textual scholarship with the excitement of a best selling thriller, Harvey Minkoff tells the remarkable tale of the manuscript in “The Aleppo Codex—Ancient bible from the ashes.”

Minkoff is associate professor of English linguistics at Hunter College in New York City. Author of six books on language and writing, including Visions and Re-Visions (Prentice-Hall, 1990), Minkoff himself speaks French, Spanish, Hebrew, Latin and Yiddish. His recent BR articles include “The Man Who Wasn’t There: Textual Mysteries Created by Hebrew Spelling,” BR 06:06 and “Coarse Language in the Bible? It’s Culture Shocking!” BR 05:02. Minkoff is both a Sunday school Bible teacher and a karate instructor.

A masterpiece of understatement, the eight simple words that conclude the story of Jephthah and his daughter seem to leave little doubt about what happened: “He did to her as he had vowed” (Judges 11:39)—Jephthah sacrificed his daughter in fulfillment of his vow to sacrifice “whatever comes out of the door of my house to meet me on my safe return” (Judges 11:31) if he gained a victory over the Ammonites. This terse conclusion presents us with an apparent contradiction, however, because a human sacrifice is not acceptable to God (Deuteronomy 18:10). Therefore, Jephthah would have had to violate the Torah, the Law that God gave to Moses, to fulfill his vow. Solomon Landers resolves the paradox with a new interpretation of the episode and a new answer to the question, “Did Jephthah Kill His Daughter?”

An essayist, editor, minister and U.S. Senate research assistant, Landers is the founder and director of the Memra Institute for Biblical Research, which specializes in “Bible difficulties.” He has served as a U.S. correspondent for the London news magazine Impact and as a counselor for prison ministry at the District of Columbia Detention Facility. His forthcoming book, The Church that Disappeared, focuses on the 004unique phenomenon of earliest (Jewish) Christianity.

In one of the most striking images in the New Testament, the evangelist Mark describes the heavens tearing open during the baptism of Jesus. Not content with using the metaphor of tearing just once, Mark employs it a second time in recounting Jesus’ crucifixion. These two usages are no coincidence, writes David Ulansey in “Heavens Torn Open.” Ulansey examines several possible precedents for Mark’s metaphor in the books of the prophets Isaiah and Ezekiel and shows how the evangelist’s use of the image emphasizes the extraordinary nature of Jesus’ public life.

Ulansey, assistant professor of religion at Boston University, is the author of The Origins of the Mithraic Mysteries: Cosmology and Salvation in the Ancient World (Oxford Univ. Press, 1989), selection of the History Book Club.

To many Bible readers, the semi-nomadic, desert life of the patriarchs may seem hopelessly irretrievable—something to be experienced only in the imagination. In fact, many Bedouin of the Sinai and Negev deserts still follow a lifestyle remarkably similar to that of the patriarchs. Both their material culture and their folkways offer insights into otherwise obscure details in the Bible. A case in point is the story of the rape of Dinah (Genesis 34). The deceit and ruthlessness exhibited by Simeon and Levy in avenging their sister’s rape leaves many modern readers as aghast as Jacob, who cursed his sons […]