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Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 results
Profiles in Scholarly Courage
Early days of New Testament criticism
More than two centuries ago, it occurred to a few European intellectuals that Jesus as a figure of history may have been quite different from Jesus as portrayed in the Gospels. With the awareness of that potential difference, the scholarly quest for the Jesus of history began. At that time and in...
Bible Review, October 1994
The History of Israelite Religion
A Secular or Theological Subject?
If we propose to study the history of the religion of ancient Israel, we must be governed by the same postulates that are the basis of modern historical method. Our task must be a historical, not a theological, enterprise. We must trace the...
Biblical Archaeology Review, May/June 2005
Bah, Humbug!
A scholar rips Handel’s Messiah
Every December, concert halls and churches throughout the English-speaking world resound with the strains of George Frederic Handel‘s mighty Messiah. For centuries, music lovers have gone home humming the arias and choruses that Handel‘s...
Bible Review, December 2002
Exorcising Demons
Pazuzu...Lamashtu...Khatyu...Sheseru...Sasam...Lilith...Asmodeus...Beelzebub.... Names to conjure with. Literally. Years ago, when I was a student at Harvard, my teacher Frank Moore Cross raised a puzzling question: Why do demons—so prominent...
Bible Review, October 2004
II: Original Biblical Text Reconstructed from Newly Found Fragments
Scrolls provide a fresh understanding of apocalyptic elements in late biblical religion
In the last issue of Bible Review, Professor Cross presented a description, based on his study of the Dead Sea Scrolls, of how the text of the Hebrew Bible developed (“The Text...
Bible Review, Fall 1985
The Search Begins: The Fathers of Historical Jesus Scholarship
During the Enlightenment, the historian’s job changed dramatically. It was no longer enough simply to chronicle events reported in earlier, authoritative texts. Tradition and authority had become suspect, as investigation and reason became the...
Bible Review, Summer 2005
Circumcision
Who Did It, Who Didn’t and Why
Pottery is probably the archaeologist’s most important diagnostic tool, not only for dating a stratum of an excavation, but also for determining the culture and ethnicity of the ancient people who lived there at the time. In 1969, however, at...
Biblical Archaeology Review, July/August 2006
I: The Text Behind the Text of the Hebrew Bible
This is Part I of a two-part article; the second part will appear in the next issue of Bible Review. Part 2 will discuss the...
Bible Review, Summer 1985
What Did Jesus Really Say?
About 40 scholars, all specialists in the study of the historical Jesus, are seated around a table. They have just completed their discussion of a saying attributed to Jesus in the Gospels. The time has come for each to vote on a simple but...
Bible Review, October 1989
The Song of Deborah—Why Some Tribes Answered the Call and Others Did Not
The Song of Deborah (Judges 5) is one of the most powerful pieces of poetry in the entire Bible. A prose version repeats the same story, with many variations, in Judges 4. The account tells of the deliverer (Judge) Deborah and her reluctant...
Biblical Archaeology Review, January/February 1989
The Dead Sea Scrolls and the People Who Wrote Them
After a quarter century of discovery and publication, the study of the manuscripts from the desert of Judah has entered a new, more mature phase. True, the heat and noise of the early controversies have not wholly dissipated. One occasionally hears the agonized cry of a scholar pinned beneath a collapsed theory. And in the popular press, no doubt, the so-called battle of the scrolls will continue to be fought with mercenaries for some time to come. However, the initial period of confusion is past. From the burgeoning field of scroll research and the new disciplines it has created, certain coherent patterns of fact and meaning have emerged.
Biblical Archaeology Review, March 1977
The Great Eighth Century
A century is a wholly arbitrary block of time. History surely does not proceed by 100-year chunks. And to mark the beginning and...
Bible Review, August 1989