Bible Review, December 1988
Features
The Assassination of Eglon
The first locked-room murder mystery
Ancient Israel’s authors wrote for Israelites, in Israelite language, with Israelite assumptions. That audiences on distant continents, millennia later, would be trying to piece together what they meant was a thought that never occurred to them. Changed language and changed assumptions obstruct our view of what the...Read more ›
Isaiah
The impractical prophet
The book of Isaiah begins with a superscript: “The prophecies of Isaiah son of Amoz, who prophesied concerning Judah and Jerusalem in the reigns of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah, kings of Judah” (Isaiah 1:1). This emphasizes the...Read more ›
Two Master Portraits of Isaiah
Two masterful portraits of the prophet Isaiah were painted in Rome at the beginning of the 16th century. The first, by Michelangelo (see below), was painted on the Sistine chapel ceiling between 1500 and 1510.1 The second, by Raphael (see front cover), was painted in the Church...Read more ›
Corinth & Ephesus
Why did Paul spend half his journeys in these cities?
Paul’s three missionary “journeys” form a standard feature in New Testament maps and histories. The impression that emerges from the account in Acts of the Apostles 1–21 in the New Testament is that Paul three times set out from Antioch in Syria on a...Read more ›
The Meeting Season
A time to learn, a time to drowse, a time to mingle with colleagues from around the world
Summer is the time for alphabet-soup scholarly conferences. Some are held annually, like those of the International SBL (Society of Biblical Literature), the CBA (Catholic Biblical Association) and the SNTS (Studiorum Novi Testamenti Societas), which met last summer in Sheffield, England, San Francisco and Cambridge, England, respectively...Read more ›