Bible Review

Kosher laws of the Hebrew Bible divide food into categories of “clean” and “unclean.” Only the former may be eaten. See Leviticus 11 and Deuteronomy 14.

Headlines of stories about the Jesus Seminar often highlight dimensions of its work perceived as most likely to cause offense: “Scholars Say Jesus Was Often Misquoted,” “Scholars Question Roots of Scripture,” “Scholars Seek to Discredit Christ,” “Why Do These Scholars Call Themselves Christian?”

The New Red-Letter Edition of the Five Gospels will be published by Polebridge Press, Sonoma, California. The fifth Gospel in the study is the apocryphal Gospel of Thomas.

Montanus, a recent convert to Christianity, preached in the mid-second century the imminent arrival of the New Jerusalem. His followers regarded themselves as an elite corps of spiritual Christians. A synod in 230 sent the movement underground by declaring its baptisms invalid.

B.C.E. and C.E. are the scholarly, religiously neutral designations corresponding to B.C. and A.D. They stand for “Before the Common Era” and “Common Era.”

An ostracon (pl., ostraca) is a potsherd containing an inscription. The ancients used broken pieces of pottery as note pads.

See the following BAR articles: André Lemaire, “Who or What Was Yahweh’s Asherah?” BAR 10:06; and Ze’ev Meshel, “Did Yahweh Have a Consort?” BAR 05:02.

See André Lemaire, “Fragments from the Book of Balaam Found at Deir Alla,” BAR 11:05.

See Dan P. Cole, “How Water Tunnels Worked,” BAR 06:02.