Bible Review

Until I retired from active involvement in academic life in 1978, I had been a university teacher of biblical studies for over 30 years. Earlier still, I had studied Greek and Roman literature and history for seven years at three universities and had taught classical Greek for 12 years at two other universities. The academic foundation for my later career as a teacher of biblical criticism and exegesis was laid in the Faculty of Arts, not in any theological school.

This is an original insight of Rabbi Pinchas Peli, Professor of Jewish Values at Ben-Gurion University in Beer-Sheba, whose discussion of these passages was the inspiration for this article.

This Midrash is of course based on the Hebrew word order. This Midrash does not “work” in English translations that do not follow the Hebrew word order.

Abram does not become Abraham until Genesis 17:4, 5 when God makes a covenant with Abram and marks the new relationship by a change of name. God says: “No longer shall your name be Abram (the exalted father), but your name shall now be Abraham.” Abraham, is here taken to mean father of a multitude of nations.

Biblical Hebrew was written without vowels, except for a few consonants that double as vowels in limited instances (known as matres lectionis). In the medieval period a system of diacritical marks was invented to indicate vowels. These “pointings” are sometimes used in modern Hebrew, especially in prayer books and in non-Israeli Hebrew texts, to indicate vowels.

Elsewhere, in the technical literature, Professor Haran has promised a full examination of the relevant arguments, but until he does so we see no reason to accept his conjectures based on unsubstantiated presupposition.

And that is not to ignore the vast internal agenda requiring discussion, questions of no interest whatsoever to the relationship between the two groups. The internal agenda in the writings of both parties to the debate surely predominated.

Rosemary R. Reuther, Studies in Religion 2 (1972), pp. 1–10.

The Tanna was a sage who memorized and repeated a teaching of the Mishnah. The word tny corresponds to the Hebrew word for repeat, sny. Tannaim, therefore, preserved Mishnah teachings both before the editing of the Mishnah in about 200 A.D. and afterward.

There are a number of other books in the rabbinic corpus—for example, Sifrei to Deuteronomy, Sifrei to Numbers, Sifra to Leviticus, Pesikta de-Rav Kahana—but I limit myself in this article to those books which are most relevant to my thesis relating to the parallel development of Judaism and Christianity. Other books of the rabbinic corpus responded to other issues and agendas relating for the most part to concerns internal to Judaism.