Bible Review

Joseph and His Brothers (New York: Knopf, 1948).

See previous footnote.

Jacob, YaÔaqoµbh, is here derived from the verb Ôaµqabh which is formed from the noun ÔaµqeÆbh, “heel”; thus the verb connotes “to grasp by the heel” or, by extension, “to overreach” or “to supplant,”

The pun is actually a double one; Esau is described as a “hairy man,” which was the reason for the goatskin deception in the first place, and “hairy” in Hebrew is saµÔir (Genesis 27:11).

The Aramaic translation (the Targum), the Greek Translation (the Septuagint), and, recently, the New English Bible and the New Jewish Publication Society translations all make it “the older,” not “the firstborn,” thus unfortunately missing this point and making it unavailable to their readers.

The four English letters, YHWH used to write the unpronounceable name of God (called the tetragrammaton), are written in Hebrew, yod, hay, vav, hay.

The Midrash is the collection of post-biblical commentaries on the Bible, created by the rabbis in the first to eighth centuries A.D.

The Hebrew text adds “every bird, every winged thing,’ but this phrase is not in the Old Greek (Septuagint) and is probably a later gloss

This has also been suggested by A. Wayne, “Why We Do Not Mix Meat and Milk,” American Examiner (March 30, 1960), p. 13, and by C. M. Carmichael, “On Separating Life and Death: An Explanation of Some Biblical Laws,” Harvard Theological Review 69 (1976), pp. 1–7.

Philo Judaeus of Alexandria was a Jewish philosopher who lived from about 25 B.C. to about 50 A.D. Philo wrote in Greek in the century of Jesus, Herod the Great, Paul and Hillel, and his works are thus of key importance to scholars.