Bible Review

Richard Barber, The Holy Grail (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univ. Press, 2004).

This might be implied by the saying that follows in Mark 14:25, in which Jesus says he will not drink again of the fruit of the vine until he drinks it new in the kingdom. But even here it is not clear whether he had already committed himself to abstain and so simply passed the cup to the disciples, or not.

The reference in 1 Kings 16:31 to Jezebel’s father Ethbaal as “King ... of the Sidonians” reflects the expansion of Tyrian power to include control of Sidon. According to a variety of ancient sources, Ethbaal was king of Tyre.

Check out the Anchor Bible Dictionary for the entry on Jezebel (by Gail A. Yee) and on Ahab (by Winfried Thiel).

Two good articles on the subject are: Cheryl Exum, “Prophetic Pornography,” in Plotted, Shot, and Painted (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1996); and Carol Dempsey, “The Whore of Ezekiel 16, ” in Gender and Law in the Hebrew Bible and the Ancient Near East (JSOT Supplement Series 262), ed. Victor Matthews, Bernard M. Levinson and Tikva Frymer-Kensky (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1998) pp. 57–78.

Karel van der Toorn’s From Her Cradle to Her Grave: The Role of Religion in the Life of the Israelite and the Babylonian Woman (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1994) contains useful and fascinating information on biblical marriage and the family in general.

Frank M. Cross, Canaanite Myth and Hebrew Epic (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univ. Press, 1973), p. 237.

On the characters’ motives, and on the problem of incest, see William H.C. Propp, “Kinship in 2 Samuel 13, ” Catholic Biblical Quarterly 55 (1993), pp. 39–53.