Bible Review

Gebhard J. Selz, “‘The Holy Drum, the Spear, and the Harp’: Towards an Understanding of the Problems of Deification in Third Millennium Mesopotamia,” in Sumerian Gods and Their Representations, ed. Irving Finkel and Markham J. Geller (Groningen: Styx, 1997), pp. 185–186, n.8.

For the source of this text, see Christopher Walker and Michael B. Dick, “The Mesopotamian miµs piÆ Ritual,” in Born in Heaven, Made on Earth: The Making of the Cult Image in the Ancient Near East, ed. Dick (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 1999), pp. 64–65.

James Davidson, Courtesans and Fishcakes (New York: HarperCollins, 1997), p. 40.

See Michael M. Homan, “Beer, Barley and rK;ve in the Hebrew Bible,” in the Festschrift for David Noel Freedman on His 80th Birthday (forthcoming).

See Carey Ellen Walsh, The Fruit of the Vine: Viticulture in Ancient Israel, Harvard Semitic Monographs 60 (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2000).

See Betsy A. O’Brien, “The Lord’s Supper: Fruit of the Vine or Cup of Devils?” Methodist History 31:4 (1993), p. 221.

Whitney R. Cross, The Burned Over District: The Social and Intellectual History of Enthusiastic Religion in Western New York, 1800–1850 (New York: Harper & Row, 1965), p. 216.

Despite popular belief, a “teetotaler,” a person who abstains completely from alcohol, has nothing to do with tea. Rather, the word stems from a dreidel-like top popular in Europe from the 16th to 19th century. The tops had four lettered sides, one of which was inscribed with the letter T for Latin totum, “all,” signifying “take all.” Thus teetotaler became a term used for somebody practicing total abstinence from something, such as alcohol.

Xavier Léon Dufour, in the Dictionary of the New Testament (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1983), p. 379, sums up the current views:

Another possibility was mentioned by Bishop Papias of Hierapolis, writing about 130 C.E., whose work is quoted in Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History III.39.4. Papias sought information about Jesus from an elusive “presbyter” named John.