Bible Review

Tryggve N.D. Mettinger, Solomonic State Officials, Coniectanea biblica, Old Testament series 5 (Lund: Gleerup, 1971), pp. 36–42.

4QMMT C 31.

4QMMT B 75–76.

Some of MMT’s regulations (B 3–9) are indeed concerned with avoiding gentile impurity. But they are not urging avoidance as such: The reader(s) would be just as keen on that. They define this way of avoiding gentile impurity over against other Jewish ways of doing so.

It is possible that Paul’s polemic against calendrical observances in Galatians 4:10 may relate to something like MMT section A. But it is equally likely that it simply refers to the biblical Sabbath- and festival-keeping.

The Biblical Archaeology Society, publisher of BR, was sued by Israeli scholar Elisha Qimron for copyright infringement when BAS reprinted a page from a Polish journal that contained a photocopy of a tentative reconstruction of MMT that Qimron had handed out at an academic conference. An Israeli court found in favor of Qimron, but the decision is under appeal to Israel’s Supreme Court.

Larue, Sex and the Bible, p. 99.

George W. Coats, “Lot,” in Understanding the Word, ed. James T. Butler, Edgar W. Conrad and Ben C. Ollenburger (Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1985), p. 123.

E.A. Speiser, Genesis, Anchor Bible 1 (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1986), p. 155 n. 9.