Bible Review

These inscriptions were found on large storage pots at a desert outpost in the Sinai named Kuntillet Ajrud. These texts also mention Yahweh in conjunction with a female divine counterpart, Asherah. See Ze’ev Meshel, “Did Yahweh Have a Consort?” Biblical Archaeology Review, March/April 1979; and Ruth Hestrin, “Understanding Asherah—Exploring Semitic Iconography,” Biblical Archaeology Review, September/October 1991.

Rudolf Bultmann made these suggestions in his justly famous commentary on John, published in German in 1941 and in English translation 30 years later. Unfortunately, he did not pursue them. Had he done so he might have come to more positive conclusions about the historical value of the Gospel of John.

Janet Howe Gaines, “Seductress, Heroine or Murderer?” BR, October 2001, p. 12; and “The Seductress of Qumran” (based on an article by Joseph Baumgarten), BR, October 2001, p. 21.

The Talmud is the enormous corpus of Jewish legal and legendary literature produced between the second and sixth centuries C.E.

See Shaye J.D. Cohen, “Did Ancient Jews Missionize?” BR, August 2003; and Louis H. Feldman, “Omnipresence of the God-Fearers,” Biblical Archaeology Review, September/October 1986.

See Hershel Shanks, “Is It or Isn’t It—A Synagogue? Archaeologists Disagree Over Buildings at Jericho and Migdal,” Biblical Archaeology Review, November/December 2001.

See “Truth in Fiction,” BR, February 2004, p. 10; and Ben Witherington III’s review of The Da Vinci Code, Biblical Archaeology Review, May/June 2004.

See Jan Willem Drijvers, “The True Cross,” BR, August 2003.