Bible Review

See Robert Alter, “The Song of Songs: An Ode to Intimacy,” BR, August 2002.

This might account for the seemingly redundant words in Exodus 32:35: “Then the Lord sent a plague upon the people for having made the calf which Aaron had made.” This may simply add emphasis to the claim that the calf was indeed made by Aaron and not, as Aaron claimed, by itself.

Michael B. Dick, “Worshiping Idols: What Isaiah Didn’t Know,” BR, April 2002.

Midrash (plural midrashim) is rabbinic lore of either a legal or nonlegal nature attached to a biblical verse.

See Ben Witherington III, “Bringing James Out of the Shadows,” and Jerome Murphy-O’Connor, “Where Was James Buried?” in BR, June 2003.

Scholars generally agree that a passage like this, shared by Matthew and Luke but absent from Mark, derives from a common source called Q (from the German Quelle, for “source”) used by Matthew and Luke but now lost. See Stephen J. Patterson, “Yes, Virginia, There Is a Q,” BR, October 1995.

See “Scientists Part the Red Sea,” Biblical Archaeology Review, September/October 1992, p. 26. In 1981, Hans Goedicke of Johns Hopkins University proposed that a volcanic eruption on the Mediterranean island of Thera in 1477 B.C. caused a massive tidal wave that swept across the Mediterranean and flooded the Nile, catching Pharaoh’s army by surprise.

See James Strange and Hershel Shanks, “Has the House Where Jesus Stayed in Capernaum Been Found?” Biblical Archaeology Review, November/December 1982.

Jerome Murphy-O’Connor, “Fishers of Men,” BR, June 1999.

See Mendel Nun, “Ports of Galilee,” Biblical Archaeology Review, July/August 1999.