Bible Review

See Bruce M. Metzger, review of Eyewitness to Jesus, by Carsten Peter Thiede, in Bible Books, BR 12:04.

See Graham Stanton, “A Gospel Among the Scrolls?” BR 11:06.

See James C. VanderKam, “Jubilees: How It Rewrote the Bible,” BR 08:06.

See Hershel Shanks’s review of Discoveries in the Judaean Desert Vol. XXI, Qumran Cave 4—XVI, Calendrical Texts, Shemaryahu Talmon, Jonathan Ben-Dov and Uwe Glessmer, eds., in ReViews, BAR 28:06.

See Dieter Georgi, “Was the Early Church Jewish?” BR 17:06.

The “testament” form is common in early Jewish literature. It is inspired by Jacob’s speech to his sons before his death (Genesis 49) and Moses’ speech to the people of Israel before his (Deuteronomy 31–34).

Midrash (plural midrashim, from the Hebrew for “search, investigate”) is a genre of rabbinic literature that seeks to interpret the biblical text. The direction of midrash often results in elaborate—and sometimes fantastic—expansions of the biblical story. In the present instance, however, it is simply a matter of two rabbis attempting to elucidate the plain meaning of a difficult word in the text.

The term synoptic, from the Greek for “seeing together,” refers to the fact that the Gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke share so much material that when printed side by side in three parallel columns their correspondences can be “seen together” at a glance.)

For a different interpretaion of bamot and royal religion, see Beth Alpert Nakhai, “What’s a Bamah? How Sacred Space Functioned in Ancient Israel,” BAR 20:03, and Archaeology and the Religions of Canaan and Israel (Atlanta: American Schools of Oriental Research, 2001).