Bible Review

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

See Hershel Shanks, “Don’t Let Pseudepigrapha Scare You,” BR 03:02.

A tallit is a Jewish prayer shawl; a mezuzah, a scroll inscribed with Deuteronomy 6:4–9, 11:13–21 and the name Shaddai, and placed in a case affixed to the doorpost of Jewish homes, in accordance with the command to “inscribe [the words] upon the doorposts of thy gates.”

During the Byzantine period, Onkelos produced an Aramaic translation of the Bible that Rashi later relied on.

Rashi is an acronym for Rabbi Shelomo Yitshaki (1040–1105), an outstanding scholar who wrote commentaries on the Hebrew Bible and the Talmud (the collection of Jewish laws and teachings). Midrash is a genre of rabbinic literature that includes nonliteral elaborations of biblical texts.

For a critical evaluation, see Ronald S. Hendel’s review of The Search for the Real Mt. Sinai in ReViews, BAR 25:04.

On the Akedah in Jewish and Christian art, see Robin M. Jensen, “The Binding or Sacrifice of Isaac—How Jews and Christians See Differently,” BR 09:05; and Jack Riemer, “The Binding of Isaac: Rembrandt’s Contrasting Portraits,” BR 05:06.

The deity Molech is thought to be related to the Phoenician cult of child sacrifice. See Lawrence E. Stager and Samuel R. Wolff, “Child Sacrifice at Carthage—Religious Rite or Population Control?” BAR 10:01.