Bible Review

See Jerome Murphy-O’Connor, “What Really Happened at the Transfiguration?” BR 03:03.

Midrash is a genre of rabbinic literature that includes nonliteral elaborations of biblical texts.

Rashi, a French Jew who lived from 1040 to 1105, wrote commentaries on almost every book of the Hebrew Bible and the Babylonian Talmud. The sages are earlier rabbinic authorities.

These strands are called J, or the Yahwist source (in German, Jahwist); E, or the Elohisitc source; P or the Priestly Code; and D, or teh Deuteronomic source.

See Robert J. Miller, “Why the Ugly Attacks? Scholars Know Some Sayings Are Inauthentic,” and Ben Witherington III, “Buyer Beware! Sensationalist Claims Sold Here,” in “Battling Over the Jesus Seminar,” BR 13:02; and Marcus J. Borg, “What Did Jesus Really Say?, BR 05:05.

It is consistent with the narrative as a whole that the same image be used to highlight Saul’s downfall and David’s rise to power. In “Saul and David: Crossed Fates,” BR 05:03, Jan P. Fokkelman argues that all of 1 Samuel 13 through 2 Samuel 1 is an interaction between these two processes.

See Jacob Milgrom, “Of Hems and Tassels,” BAR 09:03.

According to Deuteronomy 25:5–10, when a man refuses to marry his brother’s widow, the widow should approach the surviving brother (called the levir) “in the presence of the elders, pull the sandal off his foot, spit in his face, and make this declaration: ‘Thus shall be done to the man who will not build up his brother’s house!’ And he shall go in Israel by the name of ‘the family of the unsandaled one.’”

Midrash (plural, midrashim) is a genre of rabbinic literature that includes nonliteral elaborations of biblical texts, often for homiletic purposes.

See Jeffrey R. Zorn, “Backward Glance: A Legacy of Publication,” BAR 23:04.