Bible Review

Translated by Herbert Bronstein and Albert H. Friedlander (New York: Central Conference of American Rabbis, 1984).

One scholar has argued, however, that the ostracon, as shown here, is upside down; when viewed properly, he claims, the alphabet does run from right from left. See Joseph Naveh, “Some Considerations on the Ostracon from ‘Izbet S|art\ah,” Israel Exploration Journal 28:1–2 (1978), pp. 31–35.

See Aaron Demsky and Moshe Kochavi, “An Alphabet from the Days of the Judges,” BAR 04:03.

See Judges 3:10 for Othniel, 4:4 for Deborah, 10:2 for Tola, 10:3 for Jair, 12:7 for Jephthah, 12:8 for Ibzan, 12:11 for Elon, 12:13 for Abdon and 15:20 for Samson; only Ehud, Gideon and Shamgar are not described this way.

Voting among biblical scholars to determine a consensus on issues of translation and textual criticism is by now an uncontroversial practice, even if it is relatively recent. The tradition of voting by ecclesiastical authorities to determine official doctrines concerning the Bible is an ancient practice. For example, the Catholic Church formally adopted Jerome’s Vulgate as its canonical Bible at the Council of Trent—the vote among the bishops in attendance was 23 for, 15 against, with 16 abstentions.

The results of the Jesus Seminar’s ten years of deliberations are reported in two books: The sayings material is analyzed in The Five Gospels (New York: Macmillan, 1993); the deeds material is analyzed in our forthcoming book tentatively titled The Acts of Jesus (New York: HarperSanFrancisco).

Inerrancy, the doctrine that the Bible is completely free of any kind of error (historical, scientific, moral or religious), is a cornerstone of Fundamentalism.