Bible Review, December 2000
Features
Mary, Martha and the Kitchen Maid
My mother is a Martha; her best friend, a Mary. My mother raised five children while working, for almost all of her adult life, as a schoolteacher. My mother’s best friend had, well, more fun.1 Which is why my mother, as she cooked dinner or sat correcting...Read more ›
The Desert Tabernacle
Pure fiction or plausible account?
The patriarchs Abraham, Isaac and Jacob invoked the Lord at simple outdoor altars apparently built for the occasion. King Solomon, however, built the Lord a permanent home, the Temple in Jerusalem. Midway between these two biblical traditions stands the portable Tabernacle that housed the Ark of the...Read more ›
The Divine Warrior in His Tent
A military model for Yahweh’s tabernacle
Yahweh could have asked Moses for just about anything—a temple, a palace, even a pyramid. Instead, Yahweh requests that Moses build him a tent (Exodus 25:8–9). Once the tent has been constructed according to Yahweh’s exacting instructions, the...Read more ›
King David: Serial Murderer
New biography compares Israelite king to Saddam Hussein
King David: A Biography Steven L. MacKenzie (New York, NY: Oxford Univ. Press, 2000) 232 pp., $25.00 (hardback) I started reading this book with high hopes. Despite its title, which suggested (at least to...Read more ›
Now Playing: The Gospel of Thomas
One Sunday morning several years ago, a most astonishing thing happened to me. I was attending services at a local church in Claremont, California, where I was a graduate student working on a (then) relatively obscure text known as the Gospel of Thomas. I rose and began...Read more ›