Biblical Archaeology Review

“On Archaeology, Forgeries and Public Awareness: The ‘James Brother of Jesus’ Ossuary in Retrospect,” Bible and Interpretation, March 2011 (www.bibleinterp.com/articles/archfor358014.shtml).

Michael E. Ruane, “Gettysburg Gets a Lock of Lincoln’s Hair,” Washington Post, July 1, 2011.

See especially Michael B. Dick’s two studies: “The Legal Metaphor in Job 31, ” Catholic Biblical Quarterly 41 (1979), pp. 37–50; “Job 31, the Oath of Innocence, and the Sage,” Zeitschrift für die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft 95 (1983), pp. 31–53.

This is not the place to discuss the complex, but apt, example of the suspected adulteress in Numbers 5.

In addition to the sources cited in Greenstein, “A Forensic Understanding,” see especially F. Rachel Magdalene, On the Scales of Righteousness: Neo-Babylonian Trial Law and the Book of Job (Providence: Brown Judaic Studies, 2007). Magdalene interprets Job’s lawsuit somewhat differently.

In this translation, I am reading the Ketiv (what is written) l’ “not” for the Qere (what the Masoretic scribes wanted us to read) lw “for him”; and I am reading “his ways” for the Masoretic Text’s “my ways,” which makes no sense and results from an ancient pious correction (tiqqun soferim), intended to protect God’s honor. Compare Job 21:31.

See Donald J. Wiseman, The Alalakh Tablets (London: British Institute of Archaeology at Ankara, 1953), p. 38; see also Greenstein, “A Forensic Understanding,” pp. 257–258. For a different interpretation of the gesture, see Meir Malul, Studies in Mesopotamian Legal Symbolism (Kevalaer and Neukirchen-Vluyn: Butzon & Bercker/Neukirchener Verlag, 1988), pp. 432–439.

See my article, “Jeremiah as an Inspiration to the Poet of Job,” in John Kaltner and Louis Stulman, eds., Inspired Speech: Prophecy in the Ancient Near East—Essays in Honor of Herbert B. Huffmon (London-New York: T &T Clark International/Continuum, 2004), pp. 98–110.

The present article is based on my study, Edward L. Greenstein, “A Forensic Understanding of the Speech from the Whirlwind,” in Michael V. Fox et al., eds., Texts, Temples, and Traditions: A Tribute to Menahem Haran (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 1996), pp. 241–258.