As Passover approaches, we will get the obligatory articles (usually written by devoted skeptical journalists) about "the real truth" behind Passover (and Easter, of course). The article you'll find at this post over at Todd Bolen's Bible Places blog isn't of that...
History
Biblical History, Biblical Fiction
I thought I'd post two items that I have my ancient Israel class read each year. Both are from V. Philips Long's important book, The Art of Biblical History. The first is the book's introduction, which uses a painting and its interpretation as an analogy to the...
Historically-Conditioned Scriptures
This short piece was posted by Larry Hurtado today. Good food for thought, especially in the context of our (now old) discussion of inspiration (which we will revisit at some point). Larry targets fundamentalists (read: black and white thinkers) on both the...
Walton and Van Wolde: Hebrew Bara’ Does Not Mean “To Create”
John Hobbins has a helpful post offering links to the critiques of the thesis of Ellen Van Wolde that Hebrew bara' does not mean "create". John Walton's recent book The Lost World of Genesis 1, positively reviewed by me here and (soon) in print, has popularized this...
Taxation in Ancient Israel
Pretty informative article. I came across it while prepping for a course I'm teaching at the local university next quarter (Ancient Cities). Editor's note: Abstract from the article by Robert A. Oden, Jr, included below: ABSTRACTThis essay represents an initial...
New Book on the Great Airship of 1897
The Magonia blog posted a review today of a new book on the great airship sightings of 1897: The Great Airship of 1897: A Provocative Look at the Most Mysterious Aviation Event in History. Amazon has the publication date as February 11, 2010, but I'm guessing you can...
Abraham Was from Ur in Mesopotamia . . . Right?
I don't think so, and I'm in good company. Why? You'll know that after reading this 1958 article by Cyrus Gordon, one of my favorite scholars: "Abraham and the Merchants of Ura." You'll wonder why it's been so overlooked.
An Afterword on the Changes to Passover in Deuteronomy
If you're following the comments on this post, you will note that one of the readers (Chris) has argued that the rules for the Passover in the book of Exodus weren't really rules - Exodus only described a memorial. Therefore, the rules in Deuteronomy were the "real"...
Example #2 – Changes in Passover Laws
This is long, but bear with me. There's a discussion payoff at the end. The Three Annual (Required) Festivals for Israelites in the Book of Exodus are: Passover / Unleavened Bread (the month of Abib was renamed to Nisan during exilic times) Harvest (qatsir)...