This is an entry in the “Acrostic Contemplations.” See “Q is for ‘Quails’” Manna is a word that remains fairly well known in the English language and most people will even recognize an echo of the Exodus in its usage. The term is actually the Hebrew phrase meaning “What is it?” […]
Hebrew
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Thirty years ago in August, Elizabeth and I were married. Over our honeymoon, I was encouraged to send in an application to the Oxford Centre for Postgraduate Hebrew & Jewish Studies for their one-year “Graduate Diploma.” I was admitted and received a full scholarship, so we deferred the offer from […]
This past year I was asked by Chris Keith to write a chapter on Jesus in the Talmud for The Reception of Jesus in the First Three Centuries. Last month I was invited to speak at the 1892 Club at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. They recorded it and have posted […]
UPDATE: The Targum manuscript Valmadonna 1 was sold separately to the Museum of the Bible. This is very good news! It appears the entire a portion of the collection has been purchased by the Israeli National Library. As I shared several years ago Sotheby’s was exhibiting and the family seeking to […]
Gen. 50:20 ואתם חשבתם עלי רעה אלהים חשבה לטבה This passage is the climax of the Joseph cycle, as his brothers realize that it is their brother Joseph, whom they had sold into slavery, who is now lord in Egypt and holds their fate in his hands. Gen. 50:18 Then […]
A Facebook friend posted this article from the Washington Post, Stop. Using. Periods. Period. My friend called them “douchey, hipster pod-dorks with no allegiance to the English language” and I cannot say that my assessment is too far off. I would suggest, however that their flagging allegiance is not just to English […]
This weekend was my daughter’s high school graduation so my plan of reminding everyone of the role of the Book of Ruth in Shavuot was set aside. There does remain one more day of observance so for my observant Jewish friends, yom tov and hag sameach! Shavuot is the Feast of Weeks, the […]
It is interesting to me that the most viewed publication of mine on Academia.edu is my master’s thesis, “Joseph, Dreams, And Interpretation: A Study of the Stylistic and Rhetorical Features of the Dreams in the Joseph Narrative.” This was submitted for approval 20 years ago this May. (I submitted my […]
This is great and something I have actually known about for quite a while. When I was editing the DSS 4QS volume for Philip Alexander and Geza Vermes in grad school I was directed to read the document backwards, ignoring the words themselves in order to look solely for typos. […]
Tonight we had a great dinner on the 11th floor of the newly renovated Ohio State University library. As you enter you walk over a very cool metal “sculpture” of the English alphabet mounted in the floor. While waiting for the elevator I noticed that they had the paleo-Hebrew alphabet! […]