Latest Essays

Rachel and Leah give Jacob their maidservants, Bilhah and Zilpah, as wives to bear children on their behalf. The four sons born to the maidservants are named by Rachel and Leah to express their own feelings and experiences of having more of “their” own children. Yet the Bible consistently calls them the sons of Bilhah and Zilpah and counts them as Jacob’s sons, part of the twelve tribes of Israel. Should Bilhah and Zilpah then not be considered matriarchs?

The biblical narrative presents Isaac bound on the altar and spared by an angel—but hints in the text suggest that in an earlier version Abraham actually sacrificed his son. Medieval midrash, projecting national grief and destruction onto the biblical story, imagines Isaac was killed and resurrected. In the 20th century, Jewish artists likewise depict Isaac as dead as a symbol of mourning over the Holocaust, war, and more recently October 7th.

The nativity stories in Matthew and Luke are deeply rooted in Jewish Scripture and Second Temple Judaism. Nevertheless, over the centuries they have accumulated interpretations that portray Jews as cruel, greedy, impure, or spiritually blind. A closer look at familiar claims—from Mary’s supposed threat of being stoned to the caricature of shepherds as social outcasts—shows how antisemitism often enters the Christmas story not through the Gospels themselves, but through their interpretation.

The Greek historian Herodotus, who visited Egypt in the 5th century B.C.E., reports that Egyptians would not kiss a Greek on the mouth or use any of their food implements—knife, fork, or pot—because Greeks ate cows, which Egyptians regarded as sacred. This background sheds light on the biblical account of Egyptians refusing to eat with Joseph’s brothers—or even with Joseph himself.

When Amnon presses his sister Tamar to sleep with him, she begs him to ask the king for her hand in marriage. Was such a marriage really an option in ancient Israel? After Amnon rapes Tamar, King David is angry, but silent. Why is it Absalom who feels compelled to avenge her?

The miracle of the jug of oil lasting eight days is first narrated in the Babylonian Talmud, centuries after the establishment of Chanukah. In 1891 Poland, Chaim Zelig Slonimski, an observant, science-minded Jew, denied the historicity of this miracle, claiming that he was following in the footsteps of Maimonides. Some of his enlightened colleagues—and even some secular Zionists—thought he was endangering people’s connection to Judaism and providing antisemites a pretext to mock the Talmud.

Job, overwhelmed by suffering, imagines the moments from womb to nursing in which he wishes he had died. His lament, however, preserves surprising evidence about how women once gave birth.

Jacob is renamed Israel after being wounded in his struggle with a divine being. The Torah then introduces the prohibition against eating the sciatic nerve, a commandment that has played little role in shaping Jewish identity. Remarkably, in medieval China, the Kaifeng Jews elevated this otherwise marginal rule into their defining communal name.

In the biblical narrative (Genesis 26, 28), Esau marries Judith, Basemath, and Mahalath. A later genealogical list of Edomite clans (Genesis 36) says that he married Adah, Aholibamah, and Basemath. To make sense of this contradiction, medieval commentaries offer creative backstories, yielding different tallies for the total number of Esau’s wives.

God commands Abraham to sacrifice his son, Isaac, and Abraham comes within moments of slaughtering him before being stopped by an angel. Behind the drama lies a carefully crafted, layered composition shaped by revisions, allusions, and cross-references that show how the Akedah, the binding of Isaac, took shape and grew over time.

Why would God make righteous people suffer just to test their faithfulness? With Job, the Bible is explicit that it was in response to Satan’s challenge, but what about Abraham? Jubilees (2^nd cent. C.E.), and later the Talmud and midrash, reimagine the Akedah to have been instigated by Mastema, the Satan, or jealous angels. The midrash goes further and envisions the demon Samael tempting Abraham to make him fail.

Sarah is absent from the biblical account of Isaac’s binding, and there’s no indication that Abraham even discussed God’s command with her. Would she have been an active participant, a faithful supporter, or a grief-stricken mother? Later interpreters filled in her role according to their religious and cultural contexts.

Rebecca endures a difficult pregnancy and inquires of YHWH, who reveals that the younger will surpass the older. Yet commentators hesitate to call her a prophet, perhaps because she withholds this revelation from Isaac and later deceives him when he moves to bless Esau. But far from mere guile, her actions mark her as a Kierkegaardian Knight of Faith—acting decisively in service of the divine, much like Abraham at the binding of Isaac.

In the 2nd century C.E., when Christianity emerged as a religion, theologians such as Justin and Chrysostom interpreted Paul’s letters to mean that Christians with faith in Jesus are Abraham’s spiritual descendants through Sarah. Jews, in contrast, are only his flesh descendants, banished like Hagar. Genesis Rabbah responds that after Sarah’s death, Abraham remarried Hagar—now called Keturah, “adorned” (kitra) with commandments and good deeds—and had many more children with her than he did with Sarah.

Samuel must piece together YHWH’s intention to anoint David. Elisha’s plan to save a widow and her sons unfolds in fits and starts.

In the Ugaritic Aqhat Epic (ca. 14th cent. B.C.E., Syria), Danel laughs with unrestrained joy at El’s promise of a son. Why do Abraham and Sarah respond with nervous, uneasy laughter when YHWH makes the same promise?

In Achaemenid royal ideology, the Persian kings saw themselves as heirs to the ancient Elamite rulers, even adopting the old Elamite title “King of Anshan.” Thus, the unusual story of Abram the warrior (Genesis 14) defeating the four kings from the east led by Chedorlaomer of Elam reflects the author’s veiled hope for Israel’s triumph over its Persian overlords: if it happened in the past, it can happen again.

Hagar’s flight from Sarai is more than a story of mistreatment and divine mercy toward a maidservant. Like Moses, Hagar’s journey into the wilderness follows the contours of the fugitive hero pattern, yet examining how her story adapts this pattern sheds new light on its unexpected details and narrative turns.

Why did ancient Jewish and Christian authors attribute books, both real and imagined, to Adam and Eve, their daughters, Seth, Enosh, Kainan, Mahalalel, Jared, Enoch, Lamech, Noah, and Shem?

The language of Canaan, שׂפת כנען, Judahite, יהודית, Hebrew, עברית, or the holy language, לשון הקודש—what name did Jews and Samaritans use?

Written by a Jew in the 2nd century B.C.E., The Letter of Aristeas tells how Demetrius of Phalerum advised King Ptolemy II (3rd cent. B.C.E.) that the Library of Alexandria should commission a Greek translation of the otherwise inaccessible Jewish Torah. At the king’s request, Eleazar, the High Priest of the Jerusalem Temple, sends high-quality manuscripts and seventy-two translators—six from each Israelite tribe—who so impress the Hellenistic king and his court with the Torah’s universal wisdom that he offers to pay them to remain in Egypt.

At creation, humans and animals were alike—plant-eating, unclothed, and speaking the same language; God even brings the beasts to Adam to find a fitting companion. Everything changes when Adam and Eve eat from the tree of knowledge of good and evil. What kind of story is this? Remarkable parallels with the Mesopotamian Gilgamesh epic show how the biblical author crafted an Israelite wisdom story about the end of humankind’s infancy.

Among Solomon’s many foreign wives, only Pharaoh’s daughter receives individualized attention—but why does her story center on Solomon’s building projects?

The kingdom of Israel was destroyed in the 8th century B.C.E., but the name Israel lived on. During the Second Temple period, who called themselves Israelites, and who were the Jews? A close look at the Bible, Josephus, and other sources reveals a simple answer—and exposes the anti-Jewish bias behind the infamous “insider/outsider” theory.

​Originally, Deuteronomy presented itself as the torah, and even after its incorporation into the Pentateuch, it retains a distinct identity, which is why the Septuagint translates mishneh torah (Deuteronomy 17:18) as deuteronomium, “Second Torah.” At the same time, with the canonization of the Pentateuch, the role of the “second Torah” was claimed by: Jubilees, some Dead Sea Scrolls, Philo, early Christians, and ultimately the rabbis, culminating in the composition of the Mishnah. A millennium later, Maimonides presented his Mishneh Torah as the (so-far) complete and final embodiment of that second revelation.