Latest Essays

The story of the flowering staff in its current form and context, confirms YHWH’s previous designation of the Aaronides as priests. Originally, however, the story presented YHWH’s selection of the tribe of Levi as his priestly caste.

The story of Aaron’s staff reads like an etiological tale, explaining a holy object in the Temple. The description of the object as a stylized tree suggests a connection with the asherah, a ritual object forbidden by Deuteronomy.

Fire pans (maḥtot) are listed as part of the Tabernacle’s accessories for the menorah and the altar. They also play an important role in the stories of Korah’s rebellion and the death of Nadav and Avihu as incense censors. Archaeological excavations have uncovered what these items were and how they functioned.

Rahab is a Canaanite prostitute who becomes faithful to the God of Israel, hiding two Israelite spies when the king of Jericho sends men to capture them. The rabbis imagine her as a superhumanly seductive woman who knows the secrets of all the men in Jericho, as well as the ultimate example of repentance. The biblical story, however, suggests a more complex character, who worked within the power structures around her.

Fishbone remains discovered in eight different excavations in Jerusalem, from the Iron age to the early Islamic period, give us a sense of what fish the locals ate, and from where they were imported.

Samson’s conception story may be read subversively as the result of a union between a divine being and a mortal woman, making Samson a demi-god with superhuman characteristics. At the same time, the text keeps open the more mundane possibility that his father is Manoah and his powers are simply a gift from God.

The root ק.נ.א “jealous zeal” in the chapter on the sotah (Numbers 5) highlights a key goal of the ritual and its accompanying offering, namely, to remove the husband’s jealous zeal and allow him to remain with his wife without guilt.

In late antiquity and medieval times, the reading of the Torah and haftara was often accompanied with an Aramaic translation and Aramaic poems. Akdamut Milin and Yatziv Pitgam are the remnants of a once vibrant collection of Shavuot poems, some of which connect specific laws of the Decalogue with biblical stories, while others dramatized the revelation at Sinai with tales of Moses’ experiences in heaven.

How are we to understand Ezekiel’s bizarre vision of the chariot in its historical context? What makes it theologically so dangerous in the eyes of the rabbis?

Statements that express our feelings are often confused with factual assertions.

Leviticus allows priests and their families to enjoy the donations and sacrifices to YHWH. This differs from Hittite practice of forbidding priests access to holy objects outside of limited ritual contexts. What is the reason for the difference between these two priestly systems?

The Bible knows about many priestly families, including the Levites, the Mushites (descendants of Moses), and the Zadokites. By the time of Ezra and Chronicles, however, only Aaronide priests were legitimate, and other families either merged with them or were demoted.

Leviticus 25 legislates a multi-tiered system of rights and requirements that act as a corrective to a market in which even human beings can be sold. This system preserves the dignified status of Israelite brothers as free persons with their own ancestral agricultural land, ensuring that no Israelites become a permanent lower class.

Upon purifying the Temple in his first year as king, Hezekiah delays the celebration of Passover until the 14^th of Iyar, the date of the Torah’s Pesach Sheni, “Second Passover.” A close examination of the story (2 Chr 29–30) demonstrates that this wasn’t a simple application of the Pesach Sheni law, but that Hezekiah was innovating in order to create unity between the northern Israelites and southern Judahites.

Only two law collections in the ancient Near East discuss bestiality: the Torah and the Hittite laws. How do these laws differ, and what motivated them?

Leviticus 18 includes an extensive list of prohibited sexual relations, including incest, but it does not mention relations between a father and daughter. How can this glaring omission be explained?

Leviticus’ list of conjugally-forbidden relations was extensive for its time. While the Karaites expanded the list greatly, the rabbis did so only slightly, leaving modern-day rabbinic Judaism with more relatives permitted for marriage than most western societies.

The western wall of the ancient synagogue in Dura Europos (245 C.E.) is covered with a series of wall paintings depicting the story of Moses. What can we learn by a close reading of these panels?

Egyptian artists depicted their northern Levantine neighbors as prisoners or warriors being smitten, as dignitaries presenting tribute, and even as slaves working on royal building projects. This gives us a glimpse of what Levantines looked like in this period from an Egyptian perspective, including, perhaps, those who later identified as Israelites.

In four passages, the Torah has a father explaining different commandments to a son by referencing the exodus from Egypt. Comparing the wording in these biblical passages, the rabbis reinterpreted—and even revised—them to reflect a father explaining Pesach to four different sons: wise, stupid, wicked, and one who doesn’t ask.

The Elephantine Stele and the Great Harris Papyrus both describe Pharaoh Setnakhte’s war against the Levantine usurper Irsu in 1186 B.C.E. Reading these accounts together with Manetho’s story of the war against Osarseph offers us a possible historical context for what eventually became the Bible’s story of the exodus of Israel from Egypt.

In the Torah’s description of the paschal sacrifice, God pasachs the Israelites. Though the simple meaning of this verb is “to spare or protect,” the standard translation of the verb here is “pass over.” A look at the Greek-Jewish translations of the verb pasach and the festival name, Pesach, and a consideration of the theological problems with Exodus 12:23, sheds light on how this translation came about. 

Conversion to Judaism as we know it is a rabbinic development, but what, then is the biblical ger, and why does he need to be circumcised in order to eat from the paschal offering?

Already in the early 2nd millennium B.C.E., people knew that diseases were contagious, and fear of contagion plays a key role in the Torah’s laws regarding the skin ailment, tzaraʿat. What does this mean for understanding other kinds of tum’ah?