Latest Essays

The Difference between God’s “Name (שם)” and “Presence (כבוד)”

Deuteronomy’s law of the rebellious son (Deuteronomy 21:18–21) poses numerous problems. Like the rabbis, Josephus interprets the law, but his conclusions are quite different.

Deuteronomy prohibits certain groups from “enter[ing] the assembly of YHWH,” לא יבואו בקהל י־הוה, which likely reflects a ban on citizenship. Nevertheless, the oldest and most commonly known explanation for the term is as a prohibition against marriage, an interpretation already found in Kings and Ezra-Nehemiah.

Deuteronomy requires Israelite soldiers to carry a shovel with them for covering their feces, outside the war camp, because God is in the camp. The Qumranites and Karaites assume that feces must be impure, while the rabbis extend the law to include times of prayer and Torah study, and maintaining human decency at all times.

The original laws of the slandering husband (מוציא שם רע) and the Sotah woman accused of adultery — both take one party’s guilt as a given. Each of these laws was subsequently redacted in a way that eliminated the automatic assumption of guilt.

Reading the Succession Narrative as anti-monarchic Greek tragedy.

Deuteronomy’s legal system is complex, combining descriptions of how law actually functioned with elements of ideal law.

Decades before Facebook, blogs, and the Internet, at a time Orthodoxy was trying to distinguish itself from the Conservative movement, ten Orthodox thinkers responded to the question of what the divine revelation of the Torah meant in Orthodox Judaism. Did they meet the challenge of Biblical Criticism?

The Cow That Laid an Egg (!)

Leviticus requires covering the blood of undomesticated animals; Deuteronomy requires pouring out the blood of slaughtered domesticated animals onto the ground. How do these laws jibe with each other? The Essenes have one answer, the rabbis another, the academics a third.

Bewildered, Rashi asks why Deuteronomy records Aaron’s death at Moserah (not Mt. Hor) and why it does so in the middle of Moses’ description of his (second) forty-day stay upon Mount Horeb. Academic biblical scholarship sheds light on these questions.

Illustrations From Parashat Ekev

A careful examination of the three oldest copies of the Decalogue—4QDeutⁿ, 4QPaleoExodus^m, and the Nash Papyrus—surprisingly shows that none of them reflects the Masoretic Text.

Theologians of the ancient Near East made sense of idolatry through the ritual dedication of the statues that made them into gods.

A Roman foundation myth is highly reminiscent of the abduction of the dancing girls in the book of Judges: A closer look at the Talmud’s description of Tu B’Av reveals a revolutionary, therapeutic recasting of the traumatic biblical story.

A New Reading of Psalm 95

A border dispute between Northern Israel and Moab is recorded independently in the Torah and the Mesha Stele. Comparing these accounts uncovers the underlying issues that the Torah is addressing.

A comparative theological view

Deuteronomy, or Mishneh Torah, means “repetition of the law,” however, the author of Deuteronomy does not present the book as a repetition, but as the original revelation to Moses at Horeb, written down on the Plains of Moab.