As a rabbi watching President Trump standing, Bible in hand, in front of Washington DC’s St. John’s Episcopal Church, I wondered what scriptural verse the President could draw on for inspiration. We were, as we remain, in the midst of a national crisis. A double pandemic, Covid-19 and the virus of systemic racism. The moment…
The 1,000-year-old Hebrew Bible that went on public view for the first time last week would not exist at all, or have survived this long, without the obsessive efforts of two obscure Jewish groups: the Masoretes and the Karaites. The Masoretes were a mysterious group of scholar-scribes, who starting in the Sixth Century worked to…
Hebrew Bibles, unlike their best-known Christian and Muslim counterparts, are not renowned for their elaborate ornamentation. But during the Middle Ages, some were as vivid and artful as the famous illuminated New Testaments and Qurans we marvel over today. Imagine figures of naked men contorted into the shape of Hebrew letters; a full-page illustration of…
The Bible may be the most-recognized book in the world, but its origins remain obscure. We can’t say with certainty who wrote much of it, when the bulk of it was composed or even where. But we now have a handy primer to the most significant theories about those questions in John Barton’s “The History…
BERLIN (JTA) — Non-Jewish parents in Germany are picking names straight out of the Hebrew Bible for their newborns, and they might not even know it. According to the Society for the German Language, Ben was the most popular name for boys in 2018, with Hannah, Lea, Noah and Jakob also showing up on the top…
Most American Christians thought it was inappropriate for President Trump to sign the cover of a bible, as he did in early March, according to a Morning Consult poll, reports Religion News Service. According to the poll, 65% of Christians in the U.S., and 64% of Americans, think it was inappropriate to sign the bibles….
Well before our people sighted the tropic climes of Fiji, plumbed its waters for bottling and produced a photo-bombing icon, we were debating the nature of selling H20. As reported earlier, Fiji Water’s shifty business practices ought not be forgotten, but what does scripture have to say about them? To learn the answer, the Forward…
How can one find fresh nuance in an over 2,ooo-year-old book? If the book is the Hebrew Bible, by returning to the original Hebrew. After over two decades, the 83-year-old literary critic and translator Robert Alter has completed his translation of the Hebrew Bible, an undertaking that has resulted in over 3,000 pages of commentary…
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