A once-soaring 80-foot-high city gate and shrine from the 8th century BCE was discovered in the Tel Lachish archaeological park in south-central Israel, the site of an ancient city that was second to Jerusalem in importance. According to archaeologists, artifacts in the shrine appear to bolster a biblical story about how ancient worship was centralized…
The Republican Party’s new platform calls for teaching the Bible as literature in public schools. But which Bible, exactly, would the Republicans approve of? The idea of the Bible taught in public schools has a fraught Constitutional history. For the Jewish community, it can bring back memories of “prayer in the schools” or mandatory participation…
The Days of Awe are rich in opportunity for Jewish feminists who see themselves as activists for transformation, both personal and collective. It is striking, even ironic, that on the first day of Rosh Hashana we read the story of a catastrophic feminist failure. Sarah and Hagar are rival wives; one has what the other…
The Museum of the Bible, set to open in Washington, D.C., in 2017, will house a large collection from the Israel Antiquities Authority. The authority, which oversees archaeological digs in Israel, will have a 4,000 square-foot exhibit space in the museum to show pieces from its collection of 2 million artifacts. The exhibit will be…
The Jews and the Bible By Jean-Christophe Attias, translated by Patrick Camiller Stanford University Press, 256 pages, $22.95 The greatest irony of the Bible is that it stands for the opposite of irony — certitude, transcendence, holiness — yet it is filled with nothing but irony. A truly bizarre anthology of contradictory texts is regarded…
(JTA) — You’ve never seen the Bible like this before. That is, if you can actually see this version. For the 50th anniversary of the Shrine of the Book wing of the Israel Museum, which houses the Dead Sea Scrolls, the museum has launched an exhibition on the “nano bible,” or the world’s smallest Bible,…
Tennessee state legislators on Wednesday advanced a bill to make the Bible the official state book, a measure the state attorney general said would be unconstitutional and Republican Governor Bill Haslam has called disrespectful. The Republican-controlled state House of Representatives voted 55-38 to approve the Bible as state book. A companion bill could be considered…
● Short Stories by Jesus: The Enigmatic Parables of a Controversial Rabbi By Amy-Jill Levine HarperOne, 320 pages, $25.99 When we were children, many of us (especially those of us in yeshivot) were taught to abominate the Christian Scriptures; they were precursors to 2,000 years of Jew hatred. At the very least, it was suggested…
100% of profits support our journalism
