Article This depiction of Abraham as an incapacitated golem at the beginning of the apocalyptic section seems deliberate. Having been forcefully uprooted from his previous social and physical environment, he is now “born” to a new life. In this respect, Abraham’s state mirrors an ancient statue’s condition whose process of vivification is often likened to…

Outside of the Jewish apocrypha, Greco-Roman pagan writers frequently refer to Abraham as an astrologer, sage, and philosopher. There are many examples of this. Alexander Polyhistor (1st century BC) says that Abraham discovered astrology, Berossus (3rd century BC) said that he was a sage of celestial bodies, Vettius Valens (2nd century AD) wrote astrology books…

Hoffmeier (1997): Kitchen (2003): Binder (2011): Shupak (2020): https://www.academia.edu/43827640/The_Egyptian_Background_of_the_Joseph_Story_Selected_Issues_Revisited

Article The Temple Structure

Article The text of 1 Kgs 9:11–14 Scholars debate whether 1 Kgs 9:11–14 is based on an actual source from the reign of Solomon preserving historical details, or is more ideology and fiction reflecting much later events or much later editorial/authorial concerns. Finkelstein (2013, 107) says the pericope ‘should probably be interpreted as an etiological…

Isaac Kalimi argues in Writing and Rewriting the Story of Solomon in Ancient Israel (Cambridge University Press, 2019), pp. 19-93 that much of the narratives about Solomon were probably based on earlier sources and records from his reign and that Solomon was likely a historical figure. Keimer (2020) argues that the biblical narrative of Solomon’s…

Article Various Jewish materials also display familiarity with notions of the heavenly storehouses/treasuries of light (Jer 10:13; 51:16, 4 Ezra 4:41; 7:80, 2 Baruch 21:23), souls (4 Ezra 4:35, 4 Ezra 4:41, 4 Ezra 7:80, 2 Bar. 21:23), blessings (1 Enoch 11:1), books (2 Enoch 22:11), and other phenomena. It is also possible that, in…

Article This article traces the evolution of the archangel Metatron from his inception to his identification with Enoch. It argues that the name Metatron was derived from the term metator, which was used in Palestine to describe the role of the angel of the Lord in Exod 23:20-21. It was only in Babylonia that Metatron…

Article Moses scholarship has long held that the name “Moses” is one of the irreducible elements of the Moses narrative and would be an essential link to the exodus tradition, if it indeed is derived from the Egyptian root mśy, “to be born”.In Manetho, Moses is identified with a rebellious Egyptian priest Osarseph as the…