Latest Essays

In 1830, Joseph Smith claimed to have translated the Book of Mormon from tablets written in Egyptian. In 1835, he bought Egyptian funerary papyri from a traveling exhibitor, which he declared to have been written by Abraham. Over the coming years he published his translation as the Book of Abraham, which later became part of the LDS canon. Because every stage of this process is documented, we can see how a mid-century piece of American literature was made into scripture by a new religious movement.

“Let us make humankind” (Genesis 1:26)—whom is God addressing? Across Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, some interpreters have identified God’s audience as the angels but have assigned them strikingly different roles in humanity’s creation: collaborators, creators, or critics who question the wisdom of bringing humans and their corruption into existence.

After Eden, YHWH no longer dwells among humans. The flood reverses creation, but YHWH still does not restore His presence. The builders of the Tower of Babel—a ziggurat with “its top in the heavens”—seek to bring YHWH down its stairway to inhabit the temple, but YHWH rejects their attempt to establish His presence on their own terms. Instead, YHWH chooses to come down to Jacob via the stairway of Bethel and later to Israel at Sinai, establishing His presence through His covenant with Israel and bringing order through the torah.

I asked my 12th-grade students to divide the flood story (Genesis 6–9) into two narratives by applying four rules: look for different divine names, variations in style and language, distinct themes, and contradictions in the storyline. Is this the best pedagogical approach, or should we first teach students the established scholarship? And how can we teach students to read critically without misrepresenting the complexity of source criticism?

Why does Elohim, and not YHWH, create the world? Philo and the rabbis—though in opposite directions—each read the two names as two divine attributes, one beneficent and one that judges. The kabbalists see these as the sefirot דין Judgment and חסד Lovingkindness—while Ramchal further unites them as two colors in the prism of the divine crystal.

What did Ham really do to Noah? The story of Lot’s daughters offers a clue. The two accounts share a striking sequence: a catastrophe, a righteous survivor, wine, drunkenness, and a violation within the family. By retelling Noah’s story through Lot and his daughters, the biblical author reveals his understanding of what Ham did—and turns an ambiguous episode into a more explicit account of sexual transgression.

YHWH declares that His spirit will not endure forever among the Nephilim—demigods born from the union of divine beings and human women—בְּשַׁגַּם הוּא בָשָׂר beshagam hu basar (Genesis 6:3). What does this phrase mean?

And why do the letters have crowns?

Jerusalem’s wealthiest families in the early Roman period built monumental tombs along the roads approaching the city, placing their wealth and status on display. Yet pilgrims heading to the Temple had to avoid entering or coming into contact with these tombs, lest they become impure and be barred from the very Temple they came to visit.

Farmers and soldiers built sukkot as temporary shelters, as did pilgrims coming to Jerusalem for the week-long Sukkot festival. The practice of building a sukkah “each on his roof, and in their courtyards,” as described in Nehemiah (8:14–17), likely began in exile, in memory of the pilgrim booths of First Temple times. It then entered Leviticus as a commandment and reached the wider Judean public through Ezra’s Torah reading.

During his reign, Solomon violates Deuteronomy’s law of the king (17:16–17): he acquires wealth, horses, and wives, and God declares that his kingdom will be torn away from his heirs. Yet unlike David, Solomon does not repent. Reading Ecclesiastes as written by Solomon, Rashi portrays the king as losing everything, including his kingdom, during his own lifetime, and not only repenting but also instituting protective measures for the Torah.

The two creation stories in Genesis (1 and 2–3), and the hidden creation account in Psalms and the Prophets, can be read without their ancient Near Eastern context. But to understand what the biblical authors are responding to, revising, and arguing against, we need to read them alongside four Mesopotamian stories—Atrahasis (ca. 1700 B.C.E.), Enuma Elish (late 2nd millennium B.C.E.), Adapa (early 2nd millennium B.C.E.), and the Epic of Gilgamesh (2nd millennium B.C.E.)—along with the Canaanite Baal Cycle (14th–13th century B.C.E.).

The sailors, Ninevites, and even a fish and a plant do what God asks in the book of Jonah; the prophet alone resists. A zealot who wants Nineveh punished, Jonah flees his mission because he fears God will forgive them. When the Ninevites repent and God spares them, Jonah is furious. Read on Yom Kippur, his story challenges those whose zeal demands justice for others while pleading for divine mercy for themselves.

Paul’s (ca. 5-67 C.E.) portrayal of Jesus as an exalted ruler may seem to challenge Jewish monotheism. Yet the idea of a human king ruling on God’s behalf is already found in the Bible. Reading Paul alongside Jewish traditions of divine kingship shows how his claims about Jesus remain consistent with exclusive allegiance to one God.

With clenched fists, we beat our chests in confession on Yom Kippur—but what are we still holding in our hands? The prophets decry those who defraud the poor, hoard ill-gotten gains, and then lift their hands in prayer. Ne’ilah, the closing prayer of Yom Kippur, echoes their warning: repentance is not complete until we return what we have wrongfully held to its rightful owner. Yom Kippur may end before restitution is complete, but repentance does not.

At the climax of the binding of Isaac, Abraham sees אַיִל אַחַר “a ram behind” (MT)... or does he see אַיִל אֶחָד “one ram” (SP, LXX, etc.)? Both readings are developed in midrash: aḥar into Israel’s future redemption through the shofar, eḥad into the primordial ram created for the Akedah—two paths that converge in the shofar of Rosh Hashanah.

Rabbi Maimon, Moses Maimonides’ father, believed that the Torah’s exact wording and layout had been divinely dictated to Moses down to the smallest detail—including paragraph divisions (open vs. closed), spelling (defective vs. plene), and even the decorative taggin atop certain letters. Maimonides, despite his rationalist philosophy, largely maintained this stringent view, though he would not invalidate a Torah scroll due to missing taggin. His son, R. Abraham, further relaxed the requirements as the realities of medieval manuscripts made the older standards untenable.

Did Hannah stand before YHWH in the Temple? Were Israelite males to see YHWH’s face three times a year? Did Moses and the elders see God on Mount Sinai? Were there temples to YHWH at Hebron and Samaria? The evidence shows that ancient scribes edited biblical texts to omit what they viewed as theological errors.

Pharaoh’s daughter names the baby מֹשֶׁה, “for I drew him out of the water”—a Hebrew wordplay from an Egyptian princess?! Since the 19^th century Egyptologist, Karl Lepsius, scholars have dismissed this biblical explanation as folk etymology, and instead posited that the name derives from Egyptian mśy, “to give birth,” as in Ramesses or Ahmose. But neither the consonants nor the vowels line up, and no ancient author ever made the connection. Rather, Moses’ name derives from the Semitic מ.שׁ.י, “to draw or glean.”