Is the Bible historically accurate?
During the reign of Pharaoh Siptah, Egypt had a powerful vizier from the Levant named Baya, who dominated even the Pharaoh. Archaeological records and climatological studies show that this was right in the middle of a lengthy famine that effected the entire Mediterranean.
Prof.
Israel Knohl
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Historical-critical and text-critical approaches to the Torah have a strong precedent in classical rabbinic literature. Yet Orthodox Jewish communities today pointedly resist these methods. It is time that critical thinking about the Torah be embraced within our educational systems.
Prof.
B. Barry Levy
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Was Israel ever a tribal society? Although some scholars accept the Bible’s depiction of Israel’s pre-monarchic society as a confederation of tribes, others have dismissed this as ahistorical. Can a study of biblical law help us resolve this question?
Prof.
Rami Arav
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How the Book of Chronicles updates and reinterprets Deuteronomy
Dr.
Yigal Levin
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Parry Moshe
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The Torah implores us to remember and teach the exodus, yet surprisingly, some biblical passages seem unaware of this event and describe an alternative tradition: God found Israel in the wilderness.
Dr. Rabbi
David Frankel
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Does the Torah’s Abraham really need the historical Abraham in order to claim an important role in Jewish religious consciousness or should the Torah be seen as the story of God and not as a historical account reported by God.
Dr. Rabbi
Amit Kula
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An Historical, Philosophical, and Pedagogical Perspective[1]
Rabbi
Eric Grossman
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Jerusalem in the 14th century B.C.E. was a Canaanite city; by the 10th/9th century B.C.E. it was Israelite. The Bible records several different accounts of how it was conquered. What are we to make of these different traditions?
Dr. Rabbi
Zev Farber
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The Evidence for the Levites Leaving Egypt and the Introduction of YHWH into Israel
Prof.
Richard Elliott Friedman
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Sommer asks, “Can observant Judaism and modern biblical scholarship happily and honestly co-exist?” I’m concerned only with honesty, and will argue that Sommer’s theology fails to give an account of authoritativeness consistent with a commitment to biblical scholarship.
Prof. Rabbi
Jonathan W. Malino
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Weighing the historicity of the exodus story entails more than addressing the lack of archaeological evidence.
Dr. Rabbi
Zev Farber
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Exploring the possibility of reading the wilderness census in a way that is historically plausible.
Prof.
Ben-Zion Katz M.D.
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Notwithstanding modern day biblical critical and historical critical claims, applying the tools of contemporary philosophy demonstrates how room still exists to have faith that something extraordinary happened to our ancestors and that this event had a permanent effect on the development of Torah and Judaism.
Dr. Rabbi
Samuel Lebens
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Historical symbolism and the position of the tribe of Benjamin
Dr.
Yigal Levin
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Divergent Biblical Perspectives: Exodus 12:40 declares that the Israelites were in Egypt for 430 years. Other biblical contexts suggest a much shorter sojourn in Egypt.
Dr.
David Glatt-Gilad
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