Hebrew Bible
And its journeys from the Arabian Peninsula to the Mediterranean.
The Koren Tanakh.
The language of Homer delights in illuminating the world at length. The language of the Bible, by contrast, is compact, but fraught with the agitated flow of emotions.
A laborer complains about an abusive boss.
Jewish universalism has never thrived without particularism.
The signal achievement of Genesis is to find heroism not just on the field of battle—where Odysseus, too, excels—but on the hardscrabble ground of everyday life.
The Abraham Accords and the Egyptian roots of Passover.
As the Jewish people begins to celebrate Passover, a political philosopher asks how Exodus can clear up the ways that the left and right misunderstand what it takes to be free.
Why, in the Hebrew Bible and the Odyssey alike, does the overweening human ambition to become somebody end in lowly banishment and dispersion?
One recent Saturday morning, I was following the Torah portion from a late-13th-century manuscript and noticed some strange faded text and stress lines. What did they mean?
Beware the Teflon gossip.
“An earthquake in biblical scholarship” is how the discovery has been described. That’s true, as are the connections it reveals between ancient languages and modern ones.
Why not throw out troubling parts of the Bible?
It is praiseworthy to die for God, but even better to live for Him.
