Song of Songs: A Romantic Poem Not Written by Solomon?
Two fundamental questions surround the Song of Songs. Did Solomon actually write it, as Jewish tradition claims? And was the poem intended from the beginning as a metaphor for...
Rethinking the Historical Shavuot Holiday
The traditional narrative The liturgy of the day sums up the modern view of the holiday by calling it “this day of Shavuot, the time of the giving of...
On the (in)Sanity of Prophets
The biblical prophets can seem deeply strange. One prophet walks around naked for years. Another lies on his side for over a year and bakes bread over dung. Another...
Kohelet: The Skeptical Voice in Scripture
The profound wisdom of Kohelet (Ecclesiastes) is widely underappreciated and frequently misrepresented. Kohelet is one of the Bible’s skeptics, relentlessly questioning the assumptions that govern human life: social hierarchy...
Is Dan Originally a Philistine Tribe?
Some scholars propose that the tribe of Dan may have had foreign origins, possibly even emerging from among Israel’s later enemies—the Philistines. According to this theory, Dan was not...
Always in the Land: Tanakh’s Hidden Memory of Indigenous Israelite Origins
Table of contents: The traditional narrative The alternative narrative The children of Ephraim Menasseh’s Aramean concubine The Judah and Tamar narrative Hezron dies in Israel Caleb son of Hezron...
Always in the Land: Tanakh’s Hidden Memory of Indigenous Israelite Origins (Part II)
In Part I, we explored a number of biblical traditions that seem to imply the Israelites had deep indigenous roots in Canaan, rather than the traditional exodus framework. In...
A Miniature Exodus? The Levite Hypothesis
One of the most fascinating attempts to reconcile the biblical Exodus with archaeology is the Levite Hypothesis, proposed by Richard Elliott Friedman. Rather than viewing the Exodus as the...
