In the twenty-first century advances in digital technology are propelling the study of ancient literature and scribal culture. This essay describes an integrated set of advances in image capture, processing, and dissemination that improves upon first-hand experience and harnesses the power of the web to connect people and data. Illegible…[Read more]

Jubilees exhorts Israelites to separate from Gentiles in every way. Jubilees does not simply repeat familiar arguments that Gentiles will lead Israelites to sin if they adopt their ways. Rather, Jubilees argues that merely being in the presence of Gentiles is dangerous because they are liable to a violent death at any moment for their abhorrent…[Read more]

Acts 15 relates a council in Jerusalem discussing the legal status and requirements of gentiles who tum to Christianity. The resulting decree asserts that gentiles can be included as gentiles without adopting the status of a “convert” obligated to the complete laws from Sinai. They are still bound to the law of Moses, however, inasmuch as it…[Read more]

The Jubilees Palimpsest preserves one third of the book of Jubilees in a Latin translation copied in the fifth century. Although this one copy in Latin is plagued by lost folios, illegible text, and scribal error, its date alone establishes its significance for text criticism of Jubilees. The fragments found at Qumran preserve only small fragments…[Read more]

If we set aside the canon of scripture as it endured in Judaism, we see that Jubilees interprets the Book of the Watchers as scripture. Much as it does with Genesis, Leviticus, and Isaiah, Jubilees accounts for the Book of the Watchers, addresses problems in the apparent meaning, and provides a meaning consistent with a broader set of theological…[Read more]

In spite of some scholars’ inclination to include the book of Jubilees as
another witness to “Enochic Judaism,” the relationship of Jubilees to the
apocalyptic writings and events surrounding the Maccabean revolt has
never been adequately clarified. This book builds on scholarship on genre
to establish a clear pattern among the ways Jubil…[Read more]

The study of the book of Jubilees connects several areas of scholarship on Jewish thought and literature in antiquity. The Dead Sea Scrolls cast light on our understanding of Ethiopic Jubilees, and Ethiopic Jubilees casts light on our understanding of the Scrolls. Jubilees witnesses to the growing authority of the Pentateuch, and the ongoing…[Read more]

The Book of Jubilees uses the genre “apocalypse” to express a worldview that differs significantly from the cluster of ideas typically expressed by contemporary apocalypses. Jubilees has often been viewed as a borderline or ambiguous case among apocalypses. When viewed with the proper distinctions and definitions, Jubilees is indeed atypical but…[Read more]

The apocalypse literary genre creates a reader expectation of the apocalyptic worldview. The Book of Jubilees uses the apocalypse genre to express a worldview that diverges significantly from the cluster of views typically conveyed by the apocalypse genre. This paper focuses on one aspect of the genre and the worldview. The Book of Jubilees uses…[Read more]

This essay explores the different ways parts of the Hebrew Bible have been described as historiography. It’s an old essay whose usefulness is limited to giving the reader a snapshot of the state of the question in biblical historiography at the height of the maximalist-minimalist debate.

This essay looks at how the Persian authorization to rebuild of Jewish temple at Elephantine reflects imperial policy and sheds light on post-exilic Judaism.

This article explores the interface of multiple legal systems in early modern Daghestan. By comparing colonial engagements with legal plurality with indigenous genres of Daghestani legal discourse, I aim to shed light on the plurality of legal systems that preceded as well as informed legal discourse under colonialism. The Daghestani turn to…[Read more]

This paper takes a new approach to the contentious area of the etymology of Metatron, applying the lessons learnt from biblical folk-etymologies which have been shown to actively influence the writing of narratives. In the first section one such possible folk-etymology is proposed, based around the sequence TTR as a Divine Name in Metatron, along…[Read more]

In this essay I sketch an outline of how the book of Isaiah presents its politics, working from the assumption—based on the research of Peter Ackroyd and others—that the presentation of Isaiah, the prophet, in the book’s opening chapters is key. I end up arguing that the book advocates for Davidic politics, as others have claimed, but that its d…[Read more]

Applies theory of literature as simulation speech to argue that knowledge of the Lord is not reflected in texts of the Hebrew Bible but created by them.

This article discusses the concept of kissing as it appears in the Bible and in Rabbinic writings. Special attention is given to different motives for kissing and to different conjugations of the Hebrew verbs for kissing.

This article discusses rabbinic qualifications to the Biblical prohibition of verbally saying the names of foreign gods (typically represented by idols).

Published in The Embroidered Bible: Studies in Biblical Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha in Honour of Michael E. Stone. Edited by Lorenzo DiTommaso, Matthias Henze, and William Adler (Studia in Veteris Testamenti Pseudepigrapha; Leiden: E.J. Brill, 2017

This article traces the notion in rabbinic writings that Ezra–a leader of the Jewish people in the early Second Temple period–also functioned as a High Priest (Kohen Gadol).