Was Mary Magdalene a prostitute? Photo: Private Collection/Bridgeman Art Library/Courtesy of IAP Fine Art.

Was Mary Magdalene a Prostitute?

Was Mary Magdalene a prostitute who repented or simply an influential female follower of Jesus? Mary from Magdala has popularly been saddled with an unfavorable reputation, but how did this notion come about? In From Saint to Sinner, Birger A. Pearson examines how Mary Magdalene’s notoriety emerged in the early Christian tradition. Pearson writes that later interpreters of the Gospels attempted to diminish her “by identifying her with other women mentioned in the Gospels, most notably the unnamed sinful woman who anoints Jesus’ feet with ointment and whose sins he forgives (Luke 7:36–50) and the unnamed woman taken in adultery (John 7:53–8:11).”

Read From Saint to Sinner by Birger A. Pearson as it originally appeared in Bible Review.

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Who was Jezebel? Image: Russell-Cotes Art Gallery and Museum, Bournemouth, UK/Bridgeman Art Library.

Who Was Jezebel? How Bad Was She?

Who was Jezebel? For over 2,000 years, Jezebel, Israel’s most accursed queen, has been condemned as a murderer, a temptress and an enemy of God. Who was Jezebel, really? Was she really that bad? In How Bad Was Jezebel? Janet Howe Gaines rereads the Biblical narrative from the vantage point of the Phoenician wife of King Ahab. As Gaines writes, “To attain a more positive assessment of Jezebel’s troubled reign and a deeper understanding of her role, we must evaluate the motives of the Biblical authors who condemn the queen.”

Read Janet Howe Gaines’s article How Bad Was Jezebel? as it originally appeared in Bible Review.

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Rahab the Harlot or just the inkeeper? Image: CCI/The Art Archive at Art Resource, NY.

Rahab the Harlot?

As described in the Book of Joshua, Rahab (a heroine nonetheless known as “Rahab the Harlot”) assisted two Israelite spies in escaping down the city wall of Jericho. Was Rahab a Biblical prostitute? While the Biblical text identifies her as a zônāh, a prostitute (Joshua 2:1), Josephus reports that she kept an inn. Anthony J. Frendo critically examines the textual evidence.

Read about Anthony J. Frendo’s conclusions on Rahab the Harlot.

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Who is Lilith? Courtesy of Richard Callner, Latham, NY.

Who Is Lilith?

Fertile mother, wilderness demon, sly seductress—the resilient character Lilith has been recast in many roles. Who is Lilith? As Janet Howe Gaines writes, “In most manifestations of her myth, Lilith represents chaos, seduction and ungodliness. Yet, in her every guise, Lilith has cast a spell on humankind.” Follow Lilith’s journey from Babylonian mythology, through the Bible, to medieval lore and modern literature in Lilith by Janet Howe Gaines.

Read Lilith by Janet Howe Gaines as the article originally appeared in Bible Review.

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Related reading in Bible History Daily

Tabitha in the Bible

Deborah in the Bible

Anna in the Bible

The Creation of Woman in the Bible

What Does the Bible Say About Infertility?

5 Ways Women Participated in the Early Church

The post Scandalous Women in the Bible appeared first on Biblical Archaeology Society.

Philistine Pottery. These pottery pieces from Ashkelon bear early Philistine decorations. Photo: © The Leon Levy Expedition to Ashkelon.

The Philistines are best known from the Bible as the Israelites’ enemies, but they were much more than that. Recent archaeological discoveries help inform our understanding of their culture, economy, and even origins. In the Spring 2022 issue of Biblical Archaeology Review, Daniel M. Master of Wheaton College looks at the biblical and archaeological evidence for the Philistines’ roots in “Piece by Piece: Exploring the Origins of the Philistines.”

Who Were the Philistines?

In the Bible, the Philistines are remembered as an uncircumcised people with advanced technology and a formidable military (Judges 14:3; 1 Samuel 13:19–20; Exodus 13:17). The Philistines frequently encroached on Israelite territory, which led to some battles, including the famous clash between David, the Israelite, and Goliath, the Philistine (1 Samuel 17). They were condemned for being idol worshipers (1 Samuel 5:1–5) and soothsayers (Isaiah 2:6). In short, the Philistines are portrayed quite negatively in the Bible.

They lived in the cities of Ashdod, Ashkelon, Ekron, Gath, and Gaza—the heartland of ancient Philistia on the Mediterranean Sea’s southeastern shore. Ashdod, Ashkelon, Ekron, and Gath have been excavated in recent decades. The findings from these cities show that the Philistines had distinct pottery, weapons, tools, and houses. They also ate pork and had vast trade networks.

Philistine culture flourished during the Iron Age (12th through sixth centuries B.C.E.). Similar to the kingdoms of Israel and Judah, the Philistines lost their autonomy toward the end of the Iron Age. They became subservient and paid tribute to the Assyrians, Egyptians, and then Babylonians, the great superpowers of the region who severely punished rebellion. For example, the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar destroyed disloyal Ashkelon and Ekron and carried off many Philistines into exile.

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Where Did the Philistines Come From?

In his article, Daniel Master looks at archaeological and biblical evidence for the Philistines’ origins. He considers the accounts at Ramesses III’s mortuary temple at Medinet Habu. In the 12th century B.C.E., during the reign of Ramesses III, a confederation of tribes from the “islands” of the “northern countries” attacked Egypt—several times, both on sea and land. The Peleset, whom scholars connect with the Philistines, was named as one of these tribes.

Battle Ships. This drawing of a relief at Medinet Habu shows a sea battle between the Egyptians and people from the “islands,” who had invaded Egypt in the 12th century B.C.E. Photo: Public Domain.

On the way to Egypt, the confederation had traveled through the eastern Mediterranean and destroyed numerous cities, including Ugarit on the Syrian coast. Ammurapi, the last king of Ugarit, had written to surrounding kingdoms for help, when the “seven ships of the enemy” had arrived to ransack his kingdom. By the time help had come, though, it was too late: Ugarit lay in ruins.

Egypt defeated the confederation, as recorded on one of the temple walls at Medinet Habu. A relief from that temple also depicts a sea battle between the island tribes and the Egyptians. In it, the islanders wear distinct headdresses, which clearly set them apart from the Egyptians. After being defeated, some of these tribes settled on the southern coast of Canaan—in what would become the land of the Philistines. Egyptian sources, thus, seem to record a migration of people from the “islands” to Philistia.

Philistine Portrait? A confederation of island tribes, including the Peleset (Philistines), attacked Egypt in the 12th century B.C.E. This relief from Medinet Habu records a sea battle between the two forces. Photo: Olaf Tausch, CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Master also examines the evidence for Philistine origins in the Bible. The biblical authors remembered the Philistines as coming from a foreign land, from “Caphtor” (Genesis 10:14; Deuteronomy 2:23; 1 Chronicles 1:12; Amos 9:7; Jeremiah 47:4). Scholars have long drawn a connection between Caphtor and Crete. This is largely based on Egyptian inscriptions and paintings of “Keftiu” from the 15th and 14th centuries B.C.E., wherein the Keftiu are linked to the Minoan civilization, which was centered on Crete.

Migration Map. Who were the Philistines, and where did they come from? New archaeological evidence suggests that many of the Philistines originally came from Crete, called “Caphtor” in the Bible. Map: © Biblical Archaeology Society.

Excavations have shown that the Philistines had a distinct assemblage of artifacts. Master notes parallels between some early Philistine objects, especially from the 12th and 11th centuries B.C.E., and Aegean and Cypriot artifacts. Elements of Philistine material culture, then, also hint at an Aegean or Mediterranean origin for the Philistines.

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New evidence from Ashkelon further supports this connection. The Leon Levy Expedition excavated at Ashkelon from 1985–2016 under the direction of the late Lawrence Stager at Harvard University; for the last decade, Daniel Master co-directed excavations. They found some infant burials from the 12th century B.C.E., as well as a Philistine cemetery with burials from the 11th through eighth centuries B.C.E. Teaming up with scientists at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, they were able to analyze DNA from seven of these individuals. When they looked at the 12th-century infants’ DNA, they discovered that the infants had some European ancestry. Crete proved to be one of the best matches for the infants’ heritage—when considering all of their genetic material. Yet other places in the western Mediterranean, such as Iberia, also provided a good match.

Interestingly, in the later individuals from Ashkelon’s cemetery, this European ancestry had been so diluted to barely register. Master explains that, by the tenth century B.C.E., enough intermarriage had taken place between the Philistines and the local Levantine population that the Philistines looked a lot like their neighbors:

While there was some evidence of the same Western European Hunter-Gatherer genetic input, for all statistical purposes, it could not be identified for certain. The best models showed that these people [the tenth- and ninth-century individuals buried in Ashkelon’s cemetery] were descendants of both the 12th-century inhabitants and the earlier Bronze Age inhabitants. It appears from these results that so much intermarriage had taken place between the original immigrants and the people around them that the genetic makeup of Ashkelon’s inhabitants had lost its immigrant distinctiveness.

Yet Master clarifies that, at this point in history, the Philistines still thought of themselves as distinct, as evident in a seventh-century inscription from the Philistine city of Ekron. The inscription names Ekron’s king as Ikausu, which means “Achaean” or “Greek.” The name Ikausu (or Achish) also appears in 1 Samuel 21:10 as Gath’s king.

The Philistines remembered their foreign origins

Master concludes that the new DNA evidence, coupled with the biblical and archaeological testimonies, suggests that the Philistines originated in Crete. That is not to say that the Philistines were a homogenous group, all coming from the Aegean world, but it seems that many Philistines did indeed migrate from there, bringing with them vestiges of Minoan culture. Learn more about this ancient people in Daniel M. Master’s article “Piece by Piece: Exploring the Origins of the Philistines,” published in the Spring 2022 issue of Biblical Archaeology Review.

Subscribers: Read the full article “Piece by Piece: Exploring the Origins of the Philistines” by Daniel M. Master in the Spring 2022 issue of Biblical Archaeology Review.

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This article first appeared in Bible History Daily on March 23, 2022.

Related reading in Bible History Daily

Illuminating the Philistines’ Origins

Who Were the Philistines?

The Philistines Are Coming!

The “Philistines” to the North

All-Access members, read more in the BAS Library

The Philistines

Piece by Piece: Exploring the Origins of the Philistines

What We Know About the Philistines

The Other “Philistines”

Exploring Philistine Origins on the Island of Cyprus

The post Who Were the Philistines, and Where Did They Come From? appeared first on Biblical Archaeology Society.

An illustration of the War in Heaven for Milton’s Paradise Lost by Gustave Doré. {{PD-US}}

The identification of the beings known as “Rephaim” in biblical and ancient Near Eastern sources has caused much bewilderment throughout the years. Biblical dictionaries and encyclopedias usually provide two main meanings for the word: (1) ghosts or shades of the dead, and (2) a mythical and ancient race of giants. These meanings are mostly derived from the mentions of the Rephaim in the Bible.

The Rephaim appear in the Bible in a variety of contexts. Here are some examples (author’s translation):

Only King Og of the Bashan was left of the remaining Rephaim. His bedstead, an iron bedstead, is now in Rabbah of the Ammonites; it is nine cubits long and four cubits wide, by a standard cubit.

Deuteronomy 3:11

After this, fighting broke out with the Philistines at Gezer; that was when Sibbecai the Hushathite killed Sipai, a descendant of the Rephaim, and they were humbled.

1 Chronicles 20:4

Do you work wonders for the dead? Do Rephaim rise to praise you?

Psalm 88:11-12

It will save you from the forbidden woman, from the alien woman whose talk is smooth. … Her house sinks down to Death, and her course leads to the Rephaim.

Proverbs 2:16-18

The dead will not live, the Rephaim will not rise, you punished them and brought them to ruin; you wiped out all memory of them.

Isaiah 26:14

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If we go over the dozens of references to the Rephaim in the Bible, we see that it is very difficult to reach a single clear conclusion about their identity. Luckily, we have other sources from the ancient Near East that mention them. The first source is the Ugaritic texts, written in alphabetic cuneiform. These texts were mostly found in the ancient city of Ugarit in northern Syria in the mid-20th century. They tell much of the mythical concepts and belief systems of the people who lived there during the Bronze Age until the destruction of the city (c. 1200 B.C.E.). Some of these concepts are also known from the Bible, such as rituals associated with the gods Baal and Asherah.

What do we know of the Rephaim in Ugaritic texts? They are heroes, warriors, judges, kings, and demigods, much like Heracles or Theseus in Greek myths. They are beloved and celebrated both by gods and men, in life and death.

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The word Rephaim is also found in three Phoenician burial inscriptions. These inscriptions share similar concepts with the Ugaritic texts: The Rephaim were ancient heroes and kings, and once they perished, they dwelled together in a specific place in the underworld.

Although we have plenty of sources that mention the Rephaim, scholars still debate their identity. The Rephaim have been affiliated with or depicted as: (1) shades of the dead or a specific group among the dead; (2) healers or physicians; (3) ancestors; (4) kings, rulers, judges, heroes, and generals; (5) gods or demigods; (6) giants or titans; (7) an ethnic group or tribe; and (8) household gods (biblical teraphim) or fertility deities.

In my recent study, I tried to unlock the riddle of the Rephaim in the ancient Near East using two main keys.¹ The first is to prioritize the archaeological evidence, namely ancient inscriptions, which depict the Rephaim in a clearer sense than the Bible, which was edited and corrected according to different agendas over hundreds of years.

The second is to analyze the negative treatment of the Rephaim in the Bible. Whenever we encounter the Rephaim in biblical texts, they are either dead or being killed, enemies of Israel and of God, giants, monstrous humans, and objects of terror. It seems that although the Rephaim were highly regarded by many ancient Near Eastern peoples, they were hated and reviled by the biblical authors. What is it about them that causes God to struggle against them and their memory, and why are they still demonized long after death?

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The fact that the Rephaim are considered to be demigods and the mortal descendants of the gods in the ancient Levant could not be tolerated through mono­theistic perceptions. Monotheistic belief systems were fragile in ancient Israel and caused great dispute among the people, prophets, priests, and monarchy. The idea that some men might be divine or descendants of God was thought outrageous, as presented in Genesis 6:1-4, when a race of heroes (Nephilim) with divine blood is born to the “sons of God” and the “daughters of men.”^a This race is later identified with giants and Rephaim whom the biblical writers believe need to be eliminated. This can also be demonstrated through the eyes of the prophets, who ridicule foreign kings who presented themselves as gods (see Isaiah 14:1-23; Ezekiel 28:1-9).

The Rephaim can be found in various places throughout the Levant, including Canaan, Philistia, Judah, Ammon, Moab, Bashan, Syria, and Phoenicia. This suggests a shared concept, which likely originated in a single place and then spread to different societies in the ancient Levant. The concept identifies a beloved ruler as a part of an ancient divine bloodline of mortal heroes, which provides justification for his own bloodline to rule.

In biblical texts, however, the idea of a semi-divine monarch or a leader cannot be tolerated. The concept of the Rephaim needed to be eradicated from the belief system of Israel and Judah, and this explains the negative treatment they receive in the Bible, which is the complete opposite of how they are viewed in Ugaritic and Phoenician sources.

Notes

1. See Jonathan Yogev, The Rephaim: Sons of the Gods, Culture and History of the Ancient Near East 121 (Leiden: Brill, 2021).

a. See, e.g., Jaap Doedens, Biblical Profiles: “Exploring the Story of the Sons of God,” BAR, Summer 2020.

Jonathan Yogev is a lecturer in the Bible Department at Kaye Academic College of Education in Beersheba, Israel.

Related reading in Bible History Daily

Rock Giants in Noah

On the Shoulders of Giants

The Aramaic Afterlives of Genesis’s Giants

Who Are the Nephilim?

The Nephilim and the Sons of God

All-Access members, read more in the BAS Library

Kings Og’s Iron Bed

Biblical Profile: The Riddle of the Rephaim

Contrasting Insights of Biblical Giants

The post The Riddle of the Rephaim appeared first on Biblical Archaeology Society.

Thanks to BAR, readers hear from real experts in the field, not a summary or a version of an event that is redacted by a staff writer with little hands-on experience. I commend BAR and its editorial team for giving us a journal where you can still find trustworthy, relevant, and reliable information, conveyed by real professionals, unafraid of pushing against established dogma.

Jose M. Paredes
Flossmoor, Illinois

Pastor Mike Pangburn
Bridgeton, New Jersey

Second, I am of the Catholic faith, born and bred. I do not recall seeing any articles from Catholic scholars in BAR. If I am mistaken, I sincerely apologize. Very few if any of the conferences and workshops you advertise include Catholic scholars. When I want biblical interpretation I can trust, I consult a Catholic theologian that I know I can trust. 

Duane Breaux
Pierre Part, Louisiana

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Fix Your Dates!

I don’t know where BAR stands on the truth of God’s Holy Word. However, when I see the terms BCE and CE instead of BC and AD, it makes me wonder. Even an organization that doesn’t subscribe to any particular religious viewpoint must have some idea as to the truth of the Holy Bible. Since you seek out information that is about the history behind the biblical text, you must see that Jesus Christ lived, died, and rose from the dead and that his life changed history forever. With that in mind, to use BCE and CE is an affront to the truth of God’s Holy Word and to God himself. Can you please see fit to use terms that have been in longstanding use worldwide until the last few decades?

Bryan Daugherty
Yuba City, California

Michael Noctor
Lehighton, Pennsylvania

Johnna Hildebrand
London, Ohio

In accordance with most standard scholarly usage today, BAR’s house style is to use BCE (Before the Common Era) and CE (Common Era). However, BAR allows authors to maintain their preferred terminology as appropriate, including BC and AD (see, e.g., Győző Vörös’s article, “Under Siege: How Rome Conquered Jerusalem,”).—ED.

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John Was Not a Witness

Several letters in the Fall issue’s “Queries & Comments” draw conclusions about Jesus’s crucifixion based on the authority of the author of the Gospel of John. I know of no reputable New Testament scholar who believes that any of the four canonical gospels were written by eyewitnesses, and certainly not apostles or disciples of an apostle. Those attributions were likely assigned in the mid- to late second century to give greater authority to the gospels. All four canonical gospels are anonymous.

Arthur J. Bellinzoni
Aurora, New York

Grateful Dead Backstory

The title of the article “Ancient Judah’s Grateful Dead” refers imprecisely to the folkloristic motif of the “grateful dead” by focusing on the comfort, care, and celebration at the deceased’s tomb. Most commonly, the widespread grateful dead tales involve the death of a debtor, his creditors paid by a traveler or stranger, who, in turn, is saved from death or calamity by the soul/spirit of the grateful deceased.

Bernard Witlieb
White Plains, New York

Mysterious Negev Tombs

The short news item “Mysterious Negev Tombs,” about the tomb complex found at a crossroads on the ancient trade routes connecting Egypt and the Levant to the Arabian Peninsula, was very interesting. Among other things, it stated that a significant number of the burials were of women, which the excavators suggest may indicate human trafficking.

I wish that statement had been expanded upon to look at other possibilities. The kingdom of Cush was known for its women warriors, the most famous being Queen Amanirenas. Might the burials have been of women warriors who were hired as guards for the caravans?

Marian Powell
Chino Valley, Arizona

You might be pleased to learn that we are preparing a feature article for an upcoming issue on these mystifying tombs, so hopefully we’ll learn more then. Also, for more on the women who ruled over Cush during the time of the first Christians, check out Mark Wilson’s article “Philip’s Encounter with the ‘Ethiopian Eunuch’,” in this issue.—ED.

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Misunderstanding Moses

Ralph Hawkins seems to have missed an important point in his article “Losing Abraham’s Religion.” While I am sure that the Egyptian princess did her best to care for the infant Moses, I am equally sure that she allowed her handmaidens the opportunity to change his diapers. If the Israelites were practicing circumcision during their stay in Egypt, it would have become widely known that Moses was a Hebrew, since he was supposed to be 3 months old when placed in the Nile.

John Majka
Louisville, Kentucky

I believe Hawkins has mistranslated Exodus 4:24. The Lord wanted to kill Moses, not his infant son Gershom. It was Moses’s duty to circumcise his son on the eighth day. Zipporah realized what was happening and quickly circumcised her son, thus saving her husband. The Midrash attempts to fill in the blanks surrounding Zipporah’s actions.

Marty Blumenthal
Highland Park, Illinois

The First Council of Nicea

Thank you for your wonderful article in the Fall 2025 issue, “Where Was the First Council of Nicea?” by Mark R. Fairchild. I am a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, a Christian denomination that does not accept the Nicene Creed. I found this article very informative and interesting, and the pictures were spectacular, especially the two submerged graves. I continue to renew my BAR subscription to read articles like this. 

Julie Cannon Markham
Provo, Utah

Stay Out of Politics

I was outraged and disappointed to see you publish the letter by Craig Hunter in the Fall issue. Hunter writes nothing about archaeology but shows his prejudice and hatred by referring to “occupied” East Jerusalem and to people who have been “displaced” by the Israeli government. He even cites the bogus, racist, International Court of Justice in his screed.

In almost 40 years, I have never known BAR to become involved in politics, especially in the Arab-Israeli conflict. You deal with archaeology and the Bible very well and have always—usually quite deftly—avoided the slightest mention of this issue. Why, then, did you publish this letter instead of tossing it into the garbage where it belongs?

Wallace Gottlieb
Cedarhurst, New York

Adam Rubinstein
Ann Arbor, Michigan 

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Incorrect Hieroglyphs

The news of the discovery of the cartouche of Ramesses III in Jordan contains an incorrect reading of the hieroglyphs preceding the left cartouche. It is NOT nb 3ḫw, “Lord of transfigured spirits.” To my knowledge, this phrase never occurs as a royal epithet. Instead, the Egyptian reads nb ḫ‘w, “Lord (or Possessor) of Crowns,” which is a very common royal epithet in the New Kingdom.

James K. Hoffmeier
Emeritus Professor Of Near Eastern Archaeology
Trinity International University

Mary and Martha Mystery

While catching up on past issues, I came across the fascinating article in the Winter 2024 issue, “The Mystery of Mary and Martha,” by Elizabeth Schrader Polczer, which explains why you see the women’s names in the Gospel of John and when you don’t.   

The thought of long-ago scribes sitting in monasteries and copying older manuscripts brought this story to mind: A brother copying one part or the other of the Gospels gives a shriek as he bends over his writing desk. The abbot comes running over and asks the brother what happened. The brother looks up and stammers, “It says celebrate, not celibate!”

Keep the articles coming! 

Stephen M. Flatow
Jerusalem, Israel

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The post More Queries and Comments Spring 2026 appeared first on Biblical Archaeology Society.

“Ziggur-what?”
Jeremy Weinstein, Walnut Creek, California

Thank you to all those who submitted caption entries for our Fall 2025 cartoon, based on Genesis 11:6–7: “And the Lord said, ‘Look, they are one people, and they have all one language, and this is only the beginning of what they will do; nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them. Come, let us go down and confuse their language there, so that they will not understand one another’s speech.’” We are pleased to congratulate Jeremy Weinstein of Walnut Creek, California, who wrote the winning caption, and our runners-up:

Runners Up

“I thought speaking in tongues wasn’t invented yet!”
Milo Velebir, Ranford, Western Australia

“If we could only find that darn Rosetta Stone!”
Jerry Kliot, Painesville, Ohio

Honorable Mentions

“How do you expect me to understand you when you’re speaking in hieroglyphics?”
W. Arthur Hays Jr., Murphy, North Carolina

“So … what’s the name of that translation app? Begins with a ‘B’ …”
Debra Bream, Beachwood, Ohio

“That’s the smartest thing you’ve said all day!”
S. Cintron, Tuxedo Park, New York

“You’re babbling. Hey, how about naming the tower that?”
Frank Fischer, Farmingdale, New Jersey

“We don’t need the Tower of Babel; we need the Power of Babbel.”
Richard Wolf, Westminster, Maryland

“Maybe we should learn sign language?”
Terry Gahagan, Davenport, Iowa

“Why would you say a thing like that?”
George Kundert, Tucson, Arizona

“Where is Google Translate when you need it?”
William Cordes, Ramsey, New Jersey

“We’re way beyond tomato, tomahto!”
Michael Carniello, Deerfield, Illinois

“Say, what do you think is going on here?”
“Fine, thank you, and you?”
Dorian Alu, Belvidere, New Jersey

“What we have here is a failure to communicate.”
Jill Schirtzinger, Jacksonville, Illinois

The first debate between a Calvinist and an Arminian.
Doug Ebert, De Soto, Kansas

The post Fall 2025 Caption Contest Winners appeared first on Biblical Archaeology Society.

Write a caption for the cartoon (right) based on Genesis 44:12: “He searched, beginning with the eldest and ending with the youngest; and the cup was found in Benjamin’s sack.”

• Submit your entry here

Please include your name and address. The deadline for entries is May 15, 2026. The author of the winning caption will receive a BAS All-Access membership and three gift subscriptions to give BAR to friends. Runners-up will receive an All-Access membership and two gift subscriptions for friends.

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A salvaged page of the Codex Sinaiticus from St. Catherine’s Monastery recovered in 1975. Photo: Courtesy of St. Catherine’s Monastery.

Two hundred years after Constantine Tischendorf’s birth, questions remain as to the conditions of his removal of Codex Sinaiticus from St. Catherine’s Monastery. Dating to the mid-fourth century C.E., Codex Sinaiticus is the oldest complete manuscript of the New Testament.

In his article “Hero or Thief? Constantine Tischendorf Turns Two Hundred” in the September/October 2015 issue of Biblical Archaeology Review, Stanley E. Porter contends that Tischendorf should be considered a hero, not a thief.

The text of Codex Sinaiticus differs in numerous instances from that of the authorized version of the Bible in use during Tischendorf’s time. For example, the resurrection narrative at the end of Mark (16:9–20) is absent from the Codex Sinaiticus. So is the conclusion of the Lord’s Prayer: “For thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen” (Matthew 6:13). The woman caught in adultery from John 8 is omitted in Codex Sinaiticus.

According to James Bentley, Tischendorf was not troubled by the omission of the resurrection in Mark because he believed that Matthew was written first and that Mark’s gospel was an abridged version of Matthew’s gospel. If this were true, the absence of resurrection in Mark would not be a problem because it appears in the older Matthean gospel. Modern scholarship generally holds that Mark is in fact the oldest of the Synoptic Gospels, which could cause theological concerns over the omitted resurrection.

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One other omission in Codex Sinaiticus with theological implications is the reference to Jesus’ ascension in Luke 24:51. Additionally, Mark 1:1 in the original hand omits reference to Jesus as the Son of God.

Below, see a visual comparison of these and other differences between the King James Version and Codex Sinaiticus.

The Markan Resurrection
(Mark 16: 1–14)

The Lord’s Prayer
(Matthew 6:9–13)

The woman caught in adultery
(John 7:53–8:11)

Significant omitted verses

Alterations perhaps due to later theological beliefs

Constantine Tischendorf’s chance finding of Codex Sinaiticus, the oldest New Testament manuscript, at St. Catherine’s Monastery in the Sinai—and his later removal of the manuscript—made him both famous and infamous. Learn more by reading “Tischendorf on Trial for Removing Codex Sinaiticus, the Oldest New Testament.”

This Bible History Daily feature was originally published on August 12, 2015. Biblical quotations corrected on September 18, 2022.

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The post What’s Missing from Codex Sinaiticus, the Oldest New Testament? appeared first on Biblical Archaeology Society.

The presepio (nativity scene) is a centuries-old craft and one of Naples’s best-known traditions. This Neapolitan presepio was displayed in Rome. Photo: Howard Hudson / Wikimedia Commons.

One of the most familiar images of the Christmas season is the nativity scene—the well-known depiction of Jesus’ birth—displayed in an array of public and private settings, including churches, parks, store windows and on fireplace mantles.

The scene, first assembled by St. Francis of Assisi in 1223, is iconographic, meaning its various elements are intended primarily to depict theological—not historical, nor even literary—truths. It harmonizes two very distinct stories: Luke’s birth of Jesus in a stable, visited by shepherds, and attended by an angelic host and Matthew’s Magi, who are led by a star to the home of Jesus’ family sometime before Jesus’ second birthday.

To most people viewing the nativity scene, it depicts the birth of Jesus as it happened, with farm animals, shepherds, angels and Magi crowding the Bethlehem stable. But the combination is apocryphal, in the wide sense that the complete scene is not an accurate reflection of what the Biblical texts say about Jesus’ birth and in the narrow sense that such harmonization of Matthew and Luke is a common feature of noncanonical Christian infancy gospels.

Actually, these gospels not only combine the Biblical stories, they enhance them, with additional traditions about the birth of Jesus that circulated in antiquity. Of course most Christians throughout history were unaware of this distinction; before widespread literacy, Christians told the story of Jesus’ birth without awareness of which elements were based on Scripture and which were not.

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The Christian Apocrypha are rich with tales of the birth of Jesus. The earliest and most well-known of these are the stories found in the Protevangelium (or “Proto-Gospel”) of James. Composed in the late second century, this text combines the infancy narratives of Matthew and Luke with other traditions, including stories of the Virgin Mary’s own birth and upbringing. The Protevangelium was exceptionally popular—hundreds of manuscripts of the text exist today in a variety of languages, and it has profoundly influenced Christian liturgy and teachings about Mary.

The Protevangelium was transmitted in the West as part of the Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew, which added to it tales of the Holy Family’s sojourn in Egypt and, in some manuscripts, stories of Jesus’ childhood taken from the Infancy Gospel of Thomas. Other Pseudo-Matthew manuscripts incorporate a different telling of Jesus’ birth from an otherwise lost gospel that scholars call the Book about the Birth of the Savior.

In the East, the Protevangelium was translated into Syriac and expanded with a different set of stories set in Egypt to form the Life of the Blessed Virgin Mary, which was later translated into Arabic as the Arabic Infancy Gospel. Another Syriac reworking of the Protevangelium lies behind the Armenian Infancy Gospel. Christians in the East also expanded on Matthew’s Magi traditions creating the Revelation of the Magi, the Legend of Aphroditianus, and On the Star (erroneously attributed to Eusebius of Caesarea), each of which in their own way narrates how the Magi became aware that the star heralded the birth of a king.

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This small tripartite painting, The Nativity with the Prophets Isaiah and Ezekiel, is part of a massive altarpiece known as the Maestà. Composed of many individual paintings, the Maestà was commissioned by the Italian city of Siena in 1308 from the artist Duccio di Buoninsegna. It contains elements of the birth of Jesus from Christian Apocrypha, including the cave, the ox, the ass and the midwife. Photo: Courtesy National Gallery of Art, Washington.

If readers of these apocryphal texts could see the modern nativity scenes, they would be surprised to find the baby Jesus in a stable: In the infancy gospels, the birth takes place in a cave outside of Bethlehem, the same location given also by Justin Martyr (in his Dialogue with Trypho 78), who died around 165 C.E. They might have expected also to see a midwife in the scene; indeed, she does appear regularly in Eastern Orthodox depictions of the nativity, helping Mary bathe the newborn.

As the Protevangelium tells it, Joseph left Mary in the cave and went into Bethlehem to find a midwife. But as Joseph and the midwife approached the cave, they saw a bright cloud overshadowing it. The cloud then disappeared into the cave and a great light appeared, which withdrew and revealed the baby Jesus. Each of the later expansions of the Protevangelium narrate this scene in their own unique way, but they all endeavor to show that Jesus was not born in a natural manner, thus allowing Mary to remain physically a virgin after the birth.

So superhuman is Jesus that some texts report that he could be perceived in multiple forms. The Armenian Infancy Gospel, for example, reports that the Magi each saw him in a different way: as the Son of God on a throne, as the Son of Man surrounded by armies, and as a man tortured, dead and resurrected.

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The apocryphal accounts agree with Luke that the shepherds visited the Holy Family shortly after Jesus’ birth. In the Western texts, the family then moves from the cave to a stable and places the baby in a manger. There an ox and an ass bend their knees and worship him, fulfilling the prophecy of Isaiah 1:3, “The ox knows its owner, and the donkey its master’s crib” (see Pseudo-Matthew 14 and Birth of the Savior 86). Though an apocryphal embellishment, the animals became a common ingredient in subsequent depictions of the nativity and may be observable in nativity scenes today.

Tony Burke challenges the assertion that Christian apocrypha were truly rejected, suppressed and destroyed throughout Christian history. Read more >>

Most often, the cave remains the scene of subsequent events, including the circumcision (from Luke 2:21) and the visit of the Magi. The Magi are typically depicted in art and iconography as three richly-adorned Persian kings. However, Matthew calls them only “magi from the East” (Matthew 2:1) and does not say how many there were. The writers of the apocryphal texts did their best to clarify these matters. In the Revelation of the Magi, there are at least twelve Magi—the same number is given in other Syriac traditions—and they came to Bethlehem in April (not December) from a land in the Far East called “Shir,” perhaps meant to be understood as China. The Armenian Infancy Gospel says there were three kings, and they were accompanied by 12 commanders, each with an army of 1,000 men, which would make for a very crowded stable indeed.

Many of the texts continue the story of the Magi and tell what happened when they returned to their home country: In the Life of the Blessed Virgin (=Arabic Infancy Gospel) they bring back one of Jesus’ swaddling bands, which they worship because it has miraculous properties; in the Revelation of the Magi they share the vision-inducing food (some kind of magic mushrooms?) given to them by the star; and in the Legend of Aphroditianus they return with a painting of Jesus and his mother. None of these apocryphal Magi traditions are featured in nativity scenes today, but some of them influenced medieval art and literature.

Christians of all times and places have delighted in the story of Jesus’ birth, so much that they have yearned to learn more about the first Christmas than is found in the Biblical accounts. The Christmas nativity scene is the outcome of efforts by creative and pious writers to fill in blanks left by Matthew and Luke and to combine multiple traditions, Biblical and non-Biblical, into one enduring image. The nativity scene is a timeless representation of when God became man; it is also a testament to human imagination and the art of storytelling.

This Bible History Daily article was originally published on December 10, 2014.

Tony Burke is an associate professor in the Department of the Humanities at York University and the author of Secret Scriptures Revealed: A New Introduction to the Christian Apocrypha (London: SPCK, 2013). Burke’s research interests include the study of Christian biographical literature of the second century (infancy gospels), children and the family in Roman antiquity, curses and non-canonical Jewish and Christian writings. Follow his work at www.tonyburke.ca.

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Has the Childhood Home of Jesus Been Found?

The post Christmas Stories in Christian Apocrypha appeared first on Biblical Archaeology Society.

The Hellenistic fortified settlement of Pyla-Vigla near Larnaca, Cyprus.
Photo courtesy James Gold.

On the western side of Larnaka Bay in Cyprus, overlooking the Mediterranean, lies an imposing plateau known as Vigla. This fortified settlement, occupied briefly during the years when Alexander the Great controlled the area in the late fourth century BCE, has yielded a rich array of finds, including metal projectiles, ceramics, carved figurines, and molds for casting and producing weaponry. Last summer, I traveled to Cyprus as a BAS Dig Scholarship winner, offering my artistic skills to help excavate the site, which is being studied under the auspices of the Pyla-Koutsopetria Archaeological Project (PKAP).

What Is Archaeological Illustration?

I spent most of my time working on drawings in the Larnaka Archaeological Museum, where all of the PKAP finds are safely kept in labeled boxes. Holding each artifact in my gloved hand, I would rotate it under the lamp, examining subtle details, like scratches and carved patterns.

Using a Staedtler pen, I created my drawings with a stippling technique, slowly adding dots to build up texture and shadow. This method allowed me to capture details that might otherwise go unnoticed, ensuring that each artifact was represented as accurately as possible. Every drawing was a focused effort to faithfully document these ancient objects.

Although PKAP began in 2003, the project had never involved an artist, resulting in a backlog of special finds and metal objects to be illustrated. The museum staff provided invaluable support, retrieving trays of artifacts from previous excavation years based on a list provided by the PKAP directors. I would then identify which items needed to be drawn.

The tools of the archaeological illustrator’s trade.
Photo courtesy James Gold.

I began each drawing by carefully measuring the artifact’s dimensions using digital calipers. Then, on millimeter-grid paper, I used a pencil to sketch the outlines of the object at a 1:1 scale. I positioned a lamp to shine from the upper left—a standard in archaeological illustration—to highlight the texture and contours. Typically, I illustrated each object from several significant angles, including a frontal view, a side view, and a section.

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Other archaeological illustrators I’ve met have emphasized that these technical drawings should always be done from life, never from photos. During my time at the museum, I appreciated being able to hold the objects and rotate them, understanding how they were constructed and carved. This hands-on approach allowed me to better capture and emphasize their form in my drawings.

Why Not Just Take Photographs?

In archaeology, objects are routinely photographed for inventory purposes, yet illustrations are preferred in publications for their greater clarity and ability to reveal texture and details often lost in a photograph. Drawings are carefully measured, usually created at 1:1 scale with the artifact directly in front of the illustrator, ensuring more accurate proportions than a photograph, where the lens curvature can distort contours. For some objects I illustrated, the faintly carved imagery was only visible under extreme raking light, making it almost invisible in a regular photograph.

Illustrators can choose to emphasize particular features of an artifact that are important for analysis, such as decorative patterns, manufacturing techniques, or damage that indicates usage. Drawings also provide a standardized way of depicting artifacts, which can be easily compared across different sites and publications. This helps in identifying similarities, differences, and broader cultural patterns. Below are just a few examples of what I mean.

Excavation photograph of bread stamp. Pyla-Koutsopetria Archaeological Project, courtesy James Gold.

Illustration of bread stamp. Courtesy James Gold.

One of my favorite objects to illustrate was a small limestone “bread stamp” with a decorative floral motif carved into its surface, used to make designs on fresh loaves of bread, perhaps for special ritual purposes. Above, at left is the excavation photo showing the original find-spot of the “bread stamp,” before cleaning, while at right is my illustration of the piece. The limestone surface doesn’t show any staining or smoky marks from being in an oven, and archaeologists aren’t quite sure how these stamps were utilized in antiquity.

“Eastern Figurine” found at Pyla-Vigla

My illustration of the “Eastern Figurine.” Courtesy James Gold.

Another object I particularly enjoyed drawing was a fragmentary torso of a man, dubbed the “Eastern Figurine” by PKAP due to the figure’s long, textured beard, reminiscent of styles popular in the ancient Near East. The figure was carved from the warm-toned, finely grained limestone commonly used for carving in Cyprus.

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Finally, one of the more exciting challenges of the project involved creating reconstruction drawings of the site’s Hellenistic fortifications. After visiting the dig site, where the directors highlighted certain topographical features, I used pen, brush, and India ink to create renderings of the site as it might have looked around 300 BCE, with mudbrick walls atop fieldstone foundations.

Illustration of Pyla-Vigla’s fortifications in 300 BCE. Courtesy James Gold.

Holding objects that were crafted more than 2,000 years ago has deeply influenced the way I think about making art. These objects, created by anonymous artisans, carry an immediacy and intimacy that I aspire to in my own work. Their surfaces—worn, scratched, or still bearing faint tool marks—tell stories about the hands that shaped them, the lives they passed through, and the environments they endured. I’ve begun to see my paintings as fragments of an imagined archaeology, echoing these qualities of transformation and survival over time.

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As I worked on drawings in the Larnaka Museum, tracing the contours of a limestone figurine or mapping the intricate details of a bread stamp, I felt a quiet connection to the ancient maker. The care and precision I put into each drawing reflected my personal way of honoring their craftsmanship.

Many thanks to PKAP, the Biblical Archaeology Society, Cathy Alexander, and Professor Andrea Berlin for their essential support, which allowed me to join the Summer 2024 dig season at Pyla-Vigla. This Bible History Daily article is adapted from a longer post that appeared on my blog site, www.jamesgold.com.

James Gold is a New York-based artist whose paintings blend traditional techniques with digital-inspired hyperreality to explore fragments of hypothetical archaeology. A recipient of a Fulbright Painting Fellowship to Italy, he participated in archaeological fieldwork in Cyprus as a 2024 BAS Dig Scholarship winner. He was also recently an artist-in-residence at MASS MoCA, and will present a solo exhibition at Morgan Lehman Gallery in Fall 2025.

This article was first published in Bible History Daily on February 19, 2025.

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The post What Is Archaeological Illustration? appeared first on Biblical Archaeology Society.

Rembrandt, Moses with the Tablets of the Law, public domain.
Moses, pictured here in a painting by 17th-century Baroque artist Guido Reni, is one of the most iconic figures in the Hebrew Bible. Despite Moses’ obvious Semitic heritage, the name “Moses” is actually Egyptian, like that of other Biblical figures (Phinehas, Hophni, Hur, Merari). All of them are referred to in the Bible’s Levite sources (E, P and D of the Documentary Hypothesis). Levites like Moses fled Egypt to form a new nation of Israelites who were to “love your neighbor.”

It’s one of the most famous lines in the Bible: “Love your neighbor as yourself” (Leviticus 19:18).

Impressive. Fascinating. Inspiring. Capable of a thousand interpretations and raising 10,000 questions. A remarkable proposition coming out of ancient Judah, which was embedded in the Near Eastern world of wars, slavery, class and ethnic divisions and discriminations of all kinds.

One interpretation of this verse that has been making the rounds for years turns this grand idea on its head: The claim is that the verse means to love only one’s fellow Israelites as oneself. Instead of being inclusive, it’s actually exclusive. Is there anything to this claim?

We have to start by going all the way back to the Exodus, which the combination of archaeology and text has led me to argue was historical; it actually happened. Ninety percent of the arguments against its historicity are not about the event itself but about the size of the event: All of Israel! Two million people (as suggested by Exodus 12:37–38)! Impossible!

But the evidence of a real but smaller exodus is a different matter. The earliest Biblical sources—the very early Song of Miriam (Exodus 15) and the text known in critical Biblical scholarship as J—don’t mention any numbers.

Moreover, there is good evidence that only the Levites were in Egypt; it was they who left and then merged with the rest of Israel. Note that only Levites have numerous Egyptian names (e.g., Phinehas, Hophni, Hur, Merari, Moses). The Levites alone reflect Egyptian material culture: Their Tabernacle has parallels with the battle tent of Pharaoh Rameses II.¹ Their ark has parallels with Egyptian sacred barks.² The Levite sources alone require circumcision, which was practiced in Egypt. There is much more. For the whole picture, see my presentation at a recent conference titled Out of Egypt held last year at the University of California, San Diego, which BAR has put online at https://www.biblicalarchaeology.org/daily/biblical-topics/exodus/video-the-exodus-based-on-the-sources-themselves/.

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One more mark of the Levite sources is crucial and will bring us back now to the interpretation of “Love your neighbor as yourself.” Is neighbor exclusive or inclusive?

Of the four sources of the Torah or Pentateuch that critical scholars refer to as J, E, P and D,^a three—E, P (the Priestly source) and D (the Deuteronomistic source)—are Levite sources. In these Levite sources, the command to treat aliens fairly comes up 52 times! (How many times does this come up in the non-Levite source, J? Answer: None.)

The first occurrence of the word torah in the Torah is: “There shall be one torah for the citizen and for the alien who resides among you” (Exodus 12:49, from the Levite source P).

Why this frequent concern for aliens? We might reasonably guess that it was a matter of geography. Israel lay at the point where Africa, Asia and Europe meet. People of all backgrounds regularly passed through. So we can imagine a nation at that fulcrum of ancient trade routes having a policy of welcome to all those valuable aliens. Still, not all countries that have desired the benefits of trade have emphasized this principle. Again and again, all three Levite sources of the text (E, P and D) rather give this reason:

And you shall not persecute an alien, and you shall not oppress him, because you were aliens in the land of Egypt.

Exodus 22:20

And you shall not oppress an alien — since you know the alien’s soul, because you were aliens in the land of Egypt.

Exodus 23:9

You shall not persecute him. The alien who resides with you shall be to you like a citizen of yours, and you shall love him as yourself, because you were aliens in the land of Egypt.

Leviticus 19:33–34

So you shall love the alien, because you were aliens in the land of Egypt.

Deuteronomy 10:19

You shall not abhor an Egyptian, because you were an alien in his land.

Deuteronomy 23:8

You shall not bend judgment of an alien … You shall remember that you were a slave in Egypt, and YHWH, your God, redeemed you from there. On account of this I command you to do this thing.

Deuteronomy 24:17–18

Why should we be good to aliens? Because we know how it feels. We know the alien’s soul. So we won’t persecute foreigners; we won’t abhor them; we won’t oppress them; we won’t judge them unfairly; we’ll treat them the same as we treat ourselves; we’ll love them.

Indeed, one possible meaning of the word Levi in Hebrew is “alien.”³

It is certainly true that there are also some harsh passages toward foreigners in the Bible: Dispossess the Canaanites, destroy Jericho, etc. But the evidence in the ground, discussed and debated many times in BAR’s pages, indicates that most of that (the so-called Conquest of the land) never happened.^b Moreover in far more laws and instances, the principle of treatment of aliens is positive.

For example: Don’t rape a captured woman in war (Deuteronomy 21:10ff).

Don’t abhor an Edomite (Deuteronomy 23:8).

If you happen upon your enemy’s ox or donkey straying, bring it back to him.

If you see the donkey of someone who hates you sagging under its burden, and you would hold back from helping him: You shall help him (Exodus 23:4–5).

The Bible permits a violent response to those who threaten Israel’s existence, but it still forbids a massacre if they surrender.

The very fact that the Bible’s sources start off with the creation of the earth and all of humankind instead of starting with Israel itself is relevant here. If any of us were asked to write a history of the United States, would we start by saying, “Well, first there was the Big Bang, and then …”? The Biblical authors saw Israel’s destiny as being to bring good to all those foreign nations and peoples—to the earth. It is not a minor point. It appears in God’s first words to Abraham, in God’s first words to Isaac, and in God’s first words to Jacob: Your descendants’ purpose is to be that “all the nations/families of the earth will be blessed through you” (Genesis 12:3; 26:2–4; 28:10–14).

Which brings me back to the opening question: Is “Love your neighbor as yourself” meant exclusively or inclusively? Does this admonition refer only to your Israelite neighbor or to all humankind?

When the text already directs every Israelite to love aliens as oneself, what would be the point of saying to love only Israelites—in the very same chapter! Now my friend Jack Milgrom, of blessed memory, wrote that it is precisely because the love of the alien is specifically mentioned there that love of “neighbor” must mean only a fellow Israelite.⁴

I see his point, but his position would have been more likely if the verse about love of aliens had come first in the text and the love of neighbor had came later. But the instruction to love aliens comes after we’ve already had the instruction to love your neighbor as oneself. That is, if you tell people first to love their aliens and then give a second instruction to love their neighbors, that second instruction really does sound like an addition because the first group, aliens, obviously doesn’t include the second group, neighbors. But if you tell people first to love their neighbors, then a second instruction to love aliens a few verses later can make sense as a specification for anyone who would have thought that love of neighbor didn’t include loving others as well.

Watch full-length lectures from the Out of Egypt: Israel’s Exodus Between Text and Memory, History and Imagination conference, which addressed some of the most challenging issues in Exodus scholarship. The international conference was hosted by Calit2’s Qualcomm Institute at UC San Diego in San Diego, CA.

Did the Biblical authors think that the specifications referring to aliens were necessary? We know that they did because they said it 52 times in the Torah! And, in any case, Milgrom and I would both recognize that the bottom line is that one is supposed to love both, alien and neighbor, whether they overlap or not.

So from where did the idea come, that the Hebrew word for neighbor in this verse, re‘a, means only a member of one’s own group? We can get a better idea of what the Hebrew word for neighbor, re‘a, means by looking at other places in the Bible where this word is used.

The first occurrence of re‘a is in the story of the tower of Babel (Babylon). It is the Bible’s story of the origin of different nations and languages. It involves every person on earth: “And they said each to his re‘a …” (Genesis 11:3). That is, the term refers to every human, without any distinctions by group.

Now, one might say, though, that the word might still refer only to members of one’s own group because, at this point in the story, all humans are in fact still members of a single group. So let’s go to the next occurrence of the word. In the story of Judah and Tamar, Judah has a re‘a named Hirah the Adullamite (Genesis 38:12, 20). Hirah is a Canaanite! He comes from the (then) Canaanite city of Adullam. He cannot be a member of Judah’s clan because, at this point in the story, that clan, namely the Israelites, consists only of Jacob and his children and any grandchildren.

In Exodus 11:2 the word appears in both the masculine and feminine in the account of how the Israelites are instructed to ask their Egyptian neighbors for silver and gold items before their exodus from Egypt. The word there refers quite precisely to non-Israelites. In Exodus 2:13, on the other hand, in the story of Moses’ intervention between two “Hebrews” who are fighting, he says to the one at fault, “Why do you strike your re‘a?” So in that episode it refers to an Israelite.

Snark/Art Resource, NY
TEACHING THE LAW. In this ninth-century illustration from the Bible of Charles the Bald, Moses explains the law to the Israelites. Fifty-two occurrences in the Bible’s Levite texts (E, P and D) refer to the importance of treating foreigners fairly—no distinction between an Israelite and a non-Israelite. “Love your neighbor as yourself” is also from a Levite text. Considering this pervasive Levite stress on the fair treatment of the alien, why would a Levite text then say you only need to love an Israelite “neighbor”? Our author believes it doesn’t—“neighbor” includes all humankind.

In short, the word re‘a is used to refer to an Israelite, a Canaanite, an Egyptian, or to everyone on earth.

And still some people say that “Love your re‘a as yourself” means just your fellow Israelite. When the Ten Commandments include one that says: “You shall not bear false witness against your re‘a” (Exodus 20:16; Deuteronomy 5:17), do they think that this meant that it was okay to lie in a trial if the defendant was a foreigner (even though elsewhere, as we saw, the law forbids Israel to “bend the judgment of an alien”)? When another of the Ten Commandments says not to covet your re‘a’s wife (Exodus 20:17; Deuteronomy 5:18), do they think that this meant that it was okay to covet a Hittite’s wife (even though elsewhere the Bible condemns King David for doing just that)?

Those who contend that “neighbor” refers only to one’s neighbors of your own people frequently cite its context. They quote the sentence that precedes the sentence about loving one’s neighbor. Looking at the two together, it reads like this:

You shall not take revenge, and you shall not keep on at the children of your people.
And you shall love your neighbor as yourself.

Since the two sentences were put together into a single verse when verse numbers were added to the Bible, some interpreters have assumed that the “love your neighbor as yourself” line must also be just about “the children of your people.” Why? No reason at all. Read Leviticus 19, carefully. Coming near the very center of the Torah, it is a remarkable mixture of laws of all kinds. It goes back and forth between ethical laws and ritual laws: sacrifice, heresy, injustice, mixing seeds, wearing mixed fabrics (shaatnez), consulting the dead, gossip, robbing, molten idols, caring for the poor. It has everything! I tell my students that if you’re on a desert island and can have only one chapter of the Bible with you, make it Leviticus 19. And its laws all come mixed in between each other. No line can be judged by what comes before it or after it. And, remember, there are no verse numbers or periods or commas in the original.

For more on the Book of Leviticus, read “What Does the Bible Say About Tattoos?” and “Book of Leviticus Verses Recovered from Burnt Hebrew Bible Scroll.”

The much respected Bible scholar Harry Orlinsky made the context argument in 1974.⁵ Because of his scholarly standing, he was followed by others. Robert Wright cited him in The Evolution of God.⁶ Wright had consulted with me on the matter of loving the alien, but unfortunately we didn’t discuss the “neighbor” verse; if we had, I would have cautioned him. Hector Avalos also followed Orlinsky, saying “as Orlinsky has deftly noted …”⁷ The “deftly noted” remark has been used (and often quoted) over and over again in connection with the interpretation of this verse. It was not deft at all.

The same “context” mistake was made by John Hartung, an evolutionary anthropologist⁸ who was cited and followed by Richard Dawkins in his bestselling The God Delusion, saying, “‘Love thy neighbor’ didn’t mean what we now think it means. It meant only ‘Love another Jew.’”⁹ Hartung emphasized the importance of context, but he then used only the one verse (quoted above), seemingly unaware that the joining of its two statements was done by those who created numbered verses centuries after the Bible was written.

“Love your neighbor as yourself” remains: Famous. Impressive. Fascinating. Inspiring. You can accept or challenge it. And you can decide whether you will follow it in your own life. But don’t change what it means.

“Love Your Neighbor: Only Israelites or Everyone?” by Richard Elliott Friedman was originally published in the September/October 2014 issue of Biblical Archaeology Review. It was first republished in Bible History Daily on August 19, 2014.

Richard Elliott Friedman is the Ann and Jay Davis Professor of Jewish Studies at the University of Georgia and Katzin Professor of Jewish Civilization Emeritus at the University of California, San Diego, and author of the classic Who Wrote the Bible? (1987). He was a visiting fellow at Cambridge and Oxford, a senior fellow of the American Schools of Oriental Research in Jerusalem, a visiting professor at the University of Haifa and participated in the City of David Project archaeological excavations of Jerusalem.

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Notes

a. Richard Elliott Friedman, “Taking the Biblical Text Apart,” Bible Review, Fall 2005.

b: Aharon Kempinski, “Israelite Conquest or Settlement? New Light from Tell Masos,” BAR, September 1976;

• Yigael Yadin, “Israel Comes to Canaan: Is the Biblical Account of the Israelite Conquest of Canaan Historically Reliable?” BAR, March/April 1982;
• Ziony Zevit, “The Problem of Ai,” BAR, March/April 1985;
• David Ussishkin, “Lachish—Key to the Israelite Conquest of Canaan?” BAR, January/February 1987;
• Bryant G. Wood, “Did the Israelites Conquer Jericho? A New Look at the Archaeological Evidence,” BAR, March/April 1990;
• Hershel Shanks, “When Did Ancient Israel Begin?” BAR, January/February 2012;
• Amnon Ben-Tor, “Who Destroyed Canaanite Hazor?” BAR, July/August 2013.

1. Michael Homan, To Your Tents O Israel (Leiden: Brill, 2002), pp. 111–115.

2. Scott Noegel demonstrated this in an impressive paper at the Out of Egypt conference: “The Ark of the Covenant and Egyptian Sacred Barks: A Comparative Study” (conference, San Diego, May 31–June 9, 2013).

3. William Propp, Exodus 1–18, The Anchor Bible (New York: Doubleday, 1999), p. 128.

4. Jacob Milgrom, Leviticus 17–22, The Anchor Bible (New York: Doubleday, 2000), p. 1654; and see bibliography there.

5. Harry Orlinsky, Essays in Biblical Culture and Bible Translation (New York: Ktav, 1974), p. 83.

6. Wright cited him in The Evolution of God (New York: Little, 2009), pp. 235–236.

7. Hector Avalos, Fighting Words: The Origins of Religious Violence (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2005), p. 140.

8. John Hartung, “Love Thy Neighbor: The Evolution of In-Group Morality,” Struggles for Existence (blog), (strugglesforexistence.com/?p=article_p&id=13).

9. Dawkins, The God Delusion (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 2006), p. 253.

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