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Winner of the 2004 National Jewish Book Award for Scholarship, The Jewish Study Bible is a landmark, one-volume resource tailored especially for the needs of students of the Hebrew Bible. We sat down with co-editors Adele Berlin and Marc Zvi Brettler to talk about the revisions in the Second Edition of The Jewish Study Bible, and the Biblical Studies field as a whole.
What led to the decision to revise the Jewish Study Bible?
It has been ten years since the first edition of the Jewish Study Bible (JSB) was published. During that time our knowledge of the Bible and of ancient Israel has advanced tremendously. At the same time, a new generation of scholars has entered the field, with fresh approaches to the study of the Bible. We wanted to build on our very successful first edition by introducing our readers to new knowledge and new approaches.
How extensive are the revisions?
They are very extensive. Many books of the Bible have entirely new annotations/commentaries, by new authors, and all have been revised to reflect new scholarship. The essays have been revised, some by new authors. In addition, many new essays on a wide variety of topics have been added, ranging from topics such as the calendar to the place of the Bible in American Jewish culture.
What has changed in research in Biblical Studies since the publication of the first edition?
We now have a much broader and sophisticated appreciation of how the Bible came to be the Bible, and how its various parts were re-shaped and interpreted in ancient times. Much current emphasis is on the Persian and Hellenistic periods, when the biblical canon and its earliest interpretation were developing. The history and archaeology of these periods have given us a firmer grasp on how Jewish identity was being formed. This, in turn, helps us to better understand the development of the biblical text and its message for the audiences of those times. We recognize that there were multiple Jewish communities with differing views on certain matters, and we are sensitive to the many voices reflected (or suppressed) within the biblical books. Finally, even when scholars recognize that biblical books are composite and have a complex editorial history, it is valuable to examine the final form that an editor imposed upon them, and what this final form may mean.
Where do you see Biblical Studies heading in the next 10 years?
We are neither prophets not children of prophets (Amos 7:14). It is likely that further archaeological discoveries will help us better understand certain passages and institutions. Perhaps the debate raging about dating biblical literature will be resolved, and we will be able to better understand biblical books in their historical contexts. Finally, it is important to remember that Jewish participation in mainstream biblical scholarship began only half a century ago, and it is likely that in the coming decade Jewish scholars will find new ways of integrating classical Jewish sources with critical approaches.
What is the most important issue in the Biblical Studies field right now?
It is hard to single out just one important issue. Some of the older questions, like the history and growth of the biblical text, continue to engage scholars and they have proposed new models and new answers. A more recent development is the concern with biblical or ancient Jewish theology, a relatively neglected area until now. The general current interest in religion, religious concepts, and the importance of religious beliefs is shared by biblical scholars and has become a fruitful way to approach the study of the Bible.
Headline image credit: Rachel Preparing Bible Homework by David King. CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 via Flickr.
Everyone talks about the Bible, though few have read it cover to cover. This is not surprising—some sections of the Bible are difficult to understand without a commentary, others are tedious, and still others are boring. That is why annotated Bibles were created—to help orient readers as they read through the Bible or look into what parts of it mean. For those who have not read the Bible cover-to-cover—and even for many who have—here are some common misconceptions about the Hebrew Bible.
1. The Ten Commandments are the most important part of the Bible.
No biblical text calls them the Bible’s most important part. Various prophetic texts such as Ezekiel 18 summarize righteous behavior, but most of these do not refer to the Ten Commandments. In fact, the English term “Ten Commandments” is a misnomer from a Jewish perspective, since in the Jewish enumeration, “I am the LORD your God…” is the first divine utterance in Exodus 20 and Deuteronomy 5, and it is not a commandment at all. Thus, Jews prefer to call these the Decalogue, “the ten sayings,” which reflects the Hebrew aseret hadevarim (Exodus 24:38; Deuteronomy 4:13; 10:4).
2. We know what the original text of the Bible is.
Like all texts transmitted in antiquity, the Bible in its earliest stages of transmission was fluid. Scribes changed books that became part of the Bible accidentally and on purpose; this is now clear from evidence of the Dead Sea Scrolls.
3. The Hebrew Bible and the Old Testament are different names for the same books.
The Jewish Hebrew Bible and the Protestant Old Testament contain the same books, but in a different order—and order matters. The Catholic Old Testament is larger than the Jewish Hebrew Bible and the Protestant Old Testament. It contains the Apocrypha—select Jewish Hellenistic [Greek] Writings such as Sirach, Tobit, and Maccabees—and in two cases, Esther and Daniel, the Catholic book is larger than the Hebrew book, containing material found in the Greek texts of these works, but not in the Hebrew.
Different religious groups have different orders to the Bible. Christians typically divide the Old Testament into four sections (Law [=Torah], historical books, wisdom and poetic books, prophetic books), while Jews divide the Hebrew Bible into three sections: Torah, Nevi’im [prophets] and Ketuvim [writings]. Both of these ways of ordering biblical texts probably reflect different ancient Jewish orders that ultimately helped to define Jewish versus Christian identity. In addition, Jewish manuscripts show many different orders of the final section, Ketuvim, and the Babylonian Talmud notes an order of Nevi’im that is different than the more commonly used.
5. Everything in a prophetic book is by that prophet.
Many prophetic books contain titles or superscriptions, as in Jeremiah 1:1-3: “The words of Jeremiah son of Hilkiah, one of the priests at Anathoth in the territory of Benjamin. The word of the LORD came to him in the days of King Josiah son of Amon of Judah, in the thirteenth year of his reign, and throughout the days of King Jehoiakim son of Josiah of Judah, and until the end of the eleventh year of King Zedekiah son of Josiah of Judah, when Jerusalem went into exile in the fifth month.” However, we never have the autographs of individual prophets, and often their disciples and others added material to early forms of prophetic books, in the names of the prophet himself!
6. The Bible is history.
The modern concept of history, judged by whether or not it gets the facts right, is by and large a modern conception. In the past, all peoples told stories set in the past for a variety of reasons, e.g. to entertain, to enlighten, but rarely to recreate what actually happened. Archaeologists have uncovered many cases where the biblical account disagrees with the archaeological account, or with what we might know from other ancient Near Eastern texts.
7. All of the Psalms are by King David.
About half of the psalms in Psalms contain the word ledavid, “to/of David,” in their first sentence. But many do not. Some are anonymous, while others are explicitly attributed to other figures such as Asaph (50, 73-81). We are not even sure how ledavid should be translated—does it mean to attribute authorship to David, or might it mean “in the style of David”? Furthermore, none of the psalms reflects tenth century Hebrew, the Hebrew of the period in which David was purported to have lived, and several psalms refer to events long after that period (see e.g. Psalm 126:1). In fact, scholars do not attribute any of Psalms to King David. And at least in Jewish tradition, attributing all of the Psalter to David is not dogma, and several medieval scholars acknowledge the existence of later psalms.
