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The Creation of Woman in the Bible

Megan Sauter — Sat, 07 Mar 2026 12:00:33 +0000

This 11th-century mosaic, which shows the scene of Jesus’ crucifixion, comes from the Church of the Dormition in Daphne, Greece. Early Christians found parallels between the Adam and Eve story and Jesus and the Church. In the mosaic, blood and water flow from Jesus’ pierced side in the direction of his mother, Mary. Early Christians believed that just as Eve was birthed from the side of Adam, so the Church was birthed from the side of Jesus.

The creation of woman in the Bible has been the topic of much debate in Biblical Archaeology Review. In “Was Eve Made from Adam’s Rib—or His Baculum?” from the September/October 2015 issue, Ziony Zevit makes a shocking claim about the Adam and Eve story in the Bible.

The Biblical text says that Eve was created from Adam’s tsela‘. Although tsela‘ has traditionally been translated as “rib,” Zevit argues that it is better translated as Adam’s os baculum. This controversial conversation continues in Mary Joan Winn Leith’s article “Creating Woman,” published in the March/April 2016 issue of Biblical Archaeology Review.

In her article, Leith examines the creation of woman in the Bible. She looks at the etiological and euphemistic support for Zevit’s interpretation, and she considers how this would have fit into ancient views of biology. Then Leith focuses on an interesting part of the Adam and Eve story in the Bible: the “punishment poem” in Genesis 3:14–19.

This poem occurs after Adam and Eve have eaten the forbidden fruit. Because of their disobedience, God curses them. As Leith explains, this curse takes positive relationships, including childbirth, and turns them negative:

[T]he “punishment poem” in Genesis 3:14–19 reverses to negative effect all the positive relationships that prevailed before the humans disobeyed God. Humans and God, man and woman, humans and animals, humans and the earth now become alienated from each other where before all was harmonious. The most famous negative effect of the human disobedience is the woman’s pain in childbirth. At least theoretically then, before the punishment, childbirth in Eden should have been painless. If the father-as-child-bearer principle is hovering in the background of the creation of the woman, then the difficult childbirth promised to the woman in Genesis 3:16 reverses the painless “birth” in Genesis 2, where not only does a man—rather than a woman—give birth, but thanks to the anaesthetic “deep sleep” (tardemah), the man suffers no pain.

Thus, the creation of woman in the Bible from man—the first birth, according to Leith—is painless, but, as the “punishment poem” illustrates, all subsequent births are painful. Further, not only was the first birth painless, but it was a man—not a woman—who shockingly gives birth, setting it apart from all others.

FREE ebook: Exploring Genesis: The Bible’s Ancient Traditions in Context Mesopotamian creation myths, Joseph’s relationship with Egyptian temple practices and 3 tales of Ur, the birthplace of Abraham.

Leith then examines Christian symbolism related to the Adam and Eve story in the Bible. Early Christians believed that Eve was created from Adam’s rib or side, and they found parallels between Adam’s side and Jesus’ side that was pierced during his crucifixion. John 19:34 records, “Instead, one of the soldiers pierced his (Jesus’) side with a spear, and at once blood and water came out.” Early Christians believed that the blood represented the holy Eucharist, and the water represented baptism—two sacraments given by Jesus to the Church. Therefore, the Church was birthed from the side of Jesus, just as Eve was birthed from Adam’s side.

This interpretation is illustrated well in an 11th-century mosaic from the Church of the Dormition in Daphne, Greece. In this mosaic, blood and water flow from the pierced side of Jesus in the direction of his mother, Mary. Leith explains that Mary is often referred to as the “new Eve” and “considered to personify the Church.” The birth of the Church is visually depicted by the blood and water (sacraments) flowing toward Mary (the Church). Adam also makes an appearance in this scene. Jesus’ blood drips onto Adam’s skull at the foot of the cross. This symbolizes 1 Corinthians 15:21–22: “For since death came through a human being (Adam), the resurrection of the dead has also come through a human being (Christ); for as all die in Adam, so all will be made alive in Christ.”

To learn more about the creation of woman in the Bible, read the full article by Mary Joan Winn Leith—“Creating Woman”—in the March/April 2016 issue of Biblical Archaeology Review.

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This Bible History Daily feature was originally published on March 14, 2016.

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Was Eve Made from Adam’s Rib—or His Baculum?

Creating Woman

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Eve and Adam

How Did Adam & Eve Make a Living?

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Mary, Simeon or Anna: Who First Recognized Jesus as Messiah?

BAS Staff — Thu, 05 Mar 2026 12:00:13 +0000

THE PRESENTATION IN THE TEMPLE. When Joseph (far left) and Mary (left of center) bring baby Jesus to the Jerusalem Temple, they are greeted by Simeon, who embraces the baby, and Anna, the New Testament’s only prophetess, shown at right with a scroll, in this 1342 tempera painting by Ambrogio Lorenzetti. Simeon instantly and independently recognizes Jesus as messiah. Anna begins to preach: “She came, and began to praise God and to speak about the child to all who were looking for the redemption of Jerusalem.” Both are quicker than Mary to comprehend who Jesus is. Uffizi Gallery/Public Domain

Being first to hear doesn’t always mean being first to understand. In Luke’s birth narrative, Mary is the first to be told that Jesus will be the messiah. Luke adds that she “treasures the words” the angel Gabriel speaks to her. But Mary is also puzzled by the divine message; she is “perplexed” when the angel greets her and must “ponder” the meaning of his words (Luke 1:29; see also 2:19). In this, Mary contrasts sharply with Simeon and Anna, two elderly individuals who happen to be in the Temple when Joseph and Mary bring the infant Jesus to Jerusalem for the first time.

According to Luke 2:22–24, “[Joseph and Mary] brought him up to Jerusalem to present him to the Lord (as it is written in the law of the Lord, ‘Every firstborn male shall be designated as holy to the Lord’ [quoting Exodus 13:2, 12]) and they offered a sacrifice according to what is stated in the law of the Lord, ‘a pair of turtledoves or two young pigeons’ [based on Leviticus 12:2–8].”

At the Temple, the family is approached by a man named Simeon, who has been told by the Holy Spirit that he will not die until he has seen the messiah. (The same Spirit told him to go to the Temple that day, too.) Simeon takes Jesus in his arms and praises God: “Master, now you are dismissing your servant in peace, according to your word; for my eyes have seen your salvation, which you have prepared in the presence of all peoples, a light for revelation to the Gentiles, and for glory to your people Israel” (Luke 2:28–32). Having seen the messiah, Simeon is now prepared to die.

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Anna then approaches the Holy Family. She, too, recognizes Jesus as messiah, but she has a very different reaction: “At that moment, she came and began to speak about the child to all who were looking for the redemption of Jerusalem” (Luke 2:38). She is 84 years old, according to Luke, and she does not want to die: She wants to proselytize. Like the disciples who will follow her, she is driven to bear witness to what she has seen. Mary was the first to have the good news announced to her, but Anna is the first woman to understand fully and proclaim the good news.

This is because in addition to being a proselytizer, Anna is a “prophetess” (Luke 2:36). In fact, she is the only woman in the New Testament explicitly described as a “prophetess.” She then stands in the line of figures like the judge, military leader and prophetess Deborah and the Jerusalem prophetess Huldah, who, in the days of King Josiah, was asked to verify that an ancient scroll (a form of Deuteronomy) discovered during Temple renovations was indeed the word of God (2 Kings 22).

Unlike Simeon, Anna is not just visiting the Temple for the day; she is there all the time. According to Luke, Anna “never left the Temple but worshiped there with fasting and prayer night and day” (Luke 2:37). Perhaps she was part of some sort of order of widows (Luke tells us her husband died after only seven years of marriage) who had specific religious functions in the Temple. She may have been able to undertake this role in the Temple because she was no longer in periodic states of ritual impurity caused by menstruation.

Learn more about Anna in Robin Gallaher Branch’s Bible History Daily article “Anna in the Bible.”

Mary startles when Gabriel and God the Father appear in her home and interrupt her prayers. In Lorenzo Lotto’s unusual rendition of the Annunciation, dated to 1535, Mary’s cat is equally frightened by the divine apparition. According to Luke, Mary treasures the angel’s message, but does not fully understand it. Only after years of “pondering the message in her heart” does she become a true follower of Jesus.” Museo Civico, Recanati, Italy/Scala/Art Resource, NY.

Luke may also have seen Anna as the second witness in or around the Temple needed to validate Jesus’ significance. Deuteronomy 19:15 stresses the importance of having two witnesses to validate an event.

The pairing of Simeon and Anna reflects Luke’s penchant for male-female parallelism when he writes about the recipients of divine blessing and salvation. The story of Jesus’ birth is framed by two such stories—that of Elizabeth and Zechariah in Luke 1 and Anna and Simeon in Luke 2. Interestingly, in both, the woman is portrayed as the more positive example of discipleship. The women are not only more receptive to the message, they are more willing to act upon it, with Elizabeth realizing that her cousin is carrying the messiah and praising God for this blessing and Anna spreading the good news.

Alfred Plummer, in his classic commentary on Luke, suggested that the difference between Anna and Simeon provides a clue to Luke as a salvation historian, a chronicler of the mighty acts of God for his people through the ages. Yes, a messiah has arrived, as Simeon recognizes, but, as the prophetess Anna suggests, a new era, with a new and living voice of prophecy, has at the same time dawned.¹ In this new era, the living voice of God will continue to speak about the messianic one. Anna is the first in a line of prophetic disciples who will speak about Jesus to all who were looking for the redemption of Israel.

Not everyone can be a prophet, however. Mary, for example, does not fully understand what Anna immediately recognizes. And she won’t for several years.

Twelve years after the presentation of Jesus in the Temple, the Holy Family returns to Jerusalem and Jesus returns to the Temple, this time by himself. Mary and Joseph search for him frantically for three days. When at last they find him listening to and asking questions of the teachers in the Temple, Mary asks, “Child, why have you treated us like this? Look, your father and I have been searching for you in great anxiety.” Jesus responds, “Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house?” But, Luke reports, “they did not understand what he said to them … [but] his mother treasured all these things in her heart” (Luke 2:48–51). The late New Testament scholar Raymond Brown wrote: “Luke’s idea is that complete acceptance of the word of God, complete understanding of who Jesus is, and complete discipleship is not yet possible. This will come through the ministry of Jesus and particularly through the cross and resurrection.”

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Clearly, Luke is not painting an idealized portrait of Mary or Joseph. Rather, he paints a very human and realistic picture of Mary and Joseph as good parents, anxious, concerned, striving to be obedient and understanding, but not yet comprehending. Brown adds, however, that “Luke does not leave Mary on the negative note of misunderstanding. Rather in 2.51 [“his mother treasured all these things …”] he stresses her retention of what she has not yet understood and … her continuing search to understand.”²

Of course, in the end, Luke portrays Mary as successfully making the spiritual journey into the family of faith; in Acts 1:14, when the apostles gather in the upper room after the resurrection and ascension of Jesus, Mary is with them. But the story of Simeon and Anna suggests Mary had much to learn before she could enter into the Kingdom, and into the spiritual family of faith, which they already belonged to, and which is to be the primary family of Jesus in the eschatological age.

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Luke’s Christmas story is full of surprising reversals of fortunes and roles, in which outsiders become more intimate associates than family members, and in which women play a more active role then men. In this way Luke both prepares for and signals one of his major themes in the Gospel of Luke and in Acts—the least, the last and the lost are becoming the most, the first and the found with Jesus’ coming. Luke portrays the rise of a form of Judaism that would rely on the testimony of women as well as men, and that would empower them once again to fulfill roles like Miriam of old.

The first Christmas and the Christ child come at a particular point in time, but for many, like Mary and Joseph, the significance of the event is only understood incrementally and over the course of many years. But the prophetic insight into God’s intentions is a gift which keeps on giving and renewing the people of God. And at the outset of a long chain of such prophetic insights stand Simeon and Anna, one satisfied that prophecy has been fulfilled and the other pointing to the future, a future as bright as the promises of God.

“Mary, Simeon or Anna” by Ben Witherington III originally appeared in Bible Review, Winter 2005. The article was first republished in Bible History Daily on February 12, 2013.

Notes

1. See Alfred Plummer, Luke, International Critical Commentary (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1905), p. 71.
2. Raymond E. Brown and Karl P. Donfried, eds., Mary in the New Testament (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1978), pp. 161–162.

Ben Witherington III is Amos Professor of New Testament for Doctoral Studies at Asbury Theological Seminary and on the doctoral faculty at St. Andrews University in Scotland. A graduate of UNC, Chapel Hill, he went on to receive the M.Div. degree from Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary and a Ph.D. from the University of Durham in England. He is now considered one of the top evangelical scholars in the world, and is an elected member of the prestigious SNTS, a society dedicated to New Testament studies. Dr. Witherington has presented seminars for churches, colleges and Biblical meetings in the U.S., England, Estonia, Russia, Europe, South Africa, Zimbabwe and Australia. He has written over thirty books, including The Jesus Quest and The Paul Quest, both of which were selected as top Biblical studies works by Christianity Today. In addition to his many interviews on radio networks across the country, Professor Witherington has been featured on the History Channel, NBC, ABC, CBS, CNN, The Discovery Channel, A&E, and the PAX Network.

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The Birth of Jesus

Mary, Simeon or Anna

Before Mary: The Ancestresses of Jesus

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Tabitha in the Bible

Robin Gallaher Branch — Thu, 05 Mar 2026 12:00:06 +0000

In the 15th-century painting Healing of the Cripple and Raising of Tabith, Masolino da Panicale depicts the most famous scene of Tabitha in the Bible: the miraculous prayer of Peter that brings Tabitha back from the dead.

Luke, the writer of Luke-Acts, tells the story of Tabitha, a disciple brought back to life after prayer from the apostle Peter. After she is washed and laid out in an upper room, Peter takes her hand and commands her to get up (Acts 9:36-42).

In seven verses, Luke presents Tabitha as much loved, and the miracle of her return to life leads many to believe (v. 42). Luke’s terse account contains praise, humor, honor, sadness, joy and insights on the faith of the early church. Tabitha is so beloved and so essential to the life of her believing community in Joppa, a port city near the heart of modern Tel Aviv, that others cannot imagine life without her. Tabitha simply cannot stay dead. Her faithful community will not permit it!

Throughout Luke’s story, Tabitha remains silent. Luke speaks for her. In what could be considered a humorous touch, her only living actions are opening her eyes, seeing Peter, sitting up, being helped up by him, and being presented alive to the believers and widows (vv. 40-41).

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Luke Honors Tabitha in the Bible

By silencing her, Luke honors her. Others give her accolades and loudly mourn her death (v. 39). Perhaps the best and truest praise one receives comes extemporaneously from others. This certainly applies to the treatment of Tabitha in the Bible.

Luke introduces her with a double name: Tabitha and Dorcas (v. 36). The Aramaic and Greek mean gazelle. Perhaps the doubling shows her ministry to Jewish and Hellenistic believers, something noted earlier in Acts 6:1 and emphasized from chapter 10 on; if so, the placement of Tabitha’s story serves as a transition in the fulfillment of Jesus’ command to his disciples to “be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth” (Acts 1:8). Perhaps her name indicates a woman of energy, grace, beauty and quick movements.

Robin Gallaher Branch has written several other Bible History Daily-exclusive character studies. Read Judith: A Remarkable Heroine, Barnabas: An Encouraging Early Church Leader and Anna in the Bible.

Luke praises her as a disciple (mathetria) who was always doing good and helping the poor (Acts 9:36); her specific designation as disciple proves that Jesus had female disciples. In fact, there are three places where the words disciple or disciples include women: Acts 9:1-2, 36; 18:24-26b.

Luke indicates that Tabitha took God’s commands about society’s most vulnerable seriously. (“Do not oppress the widow or the fatherless, the alien or the poor.” Zechariah 7:10. See also Deuteronomy 24:17, 20-21; Ezekiel 22:7; James 1:27.) Looking after the marginalized is one of God’s characteristics, too, for God is shown in Psalm 146:8-9 as lifting up those bowed down, watching over the alien and sustaining the fatherless and widow.

Luke is generally quite selective with his praise, heightening the value of the accolades given to Tabitha in the Bible. In addition to Tabitha, Luke-Acts commends a few other notable characters. Consider these examples: Luke describes Zechariah and Elizabeth as upright in the sight of God (Luke 1:6), Joseph as a good and upright man from Arimathea (Luke 23:50-51) and Barnabas as a good man and full of the Holy Spirit and faith (Acts 11:24).

Acts 9 highlights Luke’s characteristic writing style with its balance of opposites. Luke pairs Tabitha’s story of dying and being brought back to life with that of Aeneas, who is healed by Peter after being bedridden for eight years (vv. 32-35). Neither Tabitha nor Aeneas seeks a miracle. While visiting Lydda, Peter sees Aeneas and says, “Aeneas, Jesus Christ heals you” (v. 34); concerning Tabitha’s death, the disciples of Joppa urge Peter to “please come at once!” (v. 38). Acts 9:1-31 tells of Saul’s conversion and verses 32-43 close and balance the chapter with stories about Peter; like Peter, Saul becomes a great apostle of the faith. Seen another way, Acts 9 contains a man’s miraculous conversion and a woman’s miraculous restoration to life.

For more than two thousand years, Jezebel has been saddled with a reputation as the bad girl of the Bible, the wickedest of women. But just how depraved was Jezebel, really? Read Janet Howe Gaines’s article How Bad Was Jezebel? for free in Bible History Daily.

Ministry Focus

Luke’s account of Tabitha focuses on her ministry (to use a modern term) to two groups: the poor and widows. In Biblical times, the designation widow meant a woman whose husband was dead and who had no means of financial support; therefore, she needed both protection and physical, legal and financial assistance.* In other words, a widow is a woman with constant needs, and being a widow was virtually synonymous with being poor. If enfeebled, who will glean for the widows and how will they eat? If they lose their houses in order to pay their debts, where will they live? (In Mark 12:40, Jesus condemns teachers of the law specifically for devouring widows’ houses.) If they lack shelter and regular sustenance, they likely will fall ill. Who then will care for them? As they age, who will listen to them?

In a parable about helping the needy, Jesus contrasts the life-saving actions of a Samaritan with the bypassing indifference of a priest and Levite (Luke 10:25-37). Unlike these members of the established priesthood who ignored the man beaten by bandits, Tabitha purposefully sought out the poor and widows and actively looked to see how she could help meet their needs. In the first century, when female activities generally centered on daily survival for themselves and their families, Tabitha engaged the needs of her community. Her lifestyle showed that love is an active verb intent on doing good for others.

Luke concentrates on one specific part of Tabitha’s ministry: making robes and clothing for the widows. Evidently she dressed these widows fashionably, for as she lies washed and prepared for burial, they tearfully display her work to Peter with obvious pride (v. 39). These women were her friends.

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Tabitha’s lifestyle contrasts admirably with the characterization of the good wife from Proverbs 31:10-31. Both display phenomenal energy. Both extend help willingly to the poor (Acts 9:36; Prov. 31:20). Both are proficient in needlework (Acts 9:39; Prov. 31:13, 19, 21,-22, 24, 25). Both seek to do good and undertake their activities within the context of faith (Acts 9:36; Prov. 31:12, 30). The lives of both women show they were “doers,” each putting feet to her faith.

Luke’s succinct description and the outpouring of grief at her death showed how greatly the believing community and widows loved Tabitha (v. 39)—a strong indication that Tabitha herself thoroughly enjoyed her work and loved these people in return.

Silences

As always when reading the Biblical text, consider its silences. What does Luke leave out? Tabitha may have been a widow herself, for Luke omits any mention of her husband or family. Additionally, Tabitha may have been independently wealthy, for the home where she is laid out awaiting burial is presumably her home and has an upper room (Acts 9:39). Evidently she offered her hospitality with flair, for the disciples and widows congregate around her. Perhaps Tabitha chose to use her wealth to aid the poor and the widows (v. 36).

Luke’s description of Tabitha makes it easy to imagine her home as welcoming, open and full of people. Luke indicates that Tabitha’s home functioned as a community center for believers. Tabitha may well have presided over a house church in her home. Quite likely her home became a drop off point for donations as she served as a reliable conduit for goods and services for believers and the wider Joppa citizenry. Tabitha is one of many New Testament women who, once converted to the new faith, set about building a community.

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Joppa’s Believing Community

In contrast to the long illness of Aeneas (v. 33), Luke presents Tabitha’s sickness and death as sudden (v. 37). Luke then shifts the narrative from Tabitha to Joppa’s believing community, which mirrors Tabitha’s lifestyle of action. It too puts feet to its faith.

Upon hearing of Tabitha’s death and Peter’s sojourn in Lydda (v. 32), members of the Joppa community immediately send two men to fetch him, hoping for a miracle.

Since Lydda was 25 miles northwest of Jerusalem and a day’s journey by foot from Joppa, it is possible that Tabitha was dead a total three days before her resuscitation. The messengers say, “Please come at once,” (me okneses); the use of the subjunctive indicates a formal request and carries a sense of respect. Peter drops everything and accompanies the messengers back to Joppa (vv. 38-39). He finds the widows grieving loudly in the upper room with the body (v. 39). Not only do the widows mourn Tabitha’s loss; they have valid concerns for their own lives, now that their protector is dead.

The widows’ mourning reciprocates the love Tabitha extended to them. Arguably she met more than their clothing needs. Her hospitality and generosity probably gave them food, sanctuary, a home, a warm heart and a listening ear. Modern research shows that talking not only is crucial to health but adds to longevity. Tabitha’s outreaching kindness undoubtedly saved lives.

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The Miracle of Tabitha in the Bible

Luke records the miracle simply. It seems to happen quickly. Peter clears the upper room, perhaps because he’s distracted by the widows’ noisy grief (v. 40)! Alone with the dead body, he gets down on his knees, prays, and turns to the dead woman. Speaking to her he says, “Tabitha, get up” (v. 40). And she does!

Peter calls in the believers and widows and gives her back to them, alive. One can imagine the plethora of emotions—joy, wonder, amazement, awe, thanksgiving and even doubt—as everybody crowds in the upper room to confirm for themselves that Tabitha really is healed and alive!

Luke concludes Tabitha’s story with more silences, muzzling both Tabitha and Peter. Peter says nothing about the miracle and Tabitha says nothing about what it’s like being dead. Instead, Luke sums up the reactions of all concerned by stating a fact—her return to life became known all over Joppa—and its result—that many people believed in the Lord because of it (v. 42).

Luke then carries on with Peter’s visit to the centurion Cornelius’ home in Caesarea (Acts 10) but remains silent about Tabitha’s life. However, Luke’s silence again compliments her, for it acknowledges the obvious. We already know her character. We know what happens. This remarkable woman simply carries on doing good for the poor and serving her friends, the widows, by making them stylish robes.

Robin Gallaher Branch is professor of Biblical studies at Victory University (formerly Crichton College) in Memphis, Tennessee, and Extraordinary Associate Professor in the Faculty of Theology at North-West University in Potchefstroom, South Africa. She received her Ph.D. in Hebrew Studies from the University of Texas in Austin in 2000. She was awarded a Fulbright Fellowship for the 2002–2003 academic year to the Faculty of Theology at North-West University. Her most recent book is Jereboam’s Wife: The Enduring Contributions of the Old Testament’s Least-Known Women (Hendrickson, 2009).

Notes

* In the Bible, widowhood often serves as a textual marker to alert savvy readers of moments of significance. For more, read Robin Gallaher Branch, “Biblical Views: Groveling Grannies or Teaching Tools” as it appeared in the January/February 2013 issue of Biblical Archaeology Review.

Bibliography

Darrell L Bock, Acts: Baker Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament. (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2007).

John Calvin, John 12-21. Acts 1-13. (Peabody: Hendrickson Publishers, 1993).

Stephen B. Clark, Stephen, Man and Woman in Christ: An Examination of the Roles of Men and Women in Light of Scripture and the Social Sciences. . (Ann Arbor: Servant Books, 1980).

Chalmer E. Faw, Acts. (Scottdale: Herald Press, 1993).

Beverly Roberts Gaventa, Acts. (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2003).

M. A. Getty-Sullivan, Women in the New Testament. (Collegeville: The Liturgical Press, 2001).

Susanne Heine, Women in Early Christianity: Are the Feminist Scholars Right? John Bowden, trans. (London: SCM Press, Ltd., 1987).

Josephus. The Works of Josephus Complete and Unabridged. Wiliam Whiston, trans. (Peabody: Hendrickson Publishers, 1987).

Craig S. Keener, Miracles: The Credibility of the New Testament Accounts. Volume 1. (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 2011).

I. Howard Marshall, New Testament Theology: Many Witnesses, One Gospel. (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2004).

C. Myers, T. Crave, & R. S. Kraemer, eds. Women in Scripture: A Dictionary of Named and Unnamed Women in the HebrewBible, the Apocryphal/Deuterocanonical Books, and the New Testament. (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2000).

Kerry Patterson, Joseph Grenny, Ron McMillan, & Al Sitzler, Crucial Conversations: Tools for Talking When Stakes are High. (New York: McGraw-Hill, 2002).

Jaroslav Pelican, Acts. (Grand Rapids: Brazos Press, 2005).

Elisabeth Fiorenza, In Memory of Her: A Feminist Theological Reconstruction of Christian Origins. (New York: Crossroads, 1983).

“Widow.” Encyclopaedia Judaica Volume 16 UR-Z Supplementary Entries. (Jerusalem: Keter Publishing House, 1972). 16:487-496.

This Bible History Daily feature was originally published in May 2013.

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Biblical Views: Biblical Widows—Groveling Grannies or Teaching Tools?

A Widow’s Plea

Understanding the Woman in the Window

Biblical Views: Tabitha and Lydia—Models of Early Christian Women Leaders

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Scandalous Women in the Bible

BAS Staff — Tue, 03 Mar 2026 12:00:19 +0000

Mary Magdalene, Jezebel, Rahab, Lilith. Today, each is considered one of the most scandalous women in the Bible. Are these so-condemned salacious women misrepresented? Have they been misunderstood? In this Bible History Daily feature, examine the lives of four women in the Bible who are more than they seem. Explore the Biblical and historical texts and traditions that shaped how these women are commonly viewed today.

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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Craft centers in Jerusalem, family structure across Israel and ancient practices—from dining to makeup—through the Mediterranean world.

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.

The Bible History Daily feature “Scandalous Women in the Bible” was originally published on April 28, 2014.

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Ancient Pergamon

Sarah Yeomans — Tue, 24 Feb 2026 12:00:52 +0000

Pergamon’s strategic location along both land and sea trading routes contributed to its prosperity. Pilgrims from all over the Mediterranean region would flock to the city to engage in commerce or to visit the famous Ascelpion, a center of medical treatments.

Perched atop a windswept mountain along the Turkish coastline and gazing proudly—almost defiantly—over the azure Aegean Sea sit the ruins of ancient Pergamon. Although the majority of its superb intact monuments now sit in Berlin’s Pergamon Museum, enough remains of the acropolis for the visitor to sense the former greatness of the city that once rivaled Alexandria, Ephesus and Antioch in culture and commerce, and whose scientific advancements in the field of medicine resonate through the corridors of today’s medical treatment facilities.

Juxtaposed sharply against this image of enlightened learning is that of “Satan’s Throne,” as described by the prophet John of Patmos (Revelation 2:12–13), which some scholars interpret as referring to the Great Altar of Pergamon, one of the most magnificent surviving structures from the Greco-Roman world.¹

The modern visitor approaches the site from the steep and winding road that leads from the modern Turkish city of Bergama just a few miles away. Upon reaching the ruins, the commanding panoramic view from Pergamon’s 1,000-foot-high perch makes it easy to understand how this city once dominated the entire region.

It was a proud city in its time, and it had reason to be so. Its monuments and building were constructed of high-quality white marble in the finest Hellenistic style, and its library rivaled that of the famed library of Alexandria in Egypt. In the mid-second century A.D., it became known throughout the Mediterranean world as a center of ancient medicine, largely due to the presence of the eminent Roman physician Galen (c. 129–200 A.D.), who was born in ancient Pergamon.

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Pergamon rose to prominence during the years of the Greek empire’s division following the death of Alexander the Great in 323 B.C. His short-lived empire was partitioned among his generals, with General Lysimachus inheriting the then-settlement of Pergamon and its wealth. Due largely to its strategic position along land and sea trading routes and in part to the wealth of the Attalid kings who ruled the kingdom, the city enjoyed centuries of prosperity that continued when it passed peacefully to Rome’s control in 133 B.C. From that point on, Pergamon’s fate was inextricably linked to that of Rome, and it rose and fell in tandem with the great Roman Empire.

The oldest and arguably most beautiful section of Pergamon is also its highest. The acropolis of Pergamon rises triumphantly over the ruins of the city that cascades down the steep slopes to the valley below. One of the most dramatic structures of the acropolis was what scholars believe to be the Temple of Zeus, the massive foundations of which are all that remain on the southern slope of the site. The altar believed to be associated with the temple, known today as the Great Altar of Pergamon, was moved to Berlin in the 19th century by German archaeologists, who evidently had an easy time getting permission for its removal from the indifferent authorities of the Ottoman empire.

Walking north from the Temple of Zeus and site of the Great Altar of Pergamon, one encounters the remains of the Temple of Athena, constructed at the end of the fourth century or beginning of the third century B.C., and dedicated to the city’s patron goddess. Just beyond that to the northwest is the magnificent structure that was the city’s famous library. While the estimated 200,000 documents of both papyrus and parchment may be rather high (Seneca estimates that approximately 40,000 volumes were catalogued in the larger library of Alexandria), it was certainly one of the largest collections of written material in the ancient world and was famous throughout the Mediterranean. It also housed one of the most extravagant wedding gifts of all time: Mark Antony is said to have presented Cleopatra with a sizable portion of the Pergamon library’s collection, in part to restore Alexandria’s own collection that went up in flames during Julius Caesar’s occupation of the city.

Honza78, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons." width="400" height="266" srcset="https://www.biblicalarchaeology.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/pergamon_altar-1024x681.jpg 1024w, https://www.biblicalarchaeology.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/pergamon_altar-300x199.jpg 300w, https://www.biblicalarchaeology.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/pergamon_altar-768x511.jpg 768w, https://www.biblicalarchaeology.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/pergamon_altar.jpg 1280w" sizes="(max-width: 400px) 100vw, 400px" />

The Great Altar of Pergamon is considered to be one of the greatest surviving monuments from antiquity. Now located in the Pergamon Museum in Berlin, Germany, the altar is thought by many scholars to be the “throne of Satan,” referred to by the prophet John in the Book of Revelations. (Revelation 2:12–13) Honza78, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

The best-preserved ancient sacred structure on ancient Pergamon’s acropolis is the Temple of Trajan, built during the reign of Emperor Hadrian (117–138 A.D.) and dedicated to his deified predecessor. Towering imposingly over the surrounding structures and ruins, its commanding presence is a testament to the strength of the imperial cult.

Read “Who Is Satan?“ and “How the Serpent Became Satan“ in Bible History Daily.

The Temple of Trajan, or the Trajaneum. The towering structure attests to the strength of the imperial cult in the city. After Augustus became the first emperor of the Roman Empire, Pergamon was authorized to become the first imperial cult center in the east.

It is hard to imagine, gazing up at its enormous height, that this was actually one of the smaller sacred structures in the temple precinct of the acropolis. The sheer size and majesty of the building against the dramatic backdrop of the valley below and the ocean and sky beyond is truly awe-inspiring.

Every ancient Greek city worth its name boasted a theater. A place for both entertainment and civic gatherings, the theater was a focal point of public life in the Greco-Roman world. The architecture of the nearly intact theater of Pergamon not only attests to the city’s importance but also provides what is surely one of the most spectacular—and dizzying—settings of the ancient world. Cascading sharply down the precipitous slope of the acropolis toward the sea, the theater is one of the steepest of its kind. The 10,000 visitors would have had to carefully navigate the 80 rows of horizontal seating, lest they take a fatal tumble to the stage more than 120 vertical feet below. Like many ancient Greek theaters, the theater at Pergamon is an acoustic marvel: An actor (or tourist) speaking normally on the stage can be heard even at the top of the cavea (seating structure).

During the second century A.D., Pergamon’s fame as a center of healing and medical science eclipsed its reputation for anything else. Its most celebrated citizen during this period was the physician Galen, whose work and research was largely responsible for providing the foundation from which modern western medicine was to spring. The asclepion at ancient Pergamon was one of the most famous in the ancient world, and this ancient version of a medical spa attracted pilgrims from all over the Mediterranean region who came seeking the restorative powers of its thermal waters and medical treatments for various ailments and injuries.

Given the fact that the city represented the epitome of Hellenistic culture, traditions and religion in both its pursuits and its very architecture, it is perhaps not surprising that early Christians viewed it as a bastion of all that was anathematic to Christian beliefs. In the Book of Revelation, John conveys a message from the risen Christ to seven Christian congregations in Asia Minor, all of which are located in modern Turkey. Pergamon’s congregation was one of these, and Christ’s message to the faithful praises them for adhering to their faith while living in the place “where Satan dwells.” Antipas, a Christian bishop of Pergamon, was believed to have been martyred here at the end of the first century A.D., around the time when many scholars believe the Book of Revelation was composed. The execution of their bishop certainly would not have endeared the city to its Christian inhabitants, and the Biblical reference to the city is reflective of the general tension between Christian and pagan communities at the end of the first century A.D.

Overcoming vertigo, the author stands in the middle tier of the three-tiered theater of Pergamon, the steepest known theater from the Greco-Roman world.

As part of the Roman Empire, Pergamon’s decline mirrored that of the empire as a whole. Like the rest of the region, it eventually came under Byzantine and then Ottoman rule. By the late 19th century, excavations had begun at the ancient site, and today it draws people from all over the world. Climbing up to the peak of the acropolis, the modern visitor can easily sense the echo of Pergamon’s glorious past, which can still be heard among the beauty of its marble ruins today.

Notes

1. See Adela Yarbro Colins, “Satan’s Throne,” BAR, May/June 2006.

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Sarah Yeomans is an archaeologist specializing in the Imperial period of the Roman Empire with a particular emphasis on ancient science and religion. Currently pursuing her doctorate at the University of Southern California, A native Californian, Sarah holds an M.A. in archaeology from the University of Sheffield, England, and a M.A. in art history from the University of Southern California. She has conducted archaeological fieldwork in Israel, Italy, Turkey, France, and England and has worked on several television and film productions, most recently as an interviewed expert on The Story of God with Morgan Freeman. She is a Provost Fellow at the University of Southern California and is the recipient of a Research Fellowship from the American Research Institute of Turkey (ARIT) as well as a Mayers Fellowship at the Huntington Library and Museum in Los Angeles. Her current research involves ancient Roman medical technology and cult, as well as the impact of epidemics on Roman society. She is generally happiest when covered in dirt, roaming archaeological sites somewhere in the Mediterranean region.

This Bible History Daily article was originally published on July 16, 2013.

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Akhenaten and Moses

Robin Ngo — Tue, 24 Feb 2026 12:00:27 +0000

On this stela from El-Amarna, Egyptian King Akhenaten is seen with his wife Nefertiti and their daughters bearing offerings to the sun-disk Aten. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Defying centuries of traditional worship of the Egyptian pantheon, Egyptian Pharaoh Akhenaten decreed during his reign in the mid-14th century B.C.E. that his subjects were to worship only one god: the sun-disk Aten. Akhenaten is sometimes called the world’s first monotheist. Did his monotheism later influence Moses—and the birth of Israelite monotheism?

In “Did Akhenaten’s Monotheism Influence Moses?” in the July/August 2015 issue of Biblical Archaeology Review, University of California, Santa Barbara, emeritus professor of anthropology Brian Fagan discusses this tantalizing question.

Egyptian King Akhenaten, meaning “Effective for Aten”—his name was originally Amenhotep IV, reigned from about 1352 to 1336 B.C.E. In the fifth year of his reign, he moved the royal residence from Thebes to a new site in Middle Egypt, Akhetaten (“the horizon of Aten,” present-day Tell el-Amarna), and there ordered lavish temples to be built for Aten. Akhenaten claimed to be the only one who had access to Aten, thus making an interceding priesthood unnecessary.

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In the BAR article “The Monotheism of the Heretic Pharaoh,” Donald B. Redford, who excavated Akhenaten’s earliest temple at Karnak (in modern Thebes), describes how Akhenaten instituted worship of Aten:

The cult of the Sun-Disk emerged from an iconoclastic “war” between the “Good God” (Akhenaten), and all the rest of the gods. The outcome of this “war” was the exaltation of the former and the annihilation of the latter. Akhenaten taxed and gradually closed the temples of the other gods; the images of their erstwhile occupants were occasionally destroyed. Cult, ritual and mythology were anathematized, literature edited to remove unwanted allusions. Names were changed to eliminate hateful divine elements; and cities where the old gods had been worshipped, were abandoned by court and government.

Akhenaten destroyed much, he created little. No mythology was devised for his new god. No symbolism was permitted in art or the cult, and the cult itself was reduced to the one simple act of offering upon the altar. Syncretism was no longer possible: Akhenaten’s god does not accept and absorb—he excludes and annihilates.

Did Egyptian Pharaoh Akhenaten’s adamant worship of one deity influence the Biblical Moses, leader of the Israelite Exodus? Was Akhenaten’s monotheism the progenitor of Israelite monotheism? According to BAR author Brian Fagan, we are talking about two different kinds of monothesisms:

“Israelite monotheism developed through centuries of discussion, declarations of faith and interactions with other societies and other beliefs,” Fagan writes. “In contrast, Akhenaten’s monotheism developed very largely at the behest of a single, absolute monarch presiding over an isolated land, where the pharaoh’s word was divine and secular law. It was an experiment that withered on the vine.”

The Biblical Archaeology Society FREE publication Aspects of Monotheism: How God Is One, edited by Hershel Shanks and Jack Meinhardt, presents an exciting, provocative and readily understandable discussion of the origins and evolution of monotheism within Judaism and Christianity. The book is free for BAS Library members.

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When Tutankhaten—the second son of Akhenaten; we know him as the famous King Tut—ascended to the throne, he, working with his advisers, restored worship of the traditional Egyptian pantheon and its chief god, Amun. Tutankhaten also changed his name to Tutankhamun, meaning “the living image of Amun.”

To learn more about the monotheism of Egyptian King Akhenaten, read the full article “Did Akhenaten’s Monotheism Influence Moses?” by Brian Fagan in the July/August 2015 issue of Biblical Archaeology Review.

Subscribers: Read the full article “Did Akhenaten’s Monotheism Influence Moses?” by Brian Fagan in the July/August 2015 issue of Biblical Archaeology Review.

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This Bible History Daily feature was originally published on June 8, 2015.

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Did Akhenaten’s Monotheism Influence Moses?

Moses’ Egyptian Name

The Monotheism of the Heretic Pharaoh

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At Carthage, Child Sacrifice?

Robin Ngo — Sun, 22 Feb 2026 12:00:32 +0000

At Carthage, child sacrifice is believed to have been practiced. Teeth and skeletal analysis of the remains at the Carthage Tophet demonstrates that infants of a specific age-range—under three months old—were most commonly cremated. Photo: ASOR, Punic Project/James Whitred.

The Bible speaks of Judahites who sacrificed their children to Molech in Jerusalem’s Ben Hinnom Valley; the practice was forbidden and considered abominable (Jeremiah 32:35; Leviticus 18:21; 2 Chronicles 28:3). While no evidence of child sacrifice has been uncovered in the Hinnom Valley, scholars today debate whether child sacrifice was practiced at Phoenician sites in the western Mediterranean. The debate is centered on the Carthage Tophet, or open-air enclosure containing the burials of infants, in modern-day Tunisia.

Was child sacrifice really practiced at ancient Carthage? In “Infants Sacrificed? The Tale Teeth Tell” in the July/August 2014 issue of Biblical Archaeology Review, Patricia Smith discusses the research she and her team conducted on the cremated remains from the Carthage Tophet.

Several sources attest to the practice of child sacrifice at Carthage. Lawrence E. Stager and Joseph A. Greene describe the evidence in the November/December 2000 issue of Archaeology Odyssey:

Classical authors and Biblical prophets charge the Phoenicians with the practice. Stelae associated with burial urns found at Carthage bear decorations alluding to sacrifice and inscriptions expressing vows to Phoenician deities. Urns buried beneath these stelae contain remains of children (and sometimes of animals) who were cremated as described in the sources or implied by the inscriptions.

Despite the evidence suggesting that the Carthaginians really did practice child sacrifice, some researchers have contended that such rituals did not occur at Carthage—or at any other Phoenician site. The Carthage Tophet, according to one study, was merely an infant cemetery.

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BAR author Patricia Smith and her research team studied the incinerated remains in 342 urns from the Carthage Tophet. The majority of the remains belonged to infants, though some contained young animals, mostly sheep and goats. An analysis of the teeth and skeletal remains from these urns revealed that most of the infants were one to two months old, a result that does not correspond to the expected pattern of mortality rates in antiquity. The findings demonstrate that a specific age range—under three months old—of infant death was over-represented at Carthage, suggesting that children under the age of three months did not die from natural causes but from something else. That something else, as the literary and epigraphic evidence indicate, is likely the practice of child sacrifice at Carthage.

To learn more about the scientific analysis conducted by Patricia Smith and her research team, read the full article “Infants Sacrificed? The Tale Teeth Tell” by Patricia Smith in the July/August 2014 issue of Biblical Archaeology Review.

Subscribers: Read “Infants Sacrificed? The Tale Teeth Tell” by Patricia Smith as it appeared in the July/August 2014 issue of Biblical Archaeology Review.

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This Bible History Daily article was originally published on July 25, 2014.

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Were living Children Sacrificed to the Gods? Yes

Were living Children Sacrificed to the Gods? No

Child Sacrifice: Returning God’s Gift

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Christmas Stories in Christian Apocrypha

BAS Staff — Tue, 17 Feb 2026 12:00:38 +0000

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.

The Last Days of Jesus: A Final “Messianic” Meal

James Tabor — Sun, 15 Feb 2026 12:00:52 +0000

This article was originally published on Dr. James Tabor’s popular Taborblog, a site that discusses and reports on “‘All things biblical’ from the Hebrew Bible to Early Christianity in the Roman World and Beyond.” Bible History Daily republished the article with consent of the author. Visit Taborblog today, or scroll down to read a brief bio of James Tabor below.

Map of New Testament Jerusalem, outlining the Old City walls and subsequent enclosures added by Herod the Great and Agrippa I. Click map to enlarge. Map courtesy James Tabor.

On Wednesday Jesus began to make plans for Passover. He sent two of his disciples into the city to prepare a large second-story guest room where he could gather secretly and safely with his inner group. He knew someone with such a room available and he had prearranged for its use.

Christian pilgrims today are shown a Crusader site known as the Cenacle or “Upper Room” on the Western Hill of Jerusalem that the Crusaders misnamed “Mount Zion.” This area was part of the “Upper City” where Herod had built his palace. It is topographically higher than even the Temple Mount.

It was the grandest section of ancient Jerusalem with broad streets and plazas and the palatial homes of the wealthy. Bargil Pixner and others have also argued that the southwest edge of Mt Zion contained an “Essene Quarter,” with more modest dwellings and its own “Essene” Gate mentioned by Josephus – see his article “Jerusalem’s Essene Gateway“.

Jesus tells his two disciples to “follow a man carrying a jug of water,” who will enter the city, and then enter a certain house. The only water source was in the southern part of the lower city of Jerusalem, the recently uncovered Pool of Siloam. This mysterious man apparently walked up the slope of Mt Zion and entered the city–likely at the Essene Gate. The house is large enough to have an upper story and likely belonged to a wealthy sympathizer of Jesus, perhaps associated with the Essenes. Later this property became the HQ of the Jesus movement led by James the brother of Jesus – see Pixner’s article “The Church of the Apostles Found on Mt Zion”.

In our free eBook Easter: Exploring the Resurrection of Jesus, expert Bible scholars and archaeologists offer in-depth research and reflections on this important event. Discover what they say about the story of the resurrection, the location of Biblical Emmaus, Mary Magdalene at the empty tomb, the ancient Jewish roots of bodily resurrection, and the possible endings of the Gospel of Mark.

Later Christian tradition put Jesus’ last meal with his disciples on Thursday evening and his crucifixion on Friday. We now know that is one day off. Jesus’ last meal was Wednesday night, and he was crucified on Thursday, the 14th of the Jewish month Nisan. The Passover meal itself was eaten Thursday night, at sundown, as the 15th of Nisan began. Jesus never ate that Passover meal. He had died at 3 p.m. on Thursday.

The confusion arose because all the gospels say that there was a rush to get his body off the cross and buried before sundown because the “Sabbath” was near. Everyone assumed the reference to the Sabbath had to be Saturday—so the crucifixion must have been on a Friday. However, as Jews know, the day of Passover itself is also a “Sabbath” or rest day—no matter what weekday it falls on. In the year a.d. 30, Friday the 15th of the Nisan was also a Sabbath—so two Sabbaths occurred back to back—Friday and Saturday. Matthew seems to know this as he says that the women who visited Jesus’ tomb came early Sunday morning “after the Sabbaths”—the original Greek is plural (Matthew 28:1).

As is often the case, the gospel of John preserves a more accurate chronology of what went on. John specifies that the Wednesday night “last supper” was “before the festival of Passover.” He also notes that when Jesus’ accusers delivered him to be crucified on Thursday morning they would not enter Pilate’s courtyard because they would be defiled and would not be able to eat the Passover that evening (John 18:28). John knows that the Jews would be eating their traditional Passover, or Seder meal, Thursday evening.

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Reading Mark, Matthew, and Luke one can get the impression that the “last supper” was the Passover meal. Some have even argued that Jesus might have eaten the Passover meal a day early—knowing ahead of time that he would be dead. But the fact is, Jesus ate no Passover meal in 30 CE. When the Passover meal began at sundown on Thursday, Jesus was dead. He had been hastily put in a tomb until after the festival when a proper funeral could be arranged.

There are some hints outside of John’s gospel that such was the case. In Luke, for example, Jesus tells his followers at that last meal: “I earnestly wanted to eat this Passover with you before I suffer but I won’t eat it until it is fulfilled in the kingdom of God” (Luke 22:14–16). A later copyist of the manuscript inserted the word “again” to make it say “I won’t eat it again,” since the tradition had developed that Jesus did observe Passover that night and changed its observance to the Christian Eucharist or Mass. Another indication that this is not a Passover meal is that all our records report that Jesus shared “a loaf of bread” with his disciples, using the Greek word (artos) that refers to an ordinary loaf—not to the unleavened flatbread or matzos that Jews eat with their Passover meals. Also, when Paul refers to the “last supper” he significantly does not say “on the night of Passover,” but rather “on the night Jesus was betrayed,” and he also mentions the “loaf of bread” (1 Corinthians 11:23). If this meal had been the Passover, Paul would have surely wanted to say that, but he does not.

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As late as Wednesday morning Jesus had still intended to eat the Passover on Thursday night. When he sent his two disciples into the city he instructed them to begin to make the preparations. His enemies had determined not to try to arrest him during the feast “lest there be a riot of the people” (Mark 14:2). That meant he was likely “safe” for the next week, since the “feast” included the seven days of Unleavened Bread that followed the Passover meal. Passover is the most family-oriented festival in Jewish tradition. As head of his household Jesus would have gathered with his mother, his sisters, the women who had come with him from Galilee, perhaps some of his close supporters in Jerusalem, and his Council of Twelve. It is inconceivable that a Jewish head of a household would eat the Passover segregated from his family with twelve male disciples. This was no Passover meal. Something had gone terribly wrong so that all his Passover plans were changed.

Jesus had planned a special meal Wednesday evening alone with his Council of Twelve in the upper room of the guesthouse in the lower city. The events of the past few days had brought things to a crisis and he knew the confrontation with the authorities was unavoidable. In the coming days he expected to be arrested, delivered to the Romans, and possibly crucified. He had intentionally chosen the time and the place—Passover in Jerusalem—to confront the powers that be. There was much of a private nature to discuss with those upon whom he most depended in the critical days ahead. He firmly believed that if he and his followers offered themselves up, placing their fate in God’s hands, that the Kingdom of God would manifest itself. He had intentionally fulfilled two of Zechariah’s prophecies—riding into the city as King on the foal, and symbolically removing the “traders” from the “house of God.”

At some point that day Jesus had learned that Judas Iscariot, one of his trusted Council of Twelve, had struck a deal with his enemies to have Jesus arrested whenever there was an opportunity to get him alone, away from the crowds. How Jesus knew of the plot we are not told but during the meal he said openly, “One of you who is eating with me will betray me” (Mark 14:18). His life seemed to be unfolding according to some scriptural plan. Had not David written in the Psalms, “Even my bosom friend, in whom I trusted, who ate of my bread, has lifted the heel against me” (Psalm 41:9). History has a strange way of repeating itself. Over a hundred years earlier, the Teacher of Righteousness who led the Dead Sea Scroll community had quoted that very Psalm when one of his inner “Council” had betrayed him.

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When Judas Iscariot realized that the plan for the evening included a retreat for prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane after the meal, he abruptly left the group. This secluded spot, at the foot of the Mount of Olives, just across the Kidron Valley from the Old City, offered just the setting he had promised to deliver. Some have tried to interpret Judas’s motives in a positive light. Perhaps he quite sincerely wanted Jesus to declare himself King and take power, thinking the threat of an arrest might force his hand. We simply don’t know what might have been in his mind. The gospels are content simply to call him “the Betrayer” and his name is seldom mentioned without this description.

Ironically our earliest account of that last meal on Wednesday night comes from Paul, not from any of our gospels. In a letter to his followers in the Greek city of Corinth, written around a.d. 54, Paul passes on a tradition that he says he “received” from Jesus: “Jesus on the night he was betrayed took a loaf of bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, ‘This is my body that is broken for you. Do this in remembrance of me.’ In the same way he took the cup also, after supper, saying, ‘This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me’” (1 Corinthians 11:23–25).

These words, which are familiar to Christians as part of the Eucharist or the Mass, are repeated with only slight variations in Mark, Matthew, and Luke. They represent the epitome of Christian faith, the pillar of the Christian Gospel: all humankind is saved from sins by the sacrificed body and blood of Jesus. What is the historical likelihood that this tradition, based on what Paul said he “received” from Jesus, represents what Jesus said at that last meal? As surprising as it might sound, there are some legitimate problems to consider.

Read Andrew McGowan’s article “The Hungry Jesus,” in which he challenges the tradition that Jesus was a welcoming host at meals, in Bible History Daily.

The Catacombs of Santa Priscilla features a fresco in the Greek Chapel of a banquet dating to the 3rd century – possibly referencing the Eucharistic banquet – with seven figures including a young man breaking bread and a veiled woman. Image courtesy James Tabor.

At every Jewish meal, bread is broken, wine is shared, and blessings are said over each—but the idea of eating human flesh and drinking blood, even symbolically, is completely alien to Judaism. The Torah specifically forbids the consuming of blood, not just for Israelites but anyone. Noah and his descendants, as representatives of all humanity, were first given the prohibition against “eating blood” (Genesis 9:4). Moses had warned, “If anyone of the house of Israel or the Gentiles who reside among them eats any blood I will set my face against that person who eats blood and will cut that person off from the people” (Leviticus 17:10). James, the brother of Jesus, later mentions this as one of the “necessary requirements” for non-Jews to join the Nazarene community—they are not to eat blood (Acts 15:20). These restrictions concern the blood of animals. Consuming human flesh and blood was not forbidden, it was simply inconceivable. This general sensitivity to the very idea of “drinking blood” precludes the likelihood that Jesus would have used such
symbols.

The Essene community at Qumran described in one of its scrolls a “messianic banquet” of the future at which the Priestly Messiah and the Davidic Messiah sit together with the community and bless their sacred meal of bread and wine, passing it to the community of believers, as a celebration of the Kingdom of God. They would surely have been appalled at any symbolism suggesting the bread was human flesh and the wine was blood. Such an idea simply could not have come from Jesus as a Jew.

So where does this language originate? If it first surfaces in Paul, and he did not in fact get it from Jesus, then what was its source? The closest parallels are certain Greco-Roman magical rites. We have a Greek papyrus that records a love spell in which a male pronounces certain incantations over a cup of wine that represents the blood that the Egyptian god Osiris had given to his consort Isis to make her feel love for him. When his lover drinks the wine, she symbolically unites with her beloved by consuming his blood. In another text the wine is made into the flesh of Osiris. The symbolic eating of “flesh” and drinking of “blood” was a magical rite of union in Greco-Roman culture.

Read Jonathan Klawans’s Bible Review article Was Jesus’ Last Supper a Seder? and his updated article Jesus’ Last Supper Still Wasn’t a Passover Seder Meal online for free in Bible History Daily.

We have to consider that Paul grew up in the Greco-Roman culture of the city of Tarsus in Asia Minor, outside the land of Israel. He never met or talked to Jesus. The connection he claims to Jesus is a “visionary” one, not Jesus as a flesh-and-blood human being walking the earth. See my book, Paul and Jesus for a full elaboration of the implications of Paul’s visionary revelations. When the Twelve met to replace Judas, after Jesus had been killed, they insisted that to be part of their group one had to have been with Jesus from the time of John the Baptizer through his crucifixion (Acts 1:21–22). Seeing visions and hearing voices were not accepted as qualifications for an apostle.

Second, and even more telling, the gospel of John recounts the events of that last Wednesday night meal but there is absolutely no reference to these words of Jesus instituting this new ceremony of the Eucharist. If Jesus in fact had inaugurated the practice of eating bread as his body, and drinking wine as his blood at this “last supper” how could John possibly have left it out? What John writes is that Jesus sat down to the supper, by all indications an ordinary Jewish meal. After supper he got up, took a basin of water and a cloth, and began to wash his disciples’ feet as an example of how a Teacher and Master should act as a servant—even to his disciples. Jesus then began to talk about how he was to be betrayed and John tells us that Judas abruptly left the meal.

Mark’s gospel is very close in its theological ideas to those of Paul. It seems likely that Mark, writing a decade after Paul’s account of the last supper, inserts this “eat my body” and “drink my blood” tradition into his gospel, influenced by what Paul has claimed to have received. Matthew and Luke both base their narratives wholly upon Mark, and Luke is an unabashed advocate of Paul as well. Everything seems to trace back to Paul. As we will see, there is no evidence that the original Jewish followers of Jesus, led by Jesus’ brother James, headquartered in Jerusalem, ever practiced any rite of this type. Like all Jews they did sanctify wine and bread as part of a sacred meal, and they likely looked back to the “night he was betrayed,” remembering that last meal with Jesus.

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What we really need to resolve this matter is an independent source of some type, one that is Christian but not influenced by Paul, that might shed light on the original practice of Jesus’ followers. Fortunately, in 1873 in a library at Constantinople, just such a text turned up. It is called the Didache and dates to the early 2nd century CE. It had been mentioned by early church writers but had disappeared until a Greek priest, Father Bryennios, discovered it in an archive of old manuscripts quite by accident. The title Didache in Greek means “Teaching” and its full title is “The Teaching of the Twelve Apostles.” It is a type of early Christian “instruction manual” probably written for candidates for Christian baptism to study. It has lots of ethical instructions and exhortations but also sections on baptism and the Eucharist—the sacred meal of bread and wine. And that is where the surprise comes. It offers the following blessings over wine and bread:

With respect to the Eucharist you shall give thanks as follows. First with respect to the cup: “We give you thanks our Father for the holy vine of David, your child which you made known to us through Jesus your child. To you be the glory forever.” And with respect to the bread: “We give you thanks our Father for the life and knowledge that you made known to us through Jesus your child. To you be the glory forever.”

Notice there is no mention of the wine representing blood or the bread representing flesh. And yet this is a record of the early Christian Eucharist meal! This text reminds us very much of the descriptions of the sacred messianic meal in the Dead Sea Scrolls. Here we have a messianic celebration of Jesus as the Davidic Messiah and the life and knowledge that he has brought to the community. Evidently this community of Jesus’ followers knew nothing about the ceremony that Paul advocates. If Paul’s practice had truly come from Jesus surely this text would have included it.

There is another important point in this regard. In Jewish tradition it is the cup of wine that is blessed first, then the bread. That is the order we find here in the Didache. But in Paul’s account of the “Lord’s Supper” he has Jesus bless the bread first, then the cup of wine—just the reverse. It might seem an unimportant detail until one examines Luke’s account of the words of Jesus at the meal. Although he basically follows the tradition from Paul, unlike Paul Luke reports first a cup of wine, then the bread, and then another cup of wine! The bread and the second cup of wine he interprets as the “body” and “blood” of Jesus. But with respect to the first cup—in the order one would expect from Jewish tradition—there is nothing said about it representing “blood.” Rather Jesus says, “I tell you that from now on I will not drink of the fruit of the vine until the kingdom comes” (Luke 22:18). This tradition of the first cup, found now only in Luke, is a leftover clue of what must have been the original tradition before the Pauline version was inserted, now confirmed by the Didache.

More by James Tabor in Bible History Daily

That Other “King of the Jews”

Can a Pre-Christian Version of the Book of Revelation be Recovered?

The “Strange” Ending of the Gospel of Mark and Why It Makes All the Difference

The Making of a Messiah

Understood in this light, this last meal makes historical sense. Jesus told his closest followers, gathered in secret in the Upper Room, that he will not share another meal with them until the Kingdom of God comes. He knows that Judas will initiate events that very night, leading to his arrest. His hope and prayer is that the next time they sit down together to eat, giving the traditional Jewish blessing over wine and bread—the Kingdom of God will have come.

Since Jesus met only with his Council of Twelve for that final private meal, then James as well as Jesus’ other three brothers would have been present. This is confirmed in a lost text called the Gospel of the Hebrews that was used by Jewish-Christians who rejected Paul’s teachings and authority. It survives only in a few quotations that were preserved by Christian writers such as Jerome. In one passage we are told that James the brother of Jesus, after drinking from the cup Jesus passed around, pledged that he too would not eat or drink again until he saw the kingdom arrive. So here we have textual evidence of a tradition that remembers James as being present at the last meal.

In the gospel of John there are cryptic references to James. Half a dozen times John mentions a mysterious unnamed figure that he calls “the disciple whom Jesus loved.” The two are very close; in fact this unnamed disciple is seated next to Jesus either at his right or left hand. He leaned back and put his head on Jesus’ breast during the meal (John 13:23). He is the one to whom Jesus whispers that Judas is the betrayer. Even though tradition holds that this is John the fisherman, one of the sons of Zebedee, it makes much better sense that such intimacy was shared between Jesus and his younger brother James. After all, from the few stories we have about John son of Zebedee, he has a fiery and ambitious personality—Jesus had nicknamed him and his brother the “sons of Thunder.” They are the two that had tried to obtain the two chief seats on the Council of Twelve, one asking for the right hand, the other the left. On another occasion they asked Jesus for permission to call down fire from heaven to consume a village that had not accepted their preaching (Luke 9:54). On both occasions Jesus had rebuked them. The image we get of John son of Zebedee is quite opposite from the tender intimacy of the “disciple whom Jesus loved.” No matter how ingrained the image might be in Christian imagination, it makes no sense to imagine John son of Zebedee seated next to Jesus, and leaning on his breast.

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It seems to me that the evidence points to James the brother of Jesus being the most likely candidate for this mysterious unnamed disciple. Later, just before Jesus’ death, the gospel of John tells us that Jesus put the care of his mother into the hands of this “disciple whom he loved” (John 19:26–27). How could this possibly be anyone other than James his brother, who was now to take charge of the family as head of the household?

Late that night, after the meal and its conversations, Jesus led his band of eleven disciples outside the lower city, across the Kidron Valley, to a thick secluded grove of olive trees called Gethsemane at the foot of the Mount of Olives. Judas knew the place well because Jesus often used it as a place of solitude and privacy to meet with his disciples (John 18:2). Judas had gone into the city to alert the authorities of this rare opportunity to confront Jesus at night and away from the crowds.

It was getting late and Jesus’ disciples were tired and drowsy. Sleep was the last thing on Jesus’ mind, and he was never to sleep again. His all-night ordeal was about to begin. He began to feel very distressed, fearful, and deeply grieved. He wanted to pray for strength for the trials that he knew would soon begin. Mark tells us that he prayed that if possible the “cup would be removed from him” (Mark 14:36). Jesus urged his disciples to pray with him but the meal, the wine, and the late hour took their toll. They all fell asleep.

Dr. James Tabor is Chair of the Department of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte where he is professor of Christian origins and ancient Judaism. Since earning his Ph.D. at the University of Chicago in 1981, Tabor has combined his work on ancient texts with extensive field work in archaeology in Israel and Jordan, including work at Qumran, Sepphoris, Masada, Wadi el-Yabis in Jordan. Over the past decade he has teamed up with with Shimon Gibson to excavate the “John the Baptist” cave at Suba, the “Tomb of the Shroud” discovered in 2000, Mt Zion and, along with Rami Arav, he has been involved in the re-exploration of two tombs in East Talpiot including the controversial “Jesus tomb.” Tabor is the author of the popular Taborblog, and several of his recent posts have been featured in Bible History Daily as well as the Huffington Post. His latest book, Paul and Jesus: How the Apostle Transformed Christianity has become a immediately popular with specialists and non-specialists alike. You can find links to all of Dr. Tabor’s web pages, books, and projects at jamestabor.com.

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Was Jesus’ Last Supper a Seder?

Biblical Views: From Supper to Sacrament: How the Last Supper Evolved

The Eucharist—Exploring Its Origins

Was The Last Supper a Passover Seder?

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The post The Last Days of Jesus: A Final “Messianic” Meal appeared first on Biblical Archaeology Society.

Love Your Neighbor: Only Israelites or Everyone?

BAS Staff — Sat, 14 Feb 2026 12:00:10 +0000

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/.

FREE ebook: Ancient Israel in Egypt and the Exodus.

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.

FREE ebook: Ancient Israel in Egypt and the Exodus.

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.

The post Love Your Neighbor: Only Israelites or Everyone? appeared first on Biblical Archaeology Society.

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