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.

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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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Related reading in Bible History Daily

The Adam and Eve Story: Eve Came From Where?

Lilith in the Bible and Mythology

What Does the Bible Say About Infertility?

All Access members, read more in the BAS Library

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

Creating Woman

Did Eve Fall or Was She Pushed?

Eve and Adam

How Did Adam & Eve Make a Living?

The post The Creation of Woman in the Bible appeared first on Biblical Archaeology Society.

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.

Related reading in Bible History Daily

Did the Carthaginians Really Practice Infant Sacrifice?

Did the Ancient Israelites Think Children Were People?

What Does the Bible Say About Children—and What Does Archaeology Say?

All-Access members, read more in the BAS Library

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Exodus 22:20

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

Exodus 23:9

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

Leviticus 19:33–34

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

Deuteronomy 10:19

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

Deuteronomy 23:8

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

Deuteronomy 24:17–18

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Notes

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This illustration shows Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, where God gave them the command to “be fruitful and multiply” (Genesis 1:28). Photo: From Charles Foster, The Story of the Bible (1897).

While there are many examples of strong and inspiring men and women in Genesis, the book is also packed with stories of dysfunctional families, which is evidenced from the very beginning with the first family—Adam, Eve and their two children, Cain and Abel. In no short amount of time—just 16 verses after announcing the birth of Cain and Abel in Genesis 4—Cain has murdered his younger brother and is consequently exiled from the land. In theory, this would have dropped the world’s population from four down to three. The narrative continues in Genesis 4 with Cain settling in the land of Nod and having children with his wife. Who did Cain marry? Where did she come from? Are there other people outside of Eden? In the November/December 2013 issue of BAR, Mary Joan Winn Leith addresses these questions and explores the identity of the wife of Cain in “Who Did Cain Marry?”

Given that the wife of Cain is only mentioned once in the Old Testament, she would not be counted among the famous women in Genesis. Nevertheless, her identity is still worth investigating. Who did Cain marry? Mary Joan Winn Leith first explores the traditional Jewish and Christian answers that contend that the wife of Cain was another daughter of Adam and Eve. According to this reasoning, Cain would have married his sister—one of Abel’s twin sisters no less, according to the Genesis Rabbah.

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Mary Joan Winn Leith explores the identity of the wife of Cain.

A different answer emerges when Leith turns from the traditional responses about the wife of Cain and delves into modern scholarship. Looking at recent work done by sociologists and anthropologists, she notes that when forming a group identity, we tend to define ourselves by how we differ from other groups. In the ancient Near East, sometimes those outside of a particular group or society were considered less “human” by those inside of the group. An important factor that contributes to this mindset is geography. People in the ancient Near East typically stayed close to home, which affected their perception of the world. Surely they knew that other groups of people—potential enemies or allies—existed far away, but if they never came into contact with these groups, what did they matter?

Mary Joan Winn Leith suggests that while the Israelite storyteller knew that other men and women in Genesis existed outside of Eden, they did not matter to him or factor into his account. He was concerned with Adam and Eve and their progeny—not those outside of this group.

Who did Cain marry? There are many answers. For Leith’s explanation of the identity of the wife of Cain—one of the often-overlooked women in Genesis—read her full Biblical Views column “Who Did Cain Marry?”

BAS Library Members: Read the full Biblical Views column “Who Did Cain Marry?” by Mary Joan Winn Leith in the November/December 2013 issue of Biblical Archaeology Review.

Not a BAS Library or All-Access Member yet? Join today.

This Bible History Daily feature was originally published in 2013.

Related reading in Bible History Daily

What Happened to Cain in the Bible?

Cain and Abel in the Bible

The Adam and Eve Story: Eve Came From Where?

All-Access members, read more in the BAS Library

Dealing with the Devil

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

Eve and Adam

Cain & Abel

The post Who Was the Wife of Cain? appeared first on Biblical Archaeology Society.

“So the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and he slept; then he took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh. And the rib that the Lord God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man.”
—Genesis 2:21–22, NRSV

ADAM AND EVE IN THE BIBLE. This mosaic from the Cathedral of Monreale, Sicily, depicts the creation of woman in the Bible. Eve is shown emerging from Adam’s side. Most translations of the Adam and Eve story say that Eve was created from Adam’s rib, but Ziony Zevit contends that she was created from a very different part of Adam’s body.

According to the Bible’s creation account, after making the heavens and the earth, God created humankind. The Adam and Eve story in Genesis 2 states that God formed Adam out of the dust of the ground, and then Eve was created from one of Adam’s ribs. But was it really his rib?

The Hebrew word that is traditionally translated as “rib” is tsela‘. Ziony Zevit, Distinguished Professor of Biblical Literature and Northwest Semitic Languages at American Jewish University in Bel-Air, California, believes that this translation is wrong, as do many scholars. It was first translated as “rib” in the Septuagint, a Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible from the mid-third century B.C.E. However, a more careful reading of the Hebrew word for “rib” in the Adam and Eve story suggests that Eve was created from another, very different, part of Adam’s anatomy—his os baculum (penis bone).

Zevit carefully examines the account of the creation of woman in the Bible in his article “Was Eve Made from Adam’s Rib—or His Baculum?” which appears in the September/October 2015 issue of Biblical Archaeology Review.

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Of the 40 appearances of tsela‘ in the Bible, the Adam and Eve story is the only place where it is translated as “rib.” Usually it means the side of something. Zevit explains the nuance of this word:

This Hebrew word occurs some 40 times in the Hebrew Bible, where it refers to the side of a building or of an altar or ark (Exodus 25:12; 26:20, 26; 1 Kings 6:34), a side-chamber (1 Kings 6:8; Ezekiel 41:6), or a branch of a mountain (2 Samuel 16:13). In each of these instances, it refers to something off-center, lateral to a main structure. The only place where tsela‘ might be construed as referring to a rib that branches off from the spinal cord is in Genesis 2:21–22.

According to Zevit, “rib” is the wrong translation for tsela‘ in the Adam and Eve story in the Bible. Zevit believes that tsela‘ should be translated as “a non-specific, general term,” such as one of Adam’s lateral limbs, in the Adam and Eve story. Thus, it refers to “limbs lateral to the vertical axis of an erect human body: hands, feet, or, in the case of males, the penis.”

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Which of these lateral limbs lacks a bone? Human males do not have a penis bone, but many mammals do. Zevit concludes that in the story of Adam and Eve in the Bible, the woman was created from the man’s baculum to explain why this appendage does not have a bone.

To see Ziony Zevit’s full explanation of the Adam and Eve story in the Bible, read his article “Was Eve Made from Adam’s Rib—or His Baculum?” in the September/October 2015 issue of BAR.

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This Bible History Daily feature was originally published on September 15, 2015.

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Adam and Eve

How the Serpent in the Garden Became Satan

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

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Eve and Adam

The post The Adam and Eve Story: Eve Came From Where? appeared first on Biblical Archaeology Society.

The translation suggested to me that an unmarried Jewish couple was traveling a long distance unaccompanied by other family members. And the woman—still only pledged in marriage—was in an advanced state of pregnancy. If such a situation is still scandalous in the Middle East, how much more in first-century Judea!¹

Were Mary and Joseph married or engaged when they traveled to Bethlehem? Seen here is a mosaic of the Journey to Bethlehem from the Chora Church in Istanbul.

Later I checked other translations of Luke 2:5. The English Standard Version (ESV) uses “betrothed,” an archaic Middle English word. The New Revised Standard Version (NRSV) uses “engaged,” while the New Living Translation (NLT) says “fiancée.” Again, these English versions suggest that the couple’s marriage was incomplete. This discovery led me into an in-depth word study as well as a look at ancient marriage. And what I found was surprising.

Matthew’s Gospel seems to be clearer. In the genealogy, Joseph is called the “husband of Mary,” who gave birth to Jesus (Matthew 1:16). Describing the background of their relationship, Matthew 1:18 reads, “His mother Mary was pledged to be married to Joseph.” Here Matthew uses the same Greek verb as Luke. However, after Joseph decides to divorce Mary because of her unexpected pregnancy, an angel warns him in a dream not to do so. The angel advises him to “take Mary as his wife” (Matthew 1:20). When Joseph woke up, he did what the angel commanded him: He took Mary as his wife (Matthew 1:24). Luke’s version seemingly contradicts Matthew’s, according to present English translations.

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The Greek verb mnēsteuō is used eight times in the Septuagint (the third-century B.C.E. Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible). Four uses in Deuteronomy (22:23, 25, 27, 28) deal with the legal issues surrounding an engaged woman having illicit sexual relations. If the incident happens in a city (22:23), both the man and the woman are to be stoned to death; if a rape happens in the country, only the man is to be stoned. The man is considered guilty because he has violated another man’s wife (22:24).

In the three uses in Hosea, God himself is speaking. Regarding Israel’s future day of redemption in 2:16, God declares: “You will call me ‘my husband.’” Then he states in verses 19–20: “And I will take you for my wife forever; I will take you for my wife in righteousness and in justice, in steadfast love, and in mercy. I will take you for my wife in faithfulness; and you shall know the LORD.” The NRSV translates “wife” here, while the NIV, ESV and New King James Version (NKJV) all read: “I will betroth you.” Because of the context wherein God declares that he is a husband forever, it is clear that his relationship with Israel extends beyond an engagement stage; they will metaphorically be husband and wife.

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Returning to Joseph, he would have paid the bride price to Mary’s father at their engagement (Matthew 1:20; Luke 1:27). Despite his misgivings, Joseph then obeyed the angel’s command to marry Mary (Matthew 1:20). The time of formal engagement, whether a full year or not, had passed between them. So Joseph and Mary had begun to live together except for sexual relations (Matthew 1:25). Luke’s understanding of mnēsteuō must be expanded to include both the betrothal/engagement as well as marital cohabitation. Therefore a better translation of Luke 2:5 would be: “Mary his wife who was expecting a child.” (The NKJV attempts a hybrid with “betrothed wife.”) English translations that suggest the couple was still only in the engagement stage of fiancé/fiancée must be discarded. Joseph and Mary traveled to Bethlehem as a full husband and wife under ancient Jewish law.

Mark Wilson is the director of the Asia Minor Research Center in Antalya, Turkey, and is a popular teacher on BAS Travel/Study tours. Mark received his doctorate in Biblical studies from the University of South Africa (Pretoria), where he serves as a research fellow in Biblical archaeology. He is currently Associate Professor Extraordinary of New Testament at Stellenbosch University. He leads field studies in Turkey and the eastern Mediterranean for university, seminary and church groups. He is the author of Biblical Turkey: A Guide to the Jewish and Christian Sites of Asia Minor and Victory through the Lamb: A Guide to Revelation in Plain Language. He is a frequent lecturer at BAS’s Bible Fests.

Notes

1. Joseph Fitzmyer anticipated my questions by suggesting that readers and listeners should not be overliteral because the account does not intend to answer questions such as: “What was she doing on a journey with Joseph, if she were merely his fiancée or betrothed? And worse still, pregnant as well”; see Joseph Fitzmyer, The Gospel According to Luke I–IX (New York: Doubleday, 1981), p. 407. To ask such questions, according to Fitzmyer, is to miss the point of Luke’s story. But in liturgical use such authorial nuances are lost. He also notes that Luke never calls Mary the “wife” of Joseph and perhaps was not aware of Palestinian Jewish marriage customs. This blog post assumes that Luke, because of his knowledge of Jewish customs and possible interview with Mary herself (cf. Luke 1:2), used familiar marital language that had a broader semantic range than translators give it today.

2. Douglas Stuart, Hosea-Jonah, Word Biblical Commentary, vol. 31 (Waco, TX: Word Books, 1987), p. 59.

This Bible History Daily feature was originally published on January 12, 2017.

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Does the Gospel of Matthew Proclaim Mary’s Virginity?

Where Mary Rested

The post Were Mary and Joseph Married or Engaged at Jesus’ Birth? appeared first on Biblical Archaeology Society.

Torah Scroll. What is said about tattoos in the Bible? Leviticus, the third book of the Hebrew Bible, prohibits them without giving an explicit reason. Why does the Bible prohibit tattoos? Photo: “Open Torah and Pointer” by Lawrie Cate is licensed under CC-by-SA-2.0.

What does the Bible say about tattoos?

Leviticus 19:28 says, “You shall not make any gashes in your flesh for the dead or tattoo any marks upon you: I am the LORD.” Although this passage clearly prohibits tattoos, it does not give an explicit reason why. This begs the question: Why does the Bible prohibit tattoos?

In his Biblical Views column “Unholy Ink: What Does the Bible Say about Tattoos?” Mark W. Chavalas, Professor of History at the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse, examines the taboo on tattoos in the Bible. Not only does he analyze traditional explanations for this prohibition, but he also investigates what tattoos signified to ancient Near Eastern peoples, including the ancient Israelites, which suggests the real reason why tattoos were taboo.

Leviticus 19 denounces idolatry and several pagan mourning practices. Some have thought that because of the proximity of the taboo on tattoos to the prohibition of other pagan mourning practices in Leviticus, tattooing must have been a pagan mourning practice. However, we find no evidence of this in ancient texts from the Levant, Mesopotamia or Egypt. As far as we can tell, tattooing was not an ancient mourning practice in these cultures.

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This is not to give the impression that tattooing never appears in ancient Near Eastern texts; it does—just not as a mourning practice. In the ancient Near East, tattoos were used to mark slaves. Often the name of a slave’s owner would be tattooed or branded on his hand or forehead. If then the slave were to run away, he could be easily returned to his master. Thus, tattooing was seen as a sign of ownership.

Chavalas thinks that this might be behind the taboo on tattoos in the Bible:

“Tattooing, an insignia of ownership, was perhaps condemned in Leviticus because it reminded them [the Israelites] of their past. After all, they had just spent the last four centuries as slaves in Egypt, where tattooing was also used as a sign of slavery. No longer considered slaves, the Israelites now were prohibited to mark their bodies with permanent signs of servitude to former masters. This did not have to be explicitly articled to them; no one need ask prison inmates why they shed their orange jumpsuits when they are no longer incarcerated.”

Chavalas also notes that there might be a positive reference to tattoos in the Bible. Isaiah 44:5 reads:

This one will say, “I am the LORD’s,”
another will be called by the name of Jacob,
yet another will write on the hand, “The LORD’s,”
and adopt the name of Israel.

By writing God’s name on his hand, the Israelite in Isaiah 44:5 “was willingly proposing to become a servant of God.” At least in this case, it seems that tattooing was acceptable because the person was marking himself as belonging to the God of Israel.

To learn more about tattoos in the Bible, read Mark Chavalas’s full column “Unholy Ink: What Does the Bible Say about Tattoos?” in the November/December 2016 issue of Biblical Archaeology Review.

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This Bible History Daily feature was originally published on October 31, 2016.

Related reading in Bible History Daily

Love Your Neighbor: Only Israelites or Everyone?

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The post What Does the Bible Say About Tattoos? appeared first on Biblical Archaeology Society.

What purpose did creation stories in Genesis serve? Were they Biblical myths? Pictured here is The Garden of Eden with the Fall of Man (c. 1617) by Flemish painters Peter Paul Rubens and Jan Brueghel the Elder.

Were the creation stories in Genesis meant to be taken literally?

Maybe not, says biblical scholar Shawna Dolansky in her Biblical Views column “The Multiple Truths of Myths” in the January/February 2016 issue of Biblical Archaeology Review.

Our world is very different from the world in which the Biblical authors lived over 2,000 years ago. The ancient world did not have Google, Wikipedia and smartphones—access to information on human history and scientific achievements developed over millennia at the touch of their fingertips.

Many scholars believe that the ancient Israelites had creation stories that were told and retold; these stories eventually reached the Biblical authors, who wrote them down in Genesis and other books of the Bible. Creation stories in Genesis were etiological, Shawna Dolansky and other Biblical scholars argue.¹ That is, the creation stories in Genesis served to provide answers to why the world was the way it was, such as why people wear clothes and why women experience pain during childbirth.

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Creation stories in Genesis were among the many myths that were told in the ancient Near East. Today we may think of myths as beliefs that are not true, but as a literary genre, myths “are stories that convey and reinforce aspects of a culture’s worldview: many truths,” writes Dolansky. So to call something a myth—in this sense—does not necessarily imply that it is not true.

Scholars argue that Biblical myths arose within the context of other ancient Near Eastern myths that sought to explain the creation of the world. Alongside Biblical myths were Mesopotamian myths in which, depending on the account, the creator was Enlil, Mami or Marduk. In ancient Egyptian mythology, the creator of the world was Atum in one creation story and Ptah in another.

Shawna Dolansky

“Like other ancient peoples, the Israelites told multiple creation stories,” writes Shawna Dolansky in her Biblical Views column. “The Bible gives us three (and who knows how many others were recounted but not preserved?). Genesis 1 differs from Genesis 2–3, and both diverge from a third version alluded to elsewhere in the Bible, a myth of the primordial battle between God and the forces of chaos known as Leviathan (e.g., Psalm 74), Rahab (Psalm 89) or the dragon (Isaiah 27; 51). This battle that preceded creation has the Mesopotamian Enuma Elish as its closest analogue. In Enuma Elish, the god Marduk defeats the chaotic waters in the form of the dragon Tiamat and recycles her corpse to create the earth.”

In what other ways do Biblical myths parallel ancient Near Eastern myths? What can we learn about the world in which the ancient Israelites lived through the creation stories in Genesis? Learn more by reading the full Biblical Views column “The Multiple Truths of Myths” by Shawna Dolansky in the January/February 2016 issue of BAR.

BAS Library Members: Read the full Biblical Views column “The Multiple Truths of Myths” by Shawna Dolansky in the January/February 2016 issue of Biblical Archaeology Review.

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Notes

1. For example, see Ziony Zevit, “Was Eve Made from Adam’s Rib—or His Baculum?” BAR, September/October 2015; Mary Joan Winn Leith, “ReViews: Restoring Nudity,” BAR, May/June 2014.

Related reading in Bible History Daily

The Adam and Eve Story: Eve Came From Where?

The Creation of Woman in the Bible

What Does the Bible Say About Infertility?

How the Serpent in the Garden Became Satan

Love Your Neighbor: Only Israelites or Everyone?

The Animals Went in Two by Two, According to Babylonian Ark Tablet

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The Creation Story from Genesis

Creation Myths Breed Violence

The Persistence of Chaos in God’s Creation

This Bible History Daily feature was originally published on January 31, 2016.

The post Should We Take Creation Stories in Genesis Literally? appeared first on Biblical Archaeology Society.

This fifth-century B.C.E. relief on a Phoenician funerary monument from Pozo Moro, Spain, is commonly interpreted as a scene of child sacrifice in an underworld banquet. A seemingly two-headed monster, who may well be a Phoenician deity, holds in his right hand a bowl containing a child and grasps with his left hand the leg of a piglet. Photo: Rafael dP. Iberia-Hispania licensed by CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.

My students were getting at something important in this awkward exchange. The Book of Exodus presumably reflects the views of its Israelite authors on their deity, morality, and the like. Why, we then have to ask, would the Israelites have imagined their deity Yahweh slaughtering children for sins the children themselves had not committed? If they thought children could be killed for the transgressions of others, did they even think children were persons with any type of rights?

What do I mean by “persons” exactly? A person, in my usage and that of many anthropologists, is a human being accorded status and recognition in their society. A person is an individual who is seen as having value—not economic value like a sheep or a llama, but social value, value in relationships with others. A person is typically seen as having agency and afforded certain rights, such as the right to seek redress in cases of harm. Personhood is an abstract concept. One might say it is too abstract to be useful. But discussions of personhood arise generally only in the most pressing situations—when we are discussing what we can do to human beings and their bodies. Can we terminate human bodies, execute them, torture them, commit mass killings against them? These are the situations in which personhood comes up, and if you are someone who is undergoing torture because you are seen as subhuman by the individual torturing you, personhood is anything but an abstraction to you.

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What about child sacrifice? There are many Biblical texts that condemn this practice; doesn’t that tell us that the Israelites did see children as persons worthy of protection? Unfortunately, the matter is more complicated than this, as we also find Biblical texts such as Ezekiel 20 and Exodus 13:1–2 and 22:29–30 (in the English) that suggest that some Biblical writers thought that Yahweh actually demanded child sacrifice. In 2 Kings 3, a king sacrifices his son to avert disaster, and the sacrifice actually works!

Some Biblical scholars would counter that child sacrifice was a foreign practice. The origins of child sacrifice seem beside the point, however. If the Israelites, or some Israelites, thought children should be sacrificed, this seems indicative that children lacked personhood in their eyes. Other indications of this can be found in the fact that parents could sell off children to pay off debts the parents themselves had incurred (Exodus 21:7–11; Nehemiah 5) and that parents could control whether daughters who had been raped had to marry their rapists (Exodus 22:16–17, English) and whether drunkard sons should be executed for being drunks (Deuteronomy 21:18-21). Some Biblical texts describe children getting eaten—eaten!—in times of crisis (e.g., 2 Kings 6:28-29; Ezekiel 5:6-10; Lamentations 2:20, 4:10), and a text or two even portrays Yahweh as threatening the Israelites with catastrophes so severe that they would devour their own children (Leviticus 26:27-29; Deuteronomy 28:53-57).

Child killing, child selling, child eating—the picture that emerges is a bleak one. However, before the savvy reader gets exasperated, let me state that, yes, there are Biblical passages that paint a quite different portrait of children’s status. The Book of Genesis is filled with passages implying that the Israelites were really, really interested in having children. Other books contain examples of the same thing—a desire for and valuation placed on having progeny. Parents make vows to secure progeny and to keep progeny, they feel content in having progeny, and they mourn lost progeny.

But is this longing for progeny the same as assigning personhood to children? We could answer this question more easily if we could speak and interact with real Israelites. Since we can’t do this and since the Israelites revealed their views of personhood indirectly rather than through philosophical treatises on the subject, we are left having to read through the lines. At best, the Israelites held a view of personhood that allowed for collective punishment and saw children as low-level subordinates subject to the wishes and whims of parents—usually fathers. At worst, they were not seen as persons. We seem to see a sort of graduated personhood in some Biblical texts, with older children having more claim to personhood than infants. (Fetuses, as we see in Exodus 21:22–25, where the unborn are assigned only financial value, are out of luck.) This may be why it appears that it was infants rather than older children who were sacrificed.

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We also see in the Bible disagreements between Israelites over the personhood of children. The fact that so many Biblical texts discuss child sacrifice tells us that some Israelites thought this practice was necessary or at least advantageous. This seems a particularly apt conclusion when these texts are read alongside archaeological and other evidence from elsewhere in the ancient world showing that child sacrifice really was practiced in certain locales. However, the fact that so many Biblical texts decry child sacrifice also tells us that many Israelites thought this practice was unacceptable. One can see in this disparity a disagreement over the personhood of children, or perhaps of infants in particular.

A final point is that status in Israelite society was not attached to particular ages as is the case in our society. There were no Israelite quinceañera parties where teenagers danced the night away celebrating their newly achieved personhood. Eighteen-year-old Israelites couldn’t breathe a sigh of relief knowing their parents would no longer be able to have them killed for drinking too much undiluted wine or leaving their sandals in the entryway for the umpteenth time. No, Israelite personhood was based on social role and physical maturity, not chronological age. It was also mutable and in some cases highly ambiguous to us as modern readers. Despite the desire of students of the Bible to find certitude within its pages, the Biblical corpus refuses to satisfy us on this score. More vexing, still, since the clearest statements on the status of children are some of the most troubling, the certitude offered is not always helpful. In other words, today’s teenagers had better hope that their parents look somewhere other than the Good Book for guidance on what to do with them when they find that cheap bottle of vodka stowed away under the piles of dirty laundry.

T. M. Lemos is Associate Professor of Hebrew Bible at Huron University College and a member of the graduate school faculty at the University of Western Ontario. Her most recent book is Violence and Personhood in Ancient Israel and Comparative Contexts (Oxford Univ. Press, 2017); it discusses the personhood of children in much greater detail, as well as the personhood of other groups in ancient Israel, ancient West Asia, and contemporary America.

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Children in the Ancient Near East

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Were living Children Sacrificed to the Gods? No

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Infants Sacrificed? The Tale Teeth Tell

This Bible History Daily Post was first published in April, 2018

The post Did the Ancient Israelites Think Children Were People? appeared first on Biblical Archaeology Society.

In the very first chapter of the first book of the Bible, the command is given to humankind to “be fruitful and multiply.” Genesis 1:28 reads: “God blessed them, and God said to them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth.’”

Yet despite this blessing, there are numerous instances of barrenness in the Bible—from the matriarchs Sarah, Rebecca and Rachel to Michal (Saul’s daughter and David’s wife). Joel S. Baden of Yale Divinity School and Candida R. Moss of the University of Notre Dame analyze the Biblical portrayal of infertility in the Biblical Views column “Reevaluating Biblical Infertility,” published in the September/October 2017 issue of Biblical Archaeology Review.

“Be Fruitful and Multiply.” This illustration shows Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, where God gave them the command to “be fruitful and multiply” (Genesis 1:28). Photo: From Charles Foster, The Story of the Bible (1897).

Many of the women in the Bible described as being barren, such as Sarah, Rebecca, Rachel, Hannah (Samuel’s mother), Samson’s mother and Elizabeth (John the Baptist’s mother), later conceive. However, there are other Biblical women, including Michal (David’s wife), who remain barren for their entire lives. For still others, like Dinah, Miriam and Deborah, the Bible records no offspring, which suggests they may have been barren.

According to the Bible, is infertility a punishment for sin?

Short answer: no.

Baden and Moss clarify that although “some ancient interpreters tried to identify some rationale for these women’s infertility, the Bible itself attributes no faults to them. They are, simply, barren—and blameless.” Some may argue that Michal’s infertility was a result of her contempt for King David (2 Samuel 6:16–23), but by that point in the narrative, she had already been married—first to David, then to Patiel, and then returned to David—for more than a decade. There is not an inherent causality between her reproach and her barrenness.

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Baden and Moss further explain that in those times, every birth was seen as a miracle:

[I]n the ancient Near East, there was a broader understanding that every successful procreation was the result of divine intervention: The deity had to “open the womb” in order for conception to occur. … [T]he opening of the womb was miraculous, despite its frequency. The absence of this miracle could hardly be a reflection of some human sin—and, in the case of the barren matriarchs, it is never described as such.

What else does the Bible say about infertility?

Interestingly, Baden and Moss point out that the directive “be fruitful and multiply” doesn’t apply to everyone:

Although it is spoken to the first humans in Genesis 1, “be fruitful and multiply” is not a command that pertains to all people at all times. Even in the Bible itself, these words cannot be taken as straightforward instruction: Both Noah and Jacob are told to be fruitful and multiply, yet in both cases God says this to them after they have finished producing offspring. Moreover, this blessing is given only to those individuals who stand at the head of necessary lineages: the first humans, Noah, Abraham and Jacob. Once Jacob’s 12 sons are born, no one else in the Bible will ever be told to be fruitful and multiply. After all, we are told already at the end of Genesis that the Israelites had become fruitful and numerous. The command has long since been fulfilled.

The idea that procreation is not for everyone is advanced in the New Testament, where “the driving metaphor is one of adoption.” Biological lineage becomes less important than spiritual adoption in the Christian church. Paul even recommends that some Christians stay single, so that they can better focus on ministry (1 Corinthians 7).

Learn more about Biblical infertility in Joel S. Baden and Candida R. Moss’s Biblical Views column “Reevaluating Biblical Infertility” in the September/October 2017 issue of Biblical Archaeology Review and in their recent book Reconceiving Infertility: Biblical Perspectives on Procreation and Childlessness (2015).

BAS Library Members: Read the full column “Reevaluating Biblical Infertility” by Joel S. Baden and Candida R. Moss in the September/October 2017 issue of Biblical Archaeology Review.

Not a BAS Library or All-Access Member yet? Join today.

Related reading in Bible History Daily

The Creation of Woman in the Bible

Everyday Eves

Tabitha in the Bible

Anna in the Bible

First Person: Misogyny in the Bible

Did the Ancient Israelites Think Children Were People?

What Does the Bible Say About Children—and What Does Archaeology Say?

This Bible History Daily feature was originally published on October 5, 2017.

The post What Does the Bible Say About Infertility? appeared first on Biblical Archaeology Society.