alfajr aljadid الفجر الجديد

  Song of Songs (detail), Enrico Salfi, ca. 1900-1930. Wikimedia A Nitpicking Lover in Song of Songs 1:7 Prof.Marc Zvi Brettler The woman in Song of Songs wishes to know where her lover will be, asking: “Why should I be like an ʿōṭǝyâ (כְּעֹטְיָה).” Translators struggle with this phrase, and suggest meanings as disparate as “be veiled like a prostitute,” “be as a wanderer,” or even “pick at my nits.” How do scholars use ancient translation, cognate words, and content to translate a word in the Bible whose meaning is so obscure? The woman in Song of Songs wishes to know where her lover will be, asking: “Why should I be like an ʿōṭǝyâ (כְּעֹטְיָה).” Translators struggle with this phrase, and suggest meanings as disparate as “be veiled like a prostitute,” “be as a wanderer,” or even “pick at my nits.” How do scholars use ancient translation, cognate words, and content to translate a word in the Bible whose meaning is so obscure? A Nitpicking Lover in Song of Songs 1:7 Song of Songs (detai

Pharaoh Tutankhamun destroying his enemies, ca. 1327  B.C.E , painting on wood (detail). Egyptian Museum of Cairo   Freedom from the Egyptian Empire Prof.Ronald Hendel Exodus as cultural memory of the demise of Egypt’s 400-year rule over Canaan. Archaeologists and Egyptologists tell us that there is no evidence for the Exodus.[1] This presents different problems for various types of biblical scholars. How do we make sense of the central narrative in the Bible if there is no evidence for it? If the Exodus didn’t happen, where did the story come from? Why would the ancient Israelites accept this as the story of their origins? I think it unlikely that such a central story would come from nothing. I will argue that the Exodus is a cultural memory of a historical era that really happened and for which there is (literally) tons of evidence. A Response to Defenders of the Exodus Account as History First, I will address three arguments often marshaled by defenders of the historicity of the exo

  Mother with child,  Honoré Daumier, circa 1865-1870. Wikimedia Postpartum “Bloods of Purity” Prof.Tamar Kamionkowski Mesopotamian gynecological texts and what we know about women’s post-partum flow are helpful in parsing the unusual Hebrew idiom demei tohorah, literally, “bloods of purity,” used in Leviticus 12 to describe the second stage of postpartum bleeding. The Second Stage after Childbirth According to Leviticus 12, after a woman gives birth, she passes through two different stages. The first stage is compared to the seven-day impurity (ט.מ.א) of a menstruant, referring to the norms now found in Leviticus 15. ויקרא יב:ב ...אִשָּׁה כִּי תַזְרִיעַ וְיָלְדָה זָכָר וְטָמְאָה שִׁבְעַת יָמִים כִּימֵי נִדַּת דְּו‍ֹתָהּ תִּטְמָא... Lev 12:2 …When a woman at childbirth bears a male, she shall be unclean seven days; she shall be unclean as at the time of her menstrual infirmity…. In the second stage, the woman remains (literally “sits”) in her “bloods of tohorah,” from the root ט.ה.ר, m

The  metzora  being purified with the two birds. By Dutch engraver Simon Fokke, 1712-1784. Rijksmuseum Tzaraat in Light of Its Mesopotamian Parallels Dr.Yitzhaq Feder Despite its lengthy coverage of tzaraat, biblical “leprosy,” the Torah omits discussion of its cause, its infectiousness, and its treatment. Comparison to the Mesopotamian rituals pertaining to a strikingly similar disease, Saḫaršubbû, shows that these omissions were far from accidental. He is diagnosed as sick, but never treated. He is banished from the community, but not contagious. He offers a guilt offering (אשם), but his sin is left unstated. Who is this meṣor‘a, and what is this disease called tzaraat? The question of the identity of this disease has been subject to hundreds of academic papers, a fact that may surprise the average reader who would be quite content to ignore this subject entirely. Yet the detailed discussion of skin disease in Leviticus 13–14 has implications that reach far beyond the discussion of t