This will be my final post for now on the Old Testament apocrypha.  In it I discuss the final (and particularly intriguing) book accepted in the Roman Catholic church, and a few others accepted in Orthodox Christian circles. Again this all comes from my textbook, The Bible: A Historical and Literary Introduction (Oxford, 2018).   2 Maccabees The book known as 2 Maccabees is another account of the history of the Maccabean Revolt. Its author did not have 1 Maccabees as a source but was writing independently of it. His interest is principally with the events that transpired under the leadership of Judas Maccabeus, so that the book overlaps mainly with 1 Maccabees chapters 1–7. The author indicates that his work is in fact an abridgment of a much longer five-volume description of the revolt by someone named Jason of Cyrene. He has condensed Jason’s work into a single volume. Unlike 1 Maccabees, this account was originally composed in Greek. Whereas 1 Maccabees is a rather straightforward chronicle of what happened leading up to [...]

In this post I continue discussing the books of the Apocrypha, accepted as part of Scripture by Roman Catholic and Orthodox churches.  These are important books, historically and culturally – but hardly known among Protestant readers.   Here are three more!  Descriptions are taken from my book The Bible: A Historical and Literary Introduction.   The Wisdom of Solomon The Wisdom of Solomon is a book of positive wisdom (recall Proverbs), which claims to be written by the great king of the United Monarchy. In fact it was written many centuries later, by a Jew in the Diaspora, possibly in the first century b.c.e. or the first century c.e. The book celebrates Wisdom as the greatest gift to humans and insists that it involves proper fear and adoration of God, which will lead to eternal reward. Those who lead ungodly lives, on the other hand “will be punished as their reasoning deserves” (5:10). The exaltation of wisdom recalls Proverbs 8, where Wisdom appears as a female consort with God at the beginning of all [...]

The OT Apocrypha/Deuterocanonical books are truly fascinating, even if not widely read.  Few people outside of the Catholic and Orthodox traditions knows about the first one; the other two here though are better known and, in fact, historically significant. Some descriptions from my book The New Testament: A Historical and Literary Introduction. ****************************** The Letter of Jeremiah This is one of the shortest books of Apocrypha—it is only one chapter long, and in the Latin tradition of the Roman Catholic Church it is included as the final chapter of the book of Baruch. The book is allegedly written by the prophet Jeremiah, sent to the Judeans bound for Babylonian exile. In exile they will be among people who worship other gods through idols. This book is nothing but an attack on pagan idolatry. The real historical context of the writing is a situation in which Jews around the world were surrounded by idol worship. It may have been produced in the aftermath of the Maccabean Revolt; it appears to have been composed in [...]

In my previous posts I've dealt with some of the critical problems with the New Testament that many students have to grapple with (often for the first time) when they take seminary courses on biblical studies during their ministerial training.  One of the big questions I address in my book Jesus Interrupted (HarperOne, 2009) is why pastors who learn such things in seminary don't say anything about them in their churches after graduation, not even in adult education classes.  Isn't one of the objectives of education to get educated?   In this post I continue with an excerpt from the book dealing with comparable problems in the Old Testament. **************************** These kinds of problems turn out to be even more common in the Old Testament, starting at its very beginning. Some people go to great lengths to smooth over all these differences, but when you look at them closely, they are very difficult indeed to reconcile. And why should they be reconciled? Maybe they are simply differences. The creation account in Genesis 1 is very different from [...]

Ever wonder about all those Monsters in the Bible, and what they might tell us about, well, God?   Earlier this year I read a book by Esther Hamori, God’s Monsters: Vengeful Spirits, Deadly Angels, Hybrid Creatures, and Divine Hitmen of the Bible. (Broadleaf Books, 2023).  It's been a long time since I've read a book on the Bible completely unlike anything I've read before.  I thought it was fantastic (so to say). And so I did three things right off the bat.  I agree to write a blurb for the book (see below); I met Esther (Professor of Hebrew Bible at Union Theological Seminary); and I asked her if she'd be willing to co-author the third edition of my textbook on the Bible.  (She agreed). Here is the blurb I wrote for her book. God’s Monsters is a hilarious treatment of a horrifying topic.  With deep intelligence, literary flair, and wicked wit, Esther Hamori pulls no punches in exposing the terrors of the Bible and the multitudinous divine creatures that inhabit it – including the [...]

Was the account of creation found in Genesis comparable to (or even borrowed from?) other ancient accounts in scattered throughout the world at the time? Last month my colleague Joseph Lam, an expert in the Hebrew Bible and the languages and literature of the Ancient Near East provided us with a guest post about some of the creation stories found outside Scripture in non-Israelite cultures -- stories in circulation before the ones written in Genesis (https://ehrmanblog.org/creation-stories-of-the-ancient-world-part-1-on-enuma-elish-and-genesis-1-guest-post-by-joseph-lam/) Here now is a second and equally interesting post dealing with stories from ancient Memphis Egypt (not Tennessee!)! This is the topic of his lecture course for the Great Courses/Wondrium, "Creation Stories of the Ancient World" (links at bottom) **************************** In my last blog entry, I offered a brief description of the Babylonian Creation Epic, Enuma Elish, and reflected on how one might imagine its relationship to the seven-day creation story of Genesis 1. In this post, I turn to an enigmatic but fascinating text from ancient Egypt known as the Memphite Theology that has also been compared with Genesis [...]

We come now to the conclusion of the dialogues of Job.   His friends have stridently insisted that he is suffering because he has sinned.  He vehemently argues he has not.  As it turns out, he's right.  Then why is God making him suffer?  Here God himself appears to explain.  Or rather, to insist that he is not going to explain and that Job has no right to ask him to. Is this an answer to suffering?  Or, well, a satisfactory one?  We can't even ask? Decide for yourself.  Here's how I explain the climax of the book of Job in my book God's Problem (HarperOne, 2008). ****************************** Job has no time – or need – to reply to this restatement of his friends’ views.  Before he can respond, God himself appears, in power, to overwhelm Job with his presence and to cow him into submission in the dirt.  God does not appear with a still, small voice from heaven, or in human guise, or in a comforting dream.  He sends a violent and terrifying whirlwind, [...]