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The Battle of Kadesh: Meaning for Israel and the Bible

The Battle of Kadesh: Meaning for Israel and the Bible Paper presented November 16, 2023 Annual Conference of ASOR The Battle of Kadesh in year 5 of Ramses II between Egypt and the Hittites is one of the best documented battles in the ancient Near East. Records of the battle exist in multiple copies and […]

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Israelite Writing: From Hyksos to Hellenistic

The Society of Biblical Literature recently reviewed Back to Reason: Minimalism in Biblical Studied by Niels Peter Lemche. According to reviewer Susanne Scholz: To him, the historical-literary situation is obvious and undisputable. The Hebrew Bible is Hellenistic literature. Several chapters of the book target scholars who have participated in the minimalist/maximalist debate. Simply based on […]

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“Exodus, Conquest, and the Alchemy of Memory” by Ron Hendel

The contribution “Exodus, Conquest, and the Alchemy of Memory” by Ron Hendel to the new book Biblical and Ancient Near Eastern Studies in Honor of P. Kyle McCarter obviously is about the Exodus. Ron and I were contributors to the recent book of Five Views the Exodus (Jamzen, 2021). Much of what he and I […]

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“Joseph and His Allies in Genesis 29-30” by Daniel E. Fleming and the Exodus

“Joseph and His Allies in Genesis 29” by Dan Fleming is a contribution to the new book Biblical and Ancient Near Eastern Studies in Honor of P. Kyle McCarter Jr. Previously I examined the contribution of Heath Dewrell on “Yahweh the Destroyer.” His scholarship complemented the existence of an historical Exodus although in his article […]

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Sometimes a Banana Really Is a Banana: The Mount Ebal Cultic Site

How do people process information? In particular, how to they handle cognitive dissonance? What happens when the data received is at variance with existing beliefs? Is it possible to escape a rut or paradigm especially if one has resided in it for decades or one’s entire academic life? These thoughts occurred to as I was […]

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Exodus and Egypt: Biblical Minimalist Battlefield

The current issue of Biblische Notizen (193, 2022) contains a series of articles about the confrontation in biblical scholarship between the biblical “minimalists” and the “maximalists.” The opening article by Lester Grabbe is entitled “How the Minimalists Won! A Discussion of Historical Method in Biblical Studies.” In it he claims not be a minimalist himself […]

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The Mount Ebal Curse Inscription: Response to Scott Stripling

Mount Ebal is in the news. The site of a biblical altar built by Joshua and a physical altar discovered by Adam Zertal is now the site of a proposed 40-letter inscription of curses and the name Yahweh (Yhw). The announcement was made by Scott Stripling on March 24, 2022, at the Lanier Theological Seminary. […]

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Egyptologists, Biblical Scholars, and The Exodus

Egyptologists and Biblical scholars treat the Exodus differently. They approach the idea of an historical Exodus from different assumptions and perspectives and they respond differently to new information about the Exodus. In this blog, I present a speculative case study on how the two disciplines will react differently to the same information drawing on my […]

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Passover and Pharaoh Smites the Enemy

To understand historical Passover it must be placed in the context of Egyptian violence. Egyptologists who avoid the Exodus like the plague do not do this. Biblical scholars who know that there was no historical Passover do not do this either. They confine themselves to literary and/or ritual studies. However to understand historical Yahweh smites […]

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