Every weekend, in our synagogues and churches, our children are told stories from the Bible-stories of Abraham and Noah, Jacob and Joseph. But what are these stories really about? In this probing, fascinating, and entertaining book, America's leading lawyer looks at the Bible - and in particular at the Book of Genesis - as a tale of justice done, justice undone, and justice in the eyes of the beholder. What if an angel hadn't stopped Abraham from sacrificing his son Isaac? What does Genesis seem to be telling us about taking revenge? Or even about capital punishment? Drawing on biblical commentary from throughout the ages and his own actual court battles, Dershowitz shines a brilliant legal light on the stories that comprise the foundation of our society. What he reveals is how our shared tradition has formed our attitude toward modern-day justice-and why we are all engaged in a never-ending quest to separate right from wrong.

A compilation of Midrash, Biblical, and legendary stories about the prophet Moses, who led the Children of Israel out of slavery in Egypt.

The Gospel of John presents its readers, listeners, and interpreters with a serious problem: how can we reconcile the Gospel's exalted spirituality and deep knowledge of Judaism with its portrayal of the Jews as the children of the devil (John 8:44) who persecuted Christ and his followers? One widespread solution to this problem is the so-called "expulsion hypothesis." According to this view, the Fourth Gospel was addressed to a Jewish group of believers in Christ that had been expelled from the synagogue due to their faith. The anti-Jewish elements express their natural resentment of how they had been treated; the Jewish elements of the Gospel, on the other hand, reflect the Jewishness of this group and also soften the force of the Gospel's anti-Jewish comments. In Cast out of the Covenant, this book, Adele Reinhartz presents a detailed critique of the expulsion hypothesis on literary and historical grounds. She argues that, far from softening the Gospel's anti-Jewishness, the Gospel's Jewish elements in fact contribute to it. Focusing on the Gospel's persuasive language and intentions, Reinhartz shows that the Gospel's anti-Jewishness is evident not only in the Gospel's hostile comments about the Jews but also in its appropriation of Torah, Temple, and Covenant that were so central to first-century Jewish identity. Through its skillful use of rhetoric, the Gospel attempts to convince its audience that God's favor had turned away from the Jews to the Gentiles; that there is a deep rift between the synagogue and those who confess Christ as Messiah; and that, in the Gospel's view, this rift was initiated in Jesus' own lifetime. The Fourth Gospel, Reinhartz argues, appropriates Jewishness at the same time as it repudiates Jews. In doing so, it also promotes a "parting of the ways" between those who believe that Jesus is the messiah, the Son of God, and those who do not, that is, the Jews. This rhetorical program, she suggests, may have been used to promote outreach or even an organized mission to the Gentiles, following in the footsteps of Paul and his mid-first-century contemporaries.

The contributions to this volume reflect upon changing paradigms within biblical scholarship, and in how biblical scholarship is taught. Taken together, they offer a multifaceted and informative indication of how open-mindedness in one's approach can yield fascinating results across the study of the Old Testament/Hebrew Bible. The range in topic of the contributions is exemplified in the difference between the first chapter, which works from the personal anecdote of the changing opinion of its author to make a wider point about models for Pentateuchal formation, and the third chapter, which comments on the current state of the study of ancient Israel in universities today. Other contributions include; an essay on the subject of space as a social construct in Isaiah 24-27; civil courage and whether the Bible allows room for protest; the question of monotheism in Persian Judah; the historical Ezra, and the telling of the story of Joseph (Genesis 50: 15-21) in children's Bibles in the Netherlands. The contributors include Hugh Williamson, Ehud Ben Zvi, Rainer Albertz, Karel von der Toorn, and Christoph Uehlinger.