Masorah

Okhlah we-Okhlah is a medieval compilation of information about the Hebrew Bible. Here are the basics about why it’s important and how to access it.

The latest issue of the Tyndale Bulletin carries Kim Phillips’s essay, “A New Codex from the Scribe behind the Leningrad Codex: L17.” According to the abstract,

Samuel b. Jacob was the scribe responsible for the production of the so-called Leningrad Codex (Firkowich B19a), currently our earliest complete Masoretic Bible codex. This article demonstrates that another codex from the Firkowich Collection, containing the Former Prophets only, is also the work of Samuel b. Jacob, despite the lack of a colophon to this effect. The argument is based on a combination of eleven textual and para-textual features shared between these two manuscripts, and other manuscripts known to have been produced by the same scribe.

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The latest reviews from the Review of Biblical Literature include:

• Markus Bockmuehl and Guy G. Stroumsa, eds., Paradise in Antiquity: Jewish and Christian Views, reviewed by Pieter G. R. de Villiers
• Tony Burke, ed., Ancient Gospel or Modern Forgery?: The Secret Gospel of Mark in Debate: Proceedings from the 2011 York University Christian Apocrypha Symposium, reviewed by James F. McGrath
• Andrew R. Davis, Tel Dan in Its Northern Cultic Context, reviewed by Bob Becking and by Aren M. Maeir
• Stephen Finlan, The Family Metaphor in Jesus’ Teaching: Gospel Imagery and Application, reviewed by Joanna Dewey
• Kai Kaniuth, Anne Löhnert, Jared L. Miller, Adelheid Otto, Michael Roaf, and Walther Sallaberger, eds., Tempel im Alten Orient, reviewed by Jeffrey L. Morrow
• Emma Loosley, The Architecture and Liturgy of the Bema in Fourth- to-Sixth-Century Syrian Churches, reviewed by Robert Morehouse
• Elvira Martín Contreras and Guadalupe Seijas de los Ríos-Zarzosa, Masora: La transmisión de la tradición de la Biblia Hebrea, reviewed by Amparo Alba Cecilia
• Halvor Moxnes, Jesus and the Rise of Nationalism: A New Quest for the Nineteenth Century Historical Jesus, reviewed by Craig A. Evans
• Pheme Perkins, First Corinthians, reviewed by H. H. Drake Williams III