Author: Angela Roskop Erisman
-
On the Authorship of Scripture
Last week I wrote a bit about why Spinoza was interested in interpretation of the Bible — in a nutshell, the better we do it, the harder it is for people to abuse Scripture to their own ends. We see them advancing false notions of their own as the word of God and seeking to…
Written by
-
On the Interpretation of Scripture
The Moses Chronicles has been on a bit of a hiatus. I’ll spare you the details, but the world is a bit of a wreck at the moment, and middle age has hit hard. Anyway, I am hoping now to post more regularly. Thanks for sticking with me. I am in the process of wrapping…
Written by
-
A Good, Swift Kick in the Gut
I will rebuke your descendants, and I will throw shit on your faces—the shit of your festival offerings—and you will be carried off to the shitpile along with it. — Malachi 2:3 Translations of the Bible are often too nice, so much so that the real meaning gets lost. The fact is, the Bible confronts…
Written by
-
Why We CAN Read the Torah, Fractures and All
We run up against it from the very beginning. In the first chapter of Genesis we read that “God created the man in his image; in the image of God he created him—male and female he created them” (Genesis 1:27), but it’s not long before God creates humans again (Genesis 2:7). God tells Noah to bring two…
Written by
-
The Flood
Today is Good Friday in the Christian world, a day that commemorates the execution of an innocent man because it was convenient for those who happened to hold political power. Mostly I’m going to write on The Moses Chronicles about biblical texts written in Hebrew, but to mark the day I’d like to share a…
Written by
-
My Torah Guys
I love photographs. This one is from a much-loved volume of old photos of the Holy Land. It shows three men sitting next to the Western (Wailing) Wall in Jerusalem. I call it “My Torah Guys.” I don’t know if that’s really a Torah the guy on the left is holding (I doubt it…), but…
Written by
-
How I Accidentally Wrote a Book about Moses
The wilderness narrative, the story at the heart of the Torah, or Pentateuch, follows the Israelites from Egypt to Canaan—from enslavement, to liberation, to independence. In an important sense, though, the story of Israel is the story of Moses. Philo of Alexandria wrote his De Vita Moses as a biography of this leader and lawgiver par excellence, one arm…
Written by
-
Why I Love (Jewish) Books
I lack my mother’s talent at crafty things. My childhood cross-stitches were uneven. Crocheting made my fingers hurt. And knitting? A non-starter. But I do enjoy the results of her work, and my favorite is a pinwheel quilt she made for me many years ago — out of book fabric. It’s big. I love to…
Written by
