04 Sep 2023

Judaic Topics
The Audience is the Issue The portion of the Torah called Ki Tavo (Deuteronomy 26:1–29:8) is dominated by Moses’s restatement of the blessings and curses found in a different form in Leviticus 26. There, God described the blessings that would accrue to those whose behavior met the required standards and the curses, or rebukes, that would result from a failure to meet those standards. Th...
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26 Apr 2023

Ethics Project, Judaic Topics
This week in our regular cycle of Torah study we reach the part of the book of Leviticus known as the Holiness Code. In Lev 19:1-2 God tells Moses to say to the Israelite people, “You shall be holy for I, the Lord your God, am holy.” To the question, “How am I to be holy?” we are often pointed toward the meaning of the Hebrew root of the word that is translated as “holy,” that is, קדש, k...
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06 Feb 2023

Bones of Israel, Judaic Topics, PDF
The Rabbinic Solution to Linking Shavuot and Sinai Solving a Calendar Problem Rabbinic Solution to Linking Shavuot and Sinai.02.06.23 Introduction: The day on which the Israelites are commanded to observe the festival of Shavuot is one of only ten days marked in the Hebrew text of the bible with the unusual phrase בעצם היום הזה, b’etsem ha’yom ha’zeh. That phrase and the ten days t...
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24 Jan 2023

Judaic Topics
Parashat Va’era 2023: The Names of God   The Hebrew name of the book of Exodus, Sefer Shemot, or the book of Names, gets its title from the names of the sons of Jacob who came to Egypt at the invitation of Joseph. But another issue of names comes up in the first part of Exodus that seems more important. We have already been introduced to Jacob’s family and reciting their names a...
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13 Jan 2021

Bones of Israel, Judaic Topics
(This is an excerpt from the manuscript of The Hidden Bones Apocalypse. Copyright: Charles R Lightner 2021)   The Hidden Bones Apocalypse Conclusion                 Shortly after 164 BCE—when the period of the anti-Judaic edicts of Antiochus IV had ended—a project was begun to replace the scrolls of “the Law and the Prophets and the other books”[1] that had been destroyed during...
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19 Apr 2020

Judaic Topics
The long period during which we have studied the specifications for, the erection of and the consecration of the mishkan - the desert sanctuary - comes to an end in Parashat Shemini. At the end of Parashat Tzav, the previous parashah, we learned that Aaron and his sons were to remain in, or at the entrance to, the tent of meeting, for seven days after their ritual anointing. It is on the...
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02 Apr 2020

Direct Path Project, Judaic Topics
In a few days, on Passover, we will read in the Haggadah the words that are recited when offering the first fruits of the land on the festival of Shavuot. The verbal formula is introduced by and concludes with directions for the choreography of the offering. It is found in this passage from Deuteronomy: (Deut 26:4-10; NRSV) Introduction: When the priest takes the basket from your hand...
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15 Feb 2020

Bones of Israel, Judaic Topics
I've just completed the section of The Hidden Bones Apocalypse that analyzes the question: When were the special marker phrases that define that Apocalypse inserted into the biblical text? The initial time window is defined on the early end by the translation of the Pentateuch into Greek. I've used a date of 250 BCE for that, although some would say it might be as early as 275 BCE. ...
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14 Feb 2020

Bones of Israel, Judaic Topics
This is an excerpt of a section in our analysis of The Hidden Bones Apocalypse: Shavuot in Ezekiel The reader’s first reaction to the heading of this section might be ‘but there is no Shavuot in Ezekiel’. That is the standard reading of Ezekiel, of course. It is said that Ezekiel ignores Shavuot in his listing of the festivals because he wrote from the perspective of exile. Shavuot...
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