Gary Greenberg's blog on biblical studies
Due to an enormous volume of spam comments (several thousand) in the last couple of days i will not check for comments until after i have cleared them out, which happens slowly. I have temporarily suspended comments until the situation is under control.
At ASOR 2020 I presented a paper titled Noah’s Flood: Babylonian or Egyptian in Origin? I have added the paper to my Selected Writings Page. Here is a direct link
I previously mentioned the publication at the Bible and Interpretation site of my essay titled “Was Mary the Name of Jesus’ Mother: A Source Critical Perspective.” I am now making it available here and through a link on my Selected Writings page. Here is the opening paragraph. Click on the link to read the rest of the article.
If we had no reliable written sources mentioning the name of Jesus’ mother, a good guess would be Mary. Statistically, it was one of the most popular, if not the most popular, name for Jewish women in the first century. In the Christian scriptures, more women have the name Mary than any other name. The question I wish to raise here is whether we have any reliable written evidence that Mary was the name of Jesus’ mother. Click here to read the rest
It appears that the subscriber base has been reinstalled and they need not re-subscribe.
I have completed the site upgrade. Not only does the site have a more attractive new look, I have added a substantial amount of content.
My Book Catalogue Page contains links to each of my books, with descriptive information about each, including in most cases, excerpts from the books.
The Selected Writings Page lists several articles I have written, including abstracts and links to the articles. More articles will be posted in the near future but what is currently there should hold you for a while.
The Selected Posts Page provides a list of links to some of my past posts that discuss assorted academic problems with Jewish and Christian scriptures.
On the Home Page Sidebar I will occasionally feature links to one of my books,, article and past posts.
I clicked around, and everything appears to be in good shape, but if you come across any glitches, please use the contact form to let me know.
At the moment, there appears to be a problem with subscriber notifications. I hope that will be cleared up shortly. But if you subscribe to this site and receive notice of this post, please let me know.
This upgrade has imported all of the important material from my other Web Site on Bible, Myth and History and I will no longer maintain it. That site has been reachable through the use of the biblemyth.com domain. I will soon change the pointer so that it will take you to this site instead, giving you a shorter address to input into your browser.
If you are not already a subscriber, I hope you will become one by using the subscriber box. Subscribers will receive an email whenever I add a new post, saving you the trouble of having to keep checking in to see what’s new.
Will try again in a couple of days.
Barring unforeseen problems, the upgrade to the site will probably take place Monday afternoon Eastern Standard Time.
Sometime in the next few days I will be updating this site. It will not only include a new front page design, it will feature a large amount of content based on my writings. More information about my books will be provided and in several cases excerpts will be available to read. I will also post several of my articles and papers and link to some of my earlier academic posts. Additional writings will be added over time.
Updating a site can be a perilous undertaking and I worry that the changes will wipe out the subscriber data base. I will send out a notice when the site is updated. If you don’t receive an “update completed” notice in the next week or so, I hoe you will check back and see if you need to re-subscribe.
When the site is updated and you look around and notice any glitches, I hope you’ll let me know.
Genesis 10 contains a list of Noh’s descendants through his three sons, Ham, Japheth, and Shem. The roster is divided into three branches, one for each son and lists a series of descendants from each son. Each branch is associated with different geographic territories. According to Genesis 10:32, “These are the families of Noah’s sons, according to their genealogies, in their nations; and from these the nations spread abroad on the earth after the flood.”
A number of the names closely align with the names of ancient nations in the Near East but many, if not most, are obscure and unknown from the historical records. One particularly glaring problem scholars have with the list is that it omits the various Mesopotamian empires that flourished in the first two millennia B.C.E.
There are many other problems with the list, including such issues as when it was composed and what it can tell us about geo-politics at the time of its publication. Here I want to focus on one particular issue. Who does Nimrod represent? The question puzzles biblical scholars and near eastern archaeologists and some academic contortions have been used to resolve the matter. I have a more sensible solution.
