This is a story about Jacob, but it must be told the long way around. The reader must trust me to get there eventually. And I think the reader will find the route itself interesting. In the third century B.C. there lived a famous Egyptian historian named Manetho. Unfortunately, none of Manetho’s works has survived; […]
The historian’s difficulties increase the further back he goes into past. The most intractable problem is … that of the first ancestors whom Israel claimed as her own, the patriarchs Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, whose “history” is told in Genesis 12–35. The history of Joseph, which occupies the rest of Genesis with the exception of […]
The importance of Jerusalem sprang from the cultural geniuses of old, the Jewish philosopher-kings and biblical prophets, who made Jerusalem their centre. From Jerusalem they gave forth their wisdom to the world—and changed it. As Isaiah proclaimed- “For out of Zion shall go forth the law, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.” Monotheism, […]