Katrin Kogman-Appel is a professor of Medieval Jewish history with research focusing on book culture, readers, and reading practices in medieval Europe and beyond. In The Kennicott Bible: A Masterpiece of Jewish Book Art (Bodleian Library, 2023) she discusses the text of the 24 canonized books of the Bible that is paired with David Kimchi's grammatical treatise “Sefer Miklol”. Katrin discussed the Kennecott Bible, a medieval Hebrew manuscript that contains unique illustrations and Masoretic text annotations. She explained that the manuscript draws inspiration from various sources including the Severa Bible and playing cards from the Rhineland and Netherlands, with some illustrations depicting animals in unusual positions and a political allegory involving hares, wolves, cats, and mice. Katrin described the Masoretic text as a lexical apparatus designed for precision in transmitting the canonical Hebrew text, and emphasized that the Bible served as a status symbol and public art piece for Jewish elites despite having no public art in synagogues.

A collection of reproduced images from the Kennicott Bible, a remarkable artifact from the Middle Ages. The Kennicott Bible is one of the most celebrated Hebrew Bibles that survives today, having delighted readers since its creation in 1476. Originating from La Coruña in northern Spain, it features lavish carpet pages, gold leaf silhouettes, and abundant marginal decorations. This extraordinary manuscript is a treasure trove of history, culture, devotion, art, and cross-cultural collaboration. This book features reproductions of the decorated pages of the stunning manuscript, accompanied by four chapters authored by experts in the fields of Bible study, book history, and medieval Jewish art. The authors discuss the Bible from several perspectives, explaining the Hebrew text of the Bible, the scribe who created the pages, the layout and paleography, and the illuminator who produced the Bible's decoration and its imagery. This volume also includes an analysis of the early medieval commentary on the Old Testament, the Masorah. Richly illustrated throughout, this beautiful book makes a treasure of Jewish art available for a new audience, alongside the latest scholarship on its origins, provenance, and creation.

Analyzing these ancient texts in historical context helps to enrich our understanding of the effects and reactions to historical and cultural events.

Be sure to follow Jewish Tapestry for more on Jewish history and culture.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

What happens when you read the weekly Torah portion alongside the strange, fascinating, and sometimes uncomfortable story of modern Jewish history? In this episode, Rabbi Marc Katz sits down with Rabbi David Bashevkin to discuss I Read This Over Shabbos: Reading Jewish History in the Parasha (Maggid, 2026), a book that turns Shabbat reading into an intellectual journey through the Jewish past.

Bashevkin takes familiar Torah stories and places them in surprising conversation with the events and ideas that have shaped modern Jewish life. Noah’s ark leads to the Industrial Revolution. The biblical census opens a window onto the modern haredi draft debate. Korah’s rebellion becomes a lens for understanding the rise of Marxism. Along the way, Bashevkin explores questions that remain deeply relevant: Is the founding of Israel a messianic moment? How should we understand rabbinic authority centuries after its emergence? Can political disagreements justify divisions among Jews? And how did the revival of Hebrew transform Jewish identity?

The essays move freely between Jewish history, philosophy, psychoanalysis, literature, and traditional sources. They aren't conventional Torah sermons or academic lectures; instead, they are invitations to make unexpected connections and to see both the Torah and Jewish history with fresh eyes. Each essay also ends with suggested books, turning Bashevkin's own reading into an invitation for listeners to keep exploring.

Together, Bashevkin and Katz explore what happens when the weekly parasha becomes a doorway into the Jewish historical imagination—and why Shabbat might be the perfect time to slow down, pick up a book, and reconnect with the story of our people.

About the Guest:

David Bashevkin is founder of 18Forty, a media and educational platform leading conversations on Jewish faith, identity, and community, and host of its flagship podcast. He serves as Assistant Clinical Professor of Jewish Values at Yeshiva University’s Sy Syms School of Business and is a rebbe at Isaac Breuer College. David has been rejected from several prestigious fellowships and awards.

About the Host:

Rab­bi Marc Katz is the Rab­bi at Tem­ple Ner Tamid in Bloom­field, NJ. He is author of the books Yochanan’s Gam­ble: Judaism’s Prag­mat­ic Approach to Life (JPS) cho­sen as a final­ist for the PROSE award and The Heart of Lone­li­ness: How Jew­ish Wis­dom Can Help You Cope and Find Com­fort (Turn­er Pub­lish­ing) which was cho­sen as a final­ist for the Nation­al Jew­ish Book Award.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

In this episode of the New Books Network, Željko Stanojević speaks with Matthew Montgomery about his article “An Intercessor Like Moses: A Key Component of the Psalter’s Message”, published in the European Hebrew Journal.

Montgomery’s study asks how the final form of the Masoretic Psalter communicates hope after the collapse of Judah and the Babylonian exile. Building on the widely recognized observation that Book III of the Psalter engages the downfall of the Southern Kingdom while Book IV places unusual emphasis on Moses, he traces textual signals connecting these sections with Exodus 32–34. Particular attention is given to the introduction of Moses and Aaron, the clustering of references to them in Books IV and V, and repeated allusions to Moses’ intercession after Israel’s covenant-breaking at Sinai.

The central argument is that these features are not isolated reminiscences. Read together, they help shape the Psalter’s theological and literary message. Moses appears as the paradigmatic representative who can stand between God and a disobedient people, plead on their behalf, and turn away divine anger. Montgomery argues that, in the post-exilic horizon of the Psalter, this Mosaic pattern contributes to an emerging hope for an intercessory figure capable of mediating between God and a covenant-breaking community. The interview explores what this proposal contributes to final-form readings of the Psalter and why the arrangement of psalms can itself become a vehicle of meaning.

Matthew Montgomery is a scholar of the Hebrew Bible whose research includes Psalms, scriptural reuse, rhetoric, literary coherence, and the shaping of biblical collections. His article was published on 18 June 2026 after double-blind peer review, with Prof. em. Dr. Dr. h.c. Eckart Otto serving as Academic Editor. The article is freely available through its permanent DOI.

Montgomery will also speak at the EHJ International Scholarly Online Conference 2026, “New Discoveries and New Directions in Biblical, Hebrew, and Theological Studies”. On 8 November 2026 at 22:00 CET, he will present “Neither Story or Arbitrary: The Rhetoric of Juxtaposition in the MT Psalter”. The presentation develops a related concern with how the Psalter’s ordering creates rhetorical and theological effects without requiring readers to treat the collection either as one continuous story or as an arbitrary anthology.

The host, Željko Stanojević, is a Hebrew linguist, biblical philologist, lexicographer, translator, and scholar of Biblical and Modern Hebrew. He is President of the Institute for Hebrew Language and Literature in Belgrade, Founder and Editor-in-Chief of the European Hebrew Journal, and a host on the New Books Network Biblical Studies channel. His work includes Biblical Hebrew, Semitic linguistics, textual criticism, Qumran and the Dead Sea Scrolls, Bible translation, biblical onomastics, and Hebrew lexicography.

This episode will be of interest to readers and listeners working on Psalms, the Hebrew Bible, Moses and Aaron, Exodus traditions, intercession, post-exilic theology, ancient Hebrew, biblical allusion, textual criticism, and the literary shaping of Scripture.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Saul, David, and Solomon are among the most influential—and most contested—figures in the Hebrew Bible. The biblical narratives portray them as rulers of an expanding Israelite polity that eventually divided into the kingdoms of Israel and Judah. Yet how much of these accounts reflects historical reality? Did the United Monarchy truly exist, and what can archaeology tell us about Israel’s earliest kings?

In The Bible’s First Kings: Uncovering the Story of Saul, David, and Solomon (Cambridge UP, 2025), archaeologist Avraham Faust and biblical scholar Zev I. Farber enter one of the most vigorously debated areas of biblical scholarship. Against the growing skepticism surrounding the historicity of the United Monarchy, they argue that Saul, David, and Solomon were real rulers of consequence and that the early Israelite kingdom developed into a regional “mini-empire”—even if the biblical authors later reshaped the memories of these kings in order to glorify, criticize, or vilify them.

Combining recent archaeological discoveries with close and critical readings of Samuel and Kings, Faust and Farber reconstruct the rise, development, and collapse of this short-lived ancient polity. Their study examines settlement patterns, fortifications, demographic change, relations between Israelites and Philistines, copper production in Edom and Timna, and the complex relationship between material evidence, historical memory, and biblical narrative.

In this interview, Professor Avraham Faust discusses what archaeology can—and cannot—tell us about Saul, David, and Solomon; why the scholarly consensus concerning the United Monarchy has changed so dramatically; how biblical traditions preserve genuine historical memories while also reshaping the past; and why a kingdom that lasted for less than a century left such an extraordinary religious and cultural legacy.

The interview was conducted by Željko Stanojević of the Institute for Hebrew Language and Literature, with invaluable assistance from his colleague Mila Lekić. The Institute publishes the Diamond Open Access European Hebrew Journal and organizes the EHJ International Scholarly Online Conference 2026, at which Professor Faust will present “The Archaeology of the Return to Zion and the Achaemenid Economic Revolution.”

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Tune in to this interview about Body Language: Voice, Embodiment, and Textuality in the Hebrew Bible (Yale UP, 2026). Jacqueline Vayntrub is Associate Professor of Hebrew Bible at Yale University in the Divinity School. She holds a Ph.D. with honors in Northwest Semitic Philology from the University of Chicago. Her research operates at the intersection of biblical philology, poetics, and the history of biblical scholarship. She is the author of Beyond Orality: Biblical Poetry on its own Terms (Routledge 2019), Body Language: Voice, Embodiment, and Textuality in the Hebrew Bible (Yale University Press, 2026), as well as the co-author of Hebrew Funerary Inscriptions from Iron Age Judah (Society of Biblical Literature Press, forthcoming). Her current major projects include a commentary on Ecclesiastes for the Old Testament Library series (Westminster John Knox Press), and serving as Project Director for an NEH-funded international collaboration investigating the institutional history and anti-Jewish scaffolding of modern biblical criticism.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/biblical-studies

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

In this New Books Network interview, Professor Željko Stanojević speaks with Professor Yigal Levin of Bar-Ilan University about his new book, The Chronicles of David and Solomon: 1 Chronicles 10–2 Chronicles 9: A New Translation and Commentary, published by Bloomsbury.

The conversation explores what is new in Levin’s translation and commentary, how the Book of Chronicles reshapes the stories of David and Solomon, and why Jerusalem, the Temple, the priesthood, the Levites, geography, political memory, and the idea of “all Israel” are central to the Chronicler’s message.

The book offers a new English translation and detailed commentary on 1 Chronicles 10 through 2 Chronicles 9. It is part of a planned multi-volume commentary. It begins with the death of Saul and follows the Chronicler’s account of David’s rise to power, the establishment of Jerusalem, the transfer of the Ark, the divine promise concerning David’s dynasty, preparations for the Temple, Solomon’s accession, and the construction and dedication of the Jerusalem Temple.

Levin shows that Chronicles does far more than repeat Samuel and Kings. The Chronicler selects, reorganises, expands, and omits earlier material to create a distinctive interpretation of Israel’s past. David is presented above all as the king who prepares Jerusalem, worship, personnel, materials, and institutions for the future Temple, while Solomon completes that project by building and dedicating the Temple.

The volume also examines priests, Levites, musicians, gatekeepers, officials, military groups, tribes, cities, territories, genealogies, and neighbouring peoples. These details are essential for understanding how the Chronicler imagined Israel’s unity, institutions, memory, and identity. Levin combines Biblical Hebrew, textual comparison, historical geography, archaeology, genealogy, literary analysis, and the history of ancient Israel. The commentary is especially valuable for scholars and students of Chronicles, David and Solomon, the Jerusalem Temple, biblical historiography, Persian-period Yehud, Biblical Hebrew, biblical archaeology, and ancient Israelite history.

Professor Yigal Levin is an Israeli historian and biblical scholar at Bar-Ilan University. His research focuses on the history of ancient Israel, the Book of Chronicles, historical geography, biblical archaeology, biblical historiography, genealogies and tribal identity, Persian-period Yehud, and the relationship between biblical texts, geography, archaeology, and history. He is also Director of the Rivlin Institute for the History of the Land of Israel and its Settlement.

Professor Levin is a member of the Editorial Board of the European Hebrew Journal, an international, peer-reviewed, Diamond Open Access journal published by the Institute for Hebrew Language and Literature in Belgrade. The journal publishes research in Hebrew language, Biblical Hebrew, the Hebrew Bible, Jewish Studies, Semitic linguistics, philology, textual criticism, biblical archaeology, ancient Israelite history, Hebrew literature, manuscript studies, translation, lexicography, and related fields. EHJ does not charge authors submission or publication fees.

Professor Levin has also been announced as a speaker at the international online conference New Discoveries and New Directions in Biblical, Hebrew, and Theological Studies, to be held on 6–8 November 2026. The conference brings together scholars from biblical studies, Hebrew studies, theology, archaeology, Jewish Studies, history, and related disciplines.

The interview is hosted by Professor Željko Stanojević, President of the Institute for Hebrew Language and Literature, and European Hebrew Journal, and a New Books Network host for Biblical Studies.
European Hebrew Journal

Institute for Hebrew Language and Literature:

Conference: New Discoveries and New Directions in Biblical, Hebrew, and Theological Studies, An International Online Conference Supporting the Diamond Open Access Mission of the European Hebrew Journal

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/biblical-studies

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

In Max Weber's Studies of Ancient Judaism: The Historical Foundation for a Theory of the Modern Age (Mohr Siebeck, 2002) Eckart Otto provides a history of Max Weber's work on the cultural history of ancient Judaism, a subject on which Weber spent more than 10 years. He shows how closely these studies are linked not only to theology and Jewish studies, jurisprudence and economics, the science of history and philosophy but also to the contemporary discussions surrounding the historico-cultural significance of Judaism for the »spirit of capitalism« and the chances for Judaism to preserve its identity in the conflict between assimilation and Zionism.

This conversation is a companion to Željko Stanojević's interview with Eckart Otto about Deuteronomy in the Pentateuch and the Hexateuch: Studies of the Literary History of the Pentateuch and the Hexateuch within the Framework of Deuteronomy.

Professor Dr. Dr. h.c. Eckart Otto is a highly distinguished German theologian, biblical scholar, and internationally recognised authority on Deuteronomy, the Pentateuch, biblical law, the Hebrew Bible, and the legal traditions of the ancient Near East. He is Professor Emeritus of Old Testament and Hebrew Bible at Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich. Professor Eckart Otto is also a prominent member of the Editorial Board of the European Hebrew Journal, published by the Institute for Hebrew Language and Literature in Belgrade, Serbia.

This interview is hosted by Professor Željko Stanojević, a Serbian-Israeli Hebrew linguist, biblical philologist, lexicographer, translator, and researcher in Semitic languages. He is President of the Institute for Hebrew Language and Literature, Founder and Editor-in-Chief of the European Hebrew Journal, and a host on the New Books Network. European Hebrew Journal

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/biblical-studies

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

In Deuteronomy in the Pentateuch and the Hexateuch: Studies of the Literary History of the Pentateuch and the Hexateuch within the Framework of Deuteronomy (Mohr Siebeck, 2000; unrevised e-book edition, 2019), Eckart Otto contributes to the study of Deuteronomy, the Pentateuch, the Hexateuch. The book argues that both the Hexateuch and the Pentateuch developed ideas already articulated in the Deuteronomistic form of Deuteronomy. Deuteronomy therefore appears not simply as one component of the Pentateuch, but as a central point of departure for understanding the formation of larger compositions.

Otto places Deuteronomy at the centre of the literary history of ancient Israel. Rather than treating Deuteronomy, the Priestly Writing, Joshua, and Pentateuchal traditions as isolated units, he reconstructs the processes through which these texts were connected, revised, and reinterpreted. The combination of the Priestly Writing with Deuteronomy and the Deuteronomistic Book of Joshua produced a Hexateuchal composition extending from Genesis through Joshua. A later Pentateuchal redaction separated the Torah from Joshua and placed Deuteronomy’s covenant at Horeb at its centre.

The Hexateuch reaches its narrative conclusion with Israel’s arrival in the promised land, while the Pentateuch ends with Moses and Israel still outside the land. This makes Torah and covenant, rather than possession of the land, central to Israel’s identity. Otto also argues that Hexateuchal and Pentateuchal redactors did not merely use a completed Deuteronomy; they reshaped Deuteronomy itself to serve their conceptions of covenant, law, land, and Israel’s relationship with God.

Deuteronomy contributed to the emergence of the Hexateuch and Pentateuch, but the later redactions of these larger works also transformed Deuteronomy. Otto connects these literary developments with conflicts among priestly groups in the Persian period and with debates over priesthood, law, authority, identity, and inherited traditions.

Through this approach, Otto challenges the traditional separation between Pentateuchal and Deuteronomic research. His study also has implications for the hypothesis of a “Deuteronomistic History,” inviting scholars to reconsider the relationship between Deuteronomy, Joshua, the historical books, the Priestly Writing, and the final form of the Torah. It also contributes to discussions of biblical historiography, authoritative scripture, law and narrative, and the Torah’s emergence as Judaism’s foundational text.

In this New Books Network interview, Professor Otto explains the book’s central arguments in his own words. The conversation addresses the relationship between Pentateuch and Hexateuch, the integration of Priestly and Deuteronomistic traditions, the role of Joshua, the covenant at Horeb, and the priestly conflicts that shaped the Torah in the Persian period.

This conversation is a companion to Željko Stanojević’s interview with Eckart Otto about Max Weber’s Studies of Ancient Judaism: The Historical Foundation for a Theory of the Modern Age.

Professor Dr. Dr. h.c. Eckart Otto is a distinguished German theologian and biblical scholar, known for his work on Deuteronomy, the Pentateuch, biblical law, the Hebrew Bible, and ancient Near Eastern legal traditions. He is Professor Emeritus of Old Testament and Hebrew Bible at Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich and a member of the Editorial Board of the European Hebrew Journal.

This interview is hosted by Professor Željko Stanojević, a Serbian-Israeli Hebraist, biblical philologist, lexicographer, translator, and Semitic-language researcher. He is President of the Institute for Hebrew Language and Literature, Founder and Editor-in-Chief of the European Hebrew Journal, and a host on the New Books Network.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/biblical-studies

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.