No One Asks for Forgiveness in the Bible? (Joshua Berman)
Episode Summary
People don’t ask for or grant forgiveness in the Bible—at least, not in the way modern people are familiar with. Scripture is less focused on whether someone feels sorry or magnanimous than on practical reconciliation and restoration. Repeatedly in biblical narratives, characters demonstrate this reconciliation with a kiss.
Rabbi Dr. Joshua Berman discusses how forgiveness as we understand it is a modern notion and how the relevant biblical notion differs.
Chapters
- 0:26 The Hebrew Bible doesn’t portray apology-and-forgiveness
- 4:38 Defining relationships
- 5:52 Forgiveness in the Bible, in Hebrew
- 7:48 The modern notion of forgiveness
- 10:35 Kissing
- 15:34 Torah and incarceration
- 19:40 We need to “get along”
- 21:05 The biblical authors on forgiveness
- 23:55 Reconciliation should be embraced
- 28:13 What does God think of us?
- 29:25 Postscript: The Prodigal Son
Transcripts are AI generated and are not guaranteed to correctly reflect the content of the podcast.
Transcript
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Dr. Joshua Berman
Joshua Berman is an associate professor of Bible at Bar-Ilan University in Israel and a research fellow at the Herzl Institute and the Center for Hebraic Thought. His books include Inconsistency in the Torah: Ancient Literary Convention and the Limits of Source Criticism (Oxford University Press); Created Equal: How the Bible Broke with Ancient Political Thought (Oxford University Press); The Temple: Its Symbolism and Meaning Then and Now (Wipf & Stock); and Narrative Analogy in the Hebrew Bible: Battle Stories and Their Equivalent Non-Battle Narratives (Brill).
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