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Current Issue Article Abstracts Spring 2010 Volume 100.2 • • • • • • • • Herod's Jewish Ideology Facing Romanization: On Intermarriage, Ritual Baths, and Speeches Eyal Regev In this article I explore the manner in which Herod expressed his Jewish self-identity and how he used it to rule his own people. Evidence from Herodian intermarriage, ritual baths in Herod's palaces, and speeches by Herod and Nicolaus are interpreted as representations of Herod's commitment to the Jewish ethos, namely, traces of Herod's preservation of or reflection on his own Jewish identity. My aim is therefore to understand how Herod perceived - or rather, wanted his Jewish subjects to perceive - his Jewishness, and how he reflected - or wanted others to reflect - on his combination of the Jewish and Greco-Roman ways of life. Tradition and Truth: The Ethics of Lawmaking in Tannaitic Literature Tzvi Novick This article examines aspects of "scholastic" ethics in tannaitic literature, in particular, the notion that one who is engaged in legal discussion should readily admit ignorance, and should concede to the truth. While centering on mAvot 5.7, the article traces developments in the representation of these principles through a wide variety of tannaitic texts. "Fruit and the Fruit of Fruit": Charity and Piety among Jews in Late Antique Palestine Michael L. Satlow This essay explores a single dimension of what we might call "common" or "popular" Jewish piety in late antique Palestine and its relationship to that of the rabbis. In short, I will argue that at least some Palestinian Jews in late antiquity (defined here as ca.250-600 CE) believed that God directly and materially rewarded those who gave to or acted charitably toward poor individuals (e.g., almsgiving). While elements of this understanding can be found in earlier Jewish literature, including the Hebrew Bible, the form that it took among Palestinian Jews was both new and distinctively late antique. Like the Christian bishops of late antiquity, though, rabbis sought to appropriate and domesticate this popular understanding. They thus presented charitable activities directed at their own institutions as more worthy, and positioned themselves as the intercessors whose activities caused the divine reward. This argument raises the more general theoretical problem of "popular" and "official" religion, which I discuss in the conclusion. Josephus, the Rabbis, and Responses to Catastrophes Ancient and Modern Jonathan Klawans In order to explain the impact the destruction of the second temple had on Jewish history, a number of scholars maintain that a helpful analogy can be drawn between the catastrophic defeat in 70 CE and calamities that befell the Jewish people in 1933-1945. Following from this, it is suggested that the Jewish responses to these catastrophes can also be helpfully compared: the Jews were at first shocked into silence, and only gradually able to come to terms with catastrophe. A comparison of the two historical events, alongside a careful reconsideration of the responses to 70 CE in Josephus and Rabbinic literature, will provide the basis for a critical reexamination of this approach. It will be argued here that analogies between the Jewish responses to 70 CE and 1945 do not find adequate support in either the ancient or modern evidence. When looking at the ancient evidence, which is the focus of this article, what is striking is the degree to which Josephus's response in the first decade after the destruction is in many important respects quite similar to the responses of the rabbis centuries later. Scholarly understanding of Josephus, the Rabbis, and ancient Judaism in general will be advanced if we set aside once and for all the ill-advised comparison between the events of 70 CE and 1945. Reading the Bavli in IranMeshal ha-kadmoni Shai Secunda Recently, scholars have begun to reexamine the Babylonian Talmud in light of its Sasanian Iranian context A fair number of parallels have thus far been adduced and analyzed. However, there has been relatively little theoretical discussion regarding the implications of contextualizing the Bavli. This article articulates one methodological problem by, on the one hand emphasizing both the Bavli's apparent insularity from non-Jewish Sasanian literature and its indeptedness to Palestinian rabbinic Judaism, and on the other hand, by describing the dynamanism of Sasanian cultures of religious learning which flourished within roughly the same time and space. By analyzing the Bavli's discussions of "anatomical dualism" at Sanhedrin 38b-39a, this paper advances a method of interpretation which highlights the Bavli's own processes of reading Roman Palestinian rabbinic texts in a Sasanian Babylonian context. |
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