{"title":"Prophecy in Plutarch and Philo of Alexandria","authors":"Matthew J. Klem","doi":"10.1163/15700631-bja10087","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/15700631-bja10087","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 David Winston distinguishes two types of Mosaic prophecy in Philo’s De vita Mosis, noetic and ecstatic. Noetic prophecy, which corresponds to Moses’s delivery of the special laws, is active and rational. Ecstatic prophecy, which corresponds to Moses’s predictive prophecies, is passive and irrational, though while some Greek authors view ecstasy in terms of a total possession by the god, Philo takes a more moderate view that can also be found in Plutarch. Winston’s appeal to Plutarch is the basis of this article. It explores ecstasy in Plutarch’s two dialogues on the Pythian oracle and applies Plutarch’s categories to Mosaic prophecy in De vita Mosis. In light of Plutarch’s discussion, noetic prophecy is actually passive, and ecstatic prophecy is actually active.","PeriodicalId":45167,"journal":{"name":"Journal for the Study of Judaism","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2024-05-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141115224","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Conversion to Judaism and Hostility toward Jews in the Roman Empire","authors":"K. Berthelot","doi":"10.1163/15700631-bja10086","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/15700631-bja10086","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 Hellenistic texts on Jews hardly ever refer to people converting to Judaism. Roman authors’ criticism and condemnation of people who had converted to Judaism thus appears as a new feature of anti-Jewish discourse. The relative prominence of references to Judaizers and converts in Roman literary texts may be explained by the number and visibility of proselytes in Rome, but also perhaps by the perception, within certain Roman circles, of conversion to Judaism as a betrayal of Roman values. Tacitus best illustrates this trend. This article seeks to shed light on his hostile remarks on converts through a comparison with Philo’s highly positive comments on proselytes. The comparison reveals surprising points of agreement between the two authors and helps us understand what was at stake in the phenomenon of conversion and how it could generate tensions between proselytes and their native environment.","PeriodicalId":45167,"journal":{"name":"Journal for the Study of Judaism","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2024-05-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141114189","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Diagnosing Decline","authors":"David R. Edwards","doi":"10.1163/15700631-bja10088","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/15700631-bja10088","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 In this study, I argue that Josephus’ interpretation of the period of the biblical judges, following the conquest of Canaan and settlement in the land, mirrors Greco-Roman rhetoric that traced the origins of Rome’s decline to the middle and late republic. Survey of Greco-Roman writers shows that Josephus modelled his diagnosis of the decline of Israel during the period of the judges on the causes of Roman decline identified by many Greek and Latin writers, these being: (1) influx of foreign wealth; (2) discharge of veterans and turn toward agricultural living; and (3) growth of rural elite estates. Beyond serving as his own inspiration, this literary milieu informed Josephus’ elite Greco-Roman audience, thus ensuring that they would read his interpretation of the period of the judges in light of tropes about Roman decline that were popular in their day.","PeriodicalId":45167,"journal":{"name":"Journal for the Study of Judaism","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2024-05-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141114135","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Newly Found Burial Catacombs and Inscriptions from the Necropolis at Beth Sheʿarim","authors":"Adi Erlich, Jonathan Price","doi":"10.1163/15700631-bja10085","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/15700631-bja10085","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 Beth Sheʿarim in Lower Galilee was an important Jewish village in the Roman period, with an extensive necropolis containing lavish tombs that provided burial for Jews from across the Roman East. The necropolis is renowned for its many inscriptions in Greek, Aramaic, Hebrew, and more. Two catacombs previously unknown were discovered recently in the western part of the necropolis. Each contains a few halls shaped as corridors with arcosolium chambers along the walls. Each arcosolium accommodates 3–4 burial places. In one of the caves, two Greek inscriptions painted in red were found; one, written on a slab of stone, mentions a proselyte named Jacob, while the other, inscribed on the wall, mentions Judah, the owner of the tomb. This article deals with the catacombs and the inscriptions in the context of late Roman Palestine.","PeriodicalId":45167,"journal":{"name":"Journal for the Study of Judaism","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2024-05-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141114590","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Perpetual Fires in the Jerusalem Temple through a Mediterranean Perspective","authors":"Moshe Blidstein","doi":"10.1163/15700631-bja10083","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/15700631-bja10083","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 The fires of the Jerusalem temple altar were said to be perpetual. Various writers from the fourth century BCE to the third century CE added explanations and perspectives to this practice: the argument that the fire came from heaven, that it continued even during the destruction of the temple, or that it remained lit only when the high priest was righteous. Though these texts are well known, they were never examined in a comparative context: how special were these practices and discourses in their Mediterranean and Persian contexts? Maintaining a perpetual fire on the altar or lamps was a known practice in Mediterranean sanctuaries. The discourses surrounding these fires, developed especially by Greek and Roman writers of the first century BCE and the first century CE, are in many ways similar to those in the Jewish texts. I will consider in detail the differences and similarities and their significance.","PeriodicalId":45167,"journal":{"name":"Journal for the Study of Judaism","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2024-04-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140677916","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Dositheos and Theodosios, and Other Greek theos-Names in a Jewish Context in Greco-Roman Egypt","authors":"Willy Clarysse, Yanne Broux","doi":"10.1163/15700631-bja10084","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/15700631-bja10084","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 It has long been noted that theos-names have a strong connection with the Jewish diaspora in Egypt. In this article, we look at two of the most common names of this type, Dositheos and Theodosios, and the practice of garbling the orthography of these names, as -θης for Dositheos, and Θη-, Θευ-, and Τευ- for names starting with Θεο-. We propose a link with a growing avoidance in the Roman period of the use of the name of Jahweh.","PeriodicalId":45167,"journal":{"name":"Journal for the Study of Judaism","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2024-04-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140672566","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"“Any Outsider Who Encroaches Will Be Put to Death”: Numbers 18:7 and its Interpretation in Second Temple Literature","authors":"Hanan Birenboim","doi":"10.1163/15700631-bja10081","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/15700631-bja10081","url":null,"abstract":"In its biblical context, the injunction stipulating that “the outsider who encroaches shall be put to death” seems to apply to any non-priest or non-Levite who tries to participate in the tabernacle services. This interpretation seems to have been adopted during the Second Temple period, as attested to by the Temple Scroll (11QT<jats:sup>a</jats:sup>). There is no source that states that an unauthorized entrant to the temple is subject to capital punishment, except for a gentile: Philo and Josephus write that a gentile who enters the temple court is subject to the death penalty. Several scholars propose that this punishment derives from a reinterpretation of the biblical injunction, and it seems that this interpretation originated during the Hasmonean rebellion. The claim that Herod innovated the injunction subjecting a gentile who ascended beyond the balustrade to death is difficult to accept.","PeriodicalId":45167,"journal":{"name":"Journal for the Study of Judaism","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2024-01-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139515848","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Divine Abstract Qualities and God’s Middot in Second Temple and Rabbinic Literature","authors":"Menahem Kister","doi":"10.1163/15700631-bja10080","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/15700631-bja10080","url":null,"abstract":"<p>The starting point of the article is a much-studied rabbinic tradition concerning ten abstract qualities by which the world was created. I contend that other rabbinic passages, concerning seven abstract qualities that minister before God’s throne, and seven—or ten—abstract qualities by which the world was created, are all variants of the same tradition. Each of these texts is scrutinized. The tradition embodied in these passages is traced back to the Second Temple period: an apocryphal psalm found at Qumran and a passage of the Damascus Document. The interchange between abstract divine qualities and angels, attested in passages of rabbinic literature, can also be traced back to 1 Enoch 40:9. Passages of the <em>hekhalot</em> literature can be instructively compared with the Testament of Abraham. The article demonstrates the continuity of <em>theologoumena</em> and phraseology concerning the divine in ancient Judaism, from the Second Temple period to late antiquity.</p>","PeriodicalId":45167,"journal":{"name":"Journal for the Study of Judaism","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2023-12-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139055261","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Exempla in 1 Maccabees and Josephus’ Bellum Judaicum: Doing Jewish Exemplarity in the Greco-Roman World","authors":"Carson Bay, Jan Willem van Henten","doi":"10.1163/15700631-bja10082","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/15700631-bja10082","url":null,"abstract":"<p>The study of e<em>xempla</em> and exemplarity in Mediterranean antiquity touches the methodological borderlines and interest areas of several distinct academic disciplines. Earlier studies focused on semantics and the development from the Greek <styled-content lang=\"el-Grek\" xmlns:dc=\"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/\" xmlns:ifp=\"http://www.ifactory.com/press\">παράδειγμα</styled-content> to the Roman <em>exemplum</em>. More recently, the field of Classics has tended to examine exemplarity as a phenomenon with a distinctively Roman edge. At the same time, scholars in adjacent disciplines like ancient Judaism and early Christianity have engaged Classics scholarship on this topic in their own work. This paper extends this arena by clarifying aspects of exemplarity within two paradigmatic texts of Hellenistic- and Roman-era Judaism. We examine 1 Maccabees 2:49–68 and Josephus’ <em>Jewish War</em> 6.99–110, both speeches set within “contemporary” histories written by Jewish authors. By examining these ancient Jewish passages, written within the Greco-Roman world, we help add clarity and meaning to what could be “Jewish” about exemplarity in ancient Mediterranean contexts.</p>","PeriodicalId":45167,"journal":{"name":"Journal for the Study of Judaism","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2023-12-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"138745886","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Need for Rabbinic Nomikoi: A Response to Yair Furstenberg","authors":"Kimberley Czajkowski","doi":"10.1163/15700631-bja10079","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/15700631-bja10079","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Yair Furstenberg, in his article “The Rabbinic Movement from Pharisees to Provincial Jurists” (<span style=\"font-variant: small-caps;\">DOI</span>: 10.1163/15700631-bja10070), draws parallels between the rise of the rabbinic movement and jurists in other Eastern provinces of the Roman Empire. This response considers how far we may push the comparison, especially with regard to the stimuli behind the changes in rabbinic activities that Furstenberg posits.</p>","PeriodicalId":45167,"journal":{"name":"Journal for the Study of Judaism","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2023-12-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"138580307","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}