The Study of Jesus in talmudic Tradition : With Babylonian Talmud Sahn. 43 ͣ

Canon&Culture ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 149-178
Author(s):  
Chung-Yoen Kim
Keyword(s):  
Babylonian Talmud

The Fratricidal Hasmonean Conflict and the Murder of Onias

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vered Noam
Keyword(s):  
Dead Sea Scrolls ◽  
Dead Sea ◽  
Original Version ◽  
Jewish Tradition ◽  
The Political ◽  
Babylonian Talmud ◽  
Political Stance ◽  
The Dead ◽  
The Temple

This chapter examines the story of the internecine struggle between the two Hasmonean brothers, Hyrcanus II and Aristobulus II, which brought the Hasmonean commonwealth to its end. Only in Josephus is the story of the murder of a righteous man, Onias, juxtaposed to the central tradition regarding the siege of the temple during this war, although this too was clearly an early Jewish tradition. In the rabbinic sources, the story of the siege and the sacrificial animals underwent multiple reworkings, and it is the Babylonian Talmud that reflects the more original version and message of the story. If in Chapter 2, we saw the “rabbinization” of the figure of John Hyrcanus, here the story itself underwent this process and its original moral message was replaced by multiple halakhic implications. In both corpora, this dissension between brothers is seen as the leading cause of the downfall of the Hasmonean dynasty. This was in contradistinction to the political stance represented in the Dead Sea Scrolls, which interpreted the Roman occupation as proof of the sinfulness of the Hasmonean state from its very inception.

“We Act as Their Agents” and the Prohibition of Judgment by Laymen: A Discussion of Babylonian Talmud Gittin 88b

AJS Review ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 37 (2) ◽  
pp. 257-283
Author(s):  
Amihai Radzyner
Keyword(s):  
Jewish Law ◽  
Babylonian Talmud

A sugya just a few lines long in the Babylonian Talmud, Gittin 88b, had enormous influence on the development of Jewish law in the area of the authority to pass judgment given to rabbinical courts in our day. According to the simple, commonly accepted understanding of this sugya, the Tannaim ruled that the Torah forbade men who had not received ordination to act as judges, and as a result, the judges in Babylonia were permitted to adjudicate, of necessity, only as agents of the judges of Palestine (שליחותייהו קא עבדינן, we act as their agents). The article reexamines these positions. The first part suggests two new ways to understand the essence of the agency of which R. Joseph spoke in the sugya. The second part of the article reexamines the source of the prohibition, to the extent that it exists, against adjudication by laymen.

A Classical Ethical Problem in Ancient Philosophy and Rabbinic Thought: The Case of the Shipwrecked

2013 ◽  
Vol 106 (2) ◽  
pp. 171-199 ◽  
Author(s):  
Katell Berthelot
Keyword(s):  
Comparative Analysis ◽  
Ethical Problem ◽  
Ancient Philosophy ◽  
Rabbinic Literature ◽  
Babylonian Talmud ◽  
Greco Roman ◽  
Jewish Ethics ◽  
Philosophical Texts

The story found in Sifra Behar 5.3 and in the Babylonian Talmud, Baba Meṣi'a 62a, about two persons traveling in a desert and having a quantity of water that allows only one of them to reach civilization and survive, is well known and frequently referred to in books and articles dealing with Jewish ethics. The rabbinic texts raise the question: Should the travelers share the water and die together, or should the person who owns the water drink it in order to survive? This story reminds one of the case of the two shipwrecked men who grasp a plank that can bear the weight of only one person and therefore enables only one of them to reach the coast, a case referred to in philosophical texts from the Hellenistic and Roman periods. The similarities between the issues dealt with in the rabbinic texts and the Greco-Roman ones have indeed been noticed by several scholars working on rabbinic literature (whereas specialists of ancient philosophy generally ignore them). However, a systematic comparative analysis of the rabbinic tradition and the philosophical texts has not been undertaken so far, nor have previous studies paid much attention to the issues at stake within the Greco-Roman texts themselves, to their inner logic and relationships with one another.

Birds as Dads, Babysitters, and Hats

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-27
Author(s):  
Beth A. Berkowitz
Keyword(s):  
Animal Studies ◽  
Jewish Tradition ◽  
Good Luck ◽  
Babylonian Talmud ◽  
The Earth

Abstract The commandment to send the mother bird from her nest before taking her eggs or chicks, known in Jewish tradition as shiluach hakan, is found in Deuteronomy 22:6–7. This essay addresses dominant perspectives on the mother bird mitzvah—its association with good luck, bad luck, and compassion—before showcasing rabbinic texts from Mishnah and Babylonian Talmud Hullin Chapter 12 that evince interest in birds as ingenious builders, as fathers and not just mothers, as queer parents and altruists, as rebel spirits who resist captivity even unto death and, finally, in birds as co-inhabitants of the earth whose lives are parallel to as well as enmeshed with our own. I offer here a bird-centric approach to the commandment, an effort to read it in a spirit of anti-anthropocentrism, drawing on animal studies scholar Matthew Calarco’s notion of indistinction.

Mani’s Metivta: Manichaean Pedagogy in its Late Antique Mesopotamian Context

2021 ◽  
Vol 114 (3) ◽  
pp. 346-370
Author(s):  
Jae Han
Keyword(s):  
Ad Hoc ◽  
Late Antique ◽  
Academic Institutions ◽  
Contextual Cues ◽  
Babylonian Talmud ◽  
Individual Basis ◽  
Standard Curriculum ◽  
Institutional Norms

AbstractThis article investigates the nature of Manichaean pedagogy as expressed through the late antique codices known as the Kephalaia of the Teacher and the Kephalaia of the Wisdom of my Lord Mani. By paying attention to a range of contextual cues that frame each moment of instruction, it first argues that much like their rabbinic and Christian neighbors, Mesopotamian Manichaeans did not study in academic institutions. Rather, instruction took place on an ad-hoc, individual basis, often based on happenstance events; there is no mention of a building dedicated to learning, a standard curriculum, or a semester schedule. This article then contextualizes this form of non-institutionalized Manichaean instruction by comparing three formulae found in the Kephalaia codices that have parallels in the Babylonian Talmud: the formula of Mani “sitting among” his disciples (or of his disciples “sitting before” Mani), of Mani’s disciples “standing before” Mani, and of various people “coming before” Mani. In so doing, this article ultimately argues that the Babylonian Rabbis and Syro-Mesopotamian Manichaeans shared a common pedagogical habitus, one expressed through bodily comportment and hierarchy rather than through the imposition of institutional norms.

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