A comparison between Avot and Philostratus’ Lives of the Sophists underscores striking similarities and differences between the compositions and thereby functions as […]
The temporal and geographic core of Jewish ritual purity was Second Temple Jerusalem. Like a nuclear reactor in which movements are carefully […]
One of the important distinctions between the diet of Graeco-Roman Palestine and Babylonia was the use of wine or beer as a […]
Universalist ideas were central to Jewish authors living in the Second Temple period, and to the readers who read and circulated these […]
We tend to think of the consecutive developments of Greek philosophy, normative Judaism, and early Christianity as being exclusive to one another. […]
Many Jews in the Second Temple period believed that Israel shares a special relationship with God, and at the same time, that […]
In view of the divine origin which was attributed to the Scriptures, it is not at all surprising to find them described […]
Common consumption of food, and of alcoholic beverages in particular, is one effective way of creating and reinforcing social bonds. At the […]
…although much of Second Temple and Rabbinic literature can be read in light of the Greek and later Roman-Christian context in which […]
I have argued that Josephus’s invective against John and his rebel cohort should be read within a wider Roman discourse on transgressive […]
-
Tagged avot, pirkei avot, Second Sophistic, Tannaim, Tannaitic Literature