A comparison between Avot and Philostratus’ Lives of the Sophists underscores striking similarities and differences between the compositions and thereby functions as a natural springboard into the analysis of Avot in light of the Second[…]
The temporal and geographic core of Jewish ritual purity was Second Temple Jerusalem. Like a nuclear reactor in which movements are carefully measured and protocols strictly enforced, the Temple operated according to stringent purity rules,[…]
One of the important distinctions between the diet of Graeco-Roman Palestine and Babylonia was the use of wine or beer as a common beverage. It is abundantly clear that in the Graeco-Roman world, wine was[…]
Universalist ideas were central to Jewish authors living in the Second Temple period, and to the readers who read and circulated these authors’ texts. The circulation of Jewish universalist ideas at this time indicates that[…]
We tend to think of the consecutive developments of Greek philosophy, normative Judaism, and early Christianity as being exclusive to one another. But the opposite is in fact true: these schools shared many ideas, including[…]
Many Jews in the Second Temple period believed that Israel shares a special relationship with God, and at the same time, that all people are capable of participating in a covenantal relationship with God. But[…]
In view of the divine origin which was attributed to the Scriptures, it is not at all surprising to find them described in the literature of the intertestamental and NT periods as ‘holy’. The description[…]
Common consumption of food, and of alcoholic beverages in particular, is one effective way of creating and reinforcing social bonds. At the risk of over-simplifying, the ancient Mediterranean world knew three major varieties of such[…]
…although much of Second Temple and Rabbinic literature can be read in light of the Greek and later Roman-Christian context in which they were composed, we should be wary of attributing all differences to a[…]
I have argued that Josephus’s invective against John and his rebel cohort should be read within a wider Roman discourse on transgressive gender, both the tendency in political invective to cast tyrants as effeminate objects[…]