The Talmud on conversion for love

THIS WEEK'S DAF YOMI COLUMN BY ADAM KIRSCH IN TABLET: Converting for Love (Like Natalie Portman’s Husband)? The Talmud Forbids It. Talmudic Rabbis regulated not just actions but reputations, and left a legacy we debate and refute to this day.

The most common reason why people convert to Judaism today, I would guess, is because they want to marry a Jewish spouse. Such conversions are a sign of the amazing acceptance that Judaism enjoys in America, compared to the stigma it labored under for most of Western history. For a Christian to marry a Jew in medieval Europe meant stigmatization, isolation, perhaps even violence, as it does in many parts of the Muslim world today. For us, it is simply a personal choice, even a laudable demonstration of spousal loyalty. It was surprising to learn in this week’s Daf Yomi reading, then, that according to the Talmud, converting out of love is actually forbidden. ...

I always think of Natalie Portman's husband as Darth Vader, but I suppose that's neither here nor there.

Earlier Daf Yomi columns are noted here and links.

Report on Digital Collation Conference

TOMMY WASSERMAN: Report from the Digital Collation Conference in Münster (ETC). I'm glad to hear that Collate is still around.

Conference on Ancient Jewish and Christian Apocalypses

APOCRYPHICITY: Conference Program for “Ancient Jewish and Christian Apocalypses.” Coming in mid-November in Berlin.

Apocrypha as fanfic

THE ANXIOUS BENCH: Of Scriptures and Superheroes (Philip Jenkins).

Some modern-day examples illustrate the kind of cultural curiosity that drives such a process of intertextuality and cross-referencing, although they are not ones that usually feature in Biblical or extra-Biblical scholarship. Bear with me in this thought-experiment.

Popular culture regularly produces figures or works that seize the imagination, heroes like James Bond or Batman, mythological worlds like Star Trek or Star Wars. Initially the works stand alone, but their respective worlds soon expand to include spin-offs and sequels, prequels and origin stories. Perhaps these offshoots develop the principal character and supply more information on his or her deeds, or else minor figures expand to become central to new works and series. Individual characters migrate into other genres and mythologies.

Reviewlet of Lim, The Formation of the Jewish Canon

LARRY HURTADO: “The Formation of the Jewish Canon”: Lim’s New Book. Earlier reviews etc. here, here, and links.

Jacobovici – Zias trial begins

BIBLE PLACES BLOG: Trial Begins in Jacobovici’s Lawsuit Against Zias.

Background here and links.

McGrath, mythicism, and the DSS

JAMES MCGRATH: Mythicism and the Teacher of Righteousness. I generally don't have the patience to engage with mythicism (i.e., the idea that Jesus never existed), but I'm glad James is willing to take it on.

Hong Kong exhibition opens

THE DEAD SEA SCROLLS EXHIBITION IN HONG KONG OPENED YESTERDAY:
Scrolls exhibit shines light on ancient links. Hong Kong was picked as the venue of the Dead Sea artefacts exhibition, which opens today, because of its cultural diversity (Elizabeth Cheung, South China Morning Post).

The main exhibits are the Gabriel Revelation Stone and a replica of the Great Isaiah Scroll. Background here. And more on China's current interest in Judaism is here and links.

Seland on Reading Philo

TORREY SELAND gives us two previews of his forthcoming book on Philo of Alexandria:

Reading Philo

Reading Philo: Why and How?

The book is: Torrey Seland (ed.), Reading Philo: A Handbook to Philo of Alexandria (Eerdmans).

McGrath on mythicism and space Jesus

ASKING THE IMPORTANT QUESTIONS: Did Jesus Die in Outer Space? (James McGrath in Bible and Interpretation).

Okay, the subtitle is "Evaluating a Key Claim in Richard Carrier’s On the Historicity of Jesus," which does nuance the title a bit. Here's the opening summary:

The attempt to use later sources, interpreted in ways that are at best open to dispute, in an attempt to argue against what generations of skeptical scholars have concluded to be likely with respect to the early Christian sources, is never going to make mythicism seem more probable than the hard-earned and intensely-researched consensus of historians and scholars, namely that there was a historical Jesus of Nazareth.

Also, Old Testament pseudepigrapha are involved.

A new Coptic magical handbook

WHAT'S NEW IN PAPYROLOGY: Choat, M, and Gardiner, I. edd., A Coptic Handbook of Ritual Power. From the new series The Macquarie Papyri.

New early fragments of b. Temura

THE TALMUD BLOG: A Tantalizing Tale of Temura Fragments – Guest Post by Noah Bickart.

As a Talmudist at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, I have long been accustomed to fantastical tales about the discovery of ancient manuscripts of the Babylonian Talmud. That famous picture of Schechter in the Geniza hangs everywhere in our halls. We are taught from the beginning not only to read Raphael Nathan Rabinovitch’s Dikdukei Soferim, but to imagine him on some Sunday morning in Rome, unlocking the Vatican Apostolic Library with his own set of keys, sitting down to transcribe Vatican 109 by candlelight. We hear of our own Haim Zalman Dimitrovsky, who supervised the doctorates of so many of our own teachers (Shamma Friedman, Mayer Rabinowitz, Joel Roth, and Burton L. Visotzky among countless others), roaming the monasteries of Italy, excato knife in hand, no binding safe from the search for more Seridei Bavli. And yet, we are accustomed to thinking that the time for these kinds of monumental discoveries, of even a few leaves of a Tractate stuffed into the binding of a 16th century print, has long past, and that only European libraries and monasteries might hold more finds. You can imagine my surprise when I found myself staring at an image in a Facebook message of what looked to my own eyes as an early European manuscript of the Bavli, apparently having formed the cover of a book of Church Music published in Prague in 1604, now housed in Fales Library at New York University.

[...]

Bit by bit, a letter at a time, whatever it takes. Until we're done.

Arch of Titus video

KHAN ACADEMY: Relief from the Arch of Titus, showing The Spoils of Jerusalem being brought into Rome. Narrated by Dr. Steven Fine and Dr. Beth Harris.

HT reader Yehoshua Rabinowitz. Lots more on the Arch of Titus here (scroll down) and links.

Destruction of Jewish heritage in the Middle East

ISRAEL HAYOM: Jewish heritage sites in Arab counties face extinction Old Jewish synagogues and cemeteries in Syria, Iraq, Libya and the rest of the Arab world are being turned into mosques or completely destroyed • Several Jewish organizations are sparing no effort to preserve these historic sites (Ksenia Svetlov). This article reports some very disturbing developments. Except:

This chaos has made the fate of the Jewish sites all too predictable. While several synagogues are still standing in Baghdad, Ezekiel's Tomb has been turned into a mosque. Most of the ancient Jewish inscriptions there have been destroyed or covered with cement. Daniel's Tomb in Mosul was blown up by Islamic State, which opposes worship at tombs in general, whether they are the tombs of Jewish prophets or relatives of the Prophet Muhammad in Mecca and Medina. In other areas, Islamic State and other jihadist groups are destroying sites held sacred by Shiites, including magnificent mosques, as well as Christian churches.

The atmosphere destruction has reached Syria as well. Aleppo's historic market suffered severe damage recently, together with the Umayyad mosque in Damascus and many Jewish sites. The Jobar Synagogue in Damascus, also known as the Prophet Elijah Synagogue, was demolished in May 2014. The site is in ruins, and no one will do anything to save what remains of the beautiful building that the Jewish community constructed in the Middle Ages.

Almost 20 years ago, the manuscripts known as the Damascus Codices, books of the Hebrew Bible that were written in Tiberias in the 10th century C.E., were removed from the Hosh al-Basha Synagogue in Damascus and taken out of Syria in a daring Mossad operation. They are now in the National Library in Jerusalem, far from those who dream of the destruction of books and people alike.

I have been following reports about the (traditional) Tomb of Ezekiel for years (most recently here). Reports from several years ago about its fate were pretty positive, but if this latest report is accurate, recent developments have taken a serious turn for the worse. More on the destruction of the Jobar Synagogue and on those Hebrew manuscripts from Damascus is here and links. I had heard of the destruction of the (traditional) tomb of Jonah in Mosul, but this is the first I recall hearing about the destruction of the (traditional) Tomb of Daniel there, although I see now that it too has been included in the news reports.

More on When the Greeks Ruled Egypt

EXHIBITION REVIEW: When the Greeks Ruled Egypt (James Romm, New York Review of Books). Excerpt:

Egypt was a melting pot of languages as well as of religious traditions. Aramaic arrived in the sixth century BCE as the lingua franca of Egypt’s Persian conquerors, joining the Greek, Carian, and Hebrew tongues already spoken there by pharaoh’s foreign mercenaries. A superb set of Aramaic papyri displayed in this show provides a kind of biographic sketch of one Ananiah, a Jewish garrison soldier stationed at Elephantine (modern Aswan) who married an Egyptian slave named Tamet, acquired property, refurbished his home, and passed on his estate to his children, Pilti and Jehoishema. Though they precede the Ptolemies by a century, and have no connection either to the Greeks or their rule, these perfectly preserved documents illustrate one family’s journey through time in the polyglot, multiethnic valley of the Nile.

Ananiah lived in an Egypt that chafed under Achaemenid Persian conquerors who ruled from afar and disdained local traditions. Small wonder then that the Ptolemies, who made themselves at home in Egypt and embraced much of its culture, proved such a long-lived and successful dynasty, overthrown in the end not by revolt or rebellion but by the armies of the rising power of Rome.

Background on the exhibition is here. More on the Elephantine papyri is here and links.

Zoroastrianism article

ARASH ZEINI: Zoroastrianism in Iranian history. A 2012 article by Michael Stausberg available online.

Moxnes, A Short History of the New Testament

NEW BOOK FROM I. B. TAURIS:

A Short History of the New Testament
Halvor Moxnes

£12.99 | $25.00

Few documents in world history can match the inspirational impact of the New Testament. For all its variety – gospels, letters and visions – this first-century collection of texts keeps always at its centre the enigmatic figure of Joshua/Jesus: the Jewish prophet who gathered a group around him, proclaimed the imminent end of the world, but was made captive by the authorities of Rome only to suffer a shameful criminal’s death on a cross. When his followers (including former persecutor Saul/Paul) became convinced that Jesus had defeated extinction, and had risen again to fresh life, the movement crossed over from Palestine to ignite the entire Graeco-Roman Mediterranean world. The author shows how the writings of this vibrant new faith came into being from oral transmission and then became the pillar of a great world religion. He explores their many varied usages in music, liturgy, art, language and literature. In discussing its textual origins, as well as its later reception, Moxnes shows above all how the New Testament has been employed both as a tool for liberation and as a means of power and control.

The Ketef Hinnom amulets

THE BIBLE PLACES BLOG: Artifacts of the Month: Ketef Hinnom Silver Amulets (Mike Caba).

And they are very cool artifacts, although I don't think they have any relevance for the dating of the Pentateuch. All they tell us is that the particular liturgical pronouncement inscribed on them is as old as 600 BCE, which is no particular surprise. Background here and links.

Review of Anton, Enchantress

THE JEWISH CHRONICLE: Heaven sent: Judaism’s magical mystery tour of the Talmud’s sorcery, spells (Toby Tabachnick).

The magic conjured up by J.K. Rowling in her “Harry Potter” series and the magic revealed in Maggie Anton’s new book, “Enchantress,” are two very different kinds of magic, according to the author best known for her popular “Rashi’s Daughters” trilogy.

“I didn’t make up the spells, like in ‘Harry Potter,’” Anton explained.

Rather, she said, the spells that appear in “Enchantress,” her fictional account of the life of Rav Hisda’s daughter — a character described in the Talmud, were all derived from actual incantations inscribed on Jewish archaeological artifacts dating from fourth-century Babylon.

[...]

Yes, but more like seventh-century Babylon. Background here and links.

Studia Philonica Annual XXVI

TORREY SELAND: The Studia Philonica Annual XXVI 2014. It's about to be published. Follow the link for TOC and additional information.