Antiquitopia

I just saw this positive review of Seth Schwartz's latest book, The Ancient Jews from Alexander to Muhammad , a condensation of his book, Imperialism and Jewish Society .  Imperialism and Jewish Society should be required reading of any scholar of ancient Judaism, ancient Christianity, and Roman history.

As you can see by my sidebar, I have added numerous ancient (and some medieval) Jewish manuscripts, texts, and translations.  Because of the sheer number and range of materials, I have not placed them in my typical order of digitized manuscripts, original language texts, and then translations, but largely in Chronological order and by collection: see ancient Jewish materials (Dead Sea Scrolls, Apocrypha, Pseudepigrapha, Philo, and Josephus) and then Rabbinic Materials (Mishnah, Talmud, etc.). There is plenty here, but if you know of any good websites, especially having digitized manuscripts or original language materials, please pass along the information. Moreover, check out the earlier sections (Biblical and early Christian), because I have added some materials to those as well.

I am participating in a conference at Union Theological Seminary this Thursday on "See the God." I am speaking on ancient, with an emphasis on late ancient Judaism. Here is a talk-teaser: There is an uncritical assumption that often circulates in scholarship and popular belief that Judaism is a religion of hearing to the exclusion or ignoring of seeing. This assumption operates by pointing to Jewish aniconism and reducing Jewish encounters with the divine to the Deuteronomistic emphasis on audition. Did not God say that humans could not see God—or literally God’s face—and live (Exod. 33:20)? Nonetheless, this reductive maneuver ignores the rich ambivalences of the Bible and later Jewish views concerning whether and how one can see God and live. Some follow Exod. 33:20 and categorically claim its impossibility. In this case, numerous intermediary figures fill the ocular gap, allowing appearances of aspects of God—like God’s Memra, Shekhinah, Glory, or even God’s tefilli...

For a while, I have been reconsidering ancient Jewish and, therefore, early Christian conceptions of God. Our conceptions of "monotheism" just does not always (and in fact rarely) seems to fit the bill. Ken Schenck from Indiana Wesleyan University and I have been posting here and there on this issue. I have tried to shift the question away from "were ancient Jews monotheistic?" to "how monotheistic were ancient Jews?" The rephrasing suggests a spectrum of positions, and, in fact, we find that ancient Jews had a variety of viewpoints of other gods' existence and who those other gods were and where they fit in the continuum of divine life. Today, Ken has posted what I would consider a more nuanced handling of much of the evidence that shifts us away from modern (and therefore anachronistic) conceptions of "monotheism" altogether. The question is not "whether" or "how." Instead, our terminology of, conceptions of, or d...

מי־כמוכה באלים יהוה (Exodus 15:11) The question comes from an issue raised regarding whether the enthronement of Enoch in the Similitudes of Enoch and Moses in Ezekiel's "Exagoge" actually "threaten" monotheism. I have been discussing it with Ken Schenck, professor of religion and philosophy at Indiana Wesleyan University and the blogger of Quadrilateral Thoughts . They have been side comments on a broader discussion, and so I thought I would make them the forefront of the discussion here. He also has a nice discussion of the spectrum of scholarly positions...so I would recommend reading that for helpful background. But, now, I would like everyone else to weigh in. Traditionally, scholars and people in general have assumed that ancient Judaism was monotheistic. Second Isaiah clearly thinks so--so we have one ancient Jew (or Judahite) who was monotheistic (with perhaps a school). And in a particular interpretation of the Sh'ma, one seems to be saying...