Philo's 'Therapeutae' Reconsidered

The great book by Joan E. Taylor on Philo and the Therapeutae, which has been mentioned several times on this blog, has now received a review on www.bookreviews.org.
Joan E. Taylor,
Jewish Women Philosophers of First-Century Alexandria: Philo's 'Therapeutae' Reconsidered
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003.
pp. xv + 417, $99.00. Hardcover.
The review is written by the Norwegian scholar Jorun Okland, now resident at University of Sheffield, Sheffield, UK.
The reviewer finds that "the main contribution of the book is exactly the way it brings together different perspectives and research in different fields in order to illuminate one particular text and a group it refers to. The book can be seen as an attempt to place the Therapeutae properly back into a first-century Alexandrian Jewish context and not just configure them in light of later Christian monasteries or in light of Qumran materials as Philo’s unsuccessful attempt at describing the Essenes.
The book is another example of how entry through the gates of gender criticism may in fact lead to new and striking insights into unexpected places, such as the spatial organization of the Jerusalem temple and its replication in Alexandria and elsewhere.
This reader found the discussion of the convergence of cult and philosophy particularly valuable. Maybe Philo did not use the wrong word when he described Judaism as a philosophy but rather modern people have very limited ideas of what “philosophy” meant in the ancient world."
You can read the rest of the review HERE.

Back again, but..

Back again, but somewhat 'reduced'. I caught a flu on my vacation, or perhaps more possible; an early spring allergic reaction to pollen......:(

But I'll overcome; I hope to be able soon to comment on an article by Ellen Birnbaum on Philo as a leader.

Starting up this morning in my office, I also skimmed my bloglines to see what had been up on the various blogs these days. Wow, Mark G has 22 postings, Jim D 44, Jim W 86, to mention some form my 28 bloglines feeds. I realize I have some reading to do...... Didn't these people have easter vacation? In Norway we go to our cabins in the mountains for skiing at Easter times......, well, I know that means you got to have mountains, and snow, but...
We have plenty of both..... :) Have a look here.

Vacation

Due to an extended Easter vacation, I am getting
out of my office,
away from my computer,
away from my cell-phone,
enjoying some holidays at our cabin, looking for the spring.
Leaving this afternoon, I will not be back untill Wednesday March the 30th.
Enjoy the spring-time, wherever you may be!

The Septuagint: Some Current Research

There is a brief, but interesting article on The Bible and Interpretation website, by Jennifer Dines, University of Cambridge, on The Septuagint: Greek Scriptures for Greek-speaking Jews and Christians: Some Current Research. It is specifically relevant for students of Philo and other diasora-jewish works as she sets out to focus on the Septuagint in relationship to Hellenistic Judaism. She introduces here article thus: In her lucid introductory presentation on this website (Excerpts from “Invitation to the Septuagint”), Karen Jobes highlights the importance of the Septuagint for contemporary biblical studies and lists several areas of current research. These are (1) “establishing the original text of the Septuagint and its relationship to the surviving Hebrew text”; (2) “using the Septuagint for textual criticism of the Hebrew Bible”; (3) “determining the meaning of Greek words found in the Septuagint”; (4) “reconstructing the development of the extant Greek texts from the original translation”; and (5) “understanding the development of Jewish theology in the Hellenistic age” (p.6). Areas (1) to (4) are chiefly concerned with textual criticism. They cover highly technical enterprises which are absolutely essential: we need to know how far the texts we use correspond to the original translations, and this is a work that will never be finished. But there are other areas to be researched as well, and in this essay, I would like to say something more about item (5): the Septuagint in relationship to Hellenistic Judaism (raising historical as well as theological questions). In addition, I want to touch briefly on another area of increasing interest: the influence of the Septuagint on the language and thought of early Christianity (especially the New Testament and patristic writings) and the part it plays in the history of biblical interpretation. The rest of her article can be read here.

Updates

Recent updates on my Philo-Page at RPBS are: John M.G. Barclay,
‘By the Grace of God I am what I am’: Grace and Agency in Philo and Paul

Fílon de Alexandria e a Tradição Filosofica.
Dax Fonseca Moraes Paes Nascimento (CNPq/PUC-Rio – 2001/2003)
Orientador: Danilo Marcondes de Souza Filho (PUC-Rio)

Norman Bentwich,
Philo-Judaeus of Alexandria. Originally published 1910 by The Jewish publication society of America, Philadelphia. 273 pp.

Philo and his Sources

An article by John Drury, a recent Master of Divinity graduate of Princeton Theological Seminary, on

Philo and his Sources
is available at his site to be found here.

His own presentation of the article runs thus: "an early summary and evaluation of the great Jewish intellectual, who is acutely relevant for both Biblical and Patristic studies. My evaluation (second half) is inaccurate, immature, and far-too-harsh to be taken seriously; yet the summary (first half) is still a worthwhile foray into Philo studies [2000]."

You may read for yourself to see if you agree. :-) At least the guy is honest.

Bentwich on Philo

The book of Bentwich, Norman (1883-1971)on Philo Judaeus of Alexandria is now available on the Internet, in the Gutenberg Project and textbase:Norman Bentwich,
Philo Judaeus. (Originally published 1910 by The Jewish publication society of America, Philadelphia. 273 pp). It can be downloaded on plain text or in html format, zipped, or non-zipped.

Biblioteca d'Alessandria

The Internet is full of surprises. One might presume that a website called Biblioteca d'Alessandria would led one to the Library of alexandria, or at least have something to do with that institution. But not so with this one: Biblioteca d'Alessandria is "a cross-platform system, composed by a set of very handy and fast tools, designed for building digital archives of any complexity, from the personal archive of a single researcher up to the repository of a big institution, such as a University or Research Centrer. It is based on a peer to peer network and is compatible with the Open Archive Protocol (OAI-PMH)." The site is interesting in itself, but not if you look for the ancient or modern library of Alexandria, not to say Philo....:-) Have a nice day!

The Monotheists

I don't know this book personally, but from this webpage I gather that there is some dealing with the works of Philo in this volume:F. E. Peters,
The Monotheists: Jews, Christians, and Muslims in Conflict and Competition, Volume II: The Words and Will of God (Cloth | 2003 | $29.95 / £18.95 | ISBN: 0-691-11461-7. 448 pp.) You can find a list of contents here. You can also read Chapter One here in html or pdf format. The book was the Winner of Association of American Publishers Religion Professional/Scholarly Award.

Review of Runia, On the Creation

There is a review by Naomi G. Cohen
on David Runia, Philo of Alexandria: On the Creation of the Cosmos According to Moses. Introduction, Translation and Commentary to be found in Classical Review 2004, 54:50-51.

Josephus and the New Testament

Another conference in the German research project "Corpus Judaeo-Hellenisticum (CJH)" is to take place in Greifswald, 25. - 28. Mai 2006. See program here.
This symposium is the second one concerning the CJH; the first (“Philo und das NT - das NT und Philo”) was held in 1.-4. May 2003 in Eisenach/Jena. All the contributions to that conference can be found in:Philo und das Neue Testament. Philo und das Neue Testament ...,(Mohr-Siebeck) hg. von Roland Deines und Karl-Wilhelm Niebuhr, WUNT 172, Tübingen 2004. The organizers of the coming conference presents it thus:Nach bewährtem Modell soll es auch auf dem Greifswalder Symposium wieder Paar-Vorträge geben - die dasselbe Thema sowohl aus der Perspektive des Josephus als auch aus der Perspektive des Neuen Testamentes behandeln. Einzelvorträge zu speziellen Themen schließen sich an. Ein öffentlicher Vortrag ist für den 26. Mai (Fr), 20.00 vorgesehen.

Mit den Werken des jüdischen Historikers Flavius Josephus (1. Jh. n.Chr.) besitzen wir eine der wichtigsten Quellen für theologie-, zeit- und sozialgeschichtliche Informationen zum frühen Judentum. Die Josephusforschung hat in den letzten Jahrzehnten eine enorme Arbeit geleistet. Zentren liegen außer in Deutschland (Münster) besonders in England, Frankreich, den USA und jüngst auch in Israel. Dieses Potential gilt es, ganz neu für die Arbeit des CJH zu nutzen. You can read more about the whole great project of CJH here.

OT Pseudepigrapha Index

I join my several co-bloggers on the the internet in praising the laborious work of setting up a scripture index to the Old Testament Pseudepigrapha volumes (Ed. James H. Charlesworth, New York; Doubleday 1983.)

Thanks a lot to Kevin P. Edgecomb in Berkeley, California. The index is in- pdf format, and can be downloaded here.

Philo in the press...

Jim Davila has a posting on Philo being mentioned in the press: an article in the Arutz Sheva cites Philo in a call for passive resistance to Sharon's disengagement plan. Jim has this note from David Meadows who provides the link to Arutz Sheva article. The article is a stern voice against the Sharon plans, and draws on Philo's description of The Jewish opposition to the plans of Gaius Caligula of erecting a statue in the Temple of Jerusalem. Hard reading in several ways.

You can read Philo's description in his De Legatione ad Gaium/the Embassy to Gaius 184ff.

Rabbinics and Jewish Research

David Instone-Brewer at Tyndale House, Cambridge, has sendt a very informative circular letter, listing a lot of Jewish resources available on the Internett. I copy his mail here for further information to readers of this blog who may not subscribe to his letters:

Israel is a very web-based society. Many books, introductions and all the basic rabbinic sources are available freely on the internet in Hebrew though translations are more difficult to find. All the early traditions are becoming available in my TRENT online (the translations are freely available, but the discussions can only be previewed). This will, I hope, enable a revival in the serious use of rabbinic material for NT research.

1) Introductions & dictionaries
2) Talmud and related ancient legal texts
3) Targums & Aggadic texts
4) Commercial software
5) Jewish-Christian interface
6) Manuscripts and archaeology
7) Later Jewish works & collections
8) Jewish jokes

Introductions & dictionaries

Jewish Encyclopaedia - full text and searchable, including pictures
- for ancient Judaism this is more useful than the modern Encyclopaedia Judaica
<http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/>

Dictionary of the Targumim, the Talmud Babli and Yerushalmi, and the
Midrashic Literature by Marcus Jastrow - the standard English lexicon for rabbinic works.
http://www.tyndale.cam.ac.uk/jastrow/ (an experimental site - tell me if it works for you)

Hebrew alphabet & links to teach-yourself
- also has introductions to almost every other written text form. Amazing!
http://www.omniglot.com/writing/hebrew.htm

Bar mitzvah tutor - illustrated encyclopaedias of places, people, plants etc
http://bible.ort.org/intro1.asp?lang=1
incl. Torah readings with Hebrew, transliteration, translation and audio at:
http://bible.ort.org/books/torahd5.asp
and haftorah readings at: http://bible.ort.org/books/haftarotd4.asp

Jewish virtual library (actually an online encyclopaedia)
http://www.us-israel.org/jsource/index.html
Timeline: http://www.us-israel.org/jsource/History/timeline.html
Glossary: http://www.us-israel.org/jsource/gloss.html
- starts from no knowledge. A modern traditional viewpoint.

Introduction to Judaism
- from Biblical to modern times. By a Christian, but very good.
http://www.philosophy-religion.org/world/judaism.htm

Mechon Mamre - an ultra-othodox site with very useful tools & texts
http://www.mechon-mamre.org/index.htm
- plus hyperlinked introductions to Jewish lifestyle & festivals at
http://www.mechon-mamre.org/jewfaq/index.htm
Rabbis with Dates and introduction to dating rabbinic traditions
http://www.tyndale.cam.ac.uk/Brewer/PPages/trent/book/

Talmud and related ancient legal texts

Outline of contents for Talmuds/Mishnah/Tosephta
(all follow the same plan, mostly with same chapter numbers)
http://www.jasher.com/Btalmud.htm

Interactive Guide to Talmud page layout
- with introductions to the main commentaries etc
http://www.ucalgary.ca/~elsegal/TalmudPage.html

Babylonian Talmud in English:
The complete Talmud is only available on commercial CDs (see below)
though most of the tractates are found on one of the following sites:
Soncino translation of 16 tractates at
http://www.come-and-hear.com/talmud/index.html
Rodkinson’s translation of 22 tractates (+ 3 supplementary tractates):
http://www.sacred-texts.com/jud/talmud.htm
Rodkinson is mostly OK, but he omitted portions which are “defamatory to
the Rabbis” which he thought
were inserted by Jewish-Christians (see
http://www.sacred-texts.com/jud/t10/ht123.htm#fn_17)

Original-language texts
Babylonian Talmud -
http://www.mechon-mamre.org/b/l/l0.htm
Jerusalem Talmud -
http://www.mechon-mamre.org/b/r/r0.htm
Mishnah -
http://www.mechon-mamre.org/b/h/h0.htm
Tosephta -
http://www.mechon-mamre.org/b/f/f0.htm

Downloadable original-language Talmuds, Mishnah & Tosephta for PC & Palm
http://www.mechon-mamre.org/mtrpromo.htm
eDaf Talmud pages and audio explanation
- facsimiles of the traditional pages linked to audio translation &
explanation http://www.e-daf.com/ (but a simple English goy
like me finds the accent difficult)

Maimonides
The 613 Commandments in Torah, compiled by Maimonides
http://www.aish.com/holidays/Shavuot/The_613_Commandments.asp
Mishnah-Torah – a restatement of the law for practical observance
http://www.mechon-mamre.org/p/p0000.htm
As yet, only the beginning is translated into English, but the first 60 chapters are completed at:
http://www.geocities.com/yona_n.geo/kizzur/kiz-index1.html
Summary of Mishnah-Torah
http://www.torah.org/learning/halacha-overview/archives.html

Targums & aggadic texts

Targums in Aramaic - searchable
Onqelos, Pseudo-Jonathan, Neofiti, Fragmentary, & non-Torah Targums.
http://cal1.cn.huc.edu/searching/targumsearch.html

Targums in English
Onkelos, Pseudo-Jonathan, Fragmentary trans. by Etheridge. Torah only.
http://www.tulane.edu/~ntcs/pj/psjon.htm
and for Palm at http://www.tulane.edu/~ntcs/palm/palm.html

Pirqe Rabbi Eliezer Electronic Text Editing Project
- digitisation of 3 MSS of Pirqe R Eliezer
http://www.usc.edu/dept/huc-la/pre-project/

Legends of the Jews by by Louis Ginzberg
- a readable account conflating all Jewish aggadic literature (footnotes
are missing)
http://www.philologos.org/__eb-lotj/default.htm
The 3 vols of footnotes to primary references are only in the commercial version at:
http://www.bmsoftware.com/davkalegendsofthejews.htm

Mysticism during the Talmudic Era: Sources
http://www.acs.ucalgary.ca/~elsegal/Rels463/TalmudicMysticism.html

Tales And Maxims From The Midrash by Rev. Samuel Rapaport
http://www.sacred-texts.com/jud/tmm/index.htm
- large collection of selections from a wide range of Midrashim

Commercial software

There are lots, but these are the best:

Davka's Soncino Classics Collection
Babylonian Talmud (incl. Mishnah), Midrash Rabbah, in English & Hebrew
http://www.davka.com/cgi-bin/product.cgi?product=35
(don't buy at this price - sign up for emails and wait for special offers)

Bar Ilan Judaic Libraries
"All" rabbinic literature in Hebrew, searchable & linked
http://www.jewishsoftware.com/products/Bar_Ilan_uClassicu_Library__450.asp

Wolfson Talmud with audio translation-explanation
- linked Hebrew texts (Rashi,Tosefos,, Rambam, Shulchan Aruch) with popup
dictionary
FREE CD of 1st tractate:
http://www.jewishsoftware.com/default.asp?page=category&id=449

Jewish-Christian interface

Ancient Jewish Accounts of Jesus Josephus, Celcus, Tertullian, Talmud, Toledoth Yeshu - full texts with introductions..
http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/~humm/Topics/JewishJesus/

Several books on Jesus and Judaism collected by Messianic Jews
- incl. Christianity in Talmud and Midrash by R. Travers Herford
and Jesus Christ in the Talmud, Midrash, and the Zohar by Gustav Dalman
(which both deal with the censored Talmudic passages about Jesus)
http://www.saltshakers.com/lm/

TRENT - Traditions of the Rabbis in the Era of the New Testament - earliest traditions dated and explained, esp for NT relevance.
Preview at http://www.T-R-E-N-T.com

Into His Own – Primary Jewish sources for background of the NT
http://virtualreligion.net/iho/index.html

The Talmud Unmasked: The Secret Jewish Rabbinical Teachings Concerning
Christians
Genuine scholarship, but a very biased anti-Jewish 19th C work. Use with care!]
http://www.radioislam.net/talmud/talmudi.htm

Manuscripts and archaeology

Inscriptions from the Land of Israel
- aims to collect all inscriptions from Israel 330 BCE - 613 CE
http://dev.stg.brown.edu/projects/Inscriptions/index.html

Talmud Manuscripts Project - (Jewish National and University Library)
- facsimiles of 78 MSS of Babylonian Talmud & Mishnah from 11 libraries
http://jnul.huji.ac.il/dl/talmud/intro_eng.htm

Geniza collection at Cambridge University
http://www.lib.cam.ac.uk/Taylor-Schechter/
- good introduction to the history and texts
- very few texts actually available
Most texts from Cambridge and elsewhere are viewable at:
http://www.princeton.edu/~geniza/
- a search engine for an improved version of these texts is at:
http://etcweb.princeton.edu/almagest2/display/search.jsp?table=document&proj=GENIZA

Marriage & Divorce Papyri of the Ancient Greek, Roman and Jewish World
- all the papyri from 4th C BCE to 4th C CE
http://www.tyndale.cam.ac.uk/Brewer/MarriagePapyri/Index.html

Ancient Kettubot - Marriage certificates
- 1200 MSS covering 900 years, searchable. Pictures of the originals are often very beautiful
http://jnul.huji.ac.il/dl/ketubbot/

Michael Davidson - Early Hebrew Printing
- links to manuscripts and editions of Rabbinic texts
http://aix1.uottawa.ca/~weinberg/hebraica.html

Ancient Synagogues
Primary sources and archaeology for ancient synagogues
http://www.pohick.org/sts/index.html

Historical Jewish Maps & Atlases
Biblical, Archeaological, Talmudic to Modern.
http://www.hum.huji.ac.il/Dinur/links/maps.htm

Later Jewish works & collections

RAMBI Bibliographic Index of Articles on Jewish Studies
- aims to list all scholarly articles since 1966. Good search facilities.
http://jnul.huji.ac.il/rambi/

Judaica Archival Project
- about 1000 ancient MSS which are emailed to you for a small fee
http://www.jerusalembooks.com/jap/

Jewish National and University Library Digitized Book Repository
- rare and out-of-print books, mainly in Hebrew
http://jnul.huji.ac.il/eng/digibook.html

Judaica Libraries and Archives on the Web
- links to significant collections of Judaica around the world
http://www.bibliomaven.com/

Jewish Delaware - links for ancient & modern Judaism
http://jewishdelaware.esmartweb.com/PJewishTexts.htm

Jewish History Sourcebook
- links and documents covering the whole history of the Jews
http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/jewish/jewishsbook.html

Online Texts and Documents Related to Jewish History
- covers ancient to modern, concentrating on actual texts
http://jewishhistory.huji.ac.il/links/texts.htm

Votive im römischen Griechenland.

Another review, related to the first century CE world of Philo, is on votive offerings in the province of Achaia (southern and central Greece, Akarnania, Aetolia, Thessaly and parts of southern Epirus) from the middle of the IInd century B.C. up to the IVth century A.D.Günther Schörner,
Votive im römischen Griechenland. Untersuchungen
zur späthellenistischen und Kaiserzeitlichen Kunst- und
Religionsgeschichte.
Altertumswissenschafliches Kolloquium, 7.
Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 2003. Pp. 638; pls. 100. ISBN
3-515-07688-3. EUR 90.00.

Reviewed by Mary-Anne Zagdoun, CNRS, ParisIntroduction:
"In 638 pages and 100 plates, the author gives us a monumental, fine and scholarly study of a little-known and rather neglected chapter in Greek sculpture. In fact, in the 1970s, while literature on Greek sculpture flourished, it was thought very brave to venture into Hellenistic times, let alone the Imperial Age. Greek Imperial sculpture in Greece was very neglected, and votive reliefs were thought to have practically disappeared in Roman times. Günther Schörner's fine book proves the contrary and provides us with two catalogues to meditate upon: a catalogue comprising 1240 documents of inscribed votive offerings of various kinds (statues of gods, portrait statues, reliefs, but also architectural fragments, marble ware...) (pp. 225-548), and a second catalogue of 100 votive reliefs, some of which have already been classified in catalogue I (pp. 549-578): votive reliefs, even uninscribed, are the only votive offerings that can immediately be recognized as such."
The rest of the review can be read here.

Bound by the Bible: Jews, Christians and the Sacrifice

The Bryn Mawr Book Review service has posted another review related to the Judaism of the time of interest for this blog., this time it is about various interpretations of the Aqedah Isaac, and what they can tell us about the relations between Jews and Christians in late antiquity.Edward Kessler,
Bound by the Bible: Jews, Christians and the Sacrifice
of Isaac.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004. Pp. xii, 222.
ISBN 0-521-83542-9. $75.00.
Reviewed by Pieter W. van der Horst, Utrecht University.
Introduction:
"In this book Kessler, director of the Cambridge Centre for Jewish-Christian Relations, examines whether there was an 'exegetical encounter' between Jewish and Christian interpreters of the Bible during the first six centuries CE and, if so, what this may tell us about relations between Jews and Christians in late antiquity. He focuses on the interpretations of the story of Genesis 22 (the 'binding [or: sacrifice] of Isaac,' also known as the Aqedah, 'binding'), an obvious choice since Jewish tradition increasingly attributed atoning value to the 'sacrifice' of Isaac whereas Christians attributed such value only to Jesus' death. K. argues that there was a two-way encounter and that neither Jewish nor Christian interpretations of the Aqedah can be understood properly without reference to the other. This encounter (to be distinguished from shared interpretation), K. says, was probably more than just a literary one, as happens when one or more of the following criteria are met: an explicit reference to a source (of the opposite party), the same scriptural quotations, the same literary form, and the same or opposite conclusions. The more criteria are fulfilled, the greater the chance of hitting upon an exegetical encounter in which the interpreters reacted to each other's work."

The rest of the review can be read here.