Search Results (14)

The article examines Paul’s critique of Jews in Romans, focusing on Romans 1–3. It adopts an approach of reading Paul within Judaism while differing from some interpreters representative of this approach by arguing that Paul is critiquing his fellow Jews and that his critique is relevant to his gentile audience. It argues against the traditional Protestant problematization of “works righteousness”, Sanders’ claim that Paul reasons from solution to plight, and the New Perspective’s problematization of ethnic distinctiveness. Paul’s critique is grounded in Jewish intramural prophetic critique and restoration eschatology, over against Torah-wisdom traditions. Consistent with this perspective, Paul’s fundamental criticism of Jews and Israel is their failure to keep the divine Torah. Central to Paul’s argument is the interplay between Jewish particularity and the universal scope of Paul’s gospel. Israel’s failure is an intermediate but not an ultimate divine purpose. Jewish distinctiveness and Torah reveal the seriousness of sin and affirm the justice of God’s wrath. Thus, Paul’s prophetic critique also implies a prophetic hope for Israel, intertwined with his critique of and hope for all humanity, whom he views as sinners standing under God’s judgment and needing salvation through faith in the Davidic messiah, Jesus. Full article

Ḥizzuq ʾEmunah (Faith Strengthened), written by the 16th-century Karaite Jewish scholar Isaac ben Abraham of Troki (Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth), was one of the most renowned Hebrew anti-Christian polemical works, meriting translation into most European languages. Troki authored his book during the Polish Reformation, a period marked by intense interactions and theological debates between Jews and Christians of various denominations. The author provides a comprehensive philological, grammatical, and historical analysis of the New Testament while relying heavily on the ideas and scriptural interpretations of radical Protestant theologians and Rabbanite scholars. Ḥizzuq ʾEmunah is unusual in a number of respects. This paper examines one such peculiarity—namely, the author’s view that the Torah and its commandments obligate Christians—as well as his eschatological model in which Christians will become part of Israel in the messianic age. His perspective is examined in our study with particular attention to the range of argumentative methods employed. Among these are the use of evidence from the New Testament, especially the accounts of Jesus and his disciples observing the commandments, and the contrast of early Christians’ conceptions and practices, which he views as close to the Mosaic law, with later Christian interpretations of the Old and the New Testament. Full article

In this article, we aim to gauge the perspectives of Israeli Jews on core Jewish beliefs in God, the ideas of the Election of Israel, the afterlife, the advent of the messiah, and the significance of the Temple Mount at the End of Days. We conducted a survey among a representative sample of 1204 Israeli–Jewish respondents. The survey was administered in Hebrew and fielded between 27 March and 18 April 2023. This study shows that among the Israeli public, there is a so-called secular–religious dichotomy, at least to some extent. We were able to confirm that about 50% of the sample prays often, believes that Judaism is the only true religion, and identifies as traditional or Orthodox. We also analyze a typology of secular Israelis, including traditionalist seculars, spiritual seculars, and atheist or agnostic seculars. This study further shows that there are important generational differences in Israeli society when it comes to questions of faith. The youngest Israelis comprise the most religious age cohort, while the older generations are the least religious. In the survey, we asked multiple questions on the opinions toward visiting, praying, and constructing a synagogue or a Temple on the Temple Mount. Full article

This article attempts to answer the following question: why did the author of the apocryphon called 1 Apocryphal Apocalypse of John choose to efface himself and adopt John as his pseudonym? Why not Peter or Paul? This paper argues that the author of 1 Apocryphal Apocalypse of John intended to harness the audience attached to John, the seer of Revelation, by taking his name as a pseudonym. This paper sustains this claim by demonstrating that, in antiquity, each author had a specific pool of readers, often made out of friends and accolades of the author. Thus, authors’ names evoke an audience attached to them. When an author takes another person’s name to write under, he does so out of necessity, because he does not have an audience. But, when he takes another’s person name, he does so hoping to trick the audience of the impersonated into reading him. Based on this insight, this article concludes that the author of 1 Apocr. Apoc. John wanted the readers of canonical Revelation to engage with his work and that he achieved his purpose as evinced by the fact that the titles of both works share an uncanny resemblance, ranging from identical titles to similar wording. Since titles in antiquity were given to the works by their readers, the most logical explanation for canonical Revelation and 1 Apocr. Apoc. John having the same titles is that they both shared the same readers. Finally, this article argues that, in line with recent research on the use of pseudepigraphy in Jewish, Christian, and Roman contexts, the author of 1 Apocr. Apoc. John wanted to be read by CR’s readers because he wanted to expand, criticize, rework, and update CR’s eschatological discourse, exemplified by a close reading of how 1 Apocr. Apoc. John criticized, reworked, and updated CR’s presentation of the resurrection to bring it in harmony with late Christian reflection on the subject. Full article

The dove, the most frequently mentioned bird in the Hebrew Bible, appears in diverse contexts, spanning its appearance as an element in the narrative (as in the case of Noah’s ark), and as an allegory and metaphor (as in the cryptic “sword of the dove”—twice in Jeremiah—and “the city of the dove”—Zephaniah). The dove even appears as the proper name of a prophet (or possibly of two, both named Jonah, son of Amittai). This article applies a communication perspective to better interpret some of these texts. We argue that the dove’s communicative attributes, to include unique acoustics, remarkable power of flight, but primarily the trait of returning home—the basis for the use of doves as carrier pigeons—may either explain or deepen the interpretation of many of the references to the pigeon in the Bible. In this vein, a major focus of the article is on using the dove’s homing ability as a key for reinterpreting the Book of Jonah. We conclude by suggesting that the dove’s trait of returning and, hence, its use as envoy made it a useful symbol of the deity’s presence in the world. In the Jewish reading, it became an emblem of one of the main political and eschatological themes of the Bible: the return home from exile, beginning with the exodus and return of Jacob’s sons to Canaan and ending with the Eschaton. Full article

This paper examines the view of the afterlife that emerges upon a straightforward and literal reading of the works of Maimonides that pre-date his Guide to the Perplexed. This view, whether or not it truly reflects the underlying intentions of Maimonides, has a central place in Jewish philosophy to this day. The view has to face a number of well-known objections. I argue that once the background metaphysics and epistemology has been appropriately updated to reflect some of what we have come to know over the intervening centuries, an intriguing eschatology emerges. The result is a conception of the afterlife that is Maimonidean in spirit and which can face down the objections that plagued its intellectual predecessor. Full article

In Paul’s eschatologically informed reading of Scripture, the Torah was never intended by God to be itself sufficient to secure membership in Abraham’s family. Because membership here had always been secured on the most fundamental level by God’s ḥesed, a future move of divine initiative is what the Torah and the prophets had all along anticipated. The redemption and reconciliation wrought by Christ has happened then in order to fulfill the original promise to Abraham, as seen through the lens of a broader salvation–historical matrix, in which the restoration of Israel and consequent ingathering of the nations envisaged by the prophets is integral. Romans 4 centrally concerns this new social phenomenon—the coming together of Jews and gentiles into a single, unified, eschatological covenant community, in which previous social identities necessarily retain their fundamental significance. The crucial implication of Paul’s theologizing is that to be a child of Abraham neither eradicates the import of traditional ethnic markers of Judaism, nor, wholesale, the ethnic distinctiveness of the varied people groups of the non-Jewish world. However, both groups are also therein transformed and united as one renewed humanity in Christ. Moreover, as the first person to be brought into a covenant relationship with God on the basis of God’s ḥesed, which was then met by the appropriate response of faithfulness toward God, Abraham functions for Paul as an ingroup exemplar for the Christ community. Full article

The purpose of this article is to explore what kind of light apocalyptic eschatology can shed on our understanding of Paul’s argumentation in 2 Cor 10–13. The focus is on 2 Cor 10:3–6, where Paul, using the topos of holy war, describes his struggle against the opponents in Corinth. The apostle elaborates on a biblical theme, which also appears in Jewish apocalyptic texts, such as 1QM and T. 12. Patr. Comparing 2 Corinthians with this literature allows us to see certain similarities: the performative nature of 2 Cor and 1QM; the radical division into the servants of light and the servants of darkness; the active participation of Belial/Satan in the present warfare, and the belief in the absolute defeat of the evil spirit at the end of time, combined with the gift of peace and the universal reign of the Messiah. There are also significant differences between Paul on the one hand, and 1QM and T. 12. Patr. on the other: the lack of dualism of the cosmic type and a non-violent nature of Paul’s struggle, resulting from the fact that the apostle imitates the meek and clement Christ. Ultimately, the apocalyptic eschatology sharpens Paul’s rhetoric, strengthens his authority in Corinth and enhances the weight of his appeals to the community, upon the acceptance of which the salvation of believers depends. Full article

This article explores the interrelationship between the two major issues that the theologians of earliest Christianity were pondering, i.e., how to explain the suspension of the eschaton, and how to understand the relation between Christ believers and the people of Israel. Whereas within a couple of decades a number of answers were already given to the former question in order to appease the questioners and marginalize the topic, the answer to the latter question has been not only formative for all Christian thinking for two millennia, but also utterly destructive for Jewish–Christian relations throughout the ages. This article recognizes that after two thousand years of supersessionism, it takes a lot of work to articulate a Christian theology which is fulfilment without supersessionism—but not as much work as the first generations of Christ believers had to devote to de-eschatologizing their message in order to be able to hand it over to future generations of Christians. They prevailed the challenge of their time—will we? Full article

This study is a comparative analysis of the appearances of the lower and upper Paradise, their divisions, and the journeys to and within them, which appear in mystical Jewish and Islamic sources in medieval Iberia. Ibn al-‘Arabī’s vast output on the Gardens of divine reward and their divisions generated a number of instructive comparisons to the eschatological and theosophical writing about the same subject in early Spanish Kabbalah. Although there is no direct historical evidence that kabbalists knew of such Arabic works from the region Catalonia or Andalusia, there are commonalities in fundamental imagery and in ontological and exegetical assumptions that resulted from an internalization of similar patterns of thought. It is quite reasonable to assume that these literary corpora, both products of the thirteenth century, were shaped by common sources from earlier visionary literature. The prevalence of translations of religious writing about ascents on high, produced in Castile in the later thirteenth century, can help explain the sudden appearance of visionary literature on Paradise and its divisions in the writings of Jewish esotericists of the same region. These findings therefore enrich our knowledge of the literary, intellectual, and creative background against which these kabbalists were working when they chose to depict Paradise in the way that they did, at the time that they did. Full article

Jewish apocalyptic literature emerged as a form of resistance literature during the intertestamental period. A product of marginalized communities, such literature is highly political, articulating the worldview of the politically oppressed and those who considered their religious freedoms to be under threat. As resistance literature, apocalypses cathartically utilize vivid descriptions of violence and poetic symbols of hope to encourage those who identify as victims to maintain their resistance to political pressure or injustice. This paper explores the ways the Christian Book of Revelation builds on this tradition to envisage hope in the face of systemic evil, political oppression, and injustice. Neither the noun nor verb for hope appear in Revelation, yet its eschatological vision of vindication, victory, and shared rule in New Jerusalem for those who are oppressed has inspired many Christians to hope for a new world order with significant implications for the present. After considering the historical context of Revelation, this paper will examine the ways the apocalyptic imagination of Revelation continues to be invoked and (mis)used in contemporary Christianized political discourse. I argue that the Book of Revelation continues to appeal precisely because it offers a framework for believing that the victim will become the victor in the eschaton. Full article

Numerous images embedded in the painted decorations in early modern Central and Eastern European synagogues conveyed allegorical messages to the congregation. The symbolism was derived from biblical verses, stories, legends, and prayers, and sometimes different allegories were combined to develop coherent stories. In the present case study, which concerns a bird, seemingly a nocturnal raptor, depicted on the ceiling of the Unterlimpurg Synagogue, I explore the symbolism of this image in the contexts of liturgy, eschatology, and folklore. I undertake a comparative analysis of paintings in medieval and early modern illuminated manuscripts—both Christian and Jewish—and in synagogues in both Eastern and Central Europe. I argue that in some Hebrew illuminated manuscripts and synagogue paintings, nocturnal birds of prey may have been positive representations of the Jewish people, rather than simply a response to their negative image in Christian literature and art, but also a symbol of redemption. In the Unterlimpurg Synagogue, the night bird of prey, combined with other symbolic elements, represented a complex allegoric picture of redemption, possibly implying the image of King David and the kabbalistic nighttime prayer Tikkun Ḥaẓot. This case study demonstrates the way in which early modern synagogue painters created allegoric paintings that captured contemporary religious and mystical ideas and liturgical developments. Full article

Synagogue architecture during the second half of the nineteenth century and the early part of the twentieth century was seeking novel modes of expression, and therefore the remains of ancient synagogues that were being discovered by western archeologists within the borders of the Biblical Land of Israel became a new source of inspiration. As far away as the New World, the design of contemporary synagogues was influenced by discoveries such as by the American Jewish architect, Arnold W. Brunner, who referenced the Baram Synagogue in the Galilee in his Henry S. Frank Memorial Synagogue at the Jewish Hospital in Philadelphia (1901). Less known is the fact that the archaeological discoveries in the Middle East also influenced the design of synagogues in the interwar period, in the newly-independent Baltic state of Latvia. Local architects picked up information about these archaeological finds from professional and popular editions published in German and Russian. Good examples are two synagogues along the Riga seaside, in Majori and Bulduri, and another in the inland town of Bauska. As was the case in America, the archaeological references in these Latvian examples were infused with eschatological meaning. Full article

This article unpacks Margarete Susman’s political and theological arguments at the core of her reading of the Book of Job. As I show through a reading of her oeuvre, Susman rejects political projects that she takes to be based on eschatology such as political Zionism. However, Susman should not be viewed merely as a critic of Zionism. I argue that an analysis tuned to the historical circumstances of her writing should recognize her stance on the nation-building project in Palestine as ambivalent rather than antagonistic. Susman’s conception of the Jewish spirit as rooted in self-sacrifice allows her to appreciate the national aspirations at the core of the Zionist project while rejecting Zionism’s exclusion of other Jewish national projects. I contend that Susman’s understanding of Jewish messianism as immanent rather than teleological informs her ambivalence toward Zionism as well as her original vision of Jewish political action. I argue in closing that Susman’s theodicy offers a novel vision for Jewish ethics that is not limited to the historical moment of its formulation. Susman’s theodicy also resonates within contemporary debates on Jewish diaspora in providing a non-centralized vision of Jewish national projects. Full article