Many early Christian and late Second Temple texts describe deceit as impurity. In this article, I delineate the development of this discourse and argue that it derived its power from several characteristics: mixing deceit impurity with other types of...
While “Merkavah mysticism” as a religious movement is a phenomenon of Late Ancient and Medieval Judaism, scholars have debated whether the origins of this movement are traceable to traditions of the divine Merkavah (chariot-throne) preser...
Hag/Zech 1–8 and Ezr/Neh have in common that they are often rated as primary sources when it comes to the development of Second Temple Judaism(s). Consequently, it is mostly assumed that the Persian governors of Judah (like the Persian kings) s...
The letter to the Hebrews develops a distinct christological and soteriological concept of Jesus as both high priest and unique sacrifice once and for all. In doing so, Hebrews remains largely faithful to cult traditions of Second Temple Judaism. Esp...
This article examines how the model of sect-cult development in antiquity helps us understand Paul’s discussion of Jewish traditions in the Letter to the Romans. In the traditional Augustinian–Lutheran scholarship, Romans has often been i...
For several hundred years, from the late Iron Age to the end of the 2nd century BCE, the southern neighbor of Judea was “Idumea”, populated by descendants of Edomites, together with Qedarite and other Arabs and a mix of additional ethnici...
Exile was part of the juridical system of the late Republican and early Imperial Rome. 1 Pet 2.11 adopts the language of exile to identify its audience’s place within the world. Subsequent verses indicate a disparity between their own place and...
This research explores the interpretation of nomos in Galatians 2:11–21 within the light of Greco-Roman associations and Palestinian chavurot. As such, it proposes a reading of the text and conflict as a localized issue of conflicting associati...
This article argues that the oracles of Oracula Sibyllina 4 interpreted and responded to specific crises facing ancient Mediterranean Jewish and pagan communities. With this in mind, it advances the idea that the text can be read as a Jewish reaction...
The Greek fragments conventionally known as Pseudo-Eupolemus, preserved by Eusebius via Alexander Polyhistor, offer a striking Hellenistic rewriting of the Abraham traditions, weaving together biblical narrative, mythographic genealogy, antediluvian...
This paper approaches the corpus of the Dead Sea Scrolls with the aim of underlining how a form of prophecy after (or besides) prophets is constructed in Second Temple Judaism. In contrast and parallel with other religions (saliently Islam), where pr...
The present article sets out to answer the question of the extent to which Naḥman Krochmal’s reappraisal of Philo of Alexandria in the light of his Jewish faith reflects a deep spiritual crisis that was engulfing the Maskilic world: the encroaching e...
Many modern rabbis insist that original sin was invented by St. Paul, and that it does not have a Jewish antecedent. Instead, rabbinic Judaism explains human evil in terms of “yeṣer ha-raʻ,” “the evil inclination.”...
This article describes the socially formative function of the Corinthian letters and the role that Paul’s reinterpretation of scripture plays in shaping the Corinthians’ social identity. Paul’s sustained engagement with scriptural t...
Revelations, visions and their interpretations create in themselves authority. In early Jewish Aramaic tradition, however, this is increased by the role of writing. Enoch receives revelations of the secrets of heaven from heavenly tablets by the Holy...
There are many stories in the Hebrew Bible that depict prominent Jews in the epicentre of a foreign imperia, and biblical scholarship essentially classifies every such narrative as court tales in terms of genre. Notwithstanding nuances and sub-catego...