Research Medieval Judaism and Jewish Christian relations in Late Antiquity and Medieval age.

The study of the Samaritan version of Saadya Gaon’s translation of the Pentateuch (the tafsīr), mainly based on MS London BL OR7562, shows that a Saadyan version in Arabic Characters was adopted by the Samaritans and adapted to the Samaritan Hebrew Pentateuch. The transmission of this version in MS London BL OR7562 continued after the early Samaritan Arabic translation of the Pentateuch and perhaps also its later revision had already been created, since many of their translations were preserved in MS BL OR7562, mixed with its Saadyan basic text. As MS London BL OR7562 also contains numerous words and phrases paralleled only in Christian Arabic translations of the Pentateuch and Saadyan adaptations, mainly related to the Peshitta tradition, it is reasonable to assume that these were the sources of this Samaritan Saadyan version and possibly also of the other Samaritan Arabic translations. The Samaritan version of Saadya’s translation of the Pentateuch also reveals some parallels to tenth- and eleventh-century Karaite translations and it contains prominent Aramaic and Islamic vocabulary, unfamiliar in other versions of Saadya’s tafsīr.

The volume "New Directions in Spiritual Kinship: Sacred Ties Across the Abrahamic Religions," edited by Todne Thomas, Asiya Malik and Rose Wellman, undertakes a comparative analysis of "spiritual kinship" (such as God-parenthood) in Christianity, Judaism and Islam. My chapter, "Kinship as Ethical Relation," starts by questioning the usefulness of spiritual kinship as a category for the understanding of Judaism and expands that critique into an alternate model that might be more useful for comparative purposes. I argue that the idea of "Spiritual Kinship" emerges precisely from an a set of Christian taxonomies that are often implicitly or explicitly anti-Jewish (kinship of the flesh vs. kinship of the spirit, the letter and the spirit of the law, etc.) which makes it unsuitable as an "Abrahamic" category. Moreover, the specific ways in which it is unsuitable for comparative purposes actually demonstrate the importance of this category for understanding of Christianity and of the anthropological kinship categories (affinal, consanguineal and fictive)  that were in large measure adapted from European Christian sources. Viewing kinship as a set of ethical relations, by contrast, does indeed allow for useful comparison across these religious divides and makes better sense of the ethnographic and textual data. Examples are brought from both modern and medieval Jewish life.

After serving during turbulent times at the court of Pedro’s predecessor, Alfonso XI (r. 1312–50), Sem Tob de Carrión (c. 1290-c. 1369) advocates in "Proverbios morales" for sensible policies and toleration toward Jewish subjects. As a work that also conveys the urgency among Jews to set aside internal differences in the face of mounting anti-Judaism, "Proverbios morales" points out lessons to be learned concerning inter-religious tensions by recalling the late medieval intra-Jewish conflict between orthodox Rabbinism and a longstanding anti-Rabbinite tradition.

Après une brève présentation du corpus des écrits de controverse judéo-chrétienne, nous nous intéresserons ici à la place qu’y occupent les événements, réels ou fictifs, présentés comme des « disputes ». Dans quelle mesure peuvent-ils être dissociés de l’ensemble qu’ils contribuent à constituer ? Leurs caractéristiques correspondent-elles aux éléments de définition retenus, dans l’argumentaire de notre colloque, pour les « disputes religieuses » ? Les termes les plus couramment utilisés dans l’analyse des controverses/disputes religieuses sont-ils bien adaptés à cet objet particulier ? Les réponses à ces différentes questions ne valent-elles que dans ce cas précis, ou peuvent-elles être étendues à d’autres corpus analogues ?

Der aus dem ungarischen Ofen (Buda) stammende und in Franken, später in der Pfalz tätig gewesene Konvertit und Hebraist, Christoph (ursprünglich Jakob) Mandel gab mindestens sechs Schriften in den Druck, davon sind vier erhalten geblieben: Das Jesus Christus sey das ewig götlich Wort (1536), Rechnung der LXX Wochen Danielis (1552), Beweisung aus der Juden Gesatz (1557) und Ein fein tröstlichs Gebet in der Verfolgung (1558). In diesen Werken zeigt sich ein christlicher Kabbalist, der zeitlich und sachlich Johannes Reuchlin nahesteht, der aber nicht die herkömmlichen Themen der Kabbala, vielmehr die klassischen Loci der christlichen Dogmatik behandelt. Auch die zuerst von Gustav Hammann rekonstruierte Biographie Mandels (1970) wird mit neuen archivalischen Daten ergänzt.

«Behold, my servant shall understand» is the title of the lively commentary to Is 52,12–53,12 which the Catalan rabbi and exegete Moseh ben Nachman, better known as Nachmanides, composed in the months following his «debate» inBarcelona (July 1263) with the Dominican Pau Christià. In Nachmanides’ exegesis,the Suffering Servant is not so much the people of Israel, as held by traditional Jewish exegesis but nor is it Jesus as the Christians wanted. He is rather a flesh and blood individual, called to free Israel at the moment established by God the positive aspects of which he sets out. This little work, therefore, intends to strengthen the resistance of the Jewish communities of Aragon in the face of the Dominican missionary  effort and perhaps to keep alive their messianic expectation.

RESUMO: Pedro Afonso é um rabino judeu de Huesca (Aragão) que viveu entre meados do século XI (c. 1062) e a primeira metade do século XII (c. 1140). Optou por se converter ao Cristianismo e ao que tudo indica foi batizado pelo rei de Aragão, Afonso o Batalhador, de quem recebeu o nome, além do prenome de Pedro, o santo do dia. Autor de ampla obra e polemista que alterou radicalmente os termos do debate entre o Judaísmo e o Cristianismo, no século XII. Em primeiro lugar revelou o papel da lei oral judaica, o assim denominado Talmude, que a seu ver distanciava os judeus da revelação comum ás duas religiões, que seria a autoridade (auctoritas) e que era a base da polêmica até então; em segundo lugar, à sua maneira, trouxe aportes pretensamente científicos e racionalistas embasados na filosofia e nas ciências da época (ratio) para a polêmica; e num terceiro aporte refletia sobre a efetiva legalidade da presença judaica nos domínios da Cristandade, que se baseava nos termos da tolerância apregoada por Agostinho de Hipona que vislumbrava num futuro próximo uma função dos judeus na escatologia cristã, pois estes se converteriam no final dos tempos, no Milênio. Assim colocava os judeus contemporâneos como uma espécie de hereges, que se distanciaram da revelação. Pedro Afonso é um marco na agudização da condição judaica no ocidente medieval.

abstr act This article presents an original reading of the Bavli account of Honi’s 70-year sleep. It argues that printed editions present a corrupt reading of Honi’s initial statement, which originally read ‘Seventy years like a dream!’, expressing Honi’s existential dread of his own mortality. The story must further be understood as a conscious inversion of the
Yerushalmi’s version of the tale, rejecting the Yerushalmi’s optimistic vision of the role of individual holy men in Jewish history in favour of a tragic account of individual loneliness.

Sefer Yeṣirah, or “Book of Formation,” is one of the most influential Jewish compositions of late antiquity. Attributed to the patriarch Abraham, Sefer Yeṣirah claims that the world was created by the powers of the decimal number system and the twenty two letters of the Hebrew alphabet. This short, enigmatic treatise was considered canonical by Jewish philosophers and Kabbalists and has fascinated Western thinkers and writers as diverse as Leibnitz and Borges. Nonetheless, Sefer Yesirah is nearly impossible to contextualize mainly due to its unique style and the fact that it does not refer to, nor is it referenced by, any other source in late antiquity. After a century and a half of modern scholarship, the most fundamental questions regarding its origins remain contested: Who wrote Sefer Yeṣirah? Where and when was it written? What was its “original” version? What is the meaning of this treatise?

In “Sefer Yeṣirah” and Its Contexts, Tzahi Weiss explores anew the history of Sefer Yeṣirah. Through careful scrutiny of the text’s evolution, he traces its origins to the seventh century C.E., to Jews who lived far from rabbinic circles and were familiar with the teachings of Syriac Christianity. In addition, he examines the early reception of Sefer Yeṣirah by anonymous commentators and laypeople who, already in the early stage of its reception before the twelfth century C.E., regarded Sefer Yeṣirah as a mystical, mythical or magical treatise, thus significantly differing from the common rabbinic view of Sefer Yeṣirah in that period, which viewed it as a philosophical and scientific treatise. Examined against the backdrop of this newly sketched historical context, Sefer Yeṣirah provides a unique and surprising aperture to little-known Jewish intellectual traditions of late antiquity and the early Middle-Ages which, despite their distance from the rabbinic canon, played a vital role in the development of medieval Jewish learning and culture.

Written between 1269 and 1284 in the Convent of Saint Catherine in Barcelona, Ramon Martí’s Pugio fidei (“The Dagger of Faith”) is a lengthy handbook intended for Mendicants engaged in preaching to the Jews (and the Muslims). The argumentation is founded on passages drawn from multiple sources, including Arabic and Jewish ones, reproduced in the original language (in Hebrew characters, when it comes to Arabic), translated and commented by the author himself. Among these passages, fourteen citations/mentions of Maimonides’ Guide of the Perplexed. They display two particularities that may prove to be very significant for the study of the Guide’s reception: on the one hand, the passages cited correspond to the original Arabic, Ibn Tibbon’s or Al Ḥarizi’s translations, and, on the other hand, Ramon Martí chose to provide his own translation for all of them, even though it appears that a complete Latin translation had been circulating since the beginning of the 13th century (particularly in Dominican circles). The article is followed by several appendices, including the complete and comparative citation, on three columns, of each passage according to: 1) the 17th century editor, who uses several manuscript copies of the Pugio fidei, some of which are lost today; 2) Ibn Shmuel’s edition for Ibn Tibbon’s version; 3) the Paris manuscript (Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Héb. 682) and Schlossberg’s edition for Al Ḥarizi’s version. For each of the passages, the critical apparatus also gives the alternative readings in the autograph manuscript (Paris, Bibliothèque Sainte-Geneviève 1405), unknown by the editor, which is the most complete witness of the Pugio fidei’s textual tradition.    https://journals.openedition.org/yod/3912

This is a transcription and translation of the manuscript discovered by Claudius Buchanan in the Synagogue of the "Black Jews" of Travancore (Cochin), India around the turn of the 1800s. The text is in Mishnaic Hebrew, but frequently diverges into Aramaic (sometimes with seeming influence from the Peshitta, or some other Syriac text). The manuscript today is held in the Cambridge University Library and contains roughly the entire New Testament in Hebrew, believed to have been translated in part by a certain 17th-18th c. Rabbi Ezekiel Rahabi (although his identity is disputed). The portion of this transcription and translation is based on a manuscript of the Cambridge University Library, MS heb. Oo.1.32, fols. 1r-21v. A more elegant copy of the text can be found in the Gaster Hebrew MS 1616 of the Library of the University of Manchester.

The Jewish life of Jesus (Toledoth Yeshu) constitutes one of the most important Jewish anti-Christian literary traditions. Its development can be followed in the long run of Jewish-Christian relations and polemics from late antiquity to the modern period. Toledoth Yeshu presents us with a Jewish account of Christianity, mocking Jesus as an illegitimate child and a charlatan, and describing his disciples as a bunch of violent rogues. A “best-seller” among medieval Jews, Toledoth Yeshu was also discussed by Christian scholars with a view to expose the alleged Jewish hatred of Christianity in their own anti-Jewish polemics. In the Enlightenment context, Toledoth Yeshu came to be subverted by authors such as Voltaire, with the intention to foster their critique of religion and question the historical status of the biblical narrative.
Whereas Toledoth Yeshu has most often been studied from a text-critical perspective, the present conference aims to go beyond philological debates and explore the place and function of Toledoth Yeshu within the different historical and cultural contexts in which it surfaces and circulates. This conference will thus connect recent inquiries into this text to wider issues pertaining to the historical construction, transformation, and preservation of religious identities, and their inherent discourses on gender, ethnicity, and religion.

The Babylonian Talmud contains a tale about the creation of an artificial calf by two sages who dealt with hilkhot yetzirah, or laws of formation (b. Sanhedrin 65b). Already in the eleventh century CE the phrase "Laws of Formation" was being used to refer to the short, enigmatic, and influential treatise Sefer Yetzirah (Book of Formation), which depicts the creation of the world by means of the twenty-two letters of the Hebrew alphabet. The connection between hilkhot yetzirah and Sefer Yetzirah is of great consequence in determining the period in which the latter was edited, as well as its reception history.

Interreligiöse Diskurse sind ebenso von Erzählmotiven, Geschichten und Narrativen geprägt wie von gegenseitiger Kenntnis der theologischen Schriften und rationaler Argumentation. Die Wahrnehmung und Deutung des Islam durch Christ*innen in Europa war bis ins hohe Mittelalter hinein weniger von der Kenntnis und dem Studium des Koran bestimmt als vielmehr von Erzählungen über Muḥammad.
In diesem Aufsatz werden die markantesten Variationen des christlichen Erzählmotivs von den häretischen und jüdischen Lehrern Muḥammads und ihrer Bedeutung bei der Entstehung des Qurans vorgestellt und in ihrer Funktion als hermeneutische Schlüssel für die jeweilige Darstellung des Islam im konkreten historischen Kontext ausgedeutet. Auf dieser Grundlage wird anhand von vier Aspekten diskutiert, welchen Beitrag eine kritische historische Hermeneutik zur interreligiösen Verständigung heute leisten kann. Dabei werden die ambivalenten Potentiale religiöser Narrative ausgelotet und es wird gefragt, welche Rolle der jeweilige Dritte im dialogischen Gespräch zwischen Christentum, Judentum und Islam hat.

Книга подготовлена в рамках проекта в Центре исследований диаспоры ТАУ в 2016-2019 гг. В ней собраны результаты многолетней работы по проблемам еврейско-славянских культурных контактов. «Ханаан» – название славянских земель от Праги до Днепра в средневековых еврейских источниках; «Рутения» – принятое в позднесредневековой христианской литературе обозначение белорусских и западноукраинских земель. Цель труда – комплексное изучение еврейско-славянской книжности на территории нынешних Беларуси и Украины, в XII-XVI вв., а также ее отражения в литературе Московского государства. Задачи книги заключаются в том, чтобы реконструировать облик книжников – участников еврейско-славянского диалога; проанализировать гипотезы и концепции причин и результатов двусторонних контактов; представить еврейско-славянское наследие в языке, жанровой системе средневековой книжности и генезисе оригинальной беллетристики.

Traduction entièrement nouvelle de l'Apologie, tenant compte des dernières éditions ainsi que des enseignements tirés de l'édition-traduction du Dialogue avec Tryphon publiée en 2003, avec les articles qui l'accompagnent. Bien que les destinataires ne soient pas les mêmes, le mode de composition de l'Apologie présente, dans le détail, d'évidentes analogies avec celui du Dialogue (démarche rigoureusement argumentée et solidement structurée, au sein de laquelle le passage d'un thème à un autre se fait souvent, de manière implicite, par glissements successifs). Dans l'Apologie comme dans le Dialogue, Justin raisonne à la fois de manière discursive (plan apparent)  et analogique (démarche sous-jacente).  L'ensemble des commentaires qui ne pouvaient pas trouver place dans cette édition Pléiade se retrouveront dans une prochaine monographie sur Justin de Naplouse tenant compte de l'ensemble des données révérées par l'analyse des textes qui lui sont attribués.

Democracy has never been more popular. It is successfully practiced today in a myriad of different ways by people across virtually every cultural, religious or socio-economic context. The forty-five essays collected in this companion suggest that the global popularity of democracy derives in part from its breadth and depth in the common history of human civilization. The chapters include exceptional accounts of democracy in ancient Greece and Rome, modern Europe and America, among peoples’ movements and national revolutions, and its triumph since the end of the Cold War. However, this book also includes alternative accounts of democracy’s history: its origins in prehistoric societies and early city-states, under-acknowledged contributions from China, Africa and the Islamic world, its familiarity to various Indigenous Australians and Native Americans, the various challenges it faces today in South America, Eastern Europe, the Middle East and Asia, the latest democratic developments in light of globalization and new technologies, and potential future pathways to a more democratic world. Understanding where democracy comes from, where its greatest successes and most dismal failures lie, is central to democracy’s project of inventing ways to address the need of people everywhere to live in peace, freedom and with a say in the decisions that affect their lives.

In his Summa Sacre Magice, Berengarius Ganellus had a special place for Hebrew, which he described as superior to Latin, Arabic, and Greek. Although Ganellus was not fluent in Hebrew, and there is no evidence that he read Hebrew sources, he surely draws upon Jewish sources. This article examines how Ganellus used some Jewish texts in his summa, especially the text Shi'ur Qomah. Shi'ur Qomah is a text known from at least the tenth century, in which a lengthy description of the body of God, its organs, and their divine names. As will be shown, Ganellus's unique use of Sh'iur Qomah underlines his eclectic approach and creativity.

More than 20 years after presenting his first interpretation of the mosaic from the House of Aion in a paper entitled “Uwagi na temat mozaiki z Domu Aiona w Nea Paphos (Cypr)” (Meander 9/10, 1987, p. 421-438, in Polish, and translated to English: « The Immortality of the Human Soul and the Dionysiac Mysteries in the 4th Century Allegory [in Connection with the Interpretation of the Mosaic from the “House of Aion” at Paphos in Cyprus]»), where he proposed reading the five mythological panels (1. Leda and Zeus; 2. Dionysus on Mount Nysa; 3. The Dionysian thiasos; 4. Apollo and Marsyas; 5. The Apotheosis of Cassiopeia) as an allegory of the destiny of the human soul and body, starting with conception and ending with the liberation of the soul and its apotheosis, the author now enhances his initial interpretation with numerous reflections concerning the historical context of this work of art, created in the years 320-360.
If, according to the author, the mosaic is a “Hymn” in honour of the pagan gods, Man (his soul) and his place in the (pagan) universe, then at the same time it polemicises with the Christian faith and its God, Jesus Christ.
The author puts forward numerous new solutions relating to the mosaic’s iconography and iconology. Analysis of the mosaic also leads him to propose a solution to the as-yet unanswered question regarding the absence of images of the crucified Christ in Christian art of the 3rd and 4th centuries, up until 420/430, when the first images of Christ on the cross appear.
CONTENTS:
Introduction
1. Research to-date (recap)
2. Description of mosaic (recap)
2.1. Composition of five mythological scenes
2.2. Brief iconographic description of mythological panels
2.3. Outline of individual iconographic elements and their respective roles
2.4. The pagan gods’ air of majesty and dignity as an expression of piety
3. A few words about the pagan reaction
4. An apology of pious human life according to pagan principles and a polemic on the Christian model of Man and his theological idol, Jesus Christ
4.1. Divine intervention in the act of human conception (allusion to/polemic on the Annunciation to the Virgin Mary)
4.2. The Epiphany of Dionysus (an allusion to the Epiphany of Christ – Theou Pais)
4.3. The procession and dissemination of Dionysian order (allusion to/polemic on Christ’s entry into Jerusalem)
4.4. The error of Marsyas (polemic on/allusion to the error of Jesus the Messiah): arrest, sentencing for arrogance and lack of piety (asebeia) and condemnation to a martyr’s death
4.5. The anabasis (or anagoge psyches) of a ‘beautiful soul’ (allusion to/polemic on the Ascension of Christ)
5. A few words on the mosaic programme prior to final conclusions
Final conclusions
Key words: mythological mosaic, House of Aion, Nea Paphos, Late Antiquity, Roman art, allegorical narrative, allusive language of mythological pictures, wordplay (Marsyas-Messias), Jesus Christ, anti-Christian polemic, Dionysos, Cassiopeia, Apollon, Nereides, Abstract Personifications, Greek Mythology, ΚΥΠΡΟΣ

This is a slightly revised version of the published article, "Tolerance in Judaism: The Medieval and Modern Sources." Copyright is retained by the author.

Tolerance is concerned with how one treats differences and boundaries, both within our own group, and between our group and others. These two are intertwined, for tolerance of internal differences builds a foundation for tolerance of external difference. Furthermore, delineations of differences and boundaries are systemic matters, structuring a group's world-view and self-definition, political attitudes, and much else. So this article will briefly review folk attitudes and Rabbinic statements from the medieval to the modern periods relating to diversity amongst Jews, as well as the actual treatment of internal diversity and sectarian tendencies within medieval and modern Judaism. It will then turn to attitudes to non-Jewish cultures and religions. To start with, we must ask how non-Jewish religions have actually been treated in the various independent, mostly quite remote Jewish nations that have arisen over the past two millenia, and how these treatments were justified. But we usually have more information about attitudes of Jews under majority Christian and Muslim rule. We can therefore review the historical changes in medieval Jewish attitudes to other religions in Muslim and Christian lands, in philosophical writings (particularly by Judah Halevi and Maimonides), halakhic (legal) discussions and mystical texts. All of these have influenced present attitudes. The most pivotal formulation of the relationship between Jews and non-Jews in the modern period, however, was given by Moses Mendelssohn in the 18th century. His views on tolerance and non-Jews helped to shape later Jewish self-understanding, as can be shown in the writings of Reform, Conservative and neo-Orthodox movements in the 19th and 20th centuries. The article will close with a brief account of some modern Jewish thinkers whose views of other religions have been significant.

In this article it is argued that the Qiblah passages in the Qur’an, which are commonly understood as referring to the direction of the prayer, are directly engaging with and interpreting the Shema passages in Deuteronomy and their Talmudic commentaries. By defining and applying the method of intertextual polysemy, nine points of intertextuality are identified between the various Qur’anic, Biblical, and Talmudic passages. Against this background, the article implies that narrations from traditional Qur’anic commentaries are lacking in their interpretation of these passages, since they do not employ any extra-Quranic contexts to explain their meaning. Through the method of intertextual polysemy, the alternative thesis propounded here is that the historical reference for the Qiblah passages is the Shema.

While historians examining thirteenth-century Jewish-Christian relations in Iberia and greater Europe have shown that Christian anti-Jewish violence and rhetoric increased, they have not explored whether this pattern also exists in coeval canon law, which was then flourishing.  This raises questions about the degree to which normative law reflected concurrent intellectual and lay Christian anxieties about Jews and conceptions of Judaism. My dissertation begins filling that gap by exploring how Raymond de Penaforte (d. 1275), a leading legal scholar from Barcelona, approached Jews in his legal works and broader socioreligious activities. I argue that Raymond’s normative law codes echo coeval actionable matters involving Jews – especially conversion – and problematization of Judaism as a looming spiritual danger, but not popular discourses dehumanizing Jews as monstrous threats to Christian welfare.  However, I also show, contrary to the current historiography on Raymond, that his theoretical concern for converting Jews did not translate into actions.  Raymond did not spearhead missionizing efforts targeting Jews, though his legal texts indicate that he indeed valued those endeavors. 
    By studying Raymond de Penaforte’s legal codes, I show that fear of Judaism’s influence and framing of it as a pollutant occurred in Iberia beyond polemical or theological texts, evidencing its pervasiveness in thirteenth-century Iberian discourse concerning Jews.  My project thus critically adds another dimension to our understanding of the landscape of thirteenth-Christian discourses in Iberia about Jews preceding the Spanish Inquisition while also reframing the historiographical narrative surrounding Raymond. 
    The dissertation bases its argument off Raymond’s legal works, the Summa de Paenitentia (1226 and 1236) and Summa de Matrimonio (1236).  The book accesses Raymond’s views by comparing manuscripts of his works to those of earlier authors from which he copied when he wrote his own.  Close textual comparison between Raymond’s laws concerning the Jews to those of his sources allows us to pinpoint places where Raymond deviated and offered his own view.  Those variances enable insights about Raymond’s personal perspectives.  Reading Raymond’s legal texts against later documents written about him by others describing his life work sheds light on the degree to which Raymond implemented theoretical concerns about Jews that he expressed in his writings.

How did Muslim thinkers perceive, imagine and depict Jewish-Christian interaction, whether it be in the past, in their contemporary world or in the eschatological future? Although there are numerous studies on Muslim views of Christianity, as well as on Muslim views of Judaism, there are no noteworthy ones, as yet, that deal with the question of whether and how Muslims authors (historians, exegetes, legal scholars, littérateurs) reflected on historical and imaginary relations between Jews and Christians. This collection seeks to fill this lacuna, at least in part.

This paper is about the Medieval Censorship of the Talmud which was imposed upon the Jews, what was censored and why. It also covers items related to the Crusades and the Inquisitions. The main thrust of this paper is that the Jews were witnesses to the creation of Christianity and were giving info about it in the Talmud.

In this paper, the writings related to four seventh century individuals will be examined with a hope of better understanding what happened in that time period and how news of events in the eastern Mediterranean reached western Europe.  While two of the four, Isidore of Seville and the Frankish ‘Fredegar’, repeated information they’d gathered at second hand, the other two, Bishop Arculf and Theodore of Tarsus, themselves traveled from the Levant to the British Isles.  As witnesses to the world changing events of their century, all four are certainly important sources.  This study, though, will not focus on reconstructing the truth of events but, instead, will attempt to discover what these four thought they knew, how they knew what they did, and how such information might have been carried from one end of the former Roman Empire to the other.  The purpose will be to seek a better understanding of communications and connections in one of the murkiest and most important eras in history.

The text of this current translation comes from Samuel Krauss’ 1902 collection of manuscript transcriptions—originally found in Cod. Heb. 54 of the Vienna Israelite Theological Library, but denominated by Krauss as “Ms. Vindobona,” after the Latin name for Vienna. The manuscript was allegedly stolen from the Institute’s library by the Nazis, and subsequently disappeared—possibly being either destroyed or looted during the bombing of Berlin. The truth of this lost manuscript may never be known, but a few things are clear: despite its sometimes disturbing content, the text is a paradox, both vulgarly base and eloquently beautiful, epic satire, tragically antiheroic, and altogether exceptional literature worthy of appreciation by the humanities.

Based on:
Krauss, Samuel, ed. Das Leben Jesu: Nach Judischen Quellen. Berlin: S. Calvary,
1902.

"There is simply no other book like this. Enlightening, accessible, and superbly written in a clear and jargon-free style, it makes a much-needed contribution to our knowledge of Jewish visual and literary cultures. It will no doubt be a coveted volume."--Maya Balakirsky Katz, Touro College

The love of books in the Jewish tradition extends back over many centuries, and the ways of interpreting those books are as myriad as the traditions themselves. Skies of Parchment, Seas of Ink offers the first full survey of Jewish illuminated manuscripts, ranging from their origins in the Middle Ages to the present day. Featuring some of the most beautiful examples of Jewish art of all time--including hand-illustrated versions of the Bible, the Haggadah, the prayer book, marriage documents, and other beloved Jewish texts--the book introduces readers to the history of these manuscripts and their interpretation.

Edited by Marc Michael Epstein with contributions from leading experts, this sumptuous volume features a lively and informative text, showing how Jewish aesthetic tastes and iconography overlapped with and diverged from those of Christianity, Islam, and other traditions. Featured manuscripts were commissioned by Jews and produced by Jews and non-Jews over many centuries, and represent Eastern and Western perspectives and the views of both pietistic and liberal communities across the Diaspora, including Europe, Israel, the Middle East, and Africa.

Magnificently illustrated with pages from hundreds of manuscripts, many previously unpublished or rarely seen, Skies of Parchment, Seas of Ink offers surprising new perspectives on Jewish life, presenting the books of the People of the Book as never before.

Marc Michael Epstein is the Mattie M. Paschall (1899) and Norman Davis Chair of Religion and Visual Culture at Vassar College. His most recent book, "The Medieval Haggadah: Art, Narrative, and Religious Imagination", was named one of the best books of 2011 by the "Times Literary Supplement". Eva Frojmovic is lecturer in the history of art at the University of Leeds. Jenna Siman Jacobs is curatorial manager at the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego. Hartley Lachter is the Berman Chair in Jewish Studies at Lehigh University. Shalom Sabar is professor of folklore and the arts at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Raymond P. Scheindlin is professor of medieval Hebrew literature at the Jewish Theological Seminary. Ágnes Vet? teaches religion at Vassar College. Susan Vick is curator of Judaica at Goldsmith Museum of Chizuk Amuno Congregation in Baltimore and associate professor of art history at the University of Maryland. Barbara Wolff is a New York-based illuminator of manuscripts using medieval methods. Diane Wolfthal is the David and Caroline Minter Chair in the Humanities at Rice University.

FRANCESCO BIANCHI, “Una storia di pinne e di squame”. Appunti per
una storia del pesce nell’ebraismo medievale
Partendo dai dati biblici e talmudici, l’articolo esplora, in primo luogo,
il ruolo del pesce nella creazione e le leggi alimentari che ne regolano il
consumo nel mondo ebraico medioevale attraverso la testimonianza dei
più importanti esegeti ebraici di quel periodo. Successivamente sono analizzati gli scarni dati a nostra disposizione dalle fonti ebraiche che ci infor322 Abstracts and Keywords
mano sul commercio del pesce e sui modi di prepararlo. Una breve
descrizione del ruolo simbolico nella tradizione e nel folkore ebraico conclude la ricerca.
Parole chiave: pesce, leggi alimentari, esegesi, commercio, cucina, simbologia
Against the background of the Biblical and Talmudic sources, the
paper illustrates both the status of the fish in the Creation and the dietary
laws ruling the Jewish kitchen, according to the most important Jewish
scholars in Middle Age. Afterwards, the sources dealing with the trade
and the cooking of fishes are scrutinized and compared to the situation in
the Christian world as well. A brief description of the fish as a symbol in
the Jewish tradition close the paper.
Keywords: fish fauna, food laws, exegesis, trade, cuisine, symbolism

This article focuses on the sixteenth-century Welsh Cronicl o wech oesoedd (‘Chronicle of the Six Ages [of the World]’) written by the exiled Welshman Elis Gruffydd, and in particular the section treating the poet-prophet Taliesin. A legendary figure who flourished in the sixth century, Taliesin’s powerful story nonetheless saw wide circulation and reworking throughout the medieval and early modern periods. In this article, I argue that Elis Gruffydd associates Taliesin with the chosen prophet, divinely empowered emancipator, and routinely tested spiritual leader Moses, and I explore the effect of a sixteenth-century construction of the past that positions the Welsh, their ancestors, and their literary heritage in relationship to Moses and the Jews. This article first focuses on the sixteenth-century political and cultural context in which the massive, 2500-page Cronicl was composed by the Reformation Protestant Elis Gruffydd, largely in Calais. It then considers references, prose and poetic, to Moses in the Ystoria Taliesin section of the chronicle and the ways in which the native poet-prophet Taliesin is paralleled with Moses. Thirdly, to move closer to an understanding of the contextual import and force of the Mosaic references for Elis Grufydd and his readers, the essay briefly surveys the various roles played by the Jews and Israelites in medieval and early modern Wales and Britain, and, in particular, how the largely ideational Jews intersect with and inform a sense of Welshness. In conclusion, it is suggested that Elis, potentially reading himself as a sixteenth-century inheritor of the mantle worn by both Taliesin and Moses, deployed this Mosaic window on the past to frame a specific vision of the Welsh present and future, one which constituted a response to Tudor England’s alienation of Welsh language and culture through disempowering and disenfranchising policies.

Summary: Among the Segovians it is a popular story the Miracle of the Jew called Esther, who lived in the city back in the XIIIth Century. The miracle was recorded by King Alfonso X in his Cantigas de Santa María. The object of research is the legal tradition of the death sentence suffered by the Jewish maiden Esther.

ABSTRACT
Alonso de Espina’s vitriolic polemic, Fortalitium Fidei (The fortress of faith, c. 1458–1464), includes a ferocious attack upon both Jews and the descendants of converts, who were collectively accused of judaizing. This would seem to set him at odds with the Apostle Paul’s formulation in Galatians 3:28 of a powerful notion of equality between Christians that transcended ethnic divisions. Espina has become notorious among modern historians as an influential “anti-Semitic” writer. In this article, I argue that the significance of Espina’s opus for the wider history of anti-Jewish texts needs to be revised and nuanced since, in stark contrast to many later anti-converso polemicists, he does not seek to undermine the Pauline concept of Christian spiritual closeness by appealing to biological or genealogical determinism; rather, he insists on the generalization of converso judaizing and the exceptionality of genuine Jewish conversions to Christianity.

In this thesis, I argue that early Christian reverence for Jesus, which included not only attribution of divine honours and prerogatives, but even divine worship, has its roots in late Second Temple Jewish developments in Messianic thought. When one considers Jewish Messianism in Jewish literature in the century leading up to Christ, there emerges a growing tendency to regard the Messiah in exalted terms. Thus, when the Gospels attribute divine honours and powers to Jesus, they do so in a context where such thinking is already prevalent.

Medieval Christians arguably lived in a 'real' world – a tangible place in which they lived, worked, loved, hated, and died – but through a process of world-building continually reconstructed it anew around themselves as the mythical land they called 'Christendom.' This was predicated first on reconceptualizing and then ultimately on removing (or attempting to remove) the non-Christians in their midst. In twelfth-and thirteenth-century England, Jews were the prime focus of such efforts, demonized and monsterized, and then expelled en masse. Still, it seems that every work that seeks to reconstruct England by othering Jews also undercuts its efforts by collapsing differences in time and space, so that England becomes everywhere, and the present moment becomes everywhen. This brief essay will consist of a whirlwind tour through the Hereford Map, tracing various vectors along its buckling surface, to and from that small, marginalized protuberance at the lower-left corner of creation – Britain.

Biblical wisdom literature is a treasure-trove of powerful metaphors. This article presents a sample of these metaphors and their significant impact on contemporary artwork. The impact is characterized by both appropriation and adaptation, similitude and analogy, respectively. The highlighted metaphors are not merely catalogued but, more or less, analyzed with regard to relevant contemporary artwork. This augments the importance of contemporary biblical literacy analysis and uses it as one of the tools by which it is possible to gauge the impact and interaction, in this case, of the metaphor-world of the wisdom tradition on contemporary art. More importantly, however, this study underscores the relevance of these metaphors for biblical exegesis, hermeneutics, and theology. The analysis of the reception of these metaphors in contemporary artworks undergirds and informs the process of interpretation. The reception of these metaphors in their contemporary art contexts is best understood within the framework of imagery and imagistic language. Metaphor, as a subset of imagery and imagistic language, is foundational for the examined wisdom books, Proverbs, Job, and Qoheleth, and for the relevant contemporary artwork, alike. Moreover, metaphor also constitutes a bridge between the ancient and contemporary context. With this backdrop in mind, this article argues for the necessity of exploring the connections between these wisdom books, metaphor studies, and contemporary artwork.

HISTOIRE perpétuer son travail de commentaire. « Je me suis passionné pour la construction du Talmud. Cette construction en triptyque dans laquelle les Tossaphistes sont un apport majeur et notamment Rabbenou Tam. J'ai vraiment accroché avec ce matériau et je me suis pris de curiosité pour la personnalité de Rabbenou Tam ».