A few weeks ago the Israel Antiquities Authority announced that scientists had digitally deciphered 8 verses written on a charred, 6th century scroll of the Book of Leviticus. The scroll had been unearthed at Ein-Gedi in 1970, but could not be unrolled without damaging it. New technology has now made it possible to read the text without unrolling the scroll.
The 8 verses that have been deciphered come from the book of Leviticus. They are identical to those in our bibles today. It is not surprising; throughout history Torah scribes have been meticulous in copying the text. But in fact the most ancient manuscript of the Bible does differ, in small ways, from the text we use today. Continue reading
Archives: Bible
Would You Fall Asleep in Rabbi Akiva’s Sermon?
Few midrashim startle us as much as the one which begins “Rabbi Akiva was sitting and preaching and the public was falling asleep….” Akiva was the greatest of all the early rabbis, yet his audiences did what congregations have been doing for centuries; they fell asleep during his sermon.
Continue readingLaban- A Villain in the Family?
The Midrashic tradition seems to do a great disservice to Isaac’s brother-in-law Laban. It casts him as an out-and-out villain, a trickster who according to the Passover Haggadah, wanted to prevent the creation of the Jewish nation.
“Go and see what Laban the Aramean sought to do to our father Jacob. For Pharoah only issued a decree against the men (casting the baby boys into the Nile) whereas Laban wanted to uproot all (the whole nation).”
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The “Correct” Reading of the Torah
A few weeks ago the Israel Antiquities Authority announced that scientists had digitally deciphered 8 verses written on a charred, 6th century scroll of the Book of Leviticus. The scroll had been unearthed at Ein-Gedi in 1970, but could not be unrolled without damaging it. New technology has now made it possible to read the text without unrolling the scroll.
The 8 verses that have been deciphered come from the book of Leviticus. They are identical to those in our bibles today. It is not surprising; throughout history Torah scribes have been meticulous in copying the text. But in fact the most ancient manuscript of the Bible does differ, in small ways, from the text we use today. Continue reading
The Unexpected Appearance and Influence of the Talmud
One of the remarkable things about the Talmud is that it came from nowhere, entering a national-religious culture that was already strong and thriving yet rapidly becoming that culture’s dominant text.
The Bible and the subsequent, vast corpus of Jewish literature is self-confident in its religious identity and highly prescriptive in terms of belief, practice and behaviour. It doesn’t seem to be lacking a great deal of further illumination. There is certainly no suggestion that this whole corpus will one day be eclipsed by a text that will become the cornerstone of Jewish religion. The emergence of the Talmud as a written summary of centuries of academic debate is unexpected. The dominance of the Talmud in the Jewish world today could not have been anticipated, even in the first centuries of the common era. Continue reading