Noah Hacham

Tal Ilan

The period between the Roman take-over of Egypt (30 BCE) and the failure of the Jewish diaspora revolt (115–117 CE) witnessed the continual devaluation in the status of the Jews in Egypt, and culminated in the destruction of its Jewish community. This volume collects and presents all papyri, ostraca, amulets and inscriptions from this early Roman period connected to Jews and Judaism, published since 1957. It is a follow-up of the 1960 volume 2 of the Corpus Papyrorum Judaicarum. It includes over 80 documents in Greek, Demotic, and Hebrew, both documentary and literary. The expansion of the scope of documents, to include languages other than Greek and genres beyond the documentary, allows for a better understanding of the life of the Jews in Egypt. The documents published in this volume shed new light on aspects discussed previously: The Demotic papyri better explain the Jewish settlement in Edfu, new papyri reveal more about Jewish tax, about the Acta papyri, and about the developments of the Jewish revolt. The magical papyri help explain cultural developments in the Jewish community of Egypt. This volume is thus a major contribution to the study of the decline of the greatest diaspora Jewish community in antiquity.

The Early-Roman Period (30 BCE–117 CE)

"The Order of Moed in the Mishnah and Babylonian Talmud outlines the way Jews celebrate their festivals. It is well known among feminists that Jewish life is not the same for men and women, and that women experience Jewish festivals differently." "The purpose of the feminist commentary on Seder Moed is to outline these differences, as they are reflected in the mishnaic and talmudic texts, which have become canonical for Jews and serve as a blueprint for the way they live their lives. In this introductory volume the questions of women's participation in Jewish festivals are handled on a more general and theoretic level than in the upcoming volumes which will be devoted to individual tractates. Various world-renown scholars discuss the role of women in the tractates of Seder Moed from a variety of aspects - legal, literary, theological and historical."--BOOK JACKET.

Text, Translation, and Commentary

Massekhet Taʻanit

Ronit Nikolsky

Lorena Miralles Maciá

Die rabbinische Literatur umfasst die Mischna und den Talmud, welche den zweiten Kanon des Judentums bilden und zwischen 200 und 800 n. d. Z. in Palästina und Mesopotamien verfasst wurden, sowie zahlreiche exegetische Kommentare oder Midraschim. Grundlage dieser Heiligen Schriften ist die Hebräische Bibel. Häufig bezieht sich die Literatur der Weisen auch auf biblische Frauen und biblische Gender-Konzepte. Die Beiträge des Bandes untersuchen unter Einbezug neuester Forschungserkenntnisse, wie biblische Frauen und biblische Gender-Vorstellungen in diesem umfangreichen Literaturkorpus dargestellt, bearbeitet und neu konzipiert wurden.

Rabbinische Literatur

Most studies about women, Jewish and otherwise, are usually confined to the domestic sphere: the home, the family, the bed. Yet women were present at all historical events, and it is not only the presence but also their significance for these events which should be recognized. All the sources seem to militate against an approach which assumes the presence of women in public events: When dealing with politics, war and religion, scholars can ignore women, confining themselves instead to the woman's role in the domestic sphere. Tal Ilan here seeks to discover women in the public spaces and main events of Second Temple Judaism. The main principle guiding her is that if by chance women are mentioned in the sources, they should not be treated as a means for explaining the event but rather as an end in themselves. Thus sources showing women as remote or obscure turn out to yield much relevant material. Ilan investigates women's association with the Pharisees and other sects. She analyzes women's roles in the writings of Josephus, Ben Sira, and other important sources. Furthermore she discusses famous women like Beruriah and Berenice. The Dead Sea Scrolls play an important role in her study.

Integrating Women into Second Temple History

Most studies about women, Jewish and other, are usually confined to the domestic sphere: the home, the family, the bed. Yet women were present at all historical events, and it is not only their presence but also their significance for these events which should be recognized. All the sources seem to militate against an approach which assumes the presence of women at public events. When dealing with politics, war and religion they ignore women; when dealing with women, they confine themselves to their prescribed region of the home.In this book Tal Ilan seeks to discover women in public places and at the main events of Second Temple Judaism. The primary principle guiding her work is that if by chance women are mentioned in sources, they should not be treated as a means for explaining the event but rather as an end in themselves. Thus sources showing women as remote or obscure turn out to yield much relevant material.Tal Ilan investigates women's association with the Pharisees and other sects, and analyses women's role in the writings of Josephus, Ben Sira and other important sources. Furthermore she presents us with new insights into famous women: Shelamzion Alexandra, Beruriah, Berenice and others. Special space is devoted to the importance of the Judaean Desert Documents for women's history.

Integrating Jewish Women Into Second Temple History

Tal Ilan explores the real, as against the ideal social, political and religious status of women in Palestinian Judaism of the Hellenistic and Roman periods. The main conclusions of this investigations are that extreme religious groups in Judaism of the period influenced other groups, classes and factions to tighten their control of women and represent the ideal relationships beween men and women as requiring greater chastity, in order to prove their piety. However, the lives of real women, over and against their representation in the literature of the time, and their relationships to men as opposed to the ideals represented by legal codes, were much more varied and nuanced. This book integrates both Jewish and Early Christian sources together with a feminist critique. This book is a tour de force - a major piece of research and a 'must read' for all concerned with the recovery of women's history.Judith Romney Wegner in Journal of Biblical Literature 2 (1997), pp. 354This fine collection of carefully analysed data will have lasting value...Martin Goodman in Journal of Roman Studies vol. 88 (1998), p. 189The scope of the work is impressive.Joshua Schwartz in Journal of Jewish Studies 1 (1997), pp. 156

An Inquiry Into Image and Status

Jewish Women in Greco-Roman Palestine

Lorena Miralles-Maciá Miralles-Maciá

This volume in the Bible and Women series is devoted to rabbinic literature from late Jewish antiquity to the early Middle Ages. Fifteen contributions feature different approaches to the question of biblical women and gender and encompass a wide variety of rabbinic corpora, including the Mishnah-Tosefta, halakhic and aggadic midrashim, Talmud, and late midrash. Some essays analyze biblical law and gender relations as they are reflected in the rabbinic sages’ argumentation, while others examine either the rabbinic portrayal of a certain woman or a group of women or the role of biblical women in a specific rabbinic context. Contributors include Judith R. Baskin, Yuval Blankovsky, Alexander A. Dubrau, Cecilia Haendler, Tal Ilan, Gail Labovitz, Moshe Lavee, Lorena Miralles-Maciá, Ronit Nikolsky, Susanne Plietzsch, Natalie C. Polzer, Olga I. Ruiz-Morell, Devora Steinmetz, Christiane Hannah Tzuberi, and Dvora Weisberg.

Rabbinic Literature

Queen Berenice, a Jewish queen of the 1st century, witnessed the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem, socialized most important people of her day - Philo the Philosopher, Paul the Apostle, Josephus the Historian and became Flavius Titus’ lover.

A Jewish Female Icon of the First Century CE

Queen Berenice

The Babylonian Talmud's Tractate Hullin is the longest in the Order of Qodashim with twelve chapters and over 140 pages. The Order of Qodashim ("holy things") in general deals with the Temple. The word hullin, however, means "profane things" and actually describes the kosher slaughter of beasts for human consumption outside the temple. Even though this topic is not overtly gendered, and neither does it pertain specifically to women, Tal Ilan discusses over 100 traditions that touch on women and gender. She shows that "women" forever served as good "tools" with which to discuss various topics such as halakhic reliability, or the use of magic, but more specifically that while the tractate is intensely interested in beasts and beast anatomy, women most often serve as points of comparison with beasts for authors of the Talmud. In this way, the rabbinic world view of the intermediate position of women between human and beast is repeatedly demonstrated throughout the tractate.

Tal Ilan

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