Outside the Bible Launch Event Video
Thanks to all who came to the Outside the Bible launch event. A summary of the event can be found at the YU News blog. Pictures from the event are on my Facebook page. If you missed it or just want to watch it again, here is the video:
Are the Temple’s Vessels Hidden in the Vatican?
Arch of Titus, courtesy of A. Hunter Wright, Wikimedia
Recently, a rabbi wrote a letter to the Vatican asking about the presence of the Temple vessels in its vaults. The Pope’s representative in Israel, Papal Nuncio Archbishop Giuseppe Lazzarotto, responded that if the Vatican had Temple vessels in its possession it would have already returned them. Ami Magazine interviews Prof. Steven Fine and myself about how Jews came to believe that the vessels were in the Vatican and why it is historically impossible.
Read the full article here: The Vanished Vessels of the Beis Hamikdash
The Halakhic Response of the Rabbis to the Rise of Christianity
Tabgha, courtesy of Grauesel, Wikimedia Commons
The Jewish-Christian schism in Late Antiquity has been studied from numerous points of view. This paper will approach these events by investigating the manner in which halakhic issues (questions of Jewish law) motivated the approach of the early Rabbis to the rise of the new faith, and the manner in which Rabbinic legal enactments expressed that approach as well. The eventual conclusion of the Rabbis and the Jewish community that Christianity was a separate religion and that Christians were not Jews, was intimately bound up with the Jewish laws and traditions governing personal status in the Jewish community, both for Jews by birth and proselytes. These laws, as known today, were already in full effect by the rise of Christianity. In the eyes of the Rabbis, the evolution of Christianity from a group of Jews holding heretical beliefs into a group whose members lacked the legal status of Jewish identity and, hence, constituted a separate religious community, brought about further legal rulings which were intended to separate the Christians from the Jewish community.
The Early Christians as a Jewish Sect
At the time of the Jewish-Christian schism, the tannaim (early Rabbis) were working with… Continue reading
