5,353 texts · Page 25 of 112
It's a moment dripping with drama. According to Legends of the Jews, Esther reached out, intending to point directly at Haman, the wicked advisor. He wasn't just after her life, bu...
Sometimes, it's almost… mathematical. Take the story of Haman, the villain of the Purim story, and his ultimate downfall. We all know the story: Haman plots to annihilate the Jews ...
Of wanting to hold onto something important, even when the world around us changes. And sometimes, it’s about acknowledging the darkness we've overcome. Take Purim, for example, th...
Flavius Josephus, in his Against Apion, grapples with precisely this when he contrasts the historical record of the Jews with that of the Greeks. He points out that the Greeks them...
How can the Greeks be so proud, boasting that they alone possess knowledge of antiquity and have delivered accurate accounts of early times? It seems a bit... well, absurd, doesn't...
Josephus points out a fundamental problem: when historians lack reliable source material, disagreements are bound to arise. If there are no original records, then individual interp...
Josephus, in his work Against Apion, reflects on this very question. He's making a case for the integrity and antiquity of Jewish history, and he does so by comparing it to the his...
The historian Josephus, writing in his work Against Apion, gives us a glimpse into the Jewish perspective on this very question. He contrasts the Jewish reverence for scripture wit...
Here he is, trying to set the record straight, and he's facing accusations that his work is nothing more than a "scholastic performance," something churned out just for show. Can y...
He tackles this head-on in his work, Against Apion, a passionate defense of Judaism against its detractors. And in this section, Josephus gets straight to the point: he's had enoug...
Josephus, the first-century Romano-Jewish historian, grappled with this very question when trying to explain why the Jewish people weren't as well-known to the Greeks as, say, the ...
It’s a tangled web of texts, traditions, and sometimes, well, good old-fashioned arguments. Imagine trying to prove your nation’s antiquity. How would you do it? The historian Jose...
To one such instance, where the Egyptian historian Manetho gives us a glimpse into how the ancient world viewed the Israelites' exodus from Egypt. Josephus, in his work Against Api...
Josephus, the first-century Romano-Jewish historian, certainly felt that way, and in his work Against Apion, he confronts this head-on. Josephus points out that some writers chose ...
In this particular section, Josephus addresses the nasty accusations and outright lies that were being spread about the Jewish people. He argues that these slanders are, well, just...
He's responding to the claims of a writer named Apion, who seems to have a real bone to pick with the Jews of Alexandria. Apion, you see, is going after the Alexandrian Jews, criti...
The historian Josephus, in his work Against Apion, tackles these accusations head-on. Apion, a Graeco-Egyptian intellectual, throws a real zinger: "If the Jews are citizens of Alex...
Enter Apion, a Graeco-Egyptian intellectual from the 1st century CE. Josephus, the famous Jewish historian, wrote a whole treatise Against Apion to defend Judaism against his sland...
That's the situation the Jewish people faced in antiquity, and it's what prompted Flavius Josephus to write his powerful work, Against Apion. You see, back in the day, not everyone...
Most people, as Josephus points out in his treatise Against Apion, are pretty clueless about their own legal systems. They bumble along, accidentally break a rule, and only then do...
The first-century historian Josephus, in his work Against Apion, offers a fascinating perspective on this very question when describing the Jewish people. He highlights a remarkabl...
Isn't it amazing to consider the different ways people organize their societies, and how those structures reflect their deepest beliefs? : what could be a more sacred form of gover...
In his work, Against Apion, he outlines some of the core principles embedded in Jewish law. And they go way beyond the usual "be nice" platitudes. He points out that our legislator...
What if someone just made up the Torah? What if they presented it to the world and said, "Here, this is how to live," and people just… believed them? That's the thought experiment ...
In the ancient world, it was no different. Flavius Josephus, the first-century Romano-Jewish scholar and historian, knew this all too well. In his work, Against Apion, he passionat...
Let's just say, he wasn't a fan. Josephus minces no words. He tells us that the "wisest men" justly rebuked these notions, openly mocking the idea that gods could be young and bear...
Flavius Josephus, the first-century Romano-Jewish historian, grappled with this very question in his work, Against Apion. And his answer is surprisingly relevant, even today. Josep...
Flavius Josephus, a 1st-century Romano-Jewish historian, knew that feeling all too well. In his work, Against Apion, he defends Judaism against its detractors, and in this section,...
Our guide is Josephus, the first-century Romano-Jewish historian. In his work Against Apion, he defends Judaism against its detractors. And in doing so, he offers a fascinating, an...
Josephus, a Jewish historian writing in the 1st century CE, grappled with this very question in his work, Against Apion. He was defending Judaism against its detractors, and one of...
Ever get the feeling someone's telling stories about you, and they're just... not true? That's kind of the situation the Jewish historian Josephus found himself in during the first...
The ancient writer Josephus, in his powerful work Against Apion, gives us a glimpse into the heart of Jewish values, and it's a vision that still resonates today. He’s essentially ...
The serpent could talk. That detail, buried in Josephus's retelling of creation in the Antiquities of the Jews (c. 93 CE), changes everything about how the story lands. Before the ...
Cain didn't just kill his brother. According to Josephus, he then built a city, invented weights and measures, drew the first property lines—and turned the entire human world towar...
Four hundred shekels of silver. That was the price Abraham paid for a patch of dirt in Hebron—just enough ground to bury his wife. Sarah had died at one hundred and twenty-seven ye...
The Philistines captured the Ark of God and dragged it into the temple of their idol Dagon at Ashdod. They set it beside their god like a trophy. But the next morning, they found D...
Herod sent his sons to Rome for an education. They came home polished, handsome, and walking straight into the deadliest family feud in Jewish royal history. Alexander and Aristobu...
Josephus ends his twenty-volume history of the Jewish people with a list, a boast, and a confession. The list is of every high priest from Aaron to the destruction of the Temple. T...
Jewish mystical tradition offers a stunningly beautiful answer: the Thirty-Two Paths of Wisdom. It’s a concept that's both incredibly simple and mind-bogglingly complex. Think of i...
For centuries, mystics have explored this idea, and one of the most profound expressions of it is the concept of the ten sefirot (the divine emanations). What exactly are they? Ima...
Kabbalistic tradition teaches us that the twenty-two letters of the Hebrew alphabet aren't just symbols; they are the very building blocks of existence. They are, as Rabbi Isaac Lu...
That, in essence, is the concept of Ein Sof (the Infinite, God beyond all attributes). Think of it: before anything existed, there was only the Ein Sof – the Infinite Being. This i...
In Jewish mystical tradition, the idea that humanity reflects God is a powerful and recurring theme. : (Genesis 1:27) states plainly that God created humanity in His image. But wha...
Think of it like this: the "Cause of all Causes" is above everything. I mean everything. There's no higher power, no celestial being pulling the strings of it. It's the ultimate or...
It suggests that the entire universe, everything we know, exists only because God is actively, constantly, paying attention. for a second. A sixteenth-century Kabbalistic text, Or ...
Tzimtzum, a Hebrew word that means "contraction" or "self-limitation," is a profound idea in Jewish mysticism, particularly within the Kabbalistic tradition. It suggests that, befo...
Jewish mysticism gives us a fascinating, mind-bending concept: Adam Kadmon. Adam Kadmon, literally "primordial man," isn't just some ancient dude. According to kabbalistic traditio...
It’s a question that’s haunted mystics and theologians for millennia. And the answer, as we find in Jewish tradition, is both breathtakingly beautiful and terrifyingly destructive....
