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Our guide for this adventure is Flavius Josephus, the first-century Romano-Jewish scholar and historian, and the story comes from his work, Against Apion. This book is essentially ...
Josephus, the first-century Romano-Jewish scholar, takes on Apion's wild accusations in his work Against Apion, and it’s a doozy. Apion, in his eagerness to smear the Jewish people...
The writer Josephus, in his work Against Apion, deals with just such an argument. He's responding to the claims of a fellow named Apion, who’s taking potshots at the Jewish people....
It's more than just a historical account; it's a defense of the Jewish people and their traditions. Josephus wants to set the record straight about Moses. He argues that when our a...
Maybe we should look back, way back, to some ancient wisdom. Flavius Josephus, a first-century Romano-Jewish scholar, in his work Against Apion, gives us a glimpse into the values ...
Flavius Josephus, in his work Against Apion, gives us a glimpse into the ancient Jewish legal and moral framework, and it’s He's writing to defend Judaism against its detractors, a...
The writer Josephus, in his work Against Apion, makes a pretty bold claim. He argues that Jewish laws and customs have not only been admired but actively imitated by people across ...
Two years. That is how long Joseph sat in an Egyptian prison after correctly predicting the fate of Pharaoh's cupbearer—who had promised to remember him and then promptly forgot. T...
Jacob lived seventeen years in Egypt after reuniting with the son he had mourned as dead. Seventeen years of peace, of proximity to Joseph, of watching his family flourish in the l...
The Egyptian princess who raised Moses had to make him swear an oath before handing him over to the king. That is how little she trusted her own father's court—the same court whose...
Ten times Pharaoh promised to free the Hebrews. Ten times he broke his word. Each broken promise brought something worse than the last, and according to Josephus, the plagues that ...
A donkey saw an angel before the greatest prophet of the ancient Near East did. That detail alone tells you everything about the story of Balaam. Balak, the king of Moab, was terri...
Moses did not die in any normal sense. According to Josephus, writing in the first century CE, the greatest prophet who ever lived simply vanished—swallowed by a cloud on a mountai...
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...
Saul was desperate. The Philistine army had gathered at Shunem in overwhelming numbers, and for the first time in his reign, God refused to answer him—not through prophets, not thr...
It started from a rooftop. Late one evening, David—king of Israel, conqueror of nations, the man after God's own heart—looked down from his palace and saw a woman bathing. Her name...
A prophet named Jadon traveled from Jerusalem to Bethel to deliver one of the most dramatic prophecies in Israelite history—and was killed on the way home because he stopped for di...
A single prophet against four hundred. That was the lineup on Mount Carmel, and Elijah liked his odds. The backstory is bleak. King Ahab had married Jezebel, daughter of Ethbaal, k...
King Ahab wanted a vineyard. Its owner, Naboth, said no. That refusal ended with Ahab dead in his chariot, his blood licked by dogs exactly where the prophet said it would happen. ...
King Ahaziah fell through the lattice of his upper chamber and was badly injured. Instead of praying to the God of Israel, he sent messengers to consult the Fly, the god of Ekron. ...
Elisha inherited Elijah's mantle and immediately proved he was no lesser prophet. His miracles were stranger, more varied, and sometimes more violent than his master's. A widow of ...
Hazael, king of Syria, tore through the eastern territories of Israel like a brushfire. The lands of Reuben, Gad, and the half-tribe of Manasseh fell. Gilead and Bashan burned. And...
In the space of twenty years, the throne of Israel changed hands five times, and almost every transfer was soaked in blood. Zachariah, son of Jeroboam, lasted six months before his...
One hundred and eighty-five thousand soldiers died in a single night. That is how God answered Sennacherib, king of Assyria, when he broke his word to Hezekiah and sent an army to ...
King Josiah was eight years old when he inherited the throne of Judah. His grandfather Manasseh had been the worst king in the nation's history—a man who slaughtered prophets until...
The kingdom that Josiah rebuilt fell apart the moment he died. Josephus records that when Pharaoh Neco marched through Judah on his way to fight the Babylonians at the Euphrates, J...
Nebuchadnezzar had a dream so terrifying that when he woke up, he could not remember what he had seen—only the dread it left behind. He summoned every magician, astrologer, and wis...
Daniel was still a teenager when Nebuchadnezzar brought him to Babylon in chains. He and three companions from the royal family of Judah—Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah—were given B...
Daniel survived the fall of Babylon. When Darius the Mede took the kingdom, he elevated Daniel to the highest office in the empire—one of only three governors ruling over 360 provi...
In the first year of his reign, Cyrus king of Persia did something no conqueror had ever done: he freed an enslaved nation and paid to rebuild their God's house. Josephus explains ...
Alexander the Great conquered most of the known world by age thirty, but Josephus tells a story about the one city he did not need to take by force. When Alexander marched on Jerus...
In the decades before the Great Revolt, Judea descended into a spiral of bandits, assassins, false prophets, and Roman brutality that made the final catastrophe feel inevitable. Ac...
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...
Jewish mystical tradition isn't afraid to ask big questions. And sometimes, the answers come in the form of dazzling imagery. The Zohar, that foundational text of Jewish mysticism,...
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...
The answers? Well, they're as varied and beautiful as the stars in the night sky. Some say God dwells in the celestial realms, way up in the highest heaven, seated on the Kisei ha-...
What happens when even the Divine weeps? What happens when home is lost, not just for us, but for God, too? We often think of God as unchanging, eternal, beyond our human messiness...
Our story today takes us to 16th-century Safed, a center of Jewish mysticism, and introduces us to Rabbi Abraham Berukhim, a man known for his profound connection to the Divine. Th...
Jewish tradition suggests you might be right, especially when it comes to prophecy. Think of it this way: imagine a vast, boundless ocean of light, a pure, radiant holiness residin...
That, according to some powerful Jewish mystical traditions, is how the universe came to be. Not a slow burn, not a gradual unfolding, but a single, instantaneous burst of divine e...
Maybe, just maybe, you're part of something much bigger: a cosmic wheel. The idea of a "wheel of creation" isn't some new-age concept. It's a powerful image found in Jewish mystica...
What they've imagined is According to tradition, within Paradise – also known as Gan Eden (the Garden of Eden, paradise) – lie not just one, but six palaces, each a home for the so...
It's so much more than just a physical act; it’s a profound moment steeped in tradition, faith, and ancient promises. And at the heart of it all stands a powerful, unexpected figur...
The Ba'al Shem Tov, the founder of Hasidism, reportedly did just that. The story goes that on Rosh ha-Shanah – the Jewish New Year, a day of judgment and profound spiritual signifi...
It’s a question that’s haunted humanity for millennia, and Jewish tradition has some pretty specific – and unsettling – answers. According to Jewish folklore, demons can be born fr...
I'm talking about Lilith. The tales surrounding Lilith are wild and varied, and one particular story, found woven within the mystical threads of the Zohar (1:19b), paints a fascina...
Some say they're locked away in a book, a very special book called the Book of Raziel. Now, this isn't your ordinary paperback. According to tradition, this book was revealed to Ad...
Jewish tradition paints a picture far more intense and overwhelming than we might imagine. The idea that the Torah was given through a single voice? Well, that's just the beginning...
