Thirty years ago in August, Elizabeth and I were married. Over our honeymoon, I was encouraged to send in an application to the Oxford Centre for Postgraduate Hebrew & Jewish Studies for their one-year “Graduate Diploma.” I was admitted and received a full scholarship, so we deferred the offer from […]
Judaism
56 posts
I am reading the proofs of my contribution to The Reception of Jesus in the First Three Centuries. The following quotes from Daniel Boyarin are true not only for dealing with what the Talmud has to say about Jesus but for any time we are engaging ancient texts. The effort […]
I have finally finished editing my doctoral thesis (from 20 years ago!) to make it accessible in ePub format! I have made no substantive edits to the text, so any errors present in the earlier version remain (the PDF is still available here). There are some quirks. The fonts seem […]
History does provide distance, but it does not erase the reality of what happened. Nor can changes in ideology or a desire for it to have been different. Yes, it is the nature of humans to harm one another, to be self-centered, and this leads to everything from petty grasping […]
It happens to be assigned for Morning Prayer today, but is truly a psalm for Today. Psa. 123 A Song of Ascents.1 To you I lift up my eyes, O you who are enthroned in the heavens!2 As the eyes of servants look to the hand of their master, as […]
This past year I was asked by Chris Keith to write a chapter on Jesus in the Talmud for The Reception of Jesus in the First Three Centuries. Last month I was invited to speak at the 1892 Club at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. They recorded it and have posted […]
The first review of my book on Targum Ruth, The Proselyte and the Prophet, came out this week on Reading Religion. Steven Fassberg offered a very gracious summary and review of the book while providing context for the study of the Targumim of the Megilloth. Please read it all, but to […]
I am reading Peter Schäfer’s creative reconstruction of the background for Jesus in the Talmud and a thought occurred to me that I do not see how I missed before (and a connection Schäfer does not seem to make). The Talmud addresses Jesus’ lineage (b Shab 104b), asserting that he is […]
The psalm assigned for today’s Morning Prayer is 102. Powerful, poignant, and a reminder both of the importance of lament in our prayer life and of faith within the midst of lament. Psa. 102:0 A prayer of one afflicted, when faint and pleading before the LORD. 1 Hear my prayer, O […]
UPDATE: The Targum manuscript Valmadonna 1 was sold separately to the Museum of the Bible. This is very good news! It appears the entire a portion of the collection has been purchased by the Israeli National Library. As I shared several years ago Sotheby’s was exhibiting and the family seeking to […]