The Bible is full of customs, traditions, and rituals. Many Jewish cultural practices seem unusual to the rest of the world, and others were successfully assimilated via the broader Christian culture. People don't even think of them as Jewish but the gospels read by millions of non-Jews today...
Messiah’s famous words about Torah declare, “Do not think that I came to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I did not come to abolish but to fulfill” (Mat 5:17 NASB) This verse has been explained countless times in church sermons, academic lectures, and scholarly commentaries. What can...
The Third Book of Enoch (Hebrew Enoch), or "The Book of Palaces," is an ancient Jewish mystical composition. Though named after Enoch, it was not written by the biblical Enoch himself. He is, however, the main character in a story of Rabbi Ishamel’s ascent to see the...
The Third Book of Enoch (Hebrew Enoch), or "The Book of Palaces," is an ancient Jewish mystical composition. How ancient? Around the sixth century CE. The Third Book of Enoch is quite different from 1 Enoch and 2 Enoch. It does not sound like Second Temple Era Jewish...
The Tosefta is a rabbinic text often unfamiliar to people. There is a perfectly good explanation why. When the text of Mishna, the Jewish oral traditions, was being compiled into writing by Yehudah HaNassi (second century CE), some discussions were set aside and edited out. It's not that...
Earlier, in 2023 and 2024, I crafted new translations of 1 Enoch and 2 Enoch. The book's archaic English versions are broadly available across the internet for free. Yet, my goal was to create modern and easy-to-read English texts for these classics. I received largely positive feedback from...
According to researchers of antiquity driving away bad luck, the evil eye, and, in short, envious people—this was one of the purposes of mosaics in Ancient Rome. You may know of amulets, incantations, but art and specific mosaics were also used to ward off evil. Ancient literary sources and...
Not long ago I received a curious question from a man who was struggling reading through the book of Hebrews in the New Testament. His question had to do with the temple and with the tabernacle arrangement, which was originally described in the book of Exodus. In Exodus the מִ...
For thousands of years, Jews have been praying to God while facing Jerusalem. Muslims have a similar tradition. Only they bow toward the city of Mecca. Such cultural practice may seem a bit unusual for Christians who direct their gaze elsewhere, to the altar in front of them or to...