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...
Both Jewish and Christian rituals today utilize wine. And the Bible is full of stories that mention wine's prominence. Perhaps the first one is about Noah planting a vineyard after the flood (Gen 9:20). Anthropologists will tell you that nomads do not plant vineyards. This was a...
A tree grows in Israel, in Kibbutz Qetura – a Methuselah date palm tree. It is a very unusual tree, a living palm from the days of Jesus which was named Methuselah because of its origins.
The first time I heard about heaven’s pearly gates, I wondered how people knew what those gates looked like. The reason why many people believe that heaven’s gates are made from pearls is a reference in the book of Revelation. “And the twelve gates were twelve pearls; each...
Few symbols have a tradition as long and as rich as the dove. A particular favorite in art and iconography, the dove often represents some aspect of the divine, and its use has been shared, adapted, and reinterpreted across cultures and millennia to suit changing belief systems. From the ancient...