Prof. Joshua Schwartz is Professor (Emeritus) of Historical Geography of Ancient Israel, Department of Land of Israel Studies and Archaeology, Bar-Ilan University, Ramat-Gan, Israel, and Chair, Board of Directors, Israel Antiquities Authority. He received his Ph.D. (1981) from The Hebrew University of Jerusalem. His most recent books are: Jews and Christians in Roman-Byzantine Palestine: History, Daily Life and Material Culture, Volumes 1–2 (Peter Lang 2018); Jerusalem: From its Beginning to the Ottoman Conquest (Ingenborg Rennert Center for Jerusalem Studies 2017), co-edited with Avraham Faust and Eyal Baruch; Jews and Christians in the First and Second Centuries: The Interbellum 70–132 CE (Brill 2018), co-edited with Peter J. Tomson; and The History of Jerusalem: The Second Temple Period 332 BCE – 70 CE, Volume One, History, Society and Cult, and Volume Two, The Material Culture (Yad Izhak Ben-Zvi 2020), co-edited with Ronny Reich and Isaiah Gafni.
Last Updated
April 10, 2024
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Josephus, an eyewitness to the Temple, defends its splendor and its laws to the Greco-Roman world. He takes the reader on a tour of the building in its heyday, explaining details such as how far Non-Jews and women were permitted to proceed and what lay inside, while also countering Apion’s slanderous depictions of donkey worship and human sacrifice within its walls. By opening the Mosaic constitution with the Temple and grounding its rituals in Torah law, Josephus presents it as an enduring foundation of Jewish tradition, whose significance outlives the building itself.
Josephus, an eyewitness to the Temple, defends its splendor and its laws to the Greco-Roman world. He takes the reader on a tour of the building in its heyday, explaining details such as how far Non-Jews and women were permitted to proceed and what lay inside, while also countering Apion’s slanderous depictions of donkey worship and human sacrifice within its walls. By opening the Mosaic constitution with the Temple and grounding its rituals in Torah law, Josephus presents it as an enduring foundation of Jewish tradition, whose significance outlives the building itself.
Cats were known and domesticated in ancient Egypt, Greece, and Rome, but are absent from the Bible and Second Temple literature. The Persians despised cats, but the Talmud tolerates them.
Cats were known and domesticated in ancient Egypt, Greece, and Rome, but are absent from the Bible and Second Temple literature. The Persians despised cats, but the Talmud tolerates them.
