Paul

Both Shavuot and Pentecost celebrate the culmination of a fifty-day season in the spring, after Passover and Easter respectively.

Moses promises that if Israel forsakes the covenant, God will destroy them permanently (Deut 4:25-26). Drawing on a midrash, Rashi explains that God exiled Israel early to avoid having to wipe them out; thus, God never actualized this threat. Considering Rashi’s responses to Christian ideas in other biblical texts, Rashi's comment on Deut 4:25 may well be an apologetic effort to prove that God’s covenant with the Jews remains intact.

In the Bible, Esau is the ancestor of the Edomites who live on Mount Seir, southwest of Judah. So how did the rabbis come to associate Esau and Edom with Rome? Two main factors are at work here: Christianity and Herod.

Paul, in the 1^st c., allegorizes the expulsion of Hagar to argue that his rivals should be expelled from the church, a lesson applied by later Christians to their own Jewish and Muslim rivals. Ramban, in the 13^th c., uses the same biblical story to explain why Jews of his day are persecuted. Such readings highlight an assumption ingrained in Judaism and Christianity alike: Biblical stories speak to the present-day circumstances of their audience.

The anomalous and paradoxical nature of the twelfth curse – Deuteronomy 27:26.