The Jewish Dietary Laws in the Ancient World

The Jewish Dietary Laws in the Ancient World PDF Author: Jordan D. Rosenblum
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108107664
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 209

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Book Description
In The Jewish Dietary Laws in the Ancient World Jordan D. Rosenblum explores how cultures critique and defend their religious food practices. In particular he focuses on how ancient Jews defended the kosher laws, or kashrut, and how ancient Greeks, Romans, and early Christians critiqued these practices. As the kosher laws are first encountered in the Hebrew Bible, this study is rooted in ancient biblical interpretation. It explores how commentators in antiquity understood, applied, altered, innovated upon, and contemporized biblical dietary regulations. He shows that these differing interpretations do not exist within a vacuum; rather, they are informed by a variety of motives, including theological, moral, political, social, and financial considerations. In analyzing these ancient conversations about culture and cuisine, he dissects three rhetorical strategies deployed when justifying various interpretations of ancient Jewish dietary regulations: reason, revelation, and allegory. Finally, Rosenblum reflects upon wider, contemporary debates about food ethics.

The Jewish Dietary Laws in the Ancient World

The Jewish Dietary Laws in the Ancient World PDF Author: Jordan D. Rosenblum
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108107664
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 209

Get Book

Book Description
In The Jewish Dietary Laws in the Ancient World Jordan D. Rosenblum explores how cultures critique and defend their religious food practices. In particular he focuses on how ancient Jews defended the kosher laws, or kashrut, and how ancient Greeks, Romans, and early Christians critiqued these practices. As the kosher laws are first encountered in the Hebrew Bible, this study is rooted in ancient biblical interpretation. It explores how commentators in antiquity understood, applied, altered, innovated upon, and contemporized biblical dietary regulations. He shows that these differing interpretations do not exist within a vacuum; rather, they are informed by a variety of motives, including theological, moral, political, social, and financial considerations. In analyzing these ancient conversations about culture and cuisine, he dissects three rhetorical strategies deployed when justifying various interpretations of ancient Jewish dietary regulations: reason, revelation, and allegory. Finally, Rosenblum reflects upon wider, contemporary debates about food ethics.

The Jewish Dietary Laws in the Ancient World

The Jewish Dietary Laws in the Ancient World PDF Author: Jordan Rosenblum
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781108111751
Category : Jews
Languages : en
Pages : 193

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Book Description
"A key component of this project is the history of interpretation of biblical dietary laws. As such, it is essential that the reader first becomes acquainted with what the Hebrew Bible says - and even more importantly, what it does not say. Chapter One therefore examines all of the biblical food laws and their justifications (or, almost always, their lack thereof), including: abstaining from certain animals (sometimes categorically and other times specifically), animals that die a natural death, animals killed by other animals, blood, the sciatic nerve, and slaughtering a mother and her child on the same day; sending away the mother bird from the nest before taking her eggs/chicks; and cooking a kid in its mother's milk. In discussing the supposed rationalizations for these regulations, I consider well-known anthropological and popular accounts (Mary Douglas, Jacob Milgrom, Marvin Harris, etc.)"--

The Jewish Dietary Laws in the Ancient World

The Jewish Dietary Laws in the Ancient World PDF Author: Jordan Rosenblum
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107090342
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 209

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Book Description
What did ancient Jews, Christians, Greeks, and Romans think about how and why Jews ate the way they did? Jordan D. Rosenblum examines this question.

Feasting and Fasting

Feasting and Fasting PDF Author: Aaron S. Gross
Publisher: NYU Press
ISBN: 1479827797
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 400

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Book Description
How Judaism and food are intertwined Judaism is a religion that is enthusiastic about food. Jewish holidays are inevitably celebrated through eating particular foods, or around fasting and then eating particular foods. Through fasting, feasting, dining, and noshing, food infuses the rich traditions of Judaism into daily life. What do the complicated laws of kosher food mean to Jews? How does food in Jewish bellies shape the hearts and minds of Jews? What does the Jewish relationship with food teach us about Christianity, Islam, and religion itself? Can food shape the future of Judaism? Feasting and Fasting explores questions like these to offer an expansive look at how Judaism and food have been intertwined, both historically and today. It also grapples with the charged ethical debates about how food choices reflect competing Jewish values about community, animals, the natural world and the very meaning of being human. Encompassing historical, ethnographic, and theoretical viewpoints, and including contributions dedicated to the religious dimensions of foods including garlic, Crisco, peanut oil, and wine, the volume advances the state of both Jewish studies and religious studies scholarship on food. Bookended with a foreword by the Jewish historian Hasia Diner and an epilogue by the novelist and food activist Jonathan Safran Foer, Feasting and Fasting provides a resource for anyone who hungers to understand how food and religion intersect.

Religious Competition in the Third Century CE: Jews, Christians, and the Greco-Roman World

Religious Competition in the Third Century CE: Jews, Christians, and the Greco-Roman World PDF Author: Jordan D. Rosenblum
Publisher: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht
ISBN: 364755068X
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 261

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Book Description
The essays in this work examine issues related to authority, identity, or change in religious and philosophical traditions of the third century CE. This century is of particular interest because of the political and cultural developments and conflicts that occurred during this period, which in turn drastically changed the social and religious landscape of the Roman world. The specific focus of this volume edited by Jordan D. Rosenblum, Lily Vuong, and Nathaniel DesRosiers is to explore these major creative movements and to examine their strategies for developing and designating orthodoxies and orthopraxies.Contributors were encouraged to analyze or construct the intersections between parallel religious and philosophical communities of the third century, including points of contact either between or among Jews, Christians, pagans, and philosophers. As a result, the discussions of the material contained within this volume are both comparative in nature and interdisciplinary in approach, engaging participants who work in the fields of Religious Studies, Philosophy, History and Archaeology. The overall goal was to explore dialogues between individuals or groups that illuminate the mutual competition and influence that was extant among them, and to put forth a general methodological framework for the study of these ancient dialogues. These religious and philosophical dialogues are not only of great interest and import in their own right, but they also can help us to understand how later cultural and religious developments unfolded.

To Be a Jew

To Be a Jew PDF Author: Hayim H. Donin
Publisher: Basic Books
ISBN: 1541618149
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 464

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Book Description
The classic guide to the ageless heritage of Judaism Embraced over many decades by hundreds of thousands of readers, To Be a Jew offers a clear and comprehensive introduction to traditional Jewish laws and customs as they apply to daily life in the contemporary world. In simple and powerful language, Rabbi Hayim Halevy Donin presents the fundamentals of Judaism, including the laws and observances for the Sabbath, the dietary laws, family life, prayer at home and in the synagogue, the major and minor holidays, and the guiding principles and observances of life, such as birth, naming, circumcision, adoption and conversion, Bar-mitzvah, marriage, divorce, death, and mourning. Ideal for reference, reflection, and inspiration, To Be a Jew will by greatly valued by anyone who feels that knowing, understanding, and observing the laws and traditions of Judaism in daily life is the essence of what it means to be a Jew.

Food and Identity in Early Rabbinic Judaism

Food and Identity in Early Rabbinic Judaism PDF Author: Jordan Rosenblum
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 0521195985
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 239

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Book Description
Food often defines societies and even civilizations. Through particular commensality restrictions, groups form distinct identities. This identity is enacted daily, turning the biological need to eat into a culturally significant activity. In this book, Jordan D. Rosenblum explores how food regulations and practices helped to construct the identity of early rabbinic Judaism. Bringing together the scholarship of rabbinics with that of food studies, this volume first examines the historical reality of food production and consumption in Roman-era Palestine. It then explores how early rabbinic food regulations created a distinct Jewish, male, and rabbinic identity.

Food in Ancient Judah

Food in Ancient Judah PDF Author: Cynthia Shafer-Elliott
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 9781908049735
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
First published in 2013. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Cultural Christians in the Early Church

Cultural Christians in the Early Church PDF Author: Nadya Williams
Publisher: Zondervan Academic
ISBN: 0310147824
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 251

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Book Description
In the middle of the third century CE, one North African bishop wrote a treatise for the women of his church, exhorting them to resist such culturally normalized yet immodest behaviors in their cosmopolitan Roman city as mixed public bathing in the nude, and wearing excessive amounts of jewelry and makeup. The treatise appears even more striking, once we realize that the scandalous virgins to whom it was addressed were single women who had dedicated their virginity to Christ. Stories like this one challenge the general assumption among Christians today that the earliest Christians were zealous converts who were much more counterculturally devoted to their faith than typical church-goers today. Too often Christians today think of cultural Christianity as a modern concept, and one most likely to occur in areas where Christianity is the majority culture, such as the American "Bible Belt." The story that this book presents, refutes both of these assumptions. Cultural Christians in the Early Church, which aims to be both historical and practical, argues that cultural Christians were the rule, rather than the exception, in the early church. Using different categories of sins as its organizing principle, the book considers the challenge of culture to the earliest converts to Christianity, as they struggled to live on mission in the Greco-Roman cultural milieu of the Roman Empire. These believers blurred and pushed the boundaries of what it meant to be a saint or sinner from the first to the fifth centuries CE, and their stories provide the opportunity to get to know the regular people in the early churches. At the same time, their stories provide a fresh perspective for considering the difficult timeless questions that stubbornly persist in our own world and churches: when is it a sin to eat or not eat a particular food? Are women inherently more sinful than men? And why is Christian nationalism a problem and, at times, a sin? Ultimately, recognizing that cultural sins were always a part of the story of the church and its people is a message that is both a source of comfort and a call to action in our pursuit of sanctification today.

What Did the Ancient Israelites Eat?

What Did the Ancient Israelites Eat? PDF Author: Nathan MacDonald
Publisher: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing
ISBN: 0802862985
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 172

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Book Description
What food did the ancient Israelites eat, and how much of it did they consume? That's a seemingly simple question, but it's actually a complex topic. In this fascinating book Nathan MacDonald carefully sifts through all the relevant evidence -- biblical, archaeological, anthropological, environmental -- to uncover what the people of biblical times really ate and how healthy (or unhealthy) it was. Engagingly written for general readers, What Did the Ancient Israelites Eat? is nonetheless the fruit of extensive scholarly research; the book's substantial bibliography and endnotes point interested readers to a host of original sources. Including an archaeological timeline and three detailed maps, the book concludes by analyzing a number of contemporary books that advocate a return to "biblical" eating. Anyone who reads MacDonald's responsible study will never read a "biblical diet" book in the same way again.