English Talmud online

The Soncino Babylonian Talmud is now available online, with downloads.

http://www.halakhah.com/indexrst.html

Web Yeshiva

An interesting sight was recently brought to my attention.  It is called “Web Yeshiva,” which offers a traditional Jewish Yeshiva (school) experience online.  If you want to get a sense of the traditional Orthodox Jewish interpretations, thought, and Yeshiva experience, take a look.

Main site =
http://www.webyeshiva.org/

Blog at:
http://blog.webyeshiva.org/

New Column with the Deseret News

Dan Peterson and I have started a bi-weekly column on world religion with the local and national editions of the Deseret News.  The first item can be found here.

Afghan Geniza 2

More information on the Afghan Geniza.  See here.

 

 

New Menorah Image discovered

Sixth century AD stamp from Akko; read here.

Great Quote!

Mircea Eliade made this prescient observation a half a century ago, which is highly pertinent regarding the contemporary New Atheist movement: “[Profane/Secular] Man makes himself, and he only makes himself completely in proportion as he desacralizes himself and the world.  The sacred is the prime obstacle to his freedom.  … He will not be truly free until he has killed the last god.”  (M. Eliade, The Sacred and the Profane: The Nature of Religion, (Harcourt, 1957/1987) 203.

New Book Notice: “Otherworldly Priesthood”

I just got ahold of an interesting new book on the ancient Israelite concept of celestial priesthood and temples.

Angel, J. Otherworldly and Eschatological Priesthood in the Dead Sea Scrolls, (Brill, 2010)

Geniza in Afghanistan

It appears that scholars have discovered a geniza (Jewish repository for texts to prevent desecration of the name of God written on the texts) in Afghanistan.  It seems to date from about 1000 years ago.  See report here.

 

Interesting artifact from Second Temple

A small seal related to the temple cult in Jerusalem during the second temple has been found.

See articles here.

David Larsen

News report.

The seal reads “Pure for YH[WH = Yahweh or "the Lord"]” , and seems to be a seal marking something as culticly pure for use by priests in the temple rituals.

Where did the Dome of the Rock go?

A number of Israels have on occasion painted or photoshopped the Muslim Dome of the Rock from the Temple Mount, minimally creating an idealization of what the Temple Mount really should be like.  Recently, such a photo has been distributed to IDF forces by Israel’s military Rabbinate.  Here’s the photo.

See article here.

Here is a similar painting.

And here one of the Third Temple replacing the Dome of the Rock.

Needless to say, this type of thing is extremely provocative and incendiary given the current political conditions.