Christian and Jewish Communities

It has always being said that from the starting to crawl of the printing house in the Ottoman country to coming to the beginning of the 19th century with tottery and then standing on its foots, a printing-issuing explosion was lived in the country as if revenging of delaying of 200 years. While books, newspapers and journals were advancing speedly to become the undispensable matter of the daily life, the wall calendars, which
were in fact the guide of the daily life but had not took its set on the place in which it must be, were started to be hung to the places they deserved from the middles of the century. This study in the light of the documentaries obtained from The Prime Minister’s Ottoman Archive has the aim to present a short story of the journey of the calendars that have different kinds with regard to their printer, the printing place, the causes of printing or unprinting, content and the attributes of shape in the beginning of the 20th century.

In this paper, I discuss the demographic evolution and geographical location of the Jewish communities in Rome from the Late Republic, when there is clear evidence of a Jewish settlement, till the eve of the barbarian invasions in Late Antiquity. I focus on two main topics, first the historical geography of the Jews living in ancient Rome, or where they lived, and the demographic development of the Jewish community, or how many Jews lived in the urbs. It seems that it is possible to trace the evolution of the areas of Jewish settlement in ancient Rome by using literary as well as archaeological sources. Thus, while during the Late Republic most of the Jews probably lived in the Subura, by the Augustan period the newly developed Transtiberinum neighborhood (Regio XIV) had become the main area of settlement, as with most of the other foreign immigrants who either dwelled there individually or in groups. By the end of Late Antiquity, the Jewish communities were scattered also in the southernmost area of Rome (Regio I), as well as in the eastern part of the city (Regio VI). In many cases, Jewish communities lived in the same areas as Christian groups, often concentrated around tituli. Otherwise, the number of the Jews living in Rome fluctuated through the ages and was never stable in ways that were consistent with the fluctuation of the general population of the city of Rome. Yet, literary sources (like Josephus for earlier periods) and data coming from a close analysis of the catacombs make it clear that the Jewish population of Rome was always quite small, probably no more than 1% of the entire population and oscillating from 10,000 in the first half of the second century C.E. to no more than 6,000 at the close of the fourth century C.E.

Samuel Benaroya was perhaps the last representative of a 400-year-old tradition of Turkish Jewish cantors who were experts in the singing of liturgical music according to Ottoman court music, said Edwin Seroussi, Professor and Director of the Jewish Music Research Centre at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Samuel Benaroya had died in 2003, but recordings made during the late 80s and early 90s document an art, whose tradition has nearly disappeared today.

During the 19th century, Edirne had become the most important center of this Maftirim tradition. The famous anthology “Shirei Israel be-Eretz ha-Qedem”, printed at Istanbul in 1921, was mainly a printed edition of the Divan used by the Maftirim of Edirne. The Ottoman Divan sorts all songs according to the tunes of the makamlar, but there were not only Turkish divans, but also those in Greek, Armenian, and Hebrew language.

Makam sabâ:
1. Moshe
- Semai Aǧir "Meleḵ Mêšarîm"
2. Abraham Bar Shlomo Hayyun
- Semai Aksak "Ezkôr Ḥasdê El Ne'eman"
3. Israel Najara (ca.1555 – ca.1625)
- Semai Yürük "Yôm El Qeren `ammo Nasā"

Makam beyâti:
4. Anonym
- "Yishlach Mishamayim"
İzak Algazı Efendi, chant
5. Bekhor Papa (Poetry), Moshe Cordova (1881-1967) (Music)
- Beste "`Ûri `ûri"
Samuel Benaroya, chant
6. Hammamizade İsmail Dede Efendi (1778-1846)
- Merhabâ "Bir gonca femin yâresi vardır ciğerimde"

7. Samuel Benaroya over zijn weigering ghazzan te worden
Interview met Dr. David Raphael.

Makam hicaz:
8. Israel Najara (ca. 1555 – ca.1625)
- Peşrev Semai "Yaẓa Ẓîẓ Va-Yimmal"
9. Hayyim Bejerano
- Yürük Semai "Ḥaddeš Ke-Qedem Yamênû"

Makam sehnaz:
10. Yaacov Amron
- Peşrev "Ye`erav Leḵa Adônay Elohênû"
11. Israel
- Semai Aǧir "Yafah, Ḥišqeḵ Yiv`ar"
Aharon Alidi
12. Peşrev Aksak Semai "Avî Ram Big-Gevûrah"
13. Şarki "Adônay Hû Elohênû"

Makam segah:
14. Israel Najara, music by Yusuf Paşa (1821-1884)
- Peşrev "Yehemeh Levavî"
15. Israel Najara, music by Moshe Cordova
- Beste "Yah Qadôš Yôšev Tehillôt"
16. Eliyah
- Semai "Et Ḥoškî Ha'er"
17. Yehuda
- Yürük Semai "Yismaḥ Har Ẓiyyôn"

Makam hüzzam en nikriz:
18. Abraham
- Semai Aǧir "Elî Maher Haẓẓilenû"
19. Israel Najara
- "Yavô' Dôdî Le-Gan `ednô"

Samuel Benaroya, chant
Anthology of Music Traditions in Israel
(AMTI  9803, 1998)

nr 04:
İzak Algazı Efendi (1889-1950), chant
(Odeon Records LA 202784, 1929)

This article represents a response to the excavation report by Seyer and Lotz. Weiss discusses the location of the Limyra building within the city as well as its building constructions and its raw materials. Weiss compares the Limyra building with diaspora synagogues with regard to its architectural layout and orientation as well as with regard to the functionality of its excavated rooms and its water basin. Weiss discusses also the chancel screens with the menorah depic-tions and the date of structure in Limyra. As in other Diaspora synagogues, the location of the building, its construction on an earlier structure, the use of spolia, a water installation, and an ornate bima with a decorated chancel screen are the major elements supporting an argument for an identification of the Limyra building as a synagogue but only further excavations could warrant a clear identification.

De quoi vivaient Jésus et ses disciples ? Comment l'apôtre Paul et ses compagnons finançaient-ils leurs activités missionnaires ? Les prédicateurs des premières générations chrétiennes étaient-ils rémunérés ? Quelles formes prenait la solidarité matérielle des premières communautés chrétiennes ? Cet ouvrage répond à ces questions en abordant l'ensemble des aspects économiques de la vie des premiers chrétiens. Dans tout l'Empire romain, la vie économique des premières communautés chrétiennes, depuis la prédication de Jésus jusqu'à la fin du IIIe siècle, n'était pas un aspect secondaire de leur engagement religieux, profondément lié à une approche éthique et solidaire de la pauvreté. Cela n'était pour autant pas contradictoire avec la mise en place de formes de financement diverses et ambitieuses, dès la prédication de Jésus. Ce livre montre que les exigences de la morale chrétienne s'accompagnaient d'une recherche d'efficacité, même si les abus et les dysfonctionnements n'étaient évidemment pas absents. C'est notamment par une conception de la propriété se situant entre la propriété privée et la propriété commune, héritée de la prédication de Jésus et mise en place dès la première communauté de Jérusalem, que les chrétiens ont voulu mettre en pratique leur morale ambitieuse.

The Apocalypse of St. John and the Sefer Zerubbabel [a.k.a Apocalypse of Zerubbabel] are among the most popular apocalypses of the Common Era. While the Johannine Apocalypse was written by a first-century Jewish-Christian author and would later be refracted through a decidedly Christian lens, and the Sefer Zerubbabel was probably composed by a seventh-century Jewish author for a predominantly Jewish audience, the two share much in the way of plot, narrative motifs, and archetypal characters. An examination of these commonalities and, in particular, how they intersect with gender and sexuality, suggests that these texts also may have functioned similarly as a call to reform within the generations that originally received them and, perhaps, among later medieval generations in which the texts remained important.

The purpose of this paper is to discuss the evolving status of the Jewish communities in Roman Italy, first in the early imperial period, and then in Late Antiquity. In both periods, the legal status of the Jewish community mirrored an outer framework. Therefore, if in the early imperial period the outer model was the collegium, in Late Antiquity, the Jewish community mirrored the Christian ecclesiastic organization.
Hence, this paper is divided in two different parts. In the first part I shall discuss the legal framework of the Jewish communities of Roman Italy, in the light of the collegia from the rule of Augustus until the end of the Julio-Claudian dynasty. In the second part, I shall deal with the legal framework of the Jewish communities of Roman Italy in Late Antiquity, mainly from the second half of the fourth century till the middle of the fifth century. The reference had by then become the framework of the Catholic Church. Indeed, if Constantine first permitted and then adopted Christianity, financing its clergy and its building projects, by the end of the fourth century, Theodosius I made Nicene Christianity the state religion of the Roman Empire, with important consequences: the de-legitimization of the non-Nicene creeds, such as the Arian creed, and the proscription of “paganism” as a public religion. The strict division of the paper in two parts shall make it possible to avoid a diachronic development, in order to focus rather on two distinct synchronic frameworks, that of the Early Empire and that of Late Antiquity.
The main thesis of the paper is that the legal status and the organization of the Jewish community mirrored that of outer, surrounding similar organizations, which were taken as model. Thus, while in the early imperial period the Jewish community was molded on the collegium, in Late Antiquity legal status and the internal organization of the Jewish communities of Roman Italy came to mirror that of the Christian Church.

Audio files NOW AVAILABLE at http://www.topoi.org/event/28675/

The conference will present an overview of the preliminary results of the research project (B-5-3) Early Christian Knowledge Claims. The emergence of religious identities and spaces of knowledge, as well as forms and strategies of authorization, will be examined in the light of literary and archaeological sources, and of the epigraphic evidence currently being compiled in the Inscriptiones Christianae Graecae (ICG) database. Focus will be placed on targeted regions of mainland Greece and Asia Minor (e.g., Phrygia, Lycaonia, Galatia, Macedonia) in order to develop a regionally-oriented comparative analysis of the phenomena. Two monographs on “Early Christianity in Asia Minor” by U. Huttner (2014), and C. Breytenbach and C. Zimmerman (2015), will also be presented to the public and discussed by a panel of international experts.

De quoi vivaient Jésus et ses disciples ? Comment l'apôtre Paul et ses compagnons finançaient-ils leurs activités missionnaires ? Les prédicateurs des premières générations chrétiennes étaient-ils rémunérés ? Quelles formes prenait la solidarité matérielle des premières communautés chrétiennes ? Cet ouvrage répond à ces questions en abordant l'ensemble des aspects économiques de la vie des premiers chrétiens. Dans tout l'Empire romain, la vie économique des premières communautés chrétiennes, depuis la prédication de Jésus jusqu'à la fin du IIIe siècle, n'était pas un aspect secondaire de leur engagement religieux, profondément lié à une approche éthique et solidaire de la pauvreté. Cela n'était pour autant pas contradictoire avec la mise en place de formes de financement diverses et ambitieuses, dès la prédication de Jésus. Ce livre montre que les exigences de la morale chrétienne s'accompagnaient d'une recherche d'efficacité, même si les abus et les dysfonctionnements n'étaient évidemment pas absents. C'est notamment par une conception de la propriété se situant entre la propriété privée et la propriété commune, héritée de la prédication de Jésus et mise en place dès la première communauté de Jérusalem, que les chrétiens ont voulu mettre en pratique leur morale ambitieuse.

Isaac Aboab da Fonseca, the head rabbi of the Spanish and Portuguese Jewish community of Amsterdam, published a pamphlet in 1680 that addressed the laws of the herem.  This Exhortation, as he called it, urged his readers to restore a general sense of gravity to the ban, arguing more specifically that lay leaders could legally impose a ban without a rabbi’s approval, and that the herem was deeply connected to the foundations of communal authority, which he viewed as inviolable.  His halakhic discussion engaged with a series of claims made by his unnamed interlocutors, who apparently rejected the authority of the Mahamad on practical and theoretical grounds.  Aboab’s previously unstudied work reveals a new, ideological dimension of a series of disputes that are known to have disturbed this Sephardi community in the 1670s, and complicates the widely held view that the early modern period was characterized by a decline in rabbinic authority alongside the rise of strongly lay-led communities.

The Apocalypse of St. John and the Sefer Zerubbabel [a.k.a Apocalypse of Zerubbabel] are among the most popular apocalypses of the Common Era. While the Johannine Apocalypse was written by a first-century Jewish-Christian author and would later be refracted through a decidedly Christian lens, and the Sefer Zerubbabel was probably composed by a seventh-century Jewish author for a predominantly Jewish audience, the two share much in the way of plot, narrative motifs, and archetypal characters. An examination of these commonalities and, in particular, how they intersect with gender and sexuality, suggests that these texts also may have functioned similarly as a call to reform within the generations that originally received them and, perhaps, among later medieval generations in which the texts remained important.

For Jews across the Middle East and North Africa, the 1948 establishment of the State of Israel was a transformation period-in both the build-up to it and its aftermath. Using this momentous event as its focal point, this book takes the reader on a journey to remote destinations in the 20th century Jewish experience, examining aspects of Jewish history that have hardly ever been discussed in one place and in such an intriguing combination. Jews have played an integral role in the Arab world, Turkey, Iran, and North Africa for millennia.

A strange quotation from Clement of Alexandria's now lost Hypotyposeis, preserved in the Areopagite material within the writings of Maximus Confessor/John of Scythopolis, claims that Luke the Evangelist wrote the Jewish-Christian dialogue Jason and Papiscus. This information seems so fantastic that several scholars have attempted to explain away the attribution through the composition of various hypotheses. The most popular of these was published by Johannes Ernest Grabe in his Spicilegium SS Patrum in 1698. Despite being cited by scholars from the eighteenth to the twenty-first century, Grabe's hypothesis has never been the subject of a detailed investigation. Two conclusions result from an investigation of his hypothesis: Grabe's claims of textual corruption are unfounded; and it seems clear that Clement actually did claim Lukan authorship for Jason and Papiscus.

The article discusses the process of the introduction in Galicia of a new law regulating the relations between Jewish communities and the authorities of the territorial administration. Unlike in the Galician provinces, where the Josephine patent of 1789 continued to be applied, certain Jewish communities in the cities here had developed new statutes previously, leading to partial changes in the elections for community councils. The first was the Krakow community (1870), whose Orthodox rabbi Szymon Schreiber (Sofer) attempted to withdraw the implemented changes, designing his own version of the new statutes (1882). The struggle over the form of the new law ultimately culminated with the Viennese government’s issue of relevant regulations in 1890.

La Epístola de Judas, escrito cristiano de inicios del siglo II d.C., contiene una dura crítica a ciertos miembros de la comunidad que están ejerciendo una influencia creciente. Si bien se ha intentado ver en estos personajes a creyentes desordenados y licenciosos, incluso de tinte gnóstico, nuestra propuesta se orienta a comprender la Epístola de Judas como representante de un cristianismo opositor a la emergente jerarquía local. Esta hipótesis la sostendremos a partir de un análisis de los términos con que el autor designa a sus oponentes, que confrontaremos con la Ascensión de Isaías y las cartas de Ignacio de Antioquía. La Ascensión de Isaías, documento también proveniente del área de Siria, coincide en muchos aspectos con nuestra epístola en cuestión; Ignacio exalta la conducción episcopal y describe a los jerarcas de la comunidad con ciertas características que se estarían oponiendo explícitamente a lo que se propone en la Epístola de Judas.

Palabras clave: Epístola de Judas; liderazgo; obispos; Iglesia; discurso.

Jews and Gentiles in the Early Jesus Movement casts new light on Jewish-Gentile relations and the evolution of belief in the early Jesus movement. Abel Mordechai Bibliowicz suggests that the New Testament reflects the early stages of a Gentile challenge to the authority and to the legitimacy of the descendants of Jesus' disciples and first followers as the exclusive guardians and interpreters of his legacy.

With the passage of time and loss of context, the tensions and trauma produced by this crisis came to be understood by later believers as reflective of a Jewish-Christian conflict. Bibliowicz suggests that the New Testament texts do not reflect a struggle between 'Christians' and 'Jews' nor a conflict between 'Judaism' and 'Christianity' but rather a heated dispute about Judaism and about Torah observance among Jesus' early followers.