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Tannaitic literature, early rabbinic literature from the first two centuries CE, includes a category of status called נתינים (nǝtînîm; sg. נתין, nātîn). The same term appears in Ezra-Nehemiah, relating to a group of temple laborers. However, the connection between the nǝtînîm of Ezra-Nehemiah and those in Tannaitic literature is tenuous. While the nǝtînîm in Ezra-Nehemiah are presented as an integral part of the community of returnees, in Tannaitic literature, nǝtînîm are considered to have an inferior status and a severe marital prohibition. They are never mentioned in Tannaitic descriptions of the temple and are always appended to ממזרים (mamzērîm), Jews of severely blemished pedigree. Since nǝtînîm are absent from preexilic biblical works and almost never appear in other works from the Second Temple period, it is unclear how and why the nǝtînîm resurface in Tannaitic literature, and what their relationship is to the nǝtînîm of Ezra-Nehemiah. In this article, I propose that the term assumed a new meaning in Tannaitic literature as a Hebraized form of the Greek word νόθοι. While the exact details of the process cannot be fully reconstructed, this suggestion can solve the main difficulties surrounding the nǝtînîm in Tannaitic literature and reveal the complex ways in which biblical terms and pericopes were read and utilized in antiquity.

Autant que la position de la femme dans la société, le principe de la matrilinéarité juive est révélateur des normes qui régissent le lien social. Le système de filiation matrilinéaire s’est installé dans le judaïsme sur la base de l’interprétation du dit talmudique affirmant Ton fils né d’une idolâtre n’est pas ton fils mais le sien ( Qid. 68b). Il entérinait un processus enclenché quelques siècles plus tôt, à l’époque de la Mishna , autour du premier siècle de l’ère, mettant un terme à la longue tradition biblique qui ne percevait de filiation que patrilinéaire, et instaurait, ce faisant, un modèle de transmission de la judéité qui perdure jusqu’à nos jours. Cette transformation majeure était-elle due à une évolution interne de la pensée rabbinique rationalisant la judéité au regard des affiliations ? Ou à des contraintes extérieures liées à l’imposition de nouvelles réglementations du statut de la personne ? Les deux hypothèses d’interprétations sont débattues – et parfois se rejoignent – dans les recherches menées sur la filiation ou l’identité juive. Cet article examine les conditions de la transmission de l’identité de la personne, telles qu’elles ont été traitées et définies au long des siècles par l’institution de normes juridiques et sociales régulant la filiation, la conversion et l’héritage, toutes normes qui éclairent les évolutions du statut de la femme dans l’histoire du judaïsme entre l’Antiquité tardive et le Moyen Âge. The principle of matrilineage reveals as much about the norms governing the social bond in Jewish society as it does about the status of women. The matrilineal system in Judaism is grounded on an interpretation of the Talmudic saying “Your son born to an idolater is not your son but hers ( Qid . 68b).” It perpetuated and fixed a process that had begun a few centuries earlier, during the time of the Mishnah, around the first century CE, which put an end to a long biblical tradition that allowed only patrilineal descent and established a model for the transmission of Jewishness that endures to this day. Was this major transformation the result of changes internal to rabbinic thought in an effort to rationalize Jewishness through descent, or to external constraints such as the imposition of new regulations stemming from changes in the status of the individual in surrounding societies? Both interpretations are discussed – and sometimes blended together – in historical research about parentage and Jewish identity. This article examines the conditions under which the transmission of the identity of the person have been defined over the centuries by the implementation of legal and social norms regulating descent, conversion and inheritance. It thus sheds light on the changes in the status of Jewish women between Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages.

Scattered throughout the Talmud, the founding document of rabbinic Judaism in late antiquity, can be found quite a few references to Jesus--and they're not flattering. In this lucid, richly detailed, and accessible book, Peter Schäfer examines how the rabbis of the Talmud read, understood, and used the New Testament Jesus narrative to assert, ultimately, Judaism's superiority over Christianity. The Talmudic stories make fun of Jesus' birth from a virgin, fervently contest his claim to be the Messiah and Son of God, and maintain that he was rightfully executed as a blasphemer and idolater. They subvert the Christian idea of Jesus' resurrection and insist he got the punishment he deserved in hell--and that a similar fate awaits his followers. Schäfer contends that these stories betray a remarkable familiarity with the Gospels--especially Matthew and John--and represent a deliberate and sophisticated anti-Christian polemic that parodies the New Testament narratives. He carefully distinguishes between Babylonian and Palestinian sources, arguing that the rabbis' proud and self-confident countermessage to that of the evangelists was possible only in the unique historical setting of Persian Babylonia, in a Jewish community that lived in relative freedom. The same could not be said of Roman and Byzantine Palestine, where the Christians aggressively consolidated their political power and the Jews therefore suffered. A departure from past scholarship, which has played down the stories as unreliable distortions of the historical Jesus,Jesus in the Talmudposits a much more deliberate agenda behind these narratives.

Tradition and the Formation of the Talmudoffers a new perspective on perhaps the most important religious text of the Jewish tradition. It is widely recognized that the creators of the Talmud innovatively interpreted and changed the older traditions on which they drew. Nevertheless, it has been assumed that the ancient rabbis were committed to maintaining continuity with the past. Moulie Vidas argues on the contrary that structural features of the Talmud were designed to produce a discontinuity with tradition, and that this discontinuity was part and parcel of the rabbis' self-conception. Both this self-conception and these structural features were part of a debate within and beyond the Jewish community about the transmission of tradition. Focusing on the Babylonian Talmud, produced in the rabbinic academies of late ancient Mesopotamia, Vidas analyzes key passages to show how the Talmud's creators contrasted their own voice with that of their predecessors. He also examines Zoroastrian, Christian, and mystical Jewish sources to reconstruct the debates and wide-ranging conversations that shaped the Talmud's literary and intellectual character.