Hello Rhetoric II students! Welcome back! This term we will be following the same procedure for the weekly blog. If you have any questions please post them in the comments section below. There are two online readings this week. Enjoy!
Read: Factions within Judaism
Read: The Jewish Diaspora
Will the Harkness Discussion mentioned in the syllabus for week 1 be on the online readings? If so, should I prepare notes and quotes? (Rhyme unintended)
ReplyDeleteYes it will, and please do! Nice poem, by the way.
ReplyDeleteI found both articles quite fascinating, which I will touch on in a minute, but first I want to comment on the writing style of Factions Within Judaism. I found it a bit hard to follow, and the sentence structure confusing.
ReplyDelete"We hear a series of such complaints about the priests, many of the them in the Dead Sea Scrolls, many of them found in Rabbinic literature, but some of course, as anybody who reads the Bible knows, going back to the prophets, even in Biblical times, complaining about the priests of the temple.... Nonetheless, (I took a breather here) it's clear among all the numerous groups within the Jewish community of the 1st century, that all of them, to justify themselves, have to some degree or other deal with the temple. "
It was however, interesting to see the many different factions within Judaism and the different opinions that came with them. I especially enjoyed the varying levels of Purity they padded themselves with. For example, the Essenes viewed the Temple with such respect that some of them did not even step foot in it, I assume they thought that they were not worthy enough at the time.
Of the two readings, I enjoyed The Jewish Diaspora the most, as it seems to cover slightly more detail, or perhaps in an easier manner, than that of the first. It was interesting to see how the Jews attempted to fuse with the Roman population, and how it may have influenced their beliefs. This can be seen in the following quote, "So, here's a Jewish congregation through several generations trying to maintain its its life, its identity, in a major Roman city. It's interesting that ... right adjacent to the hall of assembly, is a kitchen and a dining room. Apparently, they too had fellowship dinners." In addition to this, many Jews were integrated into daily commerce and trade. Also, they even adopted the Greek language.
While they were influenced in some aspects, the Jewish population never seemed to loose their identity. This can be seen through the building of synagogues. Upon reading this, one can picture an almost, "Jewish Town" such as a modern day China or Japan town. It is also interesting to note that while they were widely scattered they seemed to maintain themselves. It was this vastness that quite possibly influenced the spread of Christianity, as described in the article, "missionaries like Paul would begin their travels by obviously approaching their brethren." Because of this wide spread population, Christian views would in essence be able to cover more ground faster than it would have if there was only one or two masses rather than clusters. I would have liked to see more comparisons here, as to where we would be today, had the Jews not been as scattered.
Also, I wanted to address a question that I had. In the text it said that the synagogues attracted many gentiles. To what degree would this increased population have effected the economy?
Finally to wrap up, I liked how the article sheds some light on the Jewish population. Even though the jews are scattered from their home land, they are still a community for they are still able to interact with each other through wide spread events that are a part of their religion.
Just for fun, and also to see how carefully people read, did anyone else catch the random = in one of the readings?
Nuts, I just wasted 30 minutes writing this for I just read the syllabus more carefully, "No Blog." On top of that I was not even first...
DeleteDoes this comment count as signing up for the blog?
ReplyDeleteseems alright to me, we'll have something more official in class once we take the blog private.
DeleteDoes this comment, imitating Max's comment, count as signing up for the blog? Or must it be original? Yeah, don't bother replying to this one. I'm just glad I managed to get here! Interesting readings this week.
ReplyDelete