Tal Ilan Knihy

This study explores the real—as against the ideal—social, political, and religious status of women in Palestinian Judaism of Hellenistic and Roman Periods. This investigation concludes that extreme religious groups in Judaism of the period influenced other groups, classes, and factions to tighten their control of women. They also encouraged an understanding of ideal relationships between men and women, represented in the literature and the legal codes of the time, that required increasing chastity. Despite this, the lives of real women and their relationships to men continued to be varied and nuanced. This book integrates both Jewish and Early Christian sources together with a feminist critique. It is the most comprehensive work of this sort published thus far and offers a vast repository of relevant material, as well as a fresh interpretation.

In this lexicon, Tal Ilan collects all the information on names of Jews in lands east of Palestine, in which Aramaic and Arabic was spoken, and on the people who bore them between 330 BCE, a date which marks the Hellenistic conquest of East, and 650 CE, approximately the date when the Muslim conquest of East and the southern Mediterranean basin was completed. The corpus includes names from literary sources, especially the Babylonian Talmud but those mentioned in epigraphic documents, especially incantation bowls in Aramaicare, are also an important factor of the database. This lexicon is an onomasticon in as far as it is a collection of all the recorded names used by the Jews of the eastern Diaspora in the above-mentioned period. Tal Ilan discusses the provenance of the names and explains them etymologically, given the many possible sources of influence for the names at that time. In addition, she shows the division between the use of biblical names and the use of foreign names, and points out the most popular ones. This book is also a prosopography, since Ilan analyzes the identity of the persons mentioned therein. The lexicon is accompanied by a lengthy and comprehensive introduction that scrutinizes the main trends in name giving current at the time. A large part of it is devoted to the question of how one can identify a Jew in a mostly non-Jewish society.

This volume, the final in a four-part series, documents all named Jews from Antiquity, focusing on those from Palestine between 200 CE and the Arab conquest. It draws primarily from the Palestinian Talmud and inscriptions from Jewish cemeteries like Beit Shearim. Notably, it also includes a list of Samaritans known by name during this period, totaling over 3,000 entries. Together with the other volumes, the series compiles a record of more than 15,000 named Jews, offering insights into the cultural phenomenon of name-giving among Jews and their levels of assimilation or separateness. This makes the series an invaluable resource for cultural and social history, with lasting utility for scholars. Additionally, this volume features a substantial addendum to the first volume, correcting omissions and including over 500 new entries. An appendix presents findings from the project team’s research on inscriptions in Elijah's Cave in Haifa, a site still revered in Judaism today, although its ancient religious significance is debated. The team uncovered 50 inscriptions, contributing over 70 names to this volume.

In this lexicon, Tal Ilan collects all the information on names of Jews in lands west of Palestine, in which Greek and Latin was spoken, and on the people who bore them between 330 BCE, a date which marks the Hellenistic conquest of East, and 650 CE, approximately the date when the Muslim conquest of East and the southern Mediterranean basin was completed. The corpus includes names from literary sources, but those mentioned in epigraphic and papyrological documents form the vast majority of the database. This lexicon is an onomasticon in as far as it is a collection of all the recorded names used by the Jews of the western Diaspora in the above-mentioned period. Tal Ilan discusses the provenance of the names and explains them etymologically, given the many possible sources of influence for the names at that time. In addition she shows the division between the use of biblical names and the use of Greek, Latin and other foreign names, and points out the most popular names. This book is also a prosopography since Ilan analyzes the identity of the persons mentioned therein. The lexicon is accompanied by a lengthy and comprehensive introduction that scrutinizes the main trends in name giving current at the time. A large part of it is devoted to the question of how one can identify a Jew in a mostly non-Jewish society.

In this lexicon Tal Ilan collects all the information on names of Jews in Palestine and the people who bore them between 330 BCE, a date which marks the Hellenistic conquest of Palestine, and 200 CE, the date usually assigned to the close of the mishnaic period, and the early Roman Empire. Thereby she includes names from literary sources as well as those found in epigraphic and papyrological documents. It is an onomasticon in as far as it is a collection of all the recorded names used by the Jews of Palestine in the above-mentioned period. Tal Ilan discusses the provenance of the names and explains them etymologically, given the many possible sources of influence for the names at that time. In addition she shows the division between the use of biblical names and the use of Greek and other foreign names. She analyzes the identity of the persons and the choice of name and points out the most popular names at the time. The lexicon is accompanied by a lengthy and comprehensive introduction that scrutinizes the main trends in name giving current at the time. It provides immediate information on all known persons of Jewish extraction from Palestine during the Hellenistic and Early Roman Period.

The Order of Qodashim in the Mishnah and the Babylonian Talmud discusses the Temple and its rituals, especially the sacrifices. It is well known that the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem, while it stood, was almost exclusively a male institution. The purpose of the feminist commentary on Seder Qodashim is to discover niches in this elaborate system where women were present and active. Differences between male and female participation in the Temple cult - as they are presented in the mishnaic and talmudic texts - are the topic of the essays in this volume. The contributions by highly esteemed scholars of rabbinic literature represent a surprising selection of topics that touch on Temple and gender. This volume sums up two conferences, held in Berlin and Jerusalem, devoted to the Order of Qodashim, initiating the Feminist Commentary Series on this Order.

Tal Ilan explores the way historical documents from antiquity are reworked and edited in a long process that ends in silencing the women originally mentioned in them. Many methods are used to produce this end result: elimination of women or their words, denigration of the women and their role or unification of several significant women into one. These methods and others are illuminated in this book, as it uses the example of the Jewish queen Shelamzion Alexandra (76-67 BCE) for its starting point. Queen Shelamzion was the only legitimate Jewish queen in history. Yet all the documents in which she is mentioned (Josephus, Qumran scrolls, rabbinic literature etc.) have been reworked so as to minimize her significance and distort the picture we may receive of her. Tal Ilan follows the ways this was done and in doing so she encounters similar patterns in which other Jewish women in antiquity were silenced, censored and edited out.