Agrippa I and Palestinian Judaism in the first century
A number of scholars have argued that Agrippa I, upo? becoming king of Judea, aligned himself with, or at least followed the practices of, the Pharisees. While by no means the unanimous opinion of modern scholarship, this assertion has found its way into almost all recent reference work.1 The religious orientation of Agrippa is significant not just for the biography of the king. It is relevant to issues in the history of first-century Judaism. Affiliation with the Pharisees on the part of a popular ruler would support the widely-held view that the former were an extremely influential group and/or that Pharisaism was the dominant form of Palestinian Judaism. A shrewd politician like Agrippa would be unlikely to adopt religious practices rejected by the majority of his Jewish subjects or to align himself with a peripheral faction lacking broad appeal. While such a posture is not impossible ? especially if Agrippa's motivation was genuine conviction rather than political pragmatism ? a Pharisaic orientation that involved "swimming against the stream" would presumably be reflected in the popular standing of the king,or at least in the sources concerning him. So if we were able to prove that Agrippa followed the Pharisees we would have a strong argument for the dominant position of the Pharisaic party.2 But if, as I hope to show, the Judaism of Agrippa was not Pharisaic in character our understanding of the religion of first-century Judea will be different. I shall argue that the practices of Agrippa in fact reflect the common form of first-century Judaism, but that the common form was not Pharisaic. I shall return to these issues below; first we must examine the available evidence concerning the Judaism of Agrippa. I begin with the testimony of Josephus and then I shall discuss the evidence of rabbinic literature. An appendix follows my conclusions in which I argue that a well known source about "Yannai the King" actually refers to Agrippa I.
The Holiday of Holidays: A Triple-Holiday Festival for Christians, Jews and Muslims
Religions differ from each other in their beliefs, customs and holidays. They often ignite wars and create impenetrable boundaries between peoples. Religion becomes the spearhead and driving force for hatred, destruction, and separation from the other. The author will discuss an inter-religion holiday that is exceptional in the Middle East and in the entire world: called the Holiday of Holidays Festival, it unites the holidays of the three monotheistic religions, Christian Christmas, Jewish Hanukkah and Muslim Ramadan, and its logo is three intertwined hands. It takes place during the months of November and December in a mixed neighbourhood in the city of Haifa, Israel. The organizers of this festival try to create an inversion of social reality, representing it in a new and subversive form by blurring the boundaries between holiday and festival, private and public, sacred and secular, local and global, as well as between rival groups. Les religions diffèrent les unes des autres dans leurs croyances, leurs coutumes et leurs jours de congé. Elles déclenchent souvent des guerres et créent des frontières hermétiques entre les peuples. Les religions deviennent le fer de lance et la force de conduite de la haine, de la destruction et de la séparation de l'autre. L'auteure se penche sur un congé religieux qui est exceptionnel au Moyen-Orient et dans le monde entier. Nommé “la fête du congé des congés” il réunit les congés des trois religions monothéistes: le Noël chrétien, la Hanoukka juive et le Ramadan musulman. Son logo se compose de trois mains entrelacées. Cette fête a lieu durant les mois de novembre et décembre dans l'environnement mixte de la ville de Haïfa en Israël. Les organisateurs de cette fête essaient de créer une inversion de la réalité sociale par une représentation nouvelle et subversive de celle-ci, et ce en rendant floues les frontières entre congé et fête, privé et public, sacré et profane, local et global, et entre des groupes rivaux.
Reid on Hypotheses and the Ether; A Reassessment
In recent years historians of science have come to see that Thomas Reid’s Essays on the Intellectual Powers of Man had a profound impact on the development of British methodological thought in the late-eighteenth and early-nineteenth centuries. Larry Laudan has argued that Reid was “the first major British philosopher to take Newton’s opinions on induction, causality, and hypotheses seriously”; and that Reid was thereby instrumental in changing the character of British methodological discourse in the Enlightenment.(1) Geoffrey Cantor has examined in detail the influence of Reid’s critique of ether theories and hypotheses in the Essays on leading protagonists in the nineteenth-century debates surrounding the wave theory of light,(2) and Richard Olson has traced the origins of the scientific style of British physics in the Victorian period to the writings of Reid and other Common Sense philosophers. (3) As well as delineating Reid’s influence, Laudan, Cantor, and Olson have attempted to identify the problems to which he addressed himself in articulating his methodology, and they have analysed with some care the internal structure of his methodological views. Thanks to the work of these historians, therefore, we have a fairly comprehensive picture of Reid’s methodology and its fortunes in the nineteenth century.