The Tenth of Tebet and the Septuagint

This coming Friday, December 13th, we will observe the Tenth of Tebet, a fast day which remind us of three tragic events.  The main event we recall on this day is the onset of the siege of Jerusalem by Nebuḥadnezzar, the King of Babylonia.  But there were other two events that we also remember in this day, the rendition of the Tora into the Greek language and the death of Ezra haSofer. 

On the 8th of Tebet (=today), approximately in the year 300 BCE, in Alexandria, Egypt, King Ptolemy ordered 72 Jewish scholars to translate the Tora (the five Books of Moshe or Pentateuch) to Greek. King Ptolemy sought to disprove the existence of an unified Jewish tradition to find an excuse to humiliate the Jews. The 70 scholars were placed in separate workrooms. Yet, they all translated the Tora in the same exact way.  

This translation of the Tora is known as the Septuagint. Although it was done by prominent Rabbis, the Septuagint is not considered a translation which follows necessarily rabbinical tradition. As explained in Talmud Yerushalmi (Megila 9) in many cases the authors of the Septuagint deliberately deviated from the traditional Jewish understanding of the Tora and adapted the Biblical text to the Greek mentality and sensitivities to please the king and avoid a situation of danger for the Jews 

As a whole, translating the Tora to Greek was considered a dark event by Jewish historiography. Why? Because the new Greek Bible was used to advanced the agenda of the Hellenist Jews who sought to syncretize Greek and Jewish values.  Eventually the Septuagint paved the way for the advancement of non-Jewish "Biblical" religions. Unlike pagan cults which were clearly antagonistic to the Tora, these new religions were now supposedly based on the Jewish Scripture.  The Bible was now reinterpreted and used to justify non-Jewish ideas or beliefs "in the name of the Bible", all of which caused uncountable tragedies to the Jewish people. 

As Timothy McLay explains, "the Jewish Scriptures as they were known, read and interpreted in the Greek language, provided the basis for much, if not most, of the interpretive context of the New Testament."

BTW, the official Jewish translation of the Tora is the Targum Onqelos (aka Targum Didan) done ca. 100 CE.

KASHRUT: Meat and fish together

Eating fish and meat together is not restricted by Biblical law. However, the Rabbis considered that mixing fish and meat together could be harmful for one's health (סכנה).  The Gemara Pesahim (76b) is not explicit about the particular health hazard meat and fish together would trigger. It describes the problem as משום דקשיא לריחא ולדבר אחר . dabar aher, which literally means "something else" is a term which is usually used in the Talmud as a euphemism. It might be indicating thus that the rabbis were describing some type of disease which we are not able to identify today. 

Although Maimonides does not mention this prohibition, the shulhan 'aruh does (Yore Dea'a 116:2).  Rabbi Yosef Karo writes about it in the chapter where he deals with hazardous foods.  Following Rashi's opinion, Rabbi Yosef Karo identified the harm triggered by this mixture as tsara'at.  Now, we are not certain what type of disease tsara'at was. And although tsara'at is traditionally understood as a type of leprosy Maimonides explained that tsara'at should not be identified narrowly as leprosy but in a more broadly sense, probably as a general skin disease (MT Tsara'at 16:10). It is possible that eating fish and meat together might cause in some people an allergic reaction. Perhaps, as the famous commentator of the shulhan 'arukh Magen Abraham said, in our days human nature has changed (נשתנו הטבעים) and people are not affected anymore by this mixture as they used to be affected centuries ago. 

Other rabbis have a completely different interpretation about the physical risks of eating meat and fish together. In their opinion it has to do with the possibility of swallowing a fish-bone hidden in a piece of meat.

In any case, and although contemporary rabbis have not reached a definitive conclusion as to what is (or what was) the physical danger caused by eating fish and meat together, we strictly uphold this restriction, following the rulings of the shulhan 'arukh (קבלנו הוראות מר"ן).  It is important to clarify that unlike milk and meat, fish and meat may be eaten one after the other at the same meal as separate courses.

Mirror, mirror….. Maimonides on 'aboda zara 11:6

In MT Hilkhot 'aboda zara 11:4 Maimonides dealt with the definition of nihush, or reading events or natural phenomena as divine signs from God.  In 11:6 Maimonides defines the qosem. Although in modern Hebrew qosem is a magician/entertainer in Biblical and rabbinical Hebrew the qosem was a diviner, a future-teller. Maimonides explains that a qosem is the person who performs certain ritual acts, enters in a trance (mishtomem) and pretend to tell the future: this is going to happen, etc. Some of these diviners, he says, use different methods for divination. Some of them use mirrors (remember Snow-white?) and some of them  a crystal ball ('ashashit).  Maimonides explains 11:7 that it is forbidden to perform any act of divination and it is also forbidden to go to a diviner or seek his or her advice. As it is explicitly written in the Tora in the context of idolatrous practices ( Deut. 18:10) "Let no one among you be found who sacrifices their son or daughter in the fire, who practices divination or sorcery, interprets omens or engages in witchcraft".  

Divination and prediction of the future was an integral part of every pagan society. From the Greeks (the seers and oracles) to the Aztecas in ancient Mexico. The Aztecas diviners, for example, would tell the future casting maize kernels, looking into mirrors or bowls of water or tying and untying knots. As in many other pagan cultures they would also use hallucinogens (plants) to bring themselves into having "extraordinary visions of the future".  In many African societies divination is still practiced today.

For Maimonides, as per More Nebukhim 2:37, all diviners are charlatans who use their powerful imaginations and persuasive personalities pretending that the future is revealed to them by an external force.  For a Jew it is entirely forbidden to visit or seek the advice of any kind of diviner, psychic, card reader, etc. or whoever claims to foretell the future.