Did Saadia Gaon & Maimonides Believe in Eternal Marriage?

I'm very much in favour of using sources from the ancient world to explore our scriptures and doctrines.
They deepen and enrichen our understanding because, lets face it, we live in a time far-removed from that of the scriptures. Our understanding is not necessarily their understanding.
If you were to give a Russian a dozen roses they would ask who died. An even number of flowers in Russian culture is used for mourning, not for romantic or thoughtful gifts. Hilary Clinton commited a major faux pas when she sent birthday congratulations to the Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych before his birthday. For Russians and Ukrainians, this is considered very bad luck, nd a possible jinx. It simply isn't done. Many years ago, when I was a little kid, some BYU Jerusalem professors had been with the students to a cemetary in Israel. My Dad asked them how it had been. It was alright, the professor said, but the cemetary was in a terrible condition, little rocks all over the graves! We spent most of the time clearing them off.
Dad had to explain that leaving small rocks on a grave is a Jewish custom and not a lack of proper maintenance.
These are all examples of how easy it is to misunderstand a living culture, let alone a dead one several millenia removed from us.
What I find problematic is trying to force our own understandings unto the past. Particularly doctrinal understandings. Mormonising the sources, so to speak.
To avoid any misunderstanding, let me state that I believe in the doctrines of the Restoration. What I don't believe in is making texts say something that they don't.
This gives us a distorted view of both past and texts.

This colloquy between Jesus and his Sadducean detractors does not question or throw doubt, in proper cases, on the eternal verity that the family unit continues in the resurrection. Jesus had previously taught the eternal nature of the marriage union. "What therefore God [not man!] hath joined together, let not man put asunder." That is, when a marriage is performed by God's authority—not man's!—it is eternal. See Matt. 19:1-12. "Whatsoever God doeth, it shall be for ever." (Eccles. 3:14.)

Indeed, almost the whole Jewish nation believed that marriage was eternal, and that parents would beget children in the resurrection. Those few who did not believe that marriage continued after death and among such were the Sadducees, who could not so believe because they denied the resurrection itself—were nonetheless fully aware that such was the prevailing religious view of the people generally. Without doubt Jesus, the apostles, the seventies, and the disciples generally had discussed this doctrine.

The Sadducean effort here is based on the assumption that Jesus and the Jews generally believe in marriage in heaven. They are using this commonly accepted concept to ridicule and belittle the fact of the resurrection itself. They are saying: 'How absurd to believe in a resurrection (and therefore in the fact that there is marriage in heaven) when everybody knows that a woman who has had seven husbands could not have them all at once in the life to come.'

A most instructive passage showing that the Jews believed there should be marriage in heaven is found in Dummelow. "There was some division of opinion among the rabbis as to whether resurrection would be to a natural or to a supernatural (spiritual) life," he says. "A few took the spiritual view, e.g. Rabbi Raf is reported to have often said, 'In the world to come they shall neither eat, nor drink, nor beget children, nor trade. There is neither envy nor strife, but the just shall sit with crowns on their heads, and shall enjoy the splendor of the Divine Majesty.' But the majority inclined to a materialistic view of the resurrection. The pre-Christian book of Enoch says that the righteous after the resurrection shall live so long that they shall beget thousands. The received doctrine is laid down by Rabbi Saadia, who says, 'As the son of the widow of Sarepton, and the son of the Shunamite, ate and drank, and doubtless married wives, so shall it be in the resurrection'; and by Maimonides, who says, 'Men after the resurrection will use meat and drink, and will beget children, because since the Wise Architect makes nothing in vain, it follows of necessity that the members of the body are not useless, but fulfill their functions.' The point raised by the Sadducees was often debated by the Jewish doctors, who decided that 'a woman who married two husbands in this world is restored to the first in the next.'" (Dummelow, p. 698.)

How much nearer the truth were these Jews, on this point, than are the modern professors of religion who suppose that family love, felicity, and unity cease simply because the spirit steps out of the body in what men call death!
Bruce R. McConkie, Doctrinal New Testament Commentary

The very first problem to present itself is one of chronology. Saadia Gaon was born in 882 AD and died in 942. If we assume that Jesus died somewhere between AD 28-33, then Saadia is separated from him by almost eight hundred and fifty years! Maimonides was a couple of centuries later even than that, from 1138-1204.
Such late sources by themselves are very poor indicators of what beliefs 1st-century Jews would have held.
If this was the extent of the problems posed by this source, then things might not be so bad. My blog post would certainly be shorter.
No such luck.
I might be a little hard on McConkie. Most of this is not so much his fault as the fault of his source- Dummelow's commentary.
The whole thing is available for free through google books.
The Reverend John Roberts Dummelow in 1908 had edited a work entitled "The One Volume Bible Commentary." This was a fairly critical work for 1908, but in terms of Jewish and New Testament scholarship anything that old tends to be positively primeval. So many new directions and, indeed, new sources had opened up since then that our understanding of those topics is vastly improved.
Dummelow's provides no citations for the quotes listed above. By modern standards that is entirely unforgiveable in a scholarly source. I did however manage to track down the sources used.
The first source is the only one to predate Jesus' mortal ministry.

I shall destroy all iniquity from upon the face of the earth, and every evil work shall come to an end; and there shall appear the plant of righteousness; and it shall be a blessing, and deeds of righteousness shall be planted with joy for ever.
And now all the righteous shall escape, and shall live till they beget thousands; and all the days of your youth and of your old age you shall fulfil in peace. Then shall the whole earth be tilled in righteousness, and it shall all be planted with trees, and filled with blessing. And all luxuriant trees will be planted in it; and they will plant vines in it, and the vine which they plant will produce a thousand measures of wine, and of all seed which is sown upon it.
Each seah will produce a thousand seah; and every seah of olives will produce up to ten baths of oil. And as for you. cleanse the earth from all uncleanness, and from all injustice and from all sinfulness and godlessness; and all the unclean things that have been wrought 'on the earth' remove from the earth. And all the children of men are to become righteous and all nations shall serve and bless me, and all shall worship me.
And the whole earth shall be freed from all defilement and from all uncleanness, and wrath and castigation: and I shall not again send a Deluge upon it unto generations of generations and for ever.
-1 Enoch 10:16-22, trans. Matthew Black.

This passage does not imply eternal marriage in the LDS understanding of the term.
As William R. G. Loader wrote, "the images of the future do not include sexuality as a theme, although some statements imply it. The abundant fruitfulness to which 10:17-19 looks forward, when Michael rejuvenates the earth, will include that people “will live and beget thousands and all the days of their youth and their old age will be completed in peace” (10:17). This means that the author does not envisage that human beings will live like undying angels, without further need for procreation, nor that they will be in the kind of holy context where sexual activity would be out of place."[1]
Likewise, Nicklesburg, in page 49 of his commentary on 1 Enoch, explained the biblical imagery underlying 1 Enoch's concept of the future, "most of the major sections of 1 Enoch– drawing on Isaiah 65-66 for their inspiration– envision a renewed earth and a restored Jerusalem as the setting for the long life that the righteous will enjoy after the judgment."
What presents us here, then, is an ideal, rejuvenated earth in which the righteous will live as long as the antediluvian patriarchs, if not longer, and will beget thounds of children. The trees will be just as productive, yielding colossal quantities of fruit and oil. After living a long life, the righteous will die.
Nothing so far about eternal marriage.
As for the so-called Rabbi Raf, he seems to be Rabbi Judah the Patriarch, known by the honorific Rav. Rav was the chief (though not the only) compiler and redactor of the Mishnah and one of the most significant authorities among the ancient sages. Rabbi Raf is pointless tautology, much like saying Rabbi Rabbi.

In the world to come there is no eating nor drinking nor begeting nor give and take nor jealousy nor hatred nor competition, but the righteous sit with their crowns on their heads feasting on the brightness of the divine presence (Shekhinah), as it says, "And they beheld God, and did eat and drink (Ex. 24:11)."
-Babylonian Talmud, t. Berachot 17a.

This talmudic passage is a little ambiguous. Rav might have been referring to a corporeal state or he might have meant a bodiless one. Be that as it may, Rav is saying that the existence of the righteous in the world to come will be extremely different than what we know from earthly experience. The prooftext is meant to show that basking in God's splendour is what replaces physical meat and drink.

Or shall he ponder and say, 'Those in this world, shall they eat, drink and be married, or no?'
We should know that they will eat and drink like us, and be married, as is elucidated by the Sareptan widow's son and the Shunamite's son, who lived in this world, ate, drank and were worthy of marriage. One of the sages said that he was of the seed of one of them.
-Saadia Gaon, the Book of Beliefs and Opinions, the seventh article, chapter five.

I've rendered a fairly literal translation, following R. Yosef Qafih's first-rate Hebrew translation. Saadia Gaon, one of the most influential figures in Judaism, was embroiled in a polemic against those who denied the resurrection and particularly against those who spiritualised it. Any brief sketch According to Saadia, the resurrection takes place in this world. Here on earth, not in heaven. Not a general principle, the resurrection is restricted to the righteous and penitent among the children of Israel. It is a reward for the righteous. For him the resurrection is also an indication of God's power and preeminence, because if he once created us ex nihilo, then he can certainly recreate us from the same even after our bodies have entirely decayed away. This world, the world of the resurrection, is a transient and corporeal one and we will be transfered from it into the world to come, which is in heaven. There we neither eat, drink, nor live a married life. Saadia uses Moses as an example. Moses ate and drank before ascending Mt. Sinai, but while there he went without those things. Moses' experience symbolises what is to come. When he ascended Mt. Sinai and was directly, but temporarily, in the presence of God then eating, drinking and sex were a non-issue for him. They played no part at all in that experience. If that held true for the mortal Moses the more so when we will live permanently in God's presence.
Yosef Qafih says that he couldn't find a source for Saadia's statement regarding the two sons, but thinks that it might be emmendated to read "as is elucidated by the Sareptan widow's son and the Shunamite's son, and the dead which Ezekiel brought to life." The sage mentioned by Saadia is R. Judah b. Bathira, who declared that he was descended from the dead in Ezekiel's vision.[2]
At any rate, Saadia's concept of marriage was not eternal marriage. Marriage was a condition of this world. It lasted as long as people were in this world.
Saadia was very insistent that resurrection was part of this world, not the one to come.
Marriage was what legitimised sexual activity. Sexual activity was a bodily function (or appetite), like eating and drinking. Resurrection, after all, related first and foremost to the body. Eating, drinking and sex were (indeed, are) the epitome of earthly life.[3]
The last quote is the most problematic of all. It is distorted almost beyond recognition.

We can see from those treatises that the people whose souls shall return to their bodies will eat, drink, copulate, beget children and die after a very long life, a life as long as life is in the days of the Messiah. Indeed, the life after which there is no death is the life in the world to come, since there is no body in it. We believe, as any man of understanding verily does, that in the world to come souls are bodiless as the angels are. This explanation, that the body is the sum of instruments required for the soul's actions, has already been explained in an examplary fashion... Here it has been explained that the entire purpose of the body is the recption of food for sustaining the body, and begeting similar ones for the continuance of that body's kind. When that purpose is removed then it [the body] becomes unnecessary. That is, in the world to come, which is what our sages of blessed memory have elucidated, that in it is neither eating, nor drinking, nor usage[4], which is explained by the absence of a body. The Blessed One would not invent things in order for them to remain unused, and would not do anything without a reason, and heaven forbid that his acts would be like those who worship idols, "Eyes have they, but they see not, they have ears, but they hear not; noses have they, but they smell not (Ps 115:5-6)."
-Maimonides, the Treatise on Resurrection.

Maimonides had written a book entitled The Guide of the Perplexed. This book reconciled traditional Jewish beliefs with the mysteries of Aristotelian philosophy.
His book inspired many who were far more radical than he himself. They were embroiled in a sharp disoute with the traitionalists, who assumed that Maimonides was just as radical and that he denied the reality of the resurrection. He wrote the Treatise on Resurrection in order to defend himself from those charges.
Maimonides was not only a reknowned philosopher but also a gifted physician. I ommited the passage describes the three groups of functions the body is divided into.
For Maimonides, like Saadia, marriage wasn't eternal. It lasted only until man went to the heavenly realm, which is entirely bodiless. The resurrection isn't permanent. It is followed by another death, and then entry into perfect world which is that of the disembodied spirit.
None of what McConkie used support his claim.
This is not to say that there aren't Jewish sources indicating a belief in an eternal marriage.
There are some, but Dummelow's didn't include them. For the sake of fairness, I'll dedicate a future blog post to at least one of them.
My post though is more about the use of sources than eternal marriage in ancient Judaism.
To sum up my post, never use Dummelow's, there are far too many better ones out there, and McConkie's commentary should be used only with great caution. Elder McConkie being an apostle of the Lord had many good spiritual insights and he could bear powerful witness of the atonement, but he was not a great New Testament scholar.



[1]Enoch, Levi, and Jubilees on sexuality: attitudes towards sexuality in the Early Enoch Literature, the Aramaic Levi Document, and the Book of Jubilees, pg. 80.

[2]Babylonian Talmud, t. Sanhedrin 92b.

[3]I'm indebted to my friend Walker for that phrase.

[4]Usage was a rabbinic euphemism for sex.

Milk and Meat- Why Not?

Thou shalt not boil a kid in its mother's milk.
-Exodus 23:19.

This short injunction forms a major part of the dietary (kashrut) laws in Judaism. Even people who are otherwise lax in their observance of those laws will generally not eat meat and dairy products together (or pork, but we won't go into that).
Regardless of whether or not someone accepts the latter rabbinic interpretations as valid, a significant question still remains. What was the reasoning behind the biblical injunction?
Maimonides, in the 12th, century proposed an ingenious solution, similar to the ones he came up with for other strange prohibitions in the Bible. It was meant to counter idolatrous practices.

As for the prohibition against eating meat in milk, it is in my opinion not improbable that— in addition to this being undoubtedly very gross food and very filling— idolatry had something to do with it.
Perhaps such food was eaten at one of the ceremonies of their cult or one of their festivals
-The Guide to the Perplexed 3:48.

In 1929, archaeological discoveries at Ugarit seemed to prove that Maimonides was right.
Claude Schaeffer discovered a Canaanite religious text which read in part "t\b[h g]d\bh\lb. annh[.]bhm’at". Charles Virolleaud translated the first three words as "Cook a kid in milk."[1]
H. L. Ginsberg picked up the ball and ran with it.
He wrote that the reason the Bible forbade cooking a kid in milk was because it had to do with pagan gods and goddesses. The ritual described in the Ugarit text
“symbolizes the suckling of the newborn gods!”[2]
Unfortunately, Ginsberg and his followers were quite wrong about the connection between the Ugarit text and the biblical injunction.
Basically, the entire reading is wrong. There is no room for an 'h', TBH means to slaughter, not to cook, and GD is coriander.[3]
There have been many other attempts to solve the biblical puzzle, ranging from it being a prohibition on incest, to animal cruelty prevention, to being a mere practicality.
Ethnoarchaeologist Gloria London has an intriguing theory on the reason for the prohibition. In Cyprus, observing how traditional potters work, she was approached by an old woman who told her that “you never put meat into a clay pot with milk.”
London explains that "in times when people used porous clay pots to cook, everyone avoided cooking meat in containers used for milk products."
She goes on to say that "Not only did “others” refrain from mixing meat and milk in antiquity, they do so to this day. From about 300 B.C.E. in the Septuagint (the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible), the Hebrew word for “milk” was translated to the Greek word galaktos. To this day, traditional Cypriot potters make a goat-milking pot used by women, the galaftiri. It has an open mouth and side spout unlike jars used to process meat products. These pots are never used for meat. Nor are cooking pots ever used for dairy. The shape of the pot says it all—milk or meat. Rather than a dietary restriction limited to a single group of people, it was common practice to keep all ceramic pots used for milk versus meat separate...
Normally in antiquity, as in the Troodos Mountain villages of Cyprus to this day, meat is reserved for special occasions with family and friends. It would be terrible to ruin a fine meal with sour meat as a result of boiling it in a dairy pot. Simple logic kept dairy pots separate from pots used to cook meat. It’s possible that the Bible’s commandment to separate meat and milk boils down to good housekeeping. The straightforward, practical understanding of the Biblical passage originates in the prosaic perspective of a kitchen. It comes from those who make the pots, feed the animals, milk the goat, make the yogurt and cheese, cook the meat, and serve family, friends and community."[4]
The theory, interesting as it is, suffers from some fatal flaws.
First of all, if this was such a commonsensical and practical matter, "good housekeeping", why would it need to be regulated? Why include it in a list of laws governing a covenant relationship? Why the specific mention of kids and mothers instead of milk and meat?
The answer seems to lie in a different direction entirely.
Philo, the Jewish Alexandrian philosopher of the 1st century CE, nailed it on the head.
The reason was to avoid mixing life and death, for it is “grossly improper that the substance which fed the living animal should be used to season or flavor it after its death.”[5]
Jacob Milgrom expands this thought.
This prohibition is, thus, simply another instance of the emphasis on opposites characteristic of biblical ritual and practice: to separate life from death, holy from common, pure from impure, Israel from the nations. The reverence for life and Israel’s separation from the nations are ideas reflected throughout the dietary laws. For example, the reverence for life is reflected in the blood prohibition. Separating Israel from the nations is reflected in the prohibition against eating certain animals such as pig and crustaceans.
Thus the prohibition against cooking a kid in its mother’s milk conforms neatly with Israel’s overall dietary system.
The command not to boil a kid in mother’s milk is first set forth in Exodus, where the context in which it appears shows that it probably applies only to kids sacrificed on one of the Israelites’ pilgrimage festivals. By the time the command appears again in Deuteronomy, however, it is apparent that it has been transformed into something much broader, a new dietary law.
It is easy to see why this prohibition would have been so quickly integrated into the Israelites’ dietary system. It embodies two common biblical themes: reverence for life, even dumb animal life, and Israel’s separation from the nations.
This life-versus-death theory also completely and neatly elucidates the other biblical prohibitions mentioned earlier that, heretofore, have been explained as having humanitarian motives. However, the common denominator of all these prohibitions is that they prevent fusion of life and death. Thus, the life-giving process of the mother bird hatching or feeding her young should not be the occasion of their joint death (Deuteronomy 22:6). The sacrifice of the newborn may be inevitable, but not for the first week while it is constantly at the mother’s breast (Leviticus 22:27); and never should both the mother and its young be slain at the same time (Leviticus 22:28). By the token, the mother’s milk, the life-sustaining food her kid, should never become associated with its death."[6]


[1]Ugaritic Texts, 52:14.

[2]H. L. Ginsberg, The Ugarit Texts, pg. 77.

[3]Milgrom, Jacob, You Shall Not Boil a Kid in Its Mother’s Milk, Bible Review, Summer 1985, pg. 48-55.

[4]London, Gloria, Why Milk and Meat Don't Mix, Biblical Archaeology Review, Nov/Dec 2008, 66-69.

[5]Philo, De Virtute, 143.

[6]Milgrom, BR, Summer 1985, pg. 48-55.

Moses vs. Moses, or Two Medieval Jews on Idolatry

Towering over the history of Jewish thought in the medieval age are the two Moseses- the son of Maimon (Rambam), and the son of Nahman (Ramban). In the West they are known as Maimonides and Nahmanides, respectively.
I have introduced Maimonides in a previous post. Nahmanides was born in Girona, then part of Christian Spain. He was a mere child when Maimonides passed away, but in his adult years was embroiled in the controversies surrounding the supporters and detractors of Maimonides. He was heavily influenced by Maimonides' thought, but rejected his extreme rationalism and allegorisation of miracles. Here I'll let Josef Stern present one of the differences between their views.

We know what Maimonides thinks is wrong with idolatry. Even if the idolator does not believe that the idols themselves, the artificial icons, have power, he believes that they are images of gods or celestial beings who are worthy of worship because they have power over humans. In fact, however, Maimonides argues, these purported beings are powerless or unreal. Therefore, their worship is based on a false and empty presupposition. What is fundamentally wrong with idolatry, then, is that it is founded on a cognitive error of the highest magnitude (Guide of the Perplexed, I:36:82-83).

For Nahmanides, in contrast, what is wrong with idolatry is not that it is based on a false presupposition about its objects of worship.
Just the opposite: idolatry is forbidden (to Israel) precisely because its objects are real entities and powers.
In his Commentary on Exod. 20, 3, Nahmanides describes an elaborate metaphysical hierarchy, consisting of three classes of celestial beings each of which has dominion over certain peoples and places on earth, ranked in an order of power that also corresponds to the chronological order in which their representative kinds of idolatry historically emerged. The first, highest, and earliest objects of idolatry were the immaterial separate intellects, or angels. Some of these were originally believed to have power over specific nations and were therefore worshipped even when their respective nation recognized that there is a deity superior to them. Israel, however, was absolutely forbidden to worship any of these angels because it is the specially treasured people (segulah) of God who alone has power over them. Were the people of Israel to worship these “other gods” [‘elohim ‘aherim], it would be tantamount to a rejection of the one God for the others.

The second class of objects of idolatry were the visible heavenly bodies:
the sun, moon, stars, and constellations who were also known to have power over specific nations. Unlike the idolatry associated with the first class, this second kind was also theurgic: by worshipping their respective star or constellation, its worshippers believed that they could strengthen it and help it "victor" over its rivals, thereby improving their own fortune. These idolators were also the first to make physical shapes and idols whose timing was astrally significant. Through this elementary form of astrology, this brand of theurgic idolatry came to be associated with magic and to include the worship of certain humans whose power seemed closely linked to constellations.

The third species of idolatrous objects were the demons [sheidim], a class of spirits [ruhot] who, Nahmanides claims, are so-called because they dwell in destroyed or desolate [shadudim] places (C Lev. 17, 7).
These devils are material but invisible, compounded of fire and air, an ontologically intermediate kind of being with some angelic and some human properties. Thus they eat and drink, especially blood; decompose and die; fly and inhabit the sky; and know the near future (news of which they overhear from higher celestial beings). Like the higher powers, they are also assigned to specific peoples but with dominion only over ruined, wild places where they are empowered only to harm enemies and those who fall victim to them. Nahmanides treats these devils with some contempt, as nouveau deities who lack the power to benefit their worshippers, who were not worshipped by the ancients, and who were "discovered only by late Egyptian magicians. Yet he thinks that they are no less real than the others. Indeed the most important point about all three classes of objects of idolatrous worship is that they are all real beings with real power- which is precisely why they are forbidden to Israel who is commanded to worship only the one God.

--Josef Stern, Problems and Parables of Law: Maimonides and Nahmanides on Reasons for the Commandments (Ta'amei Ha-Mitzvot) (Albany, New York: SUNY Press, 1998), 144-145.

On Jews and Oath-taking

When I served a mission in Russia, I lived for a few months in the city of Novorossiysk, along the shores of the Black Sea. Though the city itself was founded in 1840, the human history of the region stretches back far into antiquity.
Not far from Novorossiysk is the resort town of Anapa, built on the ruins of Gorgippia. This Greek city belonged to the kingdom of the Bosphorus which controlled most of the northern side of the Black Sea. Gorgippia, a wealthy city indeed, covered over 40 hecatres. Its wealth came mainly from the grain trade, but it also supplied Greece and Asia Minor with fish, fur and slaves.
Trade opportunities are what appear to have attracted the Jews to the Bosphoran Kingdom where, by Roman times, they had a substantial presence and influence.
Gorgippia's community was prosperous and seems to have had its own synagogue. Several decades ago, a rather intriguing inscription was found, which though brief, provides an unparalleled glimpse into ancient Jewish society.
I reproduce the translation given by Lee I. Levine in his book The Ancient Synagogue: The First Thousand Years.

To the Most High God, Almighty, blessed, in the reign of the king Mithridates, the friend of [?] and the friend of the fatherland, in the year 338 [= 41 C.E.], in the month Deios, Pothos, the son of Strabo, dedicated to the prayer-house, in accordance with the vow, his house-bred slave-woman, whose name is Chrysa, on condition that she should be unharmed and untroubled by any of his heirs under Zeus, Ge, Helios.

This inscription deals with manumission, or the freeing of a slave. It is a written testimony that Chrysa the slave-woman is now free and that Pothos' heirs have no claim on her.
The names of the two Jews mentioned in the text- Pothos and Strabo- indicate how Jews tended to adopt the names used by their neighbours, much like in 20th century North America, when a whole generation was named Irving and Ira.
While at first glance the typical Jewish formula of a threefold invocation of God's name might appear odd, nay, even shocking when combined with the blatantly pagan formula of an oath by Zeus, the earth and the sun, let us look at some other Jewish documents.

Maimonides, a staunch opponent of paganism and idoltary if there ever was one, in his Sefer Hamitzvot (the book of commandments) rules that swearing by astral bodies is acceptable if one has the Creator in mind.

In 1961, Yigael Yadin headed an archaeological expedition to the caves above the Dead Sea. The caves were the last refuge for some of Simeon bar Kosiva's (Bar-Kochba) rebels as they fled the Roman onslaught on Ein-Gedi. Among the astonishing finds in what became known as the "Cave of Letters" was an archive of documents belonging to Babatha, a wealthy widow and landowner in Ein-Gedi and Petra.
In the subscription to one document, we read, "I, Babtha, daughter of Simon, swear by the genius of our lord Caesar that I have in good faith registered as has been written above." Italics mine.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/scrolls/babatha.html

In page 215 of his Hellenism in Jewish Palestine, Saul Lieberman provides a translation of a responsum by a 9th century Babylonian, the Rab Hai ben Nahshon Gaon.

Heaven forbid that one should do so (i.e. to circumvent the law) in vow or oaths, for that is a serious matter. There came to us a pious, learned old man and taught in the school: It is written (Deut. 4:19), 'And lest thou lift up thine eyes unto heaven and behold the sun' - that means to make a vow by it - 'and the moon' - that means to swear by it. If you transgress or circumvent either of them, then, 'thou hast gone astray' (ibid.) and are required to do the most severe penance. For the Lord will wreak vengeance upon you, and you will on this account be considered on a par with those who worship the sun and the moon. That is why it says further on (ibid. 26): 'I call heaven and earth to witness against you this day that ye shall utterly perish.'

Lieberman logically surmises that ignorant or crooked Jews abused a loophole in these kinds of oaths by sun and moon, which their gentile neighbours considered binding, but they themselves did not.
In fact, the closing formula in the Gorgippia inscription was standard legal fare in the Bosphoran Kingdom, and as such, seems to have lost most of its pagan connotations.

A final source from the last decade of the first century AD, though not a Jewish one, which Lieberman provided.
Martial's Epigrams, book XI.

XCIV. ON A JEW, A RIVAL POET.

As for the fact that you are exceedingly envious and everywhere carping at my writings, I pardon you, circumcised poet; you have your reasons. Nor am I at all concerned that, while carping at my verses, you steal them; for this too, circumcised poet, you have your reasons. This however, circumcised poet, annoys me, that, though you were born in the heart of Jerusalem, you attempt to seduce the object of my affections You deny that such is the case, and swear by the temples of Jupiter. I do not believe you; swear, circumcised poet, by Anchialus.

Martial seems aware of a Jewish prediliction for not taking gentile oaths seriously, and demands a stronger one, one that Jews would find binding.

For those interested in further reading on the subject, I highly recommend Saul Liberman and Lee I. Levine's books, mentioned above.

Maimonides on the Trinity

It is not rare that a person aims to expound the intent of some conclusions clearly and explicitly, makes an effort to reject doubts and eliminate far-fetched interpretations, and yet the unbalanced will draw the reverse judgment of the conclusion he sought to clarify. Some such thing occured even to one of God's declarations. When the chief of the prophets wished by order of God to teach us that He is One, without associates, and to remove from our hearts those wrong doctrines that the Dualists propound, he proclaimed this fundamental: The Lord is our God, the Lord alone [Deut. 6:4]. But the Christians utilized this verse to prove that God is one of three, teaching that Lord, our God, the Lord makes three names, all followed by one, which indicates that they are three and that the three are one. Far be God from what they say in their ignorance. If this is what happened to God's proclamation, it is much more likely and to be expected to happen to statements by humans.

-Moshe ben Maimon, the Rambam or Maimonides, in his The Essay on Resurrection, trans. Abraham Halkin in The Epistles of Maimonides: crisis and leadership.

It is no exaggeration to state that the Rambam (Rabbi Moshe ben Maimon), or Maimonides as he is commonly reffered to in English, is one of the major figures in Jewish history, culture and thought. One of the foremost physicians and philosophers of his day, his fame spread worldwide, and he was held in great esteem even by Christians and Muslims. When facing severe tribulations, Jewish communities as distant as Morocco and Yemen sought his help and advice. As he was court physician to the Ayyubids in Cairo, with his strong political connections the Rambam could also play a vital role in his community's life, and did.
The Rambam wrote many commentaries on the Torah and the Mishnah, that codification of the Halacha, or Jewish oral law, and explained the reasons (or ta'amei hamitzvot) for the 613 commandments of the Torah on rational, philosophical grounds. His thirteen articles of faith were adopted by all Jewish communities, indeed, the 12th of them- professing complete faith in the coming of the Messiah, even were he to tarry- has become a symbol of the unbreakable Jewish spirit, being on the lips of many Treblinka inmates marching to the gas chambers.
The Rambam's lifelong work, however was that of an educator. He seeks to draw the people away from ignorance and idolatry (the two, for him, are inseparably linked) and towards the true intent of the law- knowing God.
This for him is love, an exalted, all-consuming intellectual love, as is made clear from the following two selections.

For we live in a material world and the only pleasure we can comprehend must be material. But the delights of the spirit are everlasting and uninterrupted, and there is no resemblance in any possible way between spiritual and bodily enjoyments.
We are not sanctioned either by the Torah or by the divine philosophers to assert that the angels, the stars, and the spheres enjoy no delights. In truth they have exceeding great delight in respect of what they comprehend of the Creator (glorified be He!). This to them is an everlasting felicity without a break. They have no bodily pleasures, neither do they comprehend them, because they have no senses like ours, enabling them to have our sense experiences.
And likewise it will be with us too. When after death the worthy from among us will reach that exalted stage he will experience no bodily pleasures neither will he have any wish for them, any more than would a king of sovereign power wish to divest himself of his imperial sway and return to his boyhood's games with a ball in the street, although at one time he would without doubt have set a higher worth upon a game with a ball than on kingly dominion, such being the case only when his years were few and he was totally ignorant of of the real significance of either pursuit, just as we today rank the delights of the body above those of the soul.

-Introduction to Perek Helek, trans. Joshua Abelson, in "Maimonides on the Jewish Creed," Jewish Quarterly Revie 19(1906-07):38.

This chapter discusses serving God out of love and fear, how to teach Torah to children and ignoramuses, and those who study Torah solely for the sake of it.

1) One should not think to oneself that one will fulfil the commandments of the Torah and occupy oneself in its wisdom in order to receive the blessings mentioned therein, or to merit life in the World To Come, and to avoid the transgressions against which the Torah warns in order to be saved from the curses mentioned therein, or in order not to be cut off from life in the World To Come, for it is not fitting to serve God in this manner. Anyone who does serve in this manner is doing so out of fear. This was not the [spiritual] level of the Prophets and Sages. Only ignoramuses, women and children serve in this manner, for they are educated to do so until their knowledge has increased sufficiently so that they will serve out of love.

2) Anyone who serves out of love and occupies himself with Torah and mitzvot and follows the ways of wisdom should not do so for any earthly reason[s] or out of fear of the curses or to receive the blessings, but should fulfil the truth because it is the truth. Out of this he will receive goodness. This level is a very high one, and not every wise person attains it. This is the level of Abraham the Patriarch, whom God called His `friend', for the reason that he served God solely out of love. This is a level which God commanded, via Moses, us [to attain], as it is written, "And you shall love the Lord your God". Once a person loves God appropriately, he will fulfil the commandments out of love.

3) What is appropriate love? This is an extremely strong and profound love of God, so that one's soul is committed to the love of God and that one will be so preoccupied with it that one will appear to be lovesick, in which one's mind is perpetually occupied at all times with a particular woman. Apart from this, one's love of God has to be absolute and continuous, as we have been commanded: "...with all your heart and with all your soul"2. Solomon said by way of example, "For I am sick with love". The entire Song Of Songs is exemplary of this concept [of the love of God].

4) The first Sages said that to prevent us from [falling into the trap of] learning Torah in order to become rich or to be called a Rabbi or to be rewarded in the World To Come, the Torah says, "...to love the Lord your God", i.e. all that one does should be done purely out of love. The Sages said further that the verse, "Happy is the man who fears the Lord, who delights greatly in His commandments" refers to the commandments, and not to the reward. In this vein, the greater Sages commanded just their wiser students and told them not to be like a servant who serves his master solely for payment, but to be like a servant whose attitude is that because his master is the master it is fitting to serve him, i.e. to serve purely out of love.

5) Anyone who occupies himself with Torah in order to receive reward or to prevent any troubles is not doing so for the sake of it, whereas anyone who does so out of love for the Master of this world, and not with any ulterior motives, is doing so for the sake of it. The Sages said that one should always occupy oneself with Torah even if not for the sake of it, for out of doing so not for the sake of it one will come to doing so for the sake of it. Therefore, when one is teaching children, women and ignoramuses one should teach them to serve God out of fear and inn order to be rewarded. As their knowledge increases and they become more wise, we reveal this `secret' to them bit by bit and accustom them to this concept in repose until they totally understand it, and will serve out of love.

- Sefer Hamada', Hilchot Teshuva 10:1-5
(This translation is copyright (c) Immanuel M. O'Lvey, 1993. This translation may be distributed in any form (on disk, printed, etc.) provided that it is done so on a non-profit basis and that this copyright and conditions message is left attached. The text used for this translation was the Rambam Le'Am, published by Mossad Ha'Rav Kook, Jerusalem. Words in the text that are in square brackets do not appear in the Rambam's writings. British spelling has been used, and Sephardit pronunciation has been used for words and phrases that have been transliterated. Comments are welcome by email - imo@medphys.ucl.ac.uk.)

In chapter 1 of Maimonides' Empire of Light, Ralph Lerner describes the situation of the various Jewish communities in the Rambam's day. "Theirs is a time of physical and psychic distress, doctrinal and institutional controversy, and general perplexity. Repeatedly, the leaders or disputants in those far-flung communities turn to Maimonides. His writings that they have read and the reputation of works that they haven't seen convince them that he has the power to resolve their misgivings or confusion. They appeal to his learning, or rather to the authority he derives from his learning."
Indeed, there is hardly a more fitting description of the Rambam than the title of his most famous work, the Guide of the Perxplexed.
This philosophical treatise par excellence is directed towards those torn between the conflicting worlds of traditional Judaism as passed down by Moses through the sages on the one hand, and modern philosophy and science on the other. While one may seem incomprehensible as opposed to the logic of the other, the Rambam attempts to bridge the two. He showed that they were not implacable enemies to each other, but went hand-in-hand.
This work, written in Arabic, was translated by others into Hebrew and Latin, both during the Rambam's own lifetime. Its influence was huge, even on the development of Jewish mysticism, which seems at odds with much of the Rambam's own approach.
Rambam's style was terse. "If I could squeeze the entire Law of the Torah into one chapter, I would not write two for it." (from the essay on Resurrection).
This habit landed him in the midst of controversy.
Many had misinterpreted the statements in the Rambam's writings, and the rumours spread that he denied the reality of bodily resurrection. He paid them no heed, never being unduly perturbed by mere babblers, but when the Gaon, head of the Baghdad religious academy, and one the most significant figures of the Jewish diaspora, denounced him in writing for denying the resurrection, this could no longer be ignored. He had to respond, and respond he did through his Essay on the Resurrection.
The tone is perosnal. It is bitter, it is frustrated.
As David Hartman surmised in "Epistles of Maimonides", the "pettiness of the joy of resurrection relative to the joy of the world-to-come, i.e., the joy of intellectual love of God, was a major reason behind Maimonides' anger. Whereas his whole philosophy of Judaism centered around the lovesickness of one who strives after knowledge of God, he was now compelled to write a defense of the belief that God will miraculously restore our bodily existence so that we can enjoy the material pleasures of this world! ...The lover feels degraded when he is asked to discuss his relationship to his beloved in gross utalitarian terms.
The community's disproportionate interest in resurrection relative to more important aspects of his teachings on Judaism must have pained Maimonides deeply, for it was a sign that all that he had attempted to accomplish as a Jewish leader and educator might have failed."
The Rambam opens his essay by showing that if the very words of God, delivered by Moses, the greatest of all prophets, could have been misinterprated by the Christians, then it is no wonder that it happened to his own words by his fellow Jews.
I don't know what exactly the source for this argument using the Shema Israel was, whether maimonides encountered it directly through Christians, or idirectly via Muslim source, but Augustine, the source indicated by Halkin in his notes to this essay, is not making the same argument at all.

The divine generation, therefore, of our Lord, and his human dispensation, having both been thus systematically disposed and commended to faith, there is added to our Confession, with a view to the perfecting of the faith which we have regarding God, [the doctrine of] The Holy Spirit, who is not of a nature inferior to the Father and the Son, but, so to say, consubstantial and co-eternal: for this Trinity is one God, not to the effect that the Father is the same [Person] as the Son and the Holy Spirit, but to the effect that the Father is the Father, and the Son is the Son, and the Holy Spirit is the Holy Spirit; and this Trinity is one God, according as it is written, “Hear, O Israel, the Lord your God is one God.” At the same time, if we be interrogated on the subject of each separately, and if the question be put to us, “Is the Father God?” we shall reply, “He is God.” If it be asked whether the Son is God, we shall answer to the same effect. Nor, if this kind of inquiry be addressed to us with respect to the Holy Spirit, ought we to affirm in reply that He is anything else than God; being earnestly on our guard, [however], against an acceptance of this merely in the sense in which it is applied to men, when it is said, “You are gods.” For of all those who have been made and fashioned of the Father, through the Son, by the gift of the Holy Spirit, none are gods according to nature. For it is this same Trinity that is signified when an apostle says, “For of Him, and in Him, and through Him, are all things.” Consequently, although, when we are interrogated on the subject of each [of these Persons] severally, we reply that that particular one regarding whom the question is asked, whether it be the Father, or the Son, or the Holy Spirit, is God, no one, notwithstanding this, should suppose that three Gods are worshipped by us.

-St. Augustine, Of Faith and the Creed, chp. IX.

Be that as it may, the opening paragraph to the Essay on Resurrection is a fascinating look at the reaction of a fierce montheist and gifted philosopher to the doctrine of the Trinity.