Wedding attire

Poll #10405 Wedding attire

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It's liv's wedding in a week and a half. liv's instructions say "For the ceremony, there is no strict dress code. [...] We hope that [you] will help us to mark the occasion by wearing elegant clothes, but you are welcome to set your own style." How should I turn up?

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In a DJ
1 (20.0%)

In a lounge suit
0 (0.0%)

In a waistcoat and bow tie
3 (60.0%)

In a ballgown
1 (20.0%)

Other (suggestions in comments)
0 (0.0%)

I reserve the right not to be bound by your responses. :o)

Antiquities of the Jews, fit the thirty-third, comprising Book XV

Josephus now goes into the reign of Herod at extreme length, which I shall be abbreviating considerably here. After Herod had killed his wife Mariamne, he fell ill, and, when it was thought he would not survive, Mariamne's mother Alexandra tried to get hold of the reigns of power by taking possession of the Temple (XV.7.247): ( Read more... )

(It didn't work out well for her: Herod recovered, and killed her too.)

XV.7.250 mentions Herod's "cousin-german", a man named Achiabas. This appears to be an early example of the name Akiva. ("Ch" in Greek was, as I mentioned earlier, in the process at this time of changing from an aspirated K to a /kh/ sound.)

XV.7.257 uses the phrase "filthy lucre". According to Wikipedia, the term in English comes from the NT. I wonder whether this is an artefact of Whitston using a stock phrase, or whether Josephus used it too.

XV.7.259 gives us a tidbit about the laws of divorce: ( Read more... )

(FWIW, under the rishonim a thousand years later, women were indeed permitted to initiate divorce, then under the acharonim in the last five hundred years, the pendulum swung back the other way and once again divorce could only be initiated by the man.)

XV.8.298 describes how Herod built a temple at Shomron/Samaria/Sebaste: ( Read more... )

I wonder what kind of a temple it was. Herod is famous for enlarging and beautifying the Jews' Temple in Jerusalem, but he also went on to build lots of pagan temples around the eastern end of the Mediterranean too. I'd guess this one is probably the first of the latter, rather than being either Jewish or Samaritan.

XV.9.305 provides evidence of food aid in the ancient world, when there was a severe famine following on from two years of drought:( Read more... )

XV.10.356 offers an interesting insight into Herod's behaviour:

The Gadarenes were induced hereby, and made no small cry against him, and that the more boldly, because those that had been delivered up by Agrippa were not punished by Herod, who let them go, and did them no harm; for indeed he was the principal man in the world who appeared almost inexorable in punishing crimes in his own family, but very generous in remitting the offenses that were committed elsewhere.

We think of the Second Temple as having been rebuilt by Herod, but in fact rebuilding work went on in other periods as well (XV.11.391): ( Read more... )

In the same way that Alexandra tried to get control of the kingdom by taking control of the Temple beforehand (see above), the Romans did the same thing by taking control of the High Priestly vestments (XV.11.403):( Read more... )

Josephus notes

Mue [sic]

Ah, the youth of today: what it must be like to read an article about Lowry and not be instantly earwormed with "Matchstalk Men and Matchstalk Cats and Dogs". I was five, or possibly a little short of it, when that song was a hit: that's good staying power (though YouTube helps...).

In other news, whilst Desert Island Discs was off the air for a few weeks, I amused myself by listening to various programmes from its archive (available online back as far as 1986, and likely to retreat further into the past in the future). Among these was the one with the Chief Rabbi, Jonathan Sacks, as guest. Picture my astonishment when the first piece he chose was a song by an apostate Jew ("Das Trinklied vom Jammer der Erde," from Das Lied von der Erde by Mahler, who converted to Christianity because he felt he could not make it in his day as a Jew). Didn't think properly about the message you'd be sending out with that, ha-rav your lordship, did you?