Amit Gvaryahu
Amit Gvaryahu is an associate research scholar at the Program in Judaic Studies at Princeton University. Previously, he was a Fellow of the Martin Buber Society of Fellows, and a Post-Doctoral fellow at the Safra center for ethics at Tel Aviv University. His work focuses on money and documentary culture in rabbinic texts, and on Midrash.
He was the scholar in residence at Paideia, the European Institute for Jewish Studies in Stockholm for 2010.
Supervisors: Shlomo Naeh and Menachem Kahana
He was the scholar in residence at Paideia, the European Institute for Jewish Studies in Stockholm for 2010.
Supervisors: Shlomo Naeh and Menachem Kahana
less
InterestsView All (10)
Uploads
Papers by Amit Gvaryahu
money, as reflected by the literature they produced in Hebrew and in Greek from the
Achaemenid period until around the year 200. In this lengthy period, Jews produced
works of wisdom and history, novels, philosophy, poetry, and normative instruction,
imitating Greek and biblical models and creating new ones, in Hebrew, Aramaic,
and Greek.1
I begin with a historical discussion of the introduction of coin money into the
Levant. Then I turn to a discussion of various properties of money reflected in
ancient Jewish literature: how humans can use money to interact with the divine; the
intangible things which are like money, such as virtue and scholarship; the relation-
ship between money and personhood; the stability of money; the mental and spiri-
tual effects of the desire for money; and the moral charge money can carry. I end
with a discussion of a novel and developed theory of wealth found in a work from
Qumran known as 4QInstruction or the Wisdom of Raz-Nihiyeh.
Tannaitic literature, the earliest stratum of rabbinic literature, offers a detailed account of a complex and multivalent relationship between a small group of provincial subjects of the Roman Empire and their coins, couched in legal terms. In this article, I discuss tannaitic prescriptions for use and abuse of coins against the backdrop of other nonrabbinic Jewish approaches to Roman coinage, and in the context of the political meaning of coin use in the Roman Empire. For the Early rabbis, coins are a special category of object, governed by their own rules and made special by the image on them, which the rabbis do not consider idolatrous. To fulfill some obligations imposed by the Torah or the rabbis, the rabbis required the use of "current" (i.e., Roman-approved) coinage while arrogating to themselves the authority to regulate individual coins and to order them pulled from circulation. Coins are thus an interesting test case for the complex relationship between the Early rabbis and the empire to which they were subject.
money, as reflected by the literature they produced in Hebrew and in Greek from the
Achaemenid period until around the year 200. In this lengthy period, Jews produced
works of wisdom and history, novels, philosophy, poetry, and normative instruction,
imitating Greek and biblical models and creating new ones, in Hebrew, Aramaic,
and Greek.1
I begin with a historical discussion of the introduction of coin money into the
Levant. Then I turn to a discussion of various properties of money reflected in
ancient Jewish literature: how humans can use money to interact with the divine; the
intangible things which are like money, such as virtue and scholarship; the relation-
ship between money and personhood; the stability of money; the mental and spiri-
tual effects of the desire for money; and the moral charge money can carry. I end
with a discussion of a novel and developed theory of wealth found in a work from
Qumran known as 4QInstruction or the Wisdom of Raz-Nihiyeh.
Tannaitic literature, the earliest stratum of rabbinic literature, offers a detailed account of a complex and multivalent relationship between a small group of provincial subjects of the Roman Empire and their coins, couched in legal terms. In this article, I discuss tannaitic prescriptions for use and abuse of coins against the backdrop of other nonrabbinic Jewish approaches to Roman coinage, and in the context of the political meaning of coin use in the Roman Empire. For the Early rabbis, coins are a special category of object, governed by their own rules and made special by the image on them, which the rabbis do not consider idolatrous. To fulfill some obligations imposed by the Torah or the rabbis, the rabbis required the use of "current" (i.e., Roman-approved) coinage while arrogating to themselves the authority to regulate individual coins and to order them pulled from circulation. Coins are thus an interesting test case for the complex relationship between the Early rabbis and the empire to which they were subject.
https://thetalmudblog.wordpress.com/2015/02/23/a-gvaryahu-on-a-yadin-israel-scripture-and-tradition-rabbi-akiva-and-the-triumph-of-midrash/