R. Cleopatra? Constructions of an Egyptian Queen in the Babylonian Talmud
In: Journal of Ancient JudaismSearch for other papers by Catherine E. Bonesho in
Current site
Google Scholar
Abstract
Informed by the political power of the image of Cleopatra VII Philopator in late ancient southwest Asia and the eastern Mediterranean, this study investigates the Babylonian Talmud’s portrait of the Egyptian queen. I argue that depictions of the queen in classical rabbinic literature may not be as negative as previously thought and that the figure of Cleopatra acts as a potent character for the rabbis of the Babylonian Talmud to assert rabbinic authority because of the depth of her knowledge about the human body and her fight against Rome. The portrait of Cleopatra serves a variety of purposes, first to support certain rabbinic concepts, like resurrection and menstrual impurity, through references to Cleopatra’s knowledge of embryology and the human body, and second, to elevate and include the rabbis themselves in the famous struggle of Cleopatra versus Rome, East versus West, with the goal of further authorizing the rabbinic project itself.
Purchase
Buy instant access (PDF download and unlimited online access):
Institutional Login
Log in with Open Athens, Shibboleth, or your institutional credentials
Personal login
Log in with your brill.com account
-
Andrade, Nathanael. Zenobia: Shooting Star of Palmyra. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018.
-
Appelbaum, Alan. “The Rabbis and Palmyra: A Case Study on (Mis-)Reading Rabbinics for Historical Purposes.” Jewish Quarterly Review 101.4 (2011): 527–544.
-
Balberg, Mira. “Rabbinic Authority, Medical Rhetoric, and Body Hermeneutics in Mishnah Negaim.” AJS Review 35.2 (2011): 323–346.
-
Bar-Asher Siegal, Michal. Jewish-Christian Dialogues on Scripture in Late Antiquity: Heretic Narratives of the Babylonian Talmud. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019.
-
Berkowitz, Beth. Execution and Invention: Death Penalty Discourse in Early Rabbinic and Christian Cultures. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006.
-
Bohak, Gideon. “Rabbinic Perspectives on Egyptian Religion.” Archiv für Religionsgeschichte 2 (2000): 215–231.
-
Bonesho, Catherine. “Foreign Holidays and Festivals as Representative of Identity in Rabbinic Literature.” PhD Dissertation, University of Wisconsin, 2018.
-
Donovan Ginsberg, Lauren. Staging Memory, Staging Strife: Empire and Civil War in the ‘Octavia.’ Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017.
-
El Daly, Okasha. Egyptology: The Missing Millennium. New York: Routledge, 2005.
-
Flemming, Rebecca. “Women, Writing, and Medicine in the Classical World.” The Classical Quarterly 57.1 (2007): 257–279.
-
Fonrobert, Charlotte. “Regulating the Human Body: Rabbinic Legal Discourse and the Making of Jewish Gender.” Pages 270–294 in The Cambridge Companion to the Talmud and Rabbinic Literature. Edited by Charlotte Fonrobert and Martin Jaffee. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007.
-
Friedheim, Emmanuel. Rabbinisme et Paganisme en Palestine romaine: Étude historique des Realia talmudiques (Ier–IVème siècles). Leiden: Brill, 2006.
-
Geiger, Joseph. “Cleopatra the Physician.” Pages 28–32 in Zutot: Perspectives on Jewish Culture. Edited by Shlomo Berger, et al. Boston: Springer Press, 2001.
-
Grant, Michael. Cleopatra. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1972.
-
Gray, Alyssa. A Talmud in Exile: The Influence of Yerushalmi Avodah Zarah on the Formation of the Bavli. Providence: Brown Judaic Studies, 2005.
-
Green, Μοnica. Women’s Healthcare in the Medieval West. Burlington: Ashgate, 2000.
-
Gruen, Erich. “Cleopatra in Rome: Facts and Fantasies.” Pages 37–53 in Cleopatra: A Sphinx Revisited. Edited by Margaret Miles. Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2011.
-
Halperin, David. “Why is Diotima a Woman?” Pages 113–151 in One Hundred Years of Homosexuality. New York: Routledge, 1990.
-
Hamer, Mary. Signs of Cleopatra: Reading an Icon Historically. New York: Routledge, 1993.
-
Hartmann, Udo. Das palmyrenische Teilreich. Stuttgart: Steiner, 2001.
-
Hasan-Rokem, Galit. Tales of the Neighborhood: Jewish Narrative Dialogues in Late Antiquity. Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2003.
-
Hayes, Christine. “Displaced Self-Perceptions: The Deployment of Minim and Romans in b. Sanhedrin 90b–91a.” Pages 249–289 in Religious and Ethnic Communities in Later Roman Palestine. Edited by Hayim Lapin. Bethesda: University Press of Maryland, 1998.
-
Henning, Meghan. Hell Hath No Fury: Gender, Disability, and the Invention of Damned Bodies in Early Christian Literature. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2021.
-
Ilan, Tal. Silencing the Queen: The Literary Histories of Shelamzion and Other Jewish Women. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2006.
-
Jones, Prudence. “Rewriting Power: Zenobia, Aurelian, and the Historia Augusta.” Classical World 109.2 (2016): 221–233.
-
Kalmin, Richard. Jewish Babylonia between Persia and Roman Palestine. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006.
-
Kattan Gribetz, Sarit. “A Matter of Time: Writing Jewish Memory into Roman History.” AJS Review 40.1 (2016): 57–86.
-
Kattan Gribetz, Sarit. Time and Difference in Rabbinic Judaism. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2021.
-
Kessler, Gwynn. Conceiving Israel: The Fetus in Rabbinic Narratives. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2009.
-
Kleiner, Diana. Cleopatra and Rome. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2005.
-
Kottek, Samuel. “Medical Interest in Ancient Rabbinic Literature.” Pages 485–496 in The Literature of the Sages, Part 2: Midrash and Targum, Liturgy, Poetry, Mysticism, Contracts, Inscriptions, Ancient Science and the Languages of Rabbinic Literature. Edited by Shemuel Safrai, Peter J. Tomson, and Zeev Safrai. Assen: Uitgeverij Van Gorcum, 2006.
-
Labendz, Jenny. Socratic Torah: Non-Jews in Rabbinic Intellectual Culture. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013.
-
Lepicard, Etienne. “The Embryo in Ancient Rabbinic Literature: Between Religious Law and Didactic Narratives An Interpretive Essay.” History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences 32.1 (2010): 21–41.
-
Miles, Margaret, ed. Cleopatra: A Sphinx Revisited. Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2011.
-
Naiweld, Ron. “The Use of Rabbinic Traditions About Rome in the Babylonian Talmud.” Revue de l’histoire des religions 233.2 (2016): 255–285.
-
Neis, Rachel Rafael. “Fetus, Flesh, Food: Generating Bodies of Knowledge in Rabbinic Science.” Journal of Ancient Judaism 10.2 (2019): 181–210.
-
Neusner, Jacob. Three Questions of Formative Judaism. Leiden: Brill, 2002.
-
Pearce, Sarah. “The Cleopatras and the Jews.” Transactions of the Royal Historical Society (Sixth Series) 27 (2017): 29–64.
-
Preuss, Julius. Biblical and Talmudic Medicine. Translated by Fred Rosner. New York: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 1978.
-
Prioreschi, Plinio. Roman Medicine. Omaha: Horatius Press, 1998.
-
Rajak, Tessa. “The Rabbinic Dead and the Diaspora Dead at Beth She’arim.” Pages 349–366 in Talmud Yerushalmi and Graeco-Roman Culture I. Edited by Peter Schäfer. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1998.
-
Schwabe, Moshe and Baruch Lifshitz. Beth Shearim II: The Greek Inscriptions. Jerusalem: Masada Press, 1974.
-
Shinnar, Shulamit. “The Experiments of Cleopatra: Foreign, Gendered, and Empirical Knowledge in the Babylonian Talmud.” Pages 215–243 in Defining Jewish Medicine: Transfer of Medical Knowledge in Premodern Jewish Cultures and Traditions. Edited by Lennart Lehmhaus. Berlin: Harrassowitz Verlag, 2021.
-
Stern, Sacha. Jewish Identity in Early Rabbinic Writings. Leiden: Brill, 1994.
-
Syme, Ronald. The Roman Revolution. London: Oxford University Press, 1939.
-
Teixidor, Javier. “Palmyra in the Third Century.” Pages 181–225 in A Journey to Palmyra: Collected Essays to Remember Delbert R. Hillers. Edited by Eleonora Cussini. Leiden: Brill, 2005.
-
Ulmer, Rivka. Egyptian Cultural Icons in Midrash. New York: DeGruyter, 2009.
-
Van Henten, Jan Willem. “Cleopatra in Josephus: From Herod’s Rival to the Wise Ruler’s Opposite.” Pages 115–134 in The Wisdom of Egypt: Jewish, Early Christian, and Gnostic Essays in Honour of Gerard Luttikhuizen. Edited by Anthony Hilhorst and George H. van Kooten. Leiden: Brill, 2005.
-
Veltri, Giuseppe. “Römische Religion an der Peripherie des Reiches: Ein Kapitel rabbinischer Rhetorik.” Pages 81–138 in The Talmud Yerushalmi and Graeco-Roman Culture II. Edited by Peter Schäfer and Catherine Hezser. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2000.
-
Wyke, Maria. The Roman Mistress: Ancient and Modern Representations. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002.
| All Time | Past 365 days | Past 30 Days | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Abstract Views | 3169 | 841 | 31 |
| Full Text Views | 382 | 104 | 10 |
| PDF Views & Downloads | 530 | 218 | 12 |
R. Cleopatra? Constructions of an Egyptian Queen in the Babylonian Talmud
In: Journal of Ancient JudaismSearch for other papers by Catherine E. Bonesho in
Current site
Google Scholar
PubMed
Abstract
Informed by the political power of the image of Cleopatra VII Philopator in late ancient southwest Asia and the eastern Mediterranean, this study investigates the Babylonian Talmud’s portrait of the Egyptian queen. I argue that depictions of the queen in classical rabbinic literature may not be as negative as previously thought and that the figure of Cleopatra acts as a potent character for the rabbis of the Babylonian Talmud to assert rabbinic authority because of the depth of her knowledge about the human body and her fight against Rome. The portrait of Cleopatra serves a variety of purposes, first to support certain rabbinic concepts, like resurrection and menstrual impurity, through references to Cleopatra’s knowledge of embryology and the human body, and second, to elevate and include the rabbis themselves in the famous struggle of Cleopatra versus Rome, East versus West, with the goal of further authorizing the rabbinic project itself.
| All Time | Past 365 days | Past 30 Days | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Abstract Views | 3169 | 841 | 31 |
| Full Text Views | 382 | 104 | 10 |
| PDF Views & Downloads | 530 | 218 | 12 |
