In October 539 BCE, the Persian king Cyrus took Babylon, the ancient capital of an oriental empire covering modern Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, and Israel. In a broader sense, Babylon was the ancient world's capital of scholarship and science. The subject…
The suffering servant
One of the most impressive themes developed by Second Isaiah is that of the suffering servant. There are three poems (Isaiah 42.1-4, 49.1-6, 50.4-11) in which the prophet, who lived in the age of the Babylonian Captivity, describes…
Simon ben Kosiba, surnamed Simon bar Kochba ("son of the star") was a Jewish Messiah. Between 132 and 135, he was the leader of the last resistance against the Romans. After the end of the disastrous rebellion, the rabbis called…
Simon ben Kosiba, surnamed Simon bar Kochba ("son of the star") was a Jewish Messiah. Between 132 and 135, he was the leader of the last resistance against the Romans. After the end of the disastrous rebellion, the rabbis called…
Tolsum Writing-Tablet or Tabula Tolsummiana: oldest written text from the Netherlands.
Tolsum, writing tablet (front)
In 1914, laborers digging in the "terp"…