Austin H. Williams

As a graduate student in the Skirball Department of Hebrew and Judaic Studies, it is my privilege to get to be made to feel like an idiot by some of the greatest professors in the field.

I also manage to simultaneously learn things. Hopefully. Hopefully.

This will probably be a fairly frequent and recurring series of posts, as this semester alone I am studying with Mark S. Smith, one of the major authorities on ancient linguistics and textual developments; Jeffrey Rubenstein, authority on Talmudic, Rabbinic and Second Temple Jewish materials; and Lawrence Schiffman, the great Dead Sea Scrolls and Second Temple period scholars. All of these professors are world-class and abso-bloody-lutely brilliant. Being a first year grad student, who has not been in even part-time schooling for several years, being in such august presences is a bit much for me.

So, at any rate, since I have Texts from the Judean Desert on Tuesdays with Prof. Schiffman, I figured this would be a great way to begin this little series. Prof. Schiffman drops all types of tidbits of wisdom in his classes, and there’s a good deal of general principle things about ancient Judaica and what-not that one can glean from his classes. So, since this is my blog, I’m going to assume/hope that you give a rat’s rear about these things. Anyway, without further adieu, here is (in short) what I learned today:

• My Aramaic sucks. This is nothing new, just a reminder.
• If you wear a suit into the Qumran caves, it will be ruined by guano.
• I also don’t know enough about Jewish marriage laws.
• On that note, there are clauses, evidently, in Jewish marriage contracts (at least in the ancient world) that require husbands to ransom their wives with their own money in case their wife gets captured by rampaging soldiers…
• …unless you’re a priest, in which case you are forbidden to do so.
• There were clauses that specified that husbands would provide child support. Why? Well, child support was not assumed at this point. When kids can go out and work full-time at age twelve or thirteen, child support is more of a perk than a necessity. (Kids these days are spoiled; don’t know the value of a zùz!)
• Words of wisdom: “Always read your professors’ articles.”
• Most students in the Skirball Hebrew and Judaic Studies programme go running from German, and tend to favour modern Hebrew. I am very much the exception. This is not a good thing.
• “There’s a fundamentalism of ignorance out there.” – In reference to people who adhere to rigid interpretations of texts and traditions (i.e. the Bible) and then chunk the historicity/validity of the texts or traditions in question based on any evidence that goes against them (despite a surfeit of evidence in their favour).
• “These people can’t interpret the Bible any other way, but I’m supposed to be the fundamentalist!”

So, your nuggets of wisdom for the day, courtesy of Professor Schiffman.