The tooth was probably that of a mammoth. In my book Sacred Monsters I have a chapter on giants which shows how mammoth's teeth were often confused for human teeth.
The entire review (in english) can be found on my blog.
never mind, i see you linked to it already. thanks!
Thank you for providing both!
> The tooth was probably that of a mammoth. In my book Sacred Monsters I have a chapter on giants which shows how mammoth's teeth were often confused for human teeth.
Nu, so are mammoth's teeth 100x the size of human teeth? ;)
Artscroll, like its overseers, would like to tell you what to think, not provide information and enable you to learn how to think. This excerpt just proves that.
It's a shame really. The people they're censoring were incredible for their intellect and their intellectual honesty and willingness to do whatever they needed to to prove the truth of Torah. Why are their descendants so scared of that?
This might be the reason Artscroll was so negative on de Rossi:
Jewish Scholarship and Philosophy in the Renaissance
International conference of the Leopold-Zunz-Zentrum zur Erforschung des europäischen Judentums and the Wolfenbütteler Arbeitskreis für Renaissanceforschung
17-19 September 2000 in Wolfenbüttel
This international conference, organized by the Leopold-Zunz-Zentrum zur Erforschung des europäischen Judentums (Giuseppe Veltri, Halle) and the Wolfenbütteler Arbeitskreis für Renaissanceforschung (Heribert Smolinsky, Freiburg; Friedrich Niewöhner, Wolfenbüttel), focussed on a topic to date largely neglected in European Jewish and Renaissance studies. The venue, a bibliotheca illustris, offered a stimulating background. With its huge collection of early modern printed books, the Herzog August Bibliothek in Wolfenbüttel reflects the encyclopaedic scholarship of theRenaissance and Baroque periods. The mix of participants from Europe, Israel and the United States, consisting of both younger scholars and internationally outstanding experts in the Jewish cultural history of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, provided a rare opportunity for lively and natural interchange and discussion.
Joanna Weinberg (London): “Azariah de’ Rossi: Father of Scholars”
In her lecture, Weinberg delineated an intellectual portrait of Azariah de’ Rossi (c.1511–c.1578) who was called by later maskilim a „father of scholars“. Quoting from his epitaph, whose inscription reflects Greek pagan epigrams and does not hint at the religion of the deceased at all, Weinberg pointed to the exceptional openness Rossi showed to the world around him. Nonetheless committed to his Judaism, he was conscious of living in two intellectual worlds and intentionally addressed different kinds of audiences. Weinberg exemplified this with Azariah’s assessment of the Syriac version of the Gospels: against the background of the proclamation of the Vulgate as the official text (1546), he aspires to the highest level of truth by using the Syriac text to correct the Latin one. Criticizing in this context both Talmudic authorities and Augustine, Rossi enables different kinds of readers to identify with his remarks. When he discusses how the original Aramaic inscription of the INRI at the site of Jesus’ crucifixion might have read, he even refers to images of the titulus in church paintings of the time, e.g., to Bellini. In this way we can see him entering churches and looking at paintings with a professional eye. As Weinberg stressed, Rossi’s discussion of the Gospels extends beyond mere apologetics and is a proof of his outstanding role as a “seeker after truth”.
Though I can't really believe Artscroll was aware of all this on de Rossi's part, the mere fact that he was critical of Talmudical sources was enough for them...once they discovered that!
"Joseph Karo commissioned Elisha Gallico to draw up a decree to be distributed among all Jews, ordering that the "Me'or 'Enayim" be burned. But, Joseph Caro dying before it was ready for him to sign, the decree was not promulgated, and the rabbis of Mantua contented themselves with forbidding the reading of the work by Jews under twenty-five years of age." (Wikipedia)
Someone's passing would not prevent today's handlers from getting it signed anyway.
>Though I can't really believe Artscroll was aware of all this on de Rossi's part, the mere fact that he was critical of Talmudical sources was enough for them...once they discovered that!
I can. This is basically the reputation that ADR has. However, it is interesting to note that in another place Artscroll chose to deny his place as an antecedent for maskilim and people like Zunz:
http://elucidation-not-translati...urely-
have.html
I don't think they did this out of honor for ADR so much as to deny any sort of precedent for the maskilic approach and school in the Jewish past. If they could present themselves as the continuation of a stream of thought - as they did - that is much worse than if they can be seen as a new and alien growth.
your last quote was extremely unfortunate and out-of-place.
The Torah is Divine and infinite in wisdom and reward.
What are your thoughts on RAbbi Riesmans Book and his Treatment of DIKDUK?
Haven't seen it. Can you give me some idea of what you mean?
as a member of brooklyn's SY community, I thank you for spreading the refutation of this drivel. We have enough haredization issues without artscroll publishing books that recreate our hakhamim in their own image.
zu "torah" v'zu s'charah, indeed.
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