Jeremy Rosen
Making Sense of the Bible: Can its Ancient Text be Relevant Today? Numbers 25, Pinchas the Zealot
Summary
Study the text of the Bible weekly with Jeremy Rosen through a combination of traditional, critical, and personal perspectives. No knowledge of Hebrew or the Bible is necessary. You may use any Bible text you may have or you can go to sefaria.org. This week will begin with Numbers 25, Pinchas the zealot.
Jeremy Rosen
Manchester-born Jeremy Rosen was educated at Cambridge University England and Mir Yeshiva in Jerusalem. He has practiced as an orthodox rabbi, as principal of Carmel College in the UK, and as professor at the Faculty for Comparative Religion in Antwerp, Belgium. He has written and lectured extensively in the UK and the US, where he now resides and was the rabbi of the Persian-Jewish community in Manhattan.
The guys who are eating their sacrifices have abandoned Judaism, so they’re not religious anymore. Not in that way. They’ve become Midianites.
No, there were lots of rites of Baal-peor, which included having sex at the temple. It also included defecation in public. It had a whole list of other customs, as all religions did. And so, these are the two main ones that we are dealing with, the physical degradation which makes Midian particularly problematic.
No, the question is within the families of Moses and Aaron. Their families, who were all Levites, weren’t all given the job of being high priests or in the senior position. So this was a more senior position within the priesthood that he was given.