Publisher's Synopsis
This fourth volume of Irano-Judaica covers a wide variety of topics by some of the leading authorities in Jewish and Iranian studies. Among these are essays on Iranian culture in antiquity, Zoroastrian influences on Judaism, Iranian legal terminology in the Talmud, traces of Jewish polemics against Zoroastrianism in the Babylonian Talmud, and Zoroastrian terminology in the Geonic writings. Also discussed are Jewish and Iranian themes in Armenian literature, and the terminology used by the early Manichaeans. Other studies deal with the Aramaic component in the writing system of Pahlavi, the study of Persian by European scholars in the early modern times, the great Jewish Persian poet Shahin, the use of the Qur'an in Jewish arguments with Islam, an old Judeo-Persian dictionary of the Bible, versions of the tractate Abot in Judeo-Persian, and the use of Neo-Aramaic by Jews and Christians in Iran. The volume also contains studies on art history, with an analysis of a textile amulet covered with Judeo-Persian inscriptions, and of the rich pictorial decorations in the ancient synagogue of Dura Europos. Two of the articles survey Zoroastrianism and Jewish themes from the point of view of contemporary Zoroastrian scholars. Yad Izhak Ben-Zvi is the foremost research and academic institution in the field of Eretz-Israel and Oriental and Sephardic Jewery. It is named after the second President of Israel.
