Jacob Howland’s interest is in similarities and parallels between Greek and Jewish thought rather than in interaction and influence. But there was much interaction between Jews of the talmudic era and classical antiquity as well, as demonstrated by a discovery made by a thirteen-year-old Israeli on a hike with his father near the ancient quarry of Khirbet Shalala. The Times of Israel reports:

A nearly 2,000-year-old ring engraved with the image of Minerva, the Roman goddess of wisdom and battle—known to the Greeks as Athena—was found on Mount Carmel, near Haifa, the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) said on Wednesday.

The IAA inspector Nir Distelfeld determined that the ring, which appeared to be made of bronze, was from the 2nd and 3rd centuries CE, during the late Roman period. He gave several possibilities for its provenance: it may have belonged to a girl or woman who lived on the farm at Khirbet Shalala, or fallen from a worker at the nearby rock quarry. Alternatively, it may have served as an offering at the nearby burial sites.

“The figure is, apparently, the goddess Minerva from Roman mythology, also known as Athena in Greek mythology,” said Distelfeld, noting that she was “very popular during the Roman period in the Land of Israel.”

During the traditional three weeks of mourning, begun yesterday, for the destruction of the Temples, it seems appropriate to have a reminder of the long period that the Land of Israel was under pagan rule.

For the past 36 hours, I’ve been reading and listening to analyses of the terms and implications of the recent hostage deal. More will appear in the coming days, and I’ll try to put the best of them in this newsletter. But today I want to share a comment made on Tuesday by the Palestinian analyst Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib. While he and I would probably disagree on numerous points about the current conflict, this analysis is spot on, and goes entirely against most arguments made by those who consider themselves pro-Palestinian, and certainly those chanting for a cease-fire at all costs:

When a cease-fire in Gaza is announced, Hamas’s fascists will do everything they can to frame this as the ultimate victory; they will wear their military uniforms, emerge from their tunnels, stop hiding in schools and displacement centers, and very quickly reassert their control over the coastal enclave. They’ll even get a few Gazans to celebrate and dance for them.

This, I should note, is exactly what has happened. Alkhatib continues:

The reality is that the Islamist terrorism of Hamas, masquerading as “resistance,” has achieved nothing for the Palestinian people except for billions of dollars in wasted resources and tens of thousands of needless deaths, with Gaza in ruins after twenty years following the withdrawal of settlements in 2005. . . . Hamas’s propaganda machine, run by Qatari state media, Al Jazeera Arabic, will work overtime to help the terror group turn a catastrophic disaster into a victory akin to the battles of Stalingrad and Leningrad.

Hamas will also start punishing anyone who criticized or worked against it, and preparing for its next attack. Perhaps Palestinians would have been better off if, instead of granting them a temporary reprieve, the IDF kept fighting until Hamas was utterly defeated.