Apanorama of female figures people the writings of Philo of Alexandria, ranging from the most sublime to the most debased. Amid this colorful array of characters are three female personifications of important conceptual constructs in Philo's worldview—Wisdom (ἡ σοφία), sense perception (ἡ αἴσθησις), and Nature (ἡ φύσις). Like the concepts they represent, these figures have little in common, and it is hard to reconcile their heterogeneity with what Philo says about the “female” as a category in itself. Here the data become particularly contradictory and confusing, for Philo's gender categories are among the most rigid and consistently applied principles of his thought. My purpose here is to try to unravel this rather glaring inconsistency between Philo's narrow perception of gender and the breadth of his female characterization as displayed by these three figures.

Recent years have witnessed a growing interest in the mythic dimension of rabbinic thought. Much of this work emerged from debates between scholars of Jewish mysticism over the origins of kabbalistic myth. Should these origins be sought in external traditions that influenced medieval Judaism or within the rabbinic tradition? As is well known, Gershom Scholem claimed that the rabbis rejected myth in order to forge a Judaism based on rationality and law. Moshe Idel, on the other hand, argues that mythic conceptions and specifically the mythicization of Torah appear in rabbinic literature. While the medieval kabbalists elaborated and developed these ideas, they inherited a mythic worldview from the rabbis. Scholars are now increasingly likely to characterize many classical rabbinic sources as mythic. Medieval myth need not have been due to external influence, but should be seen as an internal development within Judaism. Despite the appearance of mythic thought in rabbinic literature, however, a tremendous gulf remains between rabbinic and kabbalistic myth. The full-blown theogonic and cosmogonic myths of the kabbalists, the complex divine structure of the Sefirot, and the detailed expressions of the theurgic effect of ritual (that is, the effect that specific rituals have upon God or the Sefirot) represent a mode of mythic thinking far more comprehensive than that of the rabbis. In rabbinic literature one finds mythic motifs—succinct, independent, and self–contained expressions—not fully developed myths. How exactly did rabbinic myth develop into medieval mystical myth?

In 1968 Amos Funkenstein published an article in Hebrew entitled “Changes in the Patterns of Christian Anti-Jewish Polemics in the 12th Century.” In that article, Funkenstein argues that Christian attitudes toward Jews underwent a change in the twelfth century, a change discernable in the Christian polemical literature of the period. In contrast to the previous Christian strategy of polemicizing against Judaism through a battery of prooftexts, or testimonia, the innovative polemics introduced three important elements—the recourse to reason, the attack on the Talmud, and the use of the Talmud to prove the truth of Christianity. These innovations signaled the beginning of the end of the relative Christian tolerance of Jews and Judaism inspired by the writings of Augustine.

When I was completing my book on foundational theology, I presented a paper on the concept of broad reflective equilibrium and foundational theology to a group of colleagues at a conference sponsored by the Association of Theological Schools. This paper summarized the book's concluding section, which dealt with the relationship between contemporary criticisms of foundationalism and a foundational theology employing the method of broad reflective equilibrium. It advanced a systematic and historical argument. Systematically, the section argued that the method of broad reflective equilibrium offered a vision of foundational theology that avoided the pitfalls of foundationalism, overcoming the foundationalism of fundamental theology. It appealed to current discussions about methodology, specifically, the discussions on reflective equilibrium in the philosophy of science and in political ethics. The historical argument appealed to Schleiermacher by relating Schleiermacher's stance on the relationship between systematic and philosophical theology to the conception of a nonfoundationalist foundational theology, employing the method of broad reflective equilibrium.

A wife's right to divorce her husband does not exist in Jewish law, or so claims virtually every textbook on Jewish law. Over the years scholars have, of course, noted exceptions to this absolute assertion. In Jewish marriage contracts from Elephantine, for example, women have a right to divorce equal to that of men. Another example is the Gospel of Mark's logion on divorce, which apparently implies that either a woman or a man can initiate divorce procedures. Josephus, moreover, relates that Salome, King Herod's sister, sent her husband a bill of divorce. Mainstream scholarship has too often brushed aside these pieces of evidence as nonrepresentative actions or misunderstandings on the part of a transmitter. The Elephantine community was thus remote and had lost contact with the center of Jewish life many years earlier, living a pagan existence and following the legal practices of its neighbors. Mark was a non-Jewish author describing the actions of Palestinian Jews in light of more familiar Roman legal practices. Salome's actions contradicted Jewish law and succeeded only because of her Roman citizenship.