AboutRabbi Barry Dov Lerner Expertise Write to me with questions about Jewish customs and law, history,
philosophy and tradition for answers from a Conservative perspective or conversion. I am a graduate of The Jewish Theological Seminary and a member of the Conservative Rabbinical Assembly. Having served in congregational pulpits since 1970, I now am President of the Foundation For Family Education, Inc. a non-profit educational endeavor. I established it to create new formats of hands-on programs and provide free educational downloads at www.jewishfreeware.org. In addition to general informational questions I welcome your questions about programs for social action, outreach to dual-faith families, inter-faith clergy projects, healing services, education for conversion, adult education for the congregation and the community. If you have questions about Informal and Formal Education I am ready to share my extensive experience with Youth Activities, Camping and Religious School/Hebrew High School on a congregational, community and national/international level.
Experience I have served on the National Youth Commission for more than 25 years and serve on the Boards of the Conservative Zionist movement MERCAZ and the World Council of Synagogues. I have always dual-families and taught candidates for conversion with a great sense of fulfillment. I am very proud of 25 years on the Jewish camping staff of Camps Ramah. My greatest source of pride is my family! Ask me about them, please!:-)
Question QUESTION: I'm curious about the spices used according to Jewish burial customs in biblical times. John 19:39 states that after Jesus' death, Nicodemus "brought a mixture of myrrh and aloes, about an hundred pound weight", with which to perform the burial. How did these spices have to be prepared before being used for burial? How long would this preparation have taken? Thanks for your help!
ANSWER: Dear Tony,
Thanks for writing.
I've done some research but the following from the Encyclopedia Judaica may help:
Unfortunately, I am not sufficiently expert to know this area. I would urge you to contact the Reference Desk of The Jewish Theological Seminary of America library - www.jtsa.edu - for followup.
Here is what the specific entry includes from the 2007 edition of the EJ. [Note: Most libraries have only the earlies edition from the mid-60's although the scholarship is reliable. The www.jewishencyclopedia online is from the early 1920's.]
Best wishes
Rabbi Dov
"Nevertheless, this assessment of the importance of decent burial must be qualified. Archaeology reveals no distinctively Israelite burial practices during almost the whole of the biblical period. The Israelites continued to use modes of burial employed in Palestine long before the conquest. It follows that it is risky to draw firm conclusions about Israelite religious beliefs on the basis of specific burial practices, e.g., the provision of grave goods or lack of them, communal or individual burial, and so on, since any or all of these may have been dictated by immemorial custom rather than by consciously held conviction. The law says relatively little about burial, and where it treats the subject, the concern is to avoid defilement by the dead (Num. 19:16; Deut. 21:22–23). The dead do not praise God, they are forgotten and cut off from His hand (Ps. 88:6, 10–12), and in consequence mourning and the burial of the dead are at most peripheral matters in Israelite religion. . . .
The New Testament sheds some light on Jewish burial practices of the first century C.E. Jesus' disciples took his body, bought a great quantity of myrrh and aloes, "and wound it in linen clothes with the spices, as the manner of the Jews is to bury" (John 19:40). There was a delay in completing the preparation of the body for burial because of the Sabbath (Mark 16:1; Luke 23:56). Luke (7:11–17) gives a vivid picture of the simple funeral of the poor; the body of a young man of Nain is borne out of the city on a pallet, clothed but without coffin, followed by the weeping mother and "much people of the city."
[Delbert Roy Hillers]"
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QUESTION: Hello, and thanks so much for your previous help. I've got one more separate question. I've heard that, in biblical times, Jews would refer to any part of a day as a "day". In other words, from 4 pm Tuesday to noon on Wednesday could be referred to, according to Jewish reckoning of time, as two days, since that time span covered a part of each of those days.
Is it true that this was/is the Jewish custom? Also, do you believe it's possible that this method of reckoning time could apply even in instances where days AND nights are specified, such as in Matthew 12:40, where Jesus said he would be "three days and three nights in the heart of the earth"? Or would "three days and three nights" refer literally to that amount of time - about 72 hours?
Answer Dear Tony,
The term "day" refers traditionally from sunset to the following sunset, based upon the Biblical reference in Genesis, "there was evening, there was day, the first day.
For example, the Sabbath begins at Friday sunset through Saturday sunset, rather than the secular day measured from midnight to midnight.
The 2007 Encyclopedia Judaica includes the following information, which should answer the technical information.
Unfortunately, I cannot comment competently on the statement attributed to Matthew as it occurs only in translation - I'm hoping to start learning Chrtian Testament Greek soon! You might want to either contact the Seminary reference desk or the reference library of Union Theological Seminary in NYCity whom I have always found helpful.
Best wishes
Rabbi Dov
EJ:
"In contrast to pagan mythology, where sunrise represents a daily contention between opposing forces, in Jewish monotheism, the day-and-night cycle is attributed to a single God who "forms the light, and creates darkness" (Isa. 45:7), "who changes the times," and "who removes the light from before the darkness and the darkness from before the light" (beginning of the evening prayer). The special religious significance attached to this periodicity can be observed in the Temple rites of regular morning and evening sacrifices and in the benedictions over the daily cycle in the morning and evening prayers (the benediction "Creator of the luminaries" in the morning prayer, and the benediction "Who brings the nights" in the evening prayer). Every morning, when darkness disappears before the light, the initial act of creation is renewed. In biblical cosmogony, the concept that at first there was "darkness on the face of the abyss" compares with a similar view on the origin of the universe of other early cultures. In contrast to Greek mythology, however, it is not the darkness, or the abyss, that "gave birth" to the light. The day was created by the order: "Let there be light." The halakhic postulate "the day goes after the night" is based on this antecedence of darkness to light and of night to day (Gen. 1:5). The 24-hour cycle starts at sunset; Sabbath and festivals begin in the evening, and terminate at the start of the following night (a number of specific day-only fasts, however, start at dawn; see *Fast Days). Certain concepts, dating probably from the pre-biblical period, reflect the belief that day is the basis of all that is good; these concepts have entered the Bible (e.g., Ps. 104:2; Dan. 2:22; Isa. 30:26) and the Apocrypha, and more especially gnostic and other writings with a dualistic tendency. Traces of the dualist theory are found in Jewish folklore and it may be assumed that the belief that Jewish redemption will come in an era when there is perpetual day derives from it. The concept was accepted, at least poetically and symbolically, both in the Bible (Zech. 14:7) and in the aggadah (Hag. 12a).
During the talmudic and subsequent periods, many superstitious beliefs relating to night took root in Jewish folklore. *Lilith, known in Assyrian and Babylonian mythologies as a flying demon (e.g., in the Epic of Gilgamesh), was the most feared of the evil night spirits and a fiend especially dangerous to women in confinement. Although there is no relation between her name and the Hebrew word laylah ("night") the phonetic similarity converted her into a night-demon threatening the lives of newborn babies, especially uncircumcised males; she is also a succubus that clings to men sleeping alone (Shab. 151b). To stave her and other diabolic creatures off, the rabbis forbade people to go out alone at night, especially on Wednesdays and Fridays (Pes. 112b). Charms, amulets, adjurations, and potions, as means of protection against "the terror by night" (Ps. 91:5), were widespread in many Jewish communities until quite recently.
The halakhah attaches great importance to the day-and-night cycle. Many mitzvot may only be performed during the day, e.g., circumcision, the sounding of the *shofar, putting on the tefillin (phylacteries), lulav ("the taking of the palm-branch"), the laying of the hands on, and the slaughtering of, sacrifices, genuflective prayer, testimony and judgment, the construction of the Temple, and others.
The Bible does not clearly define day and night or their divisions, such as "evening, morning, and noonday" (Ps. 55:18), the watches of the night (Ex. 14:24; Judg. 7:19), midnight or half the night (Ex. 11:4; 12:29), and the notion of "hour" is not mentioned at all. The duration of a "halakhic" day is from dawn until the appearance of the stars, i.e., a full solar day; it is divided into secondary periods, according to three systems:
(a) Every day (and every night) is divided into 12 "variable" ("זמניות") hours, no matter what season it occurs in; the duration of the hour is therefore dependent on the yearly season (Sanh. 38b). Ultra-Orthodox Jews in Israel follow this system to the present day.
(b) The entire day (day and night) is taken as one unit and is divided into 24 standard and fixed hours of 60 minutes each, as in the commonly accepted time system. The division of day and night into fixed hours, with a specific duration, is mentioned for the first time in the literature of the tannaim (see, e.g., Mekh. SbY to 12:29: "He is seated on the sundial [a time device probably introduced into Erez Israel during the Hellenistic period] and shows the hours with an accuracy that is within a hair's breadth"). The notion of an "hour" as an undefined and not standardized lapse of time has, however, been maintained in the Mishnah ("The early pietists waited an hour.…"; Ber. 5:1). Though it was only theoretical, there was also more detailed division; an onah ("term") is 1/24 of an hour, an et ("period") is 1/24 of an onah, and a rega ("moment") is 1/24 of an et (Tosef., Ber. 1:3). In this classification the rega is approximately ¼ of a second. The rabbis, therefore, said that "a human being … does not know his ittim [plural of et], rega'im [plural of rega], and hours … but God … entered into it by a hair's breadth" (Gen. R. 10:9). A different, more precise calculation existed in Erez Israel: "How much is a rega – 1/58,888 of an hour" (Ber. 7a). A wide literature, notably the Baraita de-Shemuel, deals with such time calculations within the framework of astrological research. Another division of the hour is into 1,080 parts; this is also very ancient and is based on the lunar month.
(c) The solar day (alone) is divided according to the changes in the brightness of the sunlight. In this system, the day is divided as follows: dawn, the appearance of the first morning twilight, is the starting point when all precepts to be fulfilled during the day become obligatory. Halakhah, however, prefers sunrise to dawn because the commencement of the day presents problems of definition; haneh ha-hammah ("first appearance of the sun") occurs after dawn and precedes zerihah by the period of time it takes to walk a mil ("mile"). At that time, the pious read the Shema. Zerihah – full sunrise – is the moment when the entire sun appears over the horizon. Sunset is the moment when the entire sun disappears below the horizon. Evening twilight is the light after sunset and it is doubtful whether this period may be called day or night, and diverse opinions have been given by the tannaim as to its exact nature and time (Shab. 34b). According to Maimonides (Yad, Shabbat 5:4), the evening twilight begins with sunset and lasts until the appearance of three medium-sized stars, and from then on it is night. R. Tam argues that evening twilight begins from the period it takes to walk three and a quarter mil after sunset to the appearance of the stars. Until then, it is still day. In the Shulhan Arukh (OH 261), this second opinion is accepted as binding. According to a third opinion, held by some of the early commentators, night begins immediately with sunset and the evening twilight is a period prior to sunset, lasting the time it takes to walk three and a quarter mil."
