Avodah Zarah 009

1:
Our mishnah consists of two clauses. The first clause identifies those pagan celebratory days which are considered holy days pursuant to the ruling in the first mishnah of this chapter. The second clause lists private holy days, which have a different halakhah.

2:
Our mishnah lists six days on which pagans in the Roman Empire observed a holy day. Clearly this list cannot possibly be exhaustive because the Romans loved festivals and 'days off'. It is probably this thought which leads Rambam, in his commentary on our mishnah, to add:

3:
The Calends were the first day of each Roman month. It is from this Latin term that we derive our modern word 'calendar'. This day was an auspicious day and it was also the day on which all debts were payable. It is probably because of this latter characteristic that for Jews the Calends were to be considered a pagan religious festival: if the Jew had to pay back a loan to a non-Jew on the Calends or receive payment from a non-Jew on the Calends there was a danger that the non-Jew would offer thanks to his god. [See AZ 003, explanantion 18.] (Presumably, observant Jews were careful to have inscribed in the Calendria – public ledger of debts payable – that his loans were not repayable on the Calends.)

4:
It is perhaps justifiable to note here that of the three days that were markers in the Roman calendar – Calends, Nones and Ides – only the Calends are noted by our mishnah as being holy days. The Nones and the Ides were just calendrical markers with no religious meaning. (The Roman clergy were very adept at declaring days as being 'auspicious' or 'inauspicious', depending on what they read in the auspices; thus while the Ides of a month might be 'inauspicious' this was not because it was the Ides but because the entrails of an animal said so.) [See AZ 007 in the discussion for a fuller explanation of the intricacies of the Roman calendar.]

5:
The Saturnalia were a festival held annually for 7 days beginning on December 17th and ending on December 23rd. Apparently, the temple of the god Saturn (known to the Greeks as Cronos) had originally been dedicated in Rome on December 17th. Saturn's spheres of influence were held to be agriculture and justice. The festival was probably the most popular in the Roman year. (Attempts by emperors to reduce its length failed miserably.) A Saturnalicius princeps was elected master of ceremonies for the proceedings which included sacrifices and ceremonies connected with the god Saturn. But the ceremonies were private as well as public. Children were given a vacation from school, people would give each other gifts, decorate their homes with holly, gambling was rife and slaves were accorded a considerable degree of licence throughout the festival. The Saturnalia were seven days in the year when it was customary to "to eat, drink, and be merry." Rather like our Jewish customs of venahafokh hu on Purim, slaves were exempt from punishment, and expected to treat their masters with mock disrespect; they celebrated a banquet which was often served by the masters. The customary greeting for the occasion was Io [pronounced 'yo'] Saturnalia! – "Up the Saturnalia! or Hurrah for the Saturnalia").

6:
Quite incredibly, in his commentary on our mishnah, Rabbi Ovadyah of Bertinoro says that this festival was initiated by Adam in the Garden of Eden! He notes that it occurs just before the winter solstice and explains that when Adam saw that the days were getting shorter and shorter he was filled with dread; after the solstice (December 21st) he saw that the days began to lengthen again and so he observed that day as a festival. Rabbi Ovadyah says that the pagans 'borrowed' this festival.

7:
Cratesis Day was, it seems, an annual holiday held on August 1st in honour of the first Roman Emperor Augustus. (Originally the Roman year had only ten months. Two more months were added by Julius Caesar [in 46 BC] and they were subsequently named after himself and his eventual successor: thus we have today the months of July and August.) Apparently the name of the holy day comes from the Greek which means 'assumption of power'. However, the Roman senate awarded the victor of the battle of Actium the title 'Augustus' in January 27 BCE, not August. In common with many Greek and Latin words that were transliterated into Hebrew the word 'Cratesis' was also corrupted. The most common corruption was the substitution of a final letter mem for an original letter samekh.

However, despite the explanation of the classical commentators about a day celebrating the 'assumption of power' we do know that in many towns and cities throughout the empire the goddess Kratesis was honoured as personifying the authority of Rome. She was always shown as a standing female, holding a figure of Nike [victory], and supporting a trophy. So it is more than possible that Kratesis Day was an annual holy day in honour of this personification of Rome Victorious.

To be continued.

We have recently been discussing how the sages in the Middle Ages – and earlier – related to Christianity.

Bob Epstein writes:

I thought that one of the reasons Rabbis disagreed about whether Christianity was idol worship was the type of Christianity they were familiar with. Practitioners of Eastern-rite Churches often prostrated themselves, while others only bowed or knelt.

I respond:

I am not sure that we can sustain such an assumption regarding the periods we are dealing with. The form of Christianity that would have been known to the sages of Eretz-Israel and Babylon was what later became institutionalised as Greek Orthodoxy or the Eastern Church. The sages of western Europe (France, Germany, England) would have known what came to be known as the Roman Catholic Church or the Western Church. But in either case there were elements that would have been anathema to an observant Jew. We need only recall the beautiful screen paintings (icons) of Christian worthies that adorned every sanctuary of the Eastern Church; the genuflections to the 'host' and so on. And in the Western Church we need only recall the wondrous decorations that adorned churches all over Europe. And, of course, prostration and genuflection before representations of the cross and the saints was a normal part of the ritual. It is not until the advent of Protestantism in general and 'the Society of Friends' in particular in 16th Century that we find religious austerity coming into vogue among some Christian sects.