Ben Hur, the novel, part 14

We are up to Book II chapter 5 of Ben Hur and Wallace throws in a cheap bit of Victorian bigotry saying that Arabs and Egyptians are stupid. The Nabatean Arabs were Jews at this time, converted under the Hasmonean kings. The Egyptians had been allies of Judea through the Seleucid persecution down to Herod’s time.

Tirzah did not have an amulet inherited from a grandmother.

Amulets were little bags containing either written material or healing herbs. Now remember that at this time Jews did not use Biblical Hebrew as a living language. They spoke Aramaic. They had an Aramaic version of Torah, or at least in synagogue somebody would get up and translate the reading from the Torah scroll as it was read. Persians speak an Indo-Iranian language, not a Semitic language. It is highly unlikely that a Persian could write a kosher amulet.

Amulets were primarily used against epilepsy. If a person was healed three times, the amulet was defined as “effective”. If the maker took it back when the first person got well, and gave it to at least two other people who were healed of other illnesses, he was defined as “expert”. (Mishnah Shabbat 6:2, one of those without a name in it, so a standard Sanhedrin decision, and the gemara on Talmud Shabbat 61/62.) So Tirzah should not have an amulet; the maker should have taken it back.

And now about not being P’rushim. If the family were not P’rushim, they would not value the teachings of Hillel and his sons. These were the cream of the P’rushi ranks, and they argued against Ts’duki teachings.

There’s only one reason Wallace would pretend that the family were not P’rushim and yet think that they followed the School of Hillel. Ignorance.

And then another bit of ignorance. Judah could not train in a Roman camp. The Roman legions worshipped their eagles. This was prohibited to Jews. There were Jewish legions in the Roman army at the time. Judah could train with one of those, have kosher food, have rest on Shabbat, and so on. They were disbanded by Theodosius II in the 400s CE when he decreed other disabling legislation against Jews. You can say all you want that only assimilated Jews would have been in the Roman army, but they were there before Titus destroyed the Second Temple and they were there after the Hadrianic persecutions.

But Wallace being ignorant or careless made another mistake.