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The earliest rabbinic commentary to the Book of Leviticus, the Sifra, is generally considered an exemplum of Rabbi Akiva's intensely scriptural school of interpretation. But, Azzan Yadin-Israel contends, the Sifra commentary exhibits two distinct layers of interpretation that bring dramatically different assumptions to bear on the biblical text: earlier interpretations accord with the hermeneutic principles associated with Rabbi Ishmael, the other major school of early rabbinic midrash, while later additions subtly alter hermeneutic terminology and formulas, resulting in an engagement with Scripture that is not interpretive at all. Rather, the midrashic terminology in the Sifra's anonymous p...
The study of midrash—the biblical exegesis, parables, and anecdotes of the Rabbis—has enjoyed a renaissance in recent years. Most recent scholarship, however, has focused on the aggadic or narrative midrash, while halakhic or legal midrash—the exegesis of biblical law—has received relatively little attention. In Scripture as Logos, Azzan Yadin addresses this long-standing need, examining early, tannaitic (70-200 C.E.) legal midrash, focusing on the interpretive tradition associated with the figure of Rabbi Ishmael. This is a sophisticated study of midrashic hermeneutics, growing out of the observation that the Rabbi Ishmael midrashim contain a dual personification of Scripture, which...
Almost five hundred years after his death, Don Isaac Abravanel (1437-1508) remains a legendary figure of Sephardic history, and above all of the Expulsion of 1492. There are numerous"portraits" that have been painted of him by pre-modern and modern scholars. And still we hesitate and cannot discern which is the true one. This first critical edition of Abravanel's Portuguese and Hebrew letters opens a unique window on a complex cultural process of assimilation and dissimulation of humanism among the fifteenth-century Jewish elite. On the one hand, it establishes Abravanel's assimilation of Iberian humanism and of major aspects of the Petrarchian consolatio; on the other hand, it points at the...
The first comprehensive analysis of the biblical and theological themes in Bruce Springsteen's music.
This important collection of essays by leading scholars of rabbinics reflects the current methodological approaches to the study of midrash. The volume situates midrash within the broader contexts of hermeneutics, rabbinics and postmodern studies, and thus presents a comprehensive view of the kinds of issues scholars in the field are engaging.
An innovative approach to the study of ten centuries of Jewish culture and history A Companion to Late Ancient Jews and Judaism explores the Jewish people, their communities, and various manifestations of their religious and cultural expressions from the third century BCE to the seventh century CE. Presenting a collection of 30 original essays written by noted scholars in the field, this companion provides an expansive examination of ancient Jewish life, identity, gender, sacred and domestic spaces, literature, language, and theological questions throughout late ancient Jewish history and historiography. Editors Gwynn Kessler and Naomi Koltun-Fromm situate the volume within Late Antiquity, e...
Encourages us to see historic Christianity as but one expression of a universalistic potential in Jewish monotheism. . . . In a fruitful career not yet nearly over, Border Lines, the culmination of many years of work, may well remain Daniel Boyarin's masterpiece.--Jack Miles, Commonweal
Is there an idiosyncratically Jewish hermeneutic? Did such ever obtain in Jewish history? Is there an idiosyncratically Jewish theology? Did such ever obtain in Jewish history? Did the two ever obtain at once and together in Jewish history? The answer to all of these questions is: Yes. Come and explore -- with an idiosyncratically odd interpreter of things Jewish -- a special brief moment in the history of Jewish letters. One is speaking of roughly 75 CE to roughly 95 CE. Come and explore what was birthed in that time period. Come and explore how what was birthed in that time period came to be rejected and suppressed on the day of the coiled snake. Come and explore how, miraculously, what was rejected and suppressed ended up being re-inscribed in the final redaction of the Bavli, rendering that written production as the quintessential expression of what is idiosyncratically Jewish.
In this book, Novenson gives a revisionist account of messianism in antiquity. He shows that, for the ancient Jews and Christians who used the term, a messiah was not an article of faith but a manner of speaking: a scriptural figure of speech useful for thinking kinds of political order.