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Talmud and Philosophy
Wide-ranging and astutely argued, Talmud and Philosophy examines the intersections, partitions, and mutual illuminations and problematizations of Western philosophy and the Talmud. Among many philosophers, the Talmud has been at best an idealized and remote object and, at worst, if noticed at all, an object of curiosity. The contributors to this volume collectively ignite and probe a new mode of inquiry by approaching the very question of partitions, conjunctions, and disjunctions between the Talmud and philosophy as the guiding question of their inquiry. Rather than using the Talmud and its modes of argumentation to develop existing philosophical themes, these essays probe the question of how the Talmud as an intellectual discipline sheds new light on the unfolding of philosophy in the history of thought.
From a Distant Relation
In his short life (1865–1921), Mikhah Yosef Berdichevsky was a versatile and influential man of letters: an innovative Hebrew prose stylist; a collector of Jewish folklore; a scholar of ancient Jewish and Christian history. He was at once a peer of Friedrich Nietzsche, the Brothers Grimm, and a diverse circle of Jewish writers in the Russian Empire and German-speaking countries. As a Yiddish writer, however, he remains unknown to general readers. Written in 1902-1906, but not published in full until the 1920s, his stories were dismissed by prominent critics and viewed as out of step with the literary taste of his own time. Yet these vivid portraits of a small Jewish town (shtetl) in the ...
Talmud and Philosophy
Wide-ranging and astutely argued, Talmud and Philosophy examines the intersections, partitions, and mutual illuminations and problematizations of Western philosophy and the Talmud. Among many philosophers, the Talmud has been at best an idealized and remote object and, at worst, if noticed at all, an object of curiosity. The contributors to this volume collectively ignite and probe a new mode of inquiry by approaching the very question of partitions, conjunctions, and disjunctions between the Talmud and philosophy as the guiding question of their inquiry. Rather than using the Talmud and its modes of argumentation to develop existing philosophical themes, these essays probe the question of how the Talmud as an intellectual discipline sheds new light on the unfolding of philosophy in the history of thought.
The Talmud's Red Fence
The Talmud's Red Fence explores how rituals and beliefs concerning menstruation in the Babylonian Talmud and neighboring Sasanian religious texts were animated by difference and differentiation. It argues that the practice and development of menstrual rituals in Babylonian Judaism was a product of the religious terrain of the Sasanian Empire, where groups like Syriac Christians, Mandaeans, Zoroastrians, and Jews defined themselves in part based on how they approached menstrual impurity. It demonstrates that menstruation was highly charged in Babylonian Judaism and Sasanian Zoroastrian, where menstrual discharge was conceived of as highly productive female seed yet at the same time as stemmin...
Jewish, Christian, and Muslim Travel Experiences
Travel and pilgrimage have become central research topics in recent years. Some archaeologists and historians have applied globalization theories to ancient intercultural connections. Classicists have rediscovered travel as a literary topic in Greek and Roman writing. Scholars of early Judaism, Christianity, and Islam have been rethinking long-familiar pilgrimage practices in new interdisciplinary contexts. This volume contributes to this flourishing field of study in two ways. First, the focus of its contributions is on experiences of travel. Our main question is: How did travelers in the ancient world experience and make sense of their journeys, real or imaginary, and of the places they visited? Second, by treating Jewish, Christian, and Islamic experiences together, this volume develops a longue durée perspective on the ways in which travel experiences across these three traditions resembled each other. By focusing on "experiences of travel," we hope to foster interaction between the study of ancient travel in the humanities and that of broader human experience in the social sciences.
Babylonian Jews and Sasanian Imperialism in Late Antiquity
From the image offered by the Babylonian Talmud, Jewish elites were deeply embedded within the Sasanian Empire (224-651 CE). The Talmud is replete with stories and discussions that feature Sasanian kings, Zoroastrian magi, fire temples, imperial administrators, Sasanian laws, Persian customs, and more quotidian details of Jewish life. Yet, in the scholarly literature on the Babylonian Talmud and the Jews of Babylonia , the Sasanian Empire has served as a backdrop to a decidedly parochial Jewish story, having little if any direct impact on Babylonian Jewish life and especially the rabbis. Babylonian Jews and Sasanian Imperialism in Late Antiquity advances a radically different understanding of Babylonian Jewish history and Sasanian rule. Building upon recent scholarship, Simcha Gross portrays a more immanent model of Sasanian rule, within and against which Jews invariably positioned and defined themselves. Babylonian Jews realized their traditions, teachings, and social position within the political, social, religious, and cultural conditions generated by Sasanian rule.
Talmudic Transgressions
In Talmudic Transgressions, scholars offer new perspectives on rabbinic literature and related areas, in essays which respond to the work of Daniel Boyarin.
Joseph
The complex and dramatic story of Joseph is the most sustained narrative in Genesis. Many call it a literary masterpiece and a story of great depth that can be read on many levels. In a lucid and engaging style, Alan T. Levenson brings the voices of Philo, Josephus, Midrash, and medieval commentators, as well as a wide range of modern scholars, into dialogue about this complex biblical figure. Levenson explores such questions as: Why did Joseph’s brothers hate him so? What is achieved by Joseph’s ups and downs on the path to extraordinary success? Why didn’t Joseph tell his father he was alive and ruling Egypt? What was Joseph like as a husband and father? Was Joseph just or cruel in testing his brothers’ characters? Levenson deftly shows how an unbroken chain of interpretive traditions, mainly literary but also artistic, have added to the depth of this fascinating and unique character.
Three Powers in Heaven
A fresh look at how Christianity and Judaism became two distinct religions through the parting of their intellectual traditions How, when, and why did Christianity and Judaism diverge into separate religions? Emanuel Fiano reinterprets the parting of the ways between Jews and Christians as a split between two intellectual traditions, a split that emerged within the context of ancient debates about Jesus’s relationship to God and the world. Fiano explores how Christianity moved away from Judaism through the development of new practices for religious inquiry. By demonstrating that the constitution of communal borders coincided with the elaboration of different methods for producing religious knowledge, the author shows that Christian theological controversies, often thought to teach us nothing beyond the history of dogma, can cast light on the broader religious landscape of late antiquity. Three Powers in Heaven thus marks not only a historical but also a methodological intervention in the study of the parting of the ways and in scholarship on ancient religion.
Metaphysical Institutions
In Metaphysical Institutions, Caner K. Dagli explores the ultimate nature of the realities we call religions, cultures, civilizations, and traditions through the lens of a particular question often limited to religious studies, history, and anthropology, namely: "What is Islam?" The book is both a philosophical treatise about the nature of shared thinking that uses the encounter between the Modern Project and Islam as an illustrative example, and an exploration of the conceptualization of Islam in light of the metaphysics of consciousness and meaning. Dagli first develops a comprehensive theory of the institution and then expands its meaning to include a new category called "metaphysical institutions," with the goal of establishing both necessary and empirically variable features of all institutions, including those that deal with ultimate questions. The new model is then used to analyze questions of authority and autonomy, rationality and imitation, the universal and the particular, and other enduring questions.
