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In this volume, Rey and Reymond offer a new critical edition of all the Hebrew manuscripts of Ben Sira from the Cairo Genizah and Dead Sea Scrolls (including the so-called'Rhyming'Paraphrase). Manuscripts are presented independently to preserve their unique qualities and to emphasize the text's pluriformity. Readers will discover numerous new readings and restorations, explained in detailed notes, that illustrate Ben Sira's complex textual composition. French and English translations together with a philological commentary help elucidate the sometimes obscure sense of the Hebrew. This edition will form the foundation for future work on the book of Ben Sira.

Although Jews lacked a political locus standi for a communication system in the Middle Ages and Early Modern periods, their involvement in trade and the close relations among Jewish communities fostered the development of effective channels of communication. This process responded primarily to security and socio-economic considerations but it has important implications for the development of communication systems as well. Written by some of the most outstanding researchers in the field of Jewish history, this collection offers a rich and consistent picture of the main developments in communications in the Jewish world before the era of mass-media. This pioneering research reconsiders the principal means of communication among the Jewish communities in the Islamic world, Christian Europe, the Ottoman Empire, and the New World, from the seventh until the nineteenth centuries.

A profound look at what it means for new generations to read and interpret ancient religious texts In this book, rabbi and philosopher Marc-Alain Ouaknin offers a postmodern reading of the Talmud. Combining traditional learning and contemporary thought, Ouaknin dovetails discussions of spirituality and religious practice with such concepts as deconstruction, intertextuality, undecidability, multiple voicing, and eroticism in the Talmud. On a broader level, he establishes a dialogue between Hebrew tradition and the social sciences, which draws, for example, on the works of Lévinas, Blanchot, and Jabès as well as Derrida. The Burnt Book represents the innovative thinking that has come to be associated with a school of French Jewish studies, headed by Lévinas and dedicated to new readings of traditional texts.The Talmud, transcribed in 500 C.E., is shown to be a text that refrains from dogma and instead encourages the exploration of its meanings. A vast compilation of Jewish oral law, the Talmud also contains rabbinical commentaries that touch on everything from astronomy to household life. Examining its literary methods and internal logic, Ouaknin explains how this text allows readers to transcend its authority in that it invites them to interpret, discuss, and recreate their religious tradition. An in-depth treatment of selected texts from the oral law and commentary goes on to provide a model for secular study of the Talmud in light of contemporary philosophical issues.Throughout, the author emphasizes the self-effacing quality of a text whose worth can be measured by the insights that live on in the minds of its interpreters long after they have closed the book. He points out that the burning of the Talmud in anti-Judaic campaigns throughout history has, in fact, been an unwitting act of complicity with Talmudic philosophy and the practice of self-effacement. Ouaknin concludes his discussion with the story of the Hasidic master Rabbi Nahman of Bratslav, who himself burned his life achievement—a work known by his students as'the Burnt Book.'This story leaves us with the question, should all books be destroyed in order to give birth to thought and renew meaning?

Der Jalkut Schimoni ist ein Sammelwerk rabbinischer Auslegungen zur gesamten Hebräischen Bibel. Unerforscht ist, nach welchen Kriterien die Auslegungen ausgewählt wurden und ob das Werk als umfassendes Nachschlagewerk für exegetische Fragen, zur Verbindung von Bibelauslegung in Talmud und Midrasch oder zur Reform der rabbinischen Auslegungstradition konzipiert wurde. Die Übersetzung des Werkes ist ein erster Schritt, diese Fragen zu beantworten.

What holds a society together, what makes it dissolve, and how is a society in crisis restored? These are the questions explored in this study, which brings the Serek ha-Yahad (IQS) into dialogue with mimetic theory. It thus aims to shed light on the forms of life and thought in the yahad, as well as on their underlying reason and purpose. From the analysis emerges an image of a community that not only has a strong awareness of the mechanisms of violence, but also of its cure. Its hierarchical organization and strict regulations are motivated by a perceived dissolution of contemporary society. By subordinating personal desire to community discipline and by establishing a system of differentiation, the yahad seeks to provide a model of how a society ought to be functioning.

Die Untersuchung zeichnet die Entstehung des Levitismus nach. Dieser kommt erst in der spätvorexilischen Zeit als judäische Innovation des Stammeskonzeptes auf. Überlieferungen über den Jakobsohn Levi werden nach 722 in Juda zur Formung einer Gruppenidentität der Beamten und literalen Eliten genutzt. Mose und Aaron als Beamte des Gottes Israel werden Protagonisten dieser Gruppierung, weswegen man auch das Priestertum am Zentralheiligtum als Teil der Beamtenschaft integrierte, sodass u.a. im Deuteronomium von levitischen Priestern gesprochen wird. In der nachexilischen Zeit wurden eine Reihe von Berufen und Gruppen unter der Bezeichnung „Leviten“ als eine Art Tempelbeamtentum der Priesterschaft unterstellt. Damit wurde eine Professionalisierung des Kultbetriebes und eine radikale Trennung von kultischen und nichtkultischen Bereichen und Tätigkeiten verbunden. Nach diesem Konzept agierten die Leviten für das Volk und repräsentierten es in den nichtkultischen Bereichen des Tempeldienstes. The study tracks the origins of the Biblical Levitism. It only emerged in the late pre-exilic period as a Judean innovation of the tribal concept. After 722, traditions about Jacob's son Levi were used in Judah to form a group identity of officials and literal elites. Moses and Aaron, as officials of the God of Israel, became protagonists of this group. Therefore, the priests at the central shrine were also integrated as part of the officials, so that Deuteronomy, for example, speaks of Levitical priests. In the post-exilic period, a number of professions and groups were subordinated to the priesthood under the designation'Levites'as a kind of temple office. In the process, a professionalisation of the cultic sector and a radical separation of cultic and non-cultic areas and activities took place. In this, the Levites acted on behalf of the people and represented them in the non-cultic areas of the temple.

Our nation's founding document, the Declaration of Independence, confidently declares,'These truths we hold to be self-evident'And yet, America today seems mired in a truth crisis. Postmodern relativism has cast doubt on the Enlightenment notion of shared, self-evident truths held by all; technologies have made the swift proliferation of untruths commonplace; political sensibilities have become so partisan as to tolerate public personalities who brazenly lie. Many Americans, Jews among them, are understandably concerned for the future of truth as we once knew it. With this book, These Truths We Hold: Judaism in an Age of Truthiness, the editors and HUC-JIR have demonstrated a commitment to full engagement in the contemporary moment as well as to our Jewish heritage as a repository of complex and deep truths. We have assembled an impressive list of contributors who address the subject of truth in Jewish tradition and in contemporary Jewish life from several important perspectives: biblical, talmudic, liturgical, scientific, philosophical, satirical, pluralistic, and poetic. The articles are meant to shore up faith and to serve as a bank of resources to orient readers to Judaism's rich, multi-faceted and morally edifying teachings about truth.

In Jewish hekhalot mysticism, one who ascends to the heavenly temple may see something which looks like - but is not - water. Should he be deceived by this illusion, he betrays his unworthiness and exposes himself to retribution.Detailed examination of the water vision discovers that its real object is the celestial pavement, separating the fiery divine realm from the'watery'world of impure organic matter. This pavement is Ezekiel's firmament of hashmal - a luminous crystalline substance - seen by the visionary from above.Further investigation finds that the water vision continues an ancient tradition of exegesis of Ezekiel 1 as an account of a heavenly ascent, in which'water'signifies materiality, femininity and impurity. The wide and profound influence of these ideas is encountered in a variety of Jewish, Christian and Gnostic sources.

Judaism, the oldest of the Abrahamic religions, is one of the pillars of modern civilization. A collective of internationally renowned experts cooperated in a singular academic enterprise to portray Judaism from its transformation as a Temple cult to its broad contemporary varieties. In three volumes the long-running book series'Die Religionen der Menschheit'(Religions of Humanity) presents for the first time a complete and compelling view on Jewish life now and then - a fascinating portrait of the Jewish people with its ability to adapt itself to most different cultural settings, always maintaining its strong and unique identity. Volume II presents Jewish literature and thinking: the Jewish Bible; Hellenistic, Tannaitic, Amoraic and Gaonic literature to medieval and modern genres. Chapters on mysticism, Piyyut, Liturgy and Prayer complete the volume.

Der Jalkut Schimoni ist ein Sammelwerk rabbinischer Auslegungen zur gesamten hebräischen Bibel. Unerforscht ist, nach welchen Kriterien die Auslegungen ausgewählt wurden und ob das Werk als umfassendes Nachschlagewerk für exegetische Fragen, zur Verbindung von Bibelauslegung in Talmud und Midrasch oder zur Reform der rabbinischen Auslegungstradition konzipiert wurde. Die Übersetzung des Werkes ist ein erster Schritt, diese Fragen zu beantworten.

Countering the traditional belief that Jews in antiquity were predominantly disinterested in the popular entertainments of the Greek and Roman world, Loren R. Spielman maps the varieties of Jewish engagement with theater, athletics, horse racing, gladiatorial, and beast shows in antiquity. The author argues that Jews from Hellenistic Alexandria to late antique Sepphoris enjoyed and exploited, or alternatively resisted and scorned, popular forms of public entertainment as they adapted to the political, social, and religious realities of imperial rule. Including references to ancient Jewish actors, athletes, promoters, and plays alongside analysis of rabbinic and other early Jewish critique of sport and spectacle, Loren R. Spielman describes the different ways that attitudes towards entertainment might have played a role in shaping ancient Jewish identity.

Der Jalkut Schimoni ist ein Sammelwerk rabbinischer Auslegungen zur gesamten hebräischen Bibel. Unerforscht ist, nach welchen Kriterien die Auslegungen ausgewählt wurden und ob das Werk als umfassendes Nachschlagewerk für exegetische Fragen, zur Verbindung von Bibelauslegung in Talmud und Midrasch oder zur Reform der rabbinischen Auslegungstradition konzipiert wurde. Die Übersetzung des Werkes ist ein erster Schritt, diese Fragen zu beantworten.

The contributors to this book analyze how the redactors of the Talmud transformed and reworked earlier aggadic (non-legal) traditions. Critical study of the Babylonian Talmud is founded on the distinction between two literary strata: traditions attributed to named sages (the Amoraim, c. 200-450 CE) and setam hatalmud, the unattributed or anonymous material. The conclusion of modern scholars is that the anonymous stratum postdates the Amoraic stratum and should be attributed to the Talmudic redactors, also known as Stammaim (c. 450-700 CE.) The contribution of the Stammaim to the aggadic (non-legal) portions of the Talmud - to midrash, narratives, ethics and theology - has received minimal scholarly attention. The articles in this book demonstrate that the Stammaim made a profound contribution to the aggadic portions of the Babylonian Talmud and illustrate the processes by which they created and composed many aggadic traditions.

Parallel to the Halakhic laws, the minhagim (customs) are dependent on local practices and the regional schools of sages and rabbis. The minhagim played a decisive role in the history of the Jewish communities and in the formation of traditions of religious rulings. They gave stability, continuity, and authority to the local institutions. The impact of Jewish custom on daily life cannot be overestimated. Evolving spontaneously as an ascending process, it presents undercurrents that emanate from the folk, gradually bringing about changes that eventually become part of the legislative code. It further reflects influences of social, cultural, and mythological tendencies and local historical elements of every-day life of the period. The aim of this volume is to examine the concept of minhag in the broadest sense of the word. Focusing on the relationship between various types of customs and their impact on every aspect of Jewish life, the volume studies the historical, anthropological, religious, and cultural development and function of rites and rituals in establishing the Jewish self-definition and the identity of the local communities that adhered to them. The volume's articles cover the subject of custom from three perspectives: an analysis of the theoretical and legal definition of custom, an analysis of the social and historical aspects of custom, and an anecdotal study of several particular customs. Customs are a wonderful historical prism by which to examine fluctuations and changes in Jewish life.

Targum Chronicles and Its Place Among the Late Targums heralds a paradigm shift in the understanding of many of the Jewish-Aramaic translations of individual biblical books and their origins. Leeor Gottlieb provides the most extensive study of Targum Chronicles to date, leading to conclusions that challenge long-accepted truisms with regard to the origin of Targums. This book's trail of evidence convincingly points to the composition of Targums in a time and place that was heretofore not expected to be the provenance of these Aramaic gems of biblical interpretation. This study also offers detailed comparisons to other Targums and fascinating new explanations for dozens of aggadic expansions in Targum Chronicles, tying them to their rabbinic sources.

In Early Jewish Messianism in the New Testament Serge Ruzer takes a new tack on the investigation of early Christian polemical strategies against the backdrop of Second Temple Judaism. Complementing traditional inquiry on the subject, Ruzer focuses on those elements of Messiah- and Christ-centered ideas that bear witness to patterns of broader circulation – namely, the Jewish messianic ideas that provided the underpinning for the identity-making moves of Jesus'early followers. The volume suggests that such attempts can be expected to reflect eschatological ideas of the Jewish ʻOtherʼ. Exploring cases where the New Testament shows itself an early witness for belief patterns found in contemporaneous or only later rabbinic sources, this volume reveals a fuller picture of Second Temple Jewish messianism.

Religious traditions are channeled to new audiences by textual markers, which inform their understanding and influence. Such markers are signs of contextualisation which belong to the paratext of a tradition: textual elements that do not belong to the core text itself but belong to their embedding and as such affect their reception. Alternatively, some texts function purposely in tandem with another text, and cannot be understood without that text. While the second text informs the way the first one is being understood, it can hardly function independently.The discussions include the arrangement of textual blocks in the Hebrew Bible; how the oral transmission of Jewish Aramaic Bible translations had to be recited as a counterpoint to the Hebrew chant; how synagogue poetry presupposes the channels of liturgical instruction; how the Talmud can be perceived as a translation of Mishnah; how the presence of paratextual elements such as annotations and prefaces influenced the Index Librorum Prohibitorum concerning 16th century Bibles; the function of paratext and scope for modern Bible translations. This volume will tentatively explore the wide range of paratext and megatext as devices of channeling religious traditions.

Halakha and the Challenge of Israeli Sovereignty examines the issues surrounding national, political, and religious sovereignty from the vantage point of halakha and its evolution. The work analyzes the efforts of the interpretative communities who adhered to halakha—the rabbinical authorities—as well as other groups who endeavored to help or to change it: the Jewish jurists in Eretz Israel who sought to integrate sections of halakha into the Jewish collective; and the religious academics who wanted more meaningful recognition of halakha in non-halakhic values. The assessment extends from the beginning of the Jewish national movement in the last two decades of the 19th century to the first two decades of the State of Israel, when weighty problems arose that required a halakhic response to the challenge of sovereignty.In this, the volume sheds light on the pliable nature of the concept of halakha, particularly in conjunction with its application to the notion of sovereignty.

This collection of essays by Isaiah M. Gafni reflects over forty years of research on central issues of Jewish history in one of its formative eras. Questions relating to representations of the past, beginning with Josephus but primarily in rabbinic and post-rabbinic literature, represent an axial theme in this volume. Throughout the collection the author addresses the tension between realities on the ground and the historiography that shaped the image of that reality for all subsequent generations. Two specific clusters of studies analyze the emergence and development of the Babylonian rabbinic community, as well as the complex relationship between the Judaean centre and the Jewish diaspora in Late Antiquity. A final selection of essays examines the impact of modern ideologies and revised methods of research on the image of Jewish life and rabbinic leadership in late antique Judaism.

The present volume gathers up studies by Peter J. Tomson, written over thirty-odd years, that deal with ancient Jewish law and identity, the teachings of Jesus, the letters of Paul, and the historiography of early Jews and Christians. Notable subject areas are Jewish purity laws, divorce law, and the use of the name'Jews'. The author also examines Jesus'teachings as understood in their primary and secondary contexts, the various situations Paul's highly differentiated rhetoric may have addressed, and the causes contributing to the growing tension between Jews and Christians and the so-called parting of the ways.

Der zweite Band dieser auf vier Bände ausgelegten Geschichte des frühen Christentums umfasst die eigentliche Frühzeit bis zum Apostelkonzil 48/49 n.Chr. und die Geschichte der palästinischen Judenchristen. Er beginnt mit der Neukonstitution der Jüngergemeinde in Jerusalem: ihrer Organisation und ihrem Gottesdienst, der raschen Ausbildung der Lehre (Christologie und Naherwartung) und der Weiterverkündigung der Botschaft Jesu, die das Ethos der Urgemeinde bestimmte. Martin Hengel und Anna Maria Schwemer untersuchen die Entstehung der Gemeinde der Hellenisten in Jerusalem, die Bekehrung des Cornelius und das Wirken des frühen Paulus im Zusammenhang mit dem schrittweisen Übergang zur Heidenmission. Die Gemeindegründung in Antiochien und die von hier ausgehende Mission in Syrien wird eingehend behandelt. Die Verfolgung durch Agrippa I. 42/43 n.Chr. bildet einen entscheidenden Wendepunkt, sie änderte die Lage der Urgemeinde und wirkte sich auf die paulinische Mission aus. Die Reise von Barnabas und Paulus als Antiochener Gemeindeapostel nach Zypern und in die Provinz Galatien ruft den Protest der Jerusalemer Gemeinde gegen die beschneidungsfreie Mission hervor; Kompromisse zur Beschneidungsfrage wurden beim Aposteltreffen in Jerusalem und zur Speisenfrage mit dem Aposteldekret gefunden. Der Schlussteil behandelt den Herrenbruder Jakobus, seinen Brief und sein Martyrium; die Verfolgung der palästinischen Gemeinden, die antipharisäische Polemik der Evangelien, die Birkat ha-Minim und die Ausstoßung der palästinischen Judenchristen aus der Synagoge.

Originally published in 1994, Jewish Views of the Afterlife is a classic study of ideas of afterlife and postmortem survival in Jewish tradition and mysticism.As both a scholar and pastoral counselor, Raphael guides the reader through 4,000 years of Jewish thought on the afterlife by investigating pertinent sacred texts produced in each era. Through a compilation of ideas found in the Bible, Apocrypha, rabbinic literature, medieval philosophy, medieval Midrash, Kabbalah, Hasidism and Yiddish literature, the reader learns how Judaism conceived of the fate of the individual after death throughout Jewish history. In addition, this book explores the implications of Jewish afterlife beliefs for a renewed understanding of traditional rituals of funeral, burial, shiva, kaddish and more. This newly released twenty-fifth anniversary edition presents new material on little-known Jewish mystical teachings on reincarnation, a chapter on “Spirits, Ghosts and Dybbuks in Yiddish Literature”, and a foreword by the renowned scholar of Jewish mysticism, Rabbi Arthur Green.Both historical and contemporary, this book provides a rich resource for scholars and laypeople and for teachers and students and makes an important Jewish contribution to the growing contemporary psychology of death and dying.

This volume discusses crucial aspects of the period between the two revolts against Rome in Judaea that saw the rise of rabbinic Judaism and of the separation between Judaism and Christianity. Most contributors no longer support the ‘maximalist'claim that around 100 CE, a powerful rabbinic regime was already in place. Rather, the evidence points to the appearance of the rabbinic movement as a group with a regional power base and with limited influence. The period is best seen as one of transition from the multiform Judaism revolving around the Second Temple in Jerusalem to a Judaism that was organized around synagogue, Tora, and sages and that parted ways with Christianity.

Training in rhetoric - the art of persuasion - formed the basis of education in the Roman Empire. The classical intellectual world centered around the debate between philosophers, who boasted knowledge of objective reality, and sophists, who could debate both sides of any issue and who attracted large audiences and paying students. The roles of the Talmudic rabbis as public orators, teachers, and jurists, parallel that of Roman orators. Rabbinic literature adopted and adapted various aspects of the classical rhetorical tradition, as is demonstrated in the Talmudic penchant for arguing both sides of hypothetical cases, the midrashic hermeneutical methods, and the structure of synagogue sermons. At the same time, the rabbis also resisted the extreme epistemological relativism of rhetoric as is evident in their restraint on theoretical argumentation, their depiction of rabbinic and divine court procedure, and their commitment to the biblical prophetic tradition. Richard Hidary demonstrates how rabbis succeeded in navigating a novel path between platonic truth and rhetorical relativism.

Nach dem Zweiten Weltkrieg hat Ernst Ludwig Ehrlich (1921–2007) herausragende israelische Gelehrte in englisch- und deutschsprachigen Veröffentlichungen in Europa und Nordamerika bekannt gemacht. Die zu diesem Zweck von ihm begründete Reihe Studia Judaica bietet heute ein Forum für wissenschaftliche Studien und Editionen aus allen Epochen der jüdischen Religionsgeschichte.

In For Out of Babylonia Shall Come Torah and the Word of the Lord from Nehar Peqod, Barak S. Cohen reevaluates the evidence in Tannaitic and Amoraic literature of an independent “Babylonian Mishnah” which originated in the proto-talmudic period. The book focuses on an analysis of the most notable halakhic corpora that have been identified by scholars as originating in the Tannaitic period or at the outset of the amoraic. If indeed such an early corpus did exist, what are its characteristics and what, if any, connection does it have with the parallel Palestinian collections? Was this Babylonian Mishnah created in order to harmonize the Palestinian Mishnah with a corpus of rabbinic teachings already existent in Babylonia?Was this corpus one of the main contributors to the forced interpretations and resolutions found so frequently in the Bavli?

The contributions to this volume examine the emergence of ancient Jewish art from the interdisciplinary perspective of scholars in Art and Archaeology, Ancient Judaism and Rabbinics, Patristics and Church History. They evaluate the manifold ways in which late antique and early Byzantine Jewish art was embedded in its Hellenistic and Roman cultural context by, at the same time, evincing specifically Jewish and local Near Eastern idiosyncrasies. Since the Graeco-Roman context was shared with early Christian art, some formal similarities are recognizable, whereas the meanings associated with the images would have differed. A study of the relationship between the literary sources (the Hebrew Bible, Jewish Hellenistic and rabbinic literature) and the artistic depictions is crucial for a proper understanding of ancient Jewish art. Similarly important are the artistic analogies appearing in Graeco-Roman and early Christian contexts. Of particular interest is the question why Jewish figurative art developed in the Land of Israel in late antiquity only: which political, social, economic, religious and cultural constellations may have led to the emergence of figurative art? How do these images relate to biblical commandments advocating aniconism and what would rabbis have made of them? Was Erwin Goodenough correct about a dichotomy between'popular'synagogue art and an aniconic rabbinic Judaism? The Jewish use of images with analogies in pagan (and sometimes also Christian) contexts is particularly striking: what led Jews to adopt images such as the zodiac and pagan mythological figures and scenes and how were they combined with images based on biblical narratives? The volume shows how an interdisciplinary approach leads to a better understanding not only of ancient Jewish, but of Graeco-Roman and Christian art as well.

This book presents a cutting-edge critical analysis of the trope of miscegenation and its biopolitical implications in contemporary Palestinian and Israeli literature, poetry, and discourse. The relationship between nationalism and demographics are examined through the narrative and poetic intrigue of intimacy between Arabs and Jews, drawing from a range of theoretical perspectives, including public sphere theory, orientalism, and critical race studies. Revisiting the controversial Brazilian writer Gilberto Freyre, who championed miscegenation in his revisionary history of Brazil, the book deploys a comparative investigation of Palestinian and Israeli writers'preoccupation with the mixed romance. Author Hella Bloom Cohen offers new interpretations of works by Mahmoud Darwish, A.B. Yehoshua, Orly Castel-Bloom, Nathalie Handal, and Rula Jebreal, among others.

A political crisis erupts when the Persian government falls to fanatics, and a Jewish insider goes rogue, determined to save her people at all costs. God and Politics in Esther explores politics and faith. It is about an era in which the prophets have been silenced and miracles have ceased, and Jewish politics has come to depend not on commands from on high, but on the boldness and belief of each woman and man. Esther takes radical action to win friends and allies, reverse terrifying decrees, and bring God's justice into the world with her own hands. Hazony's The Dawn has long been a cult classic, read at Purim each year the world over. Twenty years on, this revised edition brings the book to much wider attention. Three controversial new chapters address the astonishingly radical theology that emerges from amid the political intrigues of the book.

Time and eternity are concepts that have occupied an important place within Jewish mystical thought. This present volume gives pride of place to these concepts, and is one of the first works to bring together diverse voices on the subject. It offers a multivalent picture of the topic of time and eternity, not only by including contributions from an array of academics who are leaders in their fields, but by proposing six diverse approaches to time and eternity in Jewish mysticism: the theoretical approach to temporality, philosophical definitions, the idea of time and pre-existence, the idea of historical time, the idea of experiential time, and finally, the idea of eternity beyond time. This multivocal treatment of Jewish mysticism and time as based on variant academic approaches is novel, and it should lay the groundwork for further discussion and exploration.

Nicholas Ellis examines the interplay present in early Jewish literature between authors'theological assumptions on divine agency in evil and their readings of biblical testing narratives. Ellis takes as a starting point the Epistle of James, and compares this early Christian work against other examples of ancient Jewish interpretation. Ellis shows how varying perspectives on the divine, satanic, and human roles of testing exercised a direct influence on the interpretation of popular biblical testing narratives such as Abraham and Isaac, Job, and the Trials in the Wilderness. Read in light of the broader Jewish literature, Ellis argues that the theology and hermeneutic found in the Epistle of James as such relate to divine testing are closely paralleled by the so-called'Rewritten Bible'tradition. Within James'cosmic drama, God stands as righteous judge, with the satanic prosecutor indicting both divine integrity and human religious loyalty.

In the framework of a larger research project into ‘New Perspectives on Paul and the Jews', eight scholars from Europe, Israel, and North America join forces in querying Paul's relationship to Jews and Judaism. The sample text selected for this inquiry is the Second Letter to the Corinthians, a document particularly suited for this purpose as it reflects violent clashes between Paul and rivalling Jews and Jewish Christians. While the first three articles address more general literary and historical questions, the following five present in-depth case studies of much-studied passages from the letter and the underlying issues. An introductory essay queries how in the case at hand we can gain an adequate understanding of Paul's theology while fully respecting his particular place in Judaism.

This book explores the co-dependency of monotheism and idolatry by examining the thought of several prominent twentieth-century Jewish philosophers—Cohen, Buber, Rosenzweig, and Levinas. While all of these thinkers were keenly aware of the pitfalls of scriptural theism, to differing degrees they each succumbed to the temptation to personify transcendence, even as they tried either to circumvent or to restrain it by apophatically purging kataphatic descriptions of the deity. Derrida and Wyschogrod, by contrast, carried the project of denegation one step further, embarking on a path that culminated in the aporetic suspension of belief and the consequent removal of all images from God, a move that seriously compromises the viability of devotional piety.The inquiry into apophasis, transcendence, and immanence in these Jewish thinkers is symptomatic of a larger question. Recent attempts to harness the apophatic tradition to construct a viable postmodern negative theology, a religion without religion, are not radical enough. Not only are these philosophies of transcendence guilty of a turn to theology that defies the phenomenological presupposition of an immanent phenomenality, but they fall short on their own terms, inasmuch as they persist in employing metaphorical language that personalizes transcendence and thereby runs the risk of undermining the irreducible alterity and invisibility attributed to the transcendent other.The logic of apophasis, if permitted to run its course fully, would exceed the need to posit some form of transcendence that is not ultimately a facet of immanence. Apophatic theologies, accordingly, must be supplanted by a more far-reaching apophasis that surpasses the theolatrous impulse lying coiled at the crux of theism, an apophasis of apophasis, based on accepting an absolute nothingness—to be distinguished from the nothingness of an absolute—that does not signify the unknowable One but rather the manifold that is the pleromatic abyss at being's core. Hence, the much-celebrated metaphor of the gift must give way to the more neutral and less theologically charged notion of an unconditional givenness in which the distinction between giver and given collapses. To think givenness in its most elemental, phenomenological sense is to allow the apparent to appear as given without presuming a causal agency that would turn that given into a gift.

In a career spanning over fifty years, the questions Jacob Neusner has asked and the critical methodologies he has developed have shaped the way scholars have come to approach the rabbinic literature as well as the diverse manifestations of Judaism from rabbinic times until the present. The essays collected here honor that legacy, illustrating an influence that is so pervasive that scholars today who engage in the critical study of Judaism and the history of religions more generally work in a laboratory that Professor Neusner created. Addressing topics in ancient and Rabbinic Judaism, the Judaic context of early Christianity, American Judaism, World Religions, and the academic study of the humanities, these essays demarcate the current state of Judaic and religious studies in the academy today.

This study applies form criticism to the stories of the earliest rabbinic midrashim. The results shed light on the literary personalities of the individual midrash collections and the relationships of transmission in the tradition. These stories are of particular interest from an inter-religious and comparative literary point of view because New Testament studies have often referred to certain narratives in the gospels as'midrashic.'The author sets forth, in positive terms, an understanding of what functions historical anecdotes serve in the tannaitic midrashim, along with a catalogue of the rhetorical conventions used to fulfill those functions.

Exposed to multiple languages as a result of annexation, migration, pilgrimage and its position on key trade routes, the Roman Palestine of Late Antiquity was a border area where Aramaic, Greek, Hebrew and Arabic dialects were all in common use. This study analyses the way scriptural translation was perceived and practised by the rabbinic movement in this multilingual world. Drawing on a wide range of classical rabbinic sources, including unused manuscript materials, Willem F. Smelik traces developments in rabbinic thought and argues that foreign languages were deemed highly valuable for the lexical and semantic light they shed on the meanings of lexemes in the holy tongue. Key themes, such as the reception of translations of the Hebrew Scriptures, multilingualism in society, and rabbinic rules for translation, are discussed at length. This book will be invaluable for students of ancient Judaism, rabbinic studies, Old Testament studies, early Christianity and translation studies.

Economic Morality and Jewish Law compares the way in which welfare economics and Jewish law determine the propriety of an economic action, whether by a private citizen or the government. Espousing what philosophers would call a consequentialist ethical system, welfare economics evaluates the worthiness of an economic action based on whether the action would increase the wealth of society in the long run. In sharp contrast, Jewish law espouses a deontological system of ethics. Within this ethical system, the determination of the propriety of an action is entirely a matter of discovering the applicable rule in Judaism's code of ethics. This volume explores a variety of issues implicating morality for both individual commercial activity and economic public policy. Issues examined include price controls, the living wage, the lemons problem, short selling, and Ronald Coase's seminal theories on negative externalities. To provide an analytic framework for the study of these issues, the work first delineates the normative theories behind the concept of economic morality for welfare economics and Jewish law, and presents a case study illustrating the deontological nature of Jewish law. The book introduces what for many readers will be a new perspective on familiar economic issues. Despite the very different approaches that welfare economics and Jewish law take in evaluating the worthiness of an economic action, the author reveals a remarkable symmetry between the two systems in their ultimate prescriptions for certain economic issues.

In The Intellectual History and Rabbinic Culture of Medieval Ashkenaz, author Ephraim Kanarfogel challenges the dominant perception that medieval Ashkenazic rabbinic scholarship was lacking in intellectualism or broad scholarly interests. While cultural interaction between Jews and Christians in western Europe was less than that of Sephardic Jews, Kanarfogel's study shows that the intellectual interests of Ashkenazic rabbinic figures were much broader than Talmudic studies alone. Kanarfogel begins by highlighting several factors that have contributed to relatively narrow perceptions of Ashkenazic rabbinic culture and argues that the Tosafists, and Ashkenazic rabbinic scholarship more generally, advocated a wide definition of the truths that could be discovered through Torah study. He explores differences in talmudic and halakhic studies between the Tosafist centers of northern France and Germany, delves into aspects of biblical interpretation in each region, and identifies important Tosafists and rabbinic figures. Kanarfogel also examines the composition of liturgical poetry (piyyut) by Tosafists, interest in forms of (white) magic and mysticism on the part of a number of northern French Tosafists, and a spectrum of views on the question of anthropomorphism and messianism. Overall, Kanarfogel demonstrates that the approach taken by Tosafists was broader, more open, and more multi-disciplinary than previously considered. Medieval and Jewish history scholars will appreciate Kanarfogel's volume, which is the culmination of several decades of research on the subject.