Midrash and Theory

Midrash and Theory PDF Author: David Stern
Publisher: Northwestern University Press
ISBN: 9780810115743
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 130

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Book Description
In Midrash and Theory, David Stern presents an approach to midrashic literature through the prism of contemporary theory. As midrash--the literature of classical Jewish Scriptural interpretation--has become the focus of new interest in contemporary literary circles, it has been invoked as a precursor of post-structuralist theory and criticism. At the same time, the midrashic imagination has undergone a revival in the larger Jewish community and shown itself capable of exercising a powerful influence and hold on a new type of contemporary Jewish writing. Stern examines this resurgence of fascination with ancient Jewish interpretation from the persepctive of the cultural relevance of midrash and its connection to its original historical and literary contexts.

Studies in Ancient Midrash

Studies in Ancient Midrash PDF Author: James L. Kugel
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN:
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 198

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Book Description
Studies in Ancient Midrash is the proceedings of a conference, held at Harvard University, surveying the beginnings of ancient biblical interpretation. Essays include "Ancient Biblical Interpretation and the Biblical Sage," by James Kugel; "Literacy and the Polemics Surrounding Biblical Interpretation," by A. I. Baumgarten; "Garments of Skin, Garments of Glory," by Gary Anderson; "Leave the Dead to Bury Their Own Dead," by Menahem Kister; "Contours of Genesis Interpretation at Qumran," by Moshe Bernstein; "Qohelet's Reception and Interpretation," by Marc Hirshman; "Law, Morality and Rhetoric in Some Sayings of Jesus," by Menahem Kister; and "Biblical Interpretation in Some Qumran Prayers and Hymns," by James Kugel.

Midrash and Theory

Midrash and Theory PDF Author: David Stern
Publisher: Northwestern University Press
ISBN: 9780810115743
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 130

Get Book Here

Book Description
In Midrash and Theory, David Stern presents an approach to midrashic literature through the prism of contemporary theory. As midrash--the literature of classical Jewish Scriptural interpretation--has become the focus of new interest in contemporary literary circles, it has been invoked as a precursor of post-structuralist theory and criticism. At the same time, the midrashic imagination has undergone a revival in the larger Jewish community and shown itself capable of exercising a powerful influence and hold on a new type of contemporary Jewish writing. Stern examines this resurgence of fascination with ancient Jewish interpretation from the persepctive of the cultural relevance of midrash and its connection to its original historical and literary contexts.

Sustaining Fictions

Sustaining Fictions PDF Author: Lesleigh Cushing Stahlberg
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 0567536459
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 253

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Book Description
Even before the biblical canon became fixed, writers have revisited and reworked its stories. The author of Joshua takes the haphazard settlement of Israel recorded in the Book of Judges and retells it as an orderly military conquest. The writer of Chronicles expurgates the David cycle in Samuel I and II, offering an upright and virtuous king devoid of baser instincts. This literary phenomenon is not contained to inner-biblical exegesis. Once the telling becomes known, the retellings begin: through the New Testament, rabbinic midrash, medieval mystery plays, medieval and Renaissance poetry, nineteenth century novels, and contemporary literature, writers of the Western world have continued to occupy themselves with the biblical canon. However, there exists no adequate vocabulary-academic or popular, religious or secular, literary or theological-to describe the recurring appearances of canonical figures and motifs in later literature. Literary critics, bible scholars and book reviewers alike seek recourse in words like adaptation, allusion, echo, imitation and influence to describe what the author, for lack of better terms, has come to call retellings or recastings. Although none of these designations rings false, none approaches precision. They do not tell us what the author of a novel or poem has done with a biblical figure, do not signal how this newly recast figure is different from other recastings of it, and do not offer any indication of why these transformations have occurred. Sustaining Fictions sets out to redress this problem, considering the viability of the vocabularies of literary, midrashic, and translation theory for speaking about retelling.

Science in the Bet Midrash

Science in the Bet Midrash PDF Author: Menachem Marc Kellner
Publisher: Academic Studies PRess
ISBN:
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 404

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Book Description
This book explores the religious thought of Moses Maimonides (1138-1204), the single most influential Jew of the last thousand years. While covering many aspects of his religious philosophy, the central focus of these essays is the way Maimonides elucidated and expressed the universalistic thrust of the Jewish tradition.

Written for Us: Paul’s Interpretation of Scripture and the History of Midrash

Written for Us: Paul’s Interpretation of Scripture and the History of Midrash PDF Author: Yael Fisch
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004511598
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 233

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Book Description
This volume is a study in ancient scriptural hermeneutics, that promotes new ways to think about Paul’s interpretation of scripture and rabbinic midrash together and for the benefit of both. It analyses exegetical techniques that both Paul and the Tannaim use and opens new perspectives on how they conceive of scripture and its ideal readers.

Learning to Read Midrash

Learning to Read Midrash PDF Author: Simi Peters
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 320

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Book Description
Presenting a systematic approach to the study of midrash, each of the readings presented in this book attempts to reconstruct the reasoning behind midrashic commentary on biblical narrative. The goal of the book is to convey a sensitivity to the language and meanings of the Tanakh, and to develop a reverent appreciation for the language and teachings of the Jewish sages.

The Origins of Midrash: From Teaching to Text

The Origins of Midrash: From Teaching to Text PDF Author: Paul D. Mandel
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004336885
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 423

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Book Description
In The Origins of Midrash: From Teaching to Text, Paul Mandel presents a comprehensive study of the words darash and midrash from the Bible until the early rabbinic periods (3rd century CE). In contrast to current understandings in which the words are identified with modes of analysis of the biblical text, Mandel claims that they refer to instruction in law and not to an interpretation of text. Mandel traces the use of these words as they are associated with the scribe (sofer), the doresh ha-torah in the Dead Sea scrolls, the “exegetes of the laws” in the writings of Josephus and the rabbinic “sage” (ḥakham), showing the development of the uses of midrash as a form of instruction throughout these periods.

Womanist Midrash

Womanist Midrash PDF Author: Wilda C. Gafney
Publisher: Westminster John Knox Press
ISBN: 1611648122
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 302

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Book Description
Womanist Midrash is an in-depth and creative exploration of the well- and lesser-known women of the Hebrew Scriptures. Using her own translations, Gafney offers a midrashic interpretation of the biblical text that is rooted in the African American preaching tradition to tell the stories of a variety of female characters, many of whom are often overlooked and nameless. Gafney employs a solid understanding of womanist and feminist approaches to biblical interpretation and the sociohistorical culture of the ancient Near East. This unique and imaginative work is grounded in serious scholarship and will expand conversations about feminist and womanist biblical interpretation.

From Tradition to Commentary

From Tradition to Commentary PDF Author: Steven D. Fraade
Publisher: State University of New York Press
ISBN: 1438403143
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 365

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Book Description
This book examines Torah and its interpretation both as a recurring theme in the early rabbinic commentary and as the very practice of the commentary. It studies the phenomenon of ancient rabbinic scriptural commentary in relation to the perspectives of literary and historical criticisms and their complex intersection. The author discusses extensively the nature of ancient commentary, comparing and contrasting it with the antecedents in the pesharim of the Dead Sea Scrolls and the allegorical commentaries of Philo of Alexandria. He develops a model for a dynamic understanding of the literary structure and sociohistorical function of early rabbinic commentary, and then applies this model to the Sifre — to the oldest extant running commentary to Deuteronomy and one of the oldest rabbinic collections of exegesis. Fraade examines the commentary's representation of revelation and its reception at Mt. Sinai, with particular attention to its fractured refiguration and interrelation of Scripture, tradition, and history. He discusses the commentary's discursive empowering of the class of sages in their collective self-understanding as Israel's authorized teachers, leaders, legislators, and judges. The author also probes the tension between Torah and nature as witnesses to Israel's covenant with God.

Web of Life

Web of Life PDF Author: Galit Hasan-Rokem
Publisher: Stanford University Press
ISBN: 0804732272
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 306

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Book Description
Web of Life weaves its suggestive interpretation of Jewish culture in the Palestine of late antiquity on the warp of a singular, breathtakingly tragic, and sublime rabbinic text, Lamentations Rabbah. The textual analyses that form the core of the book are informed by a range of theoretical paradigms rarely brought to bear on rabbinic literature: structural analysis of mythologies and folktales, performative approaches to textual production, feminist theory, psychoanalytical analysis of culture, cultural criticism, and folk narrative genre analysis. The concept of context as the hermeneutic basis for literary interpretation reactivates the written text and subverts the hierarchical structures with which it has been traditionally identified. This book reinterprets rabbinic culture as an arena of multiple dialogues that traverse traditional concepts of identity regarding gender, nation, religion, and territory. The author's approach is permeated by the idea that scholarly writing about ancient texts is invigorated by an existential hermeneutic rooted in the universality of human experience. She thus resorts to personal experience as an idiom of communication between author and reader and between human beings of our time and of the past. This research acknowledges the overlap of poetic and analytical language as well as the language of analysis and everyday life. In eliciting folk narrative discourses inside the rabbinic text, the book challenges traditional views about the social basis that engendered these texts. It suggests the subversive potential of the constitutive texts of Jewish culture from late antiquity to the present by pointing out the inherent multi-vocality of the text, adding to the conventionally acknowledged synagogue and academy the home, the marketplace, and other private and public socializing institutions.