Description
Book SynopsisThis book contextualizes Rabbinic Judaism by emphasizing that the framers of Rabbinic thought were in conversation with cultures different from their own as much as with their own tradition. In a series of seven essays, presented here for the first time, the authors challenge the reader''s assumptions about Judaism in the Second Temple period, late antiquity, and the early medieval era. Arranged in chronological order according to the period of time they focus on, the essays analyze texts such as the Hebrew Bible, Greco-Roman Egyptian texts, Greek and Latin works, the Dead Sea Scrolls, early and late midrashic texts, the New Testament, the Church fathers'' writings, the Jerusalem and the Babylonian Talmuds, and Zoroastrian texts.
Table of ContentsPart 1 Preface Chapter 2 1. Legal Acts and Codification in the Dead Sea Scrolls Chapter 3 2. The Term Midrash in Tannaitic Literature Chapter 4 3. Polemics and Rabbinic Liturgy Chapter 5 4. Rabbinizing Jesus, Christianizing the Son of David: The Bavli's Approach to the Secondary Messiah Traditions Chapter 6 5. 'He in His Cloak and She in Her Cloak:' Conflicting Images of Sexuality in Sasanian Mesopotamia Chapter 7 6. Rabbi Shimon Bar Yohai: Literary Motifs Chapter 8 7. Visions of Egypt in Midrash: The Nile as the Landscape of the Other Part 9 Index
