The essays in this collection examine halakhic and rule texts found at Qumran, focusing on legal issues, the role of halakhah in relations with other Second Temple groups, and the literary development
Divine and Demonic in the Poetic Mythology of the Zohar offers a new interpretation of the Kabbalistic “Other Side,” exploring the intimacies and antagonisms of divine and demonic, and showing how the
In the study of Judaism, the Zohar has captivated the minds of interpreters for over seven centuries, and continues to entrance readers in contemporary times. Yet despite these centuries of study, ver
This book examines the emergence of self-knowledge as a determining legal consideration among the rabbis of Late Antiquity, from the third to the seventh centuries CE. Based on close readings of rabbinic texts from Palestine and Babylonia, Ayelet Hoffmann Libson highlights a unique and surprising development in Talmudic jurisprudence, whereby legal decision-making incorporated personal and subjective information. She examines the central legal role accorded to individuals' knowledge of their bodies and mental states in areas of law as diverse as purity laws, family law and the laws of Sabbath. By focusing on subjectivity and self-reflection, the Babylonian rabbis transformed earlier legal practices in a way that cohered with the cultural concerns of other religious groups in Late Antiquity. They developed sophisticated ideas about the inner self and incorporated these notions into their distinctive discourse of law.
Sefer Yeṣirah, or "Book of Formation," is one of the most influential Jewish compositions of late antiquity. First attested to in the tenth century C.E. and attributed by some to the patriarch A
In Rabbinic Tales of Destruction, Julia Watts Belser examines early Jewish accounts of the Roman conquest of Judea. Faced with stories of sexual violence, enslavement, forced prostitution, disability,
In a revision of his May 2015 doctoral dissertation at the Catholic University of Leuven, Hartog explores two commentary collections from the Hellenistic and Roman periods. The first consists of 16
In this volume in honor of Moshe J. Bernstein, students and colleagues offer their latest research on scriptural interpretation in the Dead Sea Scrolls and other literature, and on related themes.
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 demonstrate
Dead Sea: New Discoveries in the Cave of Letters is a multidisciplinary study of the Cave of Letters in the Nahal Hever of the Judean desert, a site reputed for having contained the most important fin
"Religious Studies and Rabbinics have overlapping yet distinct interests, subject matter, and methods. Religious Studies is committed to the study of religion writ large. It develops theories and meth
