Forms of Rabbinic Literature and Thought: An Introduction by Alexander Samely PDF

By Alexander Samely

ISBN-10: 0199296731

ISBN-13: 9780199296736

ISBN-10: 1435622995

ISBN-13: 9781435622999

Alexander Samely surveys the corpus of rabbinic literature, which was once written in Hebrew and Aramaic approximately 1500 years in the past and which includes the principles of Judaism, particularly the Talmud. The rabbinic works are brought in teams, illustrated via shorter and longer passages, and defined based on their literary constructions and genres. Tables and summaries offer brief info on key issues: the person works and their nature, the recurrent literary kinds that are used generally in numerous works, suggestions of rabbinic Bible interpretation, and discourse options of the Talmud. Key subject matters of present learn into the texts are addressed: their courting to one another, their cohesion, their ambiguous and 'unsystematic' personality, and their roots in oral culture. Samely explains why the nature of the texts is important to an figuring out of rabbinic notion, and why they pose particular difficulties to trendy, Western-educated readers.

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For any group of sentences found between two manifest thematic breaks, internal relationships are often quite unclear. Frequently, statements found together could contribute to a common theme, depending on how creatively one deWnes it. I am here speaking of sets of statements which have no obvious coordination, subordination, or progress, yet one can see a potential continuity linking not just two neighbouring statements, but also statements at one, two, or more removes from each other. I call such a grouping a cluster of statements, and deWne it as having, on the one hand, an undeclared and fuzzy thematic continuity and, on the other, small-scale shifts of topic which do not follow a constant principle of diVerentiation or progression (in contrast to the series).

There is Wrst the fact that the same statements, merely juxtaposed, will usually allow a plurality of equally possible uniWed messages, as I shall explain in detail in the next chapter. And then there is the fact that in most rabbinic documents one voice quotes many others, which allows disunity within the document without thereby creating disunity of the document (see further Chapter 6). Since the task of unifying themes and positions is entirely left to the readers, the unity of rabbinic Judaism becomes a hermeneutic assumption, an assumption on which our ability to understand the texts is based in the Wrst place.

If the owner of the beam went Wrst [if one walked behind the other], and the owner of the jar behind, and the jar was broken by the beam, 3. If the owner of the beam stood [suddenly], 4. ’ [before stopping], 5. If the owner of the jar went Wrst and the owner of the beam behind, and the jar was broken by the beam, 6. If the owner of the jar stood [suddenly], 7. ’, the latter is free [from liability], for the one had the right to proceed and the other had the right to proceed. he [the owner of the beam] is free.

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Forms of Rabbinic Literature and Thought: An Introduction by Alexander Samely


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