Profiling Jewish Literature in Antiquity An Inventory, from Second Temple Texts to the Talmuds

by Samely, Alexander; Philip, Alexander; Bernasconi, Rocco; Hayward, Robert

• ISBN13: 9780199684328
• ISBN10: 0199684324
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2014-01-07
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Author Biography

Alex Samely is Professor of Jewish Thought at Manchester University. He is trained as philosopher (MA, Frankfurt) and Jewish Studies scholar (DPhil Oxford) and has worked on the literary and hermeneutic constitution of Targums, Midrashic works, and the legal discourse of Rabbinic Judaism. He has also published on Spinoza and Husserl, and convenes a Levinas Reading Group at Manchester.
Philip Alexander is Professor Emeritus of Post-Biblical Jewish Literature at Manchester University and a Fellow of the British Academy. He has published widely on Second Temple period Jewish literature, Midrash, Targum and Mysticism, including the Dead Sea Scrolls.
Rocco Bernasconi is Lecturer of Jewish Literature at the Facoltà di Teologia di Lugano. He is trained in Politics (BA, Bologna) and Jewish Studies scholar (MA, Manchester, PHD, Bologna and EPHE (Paris)). He has worked on the history and literature of Early Rabbinic Judaism. He has published articles on Jewish identity and Tannaitic literature, as well as a study of the literary structure of the Genesis Apocryphon. Articles on the literary constitution of the Sefer Yetsirah and the relationship between Mishnah and Tosefta are forthcoming.
Robert Hayward is Professor of Hebrew at Durham University. He has published on Targum, Midrash, and Jewish biblical exegesis of Second Temple times, and has worked on the relationship between Jewish biblical exegesis and early Christian Bible interpretation, particularly with reference to the writings of Jerome.

Table of Contents

I: Introduction
II: Text of the Inventory
III: Commentary on the Inventory
1. The Self-Presentation of the Text as a Verbal Entity
2. The Perspective and Knowledge Horizon of the Governing Voice
3. The Poetic and Rhetorical-Communicative Constitution of Texts
4. Narrative Coherence and Narrative Aggregation
5. Thematic Coherence and Thematic Aggregation
6. Meta-Textual Structuring of Texts
7. Correspondences and Verbal Overlap with Other Texts
8. Small Forms in the Governing Voice
9. Small-Scale Coherence Relationships
10. The Juxtaposition of Part-Texts in a Compound
11. Dominant Subject Matter and Scholarly Genre Labels
Concluding Remarks
IV: Sample Profiles
1. Jubilees
2. Temple Scroll
3. Mishnah
4. Genesis Rabbah