The Cambridge Companion to the Talmud and Rabbinic Literature

by Edited by Charlotte Elisheva Fonrobert , Martin S. Jaffee

• ISBN13: 9780521605083
• ISBN10: 0521605083
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2007-05-28
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

This volume introduces students of rabbinic literature to the range of historical and interpretative questions surrounding the rabbinic texts of late antiquity. The editors, themselves well-known interpreters of Rabbinic literature, have gathered an international collection of scholars to support students' initial steps in confronting the enormous and complex rabbinic corpus. Unlike other introductions to Rabbinic writings, the present volume includes approaches shaped by anthropology, gender studies, oral-traditional studies, classics, and folklore studies.

Table of Contents

List of Contributors	p. ix
Acknowledgments	p. xi
Brief Time Line of Rabbinic Literature	p. xiii
Glossary	p. xvii
List of Abbreviations	p. xxi
Introduction	p. 1
The Conditions of Rabbinic Literary Activity
Rabbinic Authorship as a Collective Enterprise	p. 17
The Orality of Rabbinic Writing	p. 38
Social and Institutional Settings of Rabbinic Literature	p. 58
The Political Geography of Rabbinic Texts	p. 75
The Genres of Rabbinic Literary Composition
Rabbinic Midrash and Ancient Jewish Biblical Interpretation	p. 99
The Judaean Legal Tradition and the Halakhah of the Mishnah	p. 121
Roman Law and Rabbinic Legal Composition	p. 144
Middle Persian Culture and Babylonian Sages: Accommodation and Resistance in the Shaping of Rabbinic Legal Tradition	p. 165
Jewish Visionary Tradition in Rabbinic Literature	p. 198
An Almost Invisible Presence: Multilingual Puns in Rabbinic Literature	p. 222
Hermeneutical Frames for Interpreting Rabbinic Literature
The "Other" in Rabbinic Literature	p. 243
Regulating the Human Body: Rabbinic Legal Discourse and the Making of Jewish Gender	p. 270
Rabbinic Historiography and Representations of the Past	p. 295
Rabbinical Ethical Formation and the Formation of Rabbinic Ethical Compilations	p. 313
Hellenism in Jewish Babylonia	p. 336
Bibliography	p. 365
Index	p. 393
Source Index	p. 401
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