Baraita De-Melekhet Ha-Mishkan
Baraita De-Melekhet Ha-Mishkan

Author: Robert Kirschner

Publisher: Hebrew Union College Press

Published: 1992-05-01

Total Pages: 340

ISBN-13: 0878204709

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The description of the wilderness Tabernacle (melekhet ha-mishkan) in Exodus exerted a lasting impact on ancient Jewish culture, evidenced by other texts influenced by its description in Exodus: the description of Solomon's temple (I Kings 6-7), the sanctuary described in the Temple Scroll (cols. 3-13), the Eupolemus fragments, and Josephus. Philo of Alexandria first interprets the Tabernacle account in the Greek tradition of allegory wherein the tabernacle represents an archetype of the universe, that physical entity most approximating the divine abode. Apocalyptic literature frequently presents a celestial sanctuary, but the Temple rather than the Tabernacle is often the paradigm. Origen represents a typical patristic view where the tabernacle description is read completely figuratively. Tannaitic, amoraic, and geonic literature, on the other hand, provides scattered remarks on and explanations of biblical passages but no sustained exegesis of the tabernacle description. Baraita de-Melekhet ha-Mishkan presents the only systematic rabbinic exegesis of the tabernacle account to come from late antiquity or the Middle Ages. In contrast to Philo, the Church fathers, and the aggadic midrashim, this baraita assumes that the tabernacle and its furnishings need explanation as historical objects. The technology of construction, the calculation of measurements, and the delineation of architectural forms concern the framers of this document. Kirschner provides 150 pages of introductory analysis on this document's genre, structure, language, origin, date, and textual criticism before providing a critical edition with apparatus. Following the critical edition can be found Kirschner's English translation, Genizah transcriptions, plates, an appendix of biblical citations within the baraita and one for biblical and postbiblical sources in general, bibliography, and general index.

בריתא דמלאכת המשכן
בריתא דמלאכת המשכן

Author: Robert S. Kirschner

Publisher: Wayne State University Press

Published: 1992

Total Pages: 344

ISBN-13: 9780878204144

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A scientific edition of the rabbinic work concerned with the desert tabernacle described in Exodus 25-36, 35-39, and Numbers 3-4.

The Courtyards of the House of the Lord
The Courtyards of the House of the Lord

Author: Lawrence Schiffman

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2008-08-31

Total Pages: 646

ISBN-13: 9047441796

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Already before its publication, it was clear that the Temple Scroll represented a major contribution to the history of Jewish law in Late Antiquity. The present volume brings together the author’s studies on this important scroll. He has sought to uncover the hermeneutics of the Zadokite/Sadducean legal system and to compare and contrast it with other texts of its own type as well as with those in rabbinic literature preserving the Pharisaic-rabbinic approach.

The Madrid Qumran Congress (2 vols.)
The Madrid Qumran Congress (2 vols.)

Author: Julio Trebolle Barrera

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2018-11-01

Total Pages: 709

ISBN-13: 9004350128

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The material presented in these two volumes may be divided into two main sections. The first section covers biblical texts and texts which fall between the categories biblical and non-biblical. It also includes articles on topics relating to the history of the Qumran community and to the study of the New Testament in the light of the Qumran discoveries. The second section covers non-biblical texts, such as the Temple Scroll. The two sections are synthesized in the article by Frank M. Cross, in which he reviews the advances made and the challenges for the future in the field of Qumran studies. Several topics recur constantly in many of the articles, such as the origins of the history of the Qumran community, the problem of the distinction between what is biblical and non-biblical in the Qumran manuscripts, and the question of the authority of the texts in the Qumran community.

My Perfect One
My Perfect One

Author: Jonathan Kaplan

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2015-08-04

Total Pages: 245

ISBN-13: 0199359342

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Most studies of the history of interpretation of Song of Songs focus on its interpretation from late antiquity to modernity. In My Perfect One, Jonathan Kaplan examines earlier rabbinic interpretation of this work by investigating an underappreciated collection of works of rabbinic literature from the first few centuries of the Common Era, known as the tannaitic midrashim. In a departure from earlier scholarship that too quickly classified rabbinic interpretation of Song of Songs as allegorical, Kaplan advocates a more nuanced reading of the approach of the early sages, who read Song of Songs through a mode of typological interpretation concerned with the correspondence between Scripture and ideal events in Israel's history. Throughout the book Kaplan explores ways in which this portrayal helped shape a model vision of rabbinic piety as well as of an idealized vision of their beloved, God, in the wake of the destruction, dislocation, and loss the Jewish community experienced in the first two centuries of the Common Era. The archetypal and idealized language of Song of Songs provided, as Kaplan argues, a textual landscape in which to imagine an idyllic construction of Israel's relationship to her beloved, marked by mutual devotion and fidelity. Through this approach to Song of Songs, the Tannaim helped lay the foundations for later Jewish thought of a robust theology of intimacy in God's relationship with the Jewish people.

From Scribes to Scholars
From Scribes to Scholars

Author: Yakir Paz

Publisher: Mohr Siebeck

Published: 2022-11-21

Total Pages: 388

ISBN-13: 3161616308

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Yakir Paz argues that ancient Homeric scholarship had a major impact on the formation of rabbinic biblical commentaries and their modes of exegesis. This impact is discernible not only in the terminology and hermeneutical techniques used by the rabbis, but also in their perception of the Bible as a literary product, their didactic methods, editorial principles and aesthetic sensitivities. In fact, it is the influence of Homeric scholarship which can best explain the drastic differences between earlier biblical commentaries from Palestine, such as those found among the Dead Sea Scrolls, and the scholastic Halakhic Midrashim (second to third century CE). The results of the author's study call for a re-examination of many assumptions regarding the emergence of Midrash, as well as a broader appreciation of the impact of Homeric scholarship on biblical exegesis in Antiquity.

From Sermon to Commentary
From Sermon to Commentary

Author: Eliezer Segal

Publisher: Wilfrid Laurier Univ. Press

Published: 2006-01-01

Total Pages: 177

ISBN-13: 0889209111

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The Bible has always been vital to Jewish religious life, and it has been expounded in diverse ways. Perhaps the most influential body of Jewish biblical interpretation is the Midrash that was produced by expositors during the first five centuries CE. Many such teachings are collected in the Babylonian Talmud, the monumental compendium of Jewish law and lore that was accepted as the definitive statement of Jewish oral tradition for subsequent generations. However, many of the Talmud’s interpretations of biblical passages appear bizarre or pointless. From Sermon to Commentary: Expounding the Bible in Talmudic Babylonia tries to explain this phenomenon by carefully examining representative passages from a variety of methodological approaches, paying particular attention to comparisons with Midrash composed in the Land of Israel. Based on this investigation, Eliezer Segal argues that the Babylonian sages were utilizing discourses that had originated in Israel as rhetorical sermons in which biblical interpretation was being employed in an imaginative, literary manner, usually based on the interplay between two or more texts from different books of the Bible. Because they did not possess their own tradition of homiletic preaching, the Babylonian rabbis interpreted these comments without regard for their rhetorical conventions, as if they were exegetical commentaries, resulting in the distinctive, puzzling character of Babylonian Midrash.

Jewish Studies at the Turn of the Twentieth Century, Volume 1: Biblical, Rabbinical, and Medieval Studies
Jewish Studies at the Turn of the Twentieth Century, Volume 1: Biblical, Rabbinical, and Medieval Studies

Author: European Association for Jewish Studies. Congress

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 1999

Total Pages: 664

ISBN-13: 9789004115545

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169 papers from the Toledo Congress of the European Association for Jewish Studies, offering a broad, realistic perspective on the advances, achievements and anxieties of Judaic Studies, from the Bible to our days, on the eve of the new millennium.

The Menorah
The Menorah

Author: Steven Fine

Publisher: Harvard University Press

Published: 2016-11-21

Total Pages: 296

ISBN-13: 0674972554

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The menorah, the seven-branched candelabrum, has traversed millennia as a living symbol of Judaism and the Jewish people. Naturally, it did not pass through the ages unaltered. The Menorah explores the cultural and intellectual history of the Western world’s oldest continuously used religious symbol. This meticulously researched yet deeply personal history explains how the menorah illuminates the great changes and continuities in Jewish culture, from biblical times to modern Israel. Though the golden seven-branched menorahs of Moses and of the Jerusalem Temple are artifacts lost to history, the best-known menorah image survives on the Arch of Titus in Rome. Commemorating the Roman destruction of Jerusalem in 70 CE, the arch reliefs depict the spoils of the Temple, the menorah chief among them, as they appeared in Titus’s great triumphal parade in 71 CE. Steven Fine recounts how, in 2012, his team discovered the original yellow ochre paint that colored the menorah—an event that inspired his search for the history of this rich symbol from ancient Israel through classical history, the Middle Ages, and on to our own tumultuous times. Surveying artifacts and literary sources spanning three thousand years—from the Torah and the ruins of Rome to yesterday’s news—Fine presents the menorah as a source of fascination and illumination for Jews, Samaritans, Christians, and even Freemasons. A symbol for the divine, for continuity, emancipation, national liberation, and redemption, the menorah features prominently on Israel’s state seal and continues to inspire and challenge in surprising ways.