Law and Self-Knowledge in the Talmud

Highlights the emergence of self-knowledge in rabbinic literature, showing how Babylonian rabbis relied on knowledge accessible only to the individual to determine the law.

Ayelet Hoffmann Libson (Author)

9781108427494, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 17 May 2018

224 pages
23.5 x 15.7 x 1.9 cm, 0.47 kg

'This is a vitally important book. It enters into an important conversation/controversy with a major new thought and demonstrates the validity of that thought as well. The controversy is whether or not there was a turn in the conception of the 'individual' in rabbinic literature. Joshua Levinson has argued for a significant turn towards interiority and a self from biblical to rabbinic literature, while Ishay Rosen-Zvi has argued on the basis of Palestinian rabbinic literature that this is a misreading. In this book, the author makes a stunning contribution by showing that both are right (and both wrong). There is such a turn; it takes place, however, according to Libson, in amoraic Babylonia. This conclusion, it cannot be emphasized enough, is of major significance for the interpretation of the history of Jewish ideas. The book is marked by extraordinary sophistication both with respect to the sensitive historicizing interpretation of rabbinic texts as well as the infrequent but always judicious reference to both comparative and theoretical texts.' Daniel Boyarin, University of California, Berkeley

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.

1. The inward turn in rabbinic literature
2. Knowledge of the body: the case of sensation
3. Asserting the needs of the body
4. Between body and mind: the suffering self
5. Self-knowledge and a wife's autonomy.

Subject Areas: Theology [HRLB], Judaism: sacred texts [HRJS], Judaism [HRJ], Religion & beliefs [HR]