The Cambridge Companion to the Talmud and Rabbinic Literature

An international team of scholars help the reader confront the enormous and complex rabbinic corpus.

Charlotte Elisheva Fonrobert (Edited by), Martin S. Jaffee (Edited by)

9780521605083, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 28 May 2007

438 pages
22.7 x 15.5 x 2.3 cm, 0.59 kg

"The book is possibly the finest survey in English of Critical cultural issues for non-yeshiva beginning students of rabbinic literature."
Aaron Howard, Jewish Herald-Voice

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.

Introduction
Part I: 1. Rabbinic authorship as a collective enterprise Martin S. Jaffee
2. The orality of Rabbinic writing Elizabeth Shanks Alexander
3. Social and institutional settings of Rabbinic literature Jeffrey L. Rubenstein
4. The political geography of Rabbinic texts Seth Schwartz
Part II: 5. Rabbinic Midrash and ancient Jewish biblical interpretation Steven D. Fraade
6. The Judaean legal tradition and the Halakhah of the Mishnah Shaye J. D. Cohen
7. Roman law and Rabbinic legal composition Catherine Hezser
8. Middle Persian culture and Babylonian sages: accommodation and resistance in the shaping of Rabbinic legal tradition Yaakov Elman
9. Jewish visionary tradition in Rabbinic literature Michael D. Swartz
10. The almost invisible presence of the other: multi-lingual puns in Rabbinic literature Galit Hasan-Rokem
Park III: 11. The 'other' in Rabbinic literature Christine Hayes
12. Regulating the human body: Rabbinic legal discourse and the making of Jewish gender Charlotte Elisheva Fonrobert
13. Rabbinic historiography and representations of the past Isaiah Gafni
14. Rabbinic ethical formational and the formation of Rabbinic ethical compilations Jonathan Wyn Schofer
15. Hellenism in Jewish Babylonia Daniel Boyarin.

Subject Areas: Judaism [HRJ], Religion: general [HRA]