Rachel Adelman’s book The Return of the Repressed: Pirqe de-Rabbi Eliezer and the Pseudepigrapha is reviewed here. This study analyzes mythic narratives, found in the 8th century midrashic text Pirqe de-Rabbi Eliezer (PRE), that were excluded, or ‘repressed’, from the rabbinic canon, while preserved in the Pseudepigrapha of the Second Temple period. Examples include the [...]
Nel Marius reviews Hindy Najman’s Past Renewals: Interpretative Authority, Renewed Revelation and the Quest for Perfection in Jewish Antiquity. Info about the book: How did ancient Jewish authors claim authority for their interpretations? How, after the “end of prophecy”, could they claim the authority of revelation? Whom did one have to be, or aspire to [...]
Tzvee Zahavy was kind enough to send me a copy of his new book, God’s Favorite Prayers, to review. On the first page Tzvee wrote the following: My thesis in this book is simple. Jews pray every day in holy synagogues and in ordinary places throughout the world. When they do so, they engage in [...]
Alan Avery-Peck reviews Jacob Howland’s Plato and the Talmud. (here) Here is a description of the book: This innovative study sees the relationship between Athens and Jerusalem through the lens of the Platonic dialogues and the Talmud. Howland argues that these texts are animated by comparable conceptions of the proper roles of inquiry and reasoned [...]
Lawrence Schiffman has published a new book, Qumran and Jerusalem: Studies in the Dead Sea Scrolls and the History of Judaism. Major changes are occurring in our understanding of the fascinating texts of the Dead Sea Scrolls and their significance for the study of the history of Judaism and Christianity. One of the most significant [...]
One of this year’s new books on rabbinic Judaism is Jordan D. Rosenblum’s Food and Identity in Early Rabbinic Judaism. From the publisher’s website: Food often defines societies and even civilizations. Through particular commensality restrictions, groups form distinct identities: those with whom ‘we’ eat (‘us’) and those with whom ‘we’ cannot eat (‘them’). This identity [...]
Musaf Shabbat has an article on the third volume of Kuntress ha-Teshuvot He-Ḥadash, although it seems from here as if the fourth volume has already been published.
A review of the Hebrew version of Peter Schäfer’s book Judeophobia: Attitudes toward the Jews in the Ancient World can be found here. The following quote is from the English version (p. 9). The Greeks and Romans were mostly preoccupied with the monotheism of the Jews, their customs and rituals such as abstinence from pork, [...]
The recent Musaf Shabbat of Makor Rishon includes a review of two recent publications on the Cairo Geniza. One is the most recent volume of Ginzei Kedem, the annual devoted to Geniza Studies. The other book is הקנון הסמוי מן העין: חקרי קנון וגניזה. The second book looks like a very interesting collection of multi-disciplinary [...]
There are two recent book reviews related to Talmud on H-net. -Chaya T. Halberstam. Law and Truth in Biblical and Rabbinic Literature. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2009. (review here) The theme of this book is the manner in which the rabbinic search for justice is characterized by fundamental uncertainty. In her introduction, Chaya T. Halberstam [...]
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