Purity, Body, and Self in Early Rabbinic Literature

Purity, Body, and Self in Early Rabbinic Literature PDF Author: DR. S Mira Balberg
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520958217
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 262

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Book Description
This book explores the ways in which the early rabbis reshaped biblical laws of ritual purity and impurity and argues that the rabbis’ new purity discourse generated a unique notion of a bodily self. Focusing on the Mishnah, a Palestinian legal codex compiled around the turn of the third century CE, Mira Balberg shows how the rabbis constructed the processes of contracting, conveying, and managing ritual impurity as ways of negotiating the relations between one’s self and one’s body and, more broadly, the relations between one’s self and one’s human and nonhuman environments. With their heightened emphasis on subjectivity, consciousness, and self-reflection, the rabbis reinvented biblically inherited language and practices in a way that resonated with central cultural concerns and intellectual commitments of the Greco-Roman Mediterranean world. Purity, Body, and Self in Early Rabbinic Literature adds a new dimension to the study of practices of self-making in antiquity by suggesting that not only philosophical exercises but also legal paradigms functioned as sites through which the self was shaped and improved.

Purity, Body, and Self in Early Rabbinic Literature

Purity, Body, and Self in Early Rabbinic Literature PDF Author: DR. S Mira Balberg
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520958217
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 262

Get Book

Book Description
This book explores the ways in which the early rabbis reshaped biblical laws of ritual purity and impurity and argues that the rabbis’ new purity discourse generated a unique notion of a bodily self. Focusing on the Mishnah, a Palestinian legal codex compiled around the turn of the third century CE, Mira Balberg shows how the rabbis constructed the processes of contracting, conveying, and managing ritual impurity as ways of negotiating the relations between one’s self and one’s body and, more broadly, the relations between one’s self and one’s human and nonhuman environments. With their heightened emphasis on subjectivity, consciousness, and self-reflection, the rabbis reinvented biblically inherited language and practices in a way that resonated with central cultural concerns and intellectual commitments of the Greco-Roman Mediterranean world. Purity, Body, and Self in Early Rabbinic Literature adds a new dimension to the study of practices of self-making in antiquity by suggesting that not only philosophical exercises but also legal paradigms functioned as sites through which the self was shaped and improved.

Introduction to Rabbinic Literature

Introduction to Rabbinic Literature PDF Author: Jacob Neusner
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780300140149
Category : Judaism
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
The achievement of a lifetime from one of today's most eminent Judaic scholars--a landmark commentary on the history of rabbinical teachings in the Christian era: the Mishnah, the Tosefta, the Talmuds, and more.

Early Rabbinic Writings

Early Rabbinic Writings PDF Author: Hyam MacCoby
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521285537
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 272

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Book Description
Rabbinic texts are often cited in New Testament and Old Testament studies, but hitherto there has been no easy way for a student to grasp the scope and variety of the relevant rabbinic writings. This book introduces the student to the full range of the early rabbinic writings, with a thorough introduction and notes, so that both a bird's eye view of the literature as well as close aquaintance with typical and important texts can be obtained. This will enable the reader to embark on further study with a clearer orientation. The book also aims to correct many mistaken views about rabbinic Judaism arising from outdated conceptions of the relation between Christianity and Judaism.

Early Rabbinic Judaism

Early Rabbinic Judaism PDF Author: Jacob Neusner
Publisher: Brill Archive
ISBN: 9789004042568
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 252

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Book Description


Jewish Identity in Early Rabbinic Writings

Jewish Identity in Early Rabbinic Writings PDF Author: Stern
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004332766
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 312

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Book Description
Jewish Identity in Early Rabbinic Writings is more than a question of legal status: it is the experience of being Jewish or of 'Jewishness' in all its social and cultural dimensions. This work describes this experience as it emerges in Talmudic and Midrashic sources. Besides the question of “who is a Jew?”, topics include the contrast between Israel and the non-Jews, the physical embodiment of Jewish identity, the 'boundaries' of Israel and resistance to assimilation. Jewish identity, it is argued, hinges essentially on the Divine commandments (mitzvot) and on Israel's perceived proximity with the Divine. Drawing on a variety of disciplines, including the theories of William James and Merleau-Ponty, this study raises important issues in anthropology, as well as accounting for central aspects of early rabbinic Judaism.

The Literature of Early Rabbinic Judaism

The Literature of Early Rabbinic Judaism PDF Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 176

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Book Description


Blood for Thought

Blood for Thought PDF Author: Mira Balberg
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520401417
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 300

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Book Description
Blood for Thought delves into a relatively unexplored area of rabbinic literature: the vast corpus of laws, regulations, and instructions pertaining to sacrificial rituals. Mira Balberg traces and analyzes the ways in which the early rabbis interpreted and conceived of biblical sacrifices, reinventing them as a site through which to negotiate intellectual, cultural, and religious trends and practices in their surrounding world. Rather than viewing the rabbinic project as an attempt to generate a nonsacrificial version of Judaism, she argues that the rabbis developed a new sacrificial Jewish tradition altogether, consisting of not merely substitutes to sacrifice but elaborate practical manuals that redefined the processes themselves, radically transforming the meanings of sacrifice, its efficacy, and its value.

The New Testament and Rabbinic Literature

The New Testament and Rabbinic Literature PDF Author: Reimund Bieringer
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004175881
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 569

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Book Description
This book brings together the contributions of the foremost specialists on the relationship of the New Testament and Rabbinic Literature. They present the history of scholarship and deal with the main methodological issues, and analyze both legal and literary problems.

Women in the Bible, Qumran and Early Rabbinic Literature

Women in the Bible, Qumran and Early Rabbinic Literature PDF Author: Paul Heger
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004277110
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 434

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Book Description
Women in the Bible, Qumran and Early Rabbinic Literature: Their Status and Roles explores the different attitudes toward the woman’s guilt for the expulsion from the Garden and human’s calamities and the legal ramifications of her lower social and legal status regarding independence, ownership and membership in the community.

Deviancy in Early Rabbinic Literature

Deviancy in Early Rabbinic Literature PDF Author: Simcha Fishbane
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004158332
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 246

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Book Description
This study of early Rabbinic texts provides fresh and fascinating insights into the attitudes of the Rabbis towards "outsiders."