‘Have You Noticed My Servant Job?’ (Job 1:8)

Reviewed by: Studies in Rabbinic Narratives, Volume 1 ed. by Jeffrey L. Rubenstein Zev Garber jeffrey l. rubenstein (ed.), Studies in Rabbinic Narratives, Volume 1 (BJS 367; Providence, RI: Brown Judaic Studies, 2021). Pp. xxvi + 417. Paper $29. Rabbinic narrative is a relatively new subject taught primarily in the halls of academia rather than between the walls of Yeshiva. In the latter, for example, neither the Talmud (Bavli, primarily, and Yerushalmi) nor its traditional commentaries are introduced or taught as distinct literary forms or genres. Instead, traditional rabbinic writings are distinguished between halakah (Jewish law) and aggadah (diverse literary forms, including, narratives, [End Page 346] homilies, biographies, exegesis, and more) not directly related to the halakic decision-making process. In traditional rabbinic learning, the emphasis is primarily on the ways of halakah and insights related to aggadah are seen as peripheral, nonessential, and redirected for public education. Alternate approaches emerged in the nineteenth century, when academic scholars trained by the Wissenschaft des Judentums movement for the scientific study of Judaism began to probe rabbinic literature for evidence of Jewish life in antiquity, and evaluated the Talmud's narratives about the lives of the ancient rabbis as historical testimony. But how authentic is the recorded history? Does its influence substitute for its factuality? For example, Rabbi Aqiba's death by laceration is included in the 'Eleh 'Ezkerah ("The Ten Martyrs") musap prayer, which is recited primarily in Ashkenazi services on Yom Kippur. Contrary to the talmudic view, the liturgical Ten Martyrs were executed on the same day. There are two reasons given for the execution: (1) they founded schools of learning that ran contrary to imperial edict during the reign of Hadrian; or (2) they were slaughtered to atone for the sins of Joseph's ten brothers, who sold him on Yom Kippur (as per the Book of Jubilees). Both explanations provide ethical and moral challenges, that is to say, whether slaughtered for the spread of Torah and as proxy punishment, nay, execution (see Deut 24:16). More excruciating is Aqiba's contented 'Eḥad' in lieu of spitting at the executioner (saving life), as observed in b. Ber. 61b: When R. Aqiba was taken out for execution, it was the hour for the recital of the Shema, and the enemy (Rome) was combing his flesh with an iron comb, and he was accepting upon himself the kingship of heaven with love. His disciples said to him: "Our teacher, why are you content? He said to them, All my days I have been troubled over not fulfilling the verse, 'Love the Lord, your God, with all your soul'; and now that I have the opportunity to complete the Shema properly, shall I not do so?" In recent decades, Jeffrey L. Rubenstein (Talmudic Stories: Narrative Art, Composition, and Culture [Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999]) began to treat narrative in the Talmud as a subject for study in its own right. This volume contains the papers presented at a conference on "Rabbinic Narratives" held at New York University June 4–5, 2018 organized by editor Rubenstein. The inclusions are sensitively introduced by R., who reads the rabbinic narrative in venues of source criticism, redaction criticism, and comparative studies; and all essays are accompanied by a concise detailed explanation to help clarify rabbinic ideas and arguments within the broader historical and ideological context of Jewish religious history. In the Introduction, Rubenstein previews the importance of rabbinic narrative and explains his rationale for the selection and interpretation of the chapters that follow—that is, discussion of diverse examples of rabbinic devices and textual nuances that present the image, experience, teachings, and worldviews of rabbinic masters. Collectively, the book's essays and methodology immerse traditional Jewish exegesis and eisegesis in the cultural, intellectual, legal, and literary history, contexts, and categories of late antiquity to enlighten rabbinic discourse. The result is a thinking person's guide to rabbinic legal and literary contexts and texts that complement nicely traditional midrashic and sermonic approaches in the study of the Torah of Moses. Julia Watts Belser ("'Hornets Came and Consumed Her': Gender, Animality, and Hunger in Bavli Sanhedrin's Stories of Sodom and Noah") speaks of negative and positive...

The aim of this paper is to examine forms and themes of the polemic against pagan medicine and pagan doctors in the hagiographic tradition concerning SS. Cosmas and Damian until the 7th century. Polemic devices in this corpus are not as violent as in some later texts, but we can find out two main themes: the gratuity of the cures provided by the two saint doctors against the pagan doctors’ well-known greediness, and their global care of the human being, in body and soul, against the partial view of pagan medicine. As to the means of this polemic effort, Cosmas and Damian’s libellus miraculorum, in conformity with the literary genre, does not play on rationality and logos, but rather on the amazing and amusing vitality of the exemplum, with a pedagogic purpose.

Reviewed by: Selections from Horace Satires: An Edition for Intermediate Students by John Godwin Anthofili Kallergi Selections from Horace Satires: An Edition for Intermediate Students. BY john godwin. London, UK: Bloomsbury Academic, 2019. Pp x+ 120. Paperback, $12.95. ISBN: 9781501349904 The commentary of John Godwin Selections from Horace Satires: An Edition for Intermediate Students focuses on selected lines from three of the most famous Horatian satires: 1.1 (verses 1–12, 28–100), 1.3 (verses 25–75) and 2.2 (verses 1–30, 70–111). It offers a strong introduction, a full Latin text, some useful commentary notes and a vocabulary list not only for simple and commonly used words, but also for some more demanding and ambiguous ones that change their original meaning in the satirical context. A detailed introduction explains points of historical and stylistic interest. It opens with a reference to Horace and his times, offering some useful biographical information about his work, his life and his relationship with Maecenas. Besides that, a short section on Roman satire before Horace follows, while the next one discusses his originality in relation to his predecessors, such as Lucilius or Ennius, as well as his intertextual dialogue with Epicurean philosophy both in his Satires and Epistles. The following section has brief coverage on the rigid system of meters that are frequent in Roman poetry. More precisely, John Godwin focuses on Roman prosody, on hexameter and its differences with the Ancient Greek meters. Moreover, the introduction ends up with a bibliographical list of translations, editions and general works on Horace, as well as his Satires and the evolution of Roman satire in general. However, I believe that this list is quite brief and should also have included monographs in other languages, such as French or Italian. Going one step further, the full Latin texts follow Satires, 1.1, 1.3 and 2.2 with a short summary in English for all verses, helping the students understand more easily the ambivalent context of the poems. Furthermore, the next chapter includes expansive commentary notes of these three satires. They start with the general content of each poem, a word-by-word analysis of the Latin fragments, a summary of the conclusions and the poet’s deepest goals, in order to make the Satires more understandable, as it seems to be one of the most difficult types of poetry in Rome. The meat of this volume is the vocabulary itself. It lists every word in the text; nouns are listed with their genitive singular, the verbs are accompanied by their four principal tenses, adjectives with the ending of the different genders. I believe that despite the fact that this commentary is addressed to intermediate students [End Page 244] who have mastered the basics and intend to start reading some Latin verse in order to develop their skills on language and reading comprehension, the vocabulary should have been more accurate and laborious concerning helpful elements about grammar. For instance, the nouns could also have—apart from the gender and the genitive singular—the number of the declension in parentheses; likewise, the conjugation of each verb is necessary, as it helps the student cope with grammar exercises. In addition to this, the prepositions could have been accompanied with the meaning of the prepositional phrases they introduce in particular contexts. For example, the preposition ad might be used for declaring a location or an intention. Nevertheless, it is a useful tool for the reader, as it is worth consulting this vocabulary in tricky phrases carrying a totally different meaning in these poems from the one someone may find in basic dictionaries. Besides, satire as a literary genre is quite difficult and demanding, as far as the language is concerned. To sum up, this is the first intermediate-student edition of a selection of Horace’s Satires. Focusing on a deliberately limited number of poems, this edition is addressed to students who read the text for the first time; it also perfectly encapsulates the interest in Horace’s work inspiring its further study. I believe that the commentary of John Godwin in Selections from Horace Satires: An Edition for Intermediate Students will be a useful...

In this paper we analysed John Updike’s 22nd novel, Terrorist, to ascertain whether this novel could be viewed as a Bildungsroman. Our investigation is based on theoretical insights that Hegel, Lukács and Bakhtin offered on this literary genre; furthermore, we acknowledged some contemporary theories regarding this issue as well. By analysing characters and relations among them, narrative layers of the text and intertextual dialogue in Updike’s Terrorist, we strove to point out how Updike deconstructs this literary genre by showing a young man, Ahmad, who – under the influence of an imam – considers and plans to become a suicide bomber. Also, we indicated how the author’s approach to this sensitive topic is a nuanced one: the novel is militant only on surface.

This chapter presents the sources of the arguments which are the components of the Jewish philosophical critique of Christianity in the Middle Ages. The one genre of literature in which most of these contentions are located is the polemic. The Jewish polemical works exhibit great diversity both in method of argumentation and in style. According to Joseph ben Shem Tov, there are six types of polemical treatises. The first, and by far the largest, category contains works which dealt primarily with the exegesis of the Hebrew Bible. The other categories include the exegesis of rabbinic literature; attacks on Christianity; comparisons of Christian doctrines with the New Testament; attacks on the articles of Christianity; and comparisons of Christianity with the Principles of Philosophy. Jewish polemicists also employed a variety of forms in which to place their polemics. The most common forms were the dialogue or disputation; the expository treatise, following either the biblical or a topical arrangement; the poem; the letter; and the parody. The chapter then looks at other sources of Jewish philosophical arguments, such as biblical commentaries, mysticism, and legal works. It also considers the sources of Christian polemics.

From the last quarter of the eighth until the beginning of the tenth century, Carolingian monasteries, cathedrals, and courts were the sites of a vigorous scholarship grounded in the study of sacred Scripture. The significance of Bible studies in this epoch is evident from the many extant Carolingian commentaries on virtually every book of the Old and New Testaments. More works of this kind survive from the period, often in multiple copies, than is true for any other genre of literature. Although scholars used to dismiss the Carolingian Bible commentaries as uncreative compilations of material borrowed from the Church Fathers, in recent years appreciation of these tracts’ essential creativity has grown significantly. In addition, there is now increased recognition of the degree to which the ‘exegetical’ culture nurtured within the Carolingian schools fertilized other aspects of contemporary intellectual and cultural endeavour. The essays in this collection offer a fresh look at the range of biblical studies and their impact on diverse domains of Carolingian culture and learning. The bibliography provides a record of critical editions of Carolingian-era Bible commentaries and secondary scholarship in the field published within the last twelve years.

From the last quarter of the eighth until the beginning of the tenth century, Carolingian monasteries, cathedrals, and courts were the sites of a vigorous scholarship grounded in the study of sacred Scripture. The significance of Bible studies in this epoch is evident from the many extant Carolingian commentaries on virtually every book of the Old and New Testaments. More works of this kind survive from the period, often in multiple copies, than is true for any other genre of literature. Although scholars used to dismiss the Carolingian Bible commentaries as uncreative compilations of material borrowed from the Church Fathers, in recent years appreciation of these tracts’ essential creativity has grown significantly. In addition, there is now increased recognition of the degree to which the ‘exegetical’ culture nurtured within the Carolingian schools fertilized other aspects of contemporary intellectual and cultural endeavour. The essays in this collection offer a fresh look at the range of biblical studies and their impact on diverse domains of Carolingian culture and learning. The bibliography provides a record of critical editions of Carolingian-era Bible commentaries and secondary scholarship in the field published within the last twelve years.

From the last quarter of the eighth until the beginning of the tenth century, Carolingian monasteries, cathedrals, and courts were the sites of a vigorous scholarship grounded in the study of sacred Scripture. The significance of Bible studies in this epoch is evident from the many extant Carolingian commentaries on virtually every book of the Old and New Testaments. More works of this kind survive from the period, often in multiple copies, than is true for any other genre of literature. Although scholars used to dismiss the Carolingian Bible commentaries as uncreative compilations of material borrowed from the Church Fathers, in recent years appreciation of these tracts’ essential creativity has grown significantly. In addition, there is now increased recognition of the degree to which the ‘exegetical’ culture nurtured within the Carolingian schools fertilized other aspects of contemporary intellectual and cultural endeavour. The essays in this collection offer a fresh look at the range of biblical studies and their impact on diverse domains of Carolingian culture and learning. The bibliography provides a record of critical editions of Carolingian-era Bible commentaries and secondary scholarship in the field published within the last twelve years.

From the last quarter of the eighth until the beginning of the tenth century, Carolingian monasteries, cathedrals, and courts were the sites of a vigorous scholarship grounded in the study of sacred Scripture. The significance of Bible studies in this epoch is evident from the many extant Carolingian commentaries on virtually every book of the Old and New Testaments. More works of this kind survive from the period, often in multiple copies, than is true for any other genre of literature. Although scholars used to dismiss the Carolingian Bible commentaries as uncreative compilations of material borrowed from the Church Fathers, in recent years appreciation of these tracts’ essential creativity has grown significantly. In addition, there is now increased recognition of the degree to which the ‘exegetical’ culture nurtured within the Carolingian schools fertilized other aspects of contemporary intellectual and cultural endeavour. The essays in this collection offer a fresh look at the range of biblical studies and their impact on diverse domains of Carolingian culture and learning. The bibliography provides a record of critical editions of Carolingian-era Bible commentaries and secondary scholarship in the field published within the last twelve years.

From the last quarter of the eighth until the beginning of the tenth century, Carolingian monasteries, cathedrals, and courts were the sites of a vigorous scholarship grounded in the study of sacred Scripture. The significance of Bible studies in this epoch is evident from the many extant Carolingian commentaries on virtually every book of the Old and New Testaments. More works of this kind survive from the period, often in multiple copies, than is true for any other genre of literature. Although scholars used to dismiss the Carolingian Bible commentaries as uncreative compilations of material borrowed from the Church Fathers, in recent years appreciation of these tracts’ essential creativity has grown significantly. In addition, there is now increased recognition of the degree to which the ‘exegetical’ culture nurtured within the Carolingian schools fertilized other aspects of contemporary intellectual and cultural endeavour. The essays in this collection offer a fresh look at the range of biblical studies and their impact on diverse domains of Carolingian culture and learning. The bibliography provides a record of critical editions of Carolingian-era Bible commentaries and secondary scholarship in the field published within the last twelve years.

From the last quarter of the eighth until the beginning of the tenth century, Carolingian monasteries, cathedrals, and courts were the sites of a vigorous scholarship grounded in the study of sacred Scripture. The significance of Bible studies in this epoch is evident from the many extant Carolingian commentaries on virtually every book of the Old and New Testaments. More works of this kind survive from the period, often in multiple copies, than is true for any other genre of literature. Although scholars used to dismiss the Carolingian Bible commentaries as uncreative compilations of material borrowed from the Church Fathers, in recent years appreciation of these tracts’ essential creativity has grown significantly. In addition, there is now increased recognition of the degree to which the ‘exegetical’ culture nurtured within the Carolingian schools fertilized other aspects of contemporary intellectual and cultural endeavour. The essays in this collection offer a fresh look at the range of biblical studies and their impact on diverse domains of Carolingian culture and learning. The bibliography provides a record of critical editions of Carolingian-era Bible commentaries and secondary scholarship in the field published within the last twelve years.

This is a seminal study of cultural attitudes to old age among Jews of the medieval Mediterranean and Near Eastern regions. Rigorously researched and accessibly written, it will appeal to scholars across a range of disciplines as well as to the broader public. While the focus is on Jewish society and culture, critical context regarding the social history of ageing is provided by comparative perspectives from the Muslim world as well as from Spain and Provence and other areas of Christian Europe that were in the Arabic Andalusian cultural orbit. The study draws on many literary genres and scholarly disciplines: philosophy and theology, ethics and law, biblical commentary, Hebrew poetry, medical literature, and a host of marriage contracts, personal letters, and family and communal records from the Cairo Genizah. The result is a nuanced portrait of ageing as both a lived reality and a cultural paradigm in medieval Jewish society.

Reviewed by: Fashioning Jewish Identity in Medieval Western Christendom Herbert W. Basser Fashioning Jewish Identity in Medieval Western Christendom, by Robert Chasan. Cambridge UK: Cambridge University Press, 2004. 379 pp. $75.00. Christianity, once an obscure Jewish sect, rose to be a major world religion. In so doing it retained the story of harsh Pharisaic suppressions and divine displeasure at them. This memory became enshrined in the New Testament's argument that adherence to the Law of Moses and dismissal of the divinity of Jesus Christ brought God to abrogate his covenant with the Jews. Succeeding generations of Christians always imaged the Jew as the powerful suppressor and enemy of Christian values. Jews, from the beginning, felt a need to dispute Christian claims (aiming to convince and convert); sometimes they were forced to debate, and a few medieval Rabbis have left us their textbooks, records, and commentaries concerning their views of the groundless claims of the Christian attack on Judaism. Robert Chazan has written a book to inform us of some details of Jewish polemical writings in Northern Spain and Southern France. Chasan does not discuss the Jewish/pagan and Christian/pagan polemics that occurred apart from the early Jewish/Christian attacks and counter attacks. The cases are not at all comparable: Jesus had sprung up on Jewish soil, physically and spiritually, and these issues cut deeper to the bone. How did Jews respond? It would seem they more than held their own in literary and actual debates. Any student of medieval polemics finds it difficult to know what precisely is literary and what was face-to-face confrontation. The author, a prominent medievalist, has limited his scope to only a few writings of polemicists: Joseph (Northern Spain and Narbonne) and David Kimhi (Narbonne), Meir bar Simon (Narbonne), Jacob ben Reuben (time and place unknown), Moses Nachmanides [End Page 180] (Northern Spain) and a few references here and there to some minor works. He claims he has discovered a new literary genre that took form in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries: Jewish polemical writings. He probes the reasons of why it came to be when and where it did. Does he realize that biblical commentaries (or is this a new genre too?) from these areas are also unknown prior to the late eleventh and twelfth centuries? I suspect we have this literature from these places at this time because, for whatever reason, preservations of written materials stemming from these places date from these times and not earlier. Lack of evidence is not always evidence of lack. Connecting some earlier faint dots (which Chasan sees as garbled and rudimentary) might show us that the genre is not so new. More than anything else the Jewish mindset both in medieval Ashkenaz and Sepharad stemmed from the religiously oriented communal culture that Rabbinic leaders had nurtured for many centuries. For this reason it is fitting to note that both sides saw the medieval disputes as a continuation of past frictions, as Nachmanides claimed (referring to a talmudic story about the Sanhedrin's debates with Jesus' disciples—who were, in the end, executed by it) in the written introduction to his famous disputation in Barcelona. Now, however, the debates often ended in real-life dire consequences for Jews. Christians judged the outcome of the debates. In France, cartloads of valuable Talmud manuscripts were burned as debates began to center on the anti-Christian teachings of the Talmud. In Spain, whole communities were forced to convert. Although Chasan does not discuss these burnings and conversions at length, it is noteworthy that the anti-Christian teachings of the Talmud that migrated in fuller form into Toldot Yeshu (purporting to give the authoritative account of Jesus as a blasphemous sorcerer) and similar dismissive stories formed the Jewish attitude to Christianity no less than the New Testament and Church Fathers had formed the Christian attitude to Judaism. Whatever ancient rubrics in talmudic law existed to separate Jew and pagan were used by Jews as constant reminders that Christians were in no wise their monotheistic brothers and sisters. In their subjugation to Christianity, Jews even saw themselves as forced participants in the worship of foreign gods (Rashi to Deut...

Identifying the Literary Genre of the De reductione artium ad theologiamBonaventure's Inaugural Lecture at Paris Joshua C. Benson Introduction1 In 1974 at a gathering celebrating the seventh centenary of Bonaventure's death, Ignatius Brady reviewed the Quaracchi edition of Bonaventure's works. He noted various problems with the edition and considered the authenticity of a number of works discovered since the edition's completion in 1902.2 He argued against the attribution of all the texts then newly ascribed to Bonaventure, but pointed forward to texts that might still be looked for, "either by identifying them in pieces already published or by searching for them in manuscripts."3 Brady singled out two texts in particular: a text he referred to as a principium biblicum, and defined as the opening discourse of a baccalaurius biblicus; and a principium magisteriale or aulicum, which Brady defined as a "recommendatio s. scripturae or recommendatio sacrae doctrinae given in brief form by the doctorandus in the aula/hall of [End Page 149] the bishop and repeated at length soon after his promotion."4 He went on to lament that we possess lectures pertaining to these forms from great medieval theologians like John of La Rochelle and Thomas Aquinas, but none for Bonaventure. According to Brady, two primary reasons explained this gap in Bonaventure's corpus: 1) the Quaracchi editors really had no clear conception of the genre of principium and hence never looked for Bonaventure's; 2) some scholars reasoned that Bonaventure's well-known sermon "Christ the one teacher of all" functioned as his principium and hence looked no further.5 As Brady noted, however, "Christ the one teacher of all" could never function as Bonaventure's principium without doing extreme violence to the literary parameters set for that academic exercise.6 Bonaventure's principium thus remained at large and has continued to elude scholars since Brady's reflections thirty-four years ago. Until now. Though Brady's terminology requires modification in the light of more recent studies, the thesis I will argue for in this article is that the text we know as the De reductione is in fact the second half of Bonaventure's two part inaugural lecture (or principium) as a master at Paris.7 The first half of the lecture (and the De reductione's essential companion piece) I have identified and provisionally edited: an overlooked sermon beginning with the verse, Omnium artifex docuit me sapientia (Wisdom 7:21). In order to demonstrate my thesis that the De reductione is part of Bonaventure's inaugural lecture as a master or his [End Page 150] principium, I will first review the specific terminology required to understand this literary genre. Second, I will focus on the form and subject matter of the De reductione itself in order to establish that it may be understood as sermon and that its subject matter fits within the genre of principia. Third, I will highlight known principia that share concerns and style similar to the De reductione thus further demonstrating that the text is Bonaventure's principium. Fourth, I will discuss two manuscripts that present the De reductione as a principium.8 In connection, I will also indicate how these two manuscripts present the relationship between Bonaventure's overlooked sermon Omnium artifex docuit me sapientia and the De reductione. Fifth, I will show how Omnium artifex forms an essential prologue to the De reductione. I. Clarifying the literary genre of the principium The term principium can cause confusion since the term takes on different meanings in accordance with the variety of meanings and associations the term possessed in the middle ages. Clarity regarding this term is crucial if the present thesis is to be proved and so I must review the basic ways the term could be used. In a broad sense, the term principium refers simply to "the inaugural lecture of a course,"9 which in turn belongs to the much broader category of sermon.10 In this sense of inaugural lecture or sermon, Bonaventure's prologues to each of [End Page 151] the four books of Peter Lombard's Sentences, the prologues to his biblical commentaries, and even to some degree...

Science in Medieval Jewish Cultures provides the first comprehensive overview by world-renowned experts of what we know today of medieval Jews' engagement with the sciences. Many medieval Jews, whether living in Islamic or Christian civilizations, joined Maimonides in accepting the rationalist philosophical-scientific tradition and appropriated extensive bodies of scientific knowledge in various disciplines: astronomy, astrology, mathematics, logic, physics, meteorology, biology, psychology, science of language and medicine. The appropriated texts – in the original or in Hebrew translation – were the starting points for Jews' own contributions to medieval science and also informed other literary genres: religious-philosophical works, biblical commentaries and even Halakhic (legal) discussions. This volume's essays will provide readers with background knowledge of medieval scientific thought necessary to properly understand canonical Jewish scientific texts. Its breadth reflects the number and diversity of Jewish cultures in the Middle Ages and the necessity of considering the fortunes of science in each within its specific context.