Early Rabbis Research Articles

Descending from Mount Moriah

It was the final meeting of our course on “The Binding of Isaac in Jewish and Christian Traditions.” It was time to descend from the mountaintop after an intensive exploration of this dramatic biblical text and a variety of post-biblical commentaries on it. Class by class we moved from Genesis 22 to the works of the early rabbis and Church Fathers, to medieval philosophical and mystical interpretations, to modern literary adaptations of this ancient and timeless narrative.On this last day of discussion, something special happened as the level of trust in the room peaked. After nine weeks of studying together, the twenty or so rabbinical and ministerial students from Hebrew College and Andover Newton Theological School shared of themselves with unprecedented honesty and vulnerability. The catalyst for the conversation was a poem entitled “Heritage” (and especially its final lines) by the modern Israeli poet, Hayim Gouri:… Isaac, as the story goes, was notsacrificed. He lived for many years, sawwhat pleasure had to offer, until hiseyesight dimmed.But he bequeathed that hour to hisoffspring. They are born with a knife intheir hearts.After discussing at length various literary and historical dimensions of this heartrending poem—including the place of the Holocaust and the establishment of the State of Israel in Gouri’s work—my co-teacher from Andover Newton, Dr. Gregory Mobley, and I invited the students to reflect on the poem personally.Within a few moments several hands went up throughout the room. A rabbinical student who had just become a father spoke of the great sense of trepidation he felt when thinking about the pain he might cause his son in the name of God and other lofty ideals. An African American student from Andover Newton spoke of the difficulty of carrying the sacrificial theodicy she had learned in her childhood congregation: that her ancestors bore the burdens of discrimination and oppression so that she and her classmates could live better lives. Students from both schools shared their sense of gratitude for the opportunity to explore together this rich and challenging material, including those sources that initially made them feel uncomfortable in the presence of the religious “other.”We offer interfaith courses to our rabbinical and ministerial students because we believe that contemporary clergy working in an increasingly interconnected world should possess knowledge of other religious traditions and the skills to interact constructively across religious lines. It has been our experience that these courses have helped many students clarify their values and beliefs, address their fears and prejudices, and learn to work together on issues of common concern. We strive in these classes to create a safe space in which our students can engage in a multidimensional educational experience that includes both rigorous historical and textual study and meaningful personal and interpersonal exploration. Of course, we do not always succeed in reaching all of these goals. But we have been blessed to witness moments of deep encounter—moments in which our students honestly and thoughtfully share with one another their religious commitments and questions, their similarities and differences, and the pain and joy they carry in their hearts.

The Limits of "Their Laws": Ancient Rabbinic Controversies about Jewishness (and Non-Jewishness)

Neutralization is a productive way to think about how some early rabbis attempted to build and to bound Jewish identity. A neutralization strategy of the kind Moshe Halbertal has associated with Mishnah Avodah Zarah can be found in a passage from the Sifra (a third-century rabbinic legal compilation) that interprets Leviticus 18:3's injunction against following "their laws." The logic of neutralization for the Sifra is that legal significance is denied to popular, shared practice and restricted to the traditions passed on by a male elite. This reading of the Sifra draws from Daniel Boyarin's argument in Border Lines that early rabbis and Christians created new orthodoxies grounded in a notion of apostolic transmission. The Sifra passage creates a "perverse parallel" to rabbinic orthodoxy and, in so doing, tries to naturalize it. The Sifra's emphasis on gay marriage as the substance of gentile transmission points to the significance of gender and sexual identity for the creation of rabbinic orthodoxy. This neutralization strategy can be contrasted with the construction of Jewish/gentile difference found in a section of material from the Yishma'el school inserted into the Sifra, where rabbinic voices imply that it may be impossible to neutralize pagan practice. This inserted text represents an "anti-neutralization" strategy in which potency is recognized in a wide array of elite and popular habits. This analysis of the Sifra and its inserted materials contributes to an expanding conversation about early rabbis' strategies for negotiating Jewish identity within the Roman imperial context.

Reconsidering the Book and the Sword: A Rhetoric of Passivity in Rabbinic Hermeneutics

AbstractThe motif of the "book and the sword" as it appears in a Babylonian Talmud martyrdom narrative suggests that Torah and violence are mutually exclusive. This essay will explore in what ways the book and the sword have a more complicated relationship within the Babylonian Talmud and its sources than this narrative suggests. The essay will focus attention on a posture of interpretive passivity that rabbinic legislators adopt in a variety of legal contexts in which their audience's physical and social welfare is at stake, including criminal execution and women's claims upon their husbands. The essay will contrast the representation of the rabbi who laments, "What can I do? For behold the Torah said …" to the creative hermeneutics he in fact exercises. The essay will argue that this idiom, as it appears in several tannaitic texts and then is expanded in Babylonian talmudic texts, is unusual within Antiquity in giving explicit expression to embarrassment about scriptural canon. The essay proposes that the stereotyping of early rabbis as hermeneutically passive by Babylonian talmudic editors allows them to highlight their own exegetical and judicial activism as they transform inherited sources. The essay considers what the representation of hermeneutically passive rabbinic judges can reveal about the complex relationship between legal exegesis, judicial authority, and violence within rabbinic literature, from early to late, from Palestine to Babylonia.

The origins of Judaism: from Canaan to the rise of Islam

The Origins of Judaism provides a clear, straightforward account of the development of ancient Judaism in both the Judean homeland and the Diaspora. Beginning with the Bible and ending with the rise of Islam, the text depicts the emergence of a religion that would be recognized today as Judaism out of customs and conceptions that were quite different from any that now exist. Special attention is given to the early rabbis' contribution to this historical process. Together with the main narrative, the book provides substantial quotations from primary texts (biblical, rabbinic and other) along with extended side treatments of important themes, a glossary, short biographies of leading early rabbis, a chronology of important dates and suggestions for further reading.

S/He Created Them: Feminist Retellings of Biblical Stories and Unlocking The Garden: A Feminist Jewish look at the Bible, Midrash and God by Naomi Graetz

Reviewed by: S/He Created Them: Feminist Retellings of Biblical Stories, and: Unlocking The Garden: A Feminist Jewish look at the Bible, Midrash and God Fran Snyder (bio) Naomi Graetz S/He Created Them: Feminist Retellings of Biblical Stories (Gorgias Press, 2003) Naomi Graetz, Reviewer Unlocking The Garden: A Feminist Jewish look at the Bible, Midrash and God (Gorgias Press, 2005) Naomi Graetz’s midrashim and expansions of the biblical text are personal and academic, and we must be grateful to her on both counts. Firstly, she reminds us that midrash is a conversation between a fixed text and the historical period in which it was written. When Graetz writes in the introduction to S/He Created Them: Feminist Retellings of Biblical Stories that her “midrashim ... are not only exegetical, they are also eisogetical, i.e. they reflect personal concerns which are read back into the biblical text,” she underscores a truth well-remembered: the rabbis’ ‘oral Torah’1 is human-made and man-made in real time, and it is constructed upon their personal, contemporary reflections. Secondly, Graetz sets before us an exemplary model of midrash contemporaneous to our times. Her remarkable midrash on Ki Tetzeh and its haftara2 in Unlocking The Garden actually is midrash, in that it is derived from biblical verses. It is also a scholarly exercise, prefaced by explanations of Graetz’s intent and methodology and supported by footnotes. Graetz teaches critical reading skills in the English Department of Ben-Gurion University, and she brings the methods of the [End Page 82] modern academy to her craft. She reminds us that the authors of classical midrash were trained rhetors who used the exegetical methods of analysis common to the Hellenistic scholastic standards of their times. The earlier of the two books, S/He Created Them: Feminist Retellings of Biblical Stories, comprises just that—retellings. She labels the writing in this book “contemporary Midrash” without defining rabbinic midrash, the genre against which any writing that calls itself midrash should be compared. Graetz’s writing in this book is not centered on biblical verses, as was the rabbinic original, and her concern is not with shattering the verses, as did the early rabbis, and building exegetical structures on the atomized pieces. Rather Graetz goes for story. She employs the novelist’s tools—characterization, extended dialogue, descriptive backgrounding, interior monologues—and if her work resembles in form any ancient genre, it is “rewritten Bible.” What she has in common with the ancient rabbis is, if I may speak for them, intention. “For me the purpose of contemporary Midrash is threefold,” Graetz states in her introduction. “It addresses itself to the biblical text, which cries out darsheni, interpret me! Secondly, it makes the Bible relevant to an audience that does not overly care about its biblical roots. Finally, it serves my need to relate to a text, which I perceive as flowing over with hidden meanings. I feel that in writing midrash I am continuing to contribute to the work of revelation.” With the exception of audience concerns—though who knows for certain what were the needs of the ancient audience?—Graetz and the rabbis are intrigued by the same strange, contradictory, elliptical text. And they stake out the same ground and work the same problem—how to keep the canon open, how to renew the old and make the static dynamic, and how to keep God current. That last is “the work of revelation.” The canon, to which one can’t add or subtract one word, may be closed but it must not remain shut to interpretation. Every generation needs a way in. Click for larger view View full resolution Graetz wants to be “consciously feminist.” She wants to “deal with the typically feminine concerns of motherhood, barrenness, resentment about polygamy, the aftereffects of being raped, the joys of shared gossip, the tribulations of the aging process, and the unique relationship of siblings.” Genesis is her territory, and her characters are among its familiar population. Lesser-knowns appear, like Elisheva, Aaron’s wife, through whom Graetz remarks on the deaths of Nada and Avihu, Aaron’s and Elisheva’s sons. “[T]hey offered before the Lord alien...

Michael or Yhwh? Toward Identifying Melchizedek in 11Q13

Scholars are still divided over the identity of the figure Melchizedek in 11Q13. Is he an angel, or is ‘Melchizedek’ simply another title for Yhwh? This article argues that these two opposing views can be reconciled by seeing the figure Melchizedek as an expression of what the early rabbis called belief in ‘two Powers in heaven’. The way he is portrayed in 11QMelch is comparable to Philo’s concept of the divine MPHPK and the belief of the ‘Magharians’. While there are clear indications in 11Q13 that Melchizedek is an intermediary, there are equally compelling arguments that he is Yhwh. The author of 11Q13 uses a collage of biblical texts to present him as a divine intermediary. The fact that a number of biblical messianic titles are conflated in the person of Melchizedek encourages seeing other Qumran descriptions of exalted figures as referring to him as well.

Life after Death: A History of the Afterlife in the Religions of the West. By Alan F. Segal. Doubleday, 2004. 866 pages. $37.50.

The ambition of this book is breathtaking, and on first sight its length is more than a little daunting. It is, therefore, a tribute to Alan Segal’s accomplishment that, on finishing the book, the reader wishes for more. Segal’s basic premise seems to be that afterlife beliefs are not universal but in fact correlate with the worlds in which those who hold them live. Most scholars of religions will not find this to be a very remarkable claim, but to judge from the writing style, Segal aims at a wider public. That audience may find the premise startling, even unsettling. Furthermore, Segal sets afterlife beliefs in a much wider context. As a result, the book can provide general readers with a wonderfully thorough education. It may provide scholars with an opportunity to reconsider a broad range of material. The subtitle is a little misleading. The book does not provide a history of western ideas of the afterlife. It concentrates on the ancient Middle East and Mediterranean region. Segal actually begins “before the beginning” with a brief mention of Neanderthal evidence. Then he gives much fuller treatment to beliefs about the afterlife in ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia, Canaan, First Temple Judaism, Zoroastrianism, ancient Greece, Second Temple Judaism, apocalyptic texts, sectarian groups during “New Testament times,” Paul, the Gospels, the Pseudepigrapha, the Church Fathers, the early Rabbis, and nascent Islam.

SELF, SUBJECT, AND CHOSEN SUBJECTION Rabbinic Ethics and Comparative Possibilities

ABSTRACTThis paper formulates the categories of “ethics,”“self,” and “subject” for an analysis of classical rabbinic ethics centered on the text, The Fathers According to Rabbi Nathan. Early rabbis were concerned with the realms of life that today's scholars describe as ethics and self‐cultivation, yet they had no overarching concepts for either the self/person or for ethics. This analysis, then, cannot rely only upon native rabbinic terminology, but also requires a careful use of contemporary categories. This paper first sets out basic features of Rabbi Nathan and presents appropriate formulations of the relevant scholarly terms. The latter sections address possibilities for employing and revising these categories in descriptive and comparative studies more broadly, first surveying relevant scholarship on Christian, Muslim, and Manichaean sources, and then turning to ancient East Asian sources with a particular focus upon passages in the Zhuangzi.

List of Contributors

Citation (2005), "List of Contributors", Anderson, M. (Ed.) Toward a Critique of Guilt: Perspectives from Law and the Humanities (Studies in Law, Politics, and Society, Vol. 36), Emerald Group Publishing Limited, Bingley, p. vii. https://doi.org/10.1016/S1059-4337(05)36010-8 Publisher: Emerald Group Publishing Limited Copyright © 2005, Emerald Group Publishing Limited Book Chapters Contents List of Contributors Editorial Board Introduction: Guilt and Utopia Law's Guilt about Literature Guilty Professions: Specters of Sameness in Camus's The Fall The Injustice of Intersex: Feminist Science Studies and the Writing of a Wrong The Cow and the Plow: Animal Suffering, Human Guilt, and the Crime of Cruelty “Not a Story to Pass On:” Sexual Violence and Ethical Act in Toni Morrison's Beloved Was Cain Innocent? The Early Rabbis Interpret Guilt Eternal Remorse

The Fate of Jewish Historiography after the Bible: A New Interpretation

AbstractWhat caused the eventual decline in later Jewish history of the vibrant historiographical tradition of the biblical period? In contrast to the plethora of historical writings composed during the biblical period, the rabbis of the early common era apparently were not interested in writing history, and when they did relate to historical events they often introduced mythical and unrealistic elements into their writings. Scholars have offered various explanations for this phenomenon; a central goal of this article is to locate these explanations within both the immediate historical setting of Roman Palestine and the overarching cultural atmosphere of the Greco‐Roman Near East. In particular, I suggest that the largely ahistorical approach of the rabbis functioned as a local Jewish counterpart to the widespread classicizing tendencies of a contemporary Greek intellectual movement, the Second Sophistic. In both cases, eastern communities, whose political aspirations were stifled under Roman rule, sought to express their cognitive and spiritual identities by focusing on a glorious and idealized past rather than on contemporary history.Interestingly, the apparent lack of rabbinic interest in historiography is not limited to the early rabbinic period. Throughout the Middle Ages and into the Renaissance, Jews essentially did not write their political, diplomatic, or military history. Instead, Jews composed “traditional historiography” which included various types of literary genres among which the rabbinic “chain of transmission” was the most important. The chain of transmission reconstructs (or fabricates) the links that connect later rabbinic sages with their predecessors. Robert Bonfil has noted the similarity between this rabbinic project and contemporary church histories. Adding a diachronic dimension to Bonfil's comparison, I suggest that rabbinic chains of transmission and church histories are not similar though entirely independent phenomena, but rather their shared project actually derives from a common origin, the Hellenistic succession list. The succession list literary genre, which sketches the history of an intellectual discipline, apparently thrived during the Second Sophistic and diffused then into both rabbinic Judaism and early Christianity. Thus, even though historiography was not terribly important to the early rabbis or to most Second Sophistic intellectuals, the succession list schematic, or the history of an intellectual discipline, was evaluated differently. Rabbis and early Christians absorbed the succession list from Second Sophistic culture and then continued to employ this historiographical genre for many centuries to come.

Wunder und Wundertater im fruhrabbinischen Judentum: Studien zum Phanomen und seiner Uberlieferung im Horizont von Magie und Damonismus

Wunder und Wundertater im fruhrabbinischen Judentum: Studien zum Phanomen und seiner Uberlieferung im Horizont von Magie und Damonismus, by Michael Becker. WUNT 2/144. Tubingen: Mohr-Siebeck, 2002. Pp. xviii + 534. euro74.00 (paper). This large study, a doctoral dissertation supervised by Heinz-Wolfgang Kuhn, was accepted in the winter semester of 1999/2000 at the School of Protestant Theology of the Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich. It has been slightly revised for publication. Not least because of the differences between modern and ancient views on miracles, and therefore the difficulties involved in any study of miracles, Becker is sensitive to the constant need to make the text his point of departure. Almost a century ago there was a controversy in which Paul Fiebig (1876-1949) became convinced of the closeness of Jesus to the rabbis. On the other hand, Adolf Schlatter (1852-1938) disputed that Judaism proved a model for the miraculous activity of Jesus on the extraordinary grounds that neither Josephus nor the Mishnah contain any miracle story that dates back to the first century of this era. Many have interacted with and contributed to the field over the succeeding years. In ch. 1 Becker notes, in particular, the form critics Rudolf Bultmann and Martin Dibelius, as well as Isaak Heinemann, Alexander Guttmann, Max Kadushin, Leopold Sabourin, Kurt Hruby, Kurt Schubert, Ephraim E. Urbach, and Jacob Neusner (pp. 20-30). One of the things this history of the research shows is the importance of distinguishing carefully between the literary and historical levels of the texts (p. 32). Decker's investigation offers the first complete monograph since the FiebigSchlatter debate, dealing particularly with miracles and miracle workers in the rabbinic tradition. At the same time-as part 3, his significant epilogue, shows (pp. 417-42)-he seeks to deepen understanding of the Jesus tradition. Considering internal developments within Judaism over time and maintaining a sensitivity to the strange world with which he is dealing, Becker sets out to show that the representation of miracles and miracle workers in the early rabbinic literature is multilayered, as it is for any aspect of the study of any literature of late ancient times. Therefore, the section on methodology (pp. 32-49) is as important as it is sensitive to the problems of the age of the traditions, the quality of the texts, and the possibility of using this material to interact with the NT. Before coming to the heart of his research, Becker spends a great deal of time-perhaps too much time-on matters relating to magic (ch. 3) and demonology (ch. 4). Attempting-only somewhat successfully-to resist modern confusion over the nature of magic, and recognizing the need to define magic contextually, he takes account in particular of David Aune's definitions of magic as religious and, within this deviance, as managing supernatural powers in such a way that results are virtually guaranteed (Magic in Early Christianity, ANRW 2.23.2 [1980]: 1515). However, in arguing that deviance is only one-even if a prominent-aspect of magic, Becker seeks to draw attention to the need for the discussion to involve emic and etic descriptions of social, historical, and theological aspects of magic. Therefore, his starting point is the text and the opinions of the rabbis. (See his discussion in a wider context in Die 'Magie'-Problematik der Antike-Genugt eine sozialwissenschaftliche Erfassung? ZRGG 54 [2002]: 1-22.) This perspective is relevant for the study of Jesus (pp. 423-30): it shows at least that the charge of magic coming from outsiders is not useful in describing the inner motivation of Jesus' miracle working. However, I would challenge Becker that this perspective also shows-from the evidence of the Zauberpapyri-that we are unable to characterize Jesus as a magician in terms of his technique. Becker notes that the understanding of the relationship of early rabbis to magic changed over time. …

Shekhinah, the Virgin Mary, and the Song of Songs: Reflections on a Kabbalistic Symbol in Its Historical Context

In a book published several years ago entitled Keter: The Crown of God in Early Jewish Mysticism,1. Keter: The Crown of God in Early Jewish Mysticism. (Henceforth: Keter) Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997. I tried to make a modest contribution to the ongoing discussion of Kabbalistic symbols and their origins. There I traced the evolution of a single but key symbol from its place in rabbinic aggadah and early Jewish esotericism to its fixed role in the Kabbalistic symbol system of the High Middle Ages. Here I would like to repeat that process with regard to another major symbolic element of Kabbalah, considering broadly the role of the female within the godhead, particularly under the twin rubrics of shekhinah, the indwelling Presence, and kenesset yisra'el, the hypostatized “Community of Israel.” The positing of a female aspect within the divine self has to be seen against the background of the entire tradition of Jewish imaging of God, going back to the Bible and the early rabbis. Specifically, however, I plan to show that the unequivocal feminization of shekhinah in the Kabbalah of the thirteenth century is a Jewish response to and adaptation of the revival of devotion to Mary in the twelfth century Western church.

“Cain Rose up against Abel”: Murder, Mystery, and Paradise Lost

The originating text for story of first murder in Judeo-Christian history would initially appear to prohibit development of any aura of around fratricide. The Genesis text straightforwardly states that came to pass when they were in field that Cain rose up against Abel his brother and slew (4:8). Furthermore, in very next series of verses killer is promptly apprehended, interrogated, tried, judged, and condemned to exile (4:9-16). While it is obvious that biblical version of Abel's murder does not develop as a whodunit, many readers nevertheless share Elie Wiesel's sense of story: No other Biblical situation contains so many questions or arouses so many (40). Among those questions and uncertainties are several traditional concerns of literary mystery. Even earliest readers, for example, noted with curiosity that Cain's murder weapon is never identified, nor is site of fatal blow incurred by Abel. The crime scene, vaguely yet suggestively described in Scripture as the field, has also continued to prompt thoughtful inquiry and theorizing. These uncertainties, in addition to weightier concerns about Cain's motive as well as God's role in murder, were first voiced by early rabbis quoted in Midrash Rabbah, but those same enigmatic elements have also compelled consideration in many subsequent literary treatments of this primal story of crime and punishment. (1) While something of a literary mystery, then, Cain's slaying of Abel is simultaneously a theological mystery, as human drama of brother against brother is entangled with and within inscrutable ways of God. Karl Rahner begins his discussion of as religious truth by establishing as of most important key-words of Christianity and its theology (1000). Christian truths such as Trinity, Incarnation, divine foreknowledge, and grace are theological mysteries; they are incomprehensible, that is, to human reason and are available to those of faith only through divine revelation, as St. Paul explained to Ephesians: By revelation [God] made known unto me mystery (Eph. 3:3). Within story of fratricide in Genesis 4, however, theological mysteries must somehow be made to engage with human drama so as to shape presentation of God who is, after all, major character in this murder mystery. As literary Abel's murder necessarily poses a series of narrative problems that challenge creative insights of all story's redactors; as Christian mystery, however, Abel's murder poses theological problems that most seriously challenge those writers who acknowledge the incomprehensible God who comes to us as mystery (Rahner 1000). In tableau that begins Adam's vision of future before his expulsion from Garden, John Milton achieves in Book 11 of Paradise Lost one of most profoundly integrated of all literary attempts to present that is death of Abel. When Adam witnesses history's first ritual of worship sink into violent death and implores, Is Piety thus and pure Devotion paid? (11.452), he pronounces a question to which only can truly respond (cf. Quinones 17-19). To simpler question of what Cain used as a murder weapon, authorized rabbinical answer is either a staff or a stone, although several rabbis also contend that Cain strangled Abel (Midrash 188), as does Rogier Van Aerde in 1941 Dutch novel titled Cain (109). The apocryphal Books of Adam and Eve record that Cain first beat Abel with a staff and then hit him with a stone until his brains oozed out (58). In Beowulf Cain, who is Grendel's ancestor, is reported to have ingan briber, / faederen-maege (felled his own / brother with a sword [89]). In Genesis section of early-thirteenth-century Histoire Ancienne, Cain wields a baston or truncheon as he kills Abel (Joslin 88). The weapon of choice in several medieval English miracle plays presenting Abel's murder rather curiously becomes a jawbone. …

Unheroic Conduct: The Rise of Heterosexuality and the Invention of the Jewish Man

In a book that will both enlighten and provoke, Daniel Boyarin offers an alternative to the prevailing Euro-American warrior/patriarch model of masculinity and recovers the Jewish ideal of the gentle, receptive male. The Western notion of the aggressive, sexually dominant male and the passive female reaches back through Freud to Roman times, but as Boyarin makes clear, such gender roles are not universal. Analyzing ancient and modern texts, he reveals early rabbis - studious, family-oriented - as exemplars of manhood and the prime objects of female desire in traditional Jewish society. Challenging those who view the 'feminized Jew' as a pathological product of the Diaspora or a figment of anti-Semitic imagination, Boyarin argues that the Diaspora produced valuable alternatives to the dominant cultures' overriding gender norms. He finds the origins of the rabbinic model of masculinity in the Talmud, and though unrelentingly critical of rabbinic society's oppressive aspects, he shows how it could provide greater happiness for women than the passive gentility required by bourgeois European standards. Boyarin also analyzes the self-transformation of three iconic Viennese modern Jews: Sigmund Freud, the father of psychoanalysis; Theodor Herzl, the founder of Zionism; and Bertha Pappenheim (Anna O.), the first psychoanalytic patient and founder of Jewish feminism in Germany. Pappenheim is Boyarin's hero: it is she who provides him with a model for a militant feminist, anti-homophobic transformation of Orthodox Jewish society today. Like his groundbreaking Carnal Israel, this book is talmudic scholarship in a whole new light, with a vitality that will command attention from readers in feminist studies, history of sexuality, Jewish culture, and the history of psychoanalysis.

Jewish theologies of space in the scientific revolution: Henry More, Joseph Raphson, Isaac Newton and their predecessors

Summary Theological speculations on God's relation to place and space were introduced into the Jewish tradition by the early rabbis, initially in response to the previous appearance of words like māqôm (place) in Biblical literature. In the Middle Ages, Jewish philosophers modified these rabbinical ideas in the context of Aristotelian, Neoplatonic, and anti-Aristotelian currents within Jewish thought. One development in medieval Jewish thought of special interest for the development of ideas of space was the rise of Cabala, which Christian thinkers of the Renaissance and early modern periods saw as a sacred and primeval deposit of wisdom akin to prisca theologia. Both Henry More and, under More's influence, Joseph Raphson made use of Cabalist ideas in developing their own theologies of space. Isaac Newton was aware of these Jewish ideas but for the most part repudiated them, while making some use of māqôm as an expression of God's omnipresence.