Genesis Rabbah Research Articles

The Synoptic Problem in Rabbinic Literature

The Synoptic Problem in Rabbinic Literature, edited by Shaye J. D. Cohen. BJS 326. Providence: Brown University Press, 2000. Pp. xiii + 167. $60.00. Talmudic Stories: Narrative Art, Composition, and Culture, by Jeffrey Rubenstein. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999. Pp. xvi + 436. $55.00. Shaye Cohen's edited volume The Synoptic Problem in Rabbinic Literature and Jeffrey Rubenstein's Talmudic Stories: Narrative Art, Composition, and Culture are major contributions to the field of rabbinics, the former for its explicit attempt to deal with methodological issues pertaining to the study of this literature, the latter for the ways in which it analyzes several notable rabbinic stories in a fresh and detailed manner. While prima facie these works are different in terms of style and scholarly agenda, each nonetheless deals with the question of the extent to which rabbinic literature can be used to enhance our understanding of the rabbis, and of Palestinian and Babylonian Jews of late antiquity. The Synoptic Problem in Rabbinic Literature comprises six papers given at a small conference held at Brown University in 1998. Topics included the relationship of the Mishnah to the Tosefta, the relationship of these texts to Tannaitic midrashim and beraitot, the relationship of the Bavli (Babylonian Talmud) to the Yerushalmi (Palestinian Talmud), the relationship of the Talmuds to both the Tosefta and the Tannaitic midrashim, and the relationship of the Yerushalmi to Genesis Rabbah, Leviticus Rabbah, and Lamentations Rabbah. Given the caliber of the participants, undoubtedly this was an intellectual feast for those interested in current trends in rabbinic scholarship. While the collection covers a variety of topics and raises many methodological issues, its cohesion lies in its attempt to debunk the documentary hypothesis. As Robert Goldenberg refers to it, the Documentary Premise, espoused by Jacob Neusner, is an approach to rabbinic documents that treats rabbinic texts only on the redactional level with no serious regard for either earlier sources found within a work, or for similar sources found in other compilations. Each document must be understood on its own terms and as such tells us a great deal about the redactor of the compilation. That is to say, documents such as the Mishnah, Genesis Rabbah, the Tosefta, or the Yerushalmi are discrete works that attest to the coherent Weltanschauung of their respective redactors who intentionally shape their sources accordingly. Indeed, as Shaye Cohen avers, Much of ancient rabbinic literature is as synoptic as Matthew, Mark, and Luke; because of their extensive parallels in structure, content, and wording, rabbinic texts should be `seen together (p. vii). It should be noted, however, that the synoptic problem in rabbinic literature is in many respects more complex and unwieldy than in the Gospels. While the Synoptic Gospels are more or less contemporaneous, rabbinic literature spans several centuries. In this instance, the synoptic problem does not deal with three Gospels, a commonly recognized Q source and two other putative sources, but rather it involves numerous iterations of similar stories, sayings and dicta in more than one corpus (for that matter in more than one type of corpus), which, depending on the corpus itself, could very well have undergone several layers of redaction. Cohen's collection of essays, despite lacking a synthesizing conclusion, offers the reader access into the complicated nature of the synoptic problem in rabbinic literature. Each of the six chapters merits a more detailed treatment than space allows. With this in mind, I will discuss briefly the main thrust of each paper and occasionally will make some general observations. In the first paper of the series, Robert Goldenberg sets the stage for the ensuing engagement with and criticism of Neusner's documentarian approach, which he considers a deeply problematic stance. …

Traditions of the Bible: A Guide to the Bible as It Was at the Start of the Common Era

Traditions of Bible: A Guide to Bible as It Was at Start of Common Era, by James L. Kugel. Cambridge, MA/London: Harvard University Press,1998. Pp. xxii + 1055. N.P. The present volume, an expanded version of more popular work The Bible As It Was (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press,1997), is a welcome exception to wearisome truth that much scholarly output is characterized by inconsequential aims and overblown execution. James Kugel pursues objectives that reach well beyond scope of his book, and his execution of agenda within extent of book is enchanting. Kugel's main objective is to offer a sampling of exegetical traditions that grew from early interpreters' reading of Pentateuch so as to give readers a sense of what he calls in book's subtitle the Bible as it was at start of Common Era (from third century scE to first century CE). By this he means Hebrew Bible as Jews and Christians experienced it in days of its gestation and infancy. He insists that those audiences rarely encountered Bible apart from these interpretations and that Bible became scripture for them precisely because of exegetical efforts of early interpreters. Because these interpretive efforts made Bible what it became, Kugel reasons that their fruits ought to be considered with Bible. Kugel also wants to reveal interpretive reasoning behind exegetical motifs that he explores, and to show that interpretation was traditional, that is, that exegetical motifs transcended individual interpreters and their works, being passed from one generation to next. And he wants to show his readers that, in spite of long history of difficulties between Judaism and Christianity, both were.nurtured from birth by same scriptures and interpretive traditions. But Kugel has even loftier goals in mind. In Afterword he bemoans loss of interest since Reformation in the Bible as it was. He blames this diminished regard for Bible's interpretive past on post-Renaissance interest in Bible's prehistory. This abiding fascination with Bible's compositional history severs scripture from interpretive tradition that confirmed its authoritative status and it impoverishes contemporary readers. Consequently Kugel hopes that his efforts will inspire in teachers, scholars, and lay readers renewed appreciation for the Bible as it was, and that their appreciation would show up in their instruction, publications, and faithful use of Bible as God's word. Kugel sets out to achieve his aims through twenty-five chapters that trace exegetical motifs deriving from an equal number of episodes in Pentateuch. Exegetical motifs emerged from early readers' fourfold conviction that Bible is cryptic, relevant, harmonious, and correct in all details, and inspired word of God. Consequently Bible's mysteries required elucidation, its relevance had to be brought to light, its apparent contradictions and errors had to be proven to be harmonious and correct, and its testimony to God's word demanded explication. Kugel culls witnesses to exegetical motifs from an astounding number of texts. His chief sources are 1 Enoch, Septuagint, Jubilees, Wisdom of Ben Sira, Dead Sea Scrolls, Wisdom of Solomon, writings of Philo and Josephus, Targums, and New Testament; but he also consults many lesser known and/or later works such as Cave of Treasures, Genesis Rabbah, and writings of such diverse early Christian writers as Ephraem, Justin, and Augustine. Each chapter begins with a summary of a biblical episode, continues by presenting exegetical motifs that developed from episode, and concludes with a new summary that takes into account exegetical motifs' transformation of biblical episode. …

"La mujer de Rabi Yosé": Comentario lingüístico del texto arameo de Gn 17,3

This article is a study of the characteristics –phonology, morphology, syntax and lexic- of an Aramaic text of Genesis Rabbah 17,3. A comparation of this Aramaic text with the tagumic texts of the Cairo Genizah and with the text of Onqelos and Jonathan Targums reveals very interesting features of this Aramaic dialect (Jewish Palestinian Aramaic, Sokoloff or Galilean Aramaic, Kutscher).

Judah and Tamar (Genesis 38) in Ancient Jewish Exegesis: Studies in Literary Form and Hermeneutics

This exploration of Genesis 38 in three interpretive writings shows how new meanings emerge through encounters between the biblical text and later Jewish communities. A literary reading within the canon suggests that the story of Judah and Tamar points to the morally ambiguous origins of David's lineage. Ancient Jewish exegesis, however, challenges this understanding. The Testament of Judah interprets Genesis 38 as the story of a warrior king's tragic downfall. Targum Neofiti develops it to illustrate the concept "sanctification of the (divine) Name". and Genesis Rabbah portrays it as a series of providential events issuing in the royal and messianic lineage. Esther Marie Menn pioneers a fresh approach to the study of biblical interpretation by analyzing the relation between interpretative genre, altered plot structure, and cultural values.

A Rivalry of Genius: Jewish and Christian Biblical Interpretation in Late Antiquity (review)

Reviewed by: A Rivalry of Genius: Jewish and Christian Biblical Interpretation in Late Antiquity Philip A. Homan Marc Hirshman. A Rivalry of Genius: Jewish and Christian Biblical Interpretation in Late Antiquity. Trans. Batya Stein SUNY Series in Judaica: Hermeneutics, Mysticism, and Religion Albany: State University of New York Press, 1996 Pp. ix + 179. $16.95. Marc Hirshman, professor of midrash and Rabbinics at the University of Haifa and specialist in the study of the Midrash on the book of Ecclesiastes, has written a book which will serve the growing appreciation of scholars for the pre-critical biblical interpretation of the Rabbis and Church Fathers. In this book of fewer than two hundred pages, Hirshman raises the question of “mutual influences and patterns of cross-fertilization” between the Rabbis and Fathers on their interpretations of scripture as well as on the literary forms those interpretations took. Hirshman argues that, although the literary forms in which they communicated their exegeses and the reasons they studied scripture to begin with, differed, the Rabbis and Fathers were not only aware of each other but influenced the ways in which the other read certain biblical texts. Before demonstrating mutual influences in specific rabbinic and patristic texts, Hirshman claims that polemics contributed to the Jewish and Christian study of scripture and asks why the Rabbis and Fathers were polemical and how they were polemical. In chapter one, Hirshman claims that the Rabbis and Church Fathers had not only to contend with pagans as well as with gnostics in their midst but had also to defend against each other their own understanding of the Old Testament. Furthermore, they did so in different forms. The Rabbis confined themselves to the midrashic form of commentary, while the Fathers took advantage of all the forms of Greco-Roman culture available to them. In chapter two, Hirshman describes the reasons for the complexity of the hermeneutical controversy between the Rabbis and the Fathers, who fought over the inheritance of biblical Israel and the Old Testament, including Christianity’s rapid spread among the nations and consequent adoption of numerous languages and literary forms. In chapter three, he briefly treats the implications of the rhetorical characteristics of patristic interpretation in contrast to the midrashic form of rabbinic exegesis, and he sets the methodological parameters for his investigation of specific texts in the rest of the book. Hirshman limits his study of patristic texts to those by the Fathers writing in or near Palestine during the writing of the Mishnah and the Palestinian Talmud. In chapter four, he raises two issues in Justin Martyr’s Dialogue with Trypho, which explicitly quotes Jewish interpretations of scripture. Justin criticizes the Jews’ observance of the commandments; since the elements of nature do not cease on the Sabbath, he claims, God does not observe the commandments. In chapter five, the author examines the rabbinic response in Genesis Rabbah to the kind of questions raised by Justin Martyr. The Rabbis claimed that even God ruled nature within the guidelines set by the Jewish law. In chapter six, Hirshman takes up the second issue in the Dialogue, Justin’s reading the Old Testament as [End Page 316] a prophecy of Christ, by comparing the interpretation of Exodus 17:11, Moses’s guarantee of Israel’s victory over the Amalekites, in the Dialogue to its interpretation in the Mekhilta, a legal midrash on the book of Exodus. The respective interests of the Fathers and Rabbis can be seen clearly in these interpretations, since Justin attributes Israel’s victory to Moses’ making the sign of the cross of Christ, while the Rabbis attribute it to Moses’ pointing to the God who gave Israel the commandments of the Torah. In chapters seven and eight, Hirshman turns to Origen, the compiler of the Hexapla, who also cites Jewish biblical interpretations, but without the polemical overtones of Justin. Origen’s knowledge of Hebrew allows him to perceive deeper meanings in the scripture as well as more easily to interpret one verse in light of another, a method common to the Rabbis. In his homilies on the book of Exodus, he equates the bitterness of the water at Mara in Exodus 15:23–25 with the...

The Return of Myth in Genesis Rabbah on the Akeda

L'interpretation de l'Akeda par la Genese Rabbah est specialement riche et revele de nombreux themes psychologiques et mythologiques. Un tel retour midrashique vers le mythe implique qu'Abraham etait reellement determine a sacrifier son fils parce qu'il concevait cet acte comme un prolongement du sacrifice animal et tout a fait en dehors d'une volonte d'aneantir l'heritier promis a sa succession. Lorsque dans l'Akeda, les anges commandent a Abraham d'abandonner le sacrifice, la Genese Rabbah renverse une nouvelle fois les termes: Abraham semblait d'autant plus presse d'accomplir son dessein. La Genese Rabbah eclaire la dimension mythique de l'Akeda

Carnal Israel: Reading Sex in Talmudic Culture (review)

Book Reviews BOOK REVIEWS 79 Carnal Israel: Reading Sex in Talmudic Culture, by Daniel Boyarin. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993. 283 pp. $35.00 (c). In this well argued study Boyarin sets out to correct misconceptions about rabbinic attitudes to gender differences, sexual practice, and human sexuality in general. Boyarin's underlying premise is that the rabbinic psyche was not plagued with the "fear of women" and that the rabbinic mind, unlike that of Hellenistic Judaism and Christianity, did not subscribe to the dualist notion of the body-soul dichotomy. The latter fostered the loathing of the body as filthy and as the prison of the pure, heaven-bound soul; it constructed a gender-based theological and cultural hierarchy in which the female, in her sexual and procreative functions, represented the degraded pbysis, while the male stood for the sublime life of the spirit, struggling to free itselffrom the trap of the sexualized body; women represented nature and men culture. Rabbinic Judaism, however, perceived the human soul and body as a unified whole, rather than a polarity, and sexuality as one of the components of being human, not a feature of existence that should be denied and renounced. An illuminating example of the difference between the rabbinic and Hellenistic discourse of the body is the interpretation of the two versions of the creation of man in Genesis 1 and 2. Both readings view the first narrative as describing a primal human who was androgynous. Philo, however, sees the first Adam as an entirely spiritual, non-corporeal being, and the human in the second tale as a male, out of whom a female is constructed. The Rabbis understood the first human to be a bi-sexual, corporeal being, which was then separated into male and female. This difference in interpretation is not only literary, claims Boyarin, but it displays clearly the basic socio-cultural opposition between the Rabbis and their Hellenistic counterparts as well as early Christians. For the latter, the sublime form of life was that of celibacy and physical denial, symbolized in the first human, who was incorporeal and ungendered. For the Rabbis, the ideal was the return to the original state of the first human before the separation, which is accomplished in the fusion of the sexes in the sexual act. 80 SHOFAR Spring 1995 Vol. 13, No.3 Boyarin examines rabbinic texts to highlight the absence of abomination of women and the body, and the general tendency not to demonize the female. He also explores those texts that reflect a proto-feminist voice within rabbinic culture and that register the male discomfort in assigning entirely sexual and procreative roles to women. All this did not result in a non-sexist, egalitarianJewish culture. Boyarin uncovers the ambivalences, in both aggadic and halakhic materials, surrounding the questions of women and the sexual drive and women and the studying of the Torah as examples of the cultural tensions in rabbinic times. Boyarin argues, however, that we have to find the roots of the male-dominant, androcentrist ideology as well as socio-cultural practices of rabbinic Judaism in historical and economic necessities, rather than in theologically mandated or psychically rooted attitudes. Boyarin's mastery of the primary texts and his ability to examine them in their historical background as well as against modern theories and perspectives are impreSSive. He makes a convincing case for attributing equal cultural significance to historical documents and literary texts; he therefore synthesizes halakhic and aggadic texts in his quest to reveal the theological, political, and psycho-social issues embedded in them. His dazzling scholarship notwithstanding, Boyarin does have a tendency to attribute cultural significance to those texts that support his point of view and to dismiss equally powerful but contradictory texts as "exceptions to the cultural pattern," while neglecting to point out the criteria by which he deems some texts essential and others marginal. Why is the Rabbis' damning statement that Satan was created together with Eve not significant? Boyarin's reading of the aggadic material lacks sensitivity to nuances of language and tone. He therefore dismisses as an exception the tale appearing in Genesis Rabbah and in Avot deRabbi Natan, which reduces the charismatic...

“And the Elder Shall Serve the Younger”: A Midrash about Jesus

/[idrash, in its essence, is a response to scripture. The study of God's lYlword required elaboration and explication of its textual and its practical meaning. Some of this explication is believed to have been contemporaneous rabbinic response to the text; other comments were preexistent and independent statements that were subsequently appended to relevant passages. Genesis Rabbah, an exegetical midrash on the Book of Genesis compiled in the land of Israel, is considered the earliest amoraic aggadic midrash extant. Chanoch Albeck determined the date of its compilation to be no later than the end of the fifth century.l

The Figure of Joseph in Post-Biblical Jewish Literature

This book is a comparative study in the hermeneutics of the ancient interpretations of the biblical Joseph story. Assuming that every interpretation results from a creative encounter between the ultimately open text of Scripture and the specific thought world of the interpreter, it examines the particular way in which each exegete construes the biblical outline of Joseph's character. Paying special attention to the literary nature of the sources, the study begins with an analysis of the narrative methods and the hermeneutic potential of the biblical story, and then proceeds to the inter-testamental evidence. The central concern of this study is to compare the different interpretations of the philosopher Philo, the historian Josephus and the Midrash Genesis Rabbah. These sources do not only range over a considerable amount of time but significantly derive respectively from the Greek and Hebrew cultural realm. Consequently, their figures of Joseph fulfil distinctly different purposes, ranging from an idealisation of Joseph as a Hellenistic politician to autobiographical apologetics and religious instruction.

Polemic Literary Units in the Classical Midrashim and Justin Martyr's "Dialogue with Trypho"

After a literary analysis of Justin's «Dialogue with Trypho», the A. compares three selections from the «Dialogue» with parallel sources in «Mekhilta de-Rabbi Ishmael» and «Genesis Rabbah». This comparison raises the possibility of the existence of polemical collections which were eventually incorporated into the classical midrashim. Some of these units might very well trace their beginnings to anti-pagan polemic, which were modified later to answer the needs of anti-Christian polemic

Confronting Creation: How Judaism Reads Genesis: An Anthology of Genesis Rabbah (review)

Confronting Creation: How Judaism Reads Genesis: An Anthology of Genesis Rabbah (review)

Comparative Midrash: The Plan and Program of Genesis Rabbah and Leviticus Rabbah

Book Review| June 01 1988 Comparative Midrash: The Plan and Program of Genesis Rabbah and Leviticus Rabbah Comparative Midrash: The Plan and Program of Genesis Rabbah and Leviticus Rabbah, Jacob Neusner. Zev Garber Zev Garber Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Journal of Biblical Literature (1988) 107 (2): 346–348. https://doi.org/10.2307/3267728 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Permissions Search Site Citation Zev Garber; Comparative Midrash: The Plan and Program of Genesis Rabbah and Leviticus Rabbah. Journal of Biblical Literature 1 June 1988; 107 (2): 346–348. doi: https://doi.org/10.2307/3267728 Download citation file: Zotero Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All Scholarly Publishing CollectiveSBL PressJournal of Biblical Literature Search Advanced Search The text of this article is only available as a PDF. Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.