Jewish Commentaries Research Articles

Jewish Commentaries and the Septuagint

La Septante est le premier et le plus ancien exemple, pour nous, d'interpretation de la Bible hebraique. La Mekilta est un travail midrashique classique sur la Bible. En procedant a une etude comparative rigoureuse entre la Septante et la Mekilta, l'A. veut montrer des exemples authentiques d'exegese juive. Cela pose, il souhaite relever et classer les accords qui existent entre les deux textes. Interpretations et harmonisations diverses seront alors mises en evidence

Falconers: the first Portuguese naturalists

was not consistent during this long period; on the contrary, it fluctuated considerably. Moreover, the western world had only just started to become fully aware of much classical philosophy, through the translations of Arab and Jewish philosophers and commentaries on them. For this reason, empiricism and contact with nature—more than formal study, which was attempted only by a few—inspired the practice of natural history. It is necessary to assess the achievements and merits of the first Portuguese naturalists by viewing them in the context of the development of scientific knowledge in western Europe, particularly from the thirteenth century onwards. The Middle Ages were the golden age of falconry, though the sport continued in Portugal with greater or lesser enthusiasm until the eighteenth century. The earliest Portuguese works on falconry date from the fourteenth century, and although there were earlier codices on birds, they were texts with moral and religious symbolism, rather than a zoological viewpoint.

Jacob's limp

This study describes in modern medical terms a traumatic hip injury suffered by the Biblical patriarch Jacob approximately 3,500 years ago. The case history is based on the original Hebrew text found in the Bible book of Genesis (Chapter 32:25–33) as interpreted by traditional Jewish commentaries on the Bible. Jacob sustained a hip injury in hand-to-hand combat with an adversary or through an intense physiological reaction to a prophetic vision of such a battle. He appears to have sustained neurological injury to his sciatic nerve as well as musculoskeletal damage to his hip. These injuries caused a temporary limping gait. Jacob probably sustained a neurapraxia of the sciatic nerve. The differential diagnosis of his musculoskeletal hip injury includes hip dislocation, fracture, soft tissue trauma, and articular pathology.

The JPS Torah Commentary: Deuteronomy

JPS Torah Commentary: by Jeffrey H. Tigay. Philadelphia/Jerusalem: Jewish Publication Society, 1996. Pp. 1 + 548. $60.00. goal of Tigay's extensive critical commentary on Deuteronomy is determined by the program of the JPS Torah Commentary Series: to build on the venerable tradition of classical Jewish commentary by adding the insights and fruits of modern Jewish critical scholarship. comprises an introduction (pp. xi-xxxi: themes in issues of historical-critical scholarship, Deuteronomy in Jewish tradition), glossary and abbreviations (pp. xxxiii-xliii), maps (pp. xlv-1), text, commentary, and critical notes (pp. -413), and an extensive set of 33 excursuses with notes on wide-ranging topics from historical geography and vassal treaties to child sacrifice and cultic prostitution (pp. 41748). volume is more than a handful, physically, and left-to-right readers must adjust their habits of handling. English-language translation, commentary, and notes are all subordinated to the right-to-left Hebrew original supplied, complete, throughout the commentary. Biblical scholars will find that the commentary is conservative in historical orientation (e.g., excursus 6, p. 433, puts monotheism's origins at Moses' feet [in the train of Kaufmann and Albright]) and in historical-critical methodology (e.g., excursus 29, a lengthy explanation and defense of source criticism as a tool to understand literary repetition and disjunction in Deuteronomy 31). Deuteronomy is identified as the book of the torah, catalyst of Josiah's reform, composed, at least in part, shortly before the reform of 622 BCE. literary connections between 2 Kings 22-23 show a real historical link, not literary jury-rigging. Both early (Moses) and late (Ezra-Nehemiah) datings are ruled out by a combination of ideological and geographical hints in Deuteronomy that point to authorship in a latter-seventh-century refugee community, whose reform movement was transplanted to Judah from the northern kingdom in the wake of Assyrian expansion (pp. xxiii-xxiv). Tigay does take some pluralistic pains to show that the traditional Jewish hermeneutic of harmonistic interpretation has its own validity (p. 428). At the same time, he tries to coax traditionalist readers toward the historicalcritical model of biblical literary production and history (p. 429; cf. excursus 18, pp. 470-72). Tigay places that same Jewish audience in historical-critical debt as he describes the history and deuteronomic origins of contemporary liturgy (shema, excursus 10) and religious appurtenances (tellin and mezuzot, excursus 11). commentary offers a wealth of exegetical detail on every page, supplemented by lengthy excursuses. Modern readers puzzled or put off by the legal material in the Pentateuchal books will find illuminating explanations of the logical organization of Deuteronomy's laws (pp. 446-59), of the extensive list of curses in Deuteronomy 28 (pp. 489-93) and their background in the genre of ancient Near Eastern treaty formulation (pp. 494-97). Excursus 1, The Historical Geography of Deuteronomy, sets a fine antiquarian mood for the remaining thirty-two excursuses, with a complete inventory of deuteronomic place-names prefaced by an instructive introduction to the perils and potential rewards of geographical exegesis: References to secondary literature on Deuteronomy are wide-ranging, though not exhaustive. …

ביקורת נוסח המקרא: פרקי מבוא [The Textual Criticism of the Bible: An Introduction] (review)

Hebrew Studies 33 (1992) 170 Reviews (several eds., two excellent Spanish translations and one terrible English one). On the citation of Ibn Zabara as well as the matters discussed by Talmage on p. 50 of the introduction, see Judith Dishon's splendid edition (Jerusalem, 1985, p. 218; if Talmage did not see this edition, the editors again surely must have) which cites Davidson, whose edition Talmage did see, yet ignored. These matters aside, the commentary which is of most importance is that of Joseph, while the most disappointing-and even useless-is that of Moses. (Incidentally, the Oxford text [So R. Driver], attributed to Ibn 'Ezra, was also reprinted in Kitvey R' [sic] Avraham Ibn 'Ezra [Jerusalem, 1972], vol. 5; not mentioned by Talmage, nor did he make it clear that the Oxford MS was the one edited by Driver; see his vague remarks, pp. 18-19 of the introduction.) David Qiml:ti's commentary lies somewhere in between these two and is of little value to anyone other than a student of his work. Bible scholars as well as students of medieval Jewish commentaries may benefit, however, from Joseph's fascinating commentary. Talmage's introduction, for all its faults, provides an adequate guide to some of the more important observations. Norman Roth University of Wisconsin Madison, WI 53706 .~':JO 'Pi£) :~ipOn MOU m'p':l [THE TEXTUAL CRITICISM OF THE BIBLE: AN INTRODUCTION ]. By Emanuel Tov. The Biblical Encyclopaedia Library 4. Pp. xxiv + 326. Jerusalem: The Bialik Institute, 1989. Paper. Lower criticism has, lamentably, often been held in low esteem, not only because of the pejorative sound of its name but also because the study of textual minutiae seems to offer rather little intellectual adventure. Though this may not be its purpose, the book under review is certainly qualified to set things straight: The lower (or, better, textual) criticism constitutes the indispensable foundation for any serious study of the Bible. As the author pertinently points out (p. 12), however, it is not the only foundation of the literary analysis of the Bible; the so-called "Higher Criticism ," linguistic investigations, geographic and historical research, and the interpretation of individual verses likewise serve as pedestals. If these topics constitute fascinating subjects of study for their own sake, so does Hebrew Studies 33 (1992) 171 Reviews textual criticism. Tov's book produces the proof, displaying an intriguing segment of cultural history and providing excellent guidance for its appraisal. The exposition starts with a convincing demonstration of the unreliability of any commonly used Bible text (chap. 1). The most carefully printed editions of the Hebrew text, some of which claim to be based on authoritative manuscripts (e.g., Leningradensis or the Aleppo codex), not only differ from one another, but quite frequently reflect the views (or should one say "bias"?) of the scholars who edited them. The author makes us aware of the problem by juxtaposing variant readings exhibited in parallel biblical passages as well as early witnesses to text-forms which differ from the MT, to say nothing of the textus receptus. At the end of this introductory chapter the most important technical terms are explained. The second chapter describes the textual witnesses, beginning with the proto-Masoretic texts and their relation to the MT, then commenting on the Samaritan text and its earlier forms, before finally explaining the classical versions. Numerous comparative tables illustrate the issues under debate, and the problems connected with the text-critical use of the versions are amply discussed. In contradistinction to earlier works on text and versions of the OT, the unique importance of the Dead Sea Scrolls is duly demonstrated here. For the emergence of the MT the author postulates three historic stages, each bearing a characteristic degree of textual stability or variance. Chapter 3 sketches the history of the text, which is compared to previous scholars' outlines. Tov differentiates between pristine literary documents and the later established text, advocating the search for the latter as the ideal goal of textual research even though it can only be progressively approached and never reached. Chapter 4 deals with the transmission of the text, including the material aspects of the scribes' workmanship on the one hand and...

A Further Consideration of D. W. Thomas's Theories About Yāda

The late D. Winton Thomas published a number of articles on the Hebrew verb yddac, as well as on cognate nouns, and argued that it does not always mean know or the like. He claimed to have discovered a homonymous root related to the Arabic verb waduCa, become still, quiet, at rest. He suggested that, for example, the qal in Hebrew sometimes means have rest, be still, be quiet (e.g. Isa. xv 4; Ps. xxxv 15; Job ix 5, xx 20; Prov. v 6), the hiphcil make quiet, submissive (e.g. Judg. viii 16), humiliate (e.g. Ecclus vii 20), and punish (e.g. Gen. xviii 21), and the niph al be brought to submission (e.g. Judg. xvi 9); further, the qal itself can mean be humiliated (e.g. Hosea ix 7). He also claimed to find support for his theory in the ancient versions and in the writings of medieval and later Jewish commentators and lexicographers. Although he was not aware of the fact when he put forward his theory, Thomas had been anticipated by J. J. Reiske, Coniecturae in lobum et Proverbia Salomonis (Leipzig, 1779), who compared the Arabic and translated lo6-yddac in Job xx 20 as Non erit quietus, and tedac in Job xxxvii 15 as quietus manes, and suggested humiliabitur as a possible rendering of yiwwddeac in Prov. x 9. In 1970 I discussed Thomas's theory in an article (which he was able to read in typescript shortly before his death on 12 June of that year), which listed his relevant publications and the Hebrew

Ejemplos del griego rabinico a la luz del tesoro lexicográfico del <i>DGE</i>

Rabbinical Greek is defined as the Greek vocabulary which emerged in Aramaic and Hebrew sources from the first century B.C. until the end of the Byzantine period. The study of this vocabulary enlarges our understanding of the lexicon of religious life and political administration in the Roman East, as well as increasing our recognition of phonetical phenomena in the transition from κοινή to Byzantine and Modern Greek. The present work is devoted to the study of the Greek words in Genesis Rabba , a traditional Jewish commentary written in Palestine during the Byzantine period. The proper use of the DGE and its catalogue was helpful for a better understanding and interpretation of these rabbinical sources and their Hellenistic heritage.

Jewish Hermeneutics and Contemporary Theories of Textuality: Hartman, Bloom, and DerridaMidrash and Literature. Geoffrey Hartman , Sanford BudickDerrida: On the Threshold of Sense. John Llewelyn

from Hebrew verb drash, meaning search, inquiry, or investigation, is traditional exegetical method of Jewish biblical hermeneutics. According to James Kugel in Two Introductions to Midrash, an essay from and Literature, The word has been used to designate both of interpretation and fruits of that activity (the collective body of such interpretations developed by rabbinical guardians of Torah). But at bottom, Kugel tells us, midrash is not a genre of interpretation but an interpretive stance.' Though alien to Christian exegetical tradition, midrashic relation of interpreter to scripture immediately suggests parallels between its stance toward commentary and intertextuality of contemporary criticism, where readers recognize fluid boundaries between text and interpretation, rather than imperious unity of primary text, and tend to emphasize conversation over objectivity and systematic uniformity in interpretation. and Literature, which offers selections from eighteen writers from various disciplines associated with Hebrew and literary studies, suggests correspondences between types of textual interpretation practiced in ancient Israel and the new criticism. Not accidently, this anthology contains essays by Geoffrey Hartman and Jacques Derrida as well as a section entitled Midrash and Kabbalah which invites consideration of Harold Bloom. I have paired my reading of and Literature with an examination of John Llewelyn's Derrida: On Threshold of Sense,2 which, though it does not emphasize Derrida's relation to Jewish commentary, is a detailed examination of Derrida's relation to metaphysics. Reading these two books together has prompted me to think about general Judeo-Christian themes which speak to possible interrelations among Hartman, Derrida, and Bloom, both as Jewish readers and as critics who have placed themselves inside and outside Jewish literary history in order to question metaphysical tradition and classical logos. My discussion begins with a brief historical sketch of Jewish sacred literature, centering on distinctions between Jewish and Christian exegesis and entanglement of rabbinical with kabbalah. My analysis will then turn to Hartman, Bloom, and Derrida, whom I will discuss according to following themes: status, or question, of Book; Jewish tradition as orthodoxy and heresy; and relation between rhetoric and ontotheology (Heidegger's description of religion-based, transcendental ideas of Western philosophy). Because Jewish literary history and contemporary themes emerging from it are enormously complex

Joseph Ibn Kaspi's 'Gevia' Kesef': A Study in Medieval Jewish Philosophic Bible Commentary

Joseph Ibn Kaspi's 'Gevia' Kesef': A Study in Medieval Jewish Philosophic Bible Commentary

Signs Taken for Wonders: Essays in the Sociology of Literary Forms (review)

298Philosophy and Literature Susan Handelman writes fascinatingly on Derrida's relationship to die tradition of Jewish commentary on the Old Testament in which revisionary interpretations are possible because language is regarded as the essence of reality. Thus "the passion to displace origins, the Jewish heretic hermeneutic, surfaces in Derrida, who places a radical unintelligibility at die origin ofhis thought" (p. 125). The late Paul de Man's essay finds in Hegel's Aesthetics a ground for believing that poets and philosophers must forget that the figures at die heart of their writings are not discoveries but tiieir own artificial structures that nevertheless can undo usurped political authority. Michael Ryan argues against "liberal Reason" — essentially the "reason" of Descartes — by attacking the contradictions ofits founding metaphors (which those familiar withJohn Stuart Mill may diink he exaggerates ) and pointing out (p. 158) diat "the institutions ofliberal social dieory" are "discursive fictions" — which may strike die many who think all institutions created by discourse as an argument diat proves too much. Finally, Gayatri Spivak explores the extent to which Derrida's deconstruction of"phallocentrism" can serve as guide to women engaged in rewriting traditionally male discourse; it is, she finds, encouraging but "caught on the odier side of sexual difference" (p. 184). The book elicits several major questions. One is whether the term "displacement" around which this volume is organized is not employed so variously as to be simply a fashionable flag rather than a useful working term. My sense that it is forced to try to do too much is die reason I have avoided it thus far. We find, for instance, that "displacement " can mean the Derridean reversal of a hierarchy and "dislodging" of a system, and thus is opposed to Hegel's "sublation" (pp. 1 and 2), emphasis on the marginal (p. 3), a substitution for somediing else (p. 3), "transformation" as opposed to "translation" (p. 4), exile from certitude (p. 5), placement in a new context (p. 5), both Freudian Verschiebung and Einstellung (p. 6), a decentering (p. 9), inflection (p. 11), negation ofthought (p. 1 1), a violent intervention or shaking (p. 12), a looking away from (p. 24), metaphor (p. 36), the construction of a barrier, Em "ob-scene" (p. 63), a forgetting (p. 64), textual commentary (p. 95), a transfer, as of property rights (p. 137), and the rhetorical process ofcomparison (p. 256). A second question is whetiier one of the merits of the present collection is not the reinforcement of the heretical, scandalous, perhaps even displacing suspicion among those skeptical of the value of deconstruction as an intellectual enterprise diat Derrida's great achievement is essentially stylistic, that language and philosophy are simply topics sufficiendy abstract so that his word play need never collide widi extralinguistic experience. Pennsylvania State UniversityWendell V. Harris Signs Taken for Wonders: Essays in the Sociology of Literary Forms, by Franco Moretti; translated by Susan Fischer, David Forgacs, and David Miller; 273 pp. London: Verso Editions and NLB, 1983, $25.00 hardbound, $9.95 paper. This is a frustrating book. Not so much because it is a collection ofonly vaguely related essays, but radier because normal criteria for evaluating criticism do not seem to apply. If we compare one of Moretti's essays to another, there is no question that diey are uneven, Reviews299 but if one is forced to evaluate the volume as a whole, one is reduced to likes and dislikes. Those who worship in Moretti's critical church will like it. Those who don't, won't. To situate Moretti's approach, one might think back to die "philological circle" which Leo Spitzer employed to find parallel historical and linguistic structures, then add a generous measure of Freud and Marx (or Lukács) and move the emphasis from literature to society. The "signs" of die title are, according to die jacket, "literary systems that are tokens of wider cultural and political realities." Not surprisingly, Moretti is more of a historian than a rhetorician, more of a sociologist than a critic. In the first chapter, Moretti suggests that a history of literature in die guise of "a sociology of symbolic forms, a history of cultural conventions, should perhaps finally...

A History of Philosophy by B. A. G. Fuller (review)

510BOOK REVIEWS A History of Philosophy. Revised edition. By B. A. G. Fuller. New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1946. Pp. viii, 560. The author, a professor of philosophy at the University of Southern California , has wrinen an easily readable work on the history of occidental Philosophy (including a short chapter concerning the Arabian and Jewish commentators on Aristotle), beginning with the Milesian School and concluding with Santayana's Neo-Realism. A large field has been covered within, comparatively speaking, the minimum of space, and, for the most part, it has been done with able and prudent selection. On the whole it seems that the author has covered every phase in the history of philosophy and every philosopher who has found a place in the current text books. But in spite of what the author states on page V of his preface, his style is at times flippant, but, I imagine, clear and certainly pleasing to the average college student. The general position of the author seems to be that of the modern rationalist who, however, displays a tolerance towards and an honest endeavor to be fair in his criticism of Christian thought and even towards Catholic doctrine. And yet, probably due to his evident lack of information, he does not always succeed. There is no need, it seems to us, to offer a criticism of this work. We differ essentially in our basic principles; moreover, as concerns his faithfulness to accurate historical presentation, we have noted too many inaccuracies to warrant our consideration. This is particularly true concerning his treatment of Christian philosophy. The author himself acknowleges (cfr. footnote , page 344) that he has no first hand information concerning Christian thinkers and has relied solely on secondary sources such as the works of De Wulf, Gilson and Ruggiero. And yet, even with the aid of these secondary sources, he has failed to record accurately the true teaching. This is probably due to the free manner and lack of understanding of the doctrine involved For example, among many incorrect statements we submit the following to the judgment of our readers with which, we trust, neither the students of Saint Thomas nor Saint Bonaventure would agree: "In the first place, he (St Thomas) encountered the ill-will of the mystics, then chiefly centered in the Franciscan order. Bonaventure, for example, must have felt his ecstatic ardors chilled by Aquina's assertion that hope for attaining the beatific vision in our earthly life is vain, and here and now we had better cultivate the virtues and the perfections realizable in our present estate and be content to postpone mystical consummation of the love of God till after death" (p. 406). These strange "ecstatic ardors" of Saint Bonaventure are certainly imaginary for no one would think of accusing the Seraphic Doctor of entertaining hope of the beatific vision in this life. It is true that he desired complete mystical union which, we might suggest, is different from the beatific vision. From these and similar passages it would appear that the author of this present work is not well versed in many Catholic things he has written about. Philothbus Boehner, O.F.M. Franciscan Institute, St. Bonaventure, New York. ...

The Name Ashur in the Initials of a Difficult Phrase in the Bible

THE DIMINUTIVE book of Nahum abounds in textual difficulties of all sorts, which every exegete and commentator tries his best to unravel, but perhaps the greatest of these difficulties is the enigmatic phrase in 1: 12 'im selemim we-ken rabbim we-ken nagozzu we-aWbar, on which many fertile brains have exercised their acumen and ingenuity, for the most part in vain. The difficulty is not alone of a grammatical or syntactical nature, such as the conditional particle 'im in an apparently declarative sentence, or the duplicate we-ken, which, besides, has an entirely different meaning from that which it receives here, or the incongruity of one verb of the predicate being in the plural and the second verb in the singular; it concerns also the context and the general trend of the discourse, namely the problem whether the address is to the Assyrians or the Judeans. Thus most of the early exegetes took it as directed to the Assyrians, while many modern commentators prefer to construe it as addressed to the people of Judah. The rendering of this phrase in the ancient versions is variable and fails to throw any light on the true meaning of the sentence. The Septuagint's KaTapxwV vr similarly the Peshitta. The Targum, as usual, paraphrases and introduces its own interpretation: if they will be unanimous in their advice and numerous in the number of nations that gather to harass thee, Jerusalem, and will traverse the Tigris and pass the Euphrates and come to afflict thee, etc. The Vulgate is closely literal: si perfecti fuerint, et ita plures, sic quoque attondentur, et pertransibit. It is evident from the Targum that the words were considered an allusion to mighty Assyria which was about to be crushed in order to set Judah free from its yoke. This interpretation is reflected also in medieval Jewish commentaries, with the difference that some of them construe the word gelmim as peaceful (Ibn Ezra, Kimhi, et al.) instead of intact or perfect (Rashi, et al.). As a

Jewish commentaries on the old testament

Jewish commentaries on the old testament

Jewish commentaries on the old testament

Journal Article Jewish commentaries on the old testament Get access James Hooper James Hooper 1Norwich Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Notes and Queries, Volume s8-IX, Issue 218, 29 February 1896, Page 168, https://doi.org/10.1093/nq/s8-IX.218.168d Published: 29 February 1896