Rabbinic Literature Research Articles

Objects, affordances, and material histories in Roman Palestine: a case study on Northern Collar-Neck Lamps and their uses in early Jewish Sources

Abstract This article seeks to contribute to the growing scholarship on object-focused Roman histories by expanding the conversation to previously overlooked archaeological finds from Roman Palestine. This case study focuses on “Northern Collar-Neck Lamps,” which have been found throughout Roman Galilee and date to the first two centuries CE. I argue that their distinctive high collar, perhaps designed to reduce spillage, also served as an affordance that invited additional modes of interaction, namely placing a supplemental reservoir for oil – such as a pierced eggshell – over the filling hole. Once set up, this would allow for a slow drip of oil to prolong illumination time without human intervention. This usage is suggested from chronologically and geographically proximate sources, namely early rabbinic literature: Hebrew and Aramaic writings from the first centuries that reference physical details and uses of hundreds of objects and could prove helpful for future material histories of the Roman era.

Medieval Rabbinic Literature Seen in a New Light: The Sources of Yalkut Shimoni on the Book of the Twelve Prophets

Abstract The Yalkut Shimoni compiles important annotations from rabbinic literature to each book of the Hebrew Bible. The voluminous commentary cites more than 50 traditional rabbinic texts including sources which have been lost. Most academic research on the Yalkut Shimoni has focused on reconstructing these lost sources such as Midrash Yelamdenu, other research issues about Yalkut Shimoni have been neglected. This paper will focus on the Yalkut Shimoni on the Book of the Twelve Prophets. The author of the Yalkut Shimoni was not able to rely on consecutively commentaries on the Twelve Prophets such as for example the commentaries on the book of Numbers. This paper will therefore focus on the question of compilation techniques. Consequently, the author had to use pieces of commentaries on the Torah or other biblical books where Minor Prophets are cited used these to compile them to a new commentary. Furthermore, he puts these fragments together without naming the sources or introducing them to the text. This paper will show how the author combines the Palestinian and the Babylonian tradition. The author uses different techniques to cut and inweave different commentaries. Furthermore, the focus lays on the ongoing discussion whether the Yalkut Shimoni can be seen as a compilation at all. If this important work can be proofed to be no compilation, it has severe consequences especially for the reconstruction of lost sources quoted inside the Yalkut Shimoni.

The Teacher as Portrayed in Rabbinical Literature

This study seeks to examine the portrayal of teachers with regard to their personal, ethical, and pedagogic profile, in rabbinical literature, with comparison to other cultures and faiths.The research findings indicate that the figure of the teacher in rabbinical literature is compatible with the requirements and expectations of contemporary teachers. Due to the fact that according to Chazal this is a profession with lofty, particular, universal, and includes hysterical consequences and meaning, not just to preserve the nation’s culture and pass on its beliefs to future generations, but also to the very survival of the nation.

From the Jordan to Mt. Ebal and Back

Abstract This study explores the textual dynamics both within and between the law in Deut 27 and the narratives in Josh 3–4 and 8. It includes original analyses of: (a) the narrative of the Jordan crossing and its internal contradictions and ambiguities; (b) the internal rewriting and textual developments of the law in Deut 27:1–8; (c) the establishment of the altar in Josh 8:30–35 (MT), and its transfer to the Jordan crossing scene in 4QJosha; (d) the textual development of Deut 11:29–30; (e) the contribution of rabbinic literature towards elucidating the processes analyzed above; (f) the exegetical background of the so-called “Gerizim Composition” in SP, unrelated to sectarian concerns. These developments illustrate the dynamic interplay between literary history, transmission, and interpretation, and they underscore the fundamental importance of exegesis as a catalyst in these processes.

Jewish Elements in the Ancient Chinese Christian Manuscript Yishen Lun (Discourse on God)

This article identifies and analyzes four passages in the ancient Chinese Christian manuscript Yishen Lun (YSL) that exhibit distinct Jewish characteristics. The phrase “yizhong zuo shenghua” (lines 356–358) mirrors the Book of Acts’ theme of “sanctification of the Gentiles,” rooted in the Jewish dichotomous worldview, placing Jews, or Shihu Ren, at the center. The author’s use of this phrase distinguishes him from yizhong ren (Gentiles) and aligns him with Shihu Ren. In lines 256–263, YSL directly attributes messianic declarations to Jesus, a central issue in Jewish accusations of false Messiahship. In contrast, the Gospel accounts avoid making such direct accusations, as Jesus did not openly declare himself the Messiah. This distinction highlights YSL’s closer alignment with Jewish polemical traditions and legal concerns. Additionally, the use of “City of Judah” in lines 345–347 as an archaic designation for Jerusalem, predominantly found in Jewish traditions, contrasts with the more common “City of David” in other biblical texts. A philological analysis of lines 279–281 reveals imagery analogous to the synagogue parochet covering the Ark of the Scrolls. These four Jewish elements complement the one analyzed in the author’s earlier 2024 article, “The Parable of Wise and Foolish Builders in Yishen Lun and Rabbinic Literature.” That study concludes that the parable of wise and foolish builders in lines 146–156 of YSL aligns more closely with Jewish rabbinic traditions than the Gospel version. These new hermeneutical insights should provide interesting and fresh data for ongoing research into YSL.

The Desert as an Inventarium

Abstract This article is about the symbolic representation of the wilderness motif in a selection of rabbinic travel tales, taking into consideration its representation in earlier Jewish writings. The article includes a selection of rabbinic travel narratives found in b. Baba Batra that concern the desert journeys of the remarkable rabbinic protagonist Rabba bar Bar Ḥanna. The hero of the stories is presented as viewing the giant dead bodies of the biblical tribes in the wilderness, Mount Sinai, and Korah and his people, all according to the sequence of biblical events in the books of Moses. Wilderness plays an integral role in these stories. While there is little interest in this motif in Palestinian rabbinic literature, wilderness plays a distinct role in the eschatological process according to the rabbinic theological speculations known from the Babylonian Talmud. According to the selected travel narratives, which all focus on the wilderness, several objects from the biblical past, as well as some items from the dawn of creation, which are designated to play an important role in the eschatological process, are stored there.

Trans Talmud: Androgynes and Eunuchs in Rabbinic Literature, by Max K. Strassfeld

Trans Talmud: Androgynes and Eunuchs in Rabbinic Literature, by Max K. Strassfeld

Excrement and the Construction of the Praying Body in Rabbinic Literature

Abstract This article addresses the construction of prayer and of the defecating body in rabbinic literature. As opposed to viewing prayer as a spiritual and interior expression of religion and of one’s innermost depths, this study situates prayer within the context of actual bodies—that defecate, flatulate, urinate, spit, and sneeze—precisely at the moment when they wish to stand before the divine. Through a close reading of overlooked meticulous rabbinic discussions regarding cleansing the body before prayer, I examine both the rabbinic theory of prayer as well as the rabbis’ theory of the body while situating their approach within broader perceptions of “bodily bursts” in late antiquity. Instead of an idealized interiority, prominent in contemporary discourses on prayer, the rabbis are engaged in a detailed and ugly examination of their concrete interiority—and with the theological and anthropological meaning of their inability to completely regulate their own bodily activities.

Rabbinic Literature: To See and See Again

Rabbinic Literature: To See and See Again

Citation network analysis for viewpoint plurality assessment of historical corpora: The case of the medieval rabbinic literature.

Citation networks enable analysis of author groups, defining in-group dynamics, and mapping out inter-group relationships. While intellectual diversity and inclusiveness is one of the important principles of modern scholarship, it is intriguing to explore the extent to which these principles apply to historical communities of leaders and intellectuals. This paper introduces a novel methodological framework aimed at assessing the degree of viewpoint plurality and diversity of historical scholarship communities, through an in-depth analysis of the citations used in their literature, which has become possible due to the recently developed advanced computational analysis techniques. To achieve this goal, we have devised a set of new network-based indicators grounded in standard network metrics. These indicators can be applied at both the individual author and community levels. The developed methodology was applied to a citation network automatically constructed from a corpus of Rabbinic Halachic literature spanning the 10th to 15th centuries. This corpus includes over 5,000 citations from hundreds of books authored by approximately 140 Rabbinic scholars from six diverse geographic communities. We found that most of the authors and communities cite many more external resources from other communities than their own reflecting a willingness to engage with a diverse range of viewpoints. A more in-depth analysis based on the novel proportional diversity measures unveils more intriguing insights. Contrary to expectations, communities with the greatest number of external citations, such as Spain and Ashkenaz, surprisingly exhibit lower levels of viewpoint plurality compared to others, such as Italy and North Africa, elucidating a key finding of the study.

Divine Visibility in the Gospel of John

AbstractThis article argues that John’s christology affirms the material visibility of God by reconciling the notion of an “unseen” God to the visibility of the Father that Jesus presents. Three pieces of evidence support this claim. The first is that “unseen” and “invisible” are not synonymous. A survey of Second Temple, biblical, and rabbinic literature reveals that one may not assume that all hellenized Jews embraced Platonist notions of invisibility. Second, Jesus presents the Father as visible, however restricted that visibility may be to Jesus’s person. Third, John’s use of Isaiah suggests that the visibility of God in the theophanies is consonant with God’s visibility in Jesus.

Queere Lesarten von Adams Androgynie

ABSTRACT In the framework of queer readings, following feminist interpretations of the biblical creation accounts, Adam as an androgynous creature and the division of the double-faced first human are discussed. Within rabbinic literature two Jewish traditions are found which are based on Plato’s unique, strange myth of the circle-men in his work Symposium: First, it was imagined that the first human combined both genders in himself. Second, it was suggested that two persons were created in one. This has been illustrated by the double-faced image of the first human who finally has been divided. Already at the beginning of the 20th century the godlikeness of the “homosexual” was asserted in connection with Genesis 1,27. Now a queer rereading of this Bible verse is provided.

Reading Texts with Objects: Rethinking Rabbinic Materiality by the Light of Early Sabbath Laws

Abstract: Classical rabbinic literature is intensely material, as it invokes numerous objects on seemingly every page. Through the earliest rabbinic discussions on kindling Sabbath lights (M. Shabbat 2), this paper explores new pathways into rabbinic materiality or "talmudic archaeology." Whereas texts can promote a narrow focus on unique or exceptional objects, I argue that they could also provide a promontory to help us see more typical and widely used artifacts, which nets a broader understanding of the material culture that was more likely to be known by most people in Roman Galilee, including rabbis. The "Palestinian Discus Lamp" was the lighting device of choice for most people in the place and time when the Mishnah took shape. Its popularity, I argue, demonstrates the importance of design and practical use, functional aspects that have received insufficient attention. This paper contributes to rabbinics, late antique Judaism, and Jewish material culture studies, while building bridges to design theory, economics, and material religion. Abstract: Classical rabbinic literature is intensely material, as it invokes numerous objects on seemingly every page. Through the earliest rabbinic discussions on kindling Sabbath lights (M. Shabbat 2), this paper explores new pathways into rabbinic materiality or "talmudic archaeology." Whereas texts can promote a narrow focus on unique or exceptional objects, I argue that they could also provide a promontory to help us see more typical and widely used artifacts, which nets a broader understanding of the material culture that was more likely to be known by most people in Roman Galilee, including rabbis. The "Palestinian Discus Lamp" was the lighting device of choice for most people in the place and time when the Mishnah took shape. Its popularity, I argue, demonstrates the importance of design and practical use, functional aspects that have received insufficient attention. This paper contributes to rabbinics, late antique Judaism, and Jewish material culture, while building bridges to design theory, economics, and material religion.

Notes on the Hebrew Names of the Planets, as Transmitted by Epiphanius of Salamis

Abstract The article analyzes the names of the Hebrew planets, as transmitted by Epiphanius (4th century C.E.). The names for Sun, Moon, Jupiter, and Saturn are self-evident, but the names for Mars, Venus, and Mercury are more difficult to ascertain. The article engages in philological analysis in an effort to elucidate the underlying Hebrew forms of the terms written in Greek characters. Since these forms are not the ones used in rabbinic literature, the author further suggests that these terms may reflect a non-rabbinic stream of Judaism in late antiquity.

Covenant and Community in Early Rabbinic Literature

AbstractThis article concerns the role of covenant in early rabbinic literature in relation to biblical and especially Second Temple-era predecessors. The first part establishes that the Qumran sectarians and earlier circles were drawn to the concept of covenant because it represented, especially through the mechanism of covenant renewal, a powerful tool for defining and supporting group identity. The second part shows that for the rabbis, the importance of covenant lay chiefly, instead, in its capacity to conceptualize the notion of Israel as a collective body defined by corporate responsibility. The third part suggests that this novel deployment of covenant arose in part to counter the individuating force of halakah as law, another innovation of the rabbis.

The conceptualisation of morality in Judaism

This article dealt with the irony that confronts any investigation into the conceptualisation of morality in Judaism: much of contemporary scholarship promotes the Strong Dependence Theory where God is considered the prime source of morality − yet an empirical analysis of classical rabbinic literature indicates a leaning more towards the Weak Dependence Theory which considers human beings the source for morality. Somehow, scholarship seems to overlook this textual evidence. On the other hand, that same contemporary scholarship has no problem in accepting absolute and complete human autonomy in the area of Jewish religious law or Halacha. This study questioned why humans are comfortably accepted as the primary determinants of religious law but not of morality – and argued for a return to the original Weak Dependence Theory to maintain moral efficacy. It included an examination of an extreme historical test case for rabbinic morality concerning how the rabbinic world dealt internally with the moral implications of major rabbis who had fled the Holocaust.Intradisciplinary and/or interdisciplinary implications: While this literature study was conducted from an orthodox rabbinic perspective, it adopted a descriptive and evaluative methodology based on academic, rabbinic and historical sources.

Material Culture, Experimentation, and Household Lighting in Early Rabbinic Judaism

This paper examines how the materiality of lighting influenced the development of ancient rabbinic teachings that would later become the foundations of Jewish law. Drawing on ideas and frameworks from scholarship on material religion, I bring together archaeological finds, experimental archaeology, and references to objects in classical rabbinic literature to argue that the ways that lighting was used provided the earliest rabbis with tools and fodder for developing new expressions of piety that could be performed in one’s household. How lamps, oils, and wicks were used in Roman-era Palestine (second-third century CE) played an influential role in the development of rabbinic Judaism. I show this through rabbinic prescriptions on lighting lamps on Friday evening to mark the onset of the Sabbath, as the different wicks and oils created opportunities for one to choose to perform the custom in rabbinically-prescribed ways. I next demonstrate how the rabbis drew on common lighting practices to reinterpret biblical laws on the now-destroyed Jerusalem Temple cult into expressions of piety that can be performed in households throughout Roman Palestine. In this way, the materiality of light contributed towards the ancient rabbis’ role in transforming Judaism in the post-Temple age.

The Parable of Wise and Foolish Builders in Yishen Lun and Rabbinic Literature

The paper undertakes a comparative analysis of the parable of the Wise and Foolish Builders as presented in three distinct sources: the seventh-century Dunhuang manuscript Yishen Lun (Discourse on God), the sixth-century rabbinic text Avot D’Rabbi Nathan, and the Gospels (Matthew and Luke) of the Christian Bible. It explores the imagery used, piety taught, and worldviews conveyed in these renditions, concluding that the version in Yishen Lun shares a closer resemblance with the one in rabbinic literature than with the Gospels. This discovery, in conjunction with previously published findings by the author, challenges the conventional classification of Yishen Lun as an “Aluoben document” (or a Jingjiao document, for that matter), underscoring the need for further research and inquiry.

The development of comparative Jewish hermeneutics of the Gospel of Matthew

The article examines the historical development of comparative Jewish hermeneutic studies of the Gospel of Matthew starting with the 17th century. The research pays special attention to the stages of formation, to obstacles and their overcoming, and to the nature of the development of comparative works. It introduces a comparison of two parallel traditions in these studies — Christian and Jewish. The main methodological approaches of Christian and Jewish scholars come from historical criticism and philology. They transcend religious boundaries and bring academicism to comparative studies. However, later historical criticism leads to a delay in the development of comparative Jewish studies due to the problems of anachronism, since rabbinic literature originates several hundred years after the New Testament, and therefore is not suitable for synchronous comparison. Another obstacle to the development of comparative analysis poses the philological principle of only one textual meaning. Jewish hermeneutics presupposes many meanings of the sacred text, which contradicts the principle of a single meaning. A revolutionary breakthrough in comparative Jewish hermeneutics occurs in the middle of the 20th century, thanks to the use of a literary approach that is not bound by the strict rules of historical criticism and the philological principle of a single meaning. Renee Bloch suggests the use of Rabbinic literature for the study of Christian and intertestamental literature, and even of the Bible itself, even though such a comparison is anachronistic. The cultural approach helps to see the uniqueness of the cultural contribution of the exegete and to overcome religious obstacles to comparative research. The article suggests a comparative Jewish hermeneutics of the Christmas story of the Gospel of Matthew.

By Name and by Nature: Two Stories of People Named Unattractive in Daoist and Rabbinic Literature

Abstract: As part of a growing interest in comparing ancient Chinese and Jewish texts, this article examines two stories that share a theme of an unattractive person who is named according to their appearance. The Daoist story in the Zhuangzi describes Uglyface Tuo whose hideous looks did not deter women from adoring him and rulers admiring him for his administrative skill. A rabbinic story from the Babylonian Talmud ( b . Nedarim 66b) recounts the story of a homely wife whose husband compelled her to show something pretty about her to a rabbi. Zhuangzi's story thwarts any expectations for correlation between external appearances and internal substance, while the name continues to suggest a correlation between a label and content, defying a single approach. Within the Daoist tradition, and especially in Zhuangzi's thought, this seems to be the point, arguing against epistemic certainty. In the strikingly different Talmudic story, the aptly named person is a woman whose features do not elicit attraction. The correlation of her name and her appearance remains the defining similarity between the narratives. It is this consistency that holds the key to the narrative's resolution: her apposite name holds the power to restore order in the world, an order which her ugliness seems to threaten. The comparison between the two stories allows to enhance their contradictory lessons. The essay concludes by highlighting the benefits of cross-cultural research between these distant fields of study.