Torah Texts Research Articles

An Evaluation of Christian Education in Indonesia in light of Targum: A Cognitive Psychology Approach

Education is an important matter in Indonesia and also globally. This importance of education is ingrained in the Indonesian Law Constitution in 1945 (Undang-Undang Dasar 1945), chapter 31 where it states that: every Indonesian citizen deserves to receive education, and is obliged to attend basic education and the government is obliged to pay for it. In addition, the government is to seek and organize a national education system which increases faith and piety as well as noble character in the context of educating the life of the nation, which is regulated by law. The state prioritizes the education budget of at least twenty percent of the state revenue and expenditure budget as well as from the regional revenue and expenditure budget to meet the needs of implementing national education. It alsoadvances science and technology by supporting high religious values and national unity for the advancement of civilization and the welfare of mankind. As a result, the Indonesian government provides a free of charge education at public schools from grades one to nine to give an opportunity of equal education to every citizen which includes nine subjects. The challenge, however, is that all students in the public schools are required to take nine subjects every academic year. This could be overwhelmingly difficult for the students both academically and also mentally. Thus, this article attempts to propose a solution academically as to how students could cope with their forgetfulness to achieve the maximum grades. This solution, it is argued, can be discovered in the Targum and is tested through a cognitive psychology approach. Targums which form a part of the Jewish traditional literature from the Second Temple period are not merely a translation of the Hebrew Torah text into Aramaic, but also possess immense Talmudic wisdom that illuminates the Biblical stories but also provide us with important tried and tested lessons for today.

MENGAMPUNI (ἀπολυω): SIKAP ETIS YESUS TERHADAP PERCERAIAN – BERDASARKAN MATIUS 19:1-9

This article proposes a theological construction of Jesus’ ethical attitude towards divorce. The conflict between the socio-political practice that legalizes divorce and the narrative of religious rhetoric against divorce is the cause of many divorces in Christian families. An understanding of the ethical morality of Christians towards divorce shows that there is an excessive adherence to the biblical text without considering the context. I use hermeneutic principles through the dialectic of the text and the context of the Gospel of Matthew 19:1-9 as the method used by Jesus to understand the reality of the Torah text. This effort aims to assist Pastors in pastoral care when accompanying families who are about to divorce. This article uses a literature research method with a text centred (synchronic) approach and a qualitative method to examine the results of field research. The results showed that the text of Matthew 19:1-9 was about to criticize the attitude of Pharisees who wanted to trap Jesus through the question of divorce. It turns out that Jesus has His own Halakhah, that is, forgiveness to avoid divorce.

On Ibn Ḥazm’s Rhetoric in <em>al-Radd ʿalā Ibn al-Naghrīla</em>

In his polemic composition al-Radd ‘alā Ibn al-Naghrīla al-Yahūdī, Abū Muḥammad ‘Alī b. Aḥmad b. Ḥazm al-Andalusī (994/1064 CE) attempts to demonstrate the Jews’ taḥrīf (falsification) of the Torah by citing several examples. This article intends to shed some light on an important aspect of Ibn Ḥazm’s rhetoric as reflected in al-Radd ‘alā Ibn al-Naghrīla. I argue, however, that by juxtaposing some of Ibn Ḥazm’s arguments with the relevant Jewish sources, we find that in some of these examples he himself deliberately misrepresents and misquotes explicit Torah texts, undermines their authority and overlooks parallel Qur’ānic accounts of which he must have been aware. Ibn Ḥazm’s tendentiousness and double standard in this matter stem from his wish to prove that the Torah was falsified and, by so doing, to lend further support to the Qurʾānic argument regarding the taḥrīf.

The Hebrew Bible and Environmental Ethics: Humans, Non-humans, and the Living Landscape by Mari Joerstad

Reviewed by: The Hebrew Bible and Environmental Ethics: Humans, Non-humans, and the Living Landscape by Mari Joerstad Deryn Guest mari joerstad, The Hebrew Bible and Environmental Ethics: Humans, Non-humans, and the Living Landscape (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019). Pp. viii + 247. $99.99/£75. Engaging us from the opening page, the author's friendship with two magnolia trees prompts her to consider whether they have a relationship with her in return. What would a genuine intimacy between humans and trees be like? This segues into: How should we [End Page 307] interpret biblical texts that tell us that landscape, flora, and fauna can speak, rejoice, mourn, praise? If we resist the temptation to explain such things away as poetic license or exuberance, do biblical texts show us a profound interrelationship between authors and nature? Have scholars glossed too readily over the evidence that biblical writers "viewed nonanimal nature as active and alive, that is, as persons" (p. 2)? Acknowledging that attributing the word "person" to mountains, stones, trees, will discomfort some readers, she confirms that is her intent. In fact, it proves to be a justified choice of terminology, enabling readers to think more humbly, respectfully, about the landscape in which we are enmeshed. Joerstad's first aim is exegetical: to interpret the personalistic nature texts across the Pentateuch, Prophets, and Writings. The second is ecological: "to consider how engaging with the Bible's active understanding of nonhuman nature might influence our ethics in the scope and nature of contemporary environmental actions" (p. 3). She succeeds in both. While not part of the Earth Bible Commentary series, this book provides a focused study of how one might listen to and interpret the voice of Earth without creating empathetic, imaginative speeches by trees, rivers, animals, and so forth. In chap. 2, J. presents the theoretical underpinning of the book. It includes engagement with the work of Cora Diamond; with New Animism, a field that highlights different ways of interpreting the world around us by people such as the Ojibwe; and with metaphor theory. Metaphors have been viewed as reading human experience into nature, so references to trees clapping are taken as an expression of human joy and celebration projected onto the trees. But "Isaiah attributes mood to trees, mood, and historical awareness" (p. 40). What he meant by doing that is her pressing question. In chap. 3, J. discusses how Earth and ground are active characters in the Torah, able to witness, devour, swallow, rest, expel, vomit, consume. The chapter closes with J.'s thoughts on how this might encourage readers to take seriously their human responsibilities for the land and its inhabitants. Torah texts critique "elite land grabbing" and are aware of "inequalities" (p. 98), something that J. applies to the way climate change causes and effects are not evenly distributed. Chapter 4 broadens the range of persons to include rivers, trees, fields, mountains, and stars, as J. turns to the Former and Latter Prophets. The chapter is organized into five themes: (1) War: texts include Judges 5; Joshua 10; and 2 Samuel 1 and 18. (2) Theophanies in Habakkuk 3; Joel 2 and 4; and Micah 1. There is an intriguing pondering of nature's "interiority," a quality no longer solely bestowed on humans. It results in these memorable lines: "Perhaps even describing human experiences of meeting YHWH is so difficult that it requires drawing on more than everyday emotions and terms. How do I feel when YHWH arrives? I feel like the storm clouds, like the moon in eclipse, like the tremors of a quake, like rock blistering into lava" (p. 115). (3) Address, which notes the device known as apostrophe (often ignored by biblical commentators), followed by sections on (4) joy and (5) grief. J. concludes that the prophetic challenge is to "live in such a way so as not only to stave off ecological apocalypse, but so that animals, trees, and pasture lands may be pleased to host us, to live alongside us" (p. 155). The Writings are discussed in chap. 5. Reading this chapter reminded me afresh of how noisy the Psalms are! The dialogue between Job and his friends is noted for...

Reuse and Innovation in Ezekiel 20 and Exodus 31: 12–17

Ezekiel 20 has long been recognized as dependent on numerous Torah texts and traditions, in spite of the apparent contradictions. This study examines how the relationship is in fact reversed in the case of Exodus 31.12-17*, the development of which has been influenced by the innovative understanding of Sabbath in Ezekiel 20. We will first briefly explore the compositional history of Exodus 31.12-17, concluding, with the majority of contemporary mainstream scholarship, that the received text is secondary to its context, and the product of more than one compositional layer. Upon turning to the shared locutions and contextual overlap between Exodus 31.12-17 and Ezekiel 20, it becomes evident that the later layer of Exodus 31.12-17 is dependent on the description of Sabbath in Ezekiel 20.12-13, 16, 20-21, 24, leading us to argue that Exodus 31.12-17* was developed in light of this text. The final part of the study is devoted to investigating how and why the author of Ezekiel 20 used the language of the Holiness Code to further develop this particular concept of Sabbath, particularly as a sign related to sanctification of a people, which was later developed in Exodus 31.

Torah Old and New: Exegesis, Intertextuality, and Hermeneutics

Torah Old and New: Exegesis, Intertextuality, and Hermeneutics

The mission of the Jewish woman in Shabbat in the context of the Ashkenazi tradition

Our era, characterized by the breaking of old stereotypes of thinking, ideological schemes and the formation of new spiritual foundations of social development, acutely actualizes the problem of person's identification and the formation of his/her spiritual and moral values. The article reveals the role of women in the Ashkenazi tradition, a place that the Torah assigns to women in the general scheme of Jewish ritual life. The Torah texts in which the role of women in a family are analyzed in detail. The study clarifies the importance and dignity of the mission that is assigned to Jewish women and which they so faithfully carry out throughout history. The urgency of the study of the above problems is also necessitated by the generalization of the spiritual experience of Judaism, in-depth study of the patterns of new functioning of religions in the conditions of dramatic social changes, their praxeological manifestations, analysis of the mechanism of spiritual and cultural continuity in the practice of religious communities. Materials and articles can be used by specialists in the field of religious and theological studies, students, professors, while writing scientific papers, as well as at lectures related to the study of theology.

Символіка Зодіакального Кола в єврейському мистецтві Східної Галичини XVIII – першої третини ХХ ст.

Символіка Зодіакального Кола в єврейському мистецтві Східної Галичини XVIII – першої третини ХХ ст.

God and Goddess Emerging

God and Goddess Emerging

Provocation: D'var Mahloket

It is as if multiplicity of persons--and is this not very meaning of personal?--were condition for plenitude of absolute truth; as if each person, by his uniqueness, were guarantee of revelation of a unique aspect of truth, and some of its points would never have been revealed if some people had been absent from mankind.... [T]he totality of true is constituted from contribution of multiple people; uniqueness of each act of listening carrying secret of text; voice of Revelation as inflected, precisely, by each person's ear, would be necessary to Whole of Truth. --Emmanuel Levinas Jews, three opinions. --Jewish saying This piece is about argument. It is about a scholar's commitment to and Judaism's commitment to living in dark times, and connection between darkness and argument. (1) These things easily go together, but their being-togetherness is not easy. Jim Aune wrote about these things in his essay Justice and Argument in Judaism: A D'var Torah on Shofetim. In revisiting this essay, I find it difficult to move beyond two epigraphs he chose for this essay. I reprint them here because they have taken on a new meaning for me. I will take second quote first: Jews, three opinions. I have heard this saying many times and it was meaningful to me as someone who came to Judaism through conversion. My family are evangelical Christians, and argument as a culture was not part of my childhood experience. Debate had a limited place at our tables, worship sites, family spaces, and in writing that we shared with each other. I began my process of conversion after graduate school, however, when argument and debate had already become a significant part of my When my rabbi told me that I would need to prepare a D'var Torah at conclusion of my study, I found it helpful to remember his earlier lessons about Jewish tradition of debate, argument, and even disagreement. (2) Judaism has been built upon a history of innumerable debates between rabbis (and everyone else) about meanings, effects, and ethics of everything from death to whether or not you can tear toilet paper on Sabbath. I could not get D'var Torah wrong, in other words, because goal was not correctness at all. My challenge was to create D'var (a word, a speaking. telos was to join Jewish community as a member, which means participating in joyous and tumultuous event of debate. In years that followed my conversion, I found myself laughing whenever someone would jokingly mutter Jews, three opinions after a heated squabble spilled out from a synagogue committee meeting. It took me some time to adjust to my husband's Jewish family and their habits of arguing at table (and everywhere else) without any negative consequence. As Jim writes in Justice and Argument in Judaism, when he was asked by a student to explain the Jewish view of homosexuality, he told student that there could never be such a thing. Any given Torah text may thus yield multiple readings, writes Jim. This is a much more eloquent way of saying Jews, three opinions, but weighty significance of these two insights are same. goal of studying Torah is not to conclude any arguments. In fact, concluding argument would mean shutting down Judaism as a living activity. Two Jews, one opinion is not only in conflict with Judaism; it is work of Judaism to prevent that from happening. Jim's essay excavates an important difference about debate within Christianity and Judaism. He meditates on Paul's proclamation in 2 Corinthians, The letter killeth, but spirit giveth life. In writes Jim, we might very well flip Paul's statement. spirit killeth, but letter giveth The Jewish approach reads letter in such as way as to maximize human freedom within divine command, he writes. …

Early Texts of the Torah

The paper seeks a new way to understand the early activity within versions of the Torah. It builds on two recent developments. First, a refined understanding of the so-called “harmonizations” in the pre-Samaritan Pentateuch and the circulation of this version in early Hellenistic Palestine. Second, new insights with regard to the extent of Homeric scholarship in contemporary Alexandria, and of the type of contact between this activity and Jewish literati. The result is a new view of the pre-Samaritan text as an academic – rather than popular – text, which corresponds with academic textual practices elsewhere. It seeks to smooth out narratological problems in the text, basing itself on the image of Moses as a faultless author. This view explains the continuum between the various attestations of the pre-SP in Qumran and elsewhere. We show that previous explanations of the pre-Samaritan text duplications as a sequel to phenomenon in cuneiform literature are unwarranted. Finally, it is suggested to project from the explicit discussions about the legitimacy of academic Torah texts in Jewish-Hellenistic writings on their less explicit contemporaries in Judea. This reasoning paves the way for a renewed evaluation of the early stages of the conservative version, known as proto-MT, being part of the same dynamics.

Early Texts of the Torah

The paper seeks a new way to understand the early activity within versions of the Torah. It builds on two recent developments. First, a refined understanding of the so-called “harmonizations” in the pre-Samaritan Pentateuch and the circulation of this version in early Hellenistic Palestine. Second, new insights with regard to the extent of Homeric scholarship in contemporary Alexandria, and of the type of contact between this activity and Jewish literati. The result is a new view of the pre-Samaritan text as an academic – rather than popular – text, which corresponds with academic textual practices elsewhere. It seeks to smooth out narratological problems in the text, basing itself on the image of Moses as a faultless author. This view explains the continuum between the various attestations of the pre-SP in Qumran and elsewhere. We show that previous explanations of the pre-Samaritan text duplications as a sequel to phenomenon in cuneiform literature are unwarranted. Finally, it is suggested to project from the explicit discussions about the legitimacy of academic Torah texts in Jewish-Hellenistic writings on their less explicit contemporaries in Judea. This reasoning paves the way for a renewed evaluation of the early stages of the conservative version, known as proto-MT, being part of the same dynamics.

Legal Fiction: Levirate cum Land Redemption in Ruth

The article focuses on the use of the levirate and the land redemption in Ruth. It argues that Ruth, drawing on Torah texts, has fictionalized these laws. Ruth’s portrayal of these laws does not depict actual practice in the postexilic era, nor was it intended as a midrash per se on Torah laws. The book of Ruth, a story of return from exile, joined together the levirate and land redemption because these laws address the continuity of family and of inherited property. The story of the Judean family who long ago underwent “exile” and almost lost its family line and its ancestral land, but whose continuity was restored by means of Torah laws, is a metaphor for the exilic or postexilic community, which is being encouraged to see in the Torah the vehicle for its own continuity of people and land. The article also examines possible inner biblical interpretations of the go’el law in Ruth and in Jeremiah 32.

Legal Fiction: Levirate cum Land Redemption in Ruth

Abstract The article focuses on the use of the levirate and the land redemption in Ruth. It argues that Ruth, drawing on Torah texts, has fictionalized these laws. Ruth's portrayal of these laws does not depict actual practice in the postexilic era, nor was it intended as a midrash per se on Torah laws. The book of Ruth, a story of return from exile, joined together the levirate and land redemption because these laws address the continuity of family and of inherited property. The story of the Judean family who long ago underwent »exile« and almost lost its family line and its ancestral land, but whose continuity was restored by means of Torah laws, is a metaphor for the exilic or postexilic community, which is being encouraged to see in the Torah the vehicle for its own continuity of people and land. The article also examines possible inner biblical interpretations of the go'el law in Ruth and in Jeremiah 32.

Listening to a Conversation: Divorce, the Torah, and Earliest Christianity

The authors examine the interpretive processes underlying the positions on divorce advocated by Jesus, Ezra, Matthew and Paul. Their analysis reveals that, in each instance, the interpretations rely, not solely or even primarily on the explicit statement made by the only text on divorce in the Torah, Deut 24:1–4, but on connections with other Torah texts and traditions. Jesus, for example, used “order of creation” arguments, tantamount to interpretations of Deuteronomy through Genesis (i.e. divorce is unreal; the marital bond cannot be broken), and exegetical linkages that equate divorce and remarriage (neither of which has validity) with adultery (since the woman is actually still married to her husband). With converse results from a similar process, in Ezra's time, Shecaniah endorsed Ezra's decree enforcing divorce also presumably based on Deut 24:1–4. He seems to have assumed all foreign women to be “objectionable,” thus fulfilling the divorce requirement in Deut 24:1. In both cases, the process of interpreting assumes its results are part of the text and claims to have the authority of Moses. Matthew and Paul, both of whom allowed an exception to Jesus' apparently absolute opposition to divorce, seem, pursuing a similar interpretive strategy, to have equated Deuteronomy's allowance for divorce on grounds of something “objectionable” in a wife's behavior and the Torah's prohibition against adultery. The boundaries between text, tradition and interpretation were and are porous.

Why Aren’t Jewish Women Circumcised?

Why Aren't Jewish Women Circumcised? Shaye J. D. Cohen. Why Aren 't Jewish Women Circumcised? Gender and Covenant in Judaism. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005. Pp. xvii + 317 pagesGiven recent recognition of the horrific results of some forms of female circumcision, a reader happening upon this title might well dismiss Shaye Cohen's question with a sigh of gratitude that Jews have had better sense than to circumcise (or excise) women. The subtitle articulates the inadequacy of this response: as uncircumcised, women might be seen to be excluded from the covenant - perhaps even from Jewishness. Cohen traces the question historically: Who asks this question? Why? How do they answer? It also functions heuristically: What does the noncircumcision of women tell us about women in Judaism? About circumcision? About men? Or rather - what does it tell us about what men think about these issues?The study's focus is rabbinic writing from the twelfth to the fifteenth century, but its chronological scope is far greater. The first chapter lays out the canonical history of circumcision. Beginning from Torah texts and classical rabbinic literature (the Mishnah, the two Talmuds, and related works), Cohen traces transformations of circumcision through the eighteenth century on four trajectories: from rendering the child ritually pure to conferring sanctity; from removal of the foreskin to the shedding of salvific blood; from an apotropaic protection from death to salvation from evil, sin, and death; from sign of the covenant to sacrament analogous to Christian baptism. A final chapter engages the nineteenth to twenty-first centuries, delineating the emergence of challenges to circumcision from the reform movement and from the emergence of concerns for equal status for women and girls.The overarching questions of the relation of circumcision to covenant, and the import of its limitation to males, are set by Genesis 17. Cohen notes that this account is a composite and leaves the relation between covenant and circumcision unclearly defined: circumcision is an obligation proceeding from the covenant (throughout, but especially in Gn 17.14); or the covenant itself (17.10); or a sign (reminder to the deity) of the covenant (17.11, cf. Gn 9.12-17). Males only are to be circumcised; for Sarah there is the promise of a child, but no sign of the covenant. Yet the covenant is with her child Isaac and not with Ishmael and his descendants, though they are both circumcised. This paradox points forward: not all the circumcised are Jews (for instance, Arabs and most American men) and not all Jews are circumcised. Rabbinic texts insist on circumcision for male converts to Judaism but allow that circumcision may be delayed, or even dispensed with, to save the live of a child. The Jewish man who grows to adulthood uncircumcised remains a Jew, suffering some restrictions in rabbinic law but clearly a member of the community.Outsiders looking in (for the most part Christian polemicists) seem to be the catalysts who get Jews thinking about the apparent anomalies of circumcision as sign of the covenant. The most exotic are claims that Jews circumcise women. Strabo (first century B.C.E7C.E.) described both Egyptians and Jews as circumcising men and excising women, while much later Richard Francis Burton (nineteenth century) ascribed the practice to outlying tribes of Jews, a view Cohen attributes to Burton's sexual imagination, a factor doubtless engaged in much Christian polemic.Philo of Alexandria (first century CE.), the first (surviving?) Jewish writer to raise the question of why circumcision is limited to males, was aware of the circumcision of women in Hellenistic and Roman Egypt and felt compelled to explain why Jews circumcised only males: to check stronger male sexual desire and pleasure, and stronger male pride because of the greater male part in generation. He presents these two reasons as his addition to four ancient and traditional explanations for circumcision: (a) as a prophylactic against a disease most prevalent in the southern areas where circumcision is practiced; (b) to increase fertility; (c) for ritual purity; (d) to liken the penis, the organ of generation, to the heart that generates thoughts. …

<em>Reader Response:</em> The Five Books of Miriam

The rich last issue of Nashim, no. 16, included Aaron Singer’s interesting review of The Five Books of Miriam: A Woman’s Commentary on the Torah (HarperSanFrancisco, 1996), by Ellen Frankel, occasioned by the book’s recent publication in Hebrew translation (Am Oved, 2007). I found myself reading Singer’s analysis of the book as “midrash” in light of the Hebrew edition and the unfinished business I have with the publication of Hebrew translations of Jewish feminist books. When I saw the Hebrew edition, I was upset yet again by the assumptions Israeli publishers have about the ability of average, educated Israelis to take in feminist Jewish messages, as indicated by the book’s outward presentation. Two past examples come to mind. Ilana Pardes’s Countertraditions in the Bible: A Feminist Approach was translated into Hebrew as Haberi’ah lefi Ḥavah (i.e., “The Creation According to Eve”; Hakibbutz Hameuchad, 1996), and the illustration chosen for the cover was a silhouette of a female nude. Paula Hyman’s Gender and Assimilation in Modern Jewish History: The Roles and Representation of Women became Ha’ishah haYehudiyah bisvach hakidmah (“The Jewish Woman in the Throes of Modernization”; Merkaz Zalman Shazar, 1997). Along the same misguided lines, Frankel’s book became Midrash Miriam (“The Midrash of Miriam”). The original title evokes Virginia Woolf’s allusion to the sister that Shakespeare never had, and is a play on “The Five Books of Moses” in English. The title indicates that the author intended her book not as “midrash” in the popular sense of the word, but, rather, as a kind of alternative Torah text, a “midrash” or “commentary” on the Bible comparable to the alternative narratives offered in some apocryphal books (and Bible scholars may point here to one or two books in the Hebrew Bible itself, like Deuteronomy or Chronicles).

Fixing God's Torah: The Accuracy of the Hebrew Bible Text in Jewish Law (review)

Reviewed by: Fixing God’s Torah: The Accuracy of the Hebrew Bible Text in Jewish Law Moshe Sokolow B. Barry Levy. Fixing God’s Torah: The Accuracy of the Hebrew Bible Text in Jewish Law. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001. Pp. xvii + 237. God's Torah is perfect, restoring the soul; God's testimony is steadfast, making wise the simple. Psalms 19.7 Therefore were the ancients called scribes [soferim], for they would enumerate all the letters in the Torah. bKiddushin 30a From the time writing was invented, scribes have made mistakes. Moshe Sokolow Frankly, I initially found the title of this book offputting. Insert Torah, accuracy, and Jewish law into the same sentence and it appears to be an Orthodox "no brainer." Combine Torah and fixing, however, and it presents itself, to an Orthodox reader, as an almost heretical oxymoron. Happily, reading Fixing God's Torah disabused me of my reservations. B. Barry Levy, professor of religious studies and dean of the faculty of religious studies at McGill University, conducts us on a voyage of discovery that chronicles the traditional veneration of the Torah text yet surprises us by illustrating the genuinely critical lengths to which various rabbinical authorities were prepared to go in order to preserve their perception of its accuracy. Wielding talmudic passages and rabbinical responsa with the erudition and rhetorical dexterity of a talmid hakham (old world scholar), he enables his readers—scholars and laymen alike—to come to terms with the overt evidence of textual anomalies without surrendering their faith in either the Torah or in its rabbinic interpreters. The "protagonist" of the book is Rabbi David [ben Solomon] Ibn Abi Zimra (Radbaz; Egypt, sixteenth century), prolific author of over 2,400 responsa, several of which—featured in the book—deal specifically with the validity of the textual transmission of the Torah. In one case, Radbaz discusses the propriety of changing a word in the Torah to conform to the spelling indicated by the Zohar. Another responsum comprises an [End Page e29] important statement on the origin and authority of the Masorah (the collective scribal wisdom pertaining to the consonantal text of the Jewish Bible, its vocalization and accentuation) and the extent to which it should be used to determine the correct spelling of biblical words. A third deals with the letter waw in the word shlwm, "peace," in Nm 25.12, and whether it was necessary to follow a talmudic teaching that required it to be interrupted (ketu'ah). A fourth responsum considers a medieval suggestion to change the traditional reading of hw', "it," in Lev 25.33, to hi'. Levy also examines the position of the outstanding Spanish sage Rabbi Solomon Ibn Adret (Rashba, d. 1310), whose own responsa served as a basis and precedent for Radbaz. He inquires, as well, into Radbaz's use of the Masoretic notes of Jacob ben Hayyim Ibn Adoniyah, who prepared the text for Daniel Bomberg's "Rabbinic Bible" (aka Mikra'ot gedolot). Finally, he concludes with a brief examination of the attempts that have been made since the sixteenth century to reconcile Torah texts with those of Talmud and midrash, with particular emphasis on the twenty-one discrepancies noted by Rabbi Akiva Eger (Poznan, nineteenth century) in his glosses to tractate Shabat. Talmudic and midrashic literature, ranging from explicit references to variant readings among scrolls that were kept in the Temple precincts to allusions implicit in text-based hermeneutics, already testifies to the absence of complete uniformity among extant Torah texts. Given that testimony, it is difficult to comprehend why the suggestion of textual variation (mostly of the least invasive variety, comprising plene and/or defective spellings) should raise the hackles of religious Jews. Even granting that the minute care that was exercised in copying the Torah worked to severely limit the possibility of scribal deviation, ever since writing was invented scribes have made mistakes. And yet, the importance of the accuracy of revealed Scripture—and the implications of its absence—is hardly unique to Orthodox Judaism or even to Judaism in general. Witness the following claim made on behalf of the Koran: No other book in the world can match the Qur'an . . . The astonishing...

A Review of Udo Schnelle and Francis Watson on Paul

Abstract: Since E. P. Sanders introduced the “new perspective” on Paul, Lutherans have had to ask again: did Luther understand Paul on the Mosaic law? The two books reviewed here carry forward the discussion Sanders began. Udo Schnelle's Apostle Paul makes two methodological choices with dramatic consequences for understanding Paul's theology and letters: 1) Paul was in direct dialogue with the Greco‐Roman culture of the cities where he preached the gospel and founded churches, and 2) Paul's Christology, ethics, and eschatology developed and changed in relation to the religious and political crises through which he struggled. Francis Watson's Paul and the Hermeneutics of Faith makes an obvious but novel decision to focus on the five books of Moses as read by Paul in dialogue with other contemporary Jewish interpreters, arguing that Paul's view of the “law” is his counter‐reading of the five books of Torah. Paul's hermeneutic exploits tensions and anomalies in the text of Torah itself, enabling him to emphasize God's promise, not the human deeds of scriptural heroes.

Spiritual Androgyny in the Art of Michael Sgan-Cohen and Carole Berman

"Art has no master and follows its own truth."1 When a time for some idea is ripe, it seems as though that idea is dispersed like spores on a breeze. Michael Sgan-Cohen and Carole Berman, artists in different places and from different backgrounds, with no prior knowledge of each other's work, have created images that share similarities of content and process. Both use gender-ambiguous sexual imagery to explore issues of Jewish spirituality. Both artists engaged in introspective journal work and intensive scrutiny of dreams as part of their creative process. And most importantly, for each, Jewish identity, transcribed biblical words, and a connection to the land of Israel are a central point of entry for much of their work. Given the general disregard for traditional religious themes in the contemporary art world and the anti-religious sentiment of the Israeli art scene, Michael Sgan-Cohen (1944–1999) was remarkable in his unwillingness to suppress his passion for subject matter that could have been deemed "too Jewish"2 and therefore professionally hazardous. Expressed in a lively hybrid of assemblage and conceptual art, made of humble found materials—scuffed schoolroom furniture, ubiquitous army gear, and raw canvas—Sgan-Cohen's paintings and sculptures explore politics, linguistics, philosophy, and aesthetics. But throughout, they reveal his fascination with and deep reverence for Torah texts and Jewish mystical tradition. He channeled his obsessive inclinations into his work, copying out by hand endless lines of biblical text, sometimes on large sheets of paper, sometimes directly into blanked-out columns of newspapers, so that, for example, a charged biblical drama might appear as a hand-written news column in the daily paper Haaretz, next to ads for cigarettes and soap. [End Page 225] Sgan-Cohen's self-portraits as Da Vinci, Van Gogh, Don Quixote, and Moses, Jacob, and Jonah are a paradoxical mix of mythic events, offered up in a style of self-abnegating "bad" painting,3 in which the artist is the heroic central character. Click for larger view Figure 1 "Coat of Many Colors" (1981) Acrylic on canvas, 177 × 71 cm The coat's "many colors" are in fact a uniform dark blue, reminiscent of Magritte's painting of a pipe, entitled in French: "This is not a pipe."