The 2023 Society of Biblical Literature's review panel for Yael Fisch, Written for Us: Paul’s Interpretation of Scripture and the History of Midrash.
The 2023 Society of Biblical Literature's review panel for Yael Fisch, Written for Us: Paul’s Interpretation of Scripture and the History of Midrash.
"After reading Fisch’s book I am convinced that Paul’s general hermeneutic should not be identified as a radicalization of Alexandrian allegory, or as allegory at all. And I can accept, based on Paul’s blend of the intertextual method featured in later rabbinic midrash with the terminology and content of allegory in Gal 4, that allegory and midrash are not always diametrically opposed, at least for Paul. Nevertheless, as Fisch herself recognizes and details, allegory and midrash differ in numerous ways. Moreover, they are not blended in the vast majority of works of ancient Jewish interpretation or in rabbinic literature, which suggests that their distinction as hermeneutical systems has heuristic value."
"Although we might not have faith in these beliefs today, I have found that while teaching my Roman Empire class, having students reconstruct these fastidious rules, in order to learn to engage with the ars of divination, can provide them with deeper access into Roman beliefs about communication with the gods."
Was imperial rule indeed so antithetical to local agency, or was it in fact a facilitating factor in the formation and consolidation of local elite identities? Did the Hasmoneans and their supporters really espouse such an anti-imperial political theology as is often associated with them? What would change in our understanding of emerging Judaism and the Jewish political imagination if we were to reimagine the Hasmonean period without such a heavy emphasis on Jewish national and religious identity in opposition to empire?
Mira Balberg, however, points to the shifting attitudes towards forgetfulness and forgetting as a pivotal moment in the history of the rabbinic movement, and in Fractured Tablets she offers a fresh new reading of the rabbinic construction of forgetting. The rabbis shaped their subject as a fallible and often confused human being, bumbling around the world, trying to observe God’s commandments.
The essays in this volume thus provide a brief sample of what it undoubtedly a virtual goldmine for comparative literary and historical inquiry.
AJR is thrilled to feature the responses of Dr. Samuel Cook and Dr. Jacob Lollar along with the response of Dr. Miroshnikov in this three-part series.
The volume shines when it considers the interplay between materiality and close readings of literature. But the question stands for our field as it grapples with memory studies: what, indeed, is the link between form and practice, between literature and history?
“Wollenberg’s book compels us to keep firmly in mind what the trope of Written Torah v. Oral Torah tends to obscure, namely, that the rabbis absorbed, studied, and taught Scripture chiefly as an oral text.”
Yarbro Collins’s goal in Paul Transformed is to capture the multiple images of Paul that early Christ-confessors created from reading the apostle’s letters.
“The pioneering study of Thea Gomelauri unfolds the history of the Lailashi Codex, and presents the paleographical and codicological description of one of the most ancient Bible codices.”