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 Echoes of Scripture, very few studies that stemmed from a NT context ever mention rabbinic literature anymore. My book works to revive and reframe this conversation, make room for early rabbinic texts in the study of Paul and make room for Paul in the study of ancient Midrash, without collapsing these texts into constricting and antiquated models of dependency and borrowing.
“All this to say that Paul’s emphasis in Romans 10 on speaking and subsequently hearing—orality—is not because it is relevant only to his gentile communities, but because it serves as an explanation for why part of Israel still not has yet believed; they cannot believe because they cannot “hear” the oral nomos speaking about Christ and righteousness by trust. “
Studies that seek to build on her path-breaking work in the history of midrash will have to pay closer attention to this fundamental X-factor in Pauline hermeneutics.
"We tend to think about rabbinic interpretations, like midrash, arising from a difficulty in the text itself: smoothing out a piece of grit until, in the famous analogy, it becomes a pearl. What if, however, difficulties that arise from the juxtaposition of two texts are fertile ground for interpretation as well—and that interpretation is not meant to make them easier, but rather, harder?"
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?
As scholars continue to investigate the bowls from multiple angles – paleographic, onomastic, linguistic, social historical, legal, literary, ritual, visual, gendered, comparative – our understanding of Babylonian Judaism and late antique society will continue to develop. Manekin-Bamberger’s insights about the bowls’ contractual dimensions and the professional scribes who produced them – as well as about the overlap of law and magic on a broader scale – are an essential contribution to this field, and will no doubt shape, methodologically and historically, how future studies approach this corpus and its relationship to other ancient Jewish texts and artifacts and to the long history of magic, law, and religion.
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.