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The turbulent Second Temple period produced searching biblical texts whose protagonists, unlike heroes like Noah, Abraham, and Moses, were more everyday figures who expressed their moral uncertainties more vocally. Reflecting on a new type of Jewish moral agent, these tales depict men who are feminized, and women who are masculinized. In this volume, Lawrence M. Wills offers a deep interrogation of these stories, uncovering the psychological aspects of Jewish identity, moral life, and decisions that they explore. Often written as novellas, the stories investigate emotions, psychological interiorizing, the self, agency, and character. Recent insights from gender and postcolonial theory inform Wills' study, as he shows how one can study and compare modern and ancient gender constructs. Wills also reconstructs the social fabric of the Second Temple period and demonstrates how a focus on emotions, the self, and moral psychology, often associated with both ancient Greek and modern literature, are present in biblical texts, albeit in a subtle, unassuming manner.
This chapter examines the texts surviving from Qumran and the surrounding area and how their tradents understood the nature of biblical law. It will identify and describe the interpretive strategies reflected in the scrolls for both harmonization and creative reuse of biblical law.
This Companion offers a comprehensive overview of the history, nature, and legacy of biblical law. Examining the debates that swirl around the nature of biblical law, it explores its historical context, the significance of its rules, and its influence on early Judaism and Christianity. The volume also interrogates key questions: Were the rules intended to function as ancient Israel's statutory law? Is there evidence to indicate that they served a different purpose? What is the relationship between this legal material and other parts of the Hebrew Bible? Most importantly, the book provides an in-depth look at the content of the Torah's laws, with individual essays on substantive, procedural, and ritual law. With contributions from an international team of experts, written specially for this volume, The Cambridge Companion to Law in the Hebrew Bible provides an up-to-date look at scholarship on biblical law and outlines themes and topics for future research.
It is impossible to understand the rabbis and the works they produced without a grasp of the Jewish world they inherited. In this chapter, we will review that world and the documents that reflect its qualities. The evidence for the Jewish world in Palestine before the rabbis begins with the Hebrew Bible. What were the worldviews, theologies, literary styles, and systems of practice supported by the canonical books? The pre-rabbinic Jewish library also includes other literary compositions, including the Apocrypha, Pseudepigrapha, and Dead Sea Scrolls. We may also learn a great deal from the writings of early Christians. There were also received oral traditions that ultimately influenced the teachings of the rabbis. To what extent was the rabbis’ “Oral Torah” grounded in the oral traditions of the pre-Christian centuries? The difficulties in answering these questions will be addressed so that we may later consider the traditional or innovative quality of rabbinic productions. Lastly, it is impossible to understand the world of Jews in Palestine without gaining some sense of the broader Greco-Roman environment. In this chapter, we examine all this evidence and more.
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