Politics and Administration

2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
AHARON OPPENHEIMER
Keyword(s):  
Rabbinic Literature ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Roman Palestine ◽  
Urbanisation Policy

This chapter evaluates the use of rabbinic literature in the study of politics and administration in Roman Palestine. It focuses on the relationship between Severan activities in the field of cities and urbanisation in talmudic sources which include actions and rulings of Rabbi Judah haNasi. The findings reveal that even though the Romans did not force, or even request it, Rabbi Judah haNasi joined in the Severan urbanisation policy, and exempted mixed cities from tithes and the sabbatical laws in order to strengthen the Jewish basis there.

From Dungeon to Haven: Competing Theories of Gestation in Leviticus Rabbah and the Babylonian Talmud

AJS Review ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 43 (01) ◽  
pp. 143-168
Author(s):  
Shana Strauch Schick
Keyword(s):  
Medical Knowledge ◽  
Active Role ◽  
Rabbinic Literature ◽  
Babylonian Talmud ◽  
Leviticus Rabbah ◽  
Greco Roman ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Representations Of Women ◽  
Roman Palestine

Rabbinic literature offers competing images of embryology and the relationship between mother and fetus. The Palestinian midrashic collection Leviticus Rabbah 14 marginalizes the active role of the mother and depicts the process of gestation as a dangerous time for the fetus. God is in charge of the care and birth of the child, and the father is the lone source of physical material. Passages in the third chapter of Bavli tractate Niddah, in contrast, reference the biological contributions of the mother and portray an idyllic image of the womb. This study explores how cultural differences, variances in representations of women, and sources of authoritative medical knowledge in Sasanian Persia and Roman Palestine contributed to the formation of these texts with markedly different understandings of the relationship between mother and fetus. I will argue that the study of the Sasanian Persian context is key to understanding the Bavli motifs, but that the Palestinian sources can best be understood with references not only to contemporaneous Greco-Roman sources, but also to ancient Iranian and Mesopotamian works, which have been generally overlooked by scholars.

Rabbinic Perceptions of Christianity and the History of Roman Palestine

2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
WILLIAM HORBURY
Keyword(s):  
Rabbinic Literature ◽  
Western World ◽  
History Of Christianity ◽  
History Of ◽  
Roman Palestine

This chapter evaluates the use of rabbinic literature in the study of the history of Christianity in Roman Palestine. It explains that this issue goes back to medieval Jewish-Christian controversy and intertwines with the whole history of the reception of the Talmud in Europe and the western world. It suggests that the view that Christians are most often envisaged in the rabbinic references to minim is consistent with the likelihood that Christianity is envisaged in a number of rabbinic and targumic passages which do not mention minim.

Rabbinic Literature and the History of Judaism in Late Antiquity: Challenges, Methodologies and New Approaches

2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
MOSHE LAVEE
Keyword(s):  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Rabbinic Literature ◽  
Historical Source ◽  
Theoretical Frameworks ◽  
New Approaches ◽  
History Of ◽  
Roman Palestine ◽  
Late Roman

This chapter examines the methodologies, new approaches, and challenges in the use of rabbinic literature to study the history of Judaism in late antiquity. It provides some examples that demonstrate some of the issues concerning the applicability of rabbinic literature to the study of Judaism in late-Roman Palestine. It concludes that rabbinic literature can serve as a historical source, especially when read indirectly and through the lens of well-defined theoretical frameworks, and when perceived as a rabbinic cultural product that reflects delicate, sophisticated and hardly recoverable relationships between text and reality.

Using Rabbinic Literature as a Source for the History of Late-Roman Palestine: Problems and Issues1

2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
PHILIP ALEXANDER
Keyword(s):  
Rabbinic Literature ◽  
Historical Source ◽  
Preliminary Work ◽  
History Of ◽  
Roman Palestine ◽  
Late Roman

This chapter examines problems concerning the use of rabbinic literature as a resource for studying the history of late-Roman Palestine. It discusses the rabbinic corpus, the composition and transmission of the texts, the language and the genres of rabbinic literature. It concludes that rabbinic literature requires very heavy processing before its potential as a historical source can be realised and it states that the extent to which scholars engaged with this literature have done the preliminary work remains patchy.

Rabbinic Texts and the History of Late-Roman Palestine

2011 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Social History ◽  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Rabbinic Literature ◽  
Historical Evidence ◽  
Introductory Section ◽  
Current State ◽  
History Of ◽  
Political Economic ◽  
Roman Palestine ◽  
Late Roman

This volume brings together studies in the rabbinic literature of late antiquity by specialists in the history of the Jews in that period in order to reveal the value of rabbinic material as historical evidence and to show the problems and issues which arise in its exploitation. An introductory section discusses the current state of knowledge about Palestine in this period and debates the difficulties involved in editing and dating rabbinic texts. Specific core texts and text categories are then introduced to the reader in a series of ten discrete studies. The volume concludes with six thematic analyses which illustrate the use and limitations of rabbinic evidence for cultural, religious, political, economic and social history.

Conclusion

2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
MARTIN GOODMAN
Keyword(s):  
Rabbinic Literature ◽  
Historical Source ◽  
Medieval Manuscripts ◽  
Roman Provinces ◽  
History Of ◽  
Roman Palestine ◽  
Late Roman

This concluding chapter sums up the key findings of this study on the application of rabbinic literature in studying the history of late-Roman Palestine. It has been demonstrated that a great deal of evidence preserved within the rabbinic tradition in medieval manuscripts originated in the Roman provinces of Palestine between c.200 and c.700 CE. It was also shown that rabbinic texts, even at their most reliable, can only provide a very partial glimpse of late-Roman Palestine. This chapter also highlights the inherent problems using rabbinic texts as historical source and suggests ways to overcome them.

Introduction

2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
MARTIN GOODMAN
Keyword(s):  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Present Form ◽  
Rabbinic Literature ◽  
Historical Evidence ◽  
History Of ◽  
Roman Palestine ◽  
Late Roman

This introductory chapter explains the coverage of this book, which is about rabbinic texts of late antiquity and their application in the study of the history of late-Roman Palestine. It investigates whether these rabbinic texts existed in anything like their present form in late antiquity and examines the differing status as historical evidence for late antiquity of different sorts of rabbinic literature. It provides a series of thematic studies of historical topics for which rabbinic evidence has been considered as useful evidence and denied such a role by others.

Parallelism and Beyond: The Relationship between Targum Psalms and Rabbinic Literature

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-35
Author(s):  
Abraham Jacob Berkovitz
Keyword(s):  
Rabbinic Literature ◽  
Late Antique ◽  
The Relationship

Abstract This study examines six manners in which rabbinic literature and Targum Psalms interact. 1. An earlier rabbinic tradition provides the backdrop against which the Targum’s translation must be understood. 2. The Targum applies a tradition it uses to translate one part of a psalm towards translating another verse in that same psalm. 3. The Targum revises earlier rabbinic traditions to suit its own ideological and literary concerns. 4. The Targum adapts interpretations that were originally generated well beyond the confines of the psalm being translated and even the Psalter as a whole. 5. The Targum inserts itself into popular late antique exegetical discourses of particular psalms. 6. It rejects a widespread interpretive trend attested to in rabbinic literature. Overall, by moving beyond the mere notation of parallelism, we gain a clearer portrait of the translator’s relationship with rabbinic literature, his working methods, and the ideologies that impelled his creative endeavours.

Fraud: From the Biblical Basis to General Commercial Law in Roman Palestine

2006 ◽  
Vol 37 (4) ◽  
pp. 594-627
Author(s):  
Ben-Zion Rosenfeld ◽  
Joseph Menirav
Keyword(s):  
Second Temple ◽  
Roman Law ◽  
Rabbinic Literature ◽  
Commercial Law ◽  
The Bible ◽  
The Law ◽  
Rabbinic Law ◽  
Roman Palestine

AbstractThe article deals with the understanding of the historical and legal components of the law prohibiting fraud (honayah) as appears from the Bible to Rabbinic literature. The first section reviews this law and its understanding from Biblical times until the destruction of the Second Temple. Then follows a discussion of the changes that arose after this period, based on the information gleaned from the rabbinic literature, on fraud, its development, and its structure. The law declares that every deviation of one sixth of an accepted price is called fraud. The article analyzes the main issues of the law such as: is this sixth of the gross price or of the net price? How can one set the legal definitions of profit and fraud for an object that was resold several times. The authors analyze cases in which it is difficult to set a price due to various reasons, or items that both the buyer and seller cannot complain of fraud. The rabbinic law is compared and contrasted to the contemporary Roman law.

The Political Functions of (Premodern) Courts and Procedure and Questions of Comparative Method

2019 ◽  
Vol 37 (4) ◽  
pp. 937-946
Author(s):  
Amalia D. Kessler
Keyword(s):  
Comparative Method ◽  
Roman Law ◽  
Rabbinic Literature ◽  
The Political ◽  
Legal Systems ◽  
The Common ◽  
Common Era ◽  
Roman Palestine

Orit Malka's Disqualified Witnesses, Between Tannaitic Halakha and Roman Law is structured around a puzzle. Why did the rabbinic literature produced in Roman Palestine in the early centuries of the Common Era identify a list of four seemingly disparate types of people—dice-players, usurers, pigeon-flyers, and traders in Seventh Year produce—as disqualified from giving testimony in court? This argument has important implications, I suggest, for all legal systems—like most throughout history—that are not structured around a modern, positivist conception of law and of the role of courts.

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