Rabbinic Reflections on Divine–Human Interactions

This article approaches the question of tolerance by focusing on the topic of miraculous births, shared by both Jews and Christians. An analysis of chapter 14 of Leviticus Rabbah, dated to the first half of the fifth century, reveals contacts between the rabbinic text and Origen’s homilies on Leviticus, which elaborate on the same biblical texts. Jews and Christians shared the idea of God’s unquestionable power to perform miracles, but whereas the Christian discourse on miraculous birth in general addressed the birth of Jesus, the rabbis diverted the discourse to all human births.

Chronicles and intertextuality in early rabbinic literature

The call to read Chronicles ‘midrashically’ in Leviticus Rabbah 1.3 and Ruth Rabbah 2.1 challenges the contemporary understanding of intertextuality in the early Rabbis’ interpretation of Scripture. David Stern, James Kugel, and others claim that the sages considered each word of the Bible to be equal, regardless of who wrote it or when. The Rabbis’ insistence, however, that Chronicles receive special treatment contradicts this assertion. This article argues that Chronicles’ late date of composition had a dual effect. On the one hand, Chronicles’ lateness reduced its authority and led the Rabbis to give greater weight to the words of the Primary History in their intertextual readings. On the other hand, Chronicles’ retelling of the past provided a biblical warrant for the Rabbis’ own reshaping of tradition.

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

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.

A Sage Story as Dramatized Biblical Exegesis

In the study of rabbinic legend there is a widely accepted generic distinction between those legends that expand on biblical stories (exegetical narratives) and those that feature the sages of the Mishnah and the Talmud (sage stories). This article questions the absolute nature of this generic distinction by examining the circumstances that shaped the development of a sage story that appears in the midrashic collection Leviticus Rabbah and its parallels. I seek to demonstrate that occasionally stories about the sages emerge from the exegesis of biblical verses. My article demonstrates how a verse from Psalms takes on the shape of a story, which serves to solve a linguistic problem in the verse. This example sheds new light on the relationship between exegetical narratives and sage stories, and suggests that we view them as part of the same broader creative intellectual context.