Midrash and Multiplicity (Studia Judaica)

✍ Scribed by Steven D. Sacks

• Publisher: Gruyter
• Year: 2009
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 193
• Series: Studia Judaica 48
• Edition: 1
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

Pirke de-Rabbi Eliezer represents a late development in ""midrash"", or classical rabbinic interpretation, that has enlightened, intrigued and frustrated scholars of Jewish culture for the past two centuries. Pirke de-Rabbi Eliezer??s challenge to scholarship includes such issues as the work??s authorship and authenticity, an asymmetrical literary structure as well as its ambiguous relationship with a variety of rabbinic, Islamic and Hellenistic works of interpretation. This cluster of issues has contributed to the confusion about the work??s structure, origins and identity. Midrash and Multiplicity addresses the problems raised by this equivocal work, and uses Pirke de-Rabbi Eliezer in order to assess the nature of ""midrash"", and the renewal of Jewish interpretive culture, during its transition to the medieval era of the early ""Geonim"".

✦ Table of Contents

MIDRASH AND MULTIPLICITY: PIRKE DE-RABBI ELIEZER AND THE RENEWAL OF RABBINIC INTERPRETIVE CULTURE......Page 4
Acknowledgements......Page 8
Table of Contents......Page 10
PRE and the History of Rabbinic Literature......Page 12
Literary Arrangement in PRE......Page 28
Narrative and the Phenomenon of Lists......Page 33
The Context of Thematic Discourse......Page 43
Analogy and "Bound Themes" in PRE......Page 47
PRE and Pseudepigraphy......Page 53
R. Eliezer as Author, Pseudonym or Archetype......Page 64
Transmission and Tradents in PRE......Page 70
Appendix: Geonic Hebrew and Pseudepigraphy......Page 93
PRE and the Language of Scripture......Page 99
Exegetical Terminology in PRE......Page 101
PRE's Exegetical Expansions: Clusters of Scriptural Language......Page 111
Appendix: Legal Authority and Scriptural Innovation in PRE......Page 120
PRE and the Rabbinic Tradition......Page 131
Technical Vocabulary in PRE......Page 133
Quotation and Resonance: A Demonstration of Rabbinic Traditions in PRE......Page 146
Mythic Clusters: PRE's Mythic and Exegetical Reinterpretation of Rabbinic Literature......Page 156
Appendix: PRE, Ishmael and Islam......Page 168
Conclusion......Page 179
Select Bibliography......Page 182
General Index......Page 186
Hebrew Terms......Page 189
References to Biblical and Rabbinic Literature......Page 190