The Geonim of Babylonia and the Shaping of Medieval Jewish Culture - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook The Geonim of Babylonia and the Shaping of Medieval Jewish Culture write by Robert Brody. This book was released on 1998-01-01. The Geonim of Babylonia and the Shaping of Medieval Jewish Culture available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. The Geonic period from about the late sixth to mid-eleventh centuries is of crucial importance in the history of Judaism. The Geonim, for whom this era is named, were the heads of the ancient talmudic academies of Babylonia. They gained ascendancy over the older Palestinian center of Judaism and were recognized as the leading religious and spiritual authorities by most of the world's Jewish population. The Geonim and their circles enshrined the Babylonian Talmud as the central canonical work of rabbinic literature and the leading guide to religious practice, and it was a predominantly Babylonian version of Judaism that was transplanted to newer centers of Judaism in North Africa and Europe. Robert Brody's book -- the first survey in English of the Geonic period in almost a century -focuses on the cultural milieu of the Geonim and on their intellectual and literary creativity. Brody describes the cultural spheres in which the Geonim were active and the historical and cultural settings within which they functioned. He emphasizes the challenges presented by other Jewish institutions and individuals, ranging from those within the Babylonian Jewish setting -- specially the political leadership represented by the Exilarch -- to the competing Palestinian Jewish center and to sectarian movements and freethinkers who rejected rabbinic authority altogether. He also describes the variety of ways in which the development of Geonic tradition was affected by the surrounding non-Jewish cultures, both Muslim and Christian. "This book is a fresh and thorough examination of the period in question, a masterpiece of scholarship and erudition". -- Neil Danzig, Jewish Theological Seminary
The Geonim of Babylonia and the Shaping of Medieval Jewish Culture
The Geonim of Babylonia and the Shaping of Medieval Jewish Culture - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook The Geonim of Babylonia and the Shaping of Medieval Jewish Culture write by . This book was released on 1998. The Geonim of Babylonia and the Shaping of Medieval Jewish Culture available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Robert Brody's book - the first survey in English of the Geonic period in almost a century - focuses on the cultural milieu of the Geonim and on their intellectual and literary creativity.
Becoming the People of the Talmud
Becoming the People of the Talmud - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook Becoming the People of the Talmud write by Talya Fishman. This book was released on 2012-01-31. Becoming the People of the Talmud available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. In Becoming the People of the Talmud, Talya Fishman examines ways in which circumstances of transmission have shaped the cultural meaning of Jewish traditions. Although the Talmud's preeminence in Jewish study and its determining role in Jewish practice are generally taken for granted, Fishman contends that these roles were not solidified until the late eleventh and early twelfth centuries. The inscription of Talmud—which Sefardi Jews understand to have occurred quite early, and Ashkenazi Jews only later—precipitated these developments. The encounter with Oral Torah as a written corpus was transformative for both subcultures, and it shaped the roles that Talmud came to play in Jewish life. What were the historical circumstances that led to the inscription of Oral Torah in medieval Europe? How did this body of ancient rabbinic traditions, replete with legal controversies and nonlegal material, come to be construed as a reference work and prescriptive guide to Jewish life? Connecting insights from geonica, medieval Jewish and Christian history, and orality-textuality studies, Becoming the People of the Talmud reconstructs the process of cultural transformation that occurred once medieval Jews encountered the Babylonian Talmud as a written text. According to Fishman, the ascription of greater authority to written text was accompanied by changes in reading habits, compositional predilections, classroom practices, approaches to adjudication, assessments of the past, and social hierarchies. She contends that certain medieval Jews were aware of these changes: some noted that books had replaced teachers; others protested the elevation of Talmud-centered erudition and casuistic virtuosity into standards of religious excellence, at the expense of spiritual refinement. The book concludes with a consideration of Rhineland Pietism's emergence in this context and suggests that two contemporaneous phenomena—the prominence of custom in medieval Ashkenazi culture and the novel Christian attack on Talmud—were indirectly linked to the new eminence of this written text in Jewish life.
The Responsa of the Babylonian Geonim as a Source of Jewish History
The Responsa of the Babylonian Geonim as a Source of Jewish History - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook The Responsa of the Babylonian Geonim as a Source of Jewish History write by Jacob Mann. This book was released on 1921. The Responsa of the Babylonian Geonim as a Source of Jewish History available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle.
Jewish Babylonia between Persia and Roman Palestine
Jewish Babylonia between Persia and Roman Palestine - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook Jewish Babylonia between Persia and Roman Palestine write by Richard Kalmin. This book was released on 2006-10-26. Jewish Babylonia between Persia and Roman Palestine available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. The Babylonian Talmud was compiled in the third through sixth centuries CE, by rabbis living under Sasanian Persian rule in the area between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. What kind of society did these rabbis inhabit? What effect did that society have on important rabbinic texts? In this book Richard Kalmin offers a thorough reexamination of rabbinic culture of late antique Babylonia. He shows how this culture was shaped in part by Persia on the one hand, and by Roman Palestine on the other. The mid fourth century CE in Jewish Babylonia was a period of particularly intense "Palestinianization," at the same time that the Mesopotamian and east Persian Christian communities were undergoing a period of intense "Syrianization." Kalmin argues that these closely related processes were accelerated by third-century Persian conquests deep into Roman territory, which resulted in the resettlement of thousands of Christian and Jewish inhabitants of the eastern Roman provinces in Persian Mesopotamia, eastern Syria, and western Persia, profoundly altering the cultural landscape for centuries to come. Kalmin also offers new interpretations of several fascinating rabbinic texts of late antiquity. He shows how they have often been misunderstood by historians who lack attentiveness to the role of anonymous editors in glossing or emending earlier texts and who insist on attributing these texts to sixth century editors rather than to storytellers and editors of earlier centuries who introduced changes into the texts they learned and transmitted. He also demonstrates how Babylonian rabbis interacted with the non-rabbinic Jewish world, often in the form of the incorporation of centuries-old non-rabbinic Jewish texts into the developing Talmud, rather than via the encounter with actual non-rabbinic Jews in the streets and marketplaces of Babylonia. Most of these texts were "domesticated" prior to their inclusion in the Babylonian Talmud, which was generally accomplished by means of the rabbinization of the non-rabbinic texts. Rabbis transformed a story's protagonists into rabbis rather than kings or priests, or portrayed them studying Torah rather than engaging in other activities, since Torah study was viewed by them as the most important, perhaps the only important, human activity. Kalmin's arguments shed new light on rabbinic Judaism in late antique society. This book will be invaluable to any student or scholar of this period.
