
Contents
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Detailed Discussion for the Specialist Detailed Discussion for the Specialist
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A Brief Outline of the Project A Brief Outline of the Project
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What This Book Is Not: Some Notes on Method What This Book Is Not: Some Notes on Method
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Introductory Remarks: The People of the Book before the Book
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Published:April 2023
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Abstract
This introductory chapter reveals the complexities of the premodern rabbinic relationship to the Bible. While the late antique rabbinic authorities theoretically established the newly canonized Hebrew Bible as a central pillar of an emerging rabbinic Judaism, many early rabbinic statements about the nature of the biblical text and its status were ambivalent at best. As the chapter shows, many early rabbinic traditions did not valorize the Pentateuch as a perfect record of the divine will. Instead, they imagined the biblical text as a makeshift scripture. In many early rabbinic traditions, indeed, the biblical text is identified not only as a dead form of sacred revelation pruned from an inexhaustible living branch of divine truth but also as a potentially deadly form of revelation. Classical rabbinic narratives often expressed concern about the tremendous supernatural power that written scripture contains within a limited material and linguistic vessel, which could be all too easily appropriated, misinterpreted, and corrupted.
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