Sifre Deuteronomy 26 (ad Deut. 3:23): How Conscious the Composition?
The critical study of rabbinic midrash collections needs to take seriously the possibility that whoever redacted these texts did more than simply collect preexistent traditions of exegesis, but gave new meaning to such traditions in significantly reshaping and recombining them to form running commen...
| Main Author: | |
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| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Published: |
HUC
1984
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| In: |
Hebrew Union College annual
Year: 1983, Volume: 54, Pages: 245-301 |
| Online Access: |
Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) |
| Parallel Edition: | Non-electronic
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| Summary: | The critical study of rabbinic midrash collections needs to take seriously the possibility that whoever redacted these texts did more than simply collect preexistent traditions of exegesis, but gave new meaning to such traditions in significantly reshaping and recombining them to form running commentaries on the text of Scripture. Consequently, the proper contexts (literary, cultural, social, and historical) in which these collections need to be understood may be as much those of the texts' redactors as those of the putative authors of the contained traditions of interpretation. The discrete case of one small section of Sifre Deuteronomy is here chosen in order to test through application this methodology: To what extent is this text and its communicated meaning the product of self-conscious composition through the selection, shaping, and combination of traditions originating in other literary (whether written or oral) contexts? The conclusion reached is that such traditions have been subtly but significantly reshaped in being combined to form a didactically effective, if not yet polished, introduction to the earliest extant commentary on Deut. 3:23—4:1: Moses in petitioning God to be allowed to enter the promised land stands in complete humility, as if without merit, and in recognition of the gratuitous favor which God bestows equally upon all humanity. |
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| Contains: | Enthalten in: Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, Hebrew Union College annual
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