Halakhah in the Making: The Development of Jewish Law from Qumran to the Rabbis (Taubman Lectures in Jewish Studies): 6 - Hardcover

Shemesh, Aharon

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0520259106 ISBN 13: 9780520259102

Publisher: University of California Press, 2009

Synopsis

"Halakhah in the Making" offers the first comprehensive study of the legal material found in the "Dead Sea Scrolls" and its significance in the greater history of Jewish religious law (halakhah). Aharon Shemesh's pioneering study revives an issue long dormant in religious scholarship: namely, the relationship between rabbinic law, as written more than one hundred years after the destruction of the Second Temple, and Jewish practice during the Second Temple. The monumental discovery of the "Dead Sea Scrolls" in Qumran led to the revelation of this missing material and the closing of a two-hundred-year gap in knowledge, allowing work to begin comparing specific laws of the Qumran sect with rabbinic laws. With the publication of scroll "4QMMT" - a polemical letter by Dead Sea sectarians concerning points of Jewish law - an effective comparison was finally possible. This is the first book-length treatment of the material to appear since the publication of "4QMMT" and the first attempt to apply its discoveries to the work of nineteenth-century scholars. It is also the first work on this important topic written in plain language and accessible to nonspecialists in the history of Jewish law.

About this title

About the Author

Aharon Shemesh teaches in the Department of Talmud, Bar-Ilan University. He has published widely on the development of Jewish law in antiquity. This book is based on the series of talks he delivered for the Taubman Lectures in Jewish Studies at the University of California, Berkeley.

From the Back Cover

Aharon Shemesh outlines in an accessible form the major features of the history of halakhah between the Dead Sea Scrolls and the early rabbinic traditions. While agreeing with other scholars on the conservative, stringent approach to halakhah of both the Sadducees and the authors of the Scrolls, Shemesh argues that this approach surprisingly had more impact on Pharisaic and rabbinic Judaism than usually assumed. This is a unique and original thesis.--Lutz Doering, Durham University

From the Inside Flap

"Aharon Shemesh outlines in an accessible form the major features of the history of halakhah between the Dead Sea Scrolls and the early rabbinic traditions. While agreeing with other scholars on the conservative, stringent approach to halakhah of both the Sadducees and the authors of the Scrolls, Shemesh argues that this approach surprisingly had more impact on Pharisaic and rabbinic Judaism than usually assumed. This is a unique and original thesis." Lutz Doering, Durham University

Edition details

• Publisher: University of California Press
• Publication date: 2009
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0520259106
• ISBN 13: 9780520259102
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 190