Scriptural Tales Retold: The Inventiveness of Second Temple Jews (Jewish and Christian Texts) - Hardcover

Gruen, Erich S.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0567715175 ISBN 13: 9780567715173

Publisher: T&T Clark, 2024

Synopsis

Erich S. Gruen investigates a remarkable phenomenon in religious and literary history: the freedom with which Jewish writers in antiquity retold and recast, sometimes distorted or bypassed, biblical narratives that ostensibly had the status of sacred texts. Gruen asks the question of what prompted such tampering with tales that carried divine authority, and what implications this widespread practice of liberal revising had for attitudes toward the sacrality of the scriptures in general. Gruen focuses upon writings of the Second Temple period, an era of the deep integration of Jewish history and the Greco-Roman world. Gruen brings to the task the training of a classicist and ancient historian rather than that of a biblical textual critic or a rabbinics scholar, not pursuing the commentaries of the later rabbis with their very different approaches, methods, and goals. As such, Gruen's emphasis rests upon narrative rather than legal matters, the haggadic rather than the halakhic. The former lends itself most readily to the creative instincts of the re-tellers.

About this title

About the Author

Erich S. Gruen is the Gladys Rehard Wood Professor Emeritus of History and Classics at the University of California, Berkeley, USA.

Edition details

• Publisher: T&T Clark
• Publication date: 2024
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0567715175
• ISBN 13: 9780567715173
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 184