God's Echo: Exploring Scripture with Midrash - Hardcover

Eisenberg-Sasso, Sandy

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1557254788 ISBN 13: 9781557254788

Publisher: Paraclete Press, 2007

Synopsis

The Rabbis of old believed that the Torah was divinely revealed and therefore contained eternal, perfect truths and hidden meaning that required ongoing elucidation. The meaning of a text was more complicated than simply reading it. And meaning changed over time. This understanding of how the Bible mystically relates to all of life is the fertile ground from which midrash emerged. "The rabbis believed that nothing in the Bible, not the choice of words or their spellings, not the order of events or the relationship of one text to another, was haphazard or inconsequential. Everything was there with purpose. They deemed it their responsibility to discover connections and harmony where on the surface none appeared to exist. A text may contain multiple meanings. Time is of no consequence. They felt free to read back into old stories what happened in future eras, and to see in the early stories of Genesis a foreshadowing of future events."In this engaging book, Rabbi Sasso explores how midrash originated, how it is still used today, and offers new translations and interpretations of more than twenty essential midrash texts.

About this title

About the Author

Sandy Eisenberg Sasso is the best-selling author of In God's Name, God's Paintbrush, and Butterflies Under Our Hats. Half a million copies of her books are in print around the world. She was the first woman ordained from the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College in Philadelphia in 1974, becoming only the third woman in the world to become a rabbi, and she earned her Doctor of Ministry degree from Christian Theological Seminary. Sandy Sasso and her husband, Dennis, have been rabbis of Congregation Beth-El Zedeck in Indianapolis since 1977

Edition details

• Publisher: Paraclete Press
• Publication date: 2007
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1557254788
• ISBN 13: 9781557254788
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 168