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The Legends of the Jews, 2-volume set (Hardcover, New Ed)
Loot Price: R4,180
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The Legends of the Jews, 2-volume set (Hardcover, New Ed)
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This is the JPS classic reissue of a Jewish masterpiece, reset in
two volumes with all new indexes. To this day Legends of the Jews
remains a most remarkable and comprehensive compilation of stories
connected to the Hebrew Bible. It is an indispensable reference on
that body of literature known as Midrash, the imaginative retelling
and elaboration on Bible stories in which mythological tales about
demons and magic co-exist with moralistic stories about the piety
of the patriarchs. Legends is the first book to which one turns to
learn about the postbiblical understanding of a biblical episode,
or to discover the source for biblical legends that cannot be
traced directly to the Bible. It is also the first place to find
the answers to such questions as: on what day was Abraham born;
what was Moses' physical appearance, or what was the name of
Potiphar's wife. Launched in 1901 by the Jewish Publication
Society, this original project began as a single volume of 1,000
pages but grew much larger by 1938, when the seventh volume
containing the indexes was finally published. Louis Ginzberg was 28
years old when Henrietta Szold, secretary of the Society, prepared
the contract for what was conceived as a small, popular volume on
Jewish legends. As the scion of two distinguished rabbinical
families, Ginzberg studied in the great Lithuanian yeshivot of Telz
and Slobodka. Later he received his secular education at Strassburg
and Heidelberg universities. This combination of religious and
secular learning enabled him to pursue with great passion the
wide-ranging roots of Jewish legend. Ginzberg believed that Jewish
legend was both earlier and greater than what was represented in
the Talmud and midrashic collections-the primary Rabbinic sources.
And so he scoured Jewish, Christian, Islamic, and Oriental sources
to rediscover the fine threads of Jewish legend. The result was a
masterpiece: a single, coherent collection of legends that follows
the biblical narrative, accompanied by detailed notes that reveal a
complex subtext of often intersecting and multi-layered levels of
influence, borrowed notions, and interpretive commentaries. Four
new indexes and a new introduction by David Stern, Professor of
Postbiblical and Medieval Hebrew Literature, and Director of the
Jewish Studies Program at the University of Pennsylvania, complete
the reissue of one of the greatest classics of modern Jewish
literature.
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