While Scripture is at the center of many religions, among them
Islam and Christianity, this book inquires into the function,
development, and implications of the centrality of text upon the
Jewish community, and by extension on the larger question of
canonization and the text-centered community. It is a commonplace
to note how the landless and scattered Jewish communities have,
from the time of the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem in 70
A.D. until the founding of modern Israel in 1948, cleaved to the
text and derived their identity from it. But the story is far more
complex. The shift from the Bible to the Torah, from biblical
religion to rabbinic Judaism mediated by the Sages, and the sealing
of the canon together with its continuing interpretive work
demanded from the community, amount to what could be called an
unparalleled obsession with textuality. Halbertal gives us insights
into the history of this obsession, in a philosophically
sophisticated yet straightforward narrative.
"People of the Book" offers the best introduction available to
Jewish hermeneutics, a book capable of conveying the importance of
the tradition to a wide audience of both academic and general
readers. Halbertal provides a panoramic survey of Jewish attitudes
toward Scripture, provocatively organized around problems of
normative and formative authority, with an emphasis on the changing
status and functions of Mishnah, Talmud, and Kabbalah. With a gift
for weaving complex issues of interpretation into his own plot, he
animates ancient texts by assigning them roles in his own highly
persuasive narrative.
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