A "brisk and entertaining" (Wall Street Journal) journey into the mystery behind why the forbidden fruit became an apple, upending an explanation that stood for centuries.   How did the apple, unmentioned by the Bible, become the dominant symbol of temptation, sin, and the Fall? Temptation Transformed pursues this mystery across art and religious history, uncovering where, when, and why the forbidden fruit became an apple.   Azzan Yadin-Israel reveals that Eden’s fruit, once thought to be a fig or a grape, first appears as an apple in twelfth-century French art. He then traces this image back to its source in medieval storytelling. Though scholars often blame theologians for the apple, accounts of the Fall written in commonly spoken languages—French, German, and English—influenced a broader audience than cloistered Latin commentators. Azzan Yadin-Israel shows that, over time, the words for “fruit� in these languages narrowed until an apple in the Garden became self-evident. A wide-ranging study of early Christian thought, Renaissance art, and medieval languages, Temptation Transformed offers an eye-opening revisionist history of a central religious icon.

Scripture as Logos Rabbi Ishmael and the Origins of Midrash Azzan Yadin "This is perhaps the most significant and innovative scholarly work on the halakhic midrashim in the past thirty years. The claims are extremely convincing, the scholarship is rigorous, and the writing is engaging. The conclusions repeatedly break new ground and dispel mistaken ideas that have been accepted among scholars. Most impressive, Yadin consistently displays a command of both textual expertise and theory."--Jeffrey L. Rubenstein, New York University The study of midrash--the biblical exegesis, parables, and anecdotes of the Rabbis--has enjoyed a renaissance in recent years. Most recent scholarship, however, has focused on the aggadic or narrative midrash, while halakhic or legal midrash--the exegesis of biblical law--has received relatively little attention. In "Scripture as Logos," Azzan Yadin addresses this long-standing need, examining early, tannaitic (70-200 C.E.) legal midrash, focusing on the interpretive tradition associated with the figure of Rabbi Ishmael. This is a sophisticated study of midrashic hermeneutics, growing out of the observation that the Rabbi Ishmael midrashim contain a dual personification of Scripture, which is referred to as both "torah" and "ha-katuv." It is Yadin's significant contribution to note that the two terms are not in fact synonymous but rather serve as metonymies for Sinai on the one hand and, on the other, the rabbinic house of study, the bet midrash. Yadin develops this insight, ultimately presenting the complex but highly coherent interpretive ideology that underlies these rabbinic texts, an ideology that--contrary to the dominant view today--seeks to minimize the role of the rabbinic reader by presenting Scripture as actively self-interpretive. Moving beyond textual analysis, Yadin then locates the Rabbi Ishmael hermeneutic within the religious landscape of Second Temple and post-Temple literature. The result is a series of surprising connections between these rabbinic texts and Wisdom literature, the Dead Sea Scrolls, and the Church Fathers, all of which lead to a radical rethinking of the origins of rabbinic midrash and, indeed, of the Rabbis as a whole. Azzan Yadin teaches in the Department of Jewish Studies at Rutgers University. Divinations: Rereading Late Ancient Religion 2004 248 pages 6 x 9 ISBN 978-0-8122-3791-7 Cloth $69.95s 45.50 ISBN 978-0-8122-0412-4 Ebook $69.95s 45.50 World Rights Religion, History

English and German are sister languages, but as sometimes happens in families, time and distance have taken their toll, and their shared roots are not always visible. This book allows English speakers to recover these original ties and use their native knowledge of English to more easily acquire German vocabulary. A great learning tool for students of German, and for lovers of English

The earliest rabbinic commentary to the Book of Leviticus, the Sifra, is generally considered an exemplum of Rabbi Akiva's intensely scriptural school of interpretation. But, Azzan Yadin-Israel contends, the Sifra commentary exhibits two distinct layers of interpretation which bring dramatically different assumptions to bear on the biblical text: earlier interpretations accord with the hermeneutic principles associated with Rabbi Ishmael, the other major school of early rabbinic midrash, while later additions subtly alter hermeneutic terminology and formulas, resulting in an engagement with Scripture that is not interpretive at all. Rather, the midrashic terminology in the Sifra's anonymous passages is part of what Yadin-Israel calls "a hermeneutic of camouflage," aimed at presenting oral traditions as though they were scripture-based injunctions."Scripture and Tradition" offers a radical rereading of the Sifra and its authorship, with far-reaching ramifications for our understanding of rabbinic literature as a whole. Using this new understanding of the Sifra as his starting point, Yadin-Israel demonstrates a two-fold break in the portrayal of Rabbi Akiva: hermeneutically, the sober midrashist who appeared in earlier rabbinic sources is transformed into an inspired, oracular interpreter of scripture in the Babylonian Talmud; while the biographically unremarkable sage is recast as a youthful ignoramus who came to Torah study late in life. The dual transformations of Rabbi Akiva--like the Sifra's hermeneutic of camouflage--are motivated by an ideological shift toward a greater emphasis on scriptural authority and away from received traditions, an insight that sheds new light on the vexing question of midrash and oral tradition in rabbinic sources. Through this close examination of a notoriously difficult text, "Scripture and Tradition" recovers a vital piece of the history of Jewish thought.