Introduction to the Talmud and Midrash

Hermann Leberecht Strack, Günter Stemberger

Fortress Press, 1991 - 472 pages

Gunter Stemberger's revision of H. L. Strack's classic introduction to rabbinic literature, which appeared in its first English edition in 1991, was widely acclaimed. Gunter Stemberger and Markus Bockmuehl have now produced this updated edition, which is a significant revision (completed in 1996) of the 1991 volume. Following Strack's original outline, Stemberger discusses first the historical framework, the basic principles of rabbinic literature and hermeneutics and the most important Rabbis. The main part of the book is devoted to the Talmudic and Midrashic literature in the light of contemporary rabbinic research. The appendix includes a new section on electronic resources for the study of the Talmud and Midrash. The result is a comprehensive work of reference that no student of rabbinics can afford to be without.

 

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From Sermon To Commentary: Expounding The Bible In Talmudic Babylonia 

 

Eliezer Segal

Wilfrid Laurier Univ. Press, 2005 - 164 pages

 

The Bible has always been vital to Jewish religious life, and it has been expounded in diverse ways. Perhaps the most influential body of Jewish biblical interpretation is the Midrash that was produced by expositors during the first five centuries CE. Many such teachings are collected in the Babylonian Talmud, the monumental compendium of Jewish law and lore that was accepted as the definitive statement of Jewish oral tradition for subsequent generations.However, many of the Talmud's interpretations of biblical passages appear bizarre or pointless. From Sermon to Commentary: Expounding the Bible in Talmudic Babyloniatries to explain this phenomenon by carefully examining representative passages from a variety of methodological approaches, paying particular attention to comparisons with Midrash composed in the Land of Israel.Based on this investigation, Eliezer Segal argues that the Babylonian sages were utilizing discourses that had originated in Israel as rhetorical sermons in which biblical interpretation was being employed in an imaginative, literary manner, usually based on the interplay between two or more texts from different books of the Bible. Because they did not possess their own tradition of homiletic preaching, the Babylonian rabbis interpreted these comments without regard for their rhetorical conventions, as if they were exegetical commentaries, resulting in the distinctive, puzzling character of Babylonian Midrash.

 

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