Moshe Weinfeld's Books

The Promise of the Land

The Inheritance of the Land of Canaan by the Israelites

By: Moshe Weinfeld

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The Promise of the Land

The Inheritance of the Land of Canaan by the Israelites

By: Moshe Weinfeld

Written by one of the outstanding biblical scholars in the world, this book is very important, not only as technical biblical criticism but also for its treatment of one of the most pressing and controversial issues of our own time."--David N. Freedman, co-editor of "The Archaeology of the Bible

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327

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ISBN 10

0520075102

ISBN 13

9780520075108

The Place of the Law in the Religion of Ancient Israel

By: Moshe Weinfeld

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The Place of the Law in the Religion of Ancient Israel

By: Moshe Weinfeld

Over a hundred years ago, Wellhausen's revolutionary aim in his "Prolegomena" was to prove that the Priestly legal sections of the Pentateuch reflect postexilic Judaism and must be considered a deviation from the prophetic religion which preceded it. The present study points out the biased assumptions underlying Wellhausen's theory and the fallacies in this thesis. A strong case is made for the antiquity of the Priestly Code and its antedating the Book of Deuteronomy in light of many parallels between the Priestly Law and ritual texts from the Ancient Near East, and an examination of the mythic outlook in P which distinguishes it from both Deuteronomy and Second Isaiah.

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176

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BRILL

Published Date

ISBN 10

9047402952

ISBN 13

9789047402954

Normative and Sectarian Judaism in the Second Temple Period

By: Moshe Weinfeld

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Normative and Sectarian Judaism in the Second Temple Period

By: Moshe Weinfeld

The book brings together the essays on Second Temple Judaism by Moshe Weinfeld, one of the leading figures in comparative literature and the history of religion in ancient Near Eastern studies. This integrated collection centers on the religious debates within Second Temple Judaism between the sectarian Qumran community and the Pharisees. It examines topics such as liturgy, law, theology and ideology; issues that established Jewish religious forms for normative, Rabbinic Judaism. It also sets these debates in the broader context of texts and ideas from the Bible and ancient Near East texts on one hand and the New Testament and Rabbinic Judaism on the other. The book comprises four sections. The first, 'Prayer and Worship' analyzes constitutive ideas reflected in the definitive prayers of Qumran and Pharisaic liturgy. The second, 'The Qumran Scrolls' engages various legal and hermeneutic issues in the literature of the Qumran sect. Section three, 'Theology and Ideology' treats a group of foundational Jewish concepts from the historical point of view. The final section 'The New Testament' brings several basic concepts and conceptions of Judaism into New Testament context. This is volume 54 in the Library of Second Temple Studies series (formerly the Journal for the Study of the Pseudepigrapha Supplement series).

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342

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A&C Black

Published Date

ISBN 10

0567044416

ISBN 13

9780567044419

Deuteronomy and the Deuteronomic School

By: Moshe Weinfeld

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Deuteronomy and the Deuteronomic School

By: Moshe Weinfeld

By means of a threefold approach--typological analysis of literary forms, investigation of religious ideology, and study of didactic aims and methods--Weinfeld shows that the deuteronomic composition was the creation of scribal circles who began their work some time prior to the reign of Josiah and were still at work after the fall of Judah. Includes a 46-page detailed appendix on deuteronomic phraseology. This volume is a reprint of the 1972 Oxford edition.

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492

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Eisenbrauns

Published Date

ISBN 10

0931464404

ISBN 13

9780931464409

Kabbalah in Italy, 1280-1510

A Survey

By: Moshe Idel

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Kabbalah in Italy, 1280-1510

A Survey

By: Moshe Idel

This survey of the history of Kabbalah in Italy represents a major contribution from one of the world's foremost Kabbalah scholars. Idel charts the ways that Kabbalistic thought and literature developed in Italy and how its unique geographical situation facilitated the arrival of both Spanish and Byzantine Kabbalah.

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508

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Yale University Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0300126263

ISBN 13

9780300126266

Absorbing Perfections

Kabbalah and Interpretation

By: Moshe Idel

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Absorbing Perfections

Kabbalah and Interpretation

By: Moshe Idel

In this wide-ranging discussion of Kabbalah—from the mystical trends of medieval Judaism to modern Hasidism—one of the world’s foremost scholars considers different visions of the nature of the sacred text and of the methods to interpret it. Moshe Idel takes as a starting point the fact that the postbiblical Jewish world lost its geographical center with the destruction of the temple and so was left with a textual center, the Holy Book. Idel argues that a text-oriented religion produced language-centered forms of mysticism. Against this background, the author demonstrates how various Jewish mystics amplified the content of the Scriptures so as to include everything: the world, or God, for example. Thus the text becomes a major realm for contemplation, and the interpretation of the text frequently becomes an encounter with the deepest realms of reality. Idel delineates the particular hermeneutics belonging to Jewish mysticism, investigates the progressive filling of the text with secrets and hidden levels of meaning, and considers in detail the various interpretive strategies needed to decodify the arcane dimensions of the text.

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686

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Yale University Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0300135076

ISBN 13

9780300135077

Normative and Sectarian Judaism in the Second Temple Period

By: Moshe Weinfeld

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Normative and Sectarian Judaism in the Second Temple Period

By: Moshe Weinfeld

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342

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A&C Black

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ISBN 10

0567044416

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9780567044419

תהלה למשה

By: Moshe Greenberg

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תהלה למשה

By: Moshe Greenberg

Forty-five scholars here combine their skills in tribute to their colleague, teacher, and friend. This collection includes 27 English and 18 Hebrew essays on literary criticism, rabbinic literature, Hebrew word studies, Septuagint, Qumran, textual criticism, and many other topics. Moshe Greenberg is perhaps best known for his commentary on Ezekiel in the Anchor Bible series.

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395

Publisher

Eisenbrauns

Published Date

ISBN 10

1575060272

ISBN 13

9781575060279

Idolatry

By: Moshe Halbertal,Avishai Margalit

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Idolatry

By: Moshe Halbertal,Avishai Margalit

“You shall have no other gods besides Me.” This injunction, handed down through Moses three thousand years ago, marks one of the most decisive shifts in Western culture: away from polytheism toward monotheism. Despite the momentous implications of such a turn, the role of idolatry in giving it direction and impetus is little understood. This book examines the meaning and nature of idolatry—and, in doing so, reveals much about the monotheistic tradition that defines itself against this sin.The authors consider Christianity and Islam, but focus primarily on Judaism. They explore competing claims about the concept of idolatry that emerges in the Hebrew Bible as a “whoring after false gods.” Does such a description, grounded in an analogy of sexual relations, presuppose the actual existence of other gods with whom someone might sin? Or are false gods the product of “men’s hands,” simply a matter of misguided belief? The authors show how this debate, over idolatry as practice or error, has taken shape and has in turn shaped the course of Western thought—from the differentiation between Jewish and Christian conceptions of God to the distinctions between true and false belief that inform the tradition of religious enlightenment.Ranging with authority from the Talmud to Maimonides, from Marx to Nietzsche and on to G.E. Moore, this brilliant account of a subject central to our culture also has much to say about metaphor, myth, and the application of philosophical analysis to religious concepts and sensibilities. Its insights into pluralism and intolerance, into the logic and illogic of the arguments religions aim at each other, make Idolatry especially timely and valuable in these days of dark and implacable religious difference.

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318

Publisher

Harvard University Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0674264193

ISBN 13

9780674264199

Studies in Classical Hebrew

By: Moshe Bar-Asher

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Studies in Classical Hebrew

By: Moshe Bar-Asher

Professor Moshe Bar-Asher, Professor Emeritus at the Hebrew University and long-time president of the Academy of the Hebrew Language, has published more than 200 articles and sixteen books and edited aboout 90 books and collections. The vast majority of his work has been accessible, however, only to specialists who read modern Hebrew or French. Bar-Asher’s groundbreaking articles on the dialects of rabbinic literature are classics. In more recent years he has brought the same breadth and depth of grammatical knowledge, and philological acumen, to the study of older classical Hebrew texts, including literary and epigraphic texts. This volume presents studies of individual words and verses within the Bible, as well as broader thematic discussions of biblical language and its long reception-history, down through medieval scribes and modern lexicographers. Also represented are Bar-Asher’s penetrating studies of Qumran texts and languages, which illuminate both the linguistic traditions reflected in these texts and the scribal culture from which they emerged. The third section contains studies of Mishnaic Hebrew. There are both sweeping surveys of the field and its accomplishments and challenges, and studies of specific phonological, morphological, syntactic and lexical features.

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492

Publisher

Walter de Gruyter

Published Date

ISBN 10

3110300397

ISBN 13

9783110300390

Biblical Prose Prayer

As a Window to the Popular Religion of Ancient Israel

By: Moshe Greenberg

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Biblical Prose Prayer

As a Window to the Popular Religion of Ancient Israel

By: Moshe Greenberg

Some degree of spiritual enlightenment must be supposed to account for the overall tolerance, even receptivity, of the people; though they refused to comply with the prophets' uncompromising demands, and occasionally persecuted one or another of them, as a rule they allowed them to preach, and even spawned devotees who reverently preserved their speeches until canonization. Unsupported by power and wealth, the classical prophets can have persisted for centuries only because they were rooted in loamy spiritual soil. The populace constituting that soil deserves to be appreciated no less than the exotic flowers that towered above it. What was the spiritual loam that prepared Israel's soil so that prophecy could thrive in it? Any answer to this question must give due consideration to the popular life of prayer. For it was in extemporized praying that the Israelites experienced a nonmagical approach to God in which form was subordinate to content; here, in immediate contact with a God who searched the conscience and the heart, they were sensitized to sincerity in self-disclosure to God; and, finally, it was in prayer that they had constantly to face the issue of adjusting their ways to God's in order to obtain his favor. Greenberg finds in this rich life of private prayer a setting for the high religious ideas--and the scathing critique of worship--which characterized the genius of the prophets of the eighth and ninth centuries BC. This masterful evaluation of biblical prose prayer, a tradition independent of experts and special places, suggests an explanation for the unprecedented democratization of worship in postbiblical Judaism.

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Wipf and Stock Publishers

Published Date

ISBN 10

1556351119

ISBN 13

9781556351112

Kabbalah and Eros

By: Moshe Idel

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Kabbalah and Eros

By: Moshe Idel

In this book, the world's foremost scholar of Kabbalah explores the understanding of erotic love in Jewish mystical thought. Encompassing Jewish mystical literatures from those of late antiquity to works of Polish Hasidism, Moshe Idel highlights the diversity of Kabbalistic views on eros and distinguishes between the major forms of eroticism. The author traces the main developments of a religious formula that reflects the union between a masculine divine attribute and a feminine divine attribute, and he asks why such an "erotic formula" was incorporated into the Jewish prayer book. Idel shows how Kabbalistic literature was influenced not only by rabbinic literature but also by Greek thought that helped introduce a wider understanding of eros. Addressing topics ranging from cosmic eros and androgyneity to the affinity between C. J. Jung and Kabbalah to feminist thought, Idel's deeply learned study will be of consuming interest to scholars of religion, Judaism, and feminism.

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381

Publisher

Yale University Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

030010832X

ISBN 13

9780300108323

Stories of the Law

Narrative Discourse and the Construction of Authority in the Mishnah

By: Moshe Simon-Shoshan

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Stories of the Law

Narrative Discourse and the Construction of Authority in the Mishnah

By: Moshe Simon-Shoshan

Winner of Honorable Mention in the Jordan Schnitzer Book Awards of the Association for Jewish Studies Moshe Simon-Shoshan offers a groundbreaking study of Jewish law (halakhah) and rabbinic story-telling. Focusing on the Mishnah, the foundational text of halakhah, he argues that narrative was essential in early rabbinic formulations and concepts of law, legal process, and political and religious authority. The book begins by presenting a theoretical framework for considering the role of narrative in the Mishnah. Drawing on a wide range of disciplines, including narrative theory, Semitic linguistics, and comparative legal studies, Simon-Shoshan shows that law and narrative are inextricably intertwined in the Mishnah. Narrative is central to the way in which the Mishnah transmits law and ideas about jurisprudence. Furthermore, the Mishnah's stories are the locus around which the Mishnah both constructs and critiques its concept of the rabbis as the ultimate arbiters of Jewish law and practice. In the second half of the book, Simon-Shoshan applies these ideas to close readings of individual Mishnaic stories. Among these stories are some of the most famous narratives in rabbinic literature, including those of Honi the Circle-drawer and R. Gamliel's Yom Kippur confrontation with R. Joshua. In each instance, Simon-Shoshan elucidates the legal, political, theological, and human elements of the story and places them in the wider context of the book's arguments about law, narrative, and rabbinic authority. Stories of the Law presents an original and forceful argument for applying literary theory to legal texts, challenging the traditional distinctions between law and literature that underlie much contemporary scholarship.

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304

Publisher

Oxford University Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0199773815

ISBN 13

9780199773817

The Privileged Divine Feminine in Kabbalah

By: Moshe Idel

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The Privileged Divine Feminine in Kabbalah

By: Moshe Idel

This volume addresses the complex topic of the preeminent status of the divine feminine power, to be referred also as Female, within the theosophical structures of many important Kabbalists, Sabbatean believers, and Hasidic masters. This privileged status is part of a much broader vision of the Female as stemming from a very high root within the divine world, then She was emanated and constitutes the tenth, lower divine power, and even in this lower state She is sometime conceived of governing this world and as equal to the divine Male. Finally, She is conceived of as returning to Her original place in special moments, the days of Sabbath, the Jewish Holidays or in the eschatological era. Her special dignity is sometime related to Her being the telos of creation, and as the first entity that emerged in the divine thought, which has been later on generated. In some cases, an uroboric theosophy links the Female Malkhut, directly to the first divine power, Keter. The author points to the possible impact of some of the Kabbalistic discussions on conceptualizations of the feminine in the Renaissance period.

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262

Publisher

Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG

Published Date

ISBN 10

3110599805

ISBN 13

9783110599800

How Jewish is Jewish History?

By: Moshe Rosman

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How Jewish is Jewish History?

By: Moshe Rosman

Moshe Rosman cogently and critically presents the considerations that must be brought to bear on the writing of Jewish history in the light of post-modernist thinking.

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235

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Liverpool University Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

1909821128

ISBN 13

9781909821125

The Cultural Legacy of the Pre-Ashkenazic Jews in Eastern Europe

By: Moshe Taube

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The Cultural Legacy of the Pre-Ashkenazic Jews in Eastern Europe

By: Moshe Taube

A free ebook version of this title is available through Luminos, University of California Press’s Open Access publishing program. Visit www.luminosoa.org to learn more. This book uncovers cultural traces of the ancient Jewry of Eastern Europe from the 10th to 15th centuries. These traces take the form of translations from Hebrew into East Slavic, ranging from accounts of Old Testament prophets and other historical figures of interest to both Jews and Christians, such as Alexander the Great, to scientific and philosophical texts on everything from astronomy to physiognomy to metaphysics. Moshe Taube’s fine-grained analysis teases out a robust picture of this massive cultural enterprise: the translators, their erudition, their biases, and their collaborative method of translation with neighboring Christians. Summarizing over thirty years of philological and linguistic research, this book offers a substantial original contribution to the cultural history of Jews in Eastern Europe and their interaction with, and influence on, Slavic culture in the Middle Ages and Early Modern period.

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152

Publisher

Univ of California Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0520390784

ISBN 13

9780520390782

Messianic Mystics

By: Moshe Idel

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Messianic Mystics

By: Moshe Idel

One of the worl'ds leading scholars of Jewish thought examines the long tradition of Jewish messianism and mystical experience.

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Page Count

470

Publisher

Yale University Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0300082886

ISBN 13

9780300082883

The Place of the Law in the Religion of Ancient Israel

By: Moshe Weinfeld

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The Place of the Law in the Religion of Ancient Israel

By: Moshe Weinfeld

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176

Publisher

BRILL

Published Date

ISBN 10

9047402952

ISBN 13

9789047402954

People of the Book

Canon, Meaning, and Authority

By: Moshe Halbertal

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People of the Book

Canon, Meaning, and Authority

By: Moshe Halbertal

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.

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199

Publisher

Harvard University Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0674038142

ISBN 13

9780674038141

Ascensions on High in Jewish Mysticism

Pillars, Lines, Ladders

By: Moshe Idel

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Ascensions on High in Jewish Mysticism

Pillars, Lines, Ladders

By: Moshe Idel

Ascensions on high took many forms in Jewish mysticism and they permeated most of its history from its inception until Hasidism. The book surveys the various categories, with an emphasis on the archetectural images of the ascent, like the resort images of pillars, lines, and ladders.

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